Study of his life nd work maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale
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THE AMERICAS 1845 Under pressure from the pro-slavery states which need more land for agriculture, the US Congress annexes the independent region of Texas, thereby provoking Mexico to declare war. 1848 After three years of hostilities a peace settlement is negotiated granting the USA full rights to the terri tories of Arizona, New Mexico and California along with Texas in return for payment of an indemnity to Mexico. Colonel Sutter discovers gold in the Sacramento River in California; a ‘gold rush’ to the West quickly populates the new US territory with fortune-hunters. THE FAR EAST 1845 Concessions are won from the Chinese emperor which permit Christian missionaries to enter all five treaty ports. This agreement stirs up virulent hatred for the foreigners among the Chinese masses. 1845-46 The first war against the Sikhs, a religious sect living in the Punjab region of India, is brought to a successful close for the British colonialist power. The British Empire is extended to the banks of the Navi river. War
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS
j847 The German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz for mulates the principle of the conservation of energy. important works published
Max Stirner: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.* P.-J. Proudhon: Systeme des contradictions econo- miques, ou Philosophic de la misere.*
— Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Dis obedience.
KARL MARX 1844*1849 These years were the last of Marx’s engagement' on the European continent, years in which he elaborated the so-called materialist theory of history and was confronted with the reality of the 1848 revolutions as a test of its analytic strength. During his sojourn in Paris (i843-Feb.i845) Marx began studying political economy in earnest. Circumstances permitting, he deepened his knowledge with the intense devotion to his subject matter that characterises the alert and conscientious scholar. What is more, he combined theoretical research with educational activity, helping to found the Communist League as an inter national centre for socialist propaganda. 1844 In February the first and unique issue of the Deutsche Franzdsische Jahrbucher appeared in Paris. Personal dnd financial reasons destined it to a brief existence: 800 copies were confiscated by the police while being smuggled across the border into Germany from Switzerland: Ruge and Marx, the two editors, were soon at odds, as Ruge felt himself rebuked by Marx’s radical political views and his authority. Marx made three important contributions to the Jahrbucher, the most polemic of which was a two-part article ‘On the Jewish Question’, a reply to two articles by Bruno Bauer on Judaism and Christianity published in 1843. In the first section of his artide Marx pleaded for the political emancipation of the Jews in order to solve, within the limits of the existing political order and contrary to the view of Bauer, the ‘Jewish problem’. How ever, this possibility offered by democracy was not the ultimate solution to the problem, as Marx saw it Rather: The political emancipation of the Jew, the Christian, of religious man in general, is the emancipation of the state from Judaism, from Christianity, from religion in any form (MEW 11353). For the individual ‘political’ emancipation means emancipation via a detour ‘through a medium, although this be a necessary medium' (ibid.) and represents progress towards true human emancipation although still a form of emancipation ‘within the world order as it has existed up till the present’ (MEW l: 356). Marx then developed his views on the real, the ‘human eman cipation of the Jews’ in the second part of the essay. This solution to the Jewish problem entails the conscious emancipation of the individual' being from the shackles of a religion which tolerated one person’s,, becoming rich at the expense of another and condoneilwealth as a means towards social liberty. Yet to con demn such a religion would be meaningless, Marx held, for every religion M a product of inhuman society, Christianity— the perfection of Judaism—included. Yet Marx saw the Jews as well, through their suffering, as the emancipators of the Christians and of all humanity in so far as they work consciously towards changing society. . A social organisation which would eliminate the conditions favour able to fraudulent dealings would make the existence of the Jew impossible as well (MEW 1:372)4 A * The Jew must recognise his ‘practical being’ as something to be overcome, as self-alienation, which can only be superseded in a new form of society. The rights which he gains through politi cal emancipation are the limited rights of egoistic man in civil society, where the individual is ‘isolated from the community [Getneinwesen], retires into himself, his private interests and his own personal initiative’ (MEW 11366). Once society has abolished] the conflict between the individual, sensuous existence and the existence of the species as a whole, the basis which permits the Jew to exist as ‘money-changer’ and cunning trader will be destroyed t- The social emancipation of the Jew means therefore that the society must be emancipated from the negative elements which compose ‘Judaism’ as ‘practical self-interest’ (MEW 1:372), • The theme of this essay recurs in The Holy Family where Marx formulated its central argument, saying that: It was proved that the task of abolishing the essence of Judaism is in truth the task of abolishing Judaism in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today’s practice of life, which culminates in the money system (MEW 2:116). Marx’s second contribution to the Jahrbucher was an Intro duction to the critique of Hegel’s political philosophy, which he had begun to work out the preceding year, but had left unfinished and unpublished. This Introduction was politically far more developed and far more radical than the critique itself and represents, in a sense, the germ of the future Communist Manifesto. For the first time Marx speaks here of the proletarian ‘class’ and of the ‘formation’ of an industrial working class which is to act as a social emancipatory force. Outlined as well in this essay is Marx’s ‘sociological’, to use a more recent term, analysis of religion, the state and law as elements of the social super structure. Religion is the point of departure and man the orientation for this discourse. It is man who creates religion, Marx began, and not vice-versa: religion is man’s theory of the world and his fantastic self-realisation because he lives under conditions which prohibit him from realising himself in the real world: Religious misery is both expression of and protest against real misery. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the meaning of spiritless circumstances. It is the opium of the people (MEW 1: 378). The task of one who proposed to criticise religion is therefore to analyse the real world conditions which require the ‘illusory’ happiness and fulfilment of religion, i.e. ‘The critique of religion is thus in essence the critique of the valley of sorrows whose halo is religion’ (MEW 1:379). This is the stand-point which prompted Marx to undertake a critical analysis of Hegel’s philosophy of the state and right as the most complete expression of German political philosophy and of the modern state in its ideal form. The conditions in Germany were, in Marx’s view, ‘anachron istic’ for the present age; Germany had by-passed the revolutions which had advanced the other peoples politically and partici pated only in the restoration movements of the reaction. 1844 41 Philosophy for the Germans was the form in which they relived their past, just as the ancient peoples had had the imaginative form of mythology for their history. However, the only aspect of German history which stood ‘on equal footing with the official modern present’ was the philosophy of law and the state and being ‘illusory history’ was the direct negation of real conditions (MEW 1: 383). To negate this philosophy, in turn, would finally be to realise it in praxis, to overcome it by abolishing the conditions which generate illusory thinking. The root of this radical negation is man himself, who as his own supreme being must resolve the ‘categorical imperative to overthrow all con ditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected, contemp tible being’ (MEW 1:385). The German emancipation from philosophy is hence a revolution which realises the material needs of the people: ‘It is not enough that the idea strive to become reality; reality must itself feel the need for the idea’ (MEW A human and radical revolution will take place in Germany when, thanks to the progress of industrialisation, a particular class has developed, concentrating in itself all the evils of the present social order ‘so that the emancipation of this social sphere appears as the self-emancipation of the generality’ (MEW 1:388). To regain its humanity this class must redeem all humanity, in the process of which it will overthrow the social order and raise its own principle of the negation of private property to the general principle of society: The only practically feasible emancipation of Germany is based on the particular theory which declares man to be the supreme being for man (MEW 1:391). The ‘head’ of the German emancipation is therefore philosophy, its heart the proletariat and ‘the emancipation of Germany is the emancipation of mankind’. When the conditions are ripe for this step, ‘the day of German resurrection will be proclaimed by the crowing of the Gallic cock’ (ibid.). Marx’s third contribution to the Jahrbucher was a series of three letters he had written to Ruge in 1843 on the present situation in Germany. Engels contributed as well to this public ation with an essay entitled ‘Outline for a Critique of Political Economy’, which Marx later termed ‘genial’ (1859). This work and probably Proudhon's first and second Memoire sur la propriete (1840-41) as well provided Marx with the theme for his life-work. Inspired by the subject of political economy, Marx began a systematic study in April, reading, in French trans lations, the British economists Adam Smith, David Ricardo, lames Mill and John Ramsay MacCulloch, the Frenchmen Jean- Baptiste Say, J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, Constantin Pecqueur (Theorie nouvelle d’ecowomie socialc et politique, 1842), Antoine Eugene Buret (De la Misere des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France, 1840) and the German economist Wilhelm Schulz (Die Bcvveguug der Production, 1843). Marx’s excerpts and notes on his readings reveal more than just his theoretical interests; they are a key to his own moral predisposition. The attitudes indicated here towards money and religion clarify certain con cepts (i.e. the integral or all-sided man, money fetishism, alienation) which come up in later works, especially the Grundrisse (1857-58) and Capital, although in less philosophic and less Feuerbachian language. Here Marx has given as well his vision of a future society, of man freed from money and religion, the mediators of his present social existence. Here we find, further, the same quotations on money from Shakespeare and Goethe found in later works. Viewed in retrospect, Marx’s excerpt notebooks show the permanence of his basic orientation: he was never to deviate in his life-work from the standpoint defined here. A social system which valuated men in terms of money and made morality a function of financial creditability was unworthy of the human being. In such a system, moreover, The only comprehensible language which we can speak with one another is that of our objects in terms of their mutual relations. We cannot understand human language, and as such language would be ineffective ... we are so far removed from human nature that to us the direct human language seems to be a violation of human dignity, while, contrarily, the alienated language of object values appears worthy of man, justified, confident and conscious of itself (EB 1:461). Ruge, whose friendship with Marx came to a definitive break about March 26, nevertheless had a certain respect for his scholarly and intellectual qualities, although he considered him unsuited for journalism. In a letter to Feuerbach Ruge wrote: He reads a great deal, works with unusual intensity and possesses 1844 43 a critical ability which sometimes degenerates into arrogant dialectics; but he does not finish anything, continually breaks off with what he is working on and plunges time and again into an endless sea of books (May 15). To his mother Ruge described Marx as a ‘most extraordinary fellow and an insolent Jew’ (October 6) and to Julius Froebel he wrote that ‘Marx professes communism, but he is the true believer in egoism ... with his teeth bared in a grin Marx would be capable of cutting down any and all who come across his path’ (Dec. 16, quoted in P. Nerrlich, ed., Arnold Ruges Brief- wechsel und Tagebuchbldtter aus den Jahren 1825-1880. Vol. 1, Berlin, 1886, p. 381). V v::^ In the spring of 1844 Marx took an interest in the work and activities of the ‘League of the Just’ and until the end of his Paris stay he frequented meetings of workers and artisans. Writing to Feuerbach, he commented on these gatherings and noted particularly ‘the virgin freshness, the noblesse of these working men. The English proletariat is making enormous progress as well, but he lacks the cultivation characteristic of the French ... the German artisan is still too much of a crafts man’. The letter continues with an account of the activities in the German immigrant groups: ‘... the communists among them ... have been attending lectures twice weekly on your Essence of Christianity and have shown themselves remarkably receptive’ (August 11). After some months of studies in economics Marx attempted in summer to put on paper his ethical and anthropological thoughts on man’s fate as a member of bourgeois society. As a social being, through his productive activity, man confirms his individuality and his products are means of self-realisation. Man’s need is therefore to ‘objectify’ himself in his work but not to ‘dispossess’ [entaussern] or ‘alienate’ [entfremden] himself in the production process as is the case under bourgeois social conditions, where reduction of the human self appears as the realisation of labour, ‘objectification as the loss of the object and subjection to its domination, while appropriation appears as alienation, as dispossession of the self’ (EB 1:512). The products of labour, through which man naturally fulfills himself, no longer belong to the producer in the present system of private ownership. Man is not able to give free expression to his physical and mental energies. He is consequently dissatisfied with his labour and finds contentment only during his leisure time: Labour is thus for him not a pleasure, not a completion and expression of himself, but compulsion. Rooted in the institution of private property, the present production system renders im possible the development of the ‘integral’ or ‘all-sided’ man who realises himself as an individual through his social participation, through his productive activity. Four fragmentary or incompleted manuscripts remain from this early critique of political economy, commonly referred to as the ‘Paris Manuscripts’. Three of them treat specific economic themes such as land-rent, wages, profit, human needs, etc., and depart from a critique of the classic political economists. The fourth was intended as an analysis of the Hegelian dialectic but developed into a general critique of all philosophy. Here Marx applied dialectic reasoning to actual human existence, inducing a ‘materialist’ ethic for the transformation of society. Marx envisaged these manuscripts as part of a larger work divided into discussions of law, ethics, politics, etc., and to be concluded with a critical summary of the whole. The task which he set himself was to understand the social reality through a critical examination of its elements, the institutions of bourgeois society. He began, as we have noted, with political economy. The passages devoted to labour recur in Marx’s mature work on political economy, albeit in a more scientific form. The social relations of our world are governed by the values established in the productive sector and based on private property: The world of men decreases in value in direct proportion to the increase in value attributed to the world of objects. Labour produces not only commodities, it produces itself and the labouring man as commodities in the same proportion that it produces commodities in general (EB 1:511). The fundamental relation of man to woman, in particular, is altered by social circumstances in which money is the mediator between man and labour, man and man, man and society. Money is, Marx wrote, paraphrasing and quoting Shakespeare, ‘the > visible godhead, the transformation of all human and natural qualities into their opposites ... it is the universal whore, tb& universal procurer of men and of peoples’ (EB 1:565). Mart stressed the relation of man to woman as a criterion of fflgS | 1844 45 humanity, of his level of cultural development. In this relation ship is revealed ‘the extent to which the other person as a human being has become a need for him ... In man’s behaviour towards woman, prey of and servant to the communal lasciviousness, is expressed the infinite degradation of man towards himself’ (EB 1:535). Marx undertook to examine nature through man; his analyses are therefore a kind of naturalist anthropology. Hegel, by con trast, had incorporated his ‘philosophy of nature’ into a discourse on logic. Marx pointed out that neither Feuerbach nor Hegel had understood the importance of labour in the development of the human personality and as a creative expression of life. However, Marx, in the manuscript on Hegelian dialectic, gave credit to both of these thinkers for their contributions to a new understanding of human history: To Feuerbach he owed a ‘serious, critical approach to Hegelian dialectics’, while Hegel’s merit lay in his description of man’s self-realisation as a process and therefore as the product of his own labour, although he failed to grasp the material aspect of labour and conceived of jt as simply an intellectual or spiritual process. Marx in turn empha sized the sensuous nature of man and denied what Hegel postulated as the ‘ultimate reality’: A being which is not objective is not real, cannot be sensed and is merely a product of the imagination (i.e. a fantastic being) and of abstraction. To be sensuous, i.e. to be real, is to be an object of the senses, of sensuous objects ... To be sensuous is to suffer (EB 1:579). Hegel sublimates each of the social institutions to a higher level. The family, for example, is sublimated as civil society, ‘sublimated’ private law is morality, etc. Yet in all these move ments reality has remained unchanged, untouched: they are simply ‘moments’ in a theoretical process of realising Hegel’s Weltgeist. These philosophical acrobatics are possible because Hegel established social institutions as abstract concepts void of their real-world content. Marx criticised this dialectical play on concepts: ‘It is to be avoided,’ he wrote, ‘that “society” again be established as an abstract, apart from the individual. The individual is a social being’ (EB 1:538). The task of resolving the evident gap between existing social conditions and the requirements of a human existence was for Marx more than theoretical, as the philosophers imagined. He sought, however, a profound theoretic understanding of the discrepancies between the real economic situation and his ideal of the truly human society. He rejected at once the most obvious proposals to alleviate economic inequalities, such as rises in wages and salaries, which would serve only to make working men 'better-paid slaves’ and 'would win neither for the labourer nor for his labour their human destiny and their human dignity’ (EB 1:5 2of.). Even Proudhon’s suggestion of equal wages would be futile, would only extend to all producers the alienation which the working man now experienced as regards his labour. When, however, the capitalists’ private ownership of the means of production and therefore of the products themselves has been abolished, the individual labourer may once again appropriate the results of his social activity, i.e. the products, which are his own human nature. Self-alienation in the production process is overcome through the suppression of private property. Marx terms this ‘the conscious return of man to himself as a social,
as fully developed humanism ^naturalism. It is the genuine resolution of man’s conflict with man and with nature, of the conflicts between existence and being, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity and between the individual and the species (EB 1:536). Yüklə 0,64 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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