every metamorphosis is in part an elegy on the past and in part
the prologue of a great new poem that is striving for permanent
expression in a chaos of resplendent but fleeting colours. Be
that as it may, we would fain set up a monument to our past
experiences that they may regain in memory the significance
which they have lost in the active affairs of life: and what
more fitting way can we find of doing that than by bringing them
and laying them before the hearts of our parents!
"And so now, when I take stock of the year which I have just
spent here, and in so doing answer your very welcome letter from
Ems, let me consider my position, in the same way as I look on
life altogether, as the embodiment of a spiritual force that
seeks expression in every direction: in science, in art, and in
one's own personality.... On my arrival in Berlin I broke off
all my former connections, paid visits rarely and unwillingly,
and sought to bury myself in science and art.... In accordance
with my ideas at the time, poetry must of necessity be my first
concern, or at least the most agreeable of my pursuits, and the
one for which I most cared; but, as might be expected from my
disposition and the whole trend of my development, it was purely
idealistic. Next I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I
felt a strong impulse to grapple with philosophy. Both studies,
however, were so interwoven that on the one hand I worked
through the Jurist's Heineccius and Thibaut and the Sources
docilely and quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the
first two books of the Pandects of Justinian, while on the other
hand I attempted to evolve a philosophy of law in the sphere of
jurisprudence. By way of introduction I laid down a few
metaphysical principles, and carried this unfortunate work as
far as Public Rights, in all about 300 sheets.
"In this, however, more than in anything else, the conflict
between what is and what ought to be, which is peculiar to
Idealism, made itself disagreeably prominent. In the first place
there was what I had so graciously christened the Metaphysics of
Law, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions, standing
aloof from all established jurisprudence and from every actual
form of legal practice. Then the unscientific form of
mathematical dogmatism in which there is so much beating about
the bush, so much diffuse argumentation without any fruitful
development or vital creation, hindered me from the outset from
arriving at the Truth. A triangle may be constructed and
reasoned about by the mathematician; it is a mere spatial
concept and does not of itself undergo any further evolution; it
must be brought in conjunction with something else, when it
requires other properties, and thus by placing the same thing in
various relationships we are enabled to deduce new relationships
and new truths. Whereas in the concrete expression of the mental
life as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature, and in the
whole of philosophy, the object of our study must be considered
in its development.... The individual's reason must proceed with
its self-contradiction until it discovers its own unity."
In this we perceive the first trace of the Hegelian dialectic in Marx.
We see rigid geometrical forms contrasted with the continually
evolving organism, with social forms and human institutions. Marx had
put up a stout resistance against the influence of the Hegelian
philosophy; nay, he had even hated it and had made mighty efforts to
cling faithfully to his idealism, but in the end he, too, must fall
under the spell of the idea of evolution, in the form which it then
assumed in Hegelian speculation in Germany.
Marx then goes on to speak of his legal studies as well as of his
poems, and thus continues:
"As a result of these various activities I passed many sleepless
nights during my first term, engaged in many battles, and had to
endure much mental and physical excitement; and at the end of it
all I found myself not very much better off, having in the
meanwhile neglected nature, art and society, and spurned
pleasure: such, indeed, was the comment which my body seemed to
make. My doctor advised me to try the country, and so, having
for the first time passed through the whole length of the city,
I found myself before the gate on the Stralau Road.... From the
idealism which I had cherished so long I fell to seeking the
ideal in reality itself. Whereas before the gods had dwelt above
the earth, they had now become its very centre.
"I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the strange, rugged
melody of which had not pleased me. Once again I wished to dive
into the depths of the sea, this time with the resolute
intention of finding a spiritual nature just as essential,
concrete, and perfect as the physical, and instead of indulging
in intellectual gymnastics, bringing up pure pearls into the
sunlight.
"I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled 'Cleantes or on
the Source and Inevitable Development of Philosophy.' In this,
art and science, which had hitherto been kept asunder, were to
some extent blended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even set
about the task of evolving a philosophical, dialectical
exposition of the nature of the Deity as it is manifested in a
pure concept, in religion, in nature, and in history. My last
thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system; and this work,
in course of which I had to make some acquaintance with science,
Schelling and history, and which had occasioned me an infinite
amount of hard thinking, delivers me like a faithless siren into
the hands of the enemy....
"Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitlessness and utter
failure of my intellectual labours, and torn with vexation at
having to make into my idol a view which I had hated, I fell
ill, as I have already told you in a previous letter. On my
recovery I burnt all my poems and material for projected short
stories in the vain belief that I could give all that up; and,
to be sure, so far I have not given cause to gainsay it.
"During my illness I had made acquaintance with Hegel from
beginning to end, as also with most of his disciples. Through
frequent meetings with friends in Stralau I got an introduction
into a Graduates' Club, in which were a number of professors and
Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlin friends. In the
discussions that took place many conflicting views were put
forward, and more and more securely did I get involved in the
meshes of the new philosophy which I had sought to escape; but
everything articulate in me was put to silence, a veritable
ironical rage fell upon me, as well it might after so much
negation."--("Neue Zeit," 16th year, Vol. I., No. 1.)
His father was anything but pleased with this letter. He reproached
Karl with the aimless and discursive way in which he worked. He had
expected that these Berlin studies would lead to something more than
breeding monstrosities and destroying them again. He believed that
Karl would, before everything else, have considered his future career,
that he would have devoted all his attention to the lectures in his
course, that he would have cultivated the acquaintance of people in
authority, that he would have been economical, and that he would have
avoided all philosophical extravagances. He refers him to the example
of his fellow students who attend their lectures regularly and have an
eye to their future:
"Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they
now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure,
whereas my clever and gifted son Karl passes wretched sleepless
nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing
all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to
abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again
to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he
already had, without having gained anything from other people.
At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused,
whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and
attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than
those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health
in order to snatch at the ghost of erudition, which they could
probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in
the society of competent men--with social enjoyment into the
bargain!"
In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate
from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after
having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain
to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not
easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to
new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a
distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would
never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:
Therefore let us, all things daring,
Never from our task recede;
Never sink in sullen silence,
Paralysed in will and deed.
Let us not in base subjection
Brood away our fearful life,
When with deed and aspiration
We might enter in the strife.
His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He
worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions,
and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club
stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno
Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich Koeppen, a master in a
grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated
him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and
looked forward to obtaining a lectureship in some university or
other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings
of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's
subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838,
at the age of fifty-six.
Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked
all the more assiduously at the perfecting of his philosophical
knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order--at
the instigation of Bruno Bauer--to get himself admitted as quickly as
possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer
himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having
served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the
year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of
Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his
friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as
lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities
were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even
possible for Bauer to obtain a professorship; still less could Marx,
who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on
an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was
free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented
itself.
III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE.
Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical
training and with an irrestrainable impulse to enter into the
struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he
understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in
politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be
used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become
ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of
criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being,
or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified
conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune
is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the
weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away
existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for
life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the
clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.
For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the
best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in
polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war--ruthless war--against
the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.
After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field
of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that
of journalism. His material circumstances compelled him, moreover, to
consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this
time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the
foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way
for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon
procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for
editors and contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first
number of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ was published at Cologne. The
editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friendship with
Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin;
and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted
the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold
Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary
undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and
others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of
the _Rheinische Zeitung_, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement
of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In
his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and
political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor
would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed
the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In
October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held
in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were
discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning
landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the
editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely
philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censorship made the way hard for
a paper conducted with such critical acumen, and did not allow the
editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of
Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial
life:
"As editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, in 1842 and 1843 I came up,
for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in
the controversy over so-called material interests. The proceedings of
the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and
parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the
farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and
Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic
questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and
Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself
heard in the columns of the _Rheinische Zeitung_. I declared myself
against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the
studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of
my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took
advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the
_Rheinische Zeitung_, who believed they could reverse the death
sentence passed on that journal as a result of weak management, in
order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."
And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and
Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity,
resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was
about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own
household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his
material existence to his spiritual aspirations.
II.
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.
I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS.
Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the
most important critical period in the intellectual development of
Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy
he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.
Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two
years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines
associated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by
what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be
said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of
French Socialist literature just as assiduously as he did the study of
Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and
printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few passages which
bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May,
1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of
possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more
swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present
society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not
the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."
That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical
criticism. In the following few months, however, he made surprisingly
rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of
history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and
which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless
years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from
Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance
with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not
in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and
social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of
the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as
to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's
"Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of
his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and
asks which is the class that could bring about the liberation of
Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German
revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a
class in chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but
which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The
product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is
the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the
beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting
from natural circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the
masses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the
multitude arising from the acute break-up of society--especially of
the middle class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the
proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,
it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in
itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the
proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely
elevating to a general principle of society what it already
involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."
Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife
in October, 1843, in order to take up the editorship of the
Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed
to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program
of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its
final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more
evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the
fearless criticism of all existing institutions--fearless in the sense
that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from
the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those
who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we
should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved
in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own
principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy,
Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want
to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German
contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors
cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place
politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany
of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political
State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through
Socialist demands, exactly fulfils, in all its modern forms, the
demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason
everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself
everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real
achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State
with itself social truth is evolved."
Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the
embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the
constitution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to
remark that in its history the political State is the expression of
the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not
true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the
treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.
Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and
away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world
in doctrinaire fashion any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down
before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'
We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to
the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."
That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker
propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but
awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past,
inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of
their own action.
II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS.
Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring,
1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the
criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of
Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a
comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political
Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died
in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September,
1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning
of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a
close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.