Editing Marx's theory of alienation (section)

==Two forms of alienation==
In his writings from the early 1840s, [[Karl Marx]] uses the [[German_language|German]] words ''Entfremdung'' ("alienation" or "estrangement", derived from  'fremd', which means "alien") and ''Entäusserung'' ("externalisation" or "alienation", which alludes to the idea of relinquishment or surrender) to suggest an unharmonious or hostile separation between entities that naturally belong together.{{sfn|Wood|2004|p=3}}

The concept of alienation has two forms: [[Objectivity_and_subjectivity|"subjective" and "objective"]].{{sfn|Leopold|2007|p=68}} Alienation is "subjective" when human individuals feel "estranged" or do not feel at home in the modern social world.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|pp=68–69}} By this account, alienation consists in an individuals' experience of his or her life as meaningless, or his/herself as worthless.{{sfn|Wood|2004|p=8}} "Objective" alienation, by contrast, makes no reference to the beliefs or feelings of human beings. Rather, human beings are objectively alienated when they are hindered from developing their [[essence|essential]] human capacities.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|p=69}}

For Marx, objective alienation is the cause of subjective alienation: individuals experience their lives as lacking meaning or fulfilment because modern society does not promote the deployment of their human capacities.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|p=69}} 

Marx derives this concept from [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]], whom he credits with significant insight into the basic structure of the modern social world, and how it is disfigured by alienation.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|p=74}} Hegel's view is that, in the modern social world, objective alienation has already been vanquished, as the institutions of the rational or modern [[state (polity)|state]] enable individuals to fulfill themselves. Hegel believes that the [[family]], [[civil society]], and the [[state (polity)|political state]] facilitate people's actualization, both as individuals and members of a community. Nonetheless, there still exists widespread subjective alienation, where people feel estranged from the modern social world, or do not recognize modern society as a home. Hegel's project is not to reform or change the institutions of the modern social world, but to change the way in which society is understood by its members.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|p=76}}

Marx shares Hegel's belief that subjective alienation is widespread, but denies that the modern state enables individuals to actualize themselves. Marx instead takes widespread subjective alienation to indicate that objective alienation has not yet been overcome.{{sfn|Leopold|2007|pp=76-77}}