PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Marx, Gramsci & Arendt
Explain Marx’s understanding of Human Essence and Alienation.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
R1 Young Marx’s humanist question ~ what kind of being is man / what order lets him flourish rR2 essence and alienation as two sides of one enquiry ~ what man is vs what capitalism makes of him
Body flow
human essence = species-being / Gattungswesen — social animal, rejects liberal individualism + productive, creative, free conscious activity ~ labour as creative self- expression (Fromm: social, cooperative) ~ alienation = estrangement from this essence ~ material and social, not intellectual (Entfremdung) ~ four forms: product as alien thing — process as forced labour (“outside himself’) – species-being as mechanical toil ~ other men as competition over solidarity + estranged labour breeds private property ~ society splits into owners and workers
Counter-view
Marx's material-social alienation set against Hegel-Feuerbach’s purely intellectual alienation
Conclusion routes
onclusion R1 de-alienation is structural ~ abolition of private property and wage-labour routes labour restored as free self-activity R2 real freedom = freedom from want + room for self-development ~ secured only by ending alienation
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
