Drugs and alienation: beyond the drug-merchandise and capital

Abstract

This paper aims to understand, from the marxist tradition, the “issue” of drugs as a complex mediator between individual and society, focusing on their relation with processes of alienation within the capitalist society. In other words, on how the individual-drug relation in the current historical moment contributes to deepen human alienation, arising from the primary alienation posed by work. In its elapse, theoretical and methodological subsidies are pointed out, through the singular-particular-universal dialectic, to be analytically incorporated for an in-depth understanding of the thematic. Finally, we seek to establish a counter-hegemonic vision in this area breaking with moralisms and drawing emancipatory horizons that embrace new ways of relationg to drugs, others and ourselves, something inseparable from the historical task of building a new society.