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ALIENATION: CRITIQUE AND ALTERNATIVE FUTURES 15

no history, no development; but men, developing possibilities within a meaningful and sup-
their material production and their material inter- portive community. This required the nega-
course, alter, along with this their real existence, their tion of negation and the subsequent move
thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is
not determined by consciousness, but consciousness from the realm of necessity to the realm of
by life (Marx and Engels, 1978/1846: 154–5). freedom.
But further, for Marx, the material and cul-
More specifically, as noted, under conditions
tural (ideological) were not separate realms,
of wage labor, where labor power is sold as a
as bourgeois thought would make it seem
commodity, the product of that labor was a
(see Lukacs, 1971/1920). Bourgeois thought,
commodity that was owned by the capitalist
much like the fetish of commodities, was
while the whole of commodity production
reified and its ideologies were imbued with
now stood outside the worker. His/her labor
contradictions revealed by critique, the
created that ‘externalized system that now
Ideologiekritik of the Frankfurt School. Their
refluxed back upon him/her as an alien force,
critical analyses of the prevailing concepts
as an outside power’ (Marx, 1978/1844: 72).
of ‘common sense’ demonstrated that the ide-
Yet Hegel valorized Reason, for he con-
ological conceptualization of ‘freedom’ sus-
tended that if and when people understood
tained the freedom of the market at the expense
the nature of domination as a historical
of alienated individuals, while the valorization
moment, they could transcend it. Thus within
of ‘equality’ masked the inequality of a class
the context of alienated labor, there was
society. Yet the freedom and equality promised
a possibility of transcendence which would
by capital, thwarted by the alienation it gen-
enable the attainment of de-alienated
erated yet immanent within its ideology,
labor. Dunayevskaya (1965: 51) put it very
would follow the overcoming of alienation.
clearly:
This insight, examining the migration of
It is here – in the second stage of Marx’s relation to alienation from the specifics of labor power
the Hegelian dialectic – that Marx fully transcended
Hegel. The split in the philosophic category of the commodified to diverse dimensions of the
Absolute into two, like the split of the economic cultural realm has been one of the major
category of labor into labor as activity and labor- developments in alienation research. Indeed,
power as commodity, forged new weapons of on the one hand, studies show how alienation
comprehension. It enabled Marx to make a leap in can be discerned in unexpected domains, such
thought to correspond to the new, the creative
activity of the workers in establishing a society on as science, culture, leisure, and the realm of
totally new foundations which would, once and what we think of as private life. On the other
for all, abolish the division between mental and hand, researchers are uncovering the implied
manual labor and unfold the full potentialities of dialectic to show how the very pervasiveness
man – a truly new human dimension.
of alienation provides opportunities for evad-
Thus the fundamental difference between ing or even overcoming it. 3
Marx’s notion of alienation from either
rationalization and entrapment as for Weber,
or anomie for Durkheim, was that for Marx,
social life had a material foundation and ALIENATION AS THE INEVITABLE
alienation, as a cultural moment, was rooted HEGEMONIC DOMINATION OF
in wage labor, and therefore rested on contra- CONSCIOUSNESS?
dictions of class interest. For Marx, the dom-
ination of private property, inherent in There is still room for clarifying Lukacs’
capitalism, held within itself the possibility question of how consciousness was domi-
of overcoming its unique and tragic dysfunc- nated by the reified categories of bourgeois
tion, alienation. His dialectical approach made thinking that served capitalist interests. Among
it possible to establish a society where all current studies of alienation, some researchers
could find the full realization of their creative who present theorizations of various social