Objectification as alienation and praxis

Abstract

In the most general terms, objectification is the activity of man by which he creates objects as exteriorized segments of himself, i. e. humanizes nature and so transforms it into his own object world. The concept itself appeared and took shape in German classical philosophy from whence Marx borrowed it. Although the philosophers of German classical idealism, Fichte, Schelling and especially Hegel put objectification forward in their thought as a philosophic problem, they did not crystalize it as a specific concept with a separate meaning, but considered it as a process identical with exteriorization, or with alienation. On the other hand, Marx distinguishes objectification as praxis, production, the fundamental mode of man’s self-affirmation in the world, the quintessence of the human entity, from alienation as enforced, unfree wage labour in capitalistic socialproductive conditions. Through the »positive abolition of private property«, the revolutionary overcoming of class society and the establishment of an authentic human community, Marx belivies that man’s alienation will be overcome and only then will objectification be wholly affirmed as the free and universal production of diverse forms of human life.