Human emancipation as the horizon of critique: revisiting the debate on the position of humanism in Karl Marx’s mature oeuvre

Abstract

In this article, I present an analysis of the central texts of Marx’s first model of mature critique of political economy, written between 1857-59, in order to point out how the author positioned humanism within his later works. Firstly, I show how Marx intertwined two conceptual pairs: on the one hand, the history/prehistory pair is designed to distinguish socialism from all the modes of production that precede it, so that the passage to socialism and history would mark an emancipatory break with all prehistory, as human society would finally be effectively realized. However, as socialism has not yet been realized historically, Marx’s investigation focuses on the capitalism/pre-capitalism pair: he shows that pre-capitalism is a limit prior to capital, which allows him to criticize the ahistorical conception of capital held by political economists. To demonstrate this difference between capitalism and pre-capitalism, Marx revisits the notion of alienation, defining it as a specifically capitalist phenomenon. I then analyze the 1844 Manuscripts, indicating the significant differences between the Humanist conception of Marx’s youth and that of the 1857-59 model. My aim is to develop an intermediate position within secondary literature: between positions that advocate complete discontinuity and continuity without major changes, I argue, following Ruy Fausto, that there is continuity – because Marx still holds a certain humanist position – in discontinuity – because humanism in is his later works becomes the horizon of critique, ceasing to function as its foundation.