Concerning the Marx's early 1844 EPM on alienation vs. his later CAPITAL,
Ajit Sinha writes:
>But i think there is a difference here. In the *Manuscript* alienation is
seen as a natural process of Man realising his potential, reappropreating
himself. It is kind of a jurney of self realization. As a child recognizes
himself first in the face of his father, similarly Man in the very process
of reproducing his life alienates himself from nature, then society, and
then his creativity in the process of history only to regain his species
being--which is being a natural being, a social being, and a creative
being--at the historical third stage of communism. The fact that Capital
dehumanizes workers and turns them into an appendage to the machine will
not be denied or protested against either by Althusser or myself or any
variety of Marxists. The question is that, whether this is seen as an
essential process of Man's self-realization? The question is whether the
problematic in *Capital* is a humanist problematic, concerned with self-
realization of Man? <
I think that Marx's views definitely changed between the EPM and CAPITAL,
especially with his theses on Feuerbach and his (with Engels) GERMAN
IDEOLOGY, where German idealism and Feuerbach are criticized and
transformed. However, I don't think that the idea of self-realization is
abolished as much as transformed.
In the EPM, disalienation ("self-realization of Man") seems almost an
individual process, with the distinction between individual and class fuzzy
(at least to me). On the other hand, in later work, it shows up as a
clearly collective process, the collective self-liberation of the working
class as a whole as summed up by Marx's slogan that "the emancipation of
the working class must be won by the working class itself." See Hal
Draper's KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION (especially vol. II, 1978: ch. 6)
for exegesis of Marx's (and Engels') political ideas. Once workers liberate
themselves, as noted in the 1848 MANIFESTO (again with Engels), "the free
development of each is the condition for the free development of all" (p.
491 of the second edition of Tucker's MARX-ENGELS READER). It's clear (to
me) that Marx envisioned some kind of collective disalienation,
self-realization.
This also fits with Miller's analysis of Marx on morality, which links up
Marx's ethics (never collected in one place by Marx); Miller argues that
Marx's vision was similar to that of Aristotle, emphasizing morality as
part of the attainment of human potential.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.)
-- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
