CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT MARX Early Political Writings CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Series editors Raymond Geuss Lecturer in Social and Political Sciencesy University of Cambridge Quentin Skinner Professor of Political Science in the University of Cambridge Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought is now firmly estab­ lished as the major student textbook series in political theory. It aims to make available to students all the most important texts in the history of western political thought, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth century. All the familiar classic texts will be included but the series does at the same time seek to enlarge the conventional canon by incorporating an extensive range of less well-known works, many of them never before available in a modem English edition. Wherever possible, texts are pub­ lished in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with chronologies, biographical sketches, a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. When com­ pleted, the series will aim to offer an outline of the entire evolution of western political thought. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book. M A R X Early Political Writings EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY JOSEPH O’MALLEY Professor Emeritus Marquette University WITH RICHARD A. DAVIS Marquette University gl| C ambridge UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge .org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521349949 © Cambridge University Press 1994 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1994 Third printing 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. [Selections. English. 1994] Marx: early political writings /edited by Joseph OMalley. p. cm. - (Cambridge texts in the history of political thought) Translated from the German. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o 521 34241 6 (hardback) - ISBN o 521 34994 x (paperback), i. Political science. 2. State. The. i. O'Malley, Joseph J. ii. Tide. hi. Series. JC233 M29213 1994 306.2-dc20 93-31207 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-34994-9 paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents Acknowledgements page vi Editor's Introduction vii Chronology of Marx's Life and Career\ 1818-1848 xxv Bibliography xxviii Editor's and Translator's Note xxxiii From the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (§§261-313) i ‘On the Jewish Question’ 28 ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’ 57 From the Paris Notebooks 71 ‘Critical Marginal Notes on “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian” ’ 97 Points on the State and Bourgeois Society 115 ‘On Feuerbach’ 116 From ‘The German Ideology’: Chapter One, ‘Feuerbach’. 119 From Poverty of Philosophy 182 Address on Poland 185 Index 187 Acknowledgements The following people contributed to this volume by providing schol­ arly information or text resources, and I thank them for their help: Curtis Carter and Brigitte Coste (Marquette University) for Euro­ pean press material on the status of the new Marx-Engels critical edition; Terrell Carver (University of Bristol) for providing a copy of W. Hiromatsu’s edition of ‘The German Ideology. Part One’; Lawrence Stepelevich (Villanova University) for historical informa­ tion on the careers and writings of the ‘Young Hegelians’; Bertell Oilman (New York University), Jürgen Rojahn (International Insti­ tute for Social History, Amsterdam), and Maximilien Rubel (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) for detailed information about the status and prospects of the new Marx-Engels critical edi­ tion; and Allen Wood (Cornell University) for sharing his and H. B. Nisbet’s Glossary from their new translation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Anne Pasero and Denis Savage (Marquette University), David Duquette (St Norbert College), David McLellan (University of Kent at Canterbury), Fred E. Schrader (Université de Paris-Sorbonne), and Burkhard Tuschling (Phillips-Universität Marburg) read early versions of the Editor’s Introduction and offered suggestions for its improvement. Janette Hodge (Marquette University and Belmont Abbey College) prepared the entire first copy for the press, at times working under difficult circumstances, and also contributed editorial help; I am greatly indebted to her. Robin Brunette (Marquette University) prepared the final copy of the revised portions. In recognition of all that he has done and continues to do to advance serious study of Karl Marx’s thought and writings, I dedicate this volume, with deepest regard and respect, to Maximilien Rubel. vi Editor’s introduction Karl Marx (1818-1883) wrote no single work in which the essential themes of his political thought are spelled out, no work analogous to, say, Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’ Leviathan, or Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. To get the essentials of his political doctrine, one must read many of Marx’s writings, both early and late, including not only things he published but also things left in manuscript form at his death. The editors of this series have decided to offer these writings in two volumes: the present one, which includes texts that pre-date The Communist Manifesto, which was published in February 1848, and a second, being edited by Dr Terrell Carver, which will include the Manifesto and writings subsequent to it. Of Marx’s writing of 1847 we include here two short pieces: an excerpt from the conclusion of Poverty of Philosophy, which was pub­ lished in the middle of that year, and a speech he gave at the end of the year, shortly before he (and Friedrich Engels) began drafting the Manifesto. Our principal texts date from the period spring/summer 1843 to fall 1846. The first of these is Marx’s ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, excerpts from which are included here, and the last is chapter 1 of‘The German Ideology’. This latter text represents the culmination of a process that began in the earlier ‘Critique’ of Hegel: Marx’s development of a complex insight which he called the ‘guideline’ (Leitfaden) for all of his subsequent theoretical work, and which others have dubbed his ‘materialist’ theory of history, society and politics (or ‘historical materialism’ etc.) - about the details of which we will say more below. Neither the 1843 Hegel Critique nor ‘The German Ideology’ was vii Introduction published during Marx’s lifetime. Moreover, of the six additional texts from the period of 1843-6 which are included here, only three were published by him: two essays that appeared in February 1844 in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher y which he co-edited with Arnold Ruge in Paris (‘On the Jewish Question’ and ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’) and an article published in August 1844 in a radical German-language newspaper in Paris, Vor- wärts\ (‘Critical Marginal Notes on “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian” ’). These three essays have long been reco­ gnised as important documents of Marx’s intellectual development and statements of his pvt-Manifesto political principles, and they are fre­ quently cited in connection with his criticisms of religion, money and the state, and his call for working class (‘proletarian’) revolution. Striking as these essays are, however, they do not, in isolation from the unpublished writings of the period, adequately express the complex process of development of Marx’s political thought and of his ‘materialist’ insight, including the extent to which that develop­ ment was nourished by near-incessant and intensive research, first in political theory and history, then in political economy. The record of these researches lies in Marx’s study notebooks of 1843-7. The first five of these notebooks date from the summer of 1843 in Kreuz­ nach, where Marx compiled them while also writing his ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’. The results of this research (and to a lesser extent of Marx’s earlier historical and legal studies at the Uni­ versity of Berlin) are evident in that Critique, as Marx increasingly used historical data in his criticisms of Hegel’s doctrine on the state. The data bear especially on the relationship between property and political institutions, and between property and class divisions (e.g. pp. 17-21 below). The connection between his research in political history and his further research, to which that led, in political eco­ nomy is plainly reflected in a topic-index he composed in one of his Kreuznach notebooks: In addition to explicitly political topics (e.g. parliament, nobility, bureaucracy, constituent assembly, popular sov­ ereignty, division of powers and so on - all topics touched upon at one or another point in his Hegel Critique), there are ‘property and its consequences’, including ‘the connection of property to lordship and servitude’, ‘property as condition for voting capacity’, ‘possession and property’; also ‘state property’, ‘relationship of owner to com- Introduction munity’, and ‘equality and property’ (MEGA2 iv, 2, 116-19). Again, Marx’s increased focus on such themes is evident in the Hegel Critique (e.g. pp. 16, 23-5 below). None the less, that Critique and its accompanying research were just the beginning of the process that would eventually lead to ‘The German Ideology’ and through that to the Manifesto. The Kreuznach research, which culminated in a focus on the French Revolution of 1789 - an event Marx equated with the ‘genesis of the modem state’ (e.g. p. 115 below) - is also reflected in his essay ‘On the Jewish Question’ (esp. pp. 43-8 below), which he wrote in large part immediately following his composition of the Hegel Critique and prior to his move from Kreuznach to Paris with his bride in fall 1843. His research was interrupted by the move itself and the task of resettling, then by the work of editing the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (most of which fell to Marx when his co-editor Ruge became ill) and by the events surrounding the immediate financial failure of the Jahrbücher, which was due mainly to censorship (e.g. 800 copies were confiscated by the police at the German border with Switzerland). Marx resumed his studies in April of 1844, first on the French Revolution (he briefly planned to write a history of the Convention) and then in the literature of political economy. Nine of his ‘Paris Notebooks’, totalling 300 pages in the new critical edition (MEGA1), are filled with excerpts from works in political economy by Say, Skar- bek, Smith, Ricardo, James Mill, MacCulloch, Prévost, Destutt de Tracy, Engels, Schütz, List, Osiander, Buret; also included are some excerpts from Hegel’s Phenomenology. Additionally, there are note­ book materials, another 130-odd pages in the same edition, con­ taining excerpts from the political economic sources mentioned, arranged under the headings ‘Wages of Labour’, ‘Profit of Capital’, and ‘Ground-Rent’, together with reflections by Marx on such themes as ‘self-estrangement’, ‘communism’, ‘money’, and human nature as ‘species-being’ (Gattungsmsen). These latter are the mat­ erials on which the humanistic image of Marx that emerged in the 193os has been largely based: Editors, beginning with David Rjaz- anov in 1932, have separated out, rearranged, and presented these materials as the so-called ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ “ a practice which has recently come under sharp scholarly Introduction criticism (esp. Rojahn 1983, 1985). From these notebook materials - none of which appeared in print during Marx’s lifetime - we include excerpts relevant to his political thought (pp. 71-96 below). The Paris researches in political economy, as well as the Kreuz- nach-Paris studies on the French Revolution, are clearly reflected in Marx’s ‘Critical Marginal Notes on “The King of Prussia and Social Reform” ... where he used his political economic, as well as his historical, sources to expose the shallowness of the social-political analysis of his erstwhile colleague, Ruge (e.g. pp. 100-5 below). Fol­ lowing his composition of this essay, and his and his family’s enforced move to Brussels at the beginning of 1845, Marx continued his polit­ ical economic studies, including a research trip to Manchester with his friend and collaborator Engels in July and August 1845. In the period between February and June alone he compiled notes ‘on some sixty books’ (Rubel 1981, 123). From his arrival in Brussels through to the end of 1847 he read and excerpted from practically every important political economist whom he had not studied earlier (this in addition to re-reading some authors, e.g. Smith, Ricardo and MacCulloch): Petty, Davenant, Browning, Cooper, Sadler, Tooke, Gilbart, Edmonds, Cobbett, Senior, Thompson, Atkinson, Wade, Eden, Aiken, J.S. Mill et aly and most notably G. von Giilich, from whose five-volume History of the Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture of the Most Important Commercial States of our Time, which appeared between 1830 and 1845, Marx compiled over 900 pages (in the MEGA2 edition) of excerpts during the period September 1846 - December 1847. Nor were Marx’s researches limited to political eco­ nomy, but extended as well to other historical subjects, such as the history of science and technology, all of which contributed to the development of his thought in this period. Moreover, Marx’s extant notebooks are not a complete record of his studies from 1843 onward. Some notebooks have been lost, and even where it is likely that none has been, as with his Kreuznach studies, we know that he read authors who are not included in his notebooks, e.g. A. de Tocqueville and G. de Baumont, who were, along with Thomas Hamilton, early sources for his views on the character of society and politics in the United States (see pp. 32-3, 35, 44, 53 below). We stress the importance of Marx’s researches, and of the note­ books in which they are, albeit incompletely, recorded - and whose contents are at long last becoming generally available, in Sect, iv of x