Robert C. Tucker - The Marx-Engels Reader (Chap. 1.1: "Marx on the History of His Opinions") lyrics

The Early Marx Marx on the History of His Opinions This is the preface to Marx's book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, first published in 1859 - The pa**age setting forth the materialist conception of history-one of the few general statements of the theory that Marx gave in his middle and later years-is the locus cla**icus of historical materialism. But the preface is also important as an account by Marx himself of the formative period of Marxism. As such it forms an ap­propriate introduction to the writings of 1837-1846 gathered here in Part I. The "criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy" which he mentions in the third-to-last paragraph is a reference to his work. The German Ideology, written jointly with Engels. * * * I am omitting a general introduction which I had jotted down because on closer reflection any anticipation of results still to be proved appears to me to be disturbing, and the reader who on the whole desires to follow me must be resolved to ascend from the particular to the general. A few indications concerning the course of my own politico-economic studies may, on the other hand, appear in place here. I was taking up law, which discipline, however, I only pursued as a subordinate subject along with philosophy and history. In the year 1842-44, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung1, I experienced for the first time the embarra**ment of having to take part in discussions on so-called material interests. The proceedings of the Rhenish Landtag on thefts of wood and parcelling of landed property, the official polemic which Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasident of the Rhine Province, opened against the Rheinische Zeitung on the conditions of the Moselle peasantry, and finally debates on free trade and protective tariffs provided the first occasions 'for occupying myself with economic questions. On the other hand, at that time when the good will " to go further" greatly outweighed knowledge of the subject, a philosophically weakly tinged echo of French socialism and communism made itself audible in the Rheinische Zeitung. I declared myself against this amateurism, but frankly confessed at the same time in a controversy with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung2 that my previous studies did not permit me even to venture any judgement on the content of the French tendencies. Instead, I eagerly seized on the illusion of the managers of the Rheinische Zeitung, who thought that by a weaker attitude on the part of the paper they could secure a remission of the d**h sentence pa**ed upon it, to withdraw from the public stage into the study. The first work which I undertook for a solution of the doubts which a**ailed me was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right, a work the introduction to which appeared in 1844 in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher3 published in Paris. My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of "civil society," that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy. The investigation of the latter, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, whither I had emigrated in consequence of an expulsion order of M. Guizot. The general result at which I arrived and which, once won, served as a guiding thread for my studies, can be briefly formulated as follows: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or-what is but a legal expression for the same thing-with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution with the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic-in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modem bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production ar,e the last antagonistic form of the social process of production-antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human society to a close. Frederick Engels, with whom, since the appearance of his brilliant sketch on the criticism of the economic categories ( in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher), I maintained a constant exchange of ideas by correspondence, had by another road (compare his The Condition of the Working Cla** in England in 1844) arrived at the same result as I, and when in the spring of 1845 he also settled in Brussels, we resolved to work out in common the opposition of our view to the ideological view of German philosophy, in fact, to settle accounts with our erstwhile philosophical conscience. The resolve was carried out in the form of a criticism of post-Hegelian philosophy. The man*script, two large octavo volumes, had long reached its place of publication in Westphalia when we received the news that altered circumstances did not allow of its being printed. We abandoned the man*script to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly as we had achieved our main purpose-self-clarification. Of the scattered works in which we put our views before the public at that time, now from one aspect, now from another, I will mention only the Manifesto of the Communist Party, jointly written by Engels and myself, and Discours sur le libre échange published by me. The decisive points of our view were first scientifically, although only polemically, indicated in my work published in 1847 and directed against Proudhon : Misere de la Philosophie, etc. A dissertation written in German on Wage Labour, in which I put together my lectures on this subject delivered in the Brussels German Workers' Society, was interrupted, while being printed, by the February Revolution and my consequent forcible removal from Belgium. The editing of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1848 and 1849, and the subsequent events, interrupted my economic studies which could only be resumed in the year 1850 in London. The enormous material for the history of political economy which is accumulated in the British Museum, the favourable vantage point afforded by London for the observation of bourgeois society, and finally the new stage of development upon which the latter appeared to have entered with the discovery of gold in California and Australia, determined me to begin afresh from the very beginning and to work through the new material critically. These studies led partly of themselves into apparently quite remote subjects on which I had to dwell for a shorter or longer period. Especially, however, was the time at my disposal curtailed by the imperative necessity of earning my living. My contributions, during eight years now, to the first English-American newspaper, the New York Tribune, compelled an extraordinary scattering of my studies, since I occupy myself with newspaper correspondence proper only in exceptional cases. However, articles on striking economic events in England and on the Continent constituted so considerable a part of my contributions that I was compelled to make myself familiar with practical details which lie outside the sphere of the actual science of political economy. This sketch of the course of my studies in the sphere of political economy is intended only to show that my views, however they may be judged and however little they coincide with the interested prejudices of the ruling cla**es, are the results of conscientious investigation lasting many years. But at the entrance to science, as at the entrance to hell, the demand must be posted: Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto; Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta.4 Footnotes: 1. Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish Gazette) : A daily radical newspaper published in Cologne in 1842-43; From October 15, 1842, to March 18, 1843, its editor was Marx. 2. Marx has in mind his article, "Der Kommunismus und die Augsburger All­ gemeine Zeitung" ( Communism and the Augsburg General Journal) , Marx­Engels Gesamtausgabe, Abt. I, B. I, Halbband I, Frankfurt am Main, 1927, S. 260-65. 3. Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (German-French Annals) : Organ of revolutionary and communist propa­ganda, published by Marx in Paris in 1844 4. Here all mistrust must be abandoned And here must perish every craven thought. (Dante. The Divine Comedy)