The Alienation Of Thinking On The "german Ideology"

The problem of alienation is the focus among Marxist philosophical thoughts, but full of controversies. Especially, in the book The German Ideology, some people is in favor of the idea of non-alienation on the excuse of the cautious attitudes taken by Marx and Engels applying the concept of alienation; others don't pay any attention to the internal correlation of Marxist alienation, thus putting forward the theory of division. Alienation is surely the clarified and powerful expression of Marx's description about the social reality and of his standpoint in criticizing the reality. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels clarify the most precise idea of alienation in the fewest words.Alienation is not a phenomenon of nature, but of society, and it is the most essential manifestation of the practical individual and society under the condition of experience. Experience and reality originated from the past history is a kind of realistic "correlation" in the social field. This social correlation doesn't mean the harmonious one between the subject and the object, but is a kind of alien existence that is opposite, different and non-united. This force which is external and opposite to others drives human beings instead of being manipulated by human beings.Any alienation is that of the subject to the object, so Marx and Engels first establish the real starting point of the history, that is, the living individual existence, which means the realistic individuals who undertake practical activities instead of the imaginary and supposed ones. The existence of human beings means their practical living process, and the human being is the "historical human" created by "human's history".Human being is created during the practice, which is specified as production and communication, which, as two essential forms of the practical activities of human beings, interact with each other and together push forward the development of human society. However, during a given phase of the history, the two aspects of the same human activity—labor and communication, are divided and assume the form of alienation. Labor, as the innate endowment and instinct of human beings, instead transforms into an objective force controlling the human being, that is, that the object controls the human being, which in essence is a kind of enslavement relationshipbetween human beings. Therefore, the communication between human beings will be alienated into a social relationship in which human being must be obedient, which implies that the social relationship controls human beings.Alienation of personal development is manifested in three aspects: the individual development, the human relationship, and the relationship between individuals and the society. In no matter which aspect, the human being is plunged into a position of oppression and enslavement. The achievement of comprehensive development and self-discipline of the individual demands the premises, such as, the rapid development of productive forces and the generalization of communications etc, which is conducive to the existence of the individual's personality. The individual's development must be achieved on the premise of being put in a real collective.In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels, on the basis of reasonably revealing the experience and reality of historical development, resort to alienation and achieve the conscious thinking, self-examination and criticism of the reality, and the scientific description of the historical process, thus integrating the historical scale and the value scale into one.All in all, from The Manuscript of Economics and Philosophy in 1844 to The German Ideology, the idea of alienation assumes distinct or unclear differences in its different phases of evolution, but it is the rise and fall during the development of an idea instead of the essential division. The internally logic correlation of alienation is clear and strict. What is accentuated is Marx and Engels, on the basis of criticism on politics and economics, present to human beings the evolving system of human history by clarifying the relationship among labor, communication and division of labor on the metaphysical theoretical plane, which owns the powerful philosophical discourse, but is lack of the theoretical basis of economics. Only until the period of the appearance of On Capital is historical materialism no longer a supposition, but a principle demonstrated scientifically, and subsequently the idea of alienation by Marx has assumed unique historical status and theoretical value.