Marxism, Alienation, and the End of Work

Abstract

Fondements pour une Morale was intended by Gorz as the first of a threevolume odyssey. La Morale de l’Histoire, which was published in 1959, contains part of what he had planned for the third volume. It resumes the discussion of alienation and freedom which in Fondements and The Traitor had focused on the experience of the individual, considering alienation now as a social and economic phenomenon, and the process of liberation as a collective and political enterprise. Almost inevitably, its most frequent point of reference is the early ‘humanist’ writings of Marx, particularly The German Ideology. Its primary objective is to establish a credible alternative to the ‘scientific’ Marxism that was influential at the time, and to preserve the existential content of a doctrine which otherwise conceived communism as the preordained destiny of the working class, and revolution as an historical necessity. Gorz had already argued in Fondements that ‘the transformation of a factual condition is only a gain if it is carried out by those whom it benefits and it will only benefit the proletariat if it has been carried out consciously’ (FM: 115 n.1). La Morale de l’Histoire takes up this argument and develops it further. Readers may also note distinct similarities between the themes and terminology of La Morale de l’Histoire and those of Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason.