Objectivism and the rise of cultural alienation
pp. 70-85
in: Tom Rockmore (ed), Lukács today, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
For a short period after the Second World War Marx" work was read as if he had delivered his entire message in the Paris Manuscripts of 1844. According to this existentialist interpretation, man, by means of a social-economic revolution, must close the breach in the process of his self-realization caused by an alienating attitude toward his own production and restore freedom to its pristine condition. If such a social adaptation of Feuerbach's theory of Entfremdung finds any textual support in the Paris Manuscripts, it is wholly absent from a work written only one year later. In The German Ideology, capitalism appears by no means as an unfortunate interlude in the progress of freedom. Nor does Marx advocate a return to a "natural" state of freedom. On the contrary, he credits capitalism with having surpassed this state altogether.
