The third manu- script contains 43 large pages divided into two columns and paginated by Marx himself. At the end of the third manuscript (pp. XXXIX-XL) is the Introduction,” which is given in the present volume at the beginning, preceding the text of the first manuscript. The title of Marx’s work and the headings of the various parts of the manuscripts, put in square brackets, were given by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. The parts of the manuscripts are published in the sequence in which Marx put them down, save the “Introduction,” which is given in the begin- ning, and the Critique of Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole which was put in the end in accordance with the reference made by Marx in the “Introduction.” Ed.] I have already given notice in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,² the critique of jurisprudence and political science in the form of a critique of the Hegelian Philos- ophy of Right. In the course of elaboration for publication, the intermingling of crit- icism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various subjects them- selves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult. Moreover the wealth and diversity of the sub- jects to be treated, could have been compressed into one work only in a purely aphoristic style; while an aphoristic presentation of this kind, for its part, would have given the impression of arbitrary systematizing. I shall therefore issue the cri- tique of law, ethics, politics, etc., in a series of distinct, independent pamphlets, and at the end try in a special work to present them again as a connected whole showing the interrelationship of the separate parts, and finally, shall make a critique of the speculative elaboration of that material. For this reason it will be found that the interconnection between political economy and the state, law, ethics, civil life, etc., is touched on in the present work only to the extent to which political economy itself exprofesso³ touches on these subjects. [2. Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Year-Books) was edited by K. Marx and A. Ruge and published in German. The only issue was a double number which appeared in Paris in February 1844. In it were printed Marx’s Zur Judenfrage (On the Jewish Question) and Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts Philosophie. Einleitung (Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction) and Engels’s Umrisse zu einer Kritik der ‘ (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy) and Die Lage Englands (The Position of England). “Past and Present” by Thomas Carlyle.
These works mark the final transition of Marx and Engels to materialism and commu- nism. Differences of principle between Marx and the bourgeois radical Ruge were chiefly responsible for the discontinuation of the journal. Ed.] [3. Particularly. Ed.] It is hardly necessary to assure the reader conversant with political economy that my results have been won by means of a wholly empirical analysis based on a conscientious critical study of political economy. [Whereas the uninformed reviewer who tries to hide his complete ignorance and intellectual poverty by hurling the “utopian phrase”at the positive critic’s head, or again such phrases as “pure, resolute, utterly critical criticism,” the “not merely le- gal but social utterly social society,” the “compact, massy mass,” the “orator- ical orators of the massy mass,”⁴ this reviewer has yet to furnish the first proof that besides his theological family-affairs he has anything to contribute to a discussion of worldly matters.]⁵ [4. Marx refers here to Bruno Bauer who had published in Allgemeine Literatur- Zeitung two long reviews dealing with books, articles and pamphlets on the Jewish question. Most of the quoted phrases are taken from these reviews in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft I, Dezember 1843; Heft 4, März 1844. The expressions “utopian phrase” and “compact mass” can be found in B. Bauer’s article “Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand der Kritik?” published in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft 8, Juli 1844. Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (General Literary Gazette), a German monthly, was published by the young Hegelian B. Bauer in Charlottenburg from December 1843 to October 1844.
K. Marx and F. Engels gave a detailed critical appraisal of this monthly in their book Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Cf. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. Moscow, 1956. Ed.] [5. Passages enclosed in braces were crossed out by Marx in his manuscript. Ed.] It goes without saying that besides the French and English Socialists I have made use of German socialist works as well. The only original German works of substance in this science, however other than Weitling’s writings are the essays by Hess published in Einundzwanzig Bogen,⁶ and Engels’s Umrisse zu einer Kritik der ‘⁷ in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, where, likewise, I indicated in a very general way the basic elements of this work. [Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political economy, positive criticism as a whole and therefore also German posi- tive criticism of political economy owes its true foundation to the scoveries of Feuerbach, against whose Philosophie der Zukunft⁸ and Thesen zur Reform derhilosophie⁹ in the Anecdotis,¹⁰ despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence.] [6. The full title of this collection of articles is Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland). Erster Teil, Zürich und Winterthur, 1843. Ed. [7. Engels’s Outlines: See Appendix to present volume. Ed.] [8. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunfl (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future), Zürich und Winterthur, 1843. Ed.] [9. Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie (Prelim- inary Theses on the Reformation of Philosophy) published in Anekdota. Bd. II. Ed.] [10.
K. Marx and F. Engels gave a detailed critical appraisal of this monthly in their book Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Cf. K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. Moscow, 1956. Ed.] [5. Passages enclosed in braces were crossed out by Marx in his manuscript. Ed.] It goes without saying that besides the French and English Socialists I have made use of German socialist works as well. The only original German works of substance in this science, however other than Weitling’s writings are the essays by Hess published in Einundzwanzig Bogen,⁶ and Engels’s Umrisse zu einer Kritik der ‘⁷ in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, where, likewise, I indicated in a very general way the basic elements of this work. [Besides being indebted to these authors who have given critical attention to political economy, positive criticism as a whole and therefore also German posi- tive criticism of political economy owes its true foundation to the scoveries of Feuerbach, against whose Philosophie der Zukunft⁸ and Thesen zur Reform derhilosophie⁹ in the Anecdotis,¹⁰ despite the tacit use that is made of them, the petty envy of some and the veritable wrath of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence.] [6. The full title of this collection of articles is Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland). Erster Teil, Zürich und Winterthur, 1843. Ed. [7. Engels’s Outlines: See Appendix to present volume. Ed.] [8. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunfl (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future), Zürich und Winterthur, 1843. Ed.] [9. Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie (Prelim- inary Theses on the Reformation of Philosophy) published in Anekdota. Bd. II. Ed.] [10.
This is how Marx abbreviates Anekdota zur neuesten deutschen Philosophie und Publicistik (Unpublished Materials Related to Modern German Philosophy and Writing), a two-volume collection published by A. Ruge in Switzerland. It included Marx’s Notes on the Latest Prussian Instruction to Censors and Luther the Arbiter Be- tween Strauss and Feuerbach, and articles by Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Friedrich Köppen, Arnold Ruge. etc. Ed.] It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins. The less noise they make, the more certain, profound, widespread and enduring is the effect of Feuerbach’s writings, the only writings since Hegel’s Phänomenologie and Logik to contain a real theoretical revolution. In contrast to the critical theologians¹¹ of our day, I have deemed the concluding chapter of the present work the settling of accounts with Hegelian dialectic and Hegelian philosophy as a whole to be absolutely necessary, a task not yet per- formed.
This lack of thoroughness is not accidental, since even the critical theologian remains a theologian. Hence, either he had to start from certain presuppositions of philosophy accepted as authoritative; or if in the process of criticism and as a re- sult of other people’s discoveries doubts about these philosophical presuppo- sitions have arisen in him, he abandons them without vindication and in a cow- ardly fashion, abstracts from them showing his servile dependence on these presuppositions and his resentment at this dependence merely in a negative, unconscious and sophistical manner. [11. Marx has in mind B. Bauer and his followers, who were associated with the Allgemeine Literatur- Zeitung. Ed.] [In this connection the critical theologian is either forever repeating assurances about the purity of his own criticism, or tries to make it seem as though all that was left for criticism to deal with now was some other immature form of criticism out- side itself say eighteenth-century criticism and the backwardness of the masses, in order to divert the observer’s attention as well as his own from the necessary task of settling accounts between criticism and its point of origin Hegelian dialectic and German philosophy as a whole from this necessary raising of modern crit- icism above its own limitation and crudity.
Eventually, however, whenever discov- eries (such as Feuerbach’s) are made about the nature of his own philosophic presuppositions, the critical theologian partly makes it appear as if he were the one who had accomplished this, producing that appearance by taking the results of these discoveries and, without being able to develop them, hurling them in the form of catch-phrases at writers still caught in the confines of philosophy; partly he even manages to acquire a sense of his own superiority to such discoveries by covertly asserting in a veiled, malicious and skeptical fashion elements of the Hegelian dialectic which he still finds lacking in the criticism of that dialectic (which have not yet been critically served up to him for his use) against such criticism not having tried to bring such elements into their proper relation or having been capable of doing so, asserting, say, the category of mediating proof against the category of positive, self-originating truth, etc., in a way peculiar to Hegelian dialectic.
For to the theological critic it seems quite natural that every- thing has to be done by philosophy, so that he can chatter away about purity, reso- luteness, and utterly critical criticism; and he fancies himself the true conqueror of philosophy whenever he happens to feel some “moment” in Hegel¹² to be lacking in Feuerbach for however much he practices the spiritual idolatry of “self- consciousness” and “mind” the theological critic does not get beyond feeling to consciousness.]¹³ On close inspection theological criticism genuinely progressive though it was at the inception of the movement is seen in the final analysis to be nothing but the culmination and consequence of the old philosophical, and especially the Hegelian, transcendentalism, twisted into a theological caricature. This interesting example of the justice in history, which now assigns to theology, ever philosophy’s spot of infection, the further role of portraying in itself the negative dissolution of philos ophy i.e., the process of its decay this historical nemesis I shall demonstrate on another occasion.¹⁴
[12. “Moment” is a technical term in Hegelian philosophy meaning a vital ele- ment of thought. The term is used to stress that thought is a process, and thus that elements in a system of thought are also phases in a movement. Ed.] [13. In Hegel, “feeling” (Empfindung) denotes a relatively low form of mental life in which the subjective and the objective are still confused together. “Conscious- ness” (Bewusstsein) the name given by Hegel to the first major section of his Phe- nomenology of Mind denotes those forms of mental activity where a subject first seeks to comprehend an object. “Self-consciousness” and “mind” denote subse- quent, higher phases in the evolution of “absolute knowledge” or “the absolute.” Ed.] [14. Within a short time, Marx fulfilled this promise in Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, written in collaboration with Engels. See K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Critique, Moscow, 1956. Ed.] [How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach’s discoveries about the nature of philos- ophy required still, for their proof at least, a critical settling of accounts with philo- sophical dialectic will be seen from my exposition itself.]
[12. “Moment” is a technical term in Hegelian philosophy meaning a vital ele- ment of thought. The term is used to stress that thought is a process, and thus that elements in a system of thought are also phases in a movement. Ed.] [13. In Hegel, “feeling” (Empfindung) denotes a relatively low form of mental life in which the subjective and the objective are still confused together. “Conscious- ness” (Bewusstsein) the name given by Hegel to the first major section of his Phe- nomenology of Mind denotes those forms of mental activity where a subject first seeks to comprehend an object. “Self-consciousness” and “mind” denote subse- quent, higher phases in the evolution of “absolute knowledge” or “the absolute.” Ed.] [14. Within a short time, Marx fulfilled this promise in Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, written in collaboration with Engels. See K. Marx and F. Engels, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Critique, Moscow, 1956. Ed.] [How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach’s discoveries about the nature of philos- ophy required still, for their proof at least, a critical settling of accounts with philo- sophical dialectic will be seen from my exposition itself.]