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This paper aims to show how a re-lecture of Spinoza’s Ethics can enrich our comprehension of Marx’s early works and in particular two of his key-concepts, the concept of alienation and the concept of self-activity. As different as the conceptual framework of these two philosophers may seem at first sight (although it has become more and more common to bring together these two authors), the present author acts on the assumption that booth Marx’s and Spinoza’s thinking are based on an “ontology of activity”. Nevertheless, the basic human condition seems to be that of a passive being, exposed to Nature’s unrestrained force and to relations imposed to it by society. The present author wants argue in this paper that it is not in the illusion of some kind of grounding subjectivity that finite beings like us can achieve liberation, but in the process of knowledge of the (natural and social) determinations which is the process of becoming active, i.e. the revolutionary transformation of the relation to oneself, to the other human beings and to Nature.

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