Abstract
The publication of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (EPM) in German in 1933 immediately triggered off debate as to where the document fitted in Marx’s theories generally. The obvious possibilities were first, that these writings could be dismissed as juvenilia, and that Marxism as understood by figures as diverse as Lenin, Kautsky, Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg and Trotsky, none of whom said anything significant about alienation, could be studied and argued about while disregarding the EPM. Second, there were actually numerous reappearances of the theory of alienation in the writings of Marx after 1847, and the alienation theory must be very important in his mature writings. In what follows, I will argue the case for the unfashionable first alternative, but also be reviewing many of the arguments for and against continuity in Marx’s work, hopefully making the article useful irrespective of which side one takes.
Introduction
Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (EPM) were first published in German in 1933. An immediate debate ensued, but only in German, as to whether these manuscripts should be regarded as juvenilia, or whether they provided a significant insight into the underlying meaning of Marx’s later work (see Rojahn 2022). This debate died down for obvious reasons. Just to be known as a Marxist was dangerous in Germany following the accession to power of the Nazis – indeed, the manuscript of the EPM had to be smuggled across the border into Denmark, and thence conveyed to the Soviet Union. The publication of Marx’s collected works in the Soviet Union (Marx Engels Gezamtausgabe1 or MEGA1) was disrupted by the dismissal and eventual arrest and execution of David Riazanov, the first director of the project. The increasingly tumultuous years of the 1930s, leading up to the Second World War and subsequent Cold War, provided considerable disruption and distraction from debates about the meaning of Marxism. It might be expected that the publication of the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, which contains numerous places where reference is made to the idea of alienation, would revive debate, but it came out in a limited edition in 1939, and apparently many copies were used for propaganda among German prisoners of war, who, one suspects, were more concerned about simply surviving than with a difficult text such as the Grundrisse.
Debate really took off with the publication of the EPM in English in 1963. It continued, with the publication of numerous books about Marx which dealt with the problem of continuity, until the mid-1970s. Plainly the radicalisation of a generation by opposition to the war in Vietnam, the inspiration of a more liberal version of communism under Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, and the near-miss of a revolution in France in 1968, all generated interest in the writings of Marx. Although publication on Marx has continued at a considerable rate, in the Anglo-Saxon world, it is generally assumed that there is a high degree of continuity between the Marx of the EPM and the later Marx. Works which argue for continuity include: Avineri (1970), Cornforth (1973), Cornu (1957), Garaudy (1967), Howard (1972), Hippolyte (1969), Kamenka (1972), Kolakowski (1971), Korsch (1970) – this book was originally published in 1938, and along with Lukǻcs (2014 [1971]), which originally appeared in German in 1923, requires special treatment – Lewis (1972), McLellan (1971, 1973, 1980) Maguire (1972), Mészáros (1970), Ollman (1977), Plamenatz (1975), Thomas (1976), Tucker (2001), Wilde (1998, 2004), Holloway (1997, 2002), Dyer-Witheford (2004). More recently, there is a rather idiosyncratic book by Lamb and Burnham (2018), reviewed at some length Magnus Moller Ziegler in the Marxism and Philosophy Review of Books, and by Cowling (2022), and a book by Musto (2021).
There are, of course, important variations among the above authors, but they all broadly take the line that the youthful theory of alienation in some way reappears in the writings of the older Marx, and is very important there.
A rather different group of authors who argue for continuity place a much greater emphasis on the idea that both the young Marx and the older Marx are basically Hegelian. These include: Marcuse (2020 (1967)), Lukács (1975, 2014 [1971]) and Arthur (1986).
A further important contributor to this debate is Geras (1983). His claim is rather different, namely, that the older Marx retains a concept of human nature.
The above authors in various ways present the case for continuity. Arguing for discontinuity, apart from the already-mentioned Rojahn, there is notably Althusser (1973, 2001, 2005) Althusser and Balibar (1970), Balibar (2014), Cowling (1989, 2006), Cutler et al. (1977, 1978), Hindess and Hurst (1975, 1977) Authors arguing against Althusser include Cornforth (1973), Kolakowski (1971) and Lewis (1972).
What the reader should see emerging above is that there are several varieties of argument for and against continuity in Marx’s work, and that not all the arguments in favour of continuity are compatible with each other; and the same is true of the arguments against continuity. It requires something much longer than an article to thoroughly rehearse and evaluate each of these arguments, but a taxonomy of them should provide a useful beginning. Approaches which will be briefly considered below are:
Simply listing passages in Marx’s work after 1847 which include apparent references to the idea of alienation.
Outstanding individual authors with particular ideas in favour of continuity, for example, Fromm, Mandel, Tucker, Avineri, Lamb and Burnham and Ollman.
Arguments for continuity based on equivalences – for example, the argument that the alienation of labour and the exploitation of labour can be identified with each other.
Arguments for continuity, based on the idea that Marx remained a Hegelian throughout his life, adopted by Lukács, Marcuse, Arthur and Sayers.
Geras’s argument that Marx had a concept of human nature, which is seen as providing the foundation of a theory of alienation.
Althusser’s argument for discontinuity, based on the idea that he has engaged in a symptomatic reading of Marx, which identifies the underlying problematic of texts, which allows him to identify the young Marx as an avant-garde Feuerbachian, and to discern the basis of the scientific older Marx. However, over time Althusser produced different versions of the scientific older Marx; his British followers also developed different ideas about historical materialism, and Marxist philosophy. Added to this, there are, obviously, different versions of historical materialism quite apart from those linked to Althusser.
Cowling’s attempt to argue for discontinuity based on examining apparent appearances of alienation in the older Marx. These include the fetishism of commodities.
The article is divided into sections following the above pattern. The general conclusion is that the arguments in favour of discontinuity are much stronger than is generally believed.
Listing passages where alienation appears in the older Marx
A straightforward initial strategy for somebody wanting to argue for continuity to look for passages where alienation is mentioned. A particular example of this is McLellan’s book of translations from Marx’s Grundrisse (McLellan 1971). This book of 166 pages comprises selections from a German text of about 900 pages, with a very strong emphasis on those passages where the idea of alienation makes an appearance. It does not really give an overall summary of the argument of the text. Somebody wanting a more balanced account of the Grundrisse would do better to look at Choat’s book, which is an excellent attempt to summarise the overall content of the manuscript (Choat 2016). Overall, the Grundrisse should be seen as a first draft of Capital, which, as it says, is a critique of political economy, partly on technical grounds, for example, the introduction of the concept of surplus value, from which interest, profit and rent are derived, or the concept of absolute ground rent, and, very importantly, the understanding of capitalism as an economic system which has a history and is destined to be overthrown. Musto, in a recent examination of the concept of alienation in Marx (Musto 2021), adopts a similar strategy to McLellan. He gives a good account of the concept of alienation in the young Marx and the use made of this idea by a variety of thinkers, and then proceeds to simply provide a series of translations of passages in the older Marx where the idea of alienation appears. Again, there is no attempt to demonstrate how these passages contribute to the overall argument of the texts from which they are drawn. The limitations of Musto’s (2020) approach are demonstrated by a reading of his excellent work, a discussion of the last years of Marx’s life, which make no mention whatsoever of alienation – which is surely extremely strange if this is a fundamental concept in his work! The most extreme version of this listing approach is perhaps that of Lewis (1972), who states that there are 300 appearances of alienation in the Grundrisse. To do this, he must be including numerous references to the legal concept of alienation, simply meaning selling. While this might include a reference to Marx’s youthful ideas about alienation, the notion is found in British political economists, as in the idea of profit upon alienation, meaning that the capitalist makes a profit when the commodity the capitalist has produced is sold, and in this context, has no obvious reference to Marx’s youthful ideas. This usage is actually very frequent in the Grundrisse. If it demonstrates continuity with the EPM, then Sir James Steuart’s (1777 [1776, 1770]) Political Oeconomy, with no discussion whatsoever of the condition of workers, but quite frequent references to alienation in the sense of selling, is also continuous with the EPM and with the Grundrisse. For a fuller discussion of Sir James Steuart, see the “Althusser’s argument that there is a break in Marx’s work: how is the break to be identified?” section.
Outstanding individual authors
Tucker is outstanding because his book originally appeared in 1961; the references in what follows are to an edition which appeared in 2001. Tucker (2001: 6) was thus writing about the EPM before the English translation appeared. He sees Marx as having devised a religion of revolution. Although Marx wrote at length about economics, the origin of this was in the development of German philosophy from Kant through to Hegel and then to Feuerbach (Tucker 2001: 26). He appropriately notes Marx’s enthusiasm for Hegel, followed by his extremely enthusiastic reception of Feuerbach, who he sees as a philosopher who went well beyond Hegel, seeing Feuerbach as the only road to the truth, carrying out a ‘real theoretical revolution’; he is a liberator (Tucker 2001: 80, 95). Feuerbach, Tucker notes, ‘sees man as an inherently creative being who derives joy from productive activity willingly performed . . . Creation is in itself a divine activity’ (Tucker 2001: 89). Indeed, Feuerbach sees the unity of man with man coming in the form of communism (Tucker 2001: 91). Marx follows Feuerbach in seeing that men need to free themselves from religious illusion (Tucker 2001: 101). Tucker thinks that Marx’s initial conception of the proletariat is of man suffering from self-alienation, rather than being based on meeting proletarians or studying political economy (Tucker 2001: 113). Tucker (2001: 124) constantly emphasises Marx as incorporating a worldly religion, as found in Hegel, transformed in Feuerbach, and also found in political economy. He argues for continuity in Marx by emphasising that the conception of ‘anthropological nature as the self-externalisation of man’ ‘lies at the core of Marx’s thought’ (Tucker 2001: 131, see also p. 169). Tucker (2001: 171) emphasises the continuity between the Marxian ‘science of history’ and the Hegelian conception of history, and thence, also between the Marx of 1844 and the Marx of Capital. He carries on to speculate as to why Marx never published a text on the lines of the EPM, concluding that there would be little interest in it, and also in Hegel’s philosophy (Tucker 2001: 173). Tucker (2001: 185) sees the division of labour as the equivalent idea to the self-alienation of labour. There is something extremely odd here. The concept of ‘anthropological nature as the self-externalisation of man’ ‘lies at the core of Marx’s thought’, in which case the clear explanation of this in the EPM would surely be of considerable interest to readers of Capital, so that it would be well worth publishing either the original manuscript or a polished version of it, as it would clarify what Capital is really all about. Why, then, did Marx make no attempt to publish it as a companion volume to Capital?
Ollman is definitely an outstanding author. His very important and useful starting point is the idea that Marx has a philosophy of internal relations. He contends that all the concepts that Marx uses imply all the others, but, obviously, some are much more closely related to each other than others. Every factor in Marx’s study of capitalism is a ‘definite social relationship’ (Ollman 1977: 14). Ollman says, According to the common-sense view, a social factor is taken to be logically independent of other social factors to which it is related. The ties between them are contingent . . . One can logically conceive . . . of any social factor existing without its relations to others. In Marx’s view such relations are internal to each factor (they are ontological relations), so that when an important one alters, the fact itself alters; it becomes something else. Thus, for example . . . ‘there can no longer be wage-labour when there is no longer any capital’ . . .
Ollman says that he is using the term ‘relation’ in two different senses: as a factor, because each factor is a social production relation, but also as a connection, meaning the connection between different factors. (Ollman 1977: 15). Cause and effect are internally related to each other. (Ollman 1977: 17). Moving on to the philosophy of internal relations, Ollman gives a series of reasons for attributing such a doctrine to Marx. He quotes Marx saying ‘the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man’. Man is the aggregate of social relations. Marx’s treatment of man and nature exhibits this – he treats man as part of nature. He quotes Marx saying ‘A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature’. Thus, the sun and a plant are interrelated in such a way that the relationship between them is conceived of as appertaining to each. Moreover, Marx comes from the background of Hegel, thus also of Leibniz and Spinoza, all of whom subscribe to a doctrine of internal relations (Ollman 1977: 27–29). The philosophy of internal relations was particularly well developed by Hegel, but Marx agrees with Feuerbach’s inversion of Hegel, while still accepting, as did Feuerbach, Hegel’s relational views (Ollman 1977: 33). Marx never really dealt with the question of the materialist content that he gave to the philosophy of internal relations, but he saw the work of Joseph Dietzgen as dealing with this issue very well.
In the work of philosophers such as Hegel this doctrine of internal relations is part of an idealist framework, but in Marx empirical reality plays a significant role: Marx’s ideas can be tested against the social world. Thus, for example, Marx argued that there was a falling rate of profit, which corresponded to the state of the economy in his time. However, if it is not universally true in capitalist economies then there is a problem which Marxist economists need to resolve.
Ollman (1977: 52, 58) accepts that Engels in the Anti-Dühring was presenting views which Marx agreed with, including the four laws of dialectics, which are simply a reformulation of a relational view of the world. This puts him at odds with several other authors, notably Norman Levine (1975, 2006) and Terrell Carver (1974), who put forward a variety of arguments to detach Marx from Engels’ version of the dialectic.
Ollman (1977) provides an excellent account of Marx’s theory of alienation. At one point he says that the ‘distinguishing powers and needs’ of the human species are as follows: starting with powers: ‘seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, being aware sensing, wanting, acting, loving’, where ‘acting’ means ‘acting as’, or ‘practising’. Addition species powers are ‘willing, procreating, sex, knowing and judging’ (pp. 82–83). A ‘natural power which man exercises in a way markedly different from that of the animals can become a species power’. For example, sex is a ‘natural power but it is also a species power’. Ollman notes that women are regarded and treated in a variety of ways the world over, and when they are ‘accepted as equals, possessing the same rights and as deserving the same thoughtfulness as males, then sexuality will have been raised to the level of things peculiarly human’. Ollman provides an accurate reflection of Marx, but here, as also in various other places, is relatively unimaginative. For example, the Indian society in which the Kama Sutra was produced was undoubtedly patriarchal and unequal, but the thoughtfulness and devotion to pleasure in sexual activity found in the book is undoubtedly characteristically human, in a way which even animals which devote a great deal of time to sexual activity, such as bonobos, do not display. Or consider the extremely unpleasant example the Marquis de Sade in his 120 Days of Sodom. The book is undoubtedly extremely patriarchal and domineering, ending with extensive slaughter. It is, however, a human production which has no parallels in the animal world. In other words, only a little thought demonstrates Marx’s limitations in this respect (Ollman’s discussion is at: 1977: 84). Moreover, while all capitalist societies are patriarchal, they vary considerably: the situation of women in contemporary Scandinavia is considerably better for women than that in early 19th-century Britain, where women had very few rights; and is also better than that of women in the modern-day United States, which has a welfare state much inferior to that of the Scandinavian countries.
Ollman (1977: 160) quotes the passage from the German Ideology which states that ‘He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood’. Ollman simply goes along with this, but remembering what Marx says elsewhere, actually workers can easily be thrown out of work with the collapse of a particular industry or with the introduction of labour-saving machinery, and need to retrain as something else – or they become part of the Lazarus layers of the proletariat, or part of the lumpenproletariat.
Ollman (1977) asserts continuity between Capital and the 1844 Manuscripts as follows:
In this monumental treatise, Marx follows private property, and hence alienated labour, into and through the host of forms it seems in capitalist society, uncovering relationships the great majority of which were already clear to him as early as 1844(p. 164).
He sees Marx’s activity between 1844 and 1867 as a matter of ‘following out the more obscure relationships, refining his organisation and language, and, above all, to collecting supporting material’ (Ollman 1977: 166 cf. 170). However, a careful consideration of the economic theory of Capital compared with the 1844 Manuscripts clearly shows major theoretical changes, rather than just collecting supporting material. For example, in the EPM Marx generally follows Adam Smith, whereas in Capital he generally develops his theories from those of Ricardo – notably, the idea of surplus value as an intermediate step between labour and profit, interest and rent. Ollman (1997) rightly notes that Marx’s aim in Capital is to ‘lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society’ (p. 168). The obvious reference here is surely such phenomena as crises or the falling rate of profit, rather than the question of alienation.
Ollman’s (1977) relative lack of concern with economic issues is illustrated by his assertion that the organic composition of capital in the industrial sector ‘does not vary very much in any given period from sphere to spare’ (p. 178). Consider garment making, which is bound to involve numerous employees working with relatively cheap sewing machines, as opposed to the bulk production of chemicals, which requires few employees but an extremely expensive plant and extremely expensive raw materials. The organic composition of capital will plainly vary considerably between the two, thus raising the question of how the rate of profit becomes roughly even. This is the classic question of whether Marx actually solves this in Capital Volume 3.
Another place where Ollman (1977) displays a lack of imagination is in the following quotation: many products which have their equivalent in a non-alienated society are made here in a way that indicates the alienated social relations in which they are found. Thus, houses are made in family units; ‘washing machines, automatic dishwashers and most other household durables are generally quite small and can service only a few people’. (pp. 183–184)
In one sense it possibly does, but does it not also illustrate that the condition of workers and of modern capitalism is considerably better – one might say less alienated – than it was in Marx’s day, be that 1844 or 1867. These devices work with electricity, which was not normally available to the working class in Marx’s day. This obviously also raises questions about Ollman’s (1977) assertion that, for the alienated individual, there is ‘no sphere of human activity that lies outside these prison walls; hence escape, one-sided development, can only be peripheral and temporary’ (p. 202). Again, throwing clothes into a washing machine leaves a great deal more time for leisure activities than does having to wash clothes in the local stream. Ollman (1977: 206) says that – following Marx in 1844 – ‘mutual exploitation is the rule’, and therefore any lapse into kindness can prove fatal. He goes on to paint a picture of the situation of both capitalists and workers where this is true, but actually capitalists typically form associations of one kind or another, such as, in the United Kingdom, the CBI and the Institute of Directors, and the workers form trade unions and the trades union congress (TUC). Also, of course, capitalists historically have adopted very different tactics, from vigorous union busting using hired thugs through to the German employers’ use of Mitbestimmung, where workers’ representatives sit down with bosses on company boards to determine the firm’s policies. Moving on to politics, Ollman (1977) asserts that ‘parliaments, laws and the rest have assumed the guise of quasi-supreme beings to which their own creators are asked to pay obeisance’ (p. 213). People actually devote a great deal of effort to changing laws, and, in the United States, to changing the Constitution. He makes some acknowledgement of this distortion (Ollman 1977: 218).
In his conclusion, Ollman (1997: 249) acknowledges that much has changed since Marx’s day, that ‘the workers’ real lot has improved, inter-class mobility has increased, workers’ movements have often been cursed with poor leadership, white-collar component of the working class has grown larger and capitalists have sought to exacerbate national and racial antagonisms’, which has inhibited proletarian class consciousness. This obviously raises numerous questions, including the ones about the improvement of the conditions of the working class raised above. Ollman also introduces the idea of character structure. As a great deal has changed since 1977, it is not worth pursuing the validity of his analysis of the situation then, other than the questions to do with alienation already discussed.
Ollman deals with the issue of continuity in basically the same way as Tucker, by assuming that in Capital Marx is demonstrating the interrelationship between different forms of alienation. Obviously, the same criticism mentioned above, namely, that it is strange how Marx laboured for so many years to make the concept of alienation less obvious than it was in 1844. One could use arguments similar to those of Ollman to prove that Marx’s laundry list in 1844 provides the fundamental inspiration for Capital. Most of the items that Marx sent to the laundry were made of cotton. Cotton was absolutely central to the industrial revolution (see Beckert 2014): the first significant factories were in the area around Manchester, taking cotton from the raw material through to various forms of cotton cloth. Cotton was the foundation of the triangular trade in which cotton goods were taken to Africa for the purchase of slaves; the slaves were taken to America, where they produced cotton, and the cotton was taken to Britain and in particular to Manchester. Engels worked for a company which was involved in the cotton trade, and discussed the role of the cotton industry with Marx. Cotton features very substantially in Capital. Marx’s laundry list plainly provides the inspiration of his major economic work. There is actually better evidence for my hypothesis than there is for Ollman’s, as the items in the laundry list are much more on the surface in Capital than is alienation. An important point here is that if all the concepts of Capital are internally related, as Ollman rightly argues, then it is very easy to argue that almost anything that underlies Capital, particularly if one also uses the argument that it is obviously implied. To make sense of Capital, the best procedure is to start from what is on the surface, and to be cautious in assuming the importance of concepts which are rarely specifically mentioned as such, one of these being alienation.
Fromm is remarkable because of the range of ideas which he develops on the basis of humanist Marxism derived from the EPM, including producing his own translation of the EPM (Fromm 2013). For an excellent account of Fromm’s work see Wilde (2004). The EPM are also used creatively by Marcuse (see below), and appealed to Marxists in communist countries as a way of humanising the societies. For this reason, they were definitely popular in China when I attended a conference there.
Although Avineri’s book contains much that is sensible, it also includes remarks on continuity which are rather grossly teleological, such as: ‘The Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ contains material to show that Marx envisages in 1843 a society based on the abolition of private property and on the disappearance of the state. Briefly, the Communist Manifesto is immanent in the ‘Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, (Avineri 1970: 34 – see also criticisms of Avineri in Evans 1970: 530). While Marx may, indeed, have envisaged such a society, in 1843 he lacked the materialist conception of history which he and Engels developed in what now appears as the first part of The German Ideology, and which provided the foundation of claims about the abolition of private property and the disappearance of the state – it is the difference between a philosophical derivation of an idea and an economic and social account.
Mandel in his well-informed and useful account of the development of Marx’s economic thought is also capable of making teleological leaps. Thus in his discussion of two of Marx’s essays which appear in the Rheinisiche Zeitung, his discussion of the wood theft laws and his defence of the Moselle correspondent, which are the first indication of Marx taking an interest in economic matters, but from a position of ignorance below even the level of understanding of economics that he displays in the EPM. Mandel says that in the article on the wood theft laws, ‘the chief key to his [Marx’s] future theory of surplus value is to be found’: unpaid forced labour is the source of ‘“percentages”, that is, of interest and profit’ (Mandel 2015 (1971): 13). While the words may be the same, at this stage Marx lacked the economic theory which enabled him to develop the concept of surplus value.
Lamb and Burnham (2018) also assert continuity based on the alienation theory, although they state – as is implied in their title The First Marx – that their interest is in the set of theories developed by Marx in his early works. However, their version of the First Marx extends back at least as far as his doctoral dissertation, and forward to include The German Ideology. For most writers The German Ideology represents a new departure, and the development of the theory of historical materialism. Indeed, a sensible division of Marx’s work over this period would be to see him starting as a Left Hegelian, and then in the ‘Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ he adopts a Feuerbachian perspective, which continues in the EPM and The Holy Family, but is specifically abandoned in the first part of The German Ideology.
Arguments based on identifying concepts
Lamb and Burnham in The First Marx, among others, identify the concept of alienation as found in the EPM with the concept of exploitation as found in Capital. While it is tempting to do this, consider, for example, a highly qualified worker with a role in running a chemical plant. The plant has relatively few employees who are in charge of a massive capital investment. Thus, he produces the value of his labour power in the first hour of his 40-hour week, and produces surplus value over the rest of the week. He is thus seriously exploited, but enjoys a good rate of pay which enables him to provide well for his family. He has enough leisure to spend time with his family, enjoy cultivating his garden, writing a novel and singing the local choir. In contrast, a Bangladeshi garment worker earns less than the minimum wage in Bangladesh, works a 14-hour day, which sometimes extends beyond that, and has little time for leisure activities, while her rate of pay is too low to provide a decent existence for her family. Her working conditions are terrible – garment factories tend to burn down; she does not get decent maternity provision, and is subject to sexual harassment. However, she is only producing surplus value in the last hour of every day, and is thus less exploited than the chemical worker. However, she plainly suffers all the features of alienation as described by Marx in the EPM, in contrast with the chemical worker, who has at least some of the fulfilment beyond the working day characteristic of a communist society. The concept of alienation is thus definitely different from the concept of exploitation. The latter concept belongs to Marx’s attempt in Capital to provide a scientific analysis of the capitalist system, together with reasons why it is unstable. The benefits of a communist society as described by Marx in, for example, his Critique of the Gotha Programme, can be appreciated from a variety of ethical approaches, and are not described in the language of alienation.
Arguments based on Marx being a Hegelian throughout his life
Many of the authors discussed already make some reference to the persistence of Hegelian themes in Marx’s work, but are not rigorous about this. Others, however, place a very strong emphasis on Marx’s Hegelian heritage. A strong feature of their approach to continuity is their emphasis upon Marx’s Hegelianism, right through from his doctoral dissertation to Capital. A contemporary author who takes this s approach is Sayers (1998, 2011). Sayers is in good company, including Lukács (1975, 2014 [1971]), Marcuse (2020 (1967)) and Arthur (1986).
Sayers emphasises that alienation is a central concept in Marx. This is obvious in the EPM, but the word is less used in the later Marx. ‘Nevertheless, the concept of alienation is implicit throughout Marx’s work, and it continues to provide a major basis for his understanding of capitalism’ (Sayers 2011, Kindle location 117). Sayers says that for Marx as for Hegel the self is a social and historical creation. Self-alienation is destined to be overcome in the course of historical progress, although not in the way that Hegel believed it to occur. Alienation is a situation in which ‘our own activities and products take on an independent existence and become hostile powers working against us’. Sayers, along with many other authors, gives a good account of the main forms of alienation discussed in the EPM, and then moves on to give a generally useful account of man’s alienation from his species being.
Sayers says that species being is a word which Marx adopts from Feuerbach and uses for a brief period in 1844, but this is his sole substantive reference to Feuerbach in the entire book (Sayers 2011: 114). In Sayers (1998) the only reference to Feuerbach is through the medium of Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. As I said in the previous section, this is not an adequate way of dealing with that role of Feuerbach in the EPM. The EPM is a profoundly Feuerbachian document, where the starting point is direct perception of the real world, not a deduction of concepts from each other, and Sayers should at the very least discuss the significance of this. Leaving this aside, Sayers comments elsewhere in the book that Marx plainly assumes that the central feature of a fulfilled human life is creative labour, and that the basic defect of capitalist societies that creative labour is either appropriated by capital and oppresses the worker, or that the worker is reduced to a detailed labourer and unable to exercise any creativity in labour. Sayers also comments that Marx does not say very much to actually justify this view (Sayers 2011: 14). Here Sayers is making a very useful point: there are other activities apart from creative labour which are central to the human species.
Sayers continues the discussion of alienation in Marx by looking further at the relation between the concept in Marx and in Hegel. Both of them accept the idea that people are distinguished from animals because the animal has an immediate relationship with nature, whereas people are capable of deferred gratification and reflect on their own activity (Sayers 2011: 16–17). Sayers points out that Marx subsequently acknowledges that we are dealing with a difference of degree, not an absolute distinction. He quotes the well-known passage from Capital volume 1 about the difference between the worst of architects and the best of bees, which is that the architect raises his construction in his imagination before commencing work, and thus develops his own slumbering powers.
Sayers then moves on to the issue of getting rid of alienation. A particularly acute point which Sayers makes is that Marx read and thoroughly criticised Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of art, and agreed with him that artistic creation, free of the realm of necessity, is the highest form of creation (Sayers 2011: 22).
Sayers legitimately points out parallels between Hegel’s account of labour as increasingly stultified with development of industrial capitalism and Marx’s own account – they undoubtedly both relate back to Adam Smith. Hegel, he says, does not repudiate the development of industry. He gives examples of labour which is not alienated from the Hellenic world, for example, Odysseus making his own marriage bed, but regards the vanishing of this sort of simplicity as an inevitable feature of modern society which is insoluble (Sayers 2011: 30). In contrast, for Marx, modern industry has laid the foundations of a world in which alienation can be overcome under communism (Sayers 2011: 31).
In the course of this discussion, Sayers (2011) quotes a short passage from Hegel which is worthy of further analysis: The long and complicated connection between needs and work, interests and their satisfaction, is completely developed in all its ramifications, and every individual, losing his independence, is tied down in an endless series of dependencies on others. His own requirements are either not at all or only to a very small extent, his own work. (p. 28)
It is difficult to conceive of how someone might be a Marxist, or indeed a socialist of any description, if they did not accept that bringing unrestrained capitalism under rational control in some way would bring about an improved state of affairs. This is uncontentious. It is also the major characteristic of communism seen as a way of overcoming alienation, as presented by Sayers. However, the passage from Hegel raises a problem which is not solved by Sayers or Marx. Hegel appears to be pointing out that, given the extreme division of labour once industrial capitalism starts to develop, our own work directly supplies only a very small portion of our needs. If, to overcome my alienation, I need to understand and feel part of the whole process which fulfils my needs, this is surely unrealistic. Before it has any tea in it, a teabag is the product of six countries, and this sort of complexity is massively multiplied in more complex products such as aircraft. In what way then am I supposed to really feel a part of the global process which produces my needs, whether it is the outcome of capitalism or socialism?
Let us take a simple example. Under capitalism, Betty works in a hairdressers which is part of a hairdressing chain. She works long hours, is badly paid, gets varicose veins from standing too long, and always goes home exhausted. Sometimes she cuts Joan’s hair. Joan works in a bakery run by a ruthless capitalist firm. She works long hours baking unhealthy sliced white bread, is badly paid, and always goes home exhausted. Sometimes Betty buys Joan’s bread. Then there is a communist revolution, and everything is much better. Betty works shorter hours, has more breaks and more leisure to chat to customers, including Joan, who becomes her friend. On Tuesdays Betty and Joan both go to a book club. Joan is now breaking really delicious artisan bread, and also has vastly improved working conditions, shorter hours and better pay. She takes some of the bread to the book club, where Betty really enjoys eating it, while having an interesting discussion. Everybody says how nice Joan’s hair looks. Both women are involved in creative labour, and their friendship could be described as a loving relationship. This fulfils Marx’s criteria for a de-alienated relationship.
Fred gets out a tea bag, and makes a cup of tea. This is also after the communist revolution. To make the tea bag it takes 30 workers spread across six different countries, and the tea is blended from several different estates. All the workers involved have decent working conditions and are well paid. They are certainly concerned about each other, so that if there is a natural disaster in one area, other areas will rapidly and willingly lend as much assistance as they can. This would resemble the response of charities and individuals to the crisis in Ukraine. However, the relationship between Fred and the people who make his tea bag and the blended tea in it cannot possibly be intimate in the manner of the relationship between Betty and Joan. Some intimate relationships can spring up. Families who have taken in refugees from Ukraine have relationships of this sort, and doubtless arrangements could be made for groups of people from various parts of the process of producing tea to meet each other. Fourier had the idea of, for example, congresses of amorous heel scratchers, which might be a model for another sort of intimate relationship. However, particularly when everybody involved in the production and use of aircraft or smartphones is concerned, the idea that they could have the sort of loving relationships described in the EPM is unachievable – there are too many of them, too widely dispersed geographically.
Sayers gives a good account of the relation between the individual and society in liberal and communitarian philosophy. He then argues that a better account of the role of individualism is to be found in Hegel and Marx. Starting with Hegel he notes that for Hegel the idea of individualism as not a threat to social life generally is a modern development (Sayers 2011: 53). The development of a market system is benign because of what Adam Smith describes as the invisible hand underlying the competitive market, which produces a beneficial social outcome in spite of the presence of competition. Hegel provides a philosophical extension of this idea, namely, the notion of the Cunning of Reason which means that individual decisions and actions contribute to the onward march of history, and, in the context of a capitalist society has the same result as Smith’s invisible hand.
Sayers (2011) says that Marx deals with this issue in a much more profound way: Marx uses the same analogy in his account of our attitudes to the market. Just as in religion, where things which are our own creations ‘appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race’, so too in economics we find ourselves at the mercy of forces which we ourselves have created. We have lost control of our own social relations, our own creations and powers, which now appear to rule over us. (p. 53) What this means is that in order to overcome this alienation, regain control over our social lives and relate to each other in a directly social and unalienated way, more than a mere change of consciousness is needed. (p. 60) This will involve a complete transformation of society: the supersession of the predominance of monetary exchange, and of ‘civil’ or bourgeois society as such. Only then will the full and free development of individuality in a true community become a genuine possibility. (p. 64)
In the next chapter, Sayers provides a more thorough discussion of the issue already mentioned about the passage from Capital in which Marx asserts that true freedom only begins beyond the realm of necessity. His aim is to show that the interpretation of authors such as Cohen, who take Marx to mean that there is no freedom within the realm of work, which simply needs to be minimised, is erroneous (Sayers 2011: 65). Sayers says that Marx consistently asserted throughout his life that it was work that distinguished human beings from other species. The philosophical basis of this view is derived from Hegel (Sayers 2011: 67). Freedom is a matter of degree, with creative artistic activity, unconstrained by necessity, at the top, but it can still be found within necessary labour (Sayers 2011: 69). Within the realm of necessary work, freedom is enhanced by the maximum application of science and machinery. Sayers also points out that both Hegel and Marx acknowledge and celebrate the expansion of needs; the way in which we fulfil our basic needs for food and clothing and shelter take on an aesthetic aspect (Sayers 2011: 73). This analysis has considerable merits, but it raises a question which Sayers does not pursue, at least in the book under consideration: if this aesthetic dimension can be pursued under capitalism, does this make us less alienated?
Sayers (2011) moves on to discuss alienation as a critical concept. However, at an early stage of his discussion, he makes the following revealing comment: Marx describes his project as the ‘critique of political economy’. The main categories of political economy are criticised for portraying the capitalist system as in accord with universal human nature. (p. 82)
It is very debatable that this is the central theme of Capital. Major themes include a careful analysis of the ways in which labour theory of value economists had attempted to make sense of the capitalist system; partly stemming from this the extremely important identification of the labour versus labour power distinction, together with the concept of surplus value and a whole variety of other conclusions which follow on, such as three possible theories of how crises come about, the falling rate of profit, the theory of absolute ground rent and so forth. Marx is certainly aiming to show that capitalism is not permanent, and that there is the potential for its replacement by communism, but having made that general point, much of the detailed analysis is intended to provide the working class and its representatives with guidelines about how to conduct themselves politically. In other words, Marx’s main critique in Capital is nothing to do with alienation. The above criticism of Sayers is an expanded version of the above criticism of Ollman. (For a discussion of the use of the word ‘alienation’ in Marx’s later work, see the ‘Althusser’s argument that there is a break in Marx’s work: how is the break to be identified?’ section). At the time of the Second and Third Internationals, the view I am expressing here was the standard one, with only unusual figures such as Lukács and Korsch making much use of the limited selection of Marx’s early writings available in obscure places at that time.
This by no means exhausts everything interesting in Sayers’ work, for example, his discussion of justice or of communism, either it is not particularly relevant to the issue of continuity, or it is discussed below.
Geras’s argument that Marx had a conception of human nature
Geras (1983), in which he argues that, contrary to Althusser, Marx did have a conception of human nature, is generally regarded as decisive. However, it is also regarded as a decisive proof that Marx retained a conception of alienation throughout his life. However, just because Geras is right about human nature, what he actually demonstrates is by no means a proof that Marx continued to use the idea of alienation. In this section, I demonstrate that the conception of human nature that Geras finds in the older Marx is relatively thin compared with the theory of alienation. His next move is not to discuss alienation, but to discuss justice, and to argue that it is necessary to find a conception of justice from liberalism rather than Marxism. As with much of Geras’s writing, his book is tightly and rigorously argued. At an early stage he states that the main basis for the claim that Marx did not have a conception of human nature is one of the (unpublished) Theses on Feuerbach, and apart from that only some odds and ends. Of course, he says, Marx rejected some claims about human nature, as does everybody else (Geras 1983: 14–15) In the sixth Thesis on Feuerbach says that the ‘essence of man’ is the ‘ensemble of human relations’. Geras says that there is a perfectly plausible explanation of what Marx is claiming here, which is that Feuerbach is not wrong to conceive of man as a species, and thus talk of ‘species being’, but is wrong to think exclusively in those terms (Geras 1983: 31).
Geras then attempts an analysis of the possible interpretations of the Sixth Thesis, which, he says, boil down to 3:
The nature of man is conditioned by the ensemble of social relations.
Human nature or the nature of man is manifested in the ensemble of social relations.
In its reality the nature of man is determined by, or human nature is dissolved in, the ensemble of social relations (Geras 1983: 46 – slightly abridged).
The first proposition of the three above would seem to be an early formulation of the basic idea of historical materialism, and is perfectly compatible with the idea of a human nature because the dependence is not complete, and the obvious remaining part would be a nature of man due to stable, natural causes (Geras 1983: 47).
The second proposition, seeing the nature of man as manifested in social relations, would appear to be a way of emphasising the social nature of man: a biological capacity to support language, for example, would only be manifested in society (Geras 1983: 48).
The third proposition, to the effect that human nature is dissolved in the ensemble of social relations does involve the denial of a human nature. Geras then finds a series of quotations from Bottomore, Cumming, Kamenka, Althusser, Suchting, Hook, Soper and Venable, all of which involve a denial of the idea of an essential human nature (Geras 1983: 50–51). He continues by quoting Robert Tucker to the effect that in the Marxism which emerges after 1845 there is a ‘mental world from which “man” seems to be absent’, and, switching to another author who takes the same approach, where individuals are the ‘bearers’ of social relations (Suchting). The basic idea is that the fundamental concepts of historical materialism – the social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure and ideologies – supplant the concept of human nature (Geras 1983: 52).
Geras then points out that the concept of human nature appears quite frequently in The German Ideology, where there is the first clear statement of historical materialism – to take one example, the statement that the proletarian is in a situation where his ‘position does not even allow him to satisfy the needs arising directly from his human nature’ (Geras 1983: 63). In a further quotation, Geras notes Marx and Engels talking of the ‘physical nature of man’, and argues that the overall logic of the approach of Marx and Engels is that, while human nature may vary with features of the mode of production, these variations must be explained within some general and permanent characteristics. Summarising what Marx has to say about these general characteristics in The German Ideology, Geras lists needs for ‘other human beings, for sexual relations, for food, water, clothing, shelter, rest and, more generally, for circumstances that are conducive to physical health’ (Geras 1983: 72). To this may be added a need of people for personal development.
A little later Geras points out that the idea of an underlying human nature is also to be found in the younger Marx, which makes the idea that similar quotations found later amount to a renunciation of the idea of an underlying human nature distinctly odd (Geras 1983: 77). Geras then goes on to find examples of the use of the idea of an underlying human nature elsewhere in the later Marx. One striking quotation talks of Marx saying that there are ‘immutable natural conditions’ and ‘absolute determinations of human labour as such’ (Geras 1983: 82). Summarising a variety of sources in the older Marx Geras produces a longer schedule of needs:
Food, clothing, shelter, fuel, rest and sleep; hygiene, ‘healthy maintenance of the body’, fresh air and sunlight; intellectual requirements, social intercourse, sexual needs insofar as they are presupposed by ‘relations between the sexes’; the needs of support specific to infancy, old-age and incapacity, and the need for a safe and healthy working environment (Geras 1983: 83).
The deprivation of these by the capitalist system leads to what looks very like a moral condemnation of capitalism (Geras 1983: 84). Geras also argues that when Marx talks of people as the ‘bearers’ of social relations, this implies that there are people to act as bearers (Geras 1983: 92–93).
Geras argues that Marx was right to retain a concept of human nature, and that such a concept is not intrinsically reactionary – it is surely not reactionary to protest against hunger and torture on the grounds that these are incompatible with human nature (Geras 1983: 96). A little later he points out that there is massive and unmet human need on a global scale – children dying before they are five, people becoming disabled through poverty and malnutrition and so forth (Geras 1983: 105). Marxists and socialists are committed to the idea of a radically different social order, and such social order requires people of a certain type – the exact list of qualities could be debated (Geras 1983: 109). Again, a theory of human nature would seem to be involved.
Marx was opposed to talk of justice, but Geras argues that Marx had a theory of justice, but, paradoxically, that he did not believe that he had a theory of justice: ‘Marx did think capitalism was unjust but he did not think he thought so’ (Geras 1985: 36). In other words, Geras considers that Marx implicitly advocated a better society, basing himself on a conception of justice, but not one that was carefully worked out. Where does this leave us when thinking about continuity in Marx’s work? Geras makes an extremely strong case for Marx having a theory of human nature. However, it will be noticed that Geras’s conclusion from this is that Marx has an implicit theory of justice, rather than that the theory of alienation continues from the young Marx into his later writings. His work is compatible with such a view, but by no means requires it. Also, the conception of human nature that Geras finds in Marx is relatively thin compared with the claims of the youthful alienation theory. It contains an implicit demand for decent basic standards, rather than a celebration of the potential for human creativity which is found in the EPM. Geras then goes on to argue that it is necessary to turn to liberalism to find a satisfactory account of justice.
Althusser’s argument that there is a break in Marx’s work: how is the break to be identified?
It will be recalled from the Introduction above that the debate as to whether the EPM were juvenilia or the key to understanding Marx’s work broke out immediately on the publication of this text in German, that the debate died down, that the publication of an English translation in 1963 led to a range of books and articles which generally treated the EPM as a key rather than as juvenilia. However, Althusser’s intervention, notably in Althusser (2005, originally 1965 in English) and Althusser and Balibar (1970) provided new reasons for thinking that there was a break, with a transition coming in about 1846. Althusser said that he was engaged in a symptomatic reading of Marx, which would uncover the underlying problematic of his work. He is making a reference here to Lacanian psychoanalysis, but does not develop this, and the concepts have effectively a circular quality in which a symptomatic reading is the type of reading which uncovers the problematic of a text, and the problematic of a text is what can be uncovered using a symptomatic reading. Althusser claimed that in 1844 Marx was merely an avant-garde Feuerbachian (Althusser 2005: Part One, Feuerbach’s Philosophical Manifestoes), and actually translated some of Feuerbach’s work (Feuerbach 1973). The specific claim of what is uncovered in Capital is the idea of structural causality. It is this that constitutes ‘Marx’s Immense Theoretical Revolution’. Structural causality is to be distinguished from linear causality, where, for example, billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B causing it to go into a pocket, and expressive causality, involving the permeation of a whole by a single essence, as found in Hegel. Structural causality involves the determination of an element of the structure by the structural whole, or of a whole structure by another structure (Althusser and Balibar 1970: 188). As far as the continuity question is concerned, it would not be appropriate to dwell at length on structural causality. Althusser himself moved on to a position where he talks of a perpetual struggling philosophy between idealism and materialism (Althusser 2001). Also, Althusser is very insistent, when discussing historical materialism, on the dominant role of the relations of production, or, as he subsequently insists, relation of production, which, he says, actually constitute the social classes (Althusser 2020: 68, 76, 80, 83). In other words, he sees technological innovation as being driven by the need of the capitalist class to dominate the working class. While it is certainly possible to give examples of this, numerous technological innovations arise from a desire to increase productivity, for example, by applying water and subsequently steam power to the spinning and weaving of cotton. Or it may be simply a matter of an inventor worrying about how a particular process could be carried out more efficiently, which then increases productivity. Althusser’s British followers went through a series of gyrations, ending up with a position which could be termed scepticism, in other words nothing is completely definite beyond a view that the economy is very important (Cutler et al.1977, 1978; Hindess and Hurst 1975, 1977, particularly Cutler et al. 1977: 126).
While there is a widespread consensus that the materialist conception of history is a central feature of Marx’s ideas, there are several different possible interpretations of historical materialism, including Cohen’s advocacy of technological determinism (Acton 1962; Cohen 1977) – and Cohen himself was vindicating ideas advocated in a less rigorous way by the Plekhanov and Kautsky; economic determinism, without being specific between the forces of production or the relations of production – for example, Shaw (1978); relations of production determinism, as discussed above; a position which might be termed ‘class unitarianism’ which emphasises social relations, for example, Clarke (1979: 126); praxis approaches, including, in different variants, Sartre, Lefebvre, Avineri and Gramsci – see Jakubowski (1990: 37), Gramsci (1971: 372) – these approaches insist on concrete totalities, which is a corrective to some of the more abstract formulations above, but which tend to be distressingly vague; and Rader’s organic totality model (Rader 1979), which sees the social totality as an organic whole, leading to rather grisly conceptual experiments in which one imagines, for example, a person doing without three toes and two fingers, and imagines analogies with the social whole. A much fuller account of these varied approaches can be found in Cowling and Manners (1992).
Analysis of passages which include apparent references to alienation found in the older Marx
It is worth reading passages where the word ‘alienation’, or the idea of alienation occurs in the older Marx. According to Engels, Marx’s reaction when the EPM – as we now call it – was mentioned was one of embarrassment. References to alienation are much more frequent in unpublished later writings, particularly the Grundrisse, than in published writings. This would tend to suggest that Marx perhaps used the term in his unpublished writings as a form of shorthand. Many commentators effectively take the view expressed to this author by Ollman in conversation that Marx’s unpublished writings are a better guide to his views than are his published writings. This might have some foundation when dealing with a Machiavellian dictator, but seems perverse when dealing with Marx, who had some constraints from censorship, which restrained some direct calls to revolution, and some from being part of committees, as with references to justice in his Address to the International, but nothing particular to stop him discussing alienation. Indeed, it would surely have been very easy for him to have published a short book on the subject.
A full discussion would need to start with the question of which words need to be examined – for example, ‘fremdt’ might be a reference to alienation, but might simply mean foreign. Here there is just room to summarise some main possible reasons for the appearance of alienation-related discussions in the older Marx.
Legal and quasi-legal uses of the term alienation
First, what support is there for claims such as those of Lewis (1972: 26) that the word alienation appears in the Grundrisse over 300 times, or that of Mészáros, who says ‘Entfremdung’ ‘entfremdet’ and so on occur on these pages ‘several hundred times’ (Mészáros 1970: 221–226, quotation 224)? Certainly, as Hammen, one of the few commentators who rejects the idea that alienation is central to the later Marx, points out, the ‘Grundrisse . . . lacks the concentrated and explicit explanation that had characterised parts of the 1844 Manuscripts . . .’ (Hammen 1980: 226). As mentioned above, in the balanced account of the Grundrisse provided by Choat (2016), alienation plays a very minor role. In fact, a very frequent reason for the use of the term ‘alienation’ is simply selling, as in Marx’s reference to Sir James Steuart’s discussion of profit upon alienation (e.g. Marx 1969: 42; Marx & Engels 1978, Vol. 26.1, p. 8.). There is absolutely no reason to relate this to alienation as it appears in the EPM. Indeed, the numerical bulk of references to alienation or alien in the older Marx relate to this legal notion of alienation, that is, selling, or alien, that is, unrelated to, and therefore, capable of exchange by buying and selling (see Cowling, 2006, appendix). For Steuart’s uses of ‘alienation’ in the sense of selling, see Steuart, 1777 [1776, 1770]. (Kindle locations 456, 720, 1030, 1925, 2751, 3151, 3153, 4479, 5449, 6041, 6214, 6226, 6334, 6348, 6355, 6614, 6755, 6854, 6855, 6872, 6870, 6874, 6879, 6901, 7046, 7050, 7312, 7579, 7604, 7626, 7627, 8548, 8585, 8586, 8847, 8587, 8588, 8776, 8803, 8837, 8816.) I have thus made a stunning contribution to those wishing to prove continuity! Sir James Steuart, who includes no discussion whatsoever of working conditions, had a comprehensive discussion of alienation, based on the use of the word, some 70 years before Marx’s EPM! I must be the first person to realise this! Being serious, of course, the point is that the mere appearance of the word ‘alienation’ by no means demonstrates the appearance of the youthful concept of alienation.
The Fetishism of commodities
Another likely link is the idea of the fetishism of commodities (see Marx 1965, Ch. 1, 71–83, 1966, Pt. VII, Ch. 48, Marx 1972: 453–540). A straightforward reading of this theory is that it deals with the way in which the appearances of capitalist society are deceptive when compared with the reality revealed by the labour theory of value. Socially constituted relations between products and producers of commodities appear to be natural relations between commodities themselves; capital seems to produce profit or interest, land seems to produce rent, labour to produce wages. Obviously large problems are posed by the relation of this theory to Marx’s account of ideology, and by the philosophically questionable essence/appearance distinction. But no account of alienated man is needed to make sense of the theory (Cf. Levin 1980, and Brewer 1984).
Some authors (e.g. Colletti 1975: 48, Korsch 1938: 131, Marcuse (2020 [1967]: 280, 303–304, Tucker 2001: 206–207) and Lukács (2014 [1971]: 382), see the theory as a reappearance of Feuerbach’s account of the relationship between men and gods, also linked to the theory of alienation. However, Marx does not see people as worshipping commodities, and the appearance is a real appearance – a more appropriate analogy seems to be with continuing to see sunrise and sunset even though, thanks to Copernican astronomy we know this is really Earth’s spin rather than the sun moving. While this is by no means decisive, in the light of previous discussion, it is noteworthy that Marx frequently refers to people as ‘bearers’ or ‘personifications’, meaning that major features of them are constituted by the mode of production, which does not immediately suggest a reversion to the alienation idea’s essence (Marx & Engels 1978, Vol. 25/Marx 1966: 779/787, 826/818, 827/819, 829/821, 830/822, 832/824; Marx & Engels 1978, Vol. 26.3/Marx 1972: 504/514). Marx is also somewhat ambivalent about whether appearances are deceptive in all societies, or whether they are simply clear and transparent under socialism.
Geras (1973: 228–229) sees fetishism as the domination of ‘the totality of economic relations’ over ‘all the agents of capitalist society’, and sees this as a historical conception of alienation. However, Marx stresses that he does not begin from ‘man from the economically-given social period’ (Marx 1975: 201). In other words, it would appear that we are dealing with a different framework.
The domination of living labour by dead labour
The idea of the domination of dead labour over living labour refers to passages where Marx says that the powers of labour appear as what they have really become, the powers of capital. (Marx 1965: 195, 218, 233, 310, 361, 419, 423, 645; 1966: 85–86, 264; 1969: 390–391; 1972: 245, 259, 271–272; 1973: 307–308, 450–456, 458, 462–463, 469–670, 485–487, 504f., 702, 831–833; Marx and Engels 1975, Vol. 5: 63–64,78, 86–87). Such passages certainly can be interpreted as the appearances of the alienation theory, but can also be seen as an emotive way of making an economic point. Interestingly, where they can be matched up with similar passages in the Grundrisse, the use of alienation language goes down (Cf. Marx 1965: 645/ Marx & Engels 1978, Vol. 23: 674 with comparable Grundrisse passages: Marx, 1953/1973, pp. 365–367/461–463).
The many-sided man
Passages where Marx talks about many-sided men are the ones most similar to the EPM. However, at least some of what Marx is saying has to do with the development of many-sided consumers as proletarian living standards rise; it also refers to the need of capitalist society for many-sided workers who are flexible, and such people are also needed under communism. The ones closest to the young Marx come from The German Ideology. While not decisive, as Marx develops, the tendency is towards developing moral judgements acceptable from a range of ethical standpoints.
Conclusion
This article reviews some of the main ways of arguing for and against continuity in Marx’s work, which, of course, focuses on the theory of alienation. It is not possible to be completely decisive in either direction: there is sufficient use of alienation vocabulary in the older Marx to make proponents of a break feel uneasy; however, the change from an analysis founded on alienation from man’s species being to one based on the materialist conception of history points towards a major change, and coincides with a sharp reduction in the use of alienation terminology. This ought to make proponents of continuity uneasy as well. While it would be unrealistic to suppose that this debate is capable of a definitive resolution, the article provides an outline of many of the main strategies and issues which need to be considered, and thus, provides an outline of the case for discontinuity, which it argues is a very strong one, and also provides a starting point for more detailed argument.
