K. Marx on Private Property as a Basis for the Alienation of Human Essence

The article examines Marx's understanding of private property as the basis for alienating the essence of man within the framework of the "prehistory" of mankind. Marx pointed to crude communism as an abstract abolition of private property, which turns it into the universal private property of the state, without overcoming alienation. Marx associated communism, as a return of man to his essence (free creative activity), with the positive sublation of private property which is possible in the field of universal labour. Following E. Ilyenkov, the authors see the tragedy of the USSR in the historical impossibility of moving from the joint industrial
labour to the universal scientific labour, and therefore from the formal to the real socialization of property.