ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the self-actualization of social individuals in the context of historically specific sets of social relations. It focuses on self-realization, how it relates to Karl Marx’s notion of freedom, and how they are relevant in today’s world. The chapter discusses the issues that confront us at the beginning of the twenty-first century as anthropologists and, more importantly, as human beings. The cornerstone of Marx’s views about the formation of social individuals is his theory of alienation in capitalist society, which he presented in detail in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. The close connection Marx saw between alienation and relations of social domination and exploitation were already evident when he wrote The 1844 Manuscripts. His anthropology would be concerned with the everyday lives of individuals, their social relations with one another, and the cultural beliefs and dispositions they share or contest as these are both replicated and transformed in the course of their day-to-day actions.
