This week, I’d like to explore Marx’s concept of unmasking and relate it to masking and unmasking in autistic individuals. I’d also like to explore the treatment of people as a commodity and how differently-abled people fall into that commoditization. This comparison is inspired by Marx’s comments, “It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked” (Marx Hegel par.7). When he talks about self-estrangement, he’s expanding on the already-established ideas of alienation, where people become foreign to the world they’re living in. This is based on Hegel’s idea that people created a (capitalist) society that they then felt alienated in.

In Marx’s Comments on James Mills, he writes of the worker affirming himself and others by taking a communal approach to production, “In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity” (Marx Mills par.58). What he’s getting at is that by being a participant in the capitalist structure, we’re compromising our individuality and human nature, thereby making us an alien to our nature through our own doing. His comments on the holy form of self-estrangement can be related to this in the way that religion is creating a make-believe world that brings about feelings of being foreign in our human state – or it provides a relief from those feelings of foreignness by appealing to people’s desire to embrace human nature. I suppose it depends on whether you’re looking at religion as a positive or negative force. I feel like religion is devoid of individuality, despite its many sects and interpretations, so my stance would be that it creates, or adds to, those feelings of alienation.

To bring this around to the ideas of autistic masking, it is also a denial of the individual’s nature, where the affected person must ‘mask’ or pretend to act like everybody else in order to fit in and get along with ‘regular’ society. In a way, masking is an accommodation to the neurotypical in the way that it’s often done to make non-autistics feel more comfortable and in order to encourage less discrimination of the autistic. In late-diagnosed autistic adults, masking will take place from childhood and continue for many years, often resulting in a period of unmasking where they begin to embrace their true self. Marx writes on the unmasking of religious self-estrangement, “Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics” (Marx Hegel par.7). This can be compared to autistic unmasking where the criticism of oneself becomes a criticism of the ableist world that was built for the neurotypical. The veil of autism as a confusing disability that causes feelings of alienation has been pulled back to reveal the man-made world that was created to cause that alienation.

These feelings of being a foreigner in the world one is living in isn’t entirely self-imposed. In a paper on autism, discrimination, and masking, Dr. Michelle Cleary and her colleagues at Queensland University point out, “Negative attitudes toward autistic people, which are the precursor for discrimination, are quick and widespread, with neurotypical people taking as little as 10 seconds of exposure to an autistic person’s social behavior to decide the person is not neuro-normative and therefore ‘different’. Of concern are findings of a 2018 study of 111 autistic adults, which found that only 7% believed society accepted them” (Cleary, et al). In this paper, Dr. Cleary and her team point out the disadvantages autistic people are faced with in education, employment, healthcare, and the media. She elaborates on autistic masking, “Masking can also be adopted and deployed unconsciously, meaning the authentic self is suppressed without insight. Pearson and Rose, through a conceptual analysis of autistic masking, move beyond the definition of masking as a strategy of avoidance by suggesting it is a trauma response from the lived experience of stigma, while others consider masking a response to oppressive societal attitudes born from a desire for survival” (Cleary, et al). This analysis stands out as analogous to Marx’s comments on alienation and self-estrangement. In a capitalist society, the proletariat is bound to the will of the bourgeoisie as a strategy for survival. And in this way, I’d venture that his views on the denial of human nature through religion is a survival method, as well. Cleary and Marx’s thoughts about these actions happening without insight are another important comparison. When people are so caught up in surviving, they give little thought to the reason behind their behaviors and, therefore, even less thought to ways that they can enact change. Instead, they seek immediate relief from stressors, which may come in the form of religion or, for the neurodiverse, could be stimming or hyper-fixation, all of which can happen without much insight.

The superstructure is largely responsible for this need to deny the true self in order to make it through the next day. In recent comments about autism, United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversially said, “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted” (Kennedy). Aside from the fact that these statements are patently untrue (PBS), they highlight the way that people are a commodity in the eyes of the capitalist government. We’re valuable if we’re paying taxes, contributing to the workforce, and reproducing. And this doesn’t just apply to autistic people, but everybody, and is especially true of the burden that people with any kind of disability must shoulder to participate in this society. Unfortunately, many neurodiverse and disabled individuals damage their mental and physical health further by masking to fit into this paradigm of a useful human. Kennedy’s comments aren’t just toxic rhetoric, but dangerous foreshadowing. It’s widely known that before the Nazi’s set their sights on the Jews of Europe, they enslaved or exterminated the disabled, homosexuals, dissenters, and other groups of people who did not fit the mold of a worthwhile member of society – through their contribution to production and reproduction for the benefit of the state. This includes autistics (Jewish Heritage). There is a very real possibility that Kennedy’s comments are setting the stage for similar actions under the current regime. I wonder if Marx, in his analysis of Germany one-hundred years before the second world war, could have foreseen the outcome. I suspect he could, as he writes about individuality and nationalism, “But, when the separate individual is not bound by the limitations of the nation, the nation as a whole is still less liberated by the liberation of one individual. The fact that Greece had a Scythian among its philosophers did not help the Scythians to make a single step towards Greek culture” (Marx Hegel par.20). My takeaway from this quote is that even through individual unmasking, be it autism, religion, or exploitation, we can’t make a change in the system, but that an overhaul of the entire system, a revolution, must take place on a communal level to enact that change. As an autistic person, I can be aware of the stigmas and disadvantages-by-design society places on me, but that doesn’t do anything to make the world more accommodating. As a religious person, I could be fully aware of the opium-like effects of religion, but that wouldn’t remove religion as a powerful part of the superstructure. And as a proletariat, I can be aware of my survival through exploitation, but that wouldn’t absolve me of participation in the system as a means for that survival.

Works Cited

“Autism and Disability in Nazi Vienna”. Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, 25 June 2021. https://mjhnyc.org/blog/autism-and-disability-in-nazi-vienna/, Accessed 16 May 2025.

Cleary, Michelle, PhD. “Autism, Discrimination and Masking: Disrupting a Recipe for Trauma”. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 44(9), 799–808. https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2023.2239916, Accessed 16 May 2025.

“Fact-checking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Statements on Autism”. PBS News, 23 Aprile, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-statements-on-autism, Accessed 16 May 2025.

Marx, Karl. “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”. Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 7 & 10 February 1844, Paris. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm, Accessed 16 May 2025.

Marx, Karl. “Comments on James Mill”. Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Band 3, Berlin, 1932. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm, Accessed 16 May 2025.

“US Health Secretary RFK Jr claims autistic children ‘will never hold jobs, go on dates’”. Youtube, uploaded by The Independent, 16 April 2025. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaNhUvJyWUo&ab, Accessed 16 May 2025.