 On this account, the basic idea of alienation looks conceptually rather modest. In particular, this idea is not necessarily committed to certain stronger claims that might sometimes be found in the literature. That all these social and psychological ills are characterised by a problematic separation, for example, does not make alienation a natural kind, anymore than—to borrow an example associated with John Stuart Mill—the class of white objects is a natural kind (Wood 2004: 4). Nor, for instance, need there be any suggestion that the various forms of alienation identified by this account are necessarily related to each other; that, for example, they are all explained by the same underlying factor. Of course, particular theorists may have constructed—more or less plausible—accounts of alienation that do advance those, or similar, stronger claims. For instance, the young Karl Marx (1818–1883) is often understood to have suggested that one of the systematic forms of alienation somehow explains all the other ones (Wood 2004: 4). The claim here is simply that these, and other, stronger claims are not required by the basic idea.