The third interpretation of Marxism may be called
for purposes of identification, “the existentialist view”
according to which Marxism is not primarily a system
of sociology or economics, but a philosophy of human
liberation. It seeks to overcome human alienation, to
emancipate man from repressive social institutions,
especially economic institutions that frustrate his true
nature, and to bring him into harmony with himself,
his fellow men, and the world around him so that he
can both overcome his estrangements and express his
true essence through creative freedom. This view
developed as a result of two things; first, the publica-
tion in 1932 of Marx's manuscripts written in 1844
before Marx had become a Marxist (on the other two
views), which the editors entitled Economic and Philo-
sophic Manuscripts, and second, the revolt against
Stalinism in Eastern Europe at the end of World War
II among some communists who opposed the theory
and practice of Marxist-Leninism. Aware that they
could only get a hearing or exercise influence if they
spoke in the name of Marxism, they seized upon several
formulations in these manuscripts of Marx in which
he glorifies the nature of man as a freedom-loving
creature—a nature that has been distorted, cramped,
and twisted by the capitalist mode of production. They
were then able to protest in the name of Marxist
humanism against the stifling dictatorship of Stalin and
his lieutenants in their own countries, and even against
the apotheosis of Lenin.
Independently of this political motivation in the
reinterpretation of Marx, some socialist and nonsocial-
ist scholars in the West have maintained that the con-
ception of man and alienation in the early writings
of Marx is the main theme of Marx's view of socialism,
the aim of which is “the spiritual emancipation of
man.” For example, Eric Fromm writes that “it is
impossible to understand Marx's concept of socialism
and his criticism of capitalism as developed except on
the basis of his concept of man which he developed
in his early writings” (Marx's Concept of Man [1961],
p. 79). This entails that Marx's thought was understood
by no one before 1932 when the manuscripts were
published, unless they had independently developed
the theory of alienation. Robert Tucker's influential
book, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge,
1961), asserts that the significant ideas of Marx are to
be found in what he calls Marx's “original Marxism”
which turns out to be ethical, existentialist, anticipa-
tory of Buber and Tillich, and profoundly different
from the Marxism of Marx's immediate disciples. How
far the new interpretation is prepared to go in discard-
ing traditional Marxism, with its emphasis on scientific
sociology and economics as superfluous theoretical
baggage alien to the true Marx, is apparent in this
typical passage from Tucker:
Capital, the product of twenty years of hard labor to which,
as he [Marx] said, he sacrificed his health, his happiness
in life and his family, is an intellectual museum piece for
us now, whereas the sixteen page manuscript of 1844 on
the future of aesthetics, which he probably wrote in a day
and never even saw fit to publish, contains much that is
still significant
(p. 235).
Another source of the growth of this new version
of Marxism flows from the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especially the former's
Critique de la raison dialectique (Vol. I, 1960) in which
despite his rejection of materialism and his exaggerated
voluntarism, Sartre seeks to present his existentialist
idealism as ancillary to Marxism, which he hails as “the
unsurpassable philosophy of our time” (p. 9).
For various reasons, detailed elsewhere, this third
version of Marxism is making great headway among
radical and revolutionary youth that have disparaged
or repudiated specific political programs as inhibiting
action. Among those who wish to bring Marx in line
with newer developments in psychology, and especially
among socialists and communists who have based their
critiques of the existing social order on ethical princi-
ples, the existentialist version of Marx has a strong
appeal.
The theoretical difficulties this interpretation of
Marxism must face are very formidable. They are
external, derived from certain methodological princi-
ples of interpretation and from textual difficulties; and
internal, derived from the flat incompatibility of the
key notions of existential Marxism with other published
doctrines of Marx, for which Marx took public respon-
sibility. Of the many external difficulties with the in-
terpretation of Marxism as a philosophy of alienation,
three may be mentioned.
