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The Human Race

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From the genesis of the human race, to the present human beings have been trying to find a sense of unity (disalienation) amongst their counterparts, but power struggles and social stratification have made this a never ending attempt. Karl Marx and Alexis Tocqueville have given the reader an insight into ‘alienation’ through the course of their historic analyses. Emancipation, though described as the “act of liberation from social, political and legal systems” (Merriam-Webster) has become subjective in nature, as society is controlled by power struggles, class divisions, followed by a contrasting want to create an egalitarian environment. This position paper seeks to answer the overbearing question, “Is the human race really free from alienation in the form of labor, family, power relations and most importantly the right to free freely?” through a comparative framework developed on the exemplary works of Marx and Tocqueville. Commencing with ‘Democracy in America’, Tocqueville uses this platform to show the differences in democracy and aristocracy or alienation and disalienation. He uses America as the epitome of a democratic society, while Europe and particularly England form the basis of aristocracy. He implicitly defines alienation through his analysis on the division of lords and serfs in England, “Men in an aristocratic society are irrevocably marshalled according to their profession, social standing, property and birth, they feel a deep sense of sympathy towards

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