The Discovery of the Materialist Conception of History in the Writings of the Young Karl Marx
Ernie Thomson
New York: Mellen Press
2004
The
debate over the continuity between Marx's early and later writings is
now more than seventy years old and final resolution of the debate
seems as remote as ever. Since the 1970's the “continuity” view first
proposed by Shlomo Avineri and Istvan Meszaros has been generally
regarded as the most plausible account of the linkage between these
writings, while the most prominent alternative to this view has been
the much-criticized "epistemological break" thesis proposed by French
philosopher Louis Althusser. A review of the relevant literature since
the late 1970's indicates that the main arguments upon which the
continuity view was based have been increasingly undermined as new
knowledge of the context of Marx's writings in the 1840's has been
developed. The influence of two "Young Hegelian" philosophers, Ludwig
Feuerbach and Max Stirner, has emerged as an especially important
aspect of the issue.
This study, drawing on recent literature as well as original research in areas suggested by Althusser in his book For Marx,
proposes and defends a modified epistemological break thesis. In
addition to showing that Marx was a "Feuerbachian" in 1843/44 and
documenting his break with Feuerbach in 1845, the study will also
explain why Marx broke with Feuerbach when he did and in the way that
he did, an explanation that is lacking in Althusser's discussion of the
epistemological break. The explanation developed here is based on a
study of the impact on Marx, Engels and the other Young Hegelians of
Max Stirner's book The Ego and His Own, published in Germany in late 1844.
The study begins with a review of the literature on the
question of continuity between Marx's early mostly unpublished
manuscripts and his later writings. Three phases of the debate are
described: (1) an early, inconclusive phase; (2) a second phase in
which the view promoted by Avineri and Meszaros that Marx's early
writings were the basis of his whole life-work came to be widely
accepted as valid; (3) a recent shift away from the continuity view and
back toward a modified break thesis.
I then argue that this new break thesis leaves four basic
problems unresolved: (1) There is still substantial disagreement among
the break theorists regarding the extent of Marx's reliance on
Feuerbach's philosophy in 1843-44; (2) Proponents disagree as to the
timing of Marx's break with Feuerbach - was it a gradual or sudden
break?; (3) Accounts of Marx's activities during the period between
late 1844 and Spring 1845 when the break occurred are inadequate; (4)
An adequate explanation of why the break occurred has not been
developed.
Chapter 1, drawing heavily on M.W. Wartofsky's book on
Feuerbach, as well as my own original study of Feuerbach's 1839-43
writings, discusses three aspects of Feuerbach's philosophical
writings: (1) His critique of Hegel and rational metaphysics; (2) His
transformative method and its philosophical implications; (3) His
theory of alienation, including his theory of the essence of
consciousness, and his argument that religion, theology, and
contemporary philosophy are really alienated forms of human
consciousness.
I will also argue that Feuerbach's theory of alienation was
explicitly and intentionally "one-sided.” Feuerbach's application of
the philosophical principles derived from his critique and
appropriation of Hegel's philosophy generated a theory of consciousness
and a theory of the alienation of consciousness. But Feuerbach also
suggested that the same philosophical principles applied to man's
relation to "things outside him" (material nature), although Feuerbach
himself did not follow up this suggestion.
Chapter 2 examines how Marx, and to a lesser extent his
colleague Frederick Engels, employed Feuerbach's ideas in their own
writings of 1843-44, and what their plans for future works based on
Feuerbach's philosophy entailed. Here I will argue that Marx first
started using Feuerbach's ideas in 1843 for mainly practical reasons -
Feuerbach's method provided a key to the critique of Hegel's political
philosophy. But as he brought Feuerbach's framework to bear on
political questions, he became more committed to it. Then, when he
began the intensive study of political economy in early 1844, he
discovered the "other side" of Feuerbach's theory of alienation - the
application of Feuerbach's transformative method to political economy,
combined with the conceptual structure of Feuerbach's theory of the
alienation of consciousness, produced a theory of the relation of man
to material objects ("labor") and the alienation of this relation
("alienated labor") through private property and exchange. By August
1844, when Marx and Engels began their collaboration, Marx was an
ardent Feuerbachian with ambitious plans for future applications of the
alienation problematic to Hegel's philosophy and to political economy.
In Chapter 3, Stirner's critique of Feuerbach, Hegel, and modern philosophy in his book The Ego and His Own
will be examined. Stirner's book was published in November 1844, just
as Marx was finishing what turned out to be the last of his
Feuerbach-inspired works, The Holy Family.
Stirner's critique of
Feuerbach had two major consequences with respect to Feuerbach's
standing as the philosophical leader of the Young Hegelians. First,
Stirner's critique immediately challenged the claim that the "truth" of
Hegel's system was accessible through Feuerbach's transformative
method. Feuerbach's "essence of man," according to Stirner, was no less
an empty abstraction than Hegel's "Absolute Idea" had been. Second, in
criticizing Feuerbach's "man" as nothing but an empty abstraction,
Stirner did not follow the usual procedure and propose an alternative
version of human nature - instead he attacked the very notion of human
nature as an empty abstraction. Thus although it went largely unnoticed
by most of his contemporaries (except, eventually, Marx) Stirner was
among the first philosophical critics of "theoretical humanism," the
dualism of essence and existence that in one form or another had been
central to all philosophies of man for centuries.
In Chapter 4, the question of what Marx was doing in the months between completion of The Holy Family
(and the simultaneously publication of Stirner's book) and his
discovery of the materialist conception of history a few months later
will be addressed. I will argue that Marx's response to the
Stirner-Feuerbach controversy moved through two stages between November
1844 and April 1845. Marx's initial response was similar to that of the
other radical Young Hegelians - Marx saw Stirner's critique as
basically a "credibility problem" and intended to respond with another
defense of Feuerbach's philosophy. I will argue that Marx’s famous
"Theses on Feuerbach" were probably part of this intended response. But
within a few weeks after his move from Paris to Brussels in February
1845 Marx became aware of the full implications of Stirner's attack and
the fatal flaw in Feuerbach's philosophy that Stirner had brought to
the fore. It was then that Marx turned away from the defense of
Feuerbach to the task of responding to Stirner in a way that would
overcome the contradictions of theoretical humanism. The result was the
materialist conception of history.
Chapter 5 will take up the analysis of The German Ideology,
the only major work of 1845-46 by Marx and Engels and the first work
where Marx's new approach is discussed. The analysis here will differ
from previous discussions of this work in that the focus will be on the
"Saint Max" section of the book rather than the section on Feuerbach.
Marx's almost line-by-line critique of Stirner makes up about
three-fourths of the unfinished book, and it is only in "Saint Max"
that the fundamental points of Marx's new view are fully elaborated. It
is also this section that shows how much impact Stirner's critique of
Feuerbach had on Marx.
In Chapter 6 a summary of Marx's intellectual development from
early 1843 through 1845 will be outlined along with a discussion of the
aftermath of Marx's "epistemological break" and its implications for
his later works.