For Marx, work is the fundamental and central activity in human life and, potentially at least, a fulŽlling and liberating activity. Although this view is implicit throughout Marx’s work, there is little explicit explanation or defence of it. The fullest treatment is in the account of ‘estranged labour ’ [entfremdete Arbeit] in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts;1 but, even there, Marx ...

The fundamental principles of modern dialectical philosophy derive from Hegel. He sums them up as follows. `Everything is inherently contradictory ... Contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality, it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity' (Hegel 1969, 439). In Hegel's philosophy these ideas form part of an all-embracing id...

In an article devoted to the Young Marx, I have already stressed the ambiguity of the idea of ‘inverting Hegel’. It seemed to me that strictly speaking this expression suited Feuerbach perfectly; the latter did, indeed, ‘turn speculative philosophy back on to its feet’, but the only result was to arrive with implacable logic at an idealist anthropology. But the expression cannot be applied to M...

ness of private life: Hegel develops private rights and morals as such abstractions, from which it does not follow, for him, that the state or ethical life [Sittlichkeit] of which they are presuppositions can be nothing but the society (the social life) of these illusions; 9 "Hegel calls private rights the rights of abstract personality, or abstract rights. And indeed they have to be developed ...

labour. Later on, a long section of the first chapter derives various ‘forms of value’ as surface expressions of this congealed abstract labour. These expressions have ‘defects’ which lead, in a dialectical development, to more satisfactory forms. Some Marx scholars try to ignore these Hegelianisms, others consider them an important part of Marx’s argument. Lenin belonged to the latter camp; he...

We ignore the history of philosophy at our peril. Engels, who typically conflates Marx and Marxism, points to relation Marxism tradition while also denying it. In his little book on Feuerbach, Engels depicts Feuerbach as leading away from Hegel, classical German philosophy, towards materialism science. This view suggests that is best negatively related Classical including Hegel. Yet elsewhere b...

ion. The second coordinate will represent the object reference of the concept. (Vygotsky, 1986 p199) Many of those who quote Vygotsky as if he was a dialogic thinker compatible with Bakhtin are most influenced by the edited collection of translations of his work which appeared in 1978 under the title: Mind in Society. This collection is suspect as a representation of Vygotsky. The editors of th...