ABSTRACT
The transcendance of alienation is brought about by communism–the goal of history, a total transformation of human existence, the recovery by man of his natural ‘essence’. Antonio Gramsci and G. Lukacs alike, in keeping with their emphasis on human creativity, saw Marxism as a humanistic philosophy, aiming for a cultural renaissance where freedom and self-development would be the birthright of all. Thus communism, in conventional parlance, usually refers to the institutionalization of Marxism–or the Leninist variant thereof–as an instrument of despotic power. Similarly, if Marxism exposes the falseness of universalistic moral claims, then Lenin might be excused for concluding that everything which serves or injures Soviet rule is ‘morally’ good or bad respectively. In contradistinction to orthodox Marxism, with its stress on efficient material production, Herbert Marcuse and his colleagues gave pride of place to the quality of life, to the liberation of our distinctively human potentialities.
