Marxist Political Thought

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Marx's concept of alienation is fundamental in his comprehension of human nature and how each aspect of human activity, such as religion, economy, politics and society, has become an alien to man for it has been appropriated by external instances. Consequently, alienation inscribes itself in natural history as a constant and the outcome of history has therefore to be the overcoming of alienation. It discusses how Marx sees this overcoming in the realisation of true communism and how this idea of the transcendence of alienation being a historical culmination has serious implications for the overall concept of the task of philosophy.

Outline:
Marx's Theory of Alienation: Private Property as the Fundamental Source of Every Form of Self-Estrangement
The Transcendence of Alienation and the End of History
Conclusion:

From the Paper:

"Marx's theory of alienation also induces naturally that human thought is alienated from the thinker. Marx states that "The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence, i.e. from his natural and human essence" (MARX, 1844: 398). Such a consideration intervenes in Marx's critique of the Hegelian dialectic, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In this passage, Marx actually reveals that the ideological alienation of man was present through religion and especially through philosophy. Philosophy constitutes indeed a process of abstraction of man's real essence: man reflects upon his human essence by philosophising, but the thinking process is still marked by alienation in the sense that this human essence is still seen as an abstraction, it does not have any translation in the reality given that alienation has transformed man's world in a complete reified world that is estranged from man. "

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