2. In the Communist Manifesto Marx explicitly dis-
avows the theory of alienation as “metaphysical rub-
bish,” as a linguistic Germanic mystification of social
phenomena described by French social critics. Thus
as an example of “metaphysical rubbish,” Marx says,
“Underneath the French critique of money and its
functions, they wrote, 'alienation of the essence of
mankind,' and underneath the French critique of the
bourgeois State they wrote 'overthrow of the suprem-
acy of the abstract universal' and so on” (Riazanov
edition; English trans. London [1930], p. 59).
