Abstract

The concept of alienation has now been fashionable in Europe for several decades, and it has been heatedly debated. Both pro- and anti-Marxist students of Marxism have taken part in this debate. Yugoslavia has paid much attention to the issue. For a long time Soviet theoretical circles tabooed it or made negative references to it, saying that this was Marx's early thinking, that it was without value; yet they came later to deal with alienation in a very contrived way, and even shamefacedly had to admit that over there they also had alienation. Even the United States was rather backward. When I went there last year I was told that they were now paying more attention to the issue. When Comrade Zhou Yang made his report to the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1964, we in China discussed the problem of alienation. For a long time after, however, no work was done. The real significance seems to me to have emerged after undergoing the "Great Cultural Revolution."