ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the social operated in Marx's early theorisations, with a particular focus on an analysis of human nature because, ultimately, it is this aspect of the individual that is the constitutive moment of the subject and, ultimately, the social. The analysis and discussion that follow begin with the writings by Marx on Feuerbach and in particular the sixth and seventh theses, which Geras argues against the Althusserian emphasis on the marginalisation of human nature in historical materialism. The chapter also includes examination of some other early works by Marx, including The German Ideology and Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in an attempt to extend the classical understanding of human nature into the social and then into social difference. In other words, the social represents the process of meaning construction, as constituted by the antagonism and dislocation that are central to the political processes of identity and meaning constitution that operate within and across hegemony.
