ABSTRACT
The theory of alienation may well possess the theoretical resources to explain why revolutionary activity has been much more intermittent and hesitant than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels expected. The alienation of the workers consists in the fact that in doing their work, they strengthen the power of the opposing class. Capital stresses the divisiveness of the capitalist labor market as explicitly as does the essay "Alienated Labor": Workers must compete against one another. Marx's concept of alienation is often understood to refer to how individuals feel. In the discussion of alienation and elsewhere, Marx and Engels use a concept of freedom that is unfamiliar to people. In a society, where more individuals than in previous cultures have far-reaching personal freedom, everyone, subject to certain legal restrictions, is allowed to pursue his or her private goals. It is possible to have "personal freedom" but to lack the other freedom that comes only with collective control over society.
