Karl Marx was never an academic. After abandoning the career in law that his father wanted for him, and completing a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1841, he became a radical journalist and political activist. Throughout his life, during which his family suffered from real poverty, he remained on this basis an agitator for human freedom. The greatest part of his writingsâboth published and unpublishedâwere devoted to the critique of political economy, and it was through this medium that he particularly confronted the dominant ideas of his time, especially historical social theory or the philosophy of history. On these grounds, he certainly qualifies as a great philosopher, yet his purpose was never merely philosophical. His main objective, from even before he encountered political economy, was always the realization of human emancipation, which from the start he understood to be more than simply a political goal.
Already inclined to pursue a radical project of revolutionary transformation going beyond the achievements of the French Revolution, Marx had at university overcome his initial dislike of G. W. F. Hegelâs apparently conservative philosophy to work with the Left Hegelians.1 Together with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, Arnold Ruge, Moses Hess, and others, Marx embraced a view that the social and intellectual development of humanity that had been realized over the course of historyâthe fundamental subject of Hegelâs philosophyâhad not, in fact, reached its pinnacle in the Prussian monarchy of his day. It was through this Left Hegelian perspective that Marx first came to appreciate both the nature of alienation in society and the extent to which human emancipation had at its core overcoming alienation in its various forms. From the beginning, but especially after his first encounter with political economy in 1844, Marx understood the issues of alienation and emancipation to lie at the heart of historical social development.
In 1843, having been forced from his career as newspaper editor due to the suppression of its issues by reactionary Prussian censors, Marx undertook to analyse seriously the forms of alienation obstructing human freedom. He began with a close critique of part of Hegelâs Philosophy of Right.2 Where the Left Hegelians, particularly following Ludwig Feuerbach, had already criticized religion as a form of human alienationâtheir central philosophical challenge to Hegel himselfâMarx went beyond this to find alienation also in the form of the state.3 Moses Hess had recently published a book chapter that criticized money also to be a form of alienation.4 Shortly afterâin the article âOn The Jewish Questionâ, written for the Deutsch-Franzöische JahrbĂŒcher that Marx co-edited, and challenging Bauerâs preoccupation with religionâMarx reproduced this insight, but extended it to include more generally wealth in the form of property.5 Through these works of 1843, but especially as a result of encountering the ideas of Frederick Engels âwriting for the same journalâMarx was brought to confront the ideas that political economists had advanced about capitalist society. As a result of this, he was led to consider how the human condition in his day should be understood in relation to social development in history and to a future realization of humanityâs real potential.
In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx advanced the idea that alienation of labour constituted the essential form of exploitation, and was, in fact, the source of private property, not its consequence. Though he was still a long way from the critique of political economy achieved in Capital , already he recognized that the antagonistic social relations between workers and capitalists had a profound significance in human history. Indeed, he asked, âWhat in the evolution of mankind is the meaning of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour?â6 He conceived âthe entire movement of historyâ in a broad sweep from early social forms (âancient Rome, Turkey, etc.â)âwhere the âantithesis between lack of property and propertyâ remained as yet undevelopedâto labour and capital, which, in their opposition, âconstitute private property as its developed state of contradictionâ.7 He then conceived this contradiction-laden historical process to result in âCommunism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man.â8 The reduction of the mass of humanity to exploited labour first led to expanded productive capacities, thenâthrough communismâto greater human freedom. The classic articulation of this analysis, of course, is later contained in The Communist Manifesto.
Like Hegel and many others, Marx understood history in terms of developmental processes shaping human society. The philosophical cast of his early thoughtâhuman capacities realized through sequential historical forms, expressing successively higher levels of social experienceâis unmistakable. This was, however, equally central to most varieties of social theory emerging over the last three centuries, informing historiography, sociology, and political science. Yet, while Marx began with such ideas, his approach to history did not end there.
On the one hand, engaging with the capitalist system of production compelled him to address how it differed from previous forms of society, and how it came to be. On the other hand, in later life, he began to consider seriously the sociopolitical situation and potential for emancipation in societies outside the framework of Western philosophy and social theory, like India and Russia. This brought him to consider other historical trajectories, both in actual development and as alternative possibilities.
It is essential to confront historical social theory in appropriating Marxâs ideas today. His critique of political economy is widely recognized as relevant today, even by mainstream economists, but what of his project of concluding the long history of human exploitation and unfreedom? Despite the widespread presumption that his historical theory is fundamentally based on a sequence of modes of production, there is no account of such that stands as definitive.9 Indeed, many grounds exist for challenging unilinear and universal conceptions of historical development (as Marx himself came to do in his later years). Moreover, Marx relied upon existing historical ideas since proved wrong, leaving several concepts to be squared with evidence. Faced with such doubts and challenges, we must take heart from Marxâs willingness to stray beyond the framework with which he began, and learn from his ongoing efforts to advance historical understanding.
The Importance of the French Revolution to Marxâs Ideas
Born in Trierâa formerly free city that reactionary Prussia acquired in defeating FranceâMarx was from his youth preoccupied with the politics of the French Revolution and their limits. Indeed, the French Revolution dominated the world of Marxâs youth and had a profound impact on his personal and intellectual development. The Revolutionâs issues and controversies, politics and ideology, achievements and failuresâtogether with the profound reshaping of societies for which it was responsibleâcontinued to be primary determinants of the European social context until at least the revolutions of 1848.10 For more than two decades, near constant warfare had embroiled Europe, with corollaries stretching from North Africa to the Caribbean, to North America. The impact of the Revolution on the nineteenth century was in many ways comparable to the impact that the First and Second World Wars had on the twentieth century.
The Revolution both loomed as an obvious and crucial historical turning point in Marxâs ideas, and had enormous influence on his early work. This was not due to any role it may be supposed to have played in the transition from feudal class relations to those characteristic of capitalist society, but fundamentally because the Revolution trumpeted the cause of freedom: libertĂ©, Ă©galitĂ©, fraternitĂ©. The class interests generally identified with the bourgeoisie in the Revolutionâeven by Marxâwere all immediately political: republicanism, liberal rights, modestly representative democracy, and nation building. Together, these goals defined the core mission of Jacobin politics. Above all, such objectives were recognized to be antithetical to aristocratic privilege and absolute monarchy, and it was in this sense specifically that the Revolution was understood to have marked a break with feudalism .
The final defeat of the Revolution in 1815âwhen the vestiges of Jacobin politics, and any scant hope for a return to democracy notwithstanding the imperial ambi...