Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 3
How Marx Traces the Roots of
Alienation to Capitalist Society
Marx’s Basic Conception on the Profit System and Alienation
To understand human alienation, it is necessary to dwell on its fundamental economic and social roots. This was already explained brilliantly by writers such as Karl Marx 150 years ago. The left and right political forces do not take Marx’s writing on human alienation too seriously. The excuse for this is that Marx’s main writing and work was focused on economic and class issues. The main conception is that he concentrated only on the contradictions of the economic structure of capitalism, the scientific method (dialectical materialism) to understand the economic and social contradictions, and the political program that the working class needed to abolish capitalism and establish socialism. The failure to establish socialism and the monstrous distortion of “socialism” by the Stalinist bureaucracy is used by many mainstream experts to discredit Marx. Yet the top experts who are linked directly to Wall Street are well aware of the validity of Marx writings.
The great majority of the socialist left that claims to struggle for a better humanistic society, ignores Marx’s general writing on the human nature and alienation. It only emphasizes the validity of Marx’s economic and political writings. Later, the book will deal with the failure of the left to grasp alienation and provide humanistic answers to capitalism. It is suffice to say for now that not developing Marx’s main ideas on human alienation was fatal for the left. The failure of the Marxist movement to deal with alienation contributed to its decline; because of this many disillusioned people stopped taking seriously what it has to say on the economic and political questions. The freedom from alienation, and the understanding of how we can utilize our full spiritual, emotional, creative, and intellectual potential is now championed by people who ignore how capitalism distorts and destroys our potential as human beings. These attempts to free ourselves while ignoring what the system does to our spirit, psyche and humanity are false. The spread of the new age spiritual movement is an example of this.[1] Focusing only on either politics/economics or spiritual humanistic solutions is inexorable, one-sided, and failingly. It is critical, therefore, to revive and enrich Marx’s understanding about the roots of alienation and how the basic contradictions of the system distorts our social existence and psyche. Without this the alternatives remain abstract and devoid from real humanity.
The propaganda is that Marx just look at the economic political questions; that he was not a humanist, because his main concern was the narrow freedom of the workers from the chains of class society. This is not so. For Marx’s main concern was the liberation of humanity as a whole. He conceived the liberation of the working class only as a transitional stage to achieve liberation of humanity as a whole. Socialism as an economic social system was never a goal by itself. Marx believed that it was the only possible initial human social system — proceeding after the end of the oppressive class society — that could nurture the humanistic development of the individuals and the human race as a whole.
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[1]See the chapter on the new age movement.