Chapter Marx e la concezione del lavoro

Overview & Synopsis

The article analyzes the centrality of the question of work in the thought of Karl Marx, focusing in particular on the role that work has in the Marxian conception of man and in the materialistic understanding of history. Marx criticizes Adam Smith’s view according to which work is essentially a sacrifice. For Marx, work, which is constitutive and essential to human nature, can take very different forms: it can be alienated and exploited work as in capitalism, and therefore a work where the individual loses himself. But it could also be, in a different society, one of the most important ways of self-realization of the individual and extrication of his creativity.