Totality of Production and Alienation in Marx: Notes for a Critical Analysis

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Marcello Musto
Publishing Year 2014 Issue 2014/1
Language Italian Pages 22 P. 89-110 File size 537 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2014-001006
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The ‘Introduction of 1857’ to the Grundrisse is the most extensive and detailed pronouncement that Marx ever made on epistemological questions and it is an important reference for the understanding of his conception of "production". Beginning in the 1960s, the diffusion of the Grundrisse paved the way for a conception of alienation different from the one then hegemonic in sociology and psychology. It was a conception geared to the overcoming of alienation in practice - to the political action of social movements, parties and trade unions to change the working and living conditions of the working class. The publication of what may be thought of as the ‘second generation’ of Marx’s writings on alienation provided not only a coherent theoretical basis for new studies of alienation, but above all an anti-capitalist ideological platform for the extraordinary political and social movement that exploded in the world during those years.

Keywords: Alienation, economy, production, Grundrisse, fetishism, Capital.

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Marcello Musto, Totality of production and alienation in Marx: notes for a critical analysis in "PARADIGMI" 1/2014, pp 89-110, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2014-001006