ion. Human nature is expressed in the way individuals relate to class and the way they are controlled by that relationship. The workers sell their labor and are alienated from the product of their labor because of it. They do not own the means of production, while the capitalist who does sells the product of the labor of the workers. This exploitation of one class by another produces class hostilities which are constant and which are based on material inequalities. The class struggle is the defining fact of societal life and leads in time to the violent overthrow of the capitalist class by the working class, producing the dictatorship of the proletariate for a certain period until a completely classless society is produced.
Marx's sense of human nature is seen in his concept of the force of history, in his theory of revolution and of the class struggle leading to revolution, and especially in his concept of alienation based on economic relationships. The human being is defined in terms of work, production, and his or her relationship to what is produced. Marx derived the concept of alienation from Hegel, who used the term differently to refer to a timeless condition of man's mind. Marx found there to be alienation in a different form in the individual's loss of control, of personal wholeness, an alienation that is basically economic. It is not timeless but is the result of economic forces in capitalism and derives from private property. The
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