Making Sense of Your Freedom: Philosophy for the Perplexed Book

Engaging! Perhaps a good starting place for newcomers. Wolff here presents Marx's position in a clear and simple manner. From this 'Engelized Marx' explication the alienation (alienated labour) is the ultimate source of all miseries on earth which lead human beings to the creation of religions. Where does the alienation come from then? Under capitalism workers become alienated or separated from the product, productive activity (labour process/division of labour), themselves (species-being and human-essence), and from other people. Money, Marx argues, is what alienates people from other people. Money is the 'universal whore'. Liberalism disguises itself as a emancipator which provides different catalogue of rights only to protect from each other and thus reinforce alienation from one another. Then how do we escape from or transcend this alienation? Marx argues that we must adopt 'communist system' which is not to be achieved by intellutuals but by workers themselves. Workers must make their own revolution "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point, is to change it."