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SELECTED ESSAYS

BY

KARL MARX

TRANSLATED BY H.J. STENNING

Essay Index Reprint Series

BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK

First Published 1926

Reprinted 1968

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:

68-16955

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

The present volume consists of a translation of some of Karl Marx's principal writings during the six years 1844-1850.

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In 1843 Marx was twenty-five years old. He had just married, apparently on the strength of the modest salary he was to receive for editing, jointly with Arnold Ruge, a periodical called the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher (Franco-German Annuals), the purpose of which was to promote the union of German philosophy with French social science. Only one double-number of this journal ap-

peared in 1844. It contained Marx's criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right and his exposition of the social significance of the

Jewish question, in the form of a review of two works by Bruno Bauer. Translations of both articles are given in this volume.

They possess a special interest for the Marxian student, as they exhibit the grafting of a materialist philosophy upon the idealist philosophy of Hegel, and show the employment of the Hegelian dialectic in the investigation of political and historical questions.

It was not long before Marx and Ruge became intellectually estranged, and the third essay, "The King of Prussia and Social Reform," which appeared in the Paris socialist journal Vorwarts, contains a severe polemic against Ruge. In the same organ Marx published an elaborate defence of Engels in particular and communists in general from the strictures of Karl Heinzen, a radical republican politician. In both essays Marx ranges over a wide field, and develops his own views upon economic, political and historical questions.

The essay on Proudhon emphasizes the special merits of that writer as a pioneer of economic criticism, and forms a counterweight to Marx's devastating criticism of Proudhon in the "Poverty of Philosophy." This piece and the sketch of French materialism are extracted from Die Heilige Familie (The Holy Family), a comprehensive work of satirical criticism, in which Marx and Engels (whose share in writing the book was a very small one), settled accounts with their philosophic conscience.

The critique of the views of M. Guizot upon the English and French middle-class revolutions appeared in the Neue Rhenische

Revue (New Rhenish Review), a periodical which Marx and Engels edited from London in 1850.

H.J.S.

CONTENTS PAGE

A CRITICISM OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT 11

ON THE JEWISH QUESTION 40

ON THE KING OF PRUSSIA AND SOCIAL REFORM 98

MORALISING CRITICISM AND CRITICAL MORALITY: A POLEMIC AGAINST KARL HEINZEN 134

PROUDHON 171

FRENCH MATERIALISM 180

THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 196

SELECTED ESSAYS

A CRITICISM OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHTToC

As far as Germany is concerned the criticism of religion is practically completed, and the criticism of religion is the basis of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is threatened when its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis[1] has been refuted.

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He who has only found a reflexion of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven where he looked for a superman, will no longer be willing to find only the semblance of himself, only the sub-human, where he seeks and ought to find his own reality.

The foundation of the criticism of religion is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion indeed is man's self-con- sciousness and self-estimation while he has not found his feet in the universe. But Man is no [12]abstract being, squatting outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This State, this society produces religion, which is an inverted world-con-

sciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic Point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human being, inasmuch as the human being possesses no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious misery is in one mouth the expression of real misery, and in another is a protestation against real misery. Religion is the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to abandon the illusions about their condition is a demand to abandon a condition which requires illusions. [13]The criticism of religion therefore contains potentially the criticism of the Vale of Tears whose aureole is religion.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers which adorned the chain, not that man should wear his fetters denuded of fanciful em-

bellishment, but that he should throw off the chain, and break the living flower.

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he thinks, acts, shapes his reality like the disillusioned man come to his senses, so that he revolves around himself, and thus around his real sun. Religion is but the illusory sun which revolves around man, so long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is therefore the task of history, once the thither side of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of the hither side.

The immediate task of philosophy, when enlisted in the service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape, now that it has been unmasked in its holy shape. Thus the criticism of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of right, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

[14]The following essay--a contribution to this work--is in the first place joined not to the original, but to a copy, to the German

philosophy of politics and of right, for no other reason than because it pertains to Germany.

If one should desire to strike a point of contact with the German status quo, albeit in the only appropriate way, which is negatively, the result would ever remain an anachronism. Even the denial of our political present is already a dust-covered fact in the historical lumber room of modern nations. If I deny the powdered wig, I still have to deal with unpowdered wigs. If I deny the German conditions of 1843, I stand, according to French chronology, scarcely in the year 1789, let alone in the focus of the present.

German history flatters itself that it has a movement which no people in the historical heaven have either executed before or will execute after it. We have in point of fact shared in the restoration epoch of modern nations without participating in their revolutions.

We were restored, in the first place, because other nations dared to make a revolution, and, in the second place, because other nations suffered a counter revolution: in the first [15]place, because our masters were afraid, and, in the second place, because they regained their courage.

Led by our shepherds, we suddenly found ourselves in the society of freedom on the day of its interment.

As a school which legitimates the baseness of to-day by the baseness of yesterday, a school which explains every cry of the serf against the knout as rebellious, once the knout becomes a prescriptive, a derivative, a historical knout, a school to which history only shows itself a posteriori, like the God of Israel to his servant Moses, the historical juridical school would have invented German history, were it not itself an invention of German history.

On the other hand, good-humoured enthusiasts, Teutomaniacs by upbringing and freethinkers by reflexion, seek for our history of freedom beyond our history in the Teutonic primeval woods. But in what respect is our freedom history distinguished from the freedom history of the boar, if it is only to be found in the woods? Moreover, as one shouts into the wood, so one's voice comes back in

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answer ("As the question, so the answer"). Therefore peace to the Teutonic primeval woods.

[16]But war to German conditions, at all events! They lie below the level of history, they are liable to all criticism, but they remain a

subject for criticism just as the criminal who is below the level of humanity remains a subject for the executioner.

Grappling with them, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is no anatomical knife, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it will not refute but destroy. For the spirit of the conditions has been refuted. In and for themselves they are no memorable objects, but existences as contemptible as they are despised. Criticism has already settled all accounts with this subject. It no longer figures as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential work is denunciation.

What we have to do is to describe a series of social spheres, all exercising a somewhat sluggish pressure upon each other, a general state of inactive dejection, a limitation which recognizes itself as much as it misunderstands itself, squeezed within the framework of a governmental system, which, living on the conservation of all meannesses, is itself nothing less than meanness in government.

[17]What a spectacle! On the one hand, the infinitely ramified division of society into the most varied races, which confront each other with small antipathies, bad consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and precisely because of the ambiguous and suspicious positions which they occupy towards each other, such positions being devoid of all real distinctions although coupled with various formalities, are treated by their lords as existences on sufferance. And even more. The fact that they are ruled, governed, and owned they must acknowledge and confess as a favour of heaven! On the other hand, there are those rulers themselves whose greatness is in inverse proportion to their number.

The criticism which addresses itself to this object is criticism in hand-to-hand fighting, and in hand-to-hand fighting, it is not a question of whether the opponent is a noble opponent, of equal birth, or an interesting opponent; it is a question of meeting him. It is thus imperative that the Germans should have no opportunity for self-deception and resignation. The real pressure must be made more oppressive by making men conscious of the pressure, and the disgrace more disgraceful by publishing it.

[18]Every sphere of German society must be described as the partie honteuse[2] of German society, these petrified conditions must be made to dance by singing to them their own melody! The people must be taught to be startled at their own appearance, in order to implant courage into them.

And even for modern nations this struggle against the narrow-minded actuality of the German status quo cannot be without interest, for the German status quo represents the frank completion of the ancien regime, and the ancien regime is the concealed defect of the modern State. The struggle against the German political present is the struggle against the past of modern nations, which are still vexed by the recollections of this past. For them it is instructive to see the ancien regime, which enacted its tragedy with them,

playing its comedy as the German revenant. Its history was tragic so long as it was the pre-existing power of the world, and freedom, on the other hand, a personal invasion, in a word, so long as it believed and was obliged to believe in its justification. So long as the ancien regime as the existing world order struggled with a [19]nascent world, historical error was on its side, but not personal perversity. Its downfall was therefore tragic.

On the other hand, the present German regime, which is an anachronism, a flagrant contradiction of the generally recognized

axiom of the obsolescence of the ancien regime, imagines that it believes in itself, and extorts from the world the same homage. If

it believed in its own being, would it seek to hide it under the semblance of an alien being and look for its salvation in hypocrisy and sophistry? The modern ancien regime is merely the comedian of a world order whose real heroes are dead.

History is thorough, and passes through many phases when it bears an old figure to the grave. The last phase of a world historical figure is its comedy. The gods of Greece, once tragically wounded to death in the chained Prometheus of AEschylus, were fated to die a comic death in Lucian's dialogues. Why does history take this course? In order that mankind may break away in a jolly mood from its past.

In the light of this historical foresight, the political powers of Germany are vindicated. [20]As soon then as the modern politico-so- cial reality is itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to find its object.

To take an example! The relation of industry, and of the world of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the chief problems of modern times. Under what form is this problem beginning to engage the attention of Germans? Under the form of protective tariffs, of the system of prohibition, of political economy. Teutomania has passed out of men and gone into matter, and thus one fine day we saw our cotton knights and iron heroes transformed into patriots. Thus in Germany we are beginning to recognize the sovereignty of monopoly at home, in order that it may be invested with sovereignty abroad. We are now beginning in Germany

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at the point where they are leaving off in France and England.

The old rotten condition, against which these countries are theoretically in revolt, and which they only tolerate as chains are borne, is greeted in Germany as the dawning of a [21]splendid future, which as yet scarcely dares to translate itself from cunning[3] theory into the most ruthless practice. Whereas the problem in France and England reads: Political economy or the rule of society over wealth, it reads in Germany: national economy or the rule of private property over nationality. Thus England and France are faced with the question of abolishing monopoly which has been carried to its highest point; in Germany the question is to carry monopoly to its highest point.

If, therefore, the total German development were not in advance of the political German development, a German could at the most take part in present-day problems only in the same way as a Russian can do so.

But if the individual is not bound by the ties of a nation, the entire nation is even less liberated by the emancipation of an individual. The Scythians made no advance towards Greek culture because Greece numbered a Scythian among her philosophers. Luckily we Germans are no Scythians.

As the old nations lived their previous [22]history in imagination, in mythology, so we Germans live our history to come in thought, in philosophy. We are philosophical contemporaries of the present without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy

is the ideal prolongation of German history. If, therefore, we criticize the oeuvres posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, instead of the oeuvres incompletes of our real history, our criticism occupies a position among the questions of which the present says: that is the question.[4] That which represents the decaying elements of practical life among the progressive nations with modern State conditions first of all becomes critical decay in the philosophical reflexion of these conditions in Germany, where the conditions themselves do not yet exist.

German juridical and political philosophy is the sole element of German history which stands al pari with the official modern present.

The German people must therefore strike this their dream history against their existing conditions, and subject to criticism not only

these conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation.

[23]Their future can neither be confined to the direct denial of their real nor to the direct enforcement of their ideal political and juridical conditions, for they possess the direct denial of their real conditions in their ideal conditions, and the direct enforcement of their ideal conditions they have almost outlived in the opinion of neighbouring nations. Consequently the practical political party in Germany properly demands the negation of philosophy. Its error consists not in the demand, but in sticking to the demand, which seriously it neither does nor can enforce. It believes it can accomplish this negation by turning its back on philosophy, the while its averted head utters a few irritable and banal phrases over it. Moreover, its horizon is so limited as to exclude philosophy from the realm of German actuality unless it imagines philosophy to be implied in German practice and in the theories subserving it. It urges the necessity for linking up with vital forces, but forgets that the real vital force of the German people has hitherto only pullulated under its skull.

In a word: you cannot abolish philosophy without putting it into practice. The same error, only with the factors reversed, is [24]committed by the theoretical party, the political party which founds on philosophy.

The latter perceives in the present struggle only the critical struggle of philosophy with the German world; it does not suspect that

all previous philosophy has itself been a part of this world, and is its complement, if an ideal one. While critical towards its opposing party, it behaves uncritically towards itself. It starts from the assumptions of philosophy, but either refuses to carry further the results yielded by philosophy, or claims as the direct outcome of philosophy results and demands which have been culled from another sphere.

We reserve to ourselves a more detailed examination of this party.

Its fundamental defect may be reduced to this: it believes it can enforce philosophy without abolishing it. The criticism of German juridical and political philosophy, which has received through Hegel its most consistent, most ample and most recent shape, is at once both the critical analysis of the modern State and of the actuality which is connected therewith, and in addition the decisive

repudiation of the entire previous mode of the [25]German political and juridical consciousness, whose principal and most universal expression, elevated to the level of a science, is speculative jurisprudence itself.

While, on the one hand, speculative jurisprudence, this abstract and exuberant thought-process of the modern State, is possible only

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in Germany, on the other hand, the German conception of the modern State, making abstraction of real men, was only possible because and in so far as the modern State itself makes abstraction of real men or only satisfies the whole of man in an imaginary manner.

Germans have thought in politics what other peoples have done. Germany was their theoretical conscience. The abstraction and ar-rogance of her thought always kept an even pace with the one-sidedness and stunted growth of her actuality. If, therefore, the status quo of the German civic community expresses the completion of the ancien regime, the completion of the pile driven into the flesh of the modern State, the status quo of German political science expresses the inadequacy of the modern State, the decay that is set up in its flesh.

As a decisive counterpart of the previous [26]mode of German political consciousness, the criticism of speculative jurisprudence

does not run back upon itself, but assumes the shape of problems for whose solution there is only one means: practice.

The question arises: can Germany attain to a practice a la hauteur de principes,[5] that is, to a revolution which will not only raise her to the level of modern nations, but to the human level which will be the immediate future of these nations?

The weapon of criticism cannot in any case replace the criticism of weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force, but theory too becomes a material force as soon as it grasps weapons. Theory is capable of grasping weapons as soon as its argument becomes ad hommine, and its argument becomes ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the mat-ter by its root. Now the root for mankind is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German theory, and therefore of its practical energy, is its outcome from the decisive and positive abolition of religion.

The criticism of religion ends with the [27]doctrine that man is the supreme being for mankind, and therefore with the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a degraded, servile, neglected, contemptible being, conditions which cannot be better described than by the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a projected dog tax: "Poor dogs; they want to treat you like men!"

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has a specifically practical significance for Germany. Germany's revolutionary past is particularly theoretical, it is the Reformation. Then it was the monk, and now it is the philosopher in whose brain the revolution begins.

Luther vanquished servility based upon devotion, because he replaced it by servility based upon conviction. He shattered faith in authority, because he restored the authority of faith. He transformed parsons into laymen, because he transformed laymen into parsons. He liberated men from outward religiosity, because he made religiosity an inward affair of the heart. He emancipated the body from chains, because he laid chains upon the heart.

[28]But if Protestantism is not the true solution, it was the true formulation of the problem. The question was no longer a struggle between the layman and the parson external to him; it was a struggle with his own inner parson, his parsonic nature. And if the protestant transformation of German laymen into parsons emancipated the lay popes, the princes, together with their clergy, the privileged and the philistines, the philosophic transformation of the parsonic Germans into men will emancipate the people. But little as emancipation stops short of the princes, just as little will the secularization of property stop short of church robbery, which was chiefly set on foot by the hypocritical Prussians. Then the Peasants' War, the most radical fact of German history, came to grief on the reef of theology. To-day, when theology itself has come to grief, the most servile fact of German history, our status quo, will be shivered on the rock of philosophy.

The day before the Reformation, official Germany was the most abject vassal of Rome. The day before its revolution, it is the abject

vassal of less than Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of country squires and philistines. [29]Meanwhile there seems to be an important obstacle to a radical German revolution. Revolutions in fact require a passive element, a material foundation.

Theory becomes realized among a people only in so far as it represents the realization of that people's needs. Will the immense cleavage between the demands of the German intellect and the responses of German actuality now involve a similar cleavage of middle-class society from the State, and from itself ? Will theoretical needs merge directly into practical needs? It is not enough that the ideas press towards realization; reality itself must stimulate to thinking.

But Germany did not pass through the middle stages of political emancipation simultaneously with the modern nations. Even the stages which she has overcome theoretically she has not reached practically.

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How would she be able to clear with a salto mortale not only her own obstacles, but at the same time the obstacles of modern nations, obstacles which she must actually feel to mean a liberation to be striven for from her real obstacles? A radical revolution can only be the revolution of radical needs, whose preliminary conditions appear to be wholly lacking.

[30]Although Germany has only accompanied the development of nations with the abstract activity of thought, without taking

an active part in the real struggles incident to this development, she has, on the other hand, shared in the suffering incident to this development, without sharing in its enjoyments, or their partial satisfaction. Abstract activity on the one side corresponds to abstract suffering on the other side.

Consequently, one fine day Germany will find herself at the level of European decay, before she has ever stood at the level of European emancipation. The phenomenon may be likened to a fetish-worshipper, who succumbs to the diseases of Christianity.

Looking upon German governments, we find that, owing to contemporary conditions, the situation of Germany, the standpoint

of German culture and finally their own lucky instincts, they are driven to combine the civilized shortcomings of the modern State world, whose advantages we do not possess, with the barbarous shortcomings of the ancien regime, which we enjoy in full measure, so that Germany is constantly obliged to participate, if not intelligently, at any rate unintelligently, [31]in the State formations which lie beyond her status quo.

Is there for example a country in the world which shares so naively in all the illusions of the constitutional community, without sharing in its realities, as does so-called constitutional Germany? Was it necessary to combine German governmental interference,

the tortures of the censorship, with the tortures of the French September laws which presupposed freedom of the press? Just as one found the gods of all nations in the Roman pantheon, so will one find the flaws of all State forms in the Holy Roman German Em-pire. That this eclecticism will reach a point hitherto unsuspected is guaranteed in particular by the politico-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king, who thinks he can play all the parts of monarchy, both of the feudal and the bureaucratic, both of the absolute and the constitutional, of the autocratic as of the democratic, if not in the person of his people, then in his own person, if not for the people, then for himself. Germany as the embodiment of the defect of the political present, constituted in her own world, will not

be able to overthrow the specifically German obstacles without [32]overthrowing the general obstacles of the political present.

It is not the radical revolution which is a utopian dream for Germany, not the general human emancipation, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. Upon what can a partial, a merely political revolution base itself ? Upon the fact that a part of bourgeois society could emancipate itself and attain to general rulership, upon

the fact that, by virtue of its special situation, a particular class could undertake the general emancipation of society. This class would liberate the whole of society, but only upon the assumption that the whole of society found itself in the situation of this class, and consequently possessed money and education, for instance, or could acquire them if it liked.

No class in bourgeois society can play this part without setting up a wave of enthusiasm in itself and among the masses, a wave of feeling wherein it would fraternize and commingle with society in general, and would feel and be recognized as society's general representative, a wave of enthusiasm wherein its [33]claims and rights would be in truth the claims and rights of society itself, wherein it would really be the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class vindicate for itself the general rulership.

Revolutionary energy and intellectual self-confidence are not sufficient by themselves to enable a class to attain to this emancipa-tory position, and thereby exploit politically all social spheres in the interest of its own sphere. In order that the revolution of a people should coincide with the emancipation of a special class of bourgeois society, it is necessary for a class to stand out as a class representing the whole of society. Thus further involves, as its obverse side, the concentration of all the defects of society in another class, and this particular class must be the embodiment of the general social obstacles and impediments. A particular social sphere must be identical with the notorious crime of society as a whole, in such wise that the emancipation of this sphere would appear

to be the general self-emancipation. In order that one class should be the class of emancipation par excellence, another class must contrariwise be the class of [34]manifest subjugation. The negative-general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy was the condition of the positive-general significance of the class of the bourgeoisie, which was immediately encroaching upon and confronting the former.

But in Germany every class lacks not only the consistency, the keenness, the courage, the ruthlessness, which might stamp it as the negative representative of society. It lacks equally that breadth of soul which would identify it, if only momentarily, with the popular soul, that quality of genius which animates material power until it becomes political power, that revolutionary boldness which hurls at the opponent the defiant words: I am nothing, and I have to be everything. But the stock-in-trade of German morality and hon-our, not only as regards individuals but also as regards classes, constitutes rather that modest species of egoism which brings into

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prominence its own limitations.

The relation of the various spheres of German society is therefore not dramatic, but epic. Each of them begins to be self-conscious and to press its special claims upon the others not when it is itself oppressed, but when the [35]conditions of the time, irrespective

of its co-operation, create a sociable foundation from which it can on its part practise oppression. Even the moral self-esteem of the German middle class is only based on the consciousness of being the general representative of the philistine mediocrity of all the other classes.

Consequently it is not only the German kings who succeed to the throne mal a propos, but it is every sphere of bourgeois society which experiences its defeat before it celebrates its victory, develops its own handicaps before it overcomes the handicaps which confront it, asserts its own narrow-minded nature before it can assert its generous nature, so that even the opportunity of playing a great part is always past before it actually existed, and each class, so soon as it embarks on a struggle with the class above it, becomes involved in a struggle with the class below it. Consequently, the princedom finds itself fighting the monarchy, the bureaucrat finds himself fighting the nobility, the bourgeois finds himself fighting them all, while the proletariat is already commencing to fight the bourgeois.

The middle class hardly dares to seize hold of the ideas of emancipation from its own [36]standpoint before the development of social conditions and the progress of political theory declare this standpoint to be antiquated, or at least very problematical. In France partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation. In Germany universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of every partial emancipation. In France it is the reality, in Germany it is the impossibility of gradual emancipation which must bring forth entire freedom. In France every popular class is tinged with political idealism, and does not feel primarily as a particular class, but as the representative of social needs generally. The role of emancipator, therefore, flits from one class to another of the French people in a dramatic movement, until it eventually reaches the class which will no longer realize social freedom upon the basis of certain conditions lying outside of mankind and yet created by human society, but will rather organize all the conditions of human existence upon the basis of social freedom. In Germany, on the other hand, where practical life is as unintellectual as intellectual life

is unpractical, no class of bourgeois society either feels the need or possesses the capacity for emancipation, unless [37]driven thereto by its immediate position, by material necessity, by its chains themselves.

Wherein, therefore, lies the positive possibility of German emancipation?

Answer: In the formation of a class in radical chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it, an order which shall break up all orders, a sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering, which lays claim to no special right, because no particular wrong but wrong in general is committed upon it, which can no longer invoke a historical

title, but only a human title, which stands not in a one-sided antagonism to the consequences, but in a many-sided antagonism to the assumptions of the German community, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all the other spheres of society, which represents in a word the complete loss of mankind, and can therefore only redeem itself through the complete redemption of mankind. The 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 [38]circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the masses who are held down by the weight of the social system, but the multitude released by 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 elevat-ing to a general principle of society what it already involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society.

With respect to the nascent world the proletariat finds itself in the same position as the German king occupies with respect to the departed world, when he calls the people his people, just as he calls a horse his horse. In declaring the people to be his private property, the king acknowledges that private property is king.

Just as philosophy finds in the proletariat its material weapons, so the proletariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons, and as soon as the lightning of thought has penetrated [39]into the flaccid popular soil, the elevation of Germans into men will be accomplished.

Let us summarize the result at which we have arrived. The only liberation of Germany that is practical or possible is a liberation from the standpoint of the theory that declares man to be the supreme being of mankind. In Germany emancipation from the Mid-dle Ages can only be effected by means of emancipation from the results of a partial freedom from the Middle Ages. In Germany no brand of serfdom can be extirpated without extirpating every kind of serfdom. Fundamental Germany cannot be revolutionized without a revolution in its basis. The emancipation of Germans is the emancipation of mankind. The head of this emancipation is

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philosophy; its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot abolish itself without realizing philosophy.

When all the inner conditions are fulfilled, the German day of resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallic Cock.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Speech in defence of hearths and homes. [2] Shameful part.

[3] listigen, a play on the name of the protectionist economist F. List. [4] In English in the original.

[5] In conformity with principles.

[40]

ON THE JEWISH QUESTIONToC

1. Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question), Brunswick 1843.

2. Bruno Bauer, Die Fahigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen, frei zu werden (The Capacity of Modern Jews and Christians to become free), Zurich 1843.

1. Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage, Brunswick 1843.

The German Jews crave for emancipation. What emancipation do they crave? Civic, political emancipation.

Bruno Bauer answers them: Nobody in Germany is politically emancipated. We ourselves are unfree. How shall we liberate you?

You Jews are egoists, if you demand a special emancipation for yourselves as Jews. As Germans you ought to labour for the political emancipation of Germany, as men for human emancipation, and you ought to feel the special nature of your oppression and your disgrace not as an exception from the rule, but rather as its confirmation.

Or do Jews demand to be put on an equal [41]footing with Christian subjects? Then they recognize the Christian State as justified, then they recognize the regime of general subjugation. Why are they displeased at their special yoke, when the general yoke pleases them? Why should Germans interest themselves in the emancipation of the Jews, if Jews do not interest themselves in the emancipation of Germans?

The Christian State knows only privileges. In that State the Jew possesses the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which a

Christian has not. Why does he crave the rights which he has not, and which Christians enjoy?

If the Jew wants to be emancipated from the Christian State, then he should demand that the Christian State abandon its religious

prejudice. Will the Jew abandon his religious prejudice? Has he therefore the right to demand of another this abdication of religion? By its very nature the Christian State cannot emancipate the Jews; but, adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emancipated. So long as the State is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, both are equally incapable of granting and receiving emancipation.

[42]The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew in the manner of a Christian State, that is in a privileged manner, by grant-

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ing the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but causing him to feel the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the dominant religion. But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory

law to the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is justified, by abstaining on principle from all participation in the historical movement, by waiting on a future which has nothing in common with the general future of mankind, by regarding himself as a member of the Jewish people and the Jewish people as the chosen people.

Upon what grounds therefore do you Jews crave emancipation? On account of your religion? It is the mortal enemy of the State

religion. As citizens? There are no citizens in Germany. As men? You are as little men as He on whom you called.

After giving a criticism of the previous [43]positions and solutions of the question, Bauer has freshly posited the question of Jewish emancipation. How, he asks, are they constituted, the Jew to be emancipated, and the Christian State which is to emancipate? He replies by a criticism of the Jewish religion, he analyses the religious antagonism between Judaism and Christianity, he explains the nature of the Christian State, and all this with boldness, acuteness, spirit, and thoroughness, in a style as precise as it is forcible and energetic.

How then does Bauer solve the Jewish question? What is the result? The formulation of a question is its solution. The criticism of the Jewish question is the answer to the Jewish question.

The summary is therefore as follows:

We must emancipate ourselves before we are able to emancipate others.

The most rigid form of the antagonism between the Jew and the Christian is the religious antagonism. How is this antagonism resolved? By making it impossible. How is a religious antagonism made impossible? By abolishing religion.

As soon as Jew and Christian recognize [44]their respective religions as different stages in the development of the human mind, as different snake skins which history has cast off, and men as the snakes encased therein, they stand no longer in a religious relationship, but in a critical, a scientific, a human one. Science then constitutes their unity. Antagonisms in science, however, are resolved by science itself.

The German Jew is particularly affected by the lack of political emancipation in general and the pronounced Christianity of the

State. In Bauer's sense, however, the Jewish question has a general significance independent of the specific German conditions.

It is the question of the relation of religion to the State, of the contradiction between religious entanglement and political emancipation. Emancipation from religion is posited as a condition, both for the Jews, who desire to be politically emancipated, and for the State, which shall emancipate and itself be emancipated.

"Good, you say, and the Jew says so too, the Jew also is not to be emancipated as Jew, not because he is a Jew, not because he has such an excellent, general, human principle of [45]morality; the Jew will rather retire behind the citizen and be a citizen, although he is a Jew and wants to remain one: that is, he is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations. The prejudice remains in spite of the fact that it has been outstripped by general principles. If, however, it remains, it rather outstrips everything else." "Only sophistically and to outward seeming would the Jew be able to remain a Jew in civic life; if he desired to remain a Jew, the mere semblance would therefore be the essential thing and would triumph, that is, his life in the State would be only a semblance or a passing exception to the rule and the nature of things" ("The Capacity of modern Jews and Christians to become free," p. 57).

Let us see, on the other hand, how Bauer describes the task of the State: "France has recently (proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies, 26th December 1840) in connection with the Jewish question--as constantly in all other political questions--given us a glimpse of a life which is free, but revokes its freedom [46]in law, and therefore asserts it to be a sham, and on the other hand contradicts its free law by its act." "The Jewish Question," p. 64.

"General freedom is not yet legal in France, the Jewish question is not yet solved, because legal freedom--that all citizens are equal--is limited in practice, which is still dominated by religious privileges, and this unfreedom in practice reacts on the law, compelling the latter to sanction the division of nominally free citizens into oppressed and oppressor," p. 65.

When, therefore, would the Jewish problem be solved for France?

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"The Jew, for instance, must cease to be a Jew if he will not allow himself to be hindered by his law from fulfilling his duties towards the State and his fellow-citizens, going, for example, to the Chamber of Deputies on the Sabbath and taking part in the public sit-tings. Every religious privilege, and consequently the monopoly of a privileged Church, must be surrendered, and if few or many or even the great majority believe they ought still to perform religious duties, this performance must be left to themselves as a private matter," p. 65. "When there is no longer a privileged [47]religion, there will no longer be a religion. Take from religion its excommu-nicating power, and it exists no longer," p. 66.

On the one hand, Bauer states that the Jew must abandon Judaism, and that man must abandon religion, in order to be emancipated as a citizen. On the other hand, he feels he is logical in interpreting the political abolition of religion to mean the abolition of religion altogether. The State, which presupposes religion, is as yet no true, no real State. "At any rate the religious idea gives the State guarantees. But what State? What kind of State?" p. 97.

At this point we are brought up against the one-sided conception of the Jewish question.

It was by no means sufficient to inquire: Who shall emancipate? Who shall be emancipated? Criticism had a third task to perform.

It had to ask: what kind of emancipation are we concerned with? Upon what conditions is the desired emancipation based? The criticism of political emancipation itself was only the eventual criticism of the Jewish question and its true solution, in the "general question of the time."

[48]Because Bauer does not raise the question to this level he falls into contradictions. He posits conditions which are not involved in the nature of political emancipation itself. He suggests questions which his problem does not imply, and he solves problems which leave his questions unsettled. Whereas Bauer says of the opponents of Jewish emancipation: "Their mistake was that they assumed the Christian State to be the only real State, and did not subject it to the same criticism that they applied to Judaism," we find Bauer's mistake to consist in the fact that it is only the Christian State, and not the "general State," that he subjects to criticism, that he does not investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation, and consequently lays down conditions which are only explicable from an uncritical confusion of political emancipation with general human emancipation.

When Bauer asks Jews: Have you the right from your standpoint to crave political emancipation? we would inquire on the contrary: Has the standpoint of political emancipation the right to demand of Jews the abolition of Judaism, or from men generally the abolition of religion?

[49]The complexion of the Jewish question changes according to the State in which Jews find themselves. In Germany, where no political State, no State as State exists, the Jewish question is a purely theological question. The Jew finds himself in religious antagonism to the State, which acknowledges Christianity as its basis. This State is theologian ex professo. Here criticism is criticism of theology, is two-edged criticism, criticism of Christian and criticism of Jewish theology. But however critical we may be, we cannot get out of the theological circle.

In France, in the constitutional State, the Jewish question is the question of constitutionalism, of the incompleteness of political emancipation. As the semblance of a State religion is there preserved, although in a meaningless and self-contradictory formula, in the formula of a religion of the majority, the relationship of Jews to the State retains the semblance of a religious and theological antagonism.

It is only in the North American Free States--at least in part of them--that the Jewish question loses its theological significance

and becomes a really secular question. [50]Only where the political State exists in its completeness can the relation of the Jew, of the religious man generally, to the political State, and therefore the relation of religion to the State, be studied in its special features and its purity. The criticism of this relationship ceases to be theological criticism when the State ceases to adopt a theological attitude towards religion, when its attitude towards religion becomes purely political. The criticism then becomes criticism of the political State. At this point, where the question ceases to be theological, Bauer's criticism ceases to be critical. In the United States there is neither a State religion nor a religion declared to be that of the majority, nor the predominance of one cult over another. The State

is alien to all cults. (Marie ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis, etc., by G. Beaumont, Paris 1835, p. 214.) There are even North American

States where "the constitution does not impose religious beliefs or the practice of a cult as a condition of political privileges" (l.

c. p. 225). Yet "nobody in the United States believes that a man without religion might be an honest man" (l. c. p. 224). Yet North America is pre-eminently the country of [51]religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville and the Englishman Hamilton assure us with one voice. Meanwhile, the North American States only serve us as an example. The question is: What is the attitude of completed political emancipation towards religion? If even in the country of completed political emancipation we find religion not only existing, but in a fresh and vital state, it proves that the existence of religion does not contradict the completeness of the State. But as the existence of religion indicates the presence of a defect, the source of this defect may only be looked for in the nature of the State. We are

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no longer concerned with religion as the basis, but only as the phenomenon of secular shortcomings. Consequently we explain the religious handicap of the free citizens from their secular handicap. We do not assert that they must remove their religious handicap as soon as they cast off their secular fetters. We do not transform secular questions into theological questions. We transform theological questions into secular questions.

After history has for so long been dissolved in superstition, we dissolve the superstition in history. The question of the relation of [52]political emancipation becomes for us the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political State by criticizing the political State in its secular construction, apart from the religious weaknesses. We transmute the contradiction of the State with a specific religion, like Judaism, into the contradiction of the State with specific secular elements, and the contradiction of the State with religion generally into the contradiction of the State with its general assumptions.

The political emancipation of the Jew, of the Christian, of the religious man in general, means the emancipation of the State from Judaism, from Christianity, from religion generally. In its form as State, in the manner peculiar to its nature, the State emancipates itself from religion by emancipating itself from the State religion, that is, by the State as State acknowledging no religion.

Political emancipation from religion is not a thorough-going and consistent emancipation from religion, because political emancipation is not effectual and consistent human emancipation.

[53]The limit of political emancipation is immediately seen to consist in the fact that the State can cast off a fetter without men really becoming free from it, that the State can become a free State without men becoming free men. Bauer tacitly assents to this in laying down the following condition for political emancipation. "Every religious privilege, and therefore the monopoly of a privileged Church must be surrendered, and if few or many or even the great majority believe they ought still to perform religious duties, this performance must be left to themselves as a private matter." The State may therefore achieve emancipation from religion, although the great majority are still religious. And the great majority do not cease to be religious by being religious privately.

The political elevation of the individual above religion shares all the defects and all the advantages of political elevation generally. For example, the State as State annuls private property, the individual declares in a political manner that private property is abolished as soon as he abolishes the census for active and passive eligibility, which has been done in many North American States. Hamilton [54] interprets this fact quite correctly from the political standpoint: "The great multitude has won the victory over the property owners and the monied men." Is not private property ideally abolished when the have-nots become the legislators of the haves? The census

is the last political form to recognize private property.

Yet private property is not only not abolished with the political annulment of private property, but is even implied therein. The

State abolishes in its fashion the distinctions of birth, status, education, and occupation when it declares birth, status, education, and occupation to be unpolitical distinctions, when, without taking account of these distinctions, it calls upon every member of the community to participate in the popular sovereignty on an equal footing, when it deals with all the elements of the real popular life from the State's point of view. Nevertheless the State leaves private property, education, occupation operating in their own manner, that is, as education, as occupation, and developing their potentialities.