Chapter 5 Does Alienation

Abstract

Marx's writings were the first sustained and rigorous attempt to identify and scrutinize inherent contradictions as a constitutive feature of early modern society – the society he referred to as “bourgeois” society.¹ In the related literature, scholars have paid ample attention to the fact that the German term Marx used, and which had been a key concept in Hegel's philosophy of right ([1821] 1967) – bürgerliche Gesellschaft – refers to early modern society as both a society in which wealthy “burghers” are the driving force and primary decision-makers – bourgeois society – and a society of equal citizens – civil society (see especially Cohen & Arato, 1992; Riedel, 1988). The conceptual differentiation of bürgerliche Gesellschaft into bourgeois society and civil society suggests that it is not possible to discern the nature of this emergent society according to one overarching principle. Instead, it is necessary to recognize underlying contradictions as a key structuring principle. The contradictions are most conspicuous in tensions between the values of democracy (as espoused most explicitly during and by the French Revolution, in terms of liberty, equality, and fraternity/solidarity) and the imperative of a market-based economy operating according to the capitalist mode of production and foreshadowing industrialization.

Citation

Dahms, H.F. (2011), "Chapter 5 Does Alienation", Dahms, H.F. (Ed.) The Vitality Of Critical Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 28), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 223-248. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0278-1204(2011)0000028009