1. Themes and Methodological Delimitations

Lukács (1967, p. 519).

The anthropological question is paramount in Marx’s philosophy and political theory. In this context, it is worth mentioning, among many others, the works of Lucien Sève (1978) and Adam Schaff (1970).

On the relationship between Marx and the Enlightenment, see especially Besse (1963), Hook (1968) and Rihs (1963). On the influence of the French Revolution on Marx, see the following diverse approaches: Furet (1986, pp. 11–120), Guilhaumou (2002), Löwy (1989), Rubel (1989) and Soboul (1951).

See, in particular, the classic work by Calvez (1970 [1956], especially Chap. XVIII).

Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Marx–Engels, Collected Works, vol. 29, p. 262.

Marx’s and Engels’ own testimony is that they wrote The German Ideology in order to settle their accounts with their old philosophical conscience. The locus classicus of Althusser’s theory of rupture—that is, of the distinction between young and mature Marx—is his work For Marx, especially his 1960 essay ‘On the Young Marx’, which is included in the volume. There, Althusser criticises the works and arguments of political philosophers such as Oizerman, Lapine and Schaff, including Togliatti’s text ‘From Hegel to Marxism’. We read:

We should realize that in a certain sense, if these beginnings are kept in mind, we cannot say absolutely that “Marx’s youth is part of Marxism” unless we mean by this that, like all historical phenomena, the evolution of this young bourgeois intellectual can be illuminated by the application of the principles of historical materialism. Of course Marx’s youth did lead to Marxism, but only at the price of a prodigious break with his origins, a heroic struggle against the illusions he had inherited from the Germany in which he was born, and an acute attention to the realities concealed by these illusions. (Althusser 1969, pp. 83–4)

‘A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism’ in Lenin (1974).

I refer here to Bakouradze (1960), Lapine (1980) and Oizerman (1981). These works essentially adopt Lenin’s position.

Moving in a different direction, Dick Howard, inspired by the works of Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, distinguishes between Marx the philosopher and Marx the revolutionary (Howard 2002, pp. 17–23, 92–5), arguing that, although Marx the philosopher is not incompatible with Castoriadis’s politics of autonomy (ibid., p. 95), Marx of ‘the’ revolution, and especially as the (co-)author of the Communist Manifesto, proves to be the defender of ‘antipolitical politics’, who in fact leaves ‘no place for politics’ and ‘no room for autonomous political agency’ (ibid., pp. 19–20).

It is worth mentioning that Althusser, on the issue of delimitation between pre-communist and communist Marx, proposes the concept of discovery (découverte) instead of that of Aufhebung (transcendence, supersession, dépassement), as he considers the latter an idealistic concept. He argues: ‘I hope it is now clear that if we are truly to be able to think this dramatic genesis of Marx’s thought, it is essential to reject the term “supersede” and turn to that of discoveries, to renounce the spirit of Hegelian logic implied in the innocent but sly concept of “supersession” (Aufhebung)’ (1969, p. 82). It should be noted that Althusser did not change this position when, some ten years after For Marx, he attempted to rectify some of his thinking in his Elements of Self-Criticism.

‘Marx became a socialist before he elaborated “scientific socialism”,’ argued Rubel (1962). However, Rubel’s point of departure for such an approach is to show that Marx’s choice was related to his preconceived humanistic ethics, an approach that Marx is supposed to maintain unaltered throughout his communist/mature phase. Clearly, Rubel underestimates the way in which the mature Marx re-composes his political approach in connection to the issue of militant communism and his systematic engagement with political economy. A more balanced and careful account on this theme is by Richard N. Hunt (1975, vol. I, pp. 49–51).

The young Marx’s communist identity first appears in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. According to Löwy’s archival research (2003, p. 50), Marx’s close links with French and German communists did not begin before April 1844. In addition, according to Althusser (1976, p. 159), Marx is ‘politically a communist’ in The Manuscripts of 1844, although still trapped in ‘petit-bourgeois philosophical positions’. Kouvélakis (2003, pp. 234–6) also views Marx’s transition to communism in terms of rupture, thus essentially adopting Althusser’s position. It is Engels who insists that Marx himself ‘opened the series of his socialist writings’ while writing his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, published in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher early in 1844 and just before the writing of the Manuscripts (Engels, Karl Marx, in Marx–Engels, Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 184). Kamenka (1962, p. 18) is of the same opinion, especially when he refers to the meeting between the young radical thinker and the socialist cause of the proletariat.

Megill (2002, pp. 71–4) distinguishes four moments of the young Marx’s engagement with politics: the Rhenish moment (Trier); the radical Hegelian moment (Berlin: October 1836–March 1841); the journalistic moment (Rheinische Zeitung: October 1842–March 1843); and the theorising moment (March 1843–August 1844).

See McGovern (1970), who offers a useful periodisation of young Marx’s views about the state, although his analysis proves to be rather descriptive.

According to Norman Levine, ‘Marx does not call for a revolution against Frederick Wilhelm IV, but rather for “breaches”, or small reformist steps within the framework of a constitutional monarchy’ (Levine 2012, p. 147, see also p. 151, 170).

On the transitional character of Marx’s articles in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, see the influential analysis of Georg Lukács (1967, pp. 556–72).

A similar analysis is followed by Mészáros, when the Hungarian philosopher, by way of referring to the Marxian issue of alienation, notes: ‘The point of real significant change [in Marx’s thought] is not between 1844 and 1845 but between 1843 and 1844. (And even this change is far more complex than the vulgarizers—who can only operate with crude schemes like “idealism” and “materialism” etc.—imagine.)’ (Mészáros 1970, p. 232).

Poulantzas (1966, pp. 3–4). This is a rare text by the young Poulantzas presented at a conference organised in Athens by leading Greek Marxists at the time and by the Center for Marxist Studies, just a year before the Colonels’ Dictatorship in Greece.

Ibid., pp. 13–19.

Ibid., pp. 13–15.

Ibid., p. 15.

Colletti (1975, p. 46). For his part, Leopold (2007, pp. 262–71), while admitting the Rousseau–Marx ‘political affinity’, comments on Colletti’s hypothesis and recommends ‘some caution regarding both its precise character and the emphasis that it should properly receive’.

‘What strikes us most forcibly is that while Marx has not yet outlined his later materialist conception of history he already possesses a very mature theory of politics and the state’ (Colletti 1975, p. 45).

Ibid., p. 46.

Rubel (1962).

It is true that, in 1851, Marx tried to republish, in cooperation with Hermann Becker, a member of the Communist League, some of his articles of the 1842–43 period, and this is something we should not forget. The attempt, initiated by Marx himself, was blocked by the intervention of Prussian state authorities. This means that Marx continued to believe that his work of the period was still significant, at least in the context of the social and political juncture of the time. However, this does not mean that Marx’s own conception of democracy remained unchanged throughout the decades.

Rubel (1962, p. 79).

See Cornu (1948, 1958, especially vol. 2).

According to Cornu (1954, p. 72), ‘in the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Marx was still not a communist, having reached out only to the notion of radical democracy, which he wanted to see it being materialized through reforms that could not go beyond the boundaries of bourgeois democracy’.

Colletti (1975, pp. 40–2).

In this regard, see Colletti’s (1975, pp. 44–5) accurate critique of Cornu’s interpretation.

Claude Lefort (1988, p. 5), while connecting ‘really existing socialism’ with the eclipse of the political, insists that, ‘although Marxism has, as a result of the collapse of the myth of Soviet or Chinese socialism, been declining in popularity … it is only in restricted circles that this has led to a rehabilitation of the political as such’.

It is worth recalling that, in January 1844, Marx receives for publication in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher Engels’ article on ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’, the analysis and conclusions of which, as confirmed by Marx in his preface to Critique of Political Economy, are definitely shared by him.

Jameson (2010, especially pp. 11–14). Richard Ashcraft (1984, especially pp. 665–9) also adopted a similar perspective well before Jameson, arguing that Marx adopts an anarchistic attitude as regards political theory: that is, a stance not dictated by standard and abstract theoretical principles but by the practical needs of the political movement in every particular juncture of its development. This line of thinking, in my view, conforms to an approach to Marxist political theory that we could describe as pragmatic.

Lefebvre (1982, pp. 164–5).