Young Marx
Encyclopedia
Some theorists consider Karl Marx
's thought to be divided into a "young" period and a "mature" one. There is disagreement to when Marx's thought began to mature, and the problem of the idea of a "Young Marx" is the problem of tracking the development of Marx's works and of its possible unity. The problem thus centres on Marx's transition from philosophy
to economics
, which has been considered by orthodox Marxism as a progressive change towards scientific socialism
. This positivist
reading has however been challenged by Marxist theorists
, like members of the New Left
. They pointed out the humanist side in Marx's work, and how he in his early writings focused on liberation from wage-slavery and freedom from alienation
, that they claimed was a forgotten element of Marx's writings and central to understanding his later work.
Étienne Balibar
claims that Marx's works cannot be divided into "economic works" (Das Kapital
), "philosophical works" and "historical works" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the 1871 Civil War in France
, etc.). Marx's philosophy is inextricably linked to his critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement, such as the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program
: the problematic is also related to Marx's rupture with university
and its teachings concerning German Idealism
and his encounter with the proletariat
, leading him to write, along with Engels
, The Communist Manifesto
a year before the Revolutions of 1848
. Marxism's philosophical roots were commonly explained (for example by Lenin) as derived from three sources: English political economy
; French utopian socialism
, republicanism
and radicalism
; and German idealist philosophy. Although this "three sources" model is an oversimplification, it still has some measure of truth.
"bourgeois" philosophy, which Marx later criticized, along with German Idealism
, on behalf of "social relations" which primed over individual
consciousness
, a product of ideology
according to him. Marxist humanists stressed the humanistic philosophical foundations of Marx's thought by focusing on the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
(first published in 1932, and largely suppressed in the Soviet Union
until the post-Stalinist
"Thaw
"). Marx there expounds his theory of alienation
, adapted from Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity
(1841).
Althusser opposed himself to this movement, arguing that the young Marx couldn't be read while presupposing "fully-developed Marxism". He thus posed the philosophical problem of Marx's evolution as the question of how may one conceive the transformation of Marx's thought without adopting an idealist
perspective which would mark a return to Hegel's spiritualist dialectics and its teleological
perspective (the hen is in the egg as mature Marx would be in the young Marx, the "contents" of his dialectical materialist
philosophy expressed in his earlier works under the "words" of Feuerbach's idealism).
(1847) in his own work State and Revolution
(1917). Marxist philosopher
Louis Althusser
, who was a champion of this 'young' 'mature' dichotomy in his criticisms of Marxist humanism
(Praxis School
, John Lewis
, etc.) and Existential Marxism, claimed in the 1960s that The German Ideology
(written in 1845), in which Marx criticized Bruno Bauer
, Max Stirner
and other Young Hegelians
, marked the break with this young Marx. Furthermore, the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel
in his "the Place of Marxism in History" (1986) also broke Marx's intellectual development into several different stages. Althusser presented, in his For Marx (1965), a number of other opinions:
popularized the conception of an "epistemological break" between the Young Marx and the mature Marx, that is the point where Marx broke with ideology
to enter the domain of science
, a point generally considered to consist in his break with Feuerbach. However, the epistemological break
, a concept which Althusser drew out of Gaston 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 noted that the interest in the Young Marx, that is in the 1844 Manuscripts and other early works, was no longer a matter of interest only for Western Marxism
, e.g. Togliatti
, but also of Soviet studies, first of all, that the very discussion of early Marx carries political tones, as the Soviet Union
's attitude to the subject is not very approving. He also noted that, as Jahn had noted, "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." Althusser then criticizes the Marxist response to this attack:
Thereby, Althusser warns against any attempts at reading in a teleological way Marx, that is in claiming that the mature Marx was already in the young Marx and necessarily derived from him:
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 . Marx shouldn't be read in a finalist and teleological perspective, which would be a return to Hegel's idealist philosophy of history
. Thus, he writes:
François Châtelet
denied the existence of a rupture in 1857 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 . This thesis, concentrating itself on the tensions in Marx's thought instead of an alleged maturity of his thought, would also be upheld by Étienne Balibar
(1993).
Others contended that Althusser's "epistemological break" between The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) and The German Ideology (1845), in which some new concepts are forged, is a bit too abrupt, although almost no one contests the radical shifts. In fact, 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 in Capital. He even went so far as to state that only Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and some notes on a book by Adolph Wagner
were fully free from humanist ideology
. In fact, 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 of class struggle
in theory
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 his Theses on Feuerbach
(1845).
Furthermore, other important shifts in Marx's thought have been highlighted (e.g. Étienne Balibar
), in particular following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, in particular in France with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
's December 2, 1851 coup d'état
, and then after the crush of the 1871 Paris Commune
. This would lead him to substitute, in the first chapter of Das Kapital
(1867), his theory of commodity fetishism
for the theory of alienation expounded in the 1844 Manuscripts.
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's thought to be divided into a "young" period and a "mature" one. There is disagreement to when Marx's thought began to mature, and the problem of the idea of a "Young Marx" is the problem of tracking the development of Marx's works and of its possible unity. The problem thus centres on Marx's transition from philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
to economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, which has been considered by orthodox Marxism as a progressive change towards scientific socialism
Scientific Socialism
Scientific socialism is the term used by Friedrich Engels to describe the social-political-economic theory first pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why this socialism is "scientific socialism" is because its theories are held to an empirical standard, observations are essential to its...
. This positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
reading has however been challenged by Marxist theorists
Marxist philosophy
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
, like members of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
. They pointed out the humanist side in Marx's work, and how he in his early writings focused on liberation from wage-slavery and freedom from alienation
Marx's theory of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
, that they claimed was a forgotten element of Marx's writings and central to understanding his later work.
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar is a French Marxist philosopher. After the death of his teacher Louis Althusser, Balibar quickly became the leading exponent of French Marxist philosophy.- Life and work :...
claims that Marx's works cannot be divided into "economic works" (Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
), "philosophical works" and "historical works" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the 1871 Civil War in France
The Civil War in France
The Civil War in France was a pamphlet written by Karl Marx as an official statement of the General Council of the International on the character and significance of the struggle of the Parisian Communards in the French Civil War of 1871....
, etc.). Marx's philosophy is inextricably linked to his critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement, such as the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program
Critique of the Gotha Program
The Critique of the Gotha Program is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement, with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association...
: the problematic is also related to Marx's rupture with university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
and its teachings concerning German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
and his encounter with the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
, leading him to write, along with Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party is a short 1848 publication written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the...
a year before the Revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...
. Marxism's philosophical roots were commonly explained (for example by Lenin) as derived from three sources: English political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
; French utopian socialism
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
, republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
and radicalism
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
; and German idealist philosophy. Although this "three sources" model is an oversimplification, it still has some measure of truth.
The break with German Idealism
The Young Marx is usually still considered part of humanistHumanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
"bourgeois" philosophy, which Marx later criticized, along with German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, on behalf of "social relations" which primed over individual
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, a product of ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
according to him. Marxist humanists stressed the humanistic philosophical foundations of Marx's thought by focusing on the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by Karl Marx. Not published by Marx during his lifetime, they were first released in 1927 by researchers in the Soviet Union.The notebooks are an early expression of Marx's analysis of...
(first published in 1932, and largely suppressed in the Soviet Union
Philosophy in the Soviet Union
Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-Leninist thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought were repressed...
until the post-Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
"Thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
"). Marx there expounds his theory of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
, adapted from Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity
The Essence of Christianity
The Essence of Christianity is a book written by Ludwig Feuerbach and first published in 1841. It explains Feuerbach's philosophy and critique of religion. Feuerbach's theory of alienation would later be used by Karl Marx.- Influence :...
(1841).
Althusser opposed himself to this movement, arguing that the young Marx couldn't be read while presupposing "fully-developed Marxism". He thus posed the philosophical problem of Marx's evolution as the question of how may one conceive the transformation of Marx's thought without adopting an idealist
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
perspective which would mark a return to Hegel's spiritualist dialectics and its teleological
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
perspective (the hen is in the egg as mature Marx would be in the young Marx, the "contents" of his dialectical materialist
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
philosophy expressed in his earlier works under the "words" of Feuerbach's idealism).
Various breaks
Lenin claimed Marx's first mature work as The Poverty of PhilosophyThe Poverty of Philosophy
Misère de la philosophie, German title Das Elend der Philosophie, English title The Poverty of Philosophy, is a book by Karl Marx published in Paris and Brussels in 1847, where he lived in exile in 1843-1849...
(1847) in his own work State and Revolution
State and Revolution
The State and Revolution , by Vladimir Lenin, describes the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.Citing Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Lenin...
(1917). Marxist philosopher
Marxist philosophy
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
, who was a champion of this 'young' 'mature' dichotomy in his criticisms of Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
(Praxis School
Praxis School
The Praxis school was a Marxist humanist philosophical movement. It originated in Zagreb and Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia, during the 1960s.Prominent figures among the school's founders include Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga of Zagreb and Mihailo Marković of Belgrade...
, John Lewis
John Lewis (philosopher)
John Lewis was a British Unitarian minister and Marxist philosopher and author of many works on philosophy, anthropology, and religion....
, etc.) and Existential Marxism, claimed in the 1960s that The German Ideology
The German Ideology
The German Ideology is a book written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1846. Marx and Engels did not find a publisher. However, the work was later retrieved and published for the first time in 1932 by David Riazanov through the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow...
(written in 1845), in which Marx criticized Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer
Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher and historian. As a student of GWF Hegel, Bauer was a radical Rationalist in philosophy, politics and Biblical criticism...
, Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
and other Young Hegelians
Young Hegelians
The Young Hegelians, or Left Hegelians, were a group of Prussian intellectuals who in the decade or so after the death of Hegel in 1831, wrote and responded to his ambiguous legacy...
, marked the break with this young Marx. Furthermore, the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel
Ernest Mandel
Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter , was a revolutionary Marxist theorist.-Life:...
in his "the Place of Marxism in History" (1986) also broke Marx's intellectual development into several different stages. Althusser presented, in his For Marx (1965), a number of other opinions:
Althusser's "epistemological break"
Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
popularized the conception of an "epistemological break" between the Young Marx and the mature Marx, that is the point where Marx broke with ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
to enter the domain of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, a point generally considered to consist in his break with Feuerbach. However, the epistemological break
Epistemological rupture
The notion of epistemological rupture was introduced by Gaston Bachelard. He proposed that the history of science is replete with "epistemological obstacles"--or unthought/unconscious structures that were immanent within the realm of the sciences, such as principles of division...
, a concept which Althusser drew out of Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, 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 noted that the interest in the Young Marx, that is in the 1844 Manuscripts and other early works, was no longer a matter of interest only for Western Marxism
Western Marxism
Western Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union...
, e.g. Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
, but also of Soviet studies, first of all, that the very discussion of early Marx carries political tones, as the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's attitude to the subject is not very approving. He also noted that, as Jahn had noted, "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." 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 -- CapitalDas KapitalDas Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
is no longer read as On the Jewish QuestionOn the Jewish QuestionOn the Jewish Question is a work by Karl Marx, written in 1843, and first published in Paris in 1844 under the German title Zur Judenfrage in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. It was one of Marx's first attempts to deal with categories that would later be called the materialist conception of...
, On the Jewish Question is read as Capital ; 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 the history of philosophyHistory of philosophyThe history of philosophy is the study of philosophical ideas and concepts through time. Issues specifically related to history of philosophy might include : How can changes in philosophy be accounted for historically? What drives the development of thought in its historical context? To what...
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's integrity inspires as its reflex a resolute acceptance of the whole of Marx : Marx is declared to be a whole, ' the young Marx is part of Marxism ' — as if we risked losing the whole of Marx if we were to submit his youth to the radical critique of history, not the history he was going to live, but the 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.
Thereby, Althusser warns against any attempts at reading in a teleological way Marx, that is in claiming that the mature Marx was already in the young Marx and necessarily derived from him:
"Capital is an ethical 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 and conversion : 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 that Capital (and 'mature Marxism' in general) is either 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 the location of the discussion: the Young Marx. Really at stake in it: Marxism. The terms of the discussion : whether the Young Marx was already and wholly Marx.
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 . Marx shouldn't be read in a finalist and teleological perspective, which would be a return to Hegel's idealist philosophy of history
Philosophy of history
The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history...
. Thus, he writes:
"From the Hegelian viewpoint, Early Works are as inevitable and as impossible as the singular object displayed by JarryAlfred JarryAlfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
: ' the skull of the child VoltaireVoltaireFrançois-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
'. They are as inevitable as all beginnings. They are impossible because it is impossible to choose one's beginnings. Marx did not choose to be born to the thought German history had concentrated in its universityUniversityA university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
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 to the necessityNecessityIn U.S. criminal law, necessity may be either a possible justification or an exculpation for breaking the law. Defendants seeking to rely on this defense argue that they should not be held liable for their actions as a crime because their conduct was necessary to prevent some greater harm and when...
and contingency of this beginning later. The fact is that there was a beginning, 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 the thought world of his own time, to think 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 the texts in which his living thoughts have come down to us, it is as if the authors of these thoughts were themselves absent. 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 this beginning and this 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."
Criticism
Marxist humanists do not argue that Marx's thought never developed but criticise the dichotomy presented ‘young’ and ‘mature’ as being too rigid and not recognising the continuity in Marx‘s development. One piece of evidence used by Marxist humanist 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.François Châtelet
François Châtelet
François Châtelet was a historian of philosophy, political philosophy and professor in the socratic tradition. He was the husband of philosopher Noëlle Châtelet, the sister of Lionel Jospin....
denied the existence of a rupture in 1857 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 . This thesis, concentrating itself on the tensions in Marx's thought instead of an alleged maturity of his thought, would also be upheld by Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar is a French Marxist philosopher. After the death of his teacher Louis Althusser, Balibar quickly became the leading exponent of French Marxist philosophy.- Life and work :...
(1993).
Others contended that Althusser's "epistemological break" between The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) and The German Ideology (1845), in which some new concepts are forged, is a bit too abrupt, although almost no one contests the radical shifts. In fact, 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
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
and Hegelianism were to be found in Capital. He even went so far as to state that only Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and some notes on a book by Adolph Wagner
Adolph Wagner
Adolph Wagner was a German economist and politician, a leading Kathedersozialist and public finance scholar and advocate of Agrarianism...
were fully free from humanist ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
. In fact, 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 of class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
in theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
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 his Theses on Feuerbach
Theses on Feuerbach
The "Theses on Feuerbach" are eleven short philosophical notes written by Karl Marx in 1845. They outline a critique of the ideas of Marx's fellow Young Hegelian philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach...
(1845).
Furthermore, other important shifts in Marx's thought have been highlighted (e.g. Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar is a French Marxist philosopher. After the death of his teacher Louis Althusser, Balibar quickly became the leading exponent of French Marxist philosophy.- Life and work :...
), in particular following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, in particular in France with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
Louis Napoleon may refer to:* Louis Bonaparte or Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, , King Louis I of Holland, brother of Napoleon I* Napoléon Louis Bonaparte , King Louis II of Holland, second son of Louis Bonaparte...
's December 2, 1851 coup d'état
French coup of 1851
The French coup d'état on 2 December 1851, staged by Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte , ended in the successful dissolution of the French National Assembly, as well as the subsequent re-establishment of the French Empire the next year...
, and then after the crush of the 1871 Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
. This would lead him to substitute, in the first chapter of Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
(1867), his theory of commodity fetishism
Commodity fetishism
In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
for the theory of alienation expounded in the 1844 Manuscripts.
See also
- Marxist philosophyMarxist philosophyMarxist philosophy or Marxist theory are terms that cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or that is written by Marxists...
- Marxist humanismMarxist humanismMarxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
- AntihumanismAntihumanismAntihumanism is a term referring to a number of perspectives that are opposed to the project of philosophical anthropology...
- AlienationMarx's theory of alienationMarx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
- New leftNew LeftThe New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
- André GorzAndré GorzAndré Gorz , pen name of Gérard Horst, born Gerhard Hirsch, also known by his pen name Michel Bosquet, was an Austrian and French social philosopher. Also a journalist, he co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur weekly in 1964...
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, founder of existentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual... - C. Wright MillsC. Wright MillsCharles Wright Mills was an American sociologist. Mills is best remembered for his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination in which he lays out a view of the proper relationship between biography and history, theory and method in sociological scholarship...
- Praxis SchoolPraxis SchoolThe Praxis school was a Marxist humanist philosophical movement. It originated in Zagreb and Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia, during the 1960s.Prominent figures among the school's founders include Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga of Zagreb and Mihailo Marković of Belgrade...
- Marx's theory of alienationMarx's theory of alienationMarx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
- Commodity fetishismCommodity fetishismIn Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...