Marxist Humanist

Marxist humanism is a philosophical and political movement that interprets Karl Marx's works through a humanist lens, focusing on human nature and the social conditions that best support human flourishing. Marxist humanists argue that Marx himself was concerned with investigating similar questions.

Marxist humanism emerged in 1932 with the publication of Marx's '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'', and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works such as ''Capital''. They hold that it is necessary to grasp Marx's philosophical foundations to understand his later works properly.

Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and to the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism. Where other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as a natural science, Marxist humanism believes that humans are fundamentally distinct from the rest of the natural order, and should be treated so by Marxist theory. Marxist humanism emphasizes human agency, subjectivity and ethics, reaffirming the doctrine of "man is the measure of all things".

Origins

The philosophical roots

The beginnings of Marxist humanism lie with the publication of György Lukács's ''History and Class Consciousness'' and Karl Korsch's ''Marxism and Philosophy'' in 1923. In these books, Lukács and Korsch proffer a Marxism that emphasizes the Hegelian element of Karl Marx's thought. Marxism is not simply a theory of political economy that improves on its predecessors. Nor is it a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. Marxism is primarily a critique – a self-conscious transformation of society.

Korsch's book underscores Marx's doctrine of the unity of theory and practice, viewing socialist revolution as the "realization of philosophy". Marxism does not make philosophy obsolete, as "vulgar" Marxism believes; instead Marxism preserves the truths of philosophy until their revolutionary transformation into reality.

The salient essay in Lukács's collection introduces the concept of " reification". In capitalist societies, human qualities, relationships, and actions are treated as if they belong to objects created by Man — objects that then appear as if they were originally independent of Man, and seem to control human life. Conversely, human beings are transformed into thing-like beings that do not behave in a human way but according to the logic of objects. Lukács argues that elements of this concept are implicit in the analysis of commodity fetishism found in Marx's magnum opus ''Capital''. Bourgeois society perceives value as inherent in objects, and even treats people as commodities. This obscures the role of human action in creating social meaning.

The writings of Antonio Gramsci also played a crucial role in shaping a humanist interpretation of Marxism. Like Lukács, Gramsci emphasizes Marx’s intellectual debt to Hegel, arguing that Marx transcends both traditional materialism and idealism by developing a "philosophy of praxis." Gramsci describes the philosophy of praxis as an "absolute historicism," emphasizing the complete secularization of thought and the human-centered nature of history.

The rediscovery of the early Marx

The first publication of Marx's '' Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts'' in 1932 greatly changed the reception of his work. This early work of Marx was written in 1844, when Marx was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. The ''Manuscripts'' situated Marx's reading of political economy, his relationship to the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach, and his views on communism, within a new theoretical framework. In the ''Manuscripts'', Marx borrows philosophical terminology from Hegel and Feuerbach to posit a critique of capitalist society based in " alienation". Through his own activity, Man becomes alien from himself: to the products of his own activity, to the nature in which he lives, to other human beings and to his human potential. The concept is not merely descriptive, it is a call for de-alienation through radical change of the world.

The immediate impact of the ''1844 Manuscripts publication was tempered by the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933, where the work might have had its greatest reception, and by the start of Stalin’s purges in Russia in 1934. However, Lukács, who had worked under David Ryazanov in 1931 to decode the ''Manuscripts'', later claimed that this experience permanently changed his interpretation of Marxism. The significance of the ''1844 Manuscripts'' was at this time also recognized by Marxists such as Raya Dunayevskaya, Herbert Marcuse and Henri Lefebvre. Marcuse stated that the ''Manuscripts'' redefined the entire theory of "scientific socialism," while Lefebvre was responsible for the first translations of the ''Manuscripts'' into a foreign language, publishing a French edition with Norbert Guterman in 1933.

In the period after the Second World War, the texts of the early Marx were translated into Italian and discussed by Galvano Della Volpe. In France, they attracted the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The influence of Marx’s early philosophical writings peaked in the late 1950s when their themes spread widely across Western Europe. In 1961, a volume of the ''Manuscripts'' containing an introduction by Erich Fromm was published in the United States.

Another significant source for Marxist humanism was Marx's ''Grundrisse'', a 1,000 page collection of Marx's working notes for ''Capital''. First published in Moscow in 1939, the ''Grundrisse'' became available in an accessible edition in 1953. The text provided a missing link between the Hegelian philosophical humanism of Marx’s early writings and the economics of his later work. Scholars such as Roman Rosdolsky have noted how the ''Grundrisse'' revealed the ongoing influence of alienation and Hegelian dialectics in shaping Marx’s later theories, including his magnum opus.

Currents

France: existentialist Marxism

Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, prominent existentialist philosophers, integrated political concerns into their philosophies during and after the wartime occupation of France. Their collaboration in the journal ''Les Temps Modernes'' reflected their commitment to an independent Marxism. Although Merleau-Ponty abandoned Marxism by 1955, Sartre continued to engage with it. Both rejected Stalinism’s deterministic and scientistic approach, which they saw as suppressing human creativity and the emancipatory potential of Marxism. Instead, they sought to reinterpret Marxism as a theory rooted in human agency, creativity, and praxis. This independent, humanist Marxism sought to overcome the limitations of both Stalinist orthodoxy and bourgeois liberalism, focusing on the lived experiences of the oppressed.

Influenced by phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty highlighted the role of human intentionality and historical practice in shaping history. He rejected deterministic readings of Marxism and emphasized the open-ended nature of history, arguing that human agency and subjectivity prevent any guaranteed historical outcomes. His 1947 work, ''Humanism and Terror'', defended the revolutionary aims of the working class as aligned with the broader interests of humanity. He controversially justified Soviet repression, including the Moscow Trials, on the grounds that political actions should be judged not by liberal principles of justice but by their historical consequences. This stance reflected his belief that revolutionary violence, unlike the structural violence of capitalism, was aimed at ultimately creating a more just society. However, he later reconsidered these views, expressing skepticism about whether the proletariat would necessarily fulfill its historical role as the agent of emancipation. Merleau-Ponty’s later work, ''Adventures of the Dialectic'' (1955), marked a retreat from his earlier justifications of Soviet policy.

In contrast, Sartre initially maintained a "third-camp" position, rejecting alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union. However, by the early 1950s, in response to the Cold War and the Korean War, he shifted towards a more favorable view of the Soviet Union, believing it represented a force for peace. This growing divergence in their perspectives led to a break between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, culminating in Merleau-Ponty’s resignation from ''Les Temps modernes'' in 1952. Sartre adapted his existentialist philosophy to Marxism, emphasizing human freedom and subjectivity as central to the making of human history. Despite his support of the Soviet Union, he criticized Stalinist Marxism’s "iron laws" and economic determinism, proposing instead a dynamic view of human agency within historical processes. He introduced concepts such as "fused groups" (spontaneous, collective revolutionary action) and "organized group practice" (sustained communal efforts), critiquing the bureaucratic tendencies of Soviet socialism.

In 1939, Henri Lefebvre, then a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), published a brief but revolutionary study of Marxist philosophy, ''Dialectical Materialism''. In this work, he argues that the Marxist dialectic is based on the concepts of alienation and praxis, rather than the "Dialectics of Nature" found in Friedrich Engels's writings. Lefebvre drew heavily from the recently published ''1844 Manuscripts'', which he was the first to translate into French.

However, it wasn’t until 1956, following the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising, that
French Communist Party dissidents openly challenged the Marxist orthodoxy. This shift was marked by the creation of the journal ''Arguments'', edited by Lefebvre, Edgar Morin, Jean Duvignaud, Kostas Axelos, and Pierre Fougeyrollas — all former or current members of the PCF. The journal became a focal point for a new Marxist humanist critique of Stalinism.

The ''1844 Manuscripts'' became a central reference for the journal, and existentialism had a significant influence on its approach. Lefebvre, for instance, looked to Sartre for a theory of alienation under capitalism. Lefebvre argued that alienation encompassed not only labor, but also consumerism, culture, systems of meaning, and language within capitalist society. Other members of the ''Arguments'' group were influenced by Martin Heidegger’s critique of Western metaphysics. Kostas Axelos and Pierre Fougeyrollas, for example, followed Heidegger in viewing Marxism as flawed by its traditional metaphysical assumptions, and questioned the "less-than-human" values of Marxist humanism.

Starting in the late 1950s, Roger Garaudy, for many years the chief philosophical spokesman of the French Communist Party, offered a humanistic interpretation of Marx stemming from Marx's early writings which called for dialogue between Communists and existentialists, phenomenologists and Christians.

Eastern Europe: revisionism and dissent

The decade following Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 witnessed various movements for liberalization across Eastern Europe, all of them framed under the banner of "humanism." Initially condemned as " revisionist" by orthodox communists during the 1950s, this term was later co-opted by the 1960s, with Communists identifying themselves as "humanists" and professing a belief in "Everything for Man."

The revival of Marxist humanism was particularly influenced by Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism in 1956, which played a significant role in creating an environment receptive to change. After 1956, Marx’s ''1844 Manuscripts'' became a cornerstone for opposition to Stalinism in Eastern Europe. This usage has been compared to the way the New Testament inspired reformers during the Reformation. In countries like Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, a new "socialist humanist" movement emerged. It combined grassroots demands for workers’ control with the philosophical insights of early Marxist texts, creating a vision of socialism that transcended Khrushchev’s cautious rejection of Stalin’s "cult of personality."

During this period:

* Yugoslav philosophers Mihailo Marković and Gajo Petrović formulated a humanist Marxism that later became the basis of the Praxis school. From 1964 to 1975, this group published a philosophical journal, ''Praxis'', and organized annual philosophical debates on the island of Korčula. They concentrated on themes such as alienation, reification and bureaucracy.
* Leszek Kołakowski, a philosopher at Warsaw University, established himself as a prominent voice of Polish " revisionism." His essays, such as "What is Socialism?" and "The End of the Age of Myths", articulated a critique of Stalinism while reaffirming a commitment to a more democratic and human-centered socialism. His 1957 work "Responsibility and History" further advanced these ideas, arguing that socialism should be reimagined as a system that prioritizes individual autonomy and human dignity, rather than bureaucratic control.
* Czechoslovak philosopher Karel Kosík published ''Dialectics of the Concrete'' in 1961, advocating the importance of individual agency and the "human personality" in history — a stance that eventually led to his imprisonment.

Britain: the New Left

Marxist humanism played a key role in the emergence of the British New Left in the late 1950s, particularly through the efforts of dissident intellectuals such as E. P. Thompson and John Saville. In response to Khrushchev's revelations about Stalinism and the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, both historians left the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and founded ''The Reasoner'', a critical inner-party journal that soon evolved into '' The New Reasoner''. This journal became a central platform for advocating participatory democracy, opposing the Cold War, and challenging both U.S. and Soviet imperialism, while articulating a vision of democratic socialism rooted in humanist values.

In 1957, Thompson published his seminal essay, "Socialist Humanism: An Epistle to the Philistines", in ''The New Reasoner'', arguing that Soviet Marxism had become rigid and abstract, detached from the actual experiences and struggles of real men and women. He critiqued the dogmatism of Communist orthodoxy and called for a Marxism that placed human needs, agency, and moral considerations at its core. This perspective strongly resonated with young intellectuals who were disillusioned with both Stalinism and Western capitalism, helping to shape a distinctly British socialist humanist tradition.

The British New Left coalesced around ''The New Reasoner'' and the '' Universities and Left Review'', a journal founded by younger radical intellectuals who focused more on cultural transformation and issues of racial and ethnic identity. These two groups merged in 1959 to form the ''New Left Review''. However, tensions between the labor movement-oriented socialist humanists (led by Thompson) and the theory-driven editorial direction of Perry Anderson led to Thompson’s departure from the ''New Left Review'' in 1962. This marked a shift away from socialist humanism within the journal, prompting Thompson and others to establish the '' Socialist Register'' in 1964, which continued to champion a humanist Marxism.

Despite the fragmentation of the New Left, Thompson's humanist Marxism remained a significant force in British intellectual life. Particularly influential were his historical work (''The Making of the English Working Class'', 1963), his critique of Althusserian structuralism ('' The Poverty of Theory'', 1978), and his anti-nuclear activism during the 1980s. His humanist critique of Althusser centered on the claim that Marxist theory must prioritize historical agency and lived experience, rejecting the idea that individuals were merely "carriers of class relations." In contrast to Althusser’s structuralist anti-humanism, which reduced individuals to passive elements within a system, Thompson maintained that history is shaped by collective human struggle.

The Frankfurt School: critical theory

The Frankfurt School, emerging from the Institute for Social Research in 1923, developed critical theory, a philosophical approach that sought to integrate Marxist critique with insights from psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural analysis. Key figures such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and later Jürgen Habermas, aimed to analyze the conditions that maintained social domination and impeded human emancipation.

Unlike classical Marxism, which emphasized the economic base and revolutionary agency of the proletariat, the Frankfurt School expanded the scope of critique to include the role of culture, ideology, and mass communication in sustaining capitalist domination. Adorno and Horkheimer's ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'' (1944) famously argued that the Enlightenment's rationalist ideals had been co-opted into forms of instrumental reason that reinforced totalitarian tendencies within both capitalist and authoritarian socialist societies. This pessimistic view of modernity led them to question the prospects for human emancipation through traditional Marxist revolutionary praxis.

Marcuse, however, maintained a more optimistic stance. In '' Reason and Revolution'' (1941), he argued that Hegel's dialectic was inherently critical and revolutionary, rather than a justification for the status quo. Marcuse identified the potential for Hegelian thought to serve as a foundation for a critical theory of society, one that exposes the contradictions within capitalism and highlights the necessity of transformative praxis. His ''Eros and Civilization'' (1955) and '' One-Dimensional Man'' (1964) examined the ways in which advanced capitalist societies suppressed radical potential through consumer culture and technological rationality. He identified new revolutionary subjects beyond the working class, including students, intellectuals, and marginalized groups. Marcuse's ideas gained traction with the New Left in the 1960s, emphasizing personal liberation, direct political action, and critiques of bureaucratic rationality. Nevertheless, he remained skeptical about the feasibility of a humanist socialist society in an era of advanced technological control.

The Frankfurt School shared key affinities with Marxist humanism. Nevertheless, the school's engagement with Marxist humanism was ambivalent. While they rejected the crude economic determinism of Soviet Marxism, they also critiqued the abstract humanism of thinkers like Feuerbach and those Marxists who, in their view, underestimated the role of social structures in shaping human consciousness. Instead of positing an essentialist notion of human nature, critical theorists argued that subjectivity itself was historically conditioned and mediated by ideology, culture, and power relations.

Erich Fromm was the most explicitly humanist associate of the Frankfurt School, becoming one of the most influential proponents of Marxist humanism in the United States. He emphasized alienation as a central issue of capitalist society and framed his critique of capitalism through a psychological and humanistic lens. His 1965 edited collection, ''Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium'', sought to strengthen international networks of socialist/Marxist humanists, broadening their influence and visibility. Fromm argued that love, solidarity, and cooperative social relationships were fundamental human needs frustrated by capitalist structures. In ''The Sane Society'' (1955), he called for a decentralized socialist society based on workers' participation and democratic cooperation, aligning his vision with Marx’s concept of a stateless, egalitarian society. Although often perceived as a liberal or social democrat, Fromm was firmly rooted in Marxist thought, maintaining that socialism should be deeply humanistic rather than authoritarian. His political engagement extended beyond theory — he was actively involved in the peace movement, particularly as a founder of the '' Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy''. Through both his scholarship and activism, Fromm contributed significantly to the reorientation of Marxism toward a democratic and human-centered socialism.

The Johnson–Forest Tendency

The Johnson–Forest Tendency was a dissident Marxist current within Trotskyism, led by C. L. R. James (pseudonym: Johnson) and Raya Dunayevskaya (pseudonym: Forest), with Grace Lee Boggs playing a significant role. Emerging from debates within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and later the Workers Party in the United States, the group rejected traditional Leninist vanguardism and, in the 1940s, developed a theory of state capitalism, arguing that the Soviet Union was not a "degenerated workers' state" but rather a bureaucratic form of capitalist society. A major intellectual influence on the group was Dunayevskaya's reading of Marx's ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844''. This perspective led the tendency to align closely with Marxist humanism.

In 1955, following James's departure to England, the group splintered. Dunayevskaya and her followers formed the '' News and Letters Committees'', explicitly advancing Marxist humanist thought. Meanwhile, James and Grace Lee continued the '' Correspondence Publishing Committee'', later publishing ''Facing Reality'' (1958), a work inspired by the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 that called for workers' self-management as the foundation for socialism. Their approach anticipated later movements that emphasized direct democracy, rejecting not only Stalinist and Trotskyist party structures but political parties in general.

Philosophy

Marxist humanism opposes the philosophy of "dialectical materialism" that was orthodox among the Soviet-aligned Communist Parties. Following Friedrich Engels'', where Engels marries Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's dialectics to philosophical materialism, the Soviets saw Marxism as a theory not just of society but of reality as a whole. Engels's book is a work of what he calls "natural philosophy", and not one of science. Nonetheless, he claims that discoveries within the sciences tend to confirm the scientific nature of his theory. This world-view is instantiated within both the natural and social sciences. For dialectical materialism, Marxist theory will eventually lose its philosophical character and be absorbed into fully developed theoretical natural science.

Marxist humanists attack an understanding of society based on natural science, as well as science and technology themselves, as bourgeois and manipulative modes of enquiry. Marxist humanism asserts the centrality and distinctiveness of people and society. Social science differs from natural science because people and society are not instantiations of universal natural processes, as in the view of dialectical materialism. People are not objects but subjects – centers of consciousness and values – and science is an embedded part of the totalizing perspective of humanist philosophy.

Whereas dialectical materialism sees Marxist theory as primarily scientific, Marxist humanism views Marxist theory as primarily philosophical. Marxist humanism echoes earlier cultural trends, particularly the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, and draws heavily from the German idealist traditions, including the works of Kant, Hegel, and hermeneutic philosophy. These traditions reject the empiricist idea of a unified scientific methodology. Instead, they argue that human social practice has a purposive, transformative character, and thus requires a mode of understanding different from the detached, empirical observation of the natural sciences. Such understanding is less about causal explanation and more about interpreting meaning — particularly the language, ideas, and cultural practices of a society. Importantly, participants’ understanding of their own language and society is seen as an essential insight that no external science can replace. This requires an empathetic or participatory methodology, more philosophical and conceptual than empirical.

Alienation

In line with this, Marxist humanism treats alienation as Marxism's central concept. In his early writings, the young Marx advances a critique of modern society on the grounds that it impedes human flourishing. Marx's theory of alienation suggests a dysfunctional or hostile relation between entities that naturally belong in harmony with one another – an artificial separation of one
entity from another with which it had been previously and properly conjoined. The concept has "subjective" and "objective" variants. Alienation is "subjective" when human individuals feel "estranged" or do not feel at home in the modern social world. Individuals are objectively alienated when they are hindered from developing their essential human capacities. For Marx, subjective alienation stems from objective alienation: individuals experience their lives as lacking meaning or fulfilment because society does not promote the deployment of their human capacities.

Marxist humanism views alienation as the guiding idea of both Marx's early writings and his later works. According to this school of thought, the central concepts of ''Capital'' cannot be fully and properly understood without reference to this seminal theme. Communism is not merely a new socioeconomic formation that will supersede the present one, but the re-appropriation of Man's life and the abolition of alienation.

In the young Marx

=The modern state: civil society and political society

=

The earliest appearance of the concept of alienation in Marx's corpus is the ''Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right'' from 1843. Marx here discusses the modern state. For Marx, the modern state is characterized by an historically unprecedented separation between an individual's "real" life in civil society of the state. This contrasts starkly with the ancient and medieval worlds, where civil and political life formed a unity.

Modern civil society, driven by individual self-interest and the pursuit of private property, fragments society and alienates individuals from one another. Individuals in this "atomistic" civil society relate to each other primarily as means to their own ends. Modern civil society does not sustain the individual as a member of a community. This egoistic social sphere is antithetical to the "general interest" embodied by the state.

While the modern state claims to represent the common good, it remains detached and remote from the everyday lives of citizens. Marx uses the term "abstract" to highlight this detachment, contrasting the "real life" of civil society with the "transcendental existence" of the state. This abstraction, resulting from the separation of particular and common interests, leads to a political sphere where matters of universal concern are decided "without having become the real concern of the people." The state exists in theory as a representation of the common good but lacks tangible connection to citizens’ daily lives. While the state acknowledges the communal dimension of human flourishing, it does so in an inadequate manner. Individuals participate in this "heaven" of the political state as abstract citizens, separated from their concrete existence in civil society.

=Bauer's critique of religion

=

The most well-known metaphor in Marx's ''Critique'' – that of religion as the opium of the people – is derived from the writings of the Young Hegelian theologian Bruno Bauer. Bauer's primary concern is religious alienation. Bauer views religion as a division in Man's consciousness. Man suffers from the illusion that religion exists apart from and independent of his own consciousness, and that he himself is dependent on his own creation. Religious beliefs become opposed to consciousness as a separate power. Self-consciousness makes itself into an object, a thing, loses control of itself, and feels itself to be nothing before an opposing power. A religious consciousness cannot exist without this breaking up or tearing apart of consciousness: religion deprives Man of his own attributes and places them in a heavenly world.

Since religious belief is the work of a divided mind, it stands in contradiction to itself: the Gospels contradict each other and the world; they contain dogmas so far removed from common sense that they can be understood only as mysteries. The God that men worship is a ''subhuman'' God – their own imaginary, inflated and distorted reflection.

For Bauer, history reflects the self-consciousness of the historical Spirit, with empirical reality serving as a resistance Spirit must overcome. Bauer sees Christianity as a stage of self-consciousness that projected human values into myths, creating a new form of servitude by subordinating individuals to God. He argues that Christianity, rooted more in Roman culture than Jewish tradition, alienated humanity from its essence. The task of the current historical phase, Bauer claims, is to liberate humanity from religious mythology and separate the state from religion.

In the ''Critique'', Marx adopts Bauer's criticism of religion and applies this method to other fields. Marx sees Man's various alienations as peels around a genuine center. Religion is the most extreme form of alienation: it is at once both the symptom of a deep social malaise and a protest against this malaise. The criticism of religion leads to the criticism of other alienations, which must be dealt with in the same way. The influence of Bauer follows Marx through all his later criticism: this is visible in the many places where Marx establishes an economic point by reference to a religious analogy.

=Hegel's philosophy of law and history

=

The ''Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right'' credits Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel with significant insight into both the basic structure of the modern social world and its disfigurement by alienation. Hegel believes alienation will no longer exist when the social world objectively facilitates the self-realization of human individuals, and human individuals subjectively understand that this is so.

For Hegel, objective alienation is already non-existent, as the institutions of the modern social world – the family, civil society

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