II.

Early Works

In these early works Marx was still highly influenced by G. W. F. Hegel and Hegel’s more radical followers, the Young Hegelians. The concept of alienation was a central concept to his Philosophic and Economic Manuscripts of 1844. Human beings are said to be alienated if their practical existence contradicts their human essence. For instance, if they are forced into boring, repetitive, and mind-numbing jobs instead of creative ones. Economic scarcity compels human beings to co-operate and devise ways of organizing production in order to satisfy their needs. On the basis of his reading of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), Marx regarded work under capitalism as particularly degrading since the division of labour and the use of machines meant that previously creative work was divided into distinct operations, that human labour became similar to that of machines and, indeed, constantly displaced by the arrival of new machines.

Being compelled to hold on to a dismal situation by the need to earn a living is a further sign of the workers’ alienation since it demonstrates how little control they have over their own life and their own future. The workers are also alienated from what they produce, since the commodity they manufacture is taken away from them and they lose all control over its uses. Thus work under capitalism is unlike that of craft production characteristic of pre-capitalist labour, work that can provide pride to the craftsman. Marx writes in Wage-Labour and Capital (1849) that: “The worker who for twelve hours weaves, spins, drills, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads, etc., does he consider his twelve hours spinning, drilling, turning, building, shovelling, stone breaking as a manifestation of his life, as life? On the contrary life begins for him when this activity ceases, at table, in the public house, in bed.”

Marx’s concept of alienation was also central to his views on religion. The continuing popularity of religion in the age of rationalism was not evidence of the enduring appeal of superstitious beliefs—as many of Marx’s radical contemporaries believed—but was regarded by Marx as a response to the pain of being alive, to earthly suffering. The lasting attraction of religion had a material basis in an oppressive environment as is made clear by the passage that immediately precedes the famous aphorism about religion being the opium of the people: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances.” In the same text, Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), he expresses for the first time his belief that the proletariat, that is the industrial working class, was the only truly revolutionary class, a class, he wrote, “that has a universal character because of its universal sufferings…because it is the object of no particular injustice but of injustice in general.”

By then Marx was in exile in France and had come into contact with French revolutionaries. He started to move away from philosophy to study the French and British contribution to political economy. His friendship with Friedrich Engels, who had written a vivid denunciation of the consequences of industrialization in Britain (The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844), was an important element in his intellectual evolution.