The Reception of Marx’s Concept of Alienation in the Philosophy of Gajo Petrović

Abstract

Marx’s thought has radically changed the world’s socio–political structure. Of all philosophers it was he who exerted the greatest influence upon all areas of human life, thus transforming the world through his work. One of the key questions in his philosophy was the issue of human alienation. A man involved in the capitalist production process is estranged from the object of production, that is from his own activity, and therefore from his own human essence. Since man is a social being, alienation from his own essence affects his social being in a negative way. Economic alienation thus becomes the source of all other forms of alienation. Marx sees the solution to this problem in the proletarian revolution that later brought about new economic and social structures. The work of Gajo Petrović, who was the most eminent representative of the Praxis school, dealt specifically with issues concerning man and society. Consequently, he also studied the problem of human alienation. The concept of human (self–) alienation implies that the condition in which an individual or society find themselves is not conducive to societal progress, but to regression. Petrović sees the prospect of human disalienation in a revolutionary social practice through which people, in altering social relationships, simultaneously alter their very nature.