Marxist humanism is a philosophical and political movement that interprets Karl Marx's works through a humanist lens, focusing on human nature and the social conditions that best support human flourishing. Marxist humanists argue that these themes were central to Marx's thought.
Marxist humanism emerged in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation, and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works such as Capital. They hold that it is necessary to grasp Marx's philosophical foundations to understand his later works properly.
Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and to the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser, Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism. Where other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as a natural science, Marxist humanism believes that humans are fundamentally distinct from the rest of the natural order, and cannot be studied by the methods of natural science alone. Marxist humanism emphasizes human agency, subjectivity and ethics, reaffirming the doctrine of man is the measure of all things.
Origins The philosophical roots
The beginnings of Marxist humanism lie with the publication of György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy in 1923. In these books, Lukács and Korsch proffer a Marxism that emphasizes the Hegelian element of Karl Marx's thought. Marxism is not simply a theory of political economy that improves on its predecessors. Nor is it a scientific sociology, akin to the natural sciences. Marxism is primarily a critique – a self-conscious transformation of society.
Korsch's book underscores Marx's doctrine of the unity of theory and practice, viewing socialist revolution as the "realization of philosophy". Marxism does not make philosophy obsolete, as "vulgar" Marxism believes; instead Marxism preserves the truths of philosophy until their revolutionary transformation into reality.
The salient essay in Lukács's collection introduces the concept of "reification". In capitalist societies, human qualities, relationships, and actions are treated as if they belong to objects created by Man — objects that then appear as if they were originally independent of Man, and seem to control human life. Conversely, human beings are transformed into thing-like beings that do not behave in a human way but according to the logic of objects. Lukács argues that elements of this concept are implicit in the analysis of commodity fetishism found in Marx's magnum opus Capital. Bourgeois society perceives value as inherent in objects, and even treats people as commodities. This obscures the role of human action in creating social meaning.
The writings of Antonio Gramsci were also extremely important in the development of a humanist interpretation of Marxism. Like Lukács, Gramsci emphasizes Marx’s intellectual debt to Hegel. He argues that Marx transcends both traditional materialism and idealism by developing a "philosophy of praxis." Gramsci describes the philosophy of praxis as an "absolute historicism," emphasizing the complete secularization of thought and the human-centered nature of history.
The rediscovery of the early Marx
The first publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1932 greatly changed the reception of his work. Written in 1844, when Marx was twenty-five or twenty-six years old, the Manuscripts situated Marx's reading of political economy, his relationship to the philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach, and his views on communism, within a new theoretical framework. In the Manuscripts, Marx borrows philosophical terminology from Hegel and Feuerbach to posit a critique of capitalist society based in "alienation". Through his own activity, Man becomes alien from himself: to the products of his own activity, to the nature in which he lives, to other human beings, and to his human potential. The concept is not merely descriptive, it is a call for de-alienation through radical change of the world.
The immediate impact of the 1844 Manuscripts''' publication was tempered by the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933, where the work might have had its greatest reception, and by the start of Stalin’s purges in Russia in 1934. However, Lukács, who had worked under David Ryazanov in 1931 to decode the Manuscripts, later claimed that this experience permanently changed his interpretation of Marxism. The significance of the 1844 Manuscripts was at this time also recognized by Marxists such as Raya Dunayevskaya, Herbert Marcuse and Henri Lefebvre. Marcuse stated that the Manuscripts redefined the entire theory of "scientific socialism," while Lefebvre published the first translations of the Manuscripts into a foreign language, releasing a French edition with Norbert Guterman in 1933.
In the period after the Second World War, the texts of the early Marx were translated into Italian and discussed by Galvano Della Volpe. In France, they attracted the philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The influence of Marx’s early philosophical writings peaked in the late 1950s when their themes spread widely across Western Europe. In 1961, a volume of the Manuscripts containing an introduction by Erich Fromm was published in the United States.
Another significant source for Marxist humanism was Marx's Grundrisse, a 1,000 page collection of Marx's working notes for Capital. First published in Moscow in 1939, the Grundrisse became available in an accessible edition in 1953. The text provided a missing link between the Hegelian philosophical humanism of Marx’s early writings and the economics of his later work. Scholars such as Roman Rosdolsky have noted how the Grundrisse showed the ongoing influence of alienation and Hegelian dialectics in Marx’s later theories, including his magnum opus.
Currents France: existentialist Marxism
In the aftermath of the occupation of France and the Second World War, the existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty were among the founders of the independent leftist journal Les Temps Modernes. Shaped by their experiences in wartime and participation in the resistance, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty formulated an independent Marxism that integrated their political concerns into their philosophies. Merleau-Ponty eventually abandoned Marxism by 1955, but Sartre continued to engage with it thereafter. They rejected the deterministic and scientistic approach of Stalinism. Their Marxism instead reinterpreted the tradition as a theory rooted in human agency, creativity, and praxis. This humanist Marxism focused on the lived experiences of the oppressed, aiming to overcome the limitations of both Stalinist orthodoxy and bourgeois liberalism.
Influenced by phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty highlighted the role of human intentionality and historical practice in shaping history. He emphasized the open-ended nature of history, arguing that human agency and subjectivity prevent any guaranteed historical outcomes. His 1947 work, Humanism and Terror, defended the revolutionary aims of the working class as aligned with the broader interests of humanity. He justified Soviet repression, including the Moscow Trials, on the grounds that political actions should be judged not by liberal principles of justice but by their historical consequences. This stance reflected his belief that revolutionary violence, unlike the structural violence of capitalism, was aimed at ultimately creating a more just society. However, he later reconsidered these views, expressing skepticism about whether the proletariat would necessarily fulfill its historical role as the agent of emancipation. Merleau-Ponty retreated from his earlier justifications of Soviet policy in his book Adventures of the Dialectic (1955).
In contrast, Sartre initially maintained a "third-camp" position, which rejected alignment with either the United States or the Soviet Union. However, by the early 1950s, in response to the Cold War and the Korean War, he shifted towards a more favorable view of the Soviet Union, believing it represented a force for peace. This growing divergence in their perspectives led to a break between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, culminating in Merleau-Ponty's resignation from Les Temps modernes in 1952.
Sartre adapted his existentialist philosophy to Marxism. He emphasized human freedom and subjectivity as central to the making of human history. Despite his support of the Soviet Union, he criticized Stalinist Marxism's "iron laws", economic determinism, and the bureaucratic tendencies of Soviet socialism. Sartre introduced concepts such as "fused groups" (spontaneous, collective revolutionary action) and "organized group practice" (sustained communal efforts), which reflected a dynamic view of human agency within historical processes.
In 1939, Henri Lefebvre, then a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), published a brief study of Marxist philosophy, Dialectical Materialism. In this work, Lefebvre argued that the Marxist dialectic is based on the concepts of alienation and praxis, rather than the "Dialectics of Nature" found in Friedrich Engels's writings. Lefebvre drew heavily from the recently published 1844 Manuscripts, which he was the first to translate into French.
However, it was not until 1956, following the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising, that French Communist Party dissidents openly challenged the Marxist orthodoxy. The journal Arguments , edited by Lefebvre, Edgar Morin, Jean Duvignaud, Kostas Axelos, and Pierre Fougeyrollas - all former or current members of the PCF - was created that same year. The journal became a focal point for a new Marxist humanist critique of Stalinism.
The 1844 Manuscripts became a central reference for the journal, and existentialism had a significant influence on its approach. Lefebvre, for instance, looked to Sartre for a theory of alienation under capitalism. Lefebvre argued that alienation encompassed not only labor, but also consumerism, culture, systems of meaning, and language within capitalist society. Other members of the Arguments group were influenced by Martin Heidegger's critique of Western metaphysics. Kostas Axelos and Pierre Fougeyrollas followed Heidegger in viewing Marxism as flawed by its traditional metaphysical assumptions.
Starting in the late 1950s, Roger Garaudy, for many years the chief philosophical spokesman of the French Communist Party, offered a humanistic interpretation of Marx stemming from Marx's early writings which called for dialogue between Communists and existentialists, phenomenologists and Christians.
Eastern Europe: revisionism and dissent
The decade following Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 witnessed various movements for liberalization across Eastern Europe framed under the banner of "humanism." Socialist humanism was at first condemned as "revisionist," but by the 1960s official Communist parties had adopted the label themselves, professing a belief in "Everything for Man."
The revival of Marxist humanism was particularly influenced by Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in 1956, which was significant in creating an environment receptive to change. After 1956, Marx's 1844 Manuscripts became a cornerstone for opposition to Stalinism in Eastern Europe. This usage has been compared to the way the New Testament inspired reformers during the Reformation. In Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, a new "socialist humanist" movement emerged, which combined grassroots demands for workers' control with the philosophical insights of early Marxist texts."
During this period: