INTRODUCTION 985
Although Marx accepted Hegel’s dialectical understanding of history, he
became convinced that Hegel’s philosophy (and that of the Young Hegelians)
devalued humanity by its emphasis on the Absolute. Marx then drew on the mate-
rialism espoused in Ludwig Feuerbach’s work,The Essence of Christianity
(1841). Feuerbach had argued that Hegel’s philosophy was nothing more than
rationalized religion, asserting that humans were merely the “self-alienation,” or
loss of identity, of God. Instead, Feuerbach advocated an atheistic materialism
that claimed that “God” was simply the self-alienation of humans. That is, all the
divine characteristics were nothing more than idealized human characteristics
objectified and projected onto an imagined deity.
Marx used Feuerbach’s work to present his criticism of Hegel. Marx expressed
appreciation for Hegel’s dialectical understanding of the “self-creation of man as a
process” and pointed out that Hegel conceives of “objective man” as the result of
“his own labor.” But Hegel understood labor as being “abstract mental” labor, not
the natural, embodied interaction with real objects that concerned Marx. On the
other hand, although he appreciated Feuerbach’s materialism, Marx held that his
predecessor did not tie his criticism to historical development. “As far as
Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers
history he is not a materialist,” wrote Marx. Synthesizing the historical develop-
ment of Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach, Marx’s theory has often been
called “dialectical materialism” (though Marx himself did not use that term).
Marx also adapted Feuerbach’s concept of alienation, applying it to political,
social, and economic interactions. In the section on “Alienated Labor” from the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844(given here in the Loyd D. Easton
and Kurt H. Guddat translation), Marx explains how a capitalist system results in
alienation for the worker. The worker’s labor is alien to the worker because it
belongs to the capitalist. In return for the worker’s labor, the capitalist pays the
worker a wage—a wage that competition keeps at a subsistence level. Yet the
worker must continue to labor in order to survive. This means the worker is now
self-alienated since the life activity, the essence of the worker, becomes “only a
means for his existence.” But alienation is not limited to individuals. Because they
have different interests, workers, as an economic class, are alienated from those
who own the means of production. This, in turn, gives rise to class struggle
because the interests of one class are always in opposition to the interests of other
economic classes. Only by having communal ownership of the means of produc-
tion, that is, by abolishing private property, will such conflict be overcome. Only
then will those who work control both the process and the product of their labor.
The selection from Manifesto of the Communist Party,co-authored by Friedrich
Engels and given here in the Samuel Moore translation, calls on the workers of the
world to bring about such a revolutionary change in the modes of production.
Throughout his analysis of the human situation, Marx continually returned to
these material forces of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. In
the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,reprinted here
in the N.I. Stone translation, Marx explains how the real foundations of society
are the productive forces and the relations of production. His brief overview of
these forces serves as a helpful introduction to his method and program.
Marx’s thought, particularly his economic theory, has faced harsh criticism
since he first formulated his ideas. One recurring criticism is that Marx’s theory
fails to acknowledge basic human nature. Marx’s nemesis within the International,
Mikhail Bakunin, was one of the first to raise this objection in his book Statehood