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The theory of alienation played a major role in hegel's philosophy. It was conceived in the era of liberal capitalism and ignored the problems of the individual. Hegel emphasized general topics such as logic and the evolution of the historical process; the historical process itself is happening through alienation, by converting the passions (partial interests and activities) into idea and intellect (general, common, social contents). Hegel ignores the destructive and self-destructive facets of the process of alienation. Marx and Lenin worked out the individual side of the problem of alienation. Marx maintained that negation is the building block of history, with the assistance of anarchy. Its achievements are made at great cost in terms of injustice and squandered energy. Marx stressed the need for deliberate, collective human action. Marx heavily emphasizes the destructive potential of the forces of the unregulated society as a result of 'negation'. This is why the classics of marxism criticize Hegel for letting history follow its objective course; they feel that history should be corrected by the common action of the producers. The contemporary theory of alienation emphasizes the individual and negative aspects. The modern approach has been criticized by L. Feuer, (what is alienation? sociology on trial, new york, ny: prentice hall, inc) and the problem of a complete approach to the question has been treated in the works of E. FROMM and C. W. Mills.
The alienation theories of M. Seeman, M. Scott, and G. Nettler are reviewed and criticized. The basic criticisms are: (1) the authors arbitrarily combine various concepts and meanings of alienation; (2) by reason of eclecticism, the concept of alienation is incorrectly extracted from its original theoretical framework; and (3) the rationalization for this approach is the intent to operationalize the concept; however, that objective is pursued in a positivistic fashion, first by rejecting general theory, then by throwing out undesirable elements of particular theories (mostly K. Marx's). The basic confusion of the authors is between two fundamentally divergent perspectives on alienation, Marx's and E. Durkheim's. The crux of the disagreement is that Marx starts from the human being and his condition of degradation; functionalists, on the other hand, start from a given social system and define alienation in terms of individual maladjustment or nonconformity to given social norms. As noted by E. FROMM, the problem concerns not the adjustment of individuals to society, but the adjustment of society to the fundamental needs of man.
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(1974)