Marx\'s Theory of Alienation

Contents: Prefaces. Introduction. Part I. Origins and structure of the Marxian theory; I. Origins of the concept of alienation: 1. The Judeo-Christian approach. 2. Alienation as "Universal Saleability". 3. Historicity and the rise of anthropology. 4. The end of "Uncritical Positivism". II. Genesis of Marx\'s theory of alienation: 1. Marx\'s doctoral thesis and his critique of the modern state. 2. The Jewish question and the problem of German emancipation. 3. Marx\'s encounter with political economy. 4. Monistic materialism. 5. The transformation of Hegel\'s idea of "activity". III. Conceptual structure of Marx\'s theory of alienation: 1. Foundations of the Marxian system. 2. Conceptual framework of Marx\'s theory of alienation. 3. Alienation and teleology. Part II. Aspects of alienation; IV. Economic aspects: 1. Marx\'s critique of political economy. 2. From partial to universal alienation. 3. From political to economic alienation. 4. Division and alienation of labour, competition and reification. 5. Alienated labour and "Human nature". V. Political aspects: 1. Property relations. 2. Capitalistic objectification and freedom. 3. Political "Negation of the negation" and emancipation. VI. Ontological and moral aspects: 1. The "Self-mediating being of nature". 2. The limits of freedom. 3. Human attributes. 4. The alienation of human powers. 5. Means and ends, necessity and freedom: the practical programme of human emancipation. 6. Legality, morality and education. VII. Aesthetic aspects: 1. Meaning, value and need: an anthropomorphic framework of evaluation. 2. Marx\'s concept of realism. 3. The "emancipation of the human senses". 4. Production and consumption and their relation to art. 5. The significance of aesthetic education. Part III. Contemporary significance of Marx\'s theory of alienation; VIII. The controversy about Marx: 1. "Young Marx" versus "Mature Marx". 2. "Philosophy" versus "Political Economy". 3. Marx\'s intellectual development. 4. Theory of alienation and philosophy of history. IX. Individual and society: 1. Capitalist development and the cult of the individual. 2. Individual and collectivity. 3. Self-mediation of the social individual. X. Alienation and the Crisis of education: 1. Educational Utopias. 2. The Crisis of education. Notes. Bibliography. Appendix. Index.

"The alienation of humankind, in the fundamental sense of the term, means the loss of control: its embodiment in an alien force which confronts the individuals as a hostile and potentially destructive power. When Marx analysed alienation in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he indicated four principal aspects of it the alienation of human beings from: (1) nature; (2) their own productive activity; (3) their \'species being\', as members of the human species; and (4) each other.

He forcefully underlined that all this is not some \'fatality of nature\' as indeed the structural antagonisms of capital are characteristically misrepresented, so as to leave them in their place but a form of self-alienation.

In other words, not the deed of an all-powerful outside agency, natural or metaphysical, but the outcome of a determinate type of historical development which can be positively altered by a conscious intervention in the historical process, in order to \'transcend labour\'s self-alienation." (jacket)