Study of his life nd work maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale

This was the positive form of communism which Marx differentiated sharply from a more primitive form which generalises private property by raising it to its highest level as ‘universal private property’. This form of communism destroys everything which cannot be generalised, ignores real differences in human abilities and talents, negates human personality and individuality- He compared it to the ‘community of wives’ in which ‘woman becomes the common and debased property of all’: ^

One might say that the notion of the community of wives is the open and confessed secret of this still very primitive and thoughtless communism (EB 1:537).

Where the state as a political institution has not yet been abolished entirely, communism necessarily remains tainted wit*¹


1844 47

alienation. Communism must do more than overcome private property: it must grasp the ‘positive nature’ of this institution on a higher level at which the ‘human nature’ of needs is recognised. While ‘communism is the necessary form and dynamic principle of the immediate future, communism is, however, as such not the goal of human development. This goal is human society made real’ (EB 1:546).

While engaged in writing and studying in Paris, Marx was unable to secure his family's support—in May their first child fenny was born—through any regular source of income. Aware of their financial situation, Claessen announced that he was opening a national subscription on Marx’s behalf for the sacrifices he was assuming in order to promote the common cause and as a tribute to his ‘talent and effectiveness’. He wrote to Marx that: ‘Momentarily we are not in any position to do more than day- labourers. It is up to you to score for all of us’ (March 13, IISH).

Meanwhile Marx was making new acquaintances: with Proudhon, who became his debating partner in long nightly discussions on Hegelian dialectics; with Bakunin, who later joined these discussions which ended with Marx’s departure from Paris in early 1845; with the editors of the Paris journal Vorwdrts!. On June 26 Georg Jung in Cologne wrote to Marx about the recent revolts of the Silesian weavers, maintaining that they were:

a brilliant confirmation of the truth of your analysis of the present and future situation in Germany, outlined in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Right... (June 26, IISH).

Shortly thereafter, on August 7 and 10, Marx published in Vorwdrts! an article entitled ‘Critical Remarks on “The King of Prussia and Social Reform” ’. Replying to an article published by Ruge in the same journal, Marx energetically refuted the argument that Germany lacked the ‘political soul’ needed to cure the social evils such as those responsible for the uprising of the Silesian weavers. Ruge confounded social solutions and political ones and thus failed to realise that to overthrow the present conditions a social solution, namely revolution, was necessary in order to overcome the state which was the real source of social abuses: ‘The existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable’ (MEW 1:40if.). Germany, moreover, has a


‘classical calling’ for social revolution, even though it has always been unable to use effectively, in behalf of social progress, the political means at its disposition within the existing order. Only Germany’s proletariat possesses the necessary social consciousness to reverse the existing order—this was shown most dearly by the Silesian revolt:

The Silesian uprising begins precisely where the French and British labour revolts end, with the consciousness of the nature of the proletariat. The action itself bears this superior character (MEW 1:404).

Although these revolts were restricted to one sector of the proletariat and were ultimately suppressed, they provided evidence of social consciousness:

A social revolution ... is a protest of man against dehumanised life, even if it occurs in only one factory district... because the individual is reacting against his separation from a community of men (MEW 1:408).

At the end of July Marx received from Jung several recent issues of Bruno Bauer’s literary monthly, the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, containing among other articles a review of Eugene Sue’s popular novel Les Mysteres de Paris (1842-43). Jung encouraged Marx to develop his critical ideas on Bauer and his circle into an essay for publication. Marx did in fact decide to compose a pamphlet of his writings on economics and philosophy and to add an introduction in which he would openly attack Bauer’s standpoint while defending Feuerbach. On August 11 Marx wrote directly to Feuerbach, sending him his introductory essay to the ‘Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right’ and expressing his great respect for Feuerbach’s achievements. It was he, Marx wrote, who had given socialism a philosophical foundation, and his writing was more important than all the rest of contemporary German literature.

Between August and October Vorwdrts! published two essays on the British constitution and the situation in England during the 18th century. The author of these articles, Friedrich Engels, was at the time engaged in writing a larger work on England, published in 1845 as The Condition of the Working Class England. On his return to Germany from Manchester at the


^l844 49

end of August, Engels paid a ten-day visit to Marx in Paris, during which time the two men discovered many similarities in their thinking. Marx suggested that they collaborate on a pamphlet against Bauer. Engels consented and prepared his brief contribution before leaving Paris. Marx, however, found it impossible to concentrate his ideas into the space agreed upon for a pamphlet and ended by producing a book-length manuscript. The two contributions were sent to the publisher Zacharias Lowenthal in Frankfurt at the end of November and Marx received the author’s fee of 1000 francs.

From Barmen, where he divided his time between his father’s commercial enterprise and writing his book on England, Engels wrote to Marx, suggesting that he use the material he had been accumulating for a book on economics (Oct.). Engels later reported that he had read Max Stirner’s recent book Der Einzige und sein Eigen turn. Taking up Stirner's theme of human egoism, Engels remarked that, taken to its extreme, ‘his egoistic men must necessarily, out of pure egoism, become communists’. They could appropriate for their own cause the element of truth in Stirner’s principle and make egoism serve their ends:

... we are ... even apart from material hopes, communists out of egoism, we want to be men out of egoistic motivation and not just individuals ... Just as the corporeal individual is the true basis, the true point of departure for our ‘human being’, so egoism—not Stirner’s egoism of reason alone, but the egoism of the heart as well —follows as the natural basis of our human love, otherwise it hangs in the air (Nov. 19).

Marx read Stirner’s book shortly thereafter and planned to write a critique of it for Vorwdrts/.

1845 Engels continued to encourage Marx to prepare a work on economics with the least possible delay, even if this meant leaving his research in an unfinished state. Fie urged Marx to ‘forge the iron while it is hot’ for interest was high and people would welcome such a work. ‘Do as I do,’ he counselled, ‘set yourself a date by which you definitely want to be finished and try to get it published as quickly as possible’ (Jan. 20). It was his position as the son of a well-to-do factory owner which caused Engels difficulty: the double role he was forced to play, communist oy conviction and capitalist by profession, caused him considerable heart-searching. To Marx he wrote that:


... it is possible to be a communist and outwardly a dirty bourgeois trademonger, if you don’t write. But to make communist propaganda on a large scale and to be involved at the same time in trademongering and industry, that won’t do at all (Jan. 20).

Marx’s Paris activities were abruptly interrupted in January. Pressured by the Prussian government which had been anxiously surveying its citizens who had migrated to France, Minister of the Interior Guizot ordered the expulsion of the collaborators on the radical German-language periodical Vorwdrts!. After negotiations it was agreed to suppress the journal on condition that the expulsion order be revoked. The editor-in-chief of the journal, Ferdinand Colestin Bernays, nevertheless spent a year-and-a-half in prison, while Marx chose to leave the country. Shortly before his departure for Brussels, Marx was visited by the German publisher Hermann Leske who offered him a contract for a two-volume work on economics to be entitled ‘A critique of Politics and Political Economy’. An agreement was signed on February 1. Of all he was leaving behind in Paris, Marx wrote to Heine: ‘the most saddening for me is to part with the person of Heine. I wish I could pack you up along with us’ (Jan. 12).

As soon as he learned of Marx's move to Belgium, Engels made an effort to collect funds from friends and associates in order to ‘redistribute the extra cost thus entailed in a communist manner’, and thus save the Marxes from financial distress. ‘But,’ Engels added, ‘I am afraid that even in Belgium they will molest you sooner or later and that your final resort will therefore have to be England’ (Feb. 22). Marx’s stay in Brussels lasted three years: from February 1845 to March 1848. Although he would have preferred to return to Germany, the way was barred, for the Prussian government had issued a warrant for his arrest. For the time being he was in less danger in Belguim, where nevertheless the government had obliged him to sign a paper agreeing to refrain from writing on current political affairs. Having done j

so, Marx and his family were assured of political asylum and he j

was able to continue his studies in economics.

Engels soon followed Marx to Brussels in April and they began to collaborate intensely. One of their projects was to publish a collection of writings by the foremost socialist writers from France and England in German translation, beginning with Fourier, Owen and the Saint-Simonians. Among Marx’s readings

1845 5i

of this period was an Essay on the- Origin of Political Economy (1825) by the British economist John Ramsay MacCulloch. For the history of technology and technical development he read Andrew Ure; for commercial history Thomas Tooke, William Cobbett and Gustav von Giilich. He became acquainted with the problems of population growth through readings from William Petty, while Quesnay’s economic table and his work on Natural Law also drew his attention. He also continued his inquiries into English socialism with works, read in French translation as with all English authors at this time, by Robert Owen and John Bray.

Shortly after Marx had settled in Brussels, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Critique by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx—this was the order of the authors’ names on the title page—was published by J. Riitten in Frankfurt—a.M. Engels, whose actual contribution amounted to some twelve pages, found his friend’s work Very fine. Your discussion of the Jewish question, of materialism and the Mysteres is magnificent and it will certainly achieve an excellent effect’ (letter to Marx, March

In The Holy Family, while attacking the left-Hegelian group around Bauer, Marx developed his own basic ideas of socialism as inspired by French materialism and English sensualism. To a certain extent he continued his discourse on various topics broached in the unpublished manuscripts of 1844 and in earlier articles and essays, without reaching more than a limited circle of readers. Taking up the important theme of alienation from the ‘Paris Manuscripts’, Marx showed that in civil society all sectors are alienated, the propertied classes as well as the class which lives from its labour alone, whose condition of life is the 'outright, decisive and comprehensive negation of his human nature’ (MEW 2:37). The propertied classes have, however, a ‘semblance of human existence’, seeing in their alienation power and self-confirmation. Man believes himself free when observing the free movement of the objects of his alienated life: property, industry, religion, etc., ‘while in reality this is the perfection of his slavery and his inhumanity.’ (MEW 2:113). Yet the proletariat, the deprived class in a social order founded on private property, becomes conscious of its physical and moral state of deprivation. Here lies the germ of the social revolution which will abolish the proletariat as a class and with it all classes of the present inhuman system of economic relations:


It follows that the proletariat can and must free itself, yet it cannot do so without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life in today’s society as they are epitomised in his own situation (MEW 2:38).

Marx saw that an element of historical necessity could be deduced from the proletarian condition: its very being would compel it to follow a particular course of action which would emancipate it together with all the rest of society.

Marx’s attack on Bauer was above all a critique of Geist, of mind and spirit, as the solution to the problems of modem industrial society. The left-Hegelians believed they could intellec- tualise these problems and solve them on the level of abstractions. But, while they reasoned away the evils of capitalist production,

The masses of common working men toiling in the ateliers of Manchester and Lyon do not think themselves capable of reasoning away their industrial masters through pure thought (MEW 2:55).

The reality of the conditions under which the industrial proletariat lived and worked must be changed ‘so that man may become man not only in thought, in consciousness, but in his existence as a member of the mass, in his actual life’ (MEW

According to the Hegelian construction it was history, manifestation of the Weltgdst [universal spirit], which brought progress into the world. Marx termed this concept of history as ‘the speculative expression of the Germano-Christian dogma which opposes spirit and matter, God