GARY TEEPLE : Marx’s Critique of Politics 1842-1847GARY TEEPLE Marx’s Critique of Politics 1842-1847 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo LondonMarx’s Critique of Politics 1842-1847 The prevailing view of Marx’s early writings suggests that they comprise a set of disconnected works which share only the same author, that Marx was philosophically an idealist or Hegelian and politically a ‘liberal’ or ‘democrat’ throughout much of this period, and that he possessed no particular method of inquiry. Professor Teeple challenges these ideas in his exposition of the development of Marx’s critique of politics from the earliest pub- lished writings in 1842 to the end of this period in 1847. Eschewing the search for Marx’s intellectual sources, and a nar- row focus on any one of these early works, the author traces Marx’s intellectual development through a careful analysis of the texts. He demonstrates an unmistakeable continuity throughout the period, arguing that Marx consciously worked out his critique of politics from a well-defined starting point in his doctoral disser- tation and the Rheinische Zeitung articles to a logical conclusion in The German Ideology. Each step in this development, it is argued, not only formed an integral link but also remained in Marx’s eyes valid in itself. The basis of this continuity is seen to lie in the method Marx employed. The author contends that Marx did possess and apply a method in a conscious and consistent manner and that the method evolved concomitantly with his ever-deepening grasp of the nature of politics and its premises. Indeed, to discover the nature of this method and how it develops is to discover the implicit unity or rationality underlying Marx’s early writings and to grasp fully their substance. In a word, Dr Teeple argues that from a critique of politics at the level of politics to a critique of the premises of politics, Marx pursued in these early works what he considered to be a scientific understanding of the nature of human development. The thrust of the author’s argument goes against the grain of accepted opinion, and for this reason alone the book will shed new light on Marx’s widely discussed early writings and should generate considerable controversy. GARY TEEPLE is a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.© University of Toronto Press 1984 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-5631-8 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Teeple, Gary, 1945- Marx’s critique of politics: 1842-1847 Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-5631-8 1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883 — Political science. I. Title. JC233.M299T43 1983 320.5'315 C83-099102-6TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHERContents PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION: Marx’s starting point: Epicurus and the ontology of mind 3 Idealist or materialist 6 Critique and its development 17 1 The State as Rational and Real: articles from the Rheinische Zeitung, 1842-43 27 The first use of critique 28 Right and privilege 31 Law and laws 33 Press freedom and censorship 35 The state and the Christian state 36 The political state and the estates 37 The political state and representation 38 The contradiction and its resolution 40 Conclusions 42 2 State and Civil Society, or the Question of Sovereignty: the 1843 critique of Hegel 46 Sovereignty: the one or the many? 58 Bureaucracy: universality as mere form 61 Legislatures: unity or mediated conflict? 67 The upper house 75 The lower house 78 True democracy: the solved riddle 82 Conclusions 83viii Contents 3 Political and Social Emancipation: articles from the Deutsch-Franzésische Jahrbticher, 1843-44 91 Consciousness of freedom and its realization: the letters 93 The meaning of political emancipation and the prerequisite of social emancipation: ‘On the Jewish Question’ 100 The means to social emancipation: the introduction to the Critique of Hegel 108 The political point of view and the meaning of industrial strife: ‘Critical Marginal Notes’ 114 Conclusions 117 4 Private Property and Communism: the Paris manuscripts and ‘Comments on James Mill,’ 1844 121 The first manuscript: wages, profit, rent, and alienated labour 124 The second manuscript: the antithesis of capital and labour 143 The third manuscript: the transcendence of self-estrangement 147 Conclusions 157 5 The Critique of Politics: writings from 1845 to 1847 162 The French Revolution or the history of the origin of the modern state 163 The rights of man 167 The representative state: the constitutional and the democratic 171 Law 173 Taxes 179 The state and civil society 181 Social transformation and communism 186 Conclusions 192 6 Conclusions 198 The development of the critique of politics 198 The preconditions of Marx’s critique 205 Marx and the end of modern political theory 209 APPENDIX: Alienated Labour, Division of Labour, and Private Property 217 NOTES 225 GLOSSARY OF CONCEPTS 257 SELECTED AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 INDEX 293Preface The central purpose of this book is to expound Marx’s critique of politics as that critique evolved between 1842 and 1847. Through a close and literal reading of the texts of this period, I hope to explain the development of the method and content of Marx’s analysis of political relations. The contention is that these writings manifest a systematic unity which can be grasped only by examining the relation between the method and the substance of Marx’s analysis. In pursuing this argument, I have relied for source material on two princi- pal collections of the works of Marx and Engels: namely, the recent English- language Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW) (London 1975- ) and the German Marx-Engels Werke (MEW) (Berlin 1956-68). The texts I required were not available at the time in the recent Karl Marx- Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (1975- ) edition. There are several older English transla- tions of many of the early writings and many of these have been consulted; but the MECW is the most comprehensive and, in general, the most literal and, therefore, the most useful. To have relied solely on translations, how- ever, would have created insurmountable problems. A mistranslation of the Most minor sort — a preposition or a conjunction — can seriously distort a pas- Sage or render it obscure or even unintelligible. Stylistic liberties undertaken by the translator can also distort the original meaning, just as the translator’s commitment to a doctrinal view can skew the author’s intention. To over- come these and related difficulties we have referred frequently to the Ger- man, although MEW is not as comprehensive as MECW, and so on occasions this was not possible. I have checked the quotations used below, providing the German where it may aid comprehension, and I have altered the transla- tion in many cases in order to clarify it and in other cases in order to make itx Preface more comprehensible, always providing the German as one means of justify- ing the alteration to the reader. The secondary literature on the early works is, needless to say, extensive. I have attempted to consult as much of it as possible, but, as can be seen in the text, I have employed very few of the existing interpretations. Generally speaking, the thrust of the argument goes against the grain of accepted views. Just how the argument differs from other treatments of the early works should be briefly indicated. As a whole, the argument rests on a discussion of Marx’s method; that is, the fundamental approach to these early works is to discover their underlying unity by grasping the implicit methodological dynamic. That dynamic lies in what Marx perceived as the scientific method, applied consciously and with a specific purpose in mind. The whole of Marx’s writings from 1842 to 1847 can be seen in this light, as the scientific pursuit or study of the essence of man. The method I have employed is the systematic exposition in chronological order of the early writings. Followed conscientiously, this procedure has been fruitful, producing an interpretation of Marx which was not anticipated, which is more literal than interpretative, and which differs markedly from most similar attempts to review these works. Given this approach, the reader will not find the biographical and historical data so commonly employed as explanation for the development of Marx’s thought. For the same reason, I eschew any systematic examination of the sources of Marx’s ideas. Because the search for the sources is such a prevalent method in the treat- ment of these texts, I submit other, substantive, reasons for refraining from such a search. First and most important, the origin of a thought has posi- tively no bearing on the question of its value or truth. The value and truth of an idea or concept lies in its relation to the real world and in its place in a conceptual schema. Second, the partial or formal similarity of one idea to another does not account for its meaning or content. And third, the notion that a theory or method or life’s work can be explained by discovering all the sources is patently false, because it assumes that the sum of the parts equals the whole, and because it assumes that the sources can be identified and their relation demonstrated. If the focus is on Marx’s work, to the exclusion of Engels’ contribution, it is because I am treating Engels in the same way as these other sources and for the same reasons. His work on the state and on political relations, more- over, was not systematically worked out or pursued as was that of Marx. He was, of course, an important influence on Marx; but we concur with Engels’