Mumtaz asked:

Why does Marx think human alienation can only be overcome in a classless society? What
arguments can be used to accept or reject this statement?

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To answer your question properly would require a long essay. I will simply try to indicate the main
argument as I see it.

The essence of a class society, as it exists now, is tied to the concept of money. In a captalist society,
a person's labour can be bought and sold for profit, just like any other commodity.

From this simple observation, it follows that there will be persons whose labour can be bought and
sold, and persons who buy labour which they sell for profit in the form of products which labour has
produced.

In the writings of the early Marx, there is justified moral outrage at the terrible conditions under which
workers lived. But this was not what Marx meant by the worker being 'alienated'. In the 1844
Manuscripts, Marx makes the fundamental assumption that the work that a person does is the only
adequate expression of their humanity. I believe that this is a view which he held throughout his life.
Work is the means by which we express the capacities which are specifically human, the capacities of
intelligence, creativity. It is also the basis for the solidarity of society. We do not work alone, but share
the tasks that need to be done.

In order for work to be a true expression of our humanity, therefore, we need to inhabit the world we
have created by our work. This world is a world of artefacts and also a social world. The two go
together.

This state of affairs cannot be reliably achieved under capitalism. In a society where there is a
workers' class and a capitalist class, whether or not the worker is able to inhabit the world created by
his work depends on how much he can afford. How much he can afford depends on how much his
labour is valued in the marketplace. These are factors which lie outside the worker's power.

The key assumption here is marked by the term 'reliably' in the previous paragraph. Marx's criticism
of money, or the idea that everything has a universal 'exchange value', is that the laws of the
marketplace are independent of man's will. To live in such a society is to live in a state of unfreedom.
It is this state of unfreedom which is the basis for the worker's 'alienation' (and also, incidentally, for
the 'alienation' of the capitalist).

Geoffrey Klempner