Alienation, Exploitation and Abstract Labor: A Humanist Defense of Marx's Theory of Value

A neo-Marxist humanist school of thought has recently emerged which seeks to revive the notion of a fundamental cleavage between Marx as a philosopher of praxis and as a political economist. This paper defends the proposition that Marx's "mature" theories of value and exploitation are fully consistent with the "humanist materialism" which Marx enunciated in his youthful writings. Indeed, a proper specification of the key postulates of Marx's "economics" must take account of the distinctive world view and method which Marx embraced in the course of his critical appropriation and transcendence of the philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach.