The correct place ofKarl Marx's early writings within his system as a whole has been a matter of great controversy. Some believe there is abreak in Marx's development that divides his thought into two periods: the "Young Marx" is said to be a thinker who deals with the problem ofalienation, while the "Mature Marx" is said to aspire to ascientific socialism.[1]
The debate centers on the reasons for Marx's transition fromphilosophy to the analysis of moderncapitalist society. The controversy arose with the posthumous publication of the works that Marx wrote before 1845[2] — particularly theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844[1] — which had been unavailable to earlier generations of Marxists.[3] These writings, first published between 1927 and 1932,[4] provide a philosophical background to the economic, historical and political works that Marx had hitherto been known for.[5]
Orthodox Marxism follows apositivist reading that sees Marx as having made a progressive change towards scientific socialism.Marxist humanism, on the other hand, sees continuity between theHegelian philosophicalhumanism of the early Marx and the work of the later Marx.[6]
The majority of the texts that are classed as belonging to Marx's "early writings" - his writings from the early 1840s - were not published during his lifetime. Some of the most important of these, such as theCritique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, were not written for publication.[7] While Marx preserved his study notebooks from this period, he showed little interest in either publishing the unpublished works, or retaining his published works such asThe Holy Family.[8]
An effort at unearthing Marx's early writings was undertaken byFranz Mehring, who in 1902 published a collectionAus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, und Ferdinand Lassalle, which contained previously published works of Marx such asThe Holy Family and his articles for theDeutsch–Französische Jahrbücher.[9] It was not until 1927 that the early writings began to appear more fully, as part of theMarx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe edition. TheMEGA included scholarly versions of theCritique, theManuscripts and Marx'sNotes on James Mill. However, this project was cancelled shortly after it was begun. Marx's early writings did not become more widely disseminated until many years later, with satisfactory editions of theManuscripts appearing in English only in 1956, and in French in 1962.[10]
One reason for the lack of interest from Marx in his earlier writings was their basis in the philosophy ofGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In his lifetime, Marx was not well-known outside of a small circle until 1867, when the first volume ofCapital was published. By this time, Hegel was seen as long out of date, and no importance was attached to his influence on Marx.[11] Marx was instead viewed as aneconomist who had set out to prove scientifically the inevitable decline of capitalism.[12]
The intellectual development of the Marxists of theSecond International such asKarl Kautsky,Georgi Plekhanov,Eduard Bernstein andHeinrich Cunow took place in a cultural climate dominated byDarwinism.[5] This interest in Darwinism was shared byFriedrich Engels. In the later years of Marx's life and shortly after Marx's death, Engels published a number of philosophical works:Anti-Duhring,The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State andLudwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.[5] These writings were seen to provide a general philosophical theory that was absent in Marx himself.[13] It was primarily through these later works of Engels that the first generation of Marxists were attracted to Marxism.[14] For them, Marxism was an objective and scientific doctrine of the laws of social development - a "scientific socialism" free from anyethical ormetaphysical elements.[15]
The factors contributing to a delay of interest in the young Marx were not merely intellectual, but also political. The publication of Marx's early writings arrived against a backdrop of Marxism being increasingly identified with theSoviet Union and an"orthodox" interpretation of Marxist theory that had been codified by theThird International. This version of Marxism struggled to reconcile Marx’s early works with its own ideological framework. The editor of theMarx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe,David Ryazanov, was forced into internal exile within the Soviet Union, before being executed in the great purges in 1938.[16] Soviet Marxism dismissed Marx's early writings as a theoretical dead end. A conspicuous example of this is the decision by theEast German Institute of Marxism-Leninism to exclude theEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts from itsMarx-Engels Werke and publish them in a separate volume.[17]
In other quarters, the early writings were welcomed precisely because they appeared to cast doubt on the authority of Soviet Marxism.[16] Prior to their discovery, the groundwork for an understanding of their importance had been laid by two books published in 1923 -Karl Korsch'sMarxism and Philosophy andGyörgy Lukács'sHistory and Class Consciousness. Korsch and Lukács emphasized the Hegelian element to Marx, seeming to criticize official Marxism from the more open and critical position of the young Marx.[18]
In 1932, an alternative volume of theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts edited bySiegfried Landshut andJ-P Mayer appeared. Landshut and Mayer claimed that theManuscripts revealed the previously hidden thread that ran throughout Marx’s entire output, allowing his later work to be understood properly for the first time.[19]Herbert Marcuse argued that theManuscripts demonstrated the philosophical foundations of Marxism, putting "the entire theory of 'scientific socialism' on a new footing".[20] Similarly, in theManuscriptsMarshall Berman believed he had discovered "something special": "Marx, but not communism".[21]
The Young Marx is usually still considered part ofhumanist "bourgeois" philosophy, which Marx later criticized along withGerman idealism. Marx viewedsocial relations as taking precedence overindividualconsciousness - a product ofideology according to him.Marxist humanists stressed the humanistic philosophical foundations of Marx's thought by focusing on theEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In this work, Marx expounds histheory of alienation, which echoes many of the themes ofLudwig Feuerbach'sThe Essence of Christianity (1841).
The theory prominent in theManuscripts is a "return tospecies-being" - a normative,anthropological theory.[22] Some commentators suggest that the later Marx abandons this idea in favour of a structural description.Sidney Hook,[23]Daniel Bell andLewis Feuer[24] hold that the change in mode of exposition in Marx's magnum opusCapital corresponds to a change in his ideas.[25] An extreme representative of this position is theMarxist philosopherLouis Althusser, who argues that the young Marx can not be read while presupposing "fully-developed Marxism". Althusser thus poses the question of how one may conceive the transformation of Marx's thought without adopting anidealist perspective. Althusser wishes to avoid ateleological view, which holds that Marx's early writings express the contents of the Mature Marx's theory in a nascent state using Feuerbachian language.[26] For Althusser, this would mark a return toGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's spiritualdialectics.
Jean-Yves Calvez,[27]Robert C. Tucker,[28]David McLellan,Iring Fetscher,[29]Shlomo Avineri,[30]István Mészáros[31] andLeszek Kołakowski deny there is any break between the Young Marx and the Old Marx.[25]Siegfried Landshut,J-P Mayer,Heinrich Popitz,[32] andErich Fromm[33] hold that the theory of the early Marx is richer than the more intellectually restricted theory of the later Marx. Commentators such asBenedetto Croce,Karl Löwith and Sidney Hook argue that the later Marx abandonsHegelianism completely, a view disparaged byGyörgy Lukács, Iring Fetscher, Robert C. Tucker and Shlomo Avineri.[34]
Ernest Mandel distinguishes three different positions with respect to the controversy:[35]
(1) The position of those who try to deny that there is any difference between theEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts andCapital, and find the essentials of the theses ofCapital already present in theManuscripts.
(2) The position of those who consider that compared to the Marx ofCapital, the Marx of theManuscripts sets out in a more "total" and "integral" way the problem of alienated labor, especially by giving an ethical, anthropological, and even philosophical dimension to the idea; these people either contrast the two Marxs or else "re-evaluate"Capital in the light of theManuscripts.
(3) The position of those who consider that the conceptions of the young Marx of theManuscripts on alienated labor not only contradict the economic analysis ofCapital but were an obstacle that made it difficult for the young Marx to accept thelabor theory of value. For the extreme representatives of this school, the concept of alienation is a "pre-Marxist" concept which Marx had to overcome before he could arrive at a scientific analysis of capitalist economy.
— Ernest Mandel,The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, p. 164
Mandel views all of these as erroneous. The first school fails to recognize the significant evolution in Marx's thinking.[36] The second school romanticizes the young Marx and misrepresents the mature Marx's focus on socio-economic analysis.[37] The third school ignores the fact that Marx continued to employ the concept of alienation in his mature works like theGrundrisse.[38]
Mandel's view is that Marx's concept of alienation evolved from a philosophical and anthropological to an historical understanding.[39] Initially, Marx viewed alienation through a philosophical lens influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach, focusing on the estrangement of "species being."[40] Through his critique of political economy, Marx transitioned to an historical conception, grounding alienation in specific social relations, particularly thedivision of labor andcommodity production.[39]
Mandel argues that in the mature Marx, alienation manifests in various forms: economic, political, and technical, culminating under capitalist production.[41] For the mature Marx, alienation is no longer rooted in human nature, but in specific historical conditions, particularly commodity production and private ownership of themeans of production. The possibility of overcoming alienation lies in the abolition of these conditions and the establishment of a society based on collective control of production.[42]
Étienne Balibar argues that Marx's works cannot be divided into "economic works" (Das Kapital), "philosophical works" and "historical works" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon or the 1871The Civil War in France).[43] Marx's philosophy is inextricably linked to hiscritique of political economy and to his historical interventions in theworkers' movement, such as the 1875Critique of the Gotha Program. The problematic is also related to Marx's rupture withuniversity and its teachings concerningGerman idealism and his encounter with theproletariat, leading him to write along withFriedrich EngelsThe Communist Manifesto a year before theRevolutions of 1848.Marxism's philosophical roots were commonly explained (for example byVladimir Lenin)[44] as derived from three sources: Englishpolitical economy; Frenchutopian socialism,republicanism andradicalism; and German philosophy.
Vladimir Lenin claimed Marx's first mature work asThe Poverty of Philosophy (1847) in his own workState and Revolution (1917). Louis Althusser, who was a champion of this young–mature dichotomy in his criticisms ofMarxist humanism (Praxis School,John Lewis and the like) andexistential Marxism, claimed in the 1960s thatThe German Ideology (written in 1845), in which Marx criticizedBruno Bauer,Max Stirner and otherYoung Hegelians, marked the break with this young Marx. Furthermore, theTrotskyistErnest Mandel in hisThe Place of Marxism in History (1986) also broke Marx's intellectual development into several different stages. Althusser presented, in hisFor Marx (1965), a number of other opinions:[45]
ForJahn, for example, although they 'still' contain 'a whole series of abstract elements' the 1844 Manuscripts mark 'the birth of scientific socialism'. For Pajitnov, these manuscripts 'form the crucial pivot around which Marx reoriented the social sciences. The theoretical premises of Marxism had been laid down.' For Lapine, 'unlike the articles in theRheinische Zeitung in which certain elements of materialism only appear spontaneously, the 1843 Manuscript witnesses to Marx's conscious passage to materialism', and in fact 'Marx's critique of Hegel starts from materialist positions '(it is true that this 'conscious passage' is called 'implicit' and 'unconscious' in the same article). As forSchaff, he writes squarely 'We know (from later statements of Engels) that Marx became a materialist in 1841'. I am not trying to make an easy argument out of these contradictions (which might at little cost be set aside as signs of an 'open' investigation). But it is legitimate to ask whether this uncertainty about the moment when Marx passed on to materialism, etc., is not related to the spontaneous and implicit use of an analytico-teleological theory.[45]
Louis Althusser popularized the conception of an "epistemological break" between the Young Marx and the mature Marx - the point where Marx broke withideology to enter the domain ofscience - a point generally considered to consist in his break withLudwig Feuerbach. However, theepistemological break, a concept which Althusser drew out ofGaston Bachelard, is not to be conceived as a chronological point, but as a "process", thus making the question of the distinction between a "Young Marx" and a "mature Marx" a problematic one. Althusser characterized Marx'sGerman Ideology andTheses on Feuerbach, written in 1845, as "works of the break", which were then followed by a series oftransitional works from 1845 to 1857, Marx's first Mature Work being the first drafts ofCapital.[46]
Althusser noted that the interest in the Young Marx, that is in the1844 Manuscripts and other early works, was no longer a matter of interest only forWestern Marxism, e.g.Palmiro Togliatti, but also of Soviet studies, first of all, that the very discussion of early Marx carries political tones as theSoviet Union's attitude to the subject is not very approving. He also noted that asJahn had noted that "it was not Marxists who opened the debate on Marx's Early Works", indicating the political stakes surrounding it: "For this attack surprised Marxists on their own ground: that of Marx".[47] Althusser then criticizes the Marxist response to this attack:
To discomfit those who set up against Marx his own youth, the opposite position is resolutely taken up: Marx is reconciled with his youth—Capital is no longer read asOn the Jewish Question,On the Jewish Question is read asCapital ; the shadow of the young Marx is no longer projected on to Marx, but that of Marx on to the young Marx; and a pseudo-theory of thehistory of philosophy in the 'future anterior' is erected to justify this counter-position, without realizing that this pseudo-theory is quite simply Hegelian. A devout fear of a blow to Marx'sintegrity inspires as its reflex a resolute acceptance ofthe whole of Marx: Marx is declared to be a whole, 'the young Marx is part of Marxism 'as if we risked losingthe whole of Marx if we were to submit his youth to the radical critique of history, notthe history he was going to live, butthe history he did live, not an immediate history, but the reflected history for which, in his maturity, he gave us, not the 'truth ' in the Hegelian sense, but the principles of its scientific understanding.[48]
Thereby, Althusser warns against any attempts at reading in ateleological way Marx, that is in claiming that the mature Marx was already in the young Marx and necessarily derived from him:
Capital is anethical theory, the silent philosophy of which is openly spoken in Marx's Early Works. Thus, reduced to two propositions, is the thesis which has had such extraordinary success. And not only in France and in Italy, but also, as these articles from abroad show, in contemporary Germany and Poland. Philosophers, ideologues, theologians have all launched into a gigantic enterprise of criticism andconversion: let Marx be restored to his source, and let him admit at last that in him, the mature man is merely the young man in disguise. Or if he stubbornly insists on his age, let him admit the sins of his maturity, let him recognize that he sacrificed philosophy to economics, ethics to science, man to history. Let him consent to this or refuse it, his truth, everything that will survive him, everything which helps the men that we are to live and think, is contained in these few Early Works. So these good critics leave us with but a single choice: we must admit thatCapital (and 'mature Marxism' in general) iseither an expression of the Young Marx's philosophy, or its betrayal. In either case, the established interpretation must be totally revised and we must return to the Young Marx, the Marx through whom spoke the Truth. This is thelocation of the discussion: the Young Marx. Reallyat stake in it: Marxism. Theterms of the discussion : whether the Young Marx was already and wholly Marx.[49]
Althusser then criticizes the "eclectic" reading of Marx's early works, which instead of reading the text as a "whole", discompose it in various "elements" which it then judges as either "materialist" or "idealist" elements.[50] Marx should not be read in a teleological perspective, which would be a return to Hegel's idealistphilosophy of history, thus he writes:
From the Hegelian viewpoint, Early Works are as inevitable and as impossible as the singular object displayed byJarry:"the skull of the childVoltaire". They are as inevitable as all beginnings. They are impossible becauseit is impossible to choose one's beginnings. Marx did not choose to be born to the thought German history had concentrated in itsuniversity education, nor to think its ideological world. He grew up in this world, in it he learned to live and move, with it he 'settled accounts', from it he liberated himself. I shall return tothenecessity andcontingency of this beginning later. The fact is that there was abeginning, and that to work out the history of Marx's particular thoughts their movement must be grasped at the precise instant when that concrete individual the Young Marx emerged into thethought world of his own time, tothink in it in his turn, and to enter into the exchange and debate with the thoughts of his time which was to be his whole life as an ideologue. At this level of the exchanges and conflicts that are the very substance of thetexts in which his living thoughts have come down to us, it is as if the authors of these thoughts were themselvesabsent. The concrete individual who expresses himself in his thoughts and his writings is absent, so is the actual history expressed in the existing ideological field. As the author effaces himself in the presence of his published thoughts, reducing himself to their rigour, so concrete history effaces itself in the presence of its ideological themes, reducing itself to their system. This double absence will also have to be put to the test. But for the moment, everything is in play between the rigour of a single thought and the thematic system of an ideological field. Their relation is thisbeginning andthis beginning has no end. This is the relationship that has to be thought: the relation between the (internal) unity of a single thought (at each moment of its development) and the existing ideological field (at each moment of its development). But if this relationship is to be thought, so, in the same movement, must its terms.[51]
Marxist humanists do not argue that Marx's thought never developed, but criticise the dichotomy between young and mature as being too rigid, instead emphasizing the continuity in Marx's development. One piece of evidence used by Marxist humanists to highlight the importance of Marx's early works is that Marx himself in 1851 tried to have two volumes of his early writings published.David McLellan andLeszek Kołakowski both note that in the afterword to the second edition ofCapital, vol. 1, published in 1871, Marx makes reference to criticisms of Hegel that he made thirty years prior. They take this to refer to the1844 Manuscripts.[52] Kołakowski further notes that while Marx does not use the term "alienation", the description ofcommodity fetishism found in the first chapter ofCapital is the same as in his earlier works, as is the analogy with religion which he owes to Feuerbach.[53]
François Châtelet denied the existence of a rupture in 1957 between the young Marx and a mature Marx who would have discarded his errors and assume "mastery of his thought". Instead, he considered that the tensions in his thought continued on until his death in 1883.[54] This thesis, concentrating itself on the tensions in Marx's thought instead of an alleged maturity of his thought, would also be upheld byÉtienne Balibar (1993).
Others contended that Althusser's "epistemological break" betweenThe Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) andThe German Ideology (1845), in which some new concepts are forged, is a bit too abrupt, although almost no one contests the radical shifts. Though Althusser steadfastly held onto the claim of its existence, he later asserted that the turning point's occurrence around 1845 was not so clearly defined, as traces of humanism,historicism and Hegelianism were to be found inCapital. He went so far as to state that only Marx'sCritique of the Gotha Programme and some notes[55] on a book byAdolph Wagner were fully free from humanistideology. Althusser considered the epistemological break to be a process instead of a clearly defined event - the product of the incessant struggle against ideology. Althusser believed in the existence ofclass struggle intheory itself. This struggle marked the division point between those philosophers who contented themselves with providing various ideological "interpretations" of the world and those who endeavoured to "transform" the world as Marx had put it in hisTheses on Feuerbach (1845).
Furthermore, other important shifts in Marx's thought have been highlighted (e.g.Étienne Balibar), in particular following the failure of the1848 revolutions, in particular in France withLouis-Napoleon Bonaparte'sDecember 2, 1851 coup d'état and then after the crush of the 1871Paris Commune.
