International Phenomenological Society

Alienation and History in the Early Marx

Author(s): Loyd D. Easton
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Dec., 1961), pp. 193-205
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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 ALIENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX

"Alienation" has become a prominent, even common, theme in current

appraisals of man's situation in society. These appraisals widely refer to
the early writings of Marx in which "alienation" [Entfremdung] is a
central concept. For the young Marx man's own deed in government,
wealth, and culture "becomes to him an alien power, standing over against
him instead of being ruled by him." Man is thus divided within himself and
from his fellows, never truly "at home," never truly whole in his social
life. "Alienation" in this sense figures prominently in the sociological
writings of Erich Fromm and C. Wright Mills, in the political criticism of
Dissent magazine, and in reformulations of socialism taking place in
Britain and Western Europe. For Tillich, Heinemann, Sartre, and Merleau-
Ponty it is central to contemporary existentialism. Some of these appli-
cations will be illuminated in what follows. In general, they reflect a shift
of focus in social thinking since the 1930's and World War II, a shift which
gives priority to the problems of "individuality" and "work" in a mass
society. My primary concern, however, is to examine the idea of alienation
in Marx's own thought, especially his early views, and emphasize several
points - his particular appropriations from Hegel and Feuerbach, his
Hellenic image of community, and implications of his ambivalence toward
history - which are themselves generally alien to the extensive literature
on the subject.1

I
Man's "alienation" was Marx's major concern in his Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts, written in Paris in 1844 but unknown and
unpublished until 1932. Marx recognized his indebtedness to Hegel and
praised The Phenomenologyof Mind for seeing "wealth, state-power, etc.
as things estranged from man's nature," albeit only in "thought-form,"
and for dealing with the estrangement of man "in a manner often sur-
passing the Hegelian standpoint."2 The part of The Phenomenologywhich

1 Particularly,H. Popitz, Der entfremdete

Mensch(Basel, 1953); H. Marcuse, Reason
and Revolution(New York, 1954); A. C. MacIntyre, Marxism (London, 1953); K. Lo-
with, "Self-Alienationin the Early Writings of Marx,"Social Research,22 (1954), 204-
30; E. Thier et al., Marxismusstudien(TUbingen,1954); F. Pappenheim, The Alienation
of ModernMan (New York, 1959); J. Y. Calvez, La Pensee de Karl Marx (Paris, 1956).
2 Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts,trans. M. Milligan(London, 1958), pp. 149
ff. [Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Historische-KritischeGesamtausgabe - hereafter

193

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194 RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

seems to have attracted him most was not, as one might assume with
Marcuse and MacIntyre,3 the section on "Lordship and Bondage" but
rather the section which concentrates on "wealth" and "state-power,"
namely, "Spirit in Self-Estrangement: the Discipline of Culture and
Civilization."
The very existence of culture, according to Hegel, "as also the actuality
of self-consciousness, depends on the process that self-consciousness divests
itself of its personality, by doing so creates its world, and treats it as some-
thing alien and external of which it must now take possession." 4 Culture
thus manifests the development of mind through a movement of alienation
and reappropriation. But this movement is not, Hegel insists, "formal,"
as when we see that laws apply universally to persons. Rather, it is
"concrete and actual," an experienced social development through which
"state-power" and "wealth" become the opposite of what they super-
ficially seem to be. "State-power" is not simply an externally "bad"
restriction or coercion but reveals itself as a source of self-fulfillment.
"Wealth" is not simply an extrinsic "good" as individual enjoyment but
rather becomes something which can be used for all since basically it is
"the continuously created result of the labor and action of all."
While the self finds in state-power and wealth its own social action, it
does this through the medium of language wherein the particular "ego"
becomes objective through others. Here state-power becomes "nobility"
to be obeyed, wealth generates "flattery," and there arises a sophisticated,
inverted form of discourse which seems dishonest to those who see only the
surface of things. Culture breeds the vanity which can "chatter about
everything" as in the 18th century salons. But such chatter is really
important, Hegel insists, because it sees the contradiction in things and
"knows everything to be estranged from itself." Hegel's quotations
indicate that he is thinking of the title-character in Rameau's Nephew,
Diderot's famed dialogue. Rameau's nephew does indeed chatter about
everything, but as he describes the indignities he experiences in his quest
for social status, he reveals that the virtues and vices of his social betters
are really the opposite of what they seem to be. In a moment of self-
contempt he confesses that he really has no idea of who or what he is at
bottom.5 In Hegel's view, Rameau's nephew epitomizes the aspect of

MEGA - ed. D. Ryazanov, V. Adoratski (Moscow, 1931-) Abt. I, Bd. 3, pp. 155ff.]
The notes which follow will indicate the source in German along with the English
translationwhere the originalwordingis crucialor where I have retranslated.
3 Cf. Marcuse,op. cit., p. 115; MacIntyre, Op.cit., p. 25.
4 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie (New York, 1931),
pp. 507-48, the sourceof the subsequentdiscussionand quotations.
5 Diderot, Rameau'sNephewand OtherWorks,trans. J. Barzun and R. Bowen (New
York, 1956), pp. 16, 47-51, et pa88iM.

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 ALIENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 195

culture in which the estrangement of the self comes to a climax. For here
the self, standing outside state-power and wealth, deviously recognizes
them as its own doing. Here, Hegel concludes, the self becomes aware of its
"torn and shattered condition; and in knowing this it has ipso facto risen
above that condition." Thus alienation is overcome through knowledge.
Marx was also attracted to Rameau's Nephew. In the game of "con-
fessions" he played with his daughters he named Diderot his favorite prose
writer. Engels' book on Diihring's Revolution in Science, written in colla-
boration with Marx, particularly praised Rameau's Nephew as a "master-
piece of dialectics." 6 More directly, Hegel's discussion of alienation was
centered on the very issues with which Marx was preoccupied in 1844,
namely, "state-power" and "wealth." Between 1842 and 1844, as we shall
see later, Marx had used Hegel's theory of the state as a point of departure
for developing his own view in several articles and in a long, unpublished
analysis of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. As a result of his contact with
French socialists, which began with his exile from Germany to Paris in
1843, he turned to an intensive study of economics. In the views of the
classical economists, particularly in Ricardo's labor theory of value, he
found confirmation of Hegel's view that wealth is "the created result of
the labor and action of all." But, with Hegel, he saw this as part of a wider
phenomenon. He followed Hegel's more general suggestion that culture
and civilization are the result of alienation in "labor and action." Thus he
wrote in the Manuscripts:
The great thing in Hegel's Phenomenologyand its final result - the dialectic of
negativity as the moving and productiveprinciple- is simply that Hegel graspsthe
self-development of man as a process, self-loss in the object as objectification, as
alienation and the overcomingof this alienation; that he thus grasps the nature of
workand comprehendsobjective man, real because active, as the result of his own
work.7
Marx especially respected the social and historical - the "concrete and
actual" - character of Hegel's view of labor. The "great thing" in The
Phenomenology included the insight that the development of man's
specifically human capacities is "only possible through the collective
activity of men, only as a result of history." Here is the core of the social
theory identified with Marx's name: the basis of civilization is labor, a
social-historical process with dialectic as its "productive principle."

II
Every word of praise Marx had for Hegel's view of alienation, however,
6 Marx and Engels, Literatureand Art (New York, 1947), pp. 145, 79 f.; Engels,
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific [from Eugen Diihring's Revolutionin Science]trans.
E. Aveling (New York, 1935), p. 45.
7 P. 151; MEGA,I, 3, p. 156.

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196 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

was eclipsed by thrusts against it. In the Manuscripts Marx repeatedly

charged that Hegel's treatment of alienation was "mystifying," "spiritual,"
and "abstract" and the forms of alienation Hegel developed were them-
selves alienated. In these charges he followed Feuerbach who saw Hegel's
idealism as the apotheosis of abstraction which "alienates man from
himself" because it inverts the real relation of thought to the world.
Instead of seeing that the Absolute Idea is itself derived from particular
experienced things, Hegel derived particular experienced things from the
Absolute Idea. Hence the essence of nature was outside nature, the essence
of man outside man, and the essence of thought outside the thinking act.
But genuine thought, Feuerbach held, is determined by the opposite of
thought - existence, matter, sensibility, "the immediate" as perception
and passion.8 A real object, consequently, cannot be the objet of abstract
thought but only an object of the real complete man. Feuerbach sometimes
described the speculative inversion of thought's relation to the world as a
reversal of subject and predicate. The idealist sees nature, religion, and
philosophy itself as predicates of the Absolute Idea. But, said Feuerbach,
''we need only to convert the predicate into the subject to get at the pure,
undisguised truth." On these grounds and from these premises Marx
charged that with Hegel alienation and its resolution is itself alienated
because it takes place only in the movement of thought and knowledge
as shown in The Phenomenology and its concluding chapter, "Absolute
Knowledge."
In 1842-3 Marx had already criticized Hegel's Philosophy of Right in
these terms. For Hegel, Marx asserted, the family and civil society from
which the state develops are nothing but manifestations, "predicates," of
the Absolute Idea. Hence the state is an "imaginary universality," an
"estrangement," from the actual life of men. Hegel then resolves the
problems of political life - particularly the cleavage between public and
private existence apparent in the economic "war of all against all" - by
making politics "a chapter in logic."9
The Manuscripts of 1844 concentrate on Hegel's view of labor. The
alienation Hegel finds in labor, according to Marx, is itself alienated
because it arises and finds its resolution in the movement of speculative
knowledge as a necessary moment in the unfolding of the Absolute Idea.
This enabled Hegel to accomodate himself to the status quo and accept

8 Ludwig Feuerbach,Kleine PhilosophischeSchriften(Leipzig, 1950), pp. 59, 51, 144,

149, 56; Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity,trans. G. Eliot [M. Edvans],(New York,
1957), pp. xxxv, 285, 19, 25. Cf. Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, trans. R. Dixon
(Moscow,1956), pp. 81 f. utilizing Feuerbach'scritique of Hegel; S. Hook, From Hegel
to Marx (New York, 1950), p. 226.
9 Marx, "kfitik der Hegelschen Staatsphilosophie,"Die Friihschriften,ed. S. Lands-
hut (Stuttgart, 1953), p. 33 f. Cf. Hook, op. cit., pp. 249 ff.

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 ALIENATIONAND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 197

man's estranged life as "truly human." Further, it prevented him from

seeing the negative side of labor, the self-loss and deprivation for the
laborer. Accordingly,-he could not deal critically with the "present fact"
revealed in classical economics that the laborer is related to the product
of his work and, more importantly, to the act of production itself as to an
alien power. His work is forced, not free self-activity. He is at home if he
does not work, and if he works he is not at home. Only in his animal
functions does he feel himself to be acting freely. The conditions of labor
thus deprive him of a truly human existence, divide him from his fellows,
and set worker against employer, poor against rich. Private property, like
the wage of labor, is not the cause but the result of "alienated labor,
alienated life, alienated man." 10
In Marx's use of Feuerbach's idea of alienation against Hegel his empiri-
cism and existentialism become apparent. With Feuerbach he held that
genuine thought must be rooted in "sensuous consciousness," "sensibility,"
or "nature" which has a social dimension in the relation of "man to man.9"
Thus he gave priority to direct experience, to "immediacy," over against
derivative general ideas and abstractions. His existentialism appears in
emphasis on man and man's action as having an inescapably "subjective'
dimension, as being something more than a thing, object, or logical
category. The Manuscripts see man as a sensuous, limited, and suffering
being as well as a being "for itself," a species-being. Marx particularly
warns against establishing "society" as an abstraction over against the
individual. The individual is a social being as the subjective, experienced
existence of society. This view, said Marx, is neither idealism nor materi-
alism but combines the truth of each as "completed naturalism or human-
ism," a position praised by Sartre and others as distinctively ''existentia-
list" because it preserves "subjectivity" in necessary correlation with
"objectivity." 11
Under the impact of Feuerbach Marx's thought had a distinctive moral
bent, a source of its great appeal. Since the basis of religion, government,
and the whole structure of civilization is man and man's action, not the
Absolute Idea, it followed that man's alienation is not a problem to be
solved by speculative thought which, like the Owl of Minerva, takes flight
only after dusk has fallen. Nor is it to be left to the processes of history.
Defending Feuerbach against Hegelians who would "transform man

10 Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts,pp. 69-72, 79-82, 152, 161 ff.; MEGA,I, 3,

pp. 83-6, 91-3, 157, 164 ff.
11 Ibid., pp. 156-8, 105; MEGA, I, 3, pp. 160-2, 117. Cf. Sartre, Literaryand Phi7o-
sophical Essays, trans. A. Michelson (New York, 1955), pp. 203n, 229-31; P. Tillich,
"Man in a Technical Society," Perspectives(Summer, 1954), p. 118. For a summary of
the relation between Marx's early thought and existentialism see E. Thier et al., Mar-
xismusstudien,pp. 173-213, 9-13.

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198 PHILOSOPHY RESEARCH
ANDPHENOMENOLOGICAL

himself into a category," Marx insisted that "History does nothing, it

possesses no colossal riches,' it 'fights no battles'! It is rather man, actual
and living man, who does all this; 'history' does not use man as a means
for its purposes as though it were a person apart; it is nothing but the
activity of man pursuing his ends." 12 From this point of view Marx could
insist, in Kantian terms, that man's alienation is essentially a question of
"the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a
degraded, servile, neglected, contemptible being." Such a "categorical
imperative" appears in the context of Marx's criticism of religion and
reveals the import of that criticism. With Feuerbach, Marx saw religion as
an inverted, compensatory expression of human values. It is "the senti-
ment of a heartless world, . . . the spirit of spiritless conditions." But the
values for which religion invertedly stands - a world with heart and
conditions congenial to spirit - are not denied. Feuerbach defined the
"true atheist" not as the man who denies God but the man for whom the
predicates attributed to God are nothing. Marx's criticism of religion thus
reveals his moral dedication to the wholeness of man and the dignity he
may achieve as the alien powers of state, industry, and class are brought
under his associated control.
Echoes of this "humanism" in Marx's later writings are his well-known
charges that capitalism degrades human beings, turns men into com-
modities, and transforms human relations into a cash nexus. His discussion
of the "fetishism of commodities" in Capital reinstates "alienation" in
economic terminology. A commodity is mysterious because "a definite
social relation between men" has assumed "the fantastic form of a relation
between things." The humanistic theme animates Marx's vision of
socialism as "an association in which the free development of each is the
condition of the free development of all" and "the development of human
power ... is its own end." In early writings to which we shall return Marx
sees the organized state and bureaucracy as a reflection of man's alienation
to be overcome in communism where there is nothing independent of self-
active, associated individuals. This is the background of his "anarchistic"
anticipation of the "withering away" of the state and the basis of his
belief that a truly socialist society was manifest in the "self-government of
producers" of the Paris Commune, an extension of the cooperative principle
advocated by Proudhon. This "fuller democracy" involving worker
control of industry was Marx's mature answer - or better, one of his
mature answers - to the problem of alienated labor.
These echoes of Marx'shumanism indicate the prominence in his thought
of the "principle of subjectivity," as Hegel called it. He was asserting that
man is an end in himself, an end restricting the use of all means and thus
12 The Holy Family, p. 125; Die Heilige Familie (Berlin, 1955), p. 137. See Marx,
SelectedEssays, trans. H. J. Stenning (London,1926), p. 27.

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 AULENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 199

setting limits to the action of state, class, political party, or any other
social institution. In this respect one might well say, as is frequently done,
that Marx was a "child of the Enlightenment," a proponent of the "princi-
ples of 1789" who sought to substantiate that emphasis on the individual
person and his self-direction which characterizes liberal democracy.13-

III

We noted how Marx praised Hegel's Phenomenologyfor seeing alienation

in labor as "the result of history." Similar references appear throughout
the Manuscripts as Marx integrates his "humanism or completed natu-
ralism" with the "history of industry," "future historical development,"
and "world history." 14 Presently this emphasis is turned against Feuer-
bach. In The German Ideology and Theses of 1845 Marx condemns Feuer-
bach's view of man because it neglects history. It fails to see that the
existing conditions of life have made men what they are and further that
these conditions - like all objects and events man confronts in experience -
are the historical product of industry and the state of society. Accordingly
Feuerbach has no basis for action. He can at best contemplate and theorize
about man's alienation and this, Marx charges, really makes him accept
the fact that the existence of millions of proletarians is in contradiction
to their human essence. Thus Feuerbach, like Hegel, finds the answer to
man's alienation in speculative knowledge when what is required, in Marx's
view, is the "revolutionary practice" and action called for in the Theses of
1845.15
In this criticism of Feuerbach, the major turning-point in Marx's
thought, there are at least two main ideas which need to be disentangled-.
First, Marx is charging that Feuerbach failed to carry out his empiricism.

13 This side of Marx's thought has appeared at a number of points in the socialist
movement - for example, in Bernstein's "revisionism"which attacked Marx'sreliance
on Hegel and viewed socialismas extending the moral aims of liberal democracy,in the
"back to Kant" movement of continental socialists, and the views of W. E. Walling
who, in the heydey of Americansocialism around 1910, opposed "society as God" and
based his oppositionto "absolutism"on John Dewey's deferenceto "the concretething
as experienced." Today an increasing number of socialists believe that preoccupation
with consumptionand income-distributionneglects society's most important product -
the kind of men it produces.Accordinglythey revive Marx'spreoccupationwith "alien-
ated labor" and concentrate on transformationof work. See, particularly, E. Fromm,
The Sane Society (New York, 1955), VIII; D. Bell, "The 'Rediscovery' of Alienation,"
Journal of Philosophy.,54 (1959), pp. 950-52.
14 Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts,pp. 121 f., 126, 160; MEGA,1, 3, pp. 109 f.
114, 156. Cf. A. C. MacIntyre, Marxism, pp. 68 f. too sharply separating the "moral"
import of The Manuscriptsfrom the "historicalprediction"of The GermanIdeology.
15 Cf. The GermanIdeology, trans. R. Pascal (New York, 1939), pp. 33-8, 154 f.,
197-9 ("Theseson Feuerbach").

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200 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

He neglected the observable conditions of man's alienation - i.e., the

historical state of industry and society - in spite of his insistence that
genuine thought must be grounded in sensibility. He made the overcoming
of man's alienation a mere ideal to be contemplated rather than a matter
of action through concrete means in observable historical conditions. Here
Marx is demanding "concreteness" in the Hegelian sense of taking into
account the relevant, effective conditions of action. This demand, which
one might well approve in the name of moral responsibility, shapes the
attitude Marx takes toward ethical ideals. It leads him, with Hegel, to
criticize Kant's "categorical imperative" as abstract and impotent
because it neglects the whole complex of human interests and institutions
which ethical ideals express and in which they are rooted.16
But there is another aspect of Marx's criticism of Feuerbach which goes
further. He was saying, again relying on Hegel, that man's alienation will
be overcome by the movement of history itself, that there is a nisus in
events which will put an end to all forms of alienation. As early as 1837
Marx wrote to his father that he had started out from Kant, "proceeded to
seek the Idea in actuality itself," and ended "in the clutches" of Hegelia-
nism as he sought the developing unity in law, the state, nature, and
history. Hence in an exchange of letters with Arnold Ruge in 1844 Marx
insisted that the critic must develop the "social truth," the "demands of
reason," the "ought to be" in actual events and not fall prey to "dogmatic
anticipations" as in the communism of Cabet and Proudhon.17
The notion that history itself provides the answer to man's alienation
becomes especially apparent as Marx clarifies his views on "communism."
In the Manuscripts he criticizes the "vulgar" communism of Proudhon and
Fourier as seeking to universalize private property (even of women),
abstract from talent, negate man's personality, and force the situation of
the laborer on all men because it fails to see the basis of private property in
man's alienation. On the contrary, man's alienation can be overcome only
through "a complete and conscious restoration of man to himself within
the total wealth of previous development" to achieve "the full and pro-
foundly all-sided man as a continual reality." But communism in this
sense, Marx firmly insists, is no "abstraction from the objective world."

16 Cf. Hegel, Philosophyof Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1942), Sec. 135; Marx,
"Die Deutsche Ideologie," MEGA, I, 5, pp. 175-78; Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach(New
York 1941), p. 30. "Manmakes his own history," Marxwrote in 1852, "but he does not
make it out of whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but
out of such as he finds close at hand."
17 Friihschriften,pp. 7 f., 3, 168 ff. Cf. ibid., pp. 12 f., 16 ff., preparatorynotes for
Marx's doctoral dissertation defining "praxis" as (i) theoretical in "criticism" which
"apprehendsthe inadequacy of existence to essence, specific actuality to the Idea" and
(ii) as the realizationof Hegel's completedphilosophy.

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 ALIENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 201

It is, rather, "the-actualemergence,the actual futurerealizationfor man

of his natureand his natureas actual."
CriticizingProudhonin The Holy Family, Marxemphasizesthe prole-
tariat, the reflexive opposite of private property,as the agency whereby
man's alienationwill be overcome.He follows Hegel in referringto the
proletariat'sindignationat its abasement,an indignationto which it is
necessarilydrivenby the contradictionbetweenits humannature and its
life-situation. But the proletariat, along with private property, is in
movement towards its own dissolution through "a developmentwhich
does not depend on it, of which it is unconsciousand which takes place
against its will, throughthe very nature of things." A year earlierMarx
had characterizedthis movementas the "realizationof philosophy,"i.e.,
the actualization of the Hegelian Idea of which he had written to his
father in 1837.18
In The GermanIdeologyMarx specifies how communismovercomes
man'salienationin relationto politicaland economicinstitutions.It is the
achievementof a?"realcommunity"in which the "contradictionbetween
the interestof the separateindividualor individualfamily and the interest
of all" has been overcome.It makes men whole by putting an end to the
cleavage between productionand consumption,between intellectualand
manuallabor, which arise from the divisionof labor in modernindustrial
society. It does this by abolishingthe state, socialclasses,divisionof labor
and all existing forms of associationwhich expressman's self-alienation.
The alien and seeminglyindependentpowerswhichfetter men - the state,
class, industry,religion- are broughtunder their control so that there is
nothingindependentof self-active,associatedindividuals.'9
With differentterminologyMarxhad arrivedat this view of the "real
community" between 1842 and 1844 in various criticisms of Hegel's
theory of the state. Marx accepted Hegel's premisethat the state is the
unity of the generaland particular.But such a unity, Marxwent on to say,
cannot be achieved either by the constitutionalmonarchywhich Hegel
defends or even by a republic.The bureaucracyof the formeris only an
"imaginaryuniversality."The "inalienablerights of man" in the latter
are only satisfactionsof "the egoistic individual,of man separatedfrom
man and the community."The true unity of generaland particular,Marx
concluded,is to be found only in "democracy."20 But precisely such a
unity, we noted above, later becomesfor Marxthe distinguishingfeature

18 The Holy Family, p. 51 f.; Die Heilige Familie, p. 137. Marx, "On the Critiqueof
Hegel's Philosophy of Right," SelectedEssays, p. 29. Cf. Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts,p. 82.
19 The GermanIdeology,pp. 70-75, 22-27.
20 "Kritik der Hegelschen Staatsphilosophie,"Die Friihschri/ten,pp. 59-62, 46-50.
Cf. "On the Jewish Question," SelectedEssays, pp. 76 ff.

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202 PHILOSOPHY RESEARCH
AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL

of "communism." The different words thus refer to the same kind of a

community - a community whose image for both Hegel and Marx was the
Athenian polis of Pericles' time.
In the writings through which he became known to Marx, Hegel showed
a deep and abiding admiration for Hellenic civilization. He saw in Athens
under Pericles a vital unity of man and society in which any consideration
of "the state in the abstract" was out of place because an immediate
natural harmony of particular and universal had been achieved. Though
Hegel concluded that this harmony had to be corrected by "the principle
of subjectivity" found in Socrates, in the Christian emphasis on the worth
of the individual, and in Kant's ethics, his admiration of the Athenian
polis remained firm.21 Year after year he opened his lectures on Greek
philosophy by saying: "If we were permitted to have an aspiration, it
would be for such a land and such conditions."
Marx shared Hegel's admiration of Hellenic civilization and was always,
as Franz Mehring puts it, "a faithful lover of the Greeks." He studied
classical art and mythology at the university, wrote his doctoral disser-
tation of Greek philosophy, studded Capital with Greek quotations, and
read Aeschylus in the original at least once a year. Like Hegel, he deeply
admired the Athenian polis. Hence we find him insisting that only "de-
mocracy" - later called "communism" - can provide the substantial
unity of people and state such as existed "in ancient Greece where the res
public was the actual content of private life, the actual existence of the
citizen, and the merely private man was the slave." The feeling of human
dignity and freedom, says Marx, "disappeared from the world with the
Greeks" among whom "communal life was 'a truth' while at present it is
an idealistic lie." 22
But this "truth," Marx firmly insists, is no mere "ought" or "ideal." It
is "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things," the
historical result of revolutionary forces within civil society in the pro-
duction and exchange of goods. Here Marx is saying, in a dependence on
Hegel already noted, that man's alienation will be overcome by the
movement of history itself. This is the underlying and decisive point of his
objections to Feuerbach, the "true socialism" of Feuerbach's followers,
and such "utopian" socialists as Fourier and Proudhon - objections
apparent in The Poverty of Philosophy where Marx explicitly puts Hegel
above Feuerbach and in his final dismissal of "alienation" in the Commu-
nist Manifesto.23 Franz Mehring seems to have been correct in his con-
clusion that Marx "went beyond Feuerbach by going back to Hegel."
21 Cf. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York, 1956), pp.
253, 269 ff., 443 f.; J. G. Gray, Hegel'sHellenicIdeal (New York, 1941), pp. 23 f., 58, 64.
22 Friihschriften,pp. 51, 161; "Die Deutsche Ideologie," MEGA, I, 5, p. 124. Cf. R.
Sammwald,Marx und die Antike(Zurich,1957), pp. 24-31, 120-25.
23 The Poverty of Philosophy, trans. H. Quelch (Chicago, n. d.), pp. 194-97,

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 ALIENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 203

IV
Convinced that the dialectical process of history itself entails the end of
man's alienation, Marx adopted positions which undercut the humanistic
side of his thought inspired by Feuerbach and his adherence to the
"principle of subjectivity." He made man's alienation simply a present
fact and his reconciliation a future fact. To set his own view apart from
"utopianism" he insisted that socialist "preach no morals" and "have no
ideals to realize." In thus identifying what "ought to be" with the move-
ment of history, he not only deprived himself of the moral leverage for
criticizing history which was implicit in his humanism but also provided a
justification for anything and everything that happens, no matter how
cruel or inhuman. When the "collective activity of men" and the "results
of history" become the final arbiter of all human action, there is no ground
for setting limits to the action of the state or any other social institution
through the principle that man is an end in himself restricting the use of
all means. Such a principle, Marx suggested, is "abstract" and "impotent."
By comparison, the "results of history" are indeed concrete and potent,
but if they are the only test of what "ought to be," then anything and
everything that happens is morally justified.
As Marx identified the end of man's alienation with the "real movement"
of history, he came to emphasize its independence from men's actions,
likened its laws to those of nature which work with "iron necessity towards
inevitable results," and viewed it as a dialectical relation of classes and
entities such as "proletariat," "civil society," and "bourgeoisie." Within
this perspective, especially in terms of achieving class power, "the State"
as such becomes important. Though Marx, as we saw, endorsed the
"producers' self-government" of the Paris Commune, he also continued to
view socialism as he had in the Manifesto, as the exercise of centralized
state-power, lamenting to Engels that Proudhon's followers wanted to
make a company of communes "but not a State." This direction in Marx's
thought gave first place precisely to those features of Hegel's system
which, under Feuerbach's influence, he had condemned as "abstractions,"

135 f.; Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York, 1948), Secs. IIIc and IV.
Cf. Franz Mehring,Karl Marx, trans. E. Fitzgerald (New York, 1935), pp. 154 f. On the
extent to which Marx and Engels' criticism of "true socialism" in the Manifestowas
"self-criticism,"on their relation to Moses Hess who had applied Feuerbach's idea of
alienation to economic relationships, and on their differences with August Willich, a
"true socialist"who led the Germanrevolutionaryforcesin 1848, brilliantlycommanded
Ohio troops in the AmericanCivil War, and edited the radical CincinnatiRepublikaner,
see The CommunistManife8towith Explanatory Notes by D. Ryazanoff, trans. E. and
C. Paul (London, 1930). pp. 213-23 and A. Cornu, "German Utopianism: 'True'
Socialism,"Scienceand Society12 (1948), pp. 93-103.

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204 PHILOSOPHY
ANDPHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH

as forms of alienation. While the movement of "civil society" - the social

relations involved in the production and exchange of commodities - had
displaced the movement of the Absolute Idea, man was nonetheless a
subcategoryof the dialecticof history.24
This side of Marx'sthought is incompatiblewith the existentialismof
his early views preciselybecauseit eliminatesthe element of subjectivity
or "immediacy"in man's action and absorbshim in an objectiveorderof
happenings.Marx'searly empiricismis undercutby the "rationalkernel"
of dialectiche appropriatedfrom Hegel. Accordingly,he condemnedthe
views of August Comteas "miserablecomparedto Hegel's."WhenJoseph
Dietzgen, whom Marx introduced to the International Workingmen's
Associationas "our philosopher,"developed from Feuerbacha view of
knowledge which strikingly anticipated Ernst Mach and contemporary
"logical empiricism,"Marx specifically criticized it for not having ab-
sorbedHegel.25The distanceof Marx'smaturethought fromempiricismis
strikinglyrevealedin Marcuse'sReasonand Revolutionwherethe socialist
"realmof freedom"is seen as negatingthe "necessity"on whichhistorical
materialismis based to become manifest as "reasondeterminingitself."
Heresocialismindeedbecomes"a chapterin logic."
Some final qualificationsare needed, however, on Marx'srelation to
Hegel in regard to the "principleof subjectivity" and the status of the
individual.Marx,we recall,saw the "inalienablerights of man"as formsof
alienation, as satisfactionsof the "egoistic individual,of man separated
fromman and the community."Onemight arguethat their substancewill
be preservedas they are aufgehoben in the true communitywhere "social
forceis no longerseveredfromitself in the form of politicalforce."26 But
Marx identified these rights with capitalismas ideologicalreflectionsof
capitalists' class interest, and the capitalist class, of course, was to dis-
appear under communism.Sometimeshe condoned the phraseologyof
"inalienablerights" but only as a tactical concessionsince the working
class "hasno idealsto realize."Hegel, too, thoughtthese inalienablerights
would have to be transcendedbut gave attention to the preservationof
their substance in his views on freedom of inquiry, rights of Quakers,
24 This aspect of Marx's thought is especially apparent in the Bolshevik cult of
history - for example, in Trotsky's appealto the "indeferabledemandsof history," "the
will of events," and in Kruschev's referencesto "the historical course of development"
as proving the superiority of Soviet Communismand justifying intervention in Hun-
gary.
25 See my "Empiricismand Ethics in Dietzgen," Journal of the History of Ideas, 19
(1958), pp. 77-83; Marxand Engels, SelectedCorrespondence (New York, 1942), pp..252
f. and 210 on Comte's "positivist rot." Cf. H. A. Marcuse,Reason and Revolution,pp.
315-30, 271, et passim.
26 "The Jewish Question,"SelectedEssays, pp. 84 f, et passim; Friihschriften,p. 199,
et passim. Cf. M. Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston, 1949),,pp.82 f.

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 ALIENATION AND HISTORY IN THE EARLY MARX 205

choice in employment, and separationof church and state.27 Further,

Marx'sidentificationof the unity of particularand generalto be achieved
under communismwith that which prevailedin the Hellenic polis made
no provisionfor Hegel's criticismof that unity - namely, that it was in-
tuitive, customary,and deficientin "the principleof subjectivity."Marx
neglected"the principleof subjectivity"becausein goingback to Hegel to
get beyond Feuerbachhe went back to only part of Hegel. The "rational
kernel"he pickedup fromHegel was only a kernel.For Hegel the dialectic
of historywas subordinateto the developmentof the Idea in art, religion,
and philosophy.This enabledhim to insist repeatedlythat individuality,
the elementof subjectivity,is inherentlyeternaland divine as an.intrinsic
part of the Absolute Idea.28For Marx,however,the dialectic of history
had no such superstructureand hence no systematic support for the
principleof subjectivity. In this respect he was less of a "child of the
Enlightenment,"less a proponentof the "principlesof 1789"than Hegel,
and the implicationsof his thought are more congenialto totalitarianism
than to the emphasis on the individual person and his freedom which
characterizesliberaldemocracy.

LOYD D. EASTON.
OHIO WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY.

27 See Hegel, Philo8ophyof Right,Secs. 270, 124, 66. In the Rheini8cheZeitungof 1842
Marx followed Hegel's theory of the state to condemn censorship of the press as in-
compatible with "rational freedom." The individual only comes under the law in his
actions, Maix held, not in his thoughts and ideas, and a sound public mind cannot be
achieved by the evil means of reducing freedom. Many American thinkers in the 19th
century agreed with MoncureConway of Cincinnatithat Hegel's "apparent conserva-
tism was the crust outside a fiery radicalism"which viewed the history of the world as
the history of liberty emphasizingthe institutional conditions of freedom. See Conway,
David FriedrichStraU88(London,1874),pp. 23 f., and E. L-.Schaub,ed., WilliamTorrey.
Harri8 (Chicago,1936) pp. 72-75.
28 See Hegel, The Philo8ophyof Hi8tory,pp. 33, 37, 39,-200 fEf;'-Philoophyof Right,
pp. 166n, 365.

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