Marx's View of Self-Identity

In contrast to Hegel, Marx did not feel that man's essential nature is to merge with the social substance. Instead, he felt that this essence is to be found in the choices that people make in terms of their "life-activity" (p. 81). Specifically, Marx believed that people gain their self-identity through meaningful and productive work which helps to express the individual self. In Marx's view, productive labor provides opportunities for workers to "externalize" their selves and to thereby attain a sense of "self-realization" (p. 85). However, Marx also claimed that it is possible for workers to become alienated from their own products and their own labor. This sense of alienation comes about whenever workers surrender their own control over their labor. Whereas Hegel divided alienation into two categories involving separation and surrender, Marx claimed that alienation occurs as a result of "separation through surrender" (p. 91). There are two major ways in which a person can surrender the products of h

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Category: Philosophy - M