Canadian Philosophical Review, xv no. 6-xvi. 2 December. 1995-April 1996
Book review by Jay Raskin
Nasir Khan, Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings, Oslo: Solum Publishers, 1995
Pp. 294
at Amazon.co.uk, £41.93
at Amazon.co.uk, £41.93
[NOTE: This book can be downloaded here ]
This is a
good book for Marxist scholars to review some important basic concepts
and a good book to include in a graduate course on the early writings of
Marx. It increases the understanding of Marx in two important areas.
First, it clarifies the logical development that took place in Marx’s
thinking as he crossed the boundary from democrat to communist. Second,
it gives a precise description of the relationship between Marx’s
fundamental worldview and those of Hegel and Feuerbach.
Not that
others have not covered this territory before, it is just that Nasir
Khan does it as well or better. Khan accomplishes this by vigorously
focusing his research. He examines the period from March 1843 to August
1844, concentrating on three works by Marx: ‘Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, ‘On the Jewish Question’, and
‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’. He further delimits his
work by examining only the basic topic of alienation.
Khan
demonstrates that at the time of writing the ‘Critique’, (in March
through September of 1843, at the age of 25) Marx still thought that
full political rights for all people and democracy would solve the
problem of human alienation. In the ‘Critique’, Marx calls for the full democratization of the state (130).
A month or two later, writing in ‘On the Jewish Question’ and his
‘Introduction to the Critique’, Marx rejects such a partial, purely
political solution to the problem. Marx now calls for the abolition of
the state (131).
This
clarification alone makes the book important to Marxist scholars. The
transition of Marx from democrat to communist is so swift that it is
easy to miss or forget. It often appears that historical
materialism just emerges full blown from the head of Marx. Khan
carefully refutes this by tracing the progressive steps in Marx’s
thinking from the ‘Critique’ to the ‘Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts’. He shows that Marx goes from criticism of religion to
criticism of philosophy, from criticism of philosophy to criticism of
the state; from criticism of the state to criticism of society; and
finally from criticism of society to criticism of political economy and
private property (145).
Khan’s
second clarification involving the Hegel-Feuerbach-Marx relationship
also merits study. George Plekhanov in his chief work Fundamental Problems of Marxism
(1908), spent the first 20 pages complaining that the Marxists of his
day were unfamiliar with the works of Hegel and Feuerbach, and thus had a
distorted picture of what Marx was all about. This complaint still
rings true today. Khan gives a clear, demystified model of the
relationship.
This is not
an easy thing to do. In works about Marx, one often reads how Marx
turned Hegel on his head, or how he criticized Feuerbach for only
conceiving of man abstractly and not as an historical and sensuous
being. Yet the exact relationship among Marx’s concepts and those of Hegel and Feuerbach’s are more interesting.
Khan
examines how Hegel had thought he had overcome alienation by showing
that ultimately man was God (absolute spirit) in self-alienation (52).
Feuerbach reversed this formula and turned Hegel upside down to show
that the concept of God was really man in self-alienation. Marx deeply
appreciated Feuerbach for this, but realized he had only challenged the
top of the Hegelian system. Feuerbach had correctly criticized
humanity’s alienation from in its holy form—religion, but not in its
unholy forms—the state and private property. Marx attacked Feuerbach for
not taking this next obviously necessary step. Marx himself took this
step in his later writings. What Feuerbach had done to the crowning
religious part of Hegel’s system, Marx did to the rest of it. Marx
appreciated Hegel, on the other hand, for his introduction of the
historical method into philosophy; i.e., for showing spirit as
historically evolving through dialectical conflict. Marx simply replaced
Hegel’s Alienated God-Spirit by actual historical man as the true
subject of history and ran Hegel’s film backward to reveal that far from
having overcome alienation through Hegel’s philosophy, actual man was
more alienated than ever by his real socio-economic conditions. This set
the stage for Marx’s later works when he delved ever deeper into the
exact nature of those alienating conditions and came up with solutions
for them.
In the
shadowy background of Khan’s book stands Louis Althusser’s anti-humanist
theory, as presented in ‘For Marx’ and ‘Reading Capital’. Althusser put
forward the theory of an epistemological break in Marx’s works that
turned them from reflecting a humanist ideology into a new science of
society. Khan refers to this theory obliquely several times and firmly
rejects it. Khan maintains ‘Marx’s ideas regarding humanist perspective
and the question of alienation show continuity, but with important
differences in the content and form of the concept and theory of
alienation in the period under review’ (19). Khan’s work
will give comfort to those who oppose Althusser’s theory, but because it
concentrates so strongly on the early works, it really cannot be
considered a strong refutation. Althusser would certainly grant Khan’s
thesis that Marx’s early works are strongly influenced by humanism. It
is the later works that Khan does not really examine that Althusser
would contend go beyond humanism.
Khan writes
in an easy, clear and thoughtful style. His writing is pleasantly
non-polemical. Khan declares, ‘I have tried to present Marx’s views on
alienation as dispassionately as possible and have not let my own likes
and dislikes dictate the inquiry’ (18). It is to his credit that he
presents conflicting views on many issues quite fairly.
One hears common talk of Marxism being dead as a result of the Marxist parties in Eastern Europe losing state power. Yet,
Khan’s book proposes that the essence of Marxism is the overcoming of
alienation, and holding state power is only a small part of that. He
suggests that Marx thought of Communism in three stages. In the crude
stage, equal distribution and consumption are emphasized without an
understanding of the mechanism of production. In the second stage, the
proletariat controls state power and thinks of society in terms of pure
politics. The third stage is the positive appropriation of the human
essence by and for man (246-52). If Khan is right, events in the early
1990s in Eastern Europe should have about as much effect on Marxist
Philosophy as the Fall of the Roman Empire had on Christianity.
University of South Florida
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