A character mask in the Marxian sense is a character masked or disguised with a different character. The term was used by Karl Marx in various published writings from the 1840s to the 1860s. It is related to the classical Greek concept of mimesis (imitative representation using analogies) and the Roman concept of persona, but also differs from them. The notion of character masks has been used by neo-Marxist and non-Marxist sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists to interpret how people relate in societies with a complex division of labour...