Editorial Doble J

Marx’s Concept of Alienation: Origins and Implications

Posted on diciembre 30, 2024 Actualizado enn diciembre 30, 2024

Prologue by Gill Delannoi

This study is a thorough analysis Marx’s work based largely on his relation to Hegel and Feuerbach. A key section deals with Marx’s so-called «inversion» of Hegel: the application of Hegelian dialectical methodology in the arenas of economic, political and ideological development. This process is exemplified in the creation and use of a complex concept of alienation. This is, in fact, generated by the combining of two separate ideas. The First is the loss of humanity to itself, which brings with it the simultaneous co-concept of the revolutionary overcoming of that alienated state. The second is the idea of the loss of the object: an object is alienated when it is put up for sale. From this starting point, therefore, Marx is able to formulate his view of capital as alienated labour.
The study also explores how Marx’s concept of alienation is presented without reference to a definitive subject or «alienator”, and how the process of alienation followed by the overcoming of alienation assumes an absolute formal value, a value that which is not primarily presented as the outcome of empirically observed phenomena.
Unlike much of the work on Marx’s alienation, this study does not draw a line of separation between the early and the later works of Marx but sees the emancipation project developed in the 1840’s and 50s as providing the structural and conceptual framework for his later work. In this sense, therefore, the study explores how the concept of alienation can be linked to Marx’s particular view of pre-determined economic, social and political development.

Oliver Dowlen’s discussion is a profound, precise and inspiring work. Its main objective is the return to a possible victory over alienation in new political programs. The political blind spot that had been partly responsible for the failure of communism, so predictable by any political realist, had to be reconsidered.
Gil Delannoi

Oliver Dowlen is a Chercher Associé at CEVIPOF Sciences-Po, Paris
Gil Delannoi is a professor of political theory at Sciences-Po, Paris