Solitude and Solidarity in the Just Society: A Reappraisal of Marx's Vision Available to Purchase

That these two passages can appear in the same work, separated by only two paragraphs, confirms a tension latent in Marxian thought. After offering an appealing vision of a society in which the individual and community have been reconciled, Marx almost immediately denies any reliance on ethical ideals. Yet, as I shall argue, the very vision of the future society as transcending the conflict between individual will and systemic functioning is grounded in an ethic of human fulfillment as derived from the development and exercise of capacities within a community of equals. In the Marxian approach to understanding society, the ethical element is not excluded, but rather co‐exists uneasily with a theory of historical evolution.