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.
Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought, but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand, Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man, eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844 Engels was a Utopian—until Marx explained to him the meaning of political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels’ “Criticism of Political Economy” is a very noteworthy performance for a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon. Engels’ contributions to Owen’s “New Moral World” (1843-44) are indeed more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. “The System of Economic Contradictions,” on which Proudhon was working when Engels published his “Outlines,” is couched, as far as the critical side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels. Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had, independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels, on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to be Marx’s salvation. Without Engels’ literary and financial help, Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in exile.