PETER
L.
BERGER
331
cept, allowing us to explore it in concrete institutional contexts.
Now, Marx's first misunderstanding was a sociohistorical one. He
ascribed to
capitalism,
an important but partial component of moder–
nity, what should be ascribed to
modernity as a whole.
He was quite
right that capitalism has been "alienating" - thrusting man out of
community into aloneness and thus leading him to experience the
social world as a foreign reality. But in this "alienating" power
capitalism is only
one case
of modernity - every other modern institu–
tion has the same power. This is notably so with modern technology,
the modern city, and (most important of all, as Max Weber taught
us) modern bureaucracy. This particular misunderstanding by Marx,
of course, had very far-reaching historical consequences in the
development of Marxism. It lies at the center of all the socialist
utopias .
It
is a misunderstanding of vast and tragic scope. However,
there is an even more fundamental misunderstanding in Marx's use
of the concept of "alienation," on the level of philosophical an–
thropology : Marx failed to understand that "alienation" and freedom
are reverse sides of the same coin. There can be no liberation
without the cost of "alienation." This point cannot be developed
here . (Arnold Gehlen did so in his essay, "Ueber die Geburt der
Freiheit aus der Entfremdung," first published in 1952.) But, I can–
not be considered free as long as I remain bound to the collective
structures of my community (the "frieze," if you will), because my
actions in this condition are governed throughout by the accident of
my birth; indeed, this accident has become my fate . Conversely, I
cannot be liberated from this collective bondage without paying a
very high price ofloneliness , because (and here Marx was essentially
correct) man is a social being and it is very difficult (perhaps
biologically
difficult) for him to stand alone against his community.
This second Marxian misunderstanding is even more decisive than
the first one: the confusion of capitalist "alienation" with the more
comprehensive "alienation" of modernity explains why socialist
utopias continue to fail empirically; the failure to grasp the intrinsic
connection between "alienation" and freedom indicates why these
utopias are contradictory even on the level of the imagination .
* * *
We perceive a series of distinctive figures of modern Western
individuality , emerging sharply at the beginning of the age conven–
tionally called "modern," one figure following the preceding one and
bringing out yet another facet of the phenomenon: the explorer, be it
