The Discovery of the Materialist Conception of History in the Writings of the Young Karl Marx [30] 9780773464261, 0773464263

Table of contents :
Preface by Richard P. Appelbaum
Introduction
Part I. Marx and Feuerbach
1. Ludwig Feuerbach
2. Marx and Feuerbach
Part II. The Epistemological Break
3. Max Stirner
4. Marx's Epistemological Break
5. The German Ideology
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

in

T he D iscovery of the M aterialist C onception of H istory the W ritings of the Y oung K arl M arx

Thomson, Ernie. The discovery of the materialist conception of history in the writings of the young Karl Marx / Ernie Thomson. p. cm. - (Studies in social and political theoiy; v. 30) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7734-6426-3 1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883.2. Historical materialism~History~19th century. I. Title. II. Series. B3305.M74T57 2004 335.4-119~dc22 2004045559 This is volume 30 in the continuing series Studies in Social and Political Theory Volume 30 ISBN 0-7734-6426-3 SSPT Series ISBN 0-88946-100-7 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library Front cover photos: Karl Marx at about ages 20 and 60.

Copyright © 2004 Ernie Thomson All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press Box 450 Lewiston, New York USA 14092-0450

The Edwin Mellen Press Box 67 Queen ston, Ontario CANADA LOS 1L0

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents Preface by Richard P. Appelbaum....................................................................... i introduction............................................................................................................1 Part I. Marx and Feuerbach.............................................................................. 15 Chapter 1. Ludwig Feuerbach...........................................................................21 Feuerbach's critique of philosophy 22 Feuerbach's method 38 Feuerbach's theory o f alienation 46 Conclusion 53

Chapter 2. Marx and Feuerbach...........................

57

A note on Engels and Feuerbach 57 Marx and Feuerbach (1843) 60 Marx and Feuerbach (1844) 66 Conclusion 99

Part II. The Epistemological Break.................................................................103 Chapter3. MaxStirner....................................................................................I l l The Ego and His Own (Part 1)113 The Ego and His Own (Part 2) 127 Stirner vs. Feuerbach 134 Stirner vs. liberal social theory 135 Stirner's justification 137

Chapter 4. Marx’s Epistemological Break..................................................... 139 The Marx-Engels letters 140 Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach” 142 Hess's "The Recent Philosophers" 146 Marx’s "On Friedrich List" 153 Marx in the spring o f 1845 155 Feuerbach's reply to Stirner 159 Conclusion 163

Chapter 5. The German Ideology..................................................................... 173 "Feuerbach" 174

"Saint Max" 189

Chapter 6. Conclusion......................................................................................207 Notes.................................................................................................................... 217 Bibliography....................................................................................................... 223 Index.................................................................................................................... 233

Preface With the publication of For Marx and Reading Capital in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Louis Althusser ignited a storm of controversy among Marxists and Marx scholars that reshaped the debates about the nature and scope of Marxism. Althusser’s work was a response to the dogmatic Marxism of the Stalinists on the one hand and the ^humanist” strain of Marxism that emerged with the publication of Marx’s early Hegelian manuscripts on the other. Althusser argued that during his early years Marx’s ideas had been heavily influenced by the critical humanism of Ludwig Feuerbach, and were inextricably tied to the contemporary critique of Hegel’s philosophy. But in the mid-1840’s, according to Althusser, Marx broke with Feuerbach and began a long process of purging the philosophical assumptions from his work and developing a rigorously scientific approach - his materialist conception of history. This “epistemological break” thesis allowed Althusser to reinterpret "mature” Marxism in light of twentieth-century social science concepts unavailable to Marx in the nineteenth century - concepts like structuralism, over-determination, the unconscious, etc. Althusser’s supporters, taking his claims about Marx’s epistemological break more or less at face value, focused on revising Marxist theory along the lines suggested by Althusser, while his many critics, assuming that the epistemological break thesis was simply wrong, focused mostly on criticizing the reinterpretation and “modernization” of Marx’s ideas, along with personal attacks on Althusser himself. As author Ernie Thomson points out in his Introduction to this study, neither side seemed at all interested in examining either the evidence that the epistemological break thesis was based on or the gaps in Althusser’s argument for the break thesis. In the course of evaluating both Althusser’s claims and those of

his critics, Dr. Thomson reexamines some of Marx’s most-discussed writings of the period (e.g., Marx’s "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” and "Theses on Feuerbach”) and produces original studies of some of the more obscure writings of both Marx and others (Max Stimer’s The Ego and his Own, Feuerbach’s response to Stimer, Moses Hess’s critique of Stimer in his article "The Recent Philosophers,” Marx’s 1844 piece on James Mill and 1845 piece on Friedrich List, the “Saint Max” section of The German Ideology, etc.). The results of the study are, to say the least, surprising. Thomson argues strongly and persuasively that Althusser’s epistemological break thesis is fundamentally correct, and he fills in the major gaps in Althusser’s account by explaining with some precision the extent to which Feuerbach influenced Marx’s ideas in his 1843-44 writings, the timing of Marx’s break with Feuerbach in 1845, the question of why Marx broke with Feuerbach, and where the new ideas for Marx’s materialist conception of history came from. Perhaps the most surprising results of the study, though, have to do with two of the most discussed of Marx’s early unpublished writings, his theory of alienation in the EPM of 1844 and his brief and riddle-like comments in the "Theses on Feuerbach.” Marx’s theory of alienation is usually regarded as the origin and centerpiece of his critique of capitalism, and as his unique appropriation and humanization of Hegel’s theory of alienation. Thomson argues that Marx’s theory was not really Marx’s at all but rather was the "other half’ of Feuerbach 's theory of alienation, and provides strong evidence that the theory was abandoned when Marx broke with Feuerbach in 1845. Thomson also shows that Marx made an earlier unsuccessful attempt to complete Feuerbach’s theory in his unpublished 1844 critique of James Mill. Marx’s brief aphorisms in what came to be called the “Theses on Feuerbach” are usually assumed to have been written in March 1845, and are seen by some as evidence that Marx was not an uncritical follower of Feuerbach at the time and by others as representing the earliest indication of Marx’s impending break with

Feuerbach. Thomson argues that these notes were probably written in late 1844 as part of an initial review of Stimer’s book and, far from being a critique of Feuerbach, the notes outline a defense of Feuerbach’s philosophical framework against Stimer’s attacks. Louis Althusser commented somewhere that Marx was not bom a Marxist. This book illustrates his point in a striking way. It is well-researched, wellwritten, and well-argued, and should be read by everyone interested in Marxism and how Marx’s work relates to modem social theory.

Richard P. Appelbaum Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara

Introduction The debate over the continuity between Karl Marx’s early (mostly unpublished) manuscripts and his later (mostly published) writings is now more than seventy years old and, as Anthony Giddens (1971, p. 19) once observed, it seems unlikely to ever be resolved to the satisfaction of all interested parties.1 The controversies began in earnest with the publication in the 1920’s and 1930’s of several of Marx’s previously-unknown early manuscripts. These manuscripts revealed for the first time that the concept of alienation, which rarely appeared in Marx’s later published writings, had been the cornerstone of his early critical philosophy. They also seemed to show that Marx’s writings at least through the end of 1844 bore the clear imprint of Ludwig Feuerbach’s philosophical anthropology, while the next year found Marx thoroughly criticizing and rejecting Feuerbach’s views. The centrality of the notion of alienation and the apparently decisive influence of Feuerbach in the early works, coupled with Marx's rejection of Feuerbach and lack of interest in the notion of alienation from 1845 onward, led some scholars to conclude that there had been “two Marxes,” one a young immature humanistic Marx and the other an older more mature and scientific Marx. Other scholars, following the lead of Karl Korsch and Georg Lukacs, maintained that the differences between Marx’s early and later writings were more apparent than substantial, and argued that the publication of Marx's early works'had at last revealed the basic philosophical foundations of Marx’s whole life-work. A debate along similar lines arose in the United States with the publication of the first English translations of the early manuscripts in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.2 Among the proponents of the “two Marx” view were Daniel Bell (1973),

Sidney Hook (1975), and Lewis Feuer (1962). Like their European counterparts, Bell, Hook, and Feuer argued that in 1844 Marx “was still in Hegelian swaddlingclothes ... still more or less ... a Feuerbachian” and that these early manuscripts represented “groping efforts of Marx toward intellectual maturity” (Hook 1975, pp. 31-33). Marx’s mature works, they argued, began in 1845 with his and Engels’ book The German Ideology. The case for continuity was argued primarily by Erich Fromm (1961), Michael Harrington (1961), and Robert Tucker (1961). Fromm and Harrington charged that the “two-Marx” view was based on misreadings and misinterpretations of both Marx’s early and later works, and that much of the controversy was politically motivated. They also maintained that far from abandoning his early humanism and theory of alienation, Marx had devoted his whole life to the study of the problems generated in the early writings and that it is impossible to understand his later works apart from the concept of man developed in the early writings (Fromm 1961, p. 79). Tucker’s argument was somewhat different from that o f Fromm and Harrington. Tucker argued that the notion of alienation was central to all of Marx’s works, but that the source of Marx’s interest in the problem of alienation derived from Marx’s own “alienated” position in society. Thus what Marx “sees” in the early works (through the lens of his own alienation) is “a self-system in conflict a split self writ large.” But around the end of 1844, Marx “ceases ... to be clearly conscious of the fact that this is what he sees ... that which he sees presents itself to him from now on simply as ‘society’.” (1961, p. 175). Thus the continuity of the early and later works, according to Tucker, was based on the continuity of Marx’s own alienated psychological state, and the only real change was in Marx’s awareness of what he was doing. By the early 1970’s, it appeared to most scholars that the debate had been virtually resolved, largely as a result of two studies that were published about this time (Avineri 1968 and Meszaros 1970) and the increasing availability of Marx’s %

preparatory work for Capital, the “Grundrisse” written in 1857-58.

Based on his own study of Marx’s unpublished 1843 “Critique o f Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” Avineri concluded that Marx’s basic viewpoint had been constructed out of this first confrontation with Hegel’s philosophy, and that Marx’s later writings merely articulate the conclusions at which he arrived at this early stage of his intellectual odyssey. The various economic, social, and historical studies undertaken by Marx are but a corollary of the conclusions he drew from his immanent critique of Hegel’s political philosophy. (1968, p. 5) With respect to the relationship between Marx and Feuerbach, Avineri argued that Marx had perceived the flaws in Feuerbach’s philosophy from the start and thus “was never a Feuerbachian who later turned against his master.” (1968, p. 68). Avineri' maintained that Marx

was fascinated only with Feuerbach’s

transformative method, which proved for a time to be a useful methodological weapon against Hegel’s philosophy (1968, pp. 9-12). For his part, Meszaros (1970) devoted a whole chapter of his book on Marx’s theory of alienation to the “controversy about Marx” (pp. 217-253)-. In this chapter, Meszaros argued that the ties between Marx and Feuerbach had been greatly exaggerated by some authors who saw the young Marx as “a mere follower of the latter” (p. 234). He went on to argue that what Marx saw in Feuerbach were the beginnings of a fruitful approach to social theory, but that Marx was mistaken in thinking that Feuerbach was capable of moving beyond the critique o f religion into the critique of the real world. When Marx finally realized the limitations of Feuerbach’s abilities (about the end of 1844), he now made explicit the differences that had implicitly been there all along (pp. 235-237). Meszaros also sought to demonstrate that the concept of alienation retained its place at the center of Marx’s works throughout his lifetime. In an effort to destroy once and for all the notion that Marx had abandoned the concept of alienation, Meszaros offered a “limited sample” of discussions of alienation from all of Marx’s works up to his death in 1883 (1970, pp. 222-227). Meszaros also pointed out that Marx’s “G ru n d risse written in 1857-58, contained “hundreds of pages

where the problems of alienation are analyzed in a comprehensive way.” (1970, p. 224). With the new evidence and arguments provided by Avineri and Meszaros and the convincing proof provided by the “Grundrisse” that Marx had riot abandoned his interest in alienation, it now appeared to many scholars that the periodization of Marx’s writings on any grounds other than simple chronology was unjustifiable, and that the case for continuity had finally won out. The most influential critic of the continuity thesis since the 1970’s has been Louis Althusser (1970), a French philosopher who has criticized proponents of both viewpoints for their reliance on an “analytico-teleological” method of reading texts. This method involves focusing only on particular elements of a text (e.g., concepts like alienation) removed from their original contexts, and tracing their continuity (or lack of continuity) from the early to the later works. Once they are constituted as elements, these concepts are manipulated (intentionally or unintentionally) in such a way that they provide evidence for previously-decided interpretations of texts and transitions between texts (1970, p. 32). Based on his own "historical” readings of both Marx’s and Feuerbach’s writings, Althusser (1970) concludes that Marx’s works can be divided into four distinct periods, with the crucial transition coming in 1845 in the form of an "epistemological break.” This break involved a shift in the foundations of Marx’s works from an ideological approach to a nascent philosophy of science, which developed over the next two decades into mature Marxism. Althusser maintains that in 1843/1844, Marx was "no more than an avant garde

Feuerbachian,

applying

[Feuerbach’s] ethical problematic to

the

understanding of human history.” (1970, p. 46). He goes onto argue that Marx did not simply "borrow” concepts from Feuerbach one at a time, but instead "literally espoused Feuerbach’s problematic ... profoundly identified himself with it” and thereby publicly bound himself to it. Althusser maintained that in order to understand any of Marx’s early works, "it is essential to situate oneself at the very

heart of this identification, and to explore all its theoretical consequences and inferences.” (1970, p. 4). In 1845, according to Althusser, Marx suddenly broke with Feuerbach and rejected the whole approach identified with Feuerbach’s philosophy. This break involved three “indissociable elements” - a radically new theory of history and politics, a thorough rejection and critique of philosophical humanism, and a new theory of ideology (1970, p. 227). Marx’s break with humanism and simultaneous adoption of a new problematic, according to Althusser, was the young Marx’s great scientific discovery. For centuries idealist philosophies had depended on a problematic of human nature which, with all of its variations, had endured virtually unquestioned. In 1845, the fetal problems with this approach became “transparent” to Marx and this is what precipitated his “epistemological break” (1970, p. 227). Although it is the works of 1845-46 that mark the transition from an ideological to a scientific approach, Althusser maintains that “this mutation could not produce immediately, in positive and consummated form, the new theoretical problematic which it inaugurated” (1970, p. 34). Rather, these works are characterized by Althusser as negative and critical commentaries on the ideological problematic that Marx had just rejected, and it took several more years of work before Marx finally arrived at a framework adequate to his revolutionary project. Although Althusser’s epistemological break thesis has led to a great deal of controversy, little effort has been made to evaluate his claims on the basis of available evidence. A notable exception is William Leogrande (1977; 1978), who produced a specific examination of several of Althusser's claims by comparing the fundamental concepts used in Marx’s 1843-44 writings with those used in his later works. Leogrande provides some convincing evidence that Feuerbach’s concept of "species being ... constitutes the epistemological foundation of Marx’s concept of human nature” from which most of Marx’s other major concepts in the early works are derived (1977, p. 137). Just as it is the concept of species being

that leads to the view that "man” is by nature communal, it is the abandonment of this fundamental concept and its implications that leads to the transformation of Marx’s whole approach. Thus the concept of species being “is replaced in The German Ideology and subsequent works by a material connection between humans. No longer is there the claim that man is communal by nature, but rather that he is social by necessity.” (1977, pp. 138-140). Leogrande goes on to argue that this change also leads to a shift in Marx’s viewpoint on alienation from 1845 onward: "Except in one of its aspects, alienation is conceived [in 1844] as the contradiction between existence and essence. Only the alienation of the worker from his product is not predicated upon the conception of man as a species being; thus only this aspect of alienation is unaffected” by the change (1977, p. 143). So while Marx does indeed continue to discuss alienation in the later works, the concept is embedded in a very different theoretical framework from that of the early works, and refers to only one o f the original four aspects of alienation discussed by Marx in 1844. Leogrande also points out that the excerpts provided by Meszaros as proof that Marx never abandoned his interest in alienation refer, without exception, only to this one aspect o f alienation (1977, p. 148). In addition to the writings of Althusser and Leogrande, a number of other recent studies have directly or indirectly contributed to the evidence that a major break occurred in Marx’s intellectual development between late 1844 and early 1845 (e.g., Torrance 1977; Olsen 1978; Zeleny 1980; Wolfson 1982; Henry 1983; Barbalet 1983). The general conclusions reached by these authors are consistent with Barbalet’s summary of his own conclusions: On the question of Marx’s development, it will be suggested that there is a continuity in Marx’s thought. Many of his early concerns were not abandoned, but formed the first exploratory attempts to grapple with a set of problems with which Marx continued to deal and of which he continued to achieve a deeper grasp. It will also be argued, however, that alongside this continuity there is a significant discontinuity ... some of the concepts Marx continued to use in his writings are understood through different theoretical frameworks at different stages of his development. (1983, p. 2)

Barbalet, like the other authors cited above, maintains that the crucial change came in 1845, and that the writings prior to that year “constitute an ensemble of thought which does not occupy the same methodological epistemological and substantive theoretical space” as the writings that followed (1983, p. 4). The material developed in these recent studies strongly suggests that the continuity thesis, as it stands, is no longer tenable. The three basic points upon which Avineri, Meszaros, and others founded this view, Marx’s continuing interest in topics first discussed in the early manuscripts, the notion that Feuerbach was no more than a minor influence on the young Marx, and the view that Marx’s 1844 theory of alienation contained in embryo his later theories, have all been seriously undermined in more recent studies. Despite the wealth of material developed in these recent studies, there are still some problems with the ',discontinuity,, view. Two of these problems involve major disagreements among the proponents of the new view. First, there is still some disagreement regarding the extent of Marx’s reliance on Feuerbach’s philosophy in 1843-44. Althusser, for example, argues that Marx adopted Feuerbach’s philosophy as his own, and thus was a devoted “Feuerbachian” in all of his writings during this early period. Barbalet and others claim that Marx was not completely uncritical of Feuerbach’s philosophy before 1845. A second disagreement involves the timing of the transition between Marx’s views o f 1844 and those o f 1845. Althusser portrays the transition as rather sudden and dramatic. Most of the other authors cited above argue that the transition was more gradual. For example, Barbalet (1983), Henry (1983), and others argue that the break between Marx and Feuerbach grew out of internal inconsistencies in Feuerbach’s philosophy that only came to the forefront when Marx pushed its application to the limit, thus exposing the basic inadequacy of Feuerbach’s approach. In addition to these two problems, there are two further issues that are rarely addressed at all in the literature. One is the question of what Marx was doing

between the time he completed The Holy Family in November, 1844, and the events of Spring, 1845, when the first indications of a break with Feuerbach's approach appear.3 Accounts of Marx’s activities during this crucial four or five months that preceded the discovery of his new approach are almost completely absent from the literature on Marx’s development The other issue, which is the most important, involves the question of why the break occurred and where Mark obtained the new ideas that made up his revised approach. The purpose of this study will be to resolve these four basic problems and to provide an accurate account of Marx’s intellectual development from his early writings through his discovery of the materialist conception of history. With respect to the first two problems, it will be argued that Althusser’s view is essentially correct - Marx was virtually uncritical of Feuerbach and his philosophy before 1845 and his break with Feuerbach was sudden rather than gradual. As for the other two questions, some preliminary remarks are necessary. Virtually all of the recent studies of Marx’s intellectual development agree that Feuerbach’s influence on Marx’s work was decisive through late November, 1844, at which time Marx was completing The Holy Family, a book co-authored with his new collaborator Frederick Engels.4 There is also general agreement that the first indication of a break with Feuerbach came in the Spring of 1845.5 For those who argue that Marx had reservations about Feuerbach’s philosophy from early on, or that the views that Marx was developing displayed an “unconscious tendency” away from Feuerbach’s philosophy, that is, if the break with Feuerbach resulted solely from internal developments in Marx’s work, then this unaccounted-for period of time is relatively unimportant. But if Marx was uncritical of Feuerbach in 1844 and the break was sudden, the view that I will argue is correct, then the question arises of what happened in late 1844 that led to a change in Marx’s view of Feuerbach and of his own earlier ideas. It is the failure to address this question that has long plagued proponents of discontinuity views in the debates over Marx’s development. For example, Robert Tucker, in disputing the claims of those who see a break in 1845, claimed that

“there was no hiatus, no gap of time during which Marx came upon and assimilated a new set of ideas unknown to him in 1844” (1961, p. 167). If Tucker’s assertion were correct - and even most proponents of discontinuity have at least implicitly accepted this “nothing happened” claim - serious doubt would be cast on any break thesis from the start. Why would Marx’s most fundamental views have changed so radically in a period of only a few months for no reason? But although Tucker’s claim is widely accepted, it is simply not correct: Marx did come upon a new set of ideas at the end of 1844 that posed a serious challenge to his views at the time. The new set of ideas appeared in a book published by a young German philosopher who wrote under the pseudonym “Max Stimer.” Despite the fact that Stimer’s book, which contained a radical attack on Feuerbach’s philosophy, was published just as Marx was completing what would turn out to be the last of his Feuerbach-inspired works, The Holy Family,6 the fact that there is evidence that both Marx (then in Paris) and Engels (in Germany) immediately read Stimer’s book and regarded it as important,7 and the fact that about three-fourths of their only major work of 1845-46, The German Ideology, was devoted to a detailed critique of Stimer (“Saint Max”),8 little attention has been paid by scholars to the relationship between Marx and Stimer (cf. Thomas 1975), and virtually no attention has been paid to Max Stimer by most of the participants in the debates over Marx’s intellectual development.9 I will argue here that Stimer provides the key to understanding what happened in 1844-45 to detach Marx from Feuerbach’s influence and push him in new directions. In summary, this study will show that in 1843 and 1844 Marx was a Feuerbachian and that his writings of this period are thoroughly dependent on the philosophical framework developed by Feuerbach in his writings of 1839 to 1843. The culmination of Marx’s Feuerbachian period is reached in his 1844 manuscripts, where he develops a theory of alienation of activity (labor) that parallels, and uses the same formal structure as, Feuerbach’s theory of alienation of consciousness (religion). The Holy Family is the last of Marx’s Feuerbach-

inspired works and is basically a straightforward defense of Feuerbach’s philosophy against some of its most prominent critics. I will argue that the publication of Stimer’s book right at the height of Marx’s attachment to Feuerbach's philosophy created a crisis for Marx, and it was in the process of working his way out of this crisis that Marx formulated his new approach in the Spring of 1845. This new approach, the materialist conception of history, was developed from Marx’s critique of both Feuerbach and Stimer, both o f whom were now characterized as “ideologists.” On some issues, Marx accepts and extends Stimer’s critique of Feuerbach and traditional philosophy. On other issues, he defends Feuerbach and traditional philosophy against Stimer’s attacks. But the overall result is an entirely new approach. The first chapter of this study will trace the development of Feuerbach’s philosophy from his tentative 1839 critique of his mentor Hegel (“Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy”), through the 1841 work that established his reputation as a leading intellectual in Germany {The Essence o f Christianity), to his aphoristic writings of 1843 (“Preliminary Theses On the Reform of Philosophy” and “Principles of the Philosophy of the Future”) which were instrumental in converting Marx and Engels, among others, to Feuerbach’s point of view. Three major areas of Feuerbach’s philosophy will be discussed at length: First, Feuerbach's epistemological critique of Hegel and modem philosophy in his 1839 “Critique” and the “Theses” and “Principles” of 1843; Second, Feuerbach’s “transformative method,” developed and used in the Essence but fully explained only later in the “Theses” and an 1843 preface to the Essence; Third, Feuerbach's theory of alienation developed in the Introduction to the Essence, which includes a partial theory of human nature (species being) and an explanation of religion, theology, and modem philosophy as alienated expressions of human nature. As Wartofsky (1977) has pointed out, Feuerbach’s philosophy has drawn little' attention

from

English-language

scholars,

and

this

has

led

to

the

institutionalization of several misconceptions regarding Feuerbach, especially

where his relationship to Marx in the early 1840’s is concerned. With some help from Wartofsky’s excellent study, these misconceptions will be cleared up thus making it possible to specify what Feuerbach’s philosophy had to offer to the young Marx. The second chapter will examine how Marx, and to a much lesser extent Frederick Engels, employed Feuerbach’s ideas in their own works of 1843-44, and what their plans for future works based on Feuerbach’s philosophy entailed. Engels references to Feuerbach in his writings of this period are sparing, but it is clear that Engels knew Feuerbach’s philosophy well and regarded his ideas very favorably. Marx’s relationship to Feuerbach’s philosophy was quite different As Avineri (1968) has pointed out (pp. 9-10), it was only after reading Feuerbach’s “Theses” in early 1843 that Marx was able to undertake the critique of Hegel’s political philosophy that he had long wanted to write. What Avineri fails to see is that Marx, who used Feuerbach’s transformative method in his “critique” of Hegel, began to adopt Feuerbach’s whole philosophical program after breaking off work on the “Critique.” Thus as Barbalet (1983, p. 36) points out, Marx’s “Introduction” to the “Critique,” written only a few months later, “proposes the entire Feuerbachian programme” - the inversion of Hegel’s idealism, the rejection of the speculative dialectic, the primacy of “man” in philosophy, and the necessity of Franco-German unity in reforming philosophy. I will argue in this chapter that it was Marx’s adoption of Feuerbach’s whole program in mid-1843 that generated his critique of his old friend and teacher Bruno Bauer in “On the Jewish Question,” his critique of off-and-on collaborator Arnold Ruge in “The King of Prussia

and later the critique of Bauer and his

followers again in The Holy Family with Engels. All of these works centered on the defense of Feuerbach’s philosophy against its critics. Another thread of Marx’s development began in late 1843 when he began an intensive study of political economy. As Marx read the political economists and discovered the many unresolved contradictions in their works (e.g., economic

efficiency vs. ethics, the simultaneous production of increasing wealth and increasing poverty, the partisan disputes between the monetarists and the physiocrats, and so on), he could hardly help noticing the parallels with the contradictions that Feuerbach had exposed in his studies of theology (e.g., reason vs. belief, the degeneration of notions of human nature as notions of the “alien being” grew more grandiose, and the partisan disputes between Catholic and Protestant theologians). From here it was only a short step for Marx to the realization that political economy could be interpreted as a universal sphere that paralleled in its historical development, its conceptual structure, and its contradictions, the universal sphere of religion, and thus that political economy could be analyzed in terms of Feuerbach’s philosophical principles and the formal structure of Feuerbach’s theory of alienation It was this task that Marx took up in the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts” in mid-1844. In the third chapter, Stimer’s critique of Feuerbach, Hegel, and “modem philosophy” in his book The Ego and His 0wn will be examined Just as Feuerbach’s philosophy largely turns on one crucial point, his inversion of the subject and predicate of speculative philosophy (his transformative method), Stimer’s critique of contemporary philosophy turned on the same inversion applied to Feuerbach’s basic concepts. Thus where Feuerbach argues that the predicates. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hess, Moses. 1845. “The Recent Philosophers.” Pp. 359-375 in The Young Hegelians, edited by Lawrence Stepelevich. Cambridge Cambridge University Press. 1983. Hirsch, Helmut 1978. “The Ugly Marx: Analysis o f An ‘Outspoken AntiSemite’.” Philosophical Forum 8:150-166. Hodges, Donald C. 1966. “The Young Marx - a Reappraisal.” Pp. 19-35 in Marx 's Socialism, edited by Shlomo Avineri. New York: Lieber-Atherton. 1973. Hook, Sidney.

1936. From Hegel to Marx. London: Victor Gollancz.

______ 1975. Revolution, Reform, and Social Justice. New York: New York University Press. Hunt, E.K. 1978. “A Comment on William Leogrande’s Approach to The ‘Young Marx’.” Science and Society 42:84-89. Jordan, Z.A. 1967. The Evolution o f Dialectical Materialism. New York: St) Martin’s.

Kain, Philip J. 1983. “History, Knowledge, and Essence in the Early Marx.” Studies in Soviet Thought 25:261-283. ______ 1986. M arx’s Method, Epistemology, and Humanism. Rolland: D. Reidel. Kamenka, Eugene. 1970. The Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach. New York: Praeger. 1972. The Ethical Foundations o f Marxism. Second edition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kitching, Gavin. 1988. Karl Marx and the Philosophy o f Praxis. London: Routledge. Korsch, Karl. 1923, Marxism and Philosophy. London: Nib. 1970. Larrain, Jorge. 1986. A Reconstruction o f Historical Materialism. London: Allen & Unwin. Leogrande, William. 1977. “An Investigation Controversy.” Science and Society Xli:129-151.

Into the

‘Young

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______ 1978. “Marx, Feuerbach, and the Essence o f Man: A Reply to E.K. Hunt” Science and Society Xlii:211-218. Lichtheim, George. 1965. Marxism. Second Edition. New York: Praeger. ______ 1971. From Marx to Hegel. New York: Seabury Press. Lobkowicz, Nicolaus. 1967. Theory and Practice. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press. ______ 1969. “Karl Marx and Max Stimer.” Pp. 64-95 in Demythologizing Marxism, edited by Kenneth Adelman. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. McBride, William Leon. 1977. The Philosophy o f Marx. London: Hutchinson. McLellan, David. 1969. The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx. London: Mcmillan. 1970. Marx Before Marxism. New York: Harper and Row. 1971. The Thought o f Karl Marx. New York: Harper. 1973. Karl Marx:His Life and Thought. New York: Harper & Row.

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Index Absolute Spirit, 146 Alienation, 73, 224-231 Althusser, Louis, 4-8,103,143-145, 153,166, 207, 223,224, 229 Appelbaum, Richard P., 223 Arvon, Henri, 219,223 Avineri, Shlomo, 2-4,7,11,16,17, 38, 60-64, 223-226 Ballestrem, Karl G., 164-166,223 Barbalet, J.M., 6, 7, 11, 14,19, 38, 47,48, 64,143-145, 152,153,167, 212, 223 Baronovitch, L., 224 Bauer, Bruno, 11, 13, 18,47,57-61, 66, 92, 96, 97,101,106,111-114, 126,127,139,146, 158,174,178, 183,198, 208, 209, 210, 219-221, 224, 230 Bell, Daniel, 1,16, 224 Berlin, Isaiah, 18, 92,103, 111, 141, 174, 217,219, 224 Brazill, William J., 224 Breckman, Warren, 224 Brudney, Daniel, 224 Capital, 2, 106, 228 Capitalism, 225 Carver, Terrell, 224 Christianity, 10,15, 20-24, 59,61, 86,109,119,130,146,147,169, 208, 225 Clarke, Simon, 224 Communism, 80-84,169, 220 Cullen, Bernard, 224 Cunningham, Frank, 225 Dialectic, 85, 223, 226

Dupre, Louis, 224 Egoism, 115,149 Engels, Frederick, 2, 8-11, 14-21, 57-67, 73, 91, 92,95, 97, 99,101115,139-146,152-158,161,164, 173,175,208-213, 217-221, 224, 228, 229 Exchange, 230 Ferguson, Adam, 164 Fembach, David, 225 Fetscher, Iring, 225 Feuer, Louis., 2,16, 225 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 1, 3, 4,5, 7-68, 72-122,127,134-137,139,140, 142-163,166-187, 198, 199, 207214,217-221,224-231 Fromm, Erich, 2,16,225 Gagem, Michael., 225 Garaudy, Roger, 217,225 Giddens, Anthony, 1,225 Goldstick, Dan, 225 Gordon, David, 225 Gordon, Frederick Michael, 19,38, 107-109,158,163,168,170, 211, 212,219, 226 Gregor, A . James, 226 Hanfi, Zawar, 32,225,226 Harrington, Michael, 2,16,226 Hegel, G.W.F., 3,10-24, 31-38, 4048,53-66,73, 85-92, 96-102,106, 107,111,117,119,134-139,153, 156,159,162,163,166,174,175, 192,193, 207, 209,210, 217, 223230 Henry, Michel, 6, 7, 219, 226

Hess, Moses, 14, 21, 62, 63,104, 106,110, 112, 115, 139, 141, 142, 145-153, 155,173,211,218-221, 226,230 Hirsch, Helmut, 226 Hodges, Donald C., 226 Hook, Sidney, 2,15, 16, 46,47,104, 112,143,226 Humanism, 135,224-227 Hunt, E.K., 226,227 Idealism, 115 Ideology, 2, 6, 9, 14, 104-108, 112, 143, 144, 164, 165, 173,174,189, 210, 213, 214, 217-220,223,228, 229 Jewish question, 61,209 Jordan, Z.A., 226 Kain, Philip J, 227 Kamenka, Eugene, 227 Kant, I., 32, 195 Kant, Imanuel, 32, 195 Kapp, Christian, 18 Kitching, Gavin, 227 Korsch, Karl, 1, 227 Labor, 70, 124, 223 Larrain, Jorge, 227 Leogrande, William, 5, 6, 226, 227 Liberalism, 122-133, 195 Liberalism, humane, 126, 133 Liberalism, political, 122, 131 Liberalism, social, 125, 132 Lichtheim, George, 227 Lobkowicz, Nicolaus, 141,142,217220, 227 Love, 52 Lovell, Terry, 224 Mah, Harold, 228 Martin, James J., 218, 219, 226, 228, 230, 231 Marx, Karl, 1-21, 31, 38, 46-48, 53, 56-112, 115, 122, 134,139-146, 151-231 Materialism, 226, 227

McBride, William Leon, 227 McLellan, David, 57-66, 92, 104106,142,156,164,173,219,227 Mehring, Franz, 229 Meszaros, Istv an, 2-7, 16-19,142, 143, 153,229 Mill, James, 66, 67, 70-77,217,228 Moore, Stanley, 229 Moroziuk, Russel P, 229 Moroziuk, Russel P., 229 Oakley, Allen, 229 Oilman, Bertell, 229 Olsen, Richard E., 6,229 Owner, The, 128-131 Ownness, 128, 129 Paterson, R.W.K., 111,112, 141, 158,219,229 Philosophy, 3, 10,17, 18, 21-23,31, 34,60,64,82-85,97,148,208, 217, 224-231 Political economy, 69 Practice, 227 Praxis, 227 Private property, 85 Protestantism, 35, 123, 146 Proudhon, P.J, 73, 92-94 Realism, 115 Reason, 49 Religion, 27-29,39, 51, 109, 230 Resch, Robert Paul, 229 Revolution, 97, 226 Rights, 196 Roberts, Paul Craig, 230 Robins, Kevin, 224 Rockmore, Tom, 230 Rotenstreich, Nathan, 61,143, 230 Ruge, Arnold, 11, 47,62,112,158 Russell, Bertrand, 230 Sass, Hans Martin, 230 Schacht, Richard, 230 Schelling, Friedrich, 17, 32,58 Schmidt, Karl, 103, 230 Schwegler, Albert, 230

Scottish Enlightenment, 164,165 Seither, Victor Jeleniewski, 224 Self-consciousness, 87,94 Sensuous being, 23 Silberner, Edmund, 63,230 Smith, Adam, 164 Socialism, 80, 84,146,174, 223-226 Species Being, 81 Spirit, 96, 118, 130,146,149 State, The, 123-127,132,133,136, 147,148 Stepelevich, Lawrence S., 224,226, 230 Stephenson, Matthew A., 230 Stimer, Max, 9-14,59,103-137,140, 141,145, 146, 148-155,158-163,

168-171,174,176,178, 179,183, 184,186-204, 207, 210-214, 217221,226-231 Strauss, David, 57, 58, 60,178 Swingewood, Alan, 230 Szeliga, 112 Taylor, Charles, 230 Theology, 45 Thomas, Paul, 9, 14, 174, 231 Torrance, John, 6, 94,231 Tucker, Robert C., 2, 8, 231 Walliman, Isidor, 231 Wartovsky, Marx W., 20,231 Will, 77 Wolfson, Murray, 6,231 Zeleny, Jindrich, 6,231

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