A Study Of The Relationship Between Marx’s Pre-and Late Critical Thought On Alienation

The idea of alienation criticism put forward by Marx in his early work Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 plays an irreplaceable role in the entire history of Marxism and an important part of Marx’s philosophy.However,due to the different perspectives and positions of scholars on the issue of alienation,there has not been a unified definition of the relationship between the previous and the later period of Marx’s critical thought on alienation in domestic and foreign academic circles,and the opposing views of "either/or" have emerged on this issue.There is the discontinuity theory that separates the pre-critical thought of Marx’s alienation from the post-critical thought by taking the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of1844 as the boundary;there is also the continuity theory that regards Marx’s critical thought of alienation as a continuous development process and believes that there is no fundamental difference between the pre-critical thought and the post-critical thought.Through the study of Marx’s pre-late works,we find that it is necessary to break away from the traditional mode of thinking of "either/or" and not to deny the critical thought of Marx’s alienation during his youth with the materialistic historical view of his mature period,nor to overemphasize the consistency of Marx’s thought before and after,but to insist on the unity of continuity and discontinuity.We should start from the unity of continuity and discontinuity,appreciate the changes in the function and meaning of Marx’s critical thought of alienation in the first and second periods,and then understand Marx’s critical thought of alienation in a scientific way.There is no doubt that the development of the concept of alienation is so old that it can be traced back to its Latin etymology.Due to the variety of original meanings of the concept of alienation,different scholars have different understandings of the concept of alienation,and the application and interpretation of the concept of alienation are very different and in a state of constant change.In terms of classical German philosophy,Hegel was the first philosopher to use the concept of alienation as a philosophical term in his works,and he also used the concept and categories of alienation to establish his own vast philosophical system;Feuerbach,starting from intuitive materialism,used the concept of alienation to expose and accuse the oppression and slavery of religion on human beings.Marx,on the other hand,created his own critical thought of alienation by abandoning the alienation ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach.Marx’s early critical thinking on alienation was influenced by Feuerbach’s alienation of "human nature" and presented a kind of value suspension based on humanism,thus constituting a conflict between the beautiful ideal and the cruel reality.In other words,Marx’s exposure of the phenomenon of capitalist alienation was only an empirical and superficial perception,and he did not argue from the economic level as to why capitalist society produces many alienation phenomena.In order to break through this limitation,Marx devoted himself to the political economy of historical materialism and turned his attention to the Hegelian dialectic,which made the application of alienation penetrate into the capitalist economy and gave his critical thought of alienation a new meaning and function.