A Comparative Study Of Marx’s Alienation And Fromm’s Alienation

Karl Marx who lived in the19th century and Erich Fromm who lived in the20th century both were the great philosophers who had deep study of alienation. In Marx’s period, handicraft manufacturing was the main mode of social production. He found out that the high-intensity physical labor was devastating the workers, so his main concern was alienation of human labor and he took it as starting point of interpretation for his alienation theory. Erich Fromm lived in the era of the20th century which is a modern industrial society. During that time, machinery industrial production is the main mode of production which relatively liberated the workers’hands but the human spirit was becoming empty and poor. So his main concern was human psychological alienation and he took it as a breaking point to build the entire system of alienation theory.Marx and Fromm took different perspectives on the issue of alienation. Marx tended to study the alienation from a perspective of historical practice and inspect the issue outside; Fromm tended to study the alienation from a psychological perspective and think about the issue inside. Both of their alienation theories cover the two main aspects that human existence is facing and mutually complementary. Therefore, the studies and comparisons based on the two alienation theories again have great theoretical significance and practical value. In this paper, by comparing the premise, starting points and connotations of their alienation theories, we try to find out some revelatory and valuable ideas for contemporary building in our country from the way they sublate the alienation.