ABSTRACT
The state is an aspect of our political lives. Sometimes it is the most important aspect of our political lives. The question that ought to be addressed in discussions of democratization or of the supposed ubiquity of the political is why politics and the state, which are not the same thing, were pushed so artificially close together in the first place. What was once a rather occulted notion of alien politics, which is intimately connected with the democratic elements of Karl Marx’s political thinking, may at long last be able to come into its own. The dealienation of alien politics has democratic implications that go beyond the rule of or by the “immense majority” that Marx mentioned in the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The emphasis in “On ‘The Jewish Question’ “and the “Critique of Hegels ‘Philosophy of Right’,” in particular, is on alien politics. This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the book.
