Karl Marx: Alienation, Dialectics, and Historical Materialism

Karl Marx: Understanding Human Nature and Society

Alienation in Capitalist Society

For Marx, humans actualize themselves throughout history by transforming society and nature. Therefore, humans are above all active, practical beings, since labor is their main activity. Work puts humans in relation with nature and with other people. Nature appears as the "inorganic body of man." Humans are also built by society through work and in relationship with others.

Marx focuses on the alienation of the worker in capitalist society. It is at work where a person should be emphasized as a human. But under the conditions of salaried work, quite the opposite occurs: what is produced is an alienated person:

• With respect to the product of their work, that they do not own or control.
• With regard to their own activities.
• With respect to nature, that does not convert into the inorganic body of man, but something alien to the worker.
• With respect to other people at work, since all relationships with nature and other people are cut off - each one works for themselves.

Marx's conclusion is that private property is the consequence of alienated labor. Therefore, he considered that only communism would allow the elimination of all alienations and the humanization of man. The sense of having must disappear so that man can liberate all other physical and spiritual senses, and can relate to things for love rather than simply having them.

The Dialectic: A Tool for Transformation

Marx introduced the dialectic as an inversion of the Hegelian dialectic. That is, Marx's dialectic is a dialectic of reality and not of the idea, and it is a dialectic of transformation of this reality. This dialectic is based on the category of contradiction; it is open and unfinished because history and the real world are also unfinished. It does not intend to justify or understand reality but to transform it through its transformations. Marx applied the dialectic to history and economy, and this doctrine is known as historical materialism.

Historical Materialism: A New Perspective

In no way is Marx's materialism simply the affirmation that everything is matter. He opposes both Hegel's idealism and classical materialism:

• Against Hegel's idealism, he asserts the priority of being over thought.
• Against classical materialism, as it is an abstract, mechanistic materialism that reduces the subject to mechanical laws and lacks a historical dialectical character.

Thus, Marx's materialism affirms the independence of external nature regarding thought. He claims that nature cannot be separated from humans, as they are assets that transform it: the real nature is nature transformed by humans.

Marx's materialism implies the negation of the autonomy of ideas with respect to the material conditions of human existence and also the dialectical and historical character of that material basis.