ABSTRACT
Marxian philosophy and social theory is committed to an understanding of the world in order to change it. Marxists from Plekhanov to Althusser have undoubtedly suggested that Marxian science has to be divorced from the value commitments of the people involved in social practice. The dominant tone of Marxian ethics had been struck as early as the time of the young Marx’s writing of his dissertation. Marx’s hate of all external authorities, and in particular of Judaism and Christianity, reminds people of Nietzsche. But the Marxian emphasis on absolute freedom, the absolute autonomy of the human person, was always democratic. The conception of the mature Marx differs from the conception of the young one only insofar as he no longer believes that the realm of necessity can be completely overcome. Marx had a very detached view of the various “ideological forms,” as he called them.
