Bauerian Motifs in Marx’s Conception of Alienation

Abstract

The problem of alienation in Marx’s theory has, as a certain philosopher once put it, proven to be a gold-mine for many scholars. An examination of the number of scholarly studies which deal with the question of alienation in the works of Marx, particularly the early writings, proves this remark to be correct. Since the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the German Ideology were first published, many articles have appeared which examine the various aspects of the problem of alienation: the political, the religious, the ideological, the social and the economic. The concept of alienation has, to a certain extent under the influence of these studies, invaded literature, sociology and psychology — which proves the wide, almost universal range of states of alienation and their human and social significance.