Karl Marx y Los Origenes Intelectuales de La Dialéctica Materialista

KARL MARX AND THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Newcastle, Australia - PalgraveConnect - 2014-12-31
10.1057/9780230374218 - Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism, James D. White
Also by James D. White
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1917-21: A Short History
Karl Marx and the
Intellectual Origins of
Dialectical Materialism
James D. White
Reader in Russian and Soviet History
Institute of Russian and East European Studies
University of Glasgow
tt
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White, James D., 1941-
Karl Marx and the intellectual origins of dialectical materialism /
James D. White,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-16085-2
1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. 2. Philosophy, Marxist—History.
3. Philosophy, Marxist—Soviet Union. 4. Dialectical materialism.
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© James D. White 1996
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Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 The Romantic Heritage 28
2 Hegel 69
3 The Young Hegelians 102
4 Marx 145
5 Marx and the Russians 211
6 Engels 281
7 Plekhanov 296
8 Struve 350
Conclusion 358
Notes 368
Select Bibliography 397
Index 408
Vll
Preface
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of the
West in the Cold War the reputation of Marx's teaching has
suffered something of a decline. It would appear that the
demise of capitalism that Marx so confidendy predicted was
seriously mistaken. On the contrary, the development of cap-
italism is being fostered on the ruins of the Soviet system of
central planning.
This interpretation of events of course assumes a close
identification of Marx's ideas with Soviet communism. It is an
identification that is eagerly canvassed by both defenders and
opponents of the Soviet regime - the former in order to estab-
lish the Soviet regime's ideological legitimacy, and the latter
to discredit communist doctrine along with the regime to which
it allegedly gave rise. Moreover, the identification of Marxism
with the Soviet regime - at least in some of its historical phases
- is rather widespread. It embraces many if not most of the
scholars who study Marx's ideas or the Soviet system. This is
unsurprising, since the most common source for the writings
on Marx and Engels has traditionally been the Soviet Union.
Naturally the Institute of Marxism Leninism in Moscow took
care in the selection of Marx's writings to ensure that any
divergences between the content of these writings and Soviet
ideology were kept to a minimum. One also has to recognize
that in the West a powerful stimulus to study Marxism was the
supposed insight it gave into the workings of the Soviet system.
It was, after all, the existence of the Soviet Union and other com-
munist states that gave Marxism its contemporary political sig-
nificance. Given this motivation, the tendency was to empha-
size elements of continuity between Marx and his Russian and
Soviet adherents. It also followed that with the demise of the
Soviet Union the need to study Marx's ideas lost much of its
rationale.
But should one really associate the intellectual system Marx
elaborated too closely with the practice of Russian revolution-
aries and Soviet politicians? It might be that the insight Marx
provided has a value independent of the fate of any given
political and economic regime, whether that regime calls itself
IX
X Preface
socialist or not. But what, in any case, was Marx's contribution

to intellectual history? That question remains disputed to this
day; there are many interpretations proposed by students of
Marx's ideas. One cannot even say for certain in what ways the
Soviet presentation of Marx is a distortion of his true inten-
tions; to do that one would have to know for certain what
Marx's intentions were.
The object of the present study is to explain how Marx's
ideas evolved out of the German philosophical context in which
they were rooted, and how they were adapted in Russian revo-
lutionary circles to produce the 'dialectical materialism' which
formed the basis of Soviet ideology, and which exerted an
influence on how Marx's ideas have been understood in the
West.
Despite the theoretical nature of the subject the approach
throughout is historical. That is, ideas are examined as they
evolved over time. They are treated as historical phenomena,
and exactly as in the case of historical events, they are studied
for preference in primary sources.
The chronological framework extends from the 1790s,
when Kant's ideas began to be elaborated in different ways by
representatives of the Romantic school, to the 1890s, when
various works appeared in Russian which embodied the inter-
pretation of Marx's ideas which would be designated as 'dia-
lectical materialism' or 'historical materialism'. In this way one
can examine the intellectual materials out of which Marx pro-
posed to construct his system, what the system was intended to
be, why it was not completed, and what modifications it under-
went at the hands of Marx's Russian followers.
Because this study focuses to a significant degree on termi-
nology, it has seldom been possible to use existing translations
of works in German as they stood. It was necessary, for one
thing, to standardize the way that various terms were rendered
into English, so that, for example, the term Begriff might not
appear sometimes as 'Concept', sometimes as 'Notion' and
sometimes as 'Comprehension'. This is no trivial matter; much
of nineteenth-century philosophy can be presented as a dis-
course on the nature of the Concept, and it is essential to
realize that the subject of the discussion remained the same
throughout. In the case of the Universal and the Particular,
which were component elements in the Concept, it has often
Preface XI
been necessary not only to standardize their translation, but to

restore them to their rightful place as philosophical terms,
rescuing them from being submerged in the text or omitted
altogether.
In order to make it clear that such everyday words as Uni-
versal, Particular, Inner, Outer, Nature, Society, etc. are used
as philosophical terms, the device of capitalizing them has
been adopted in this work. This applies not only to substan-
tives, but also to adjectival and verbal forms. This might impart
to the text a certain eighteenth-century appearance, but no
element of personification is implied. The convention simply
denotes that the term in question does not have its usual English
connotations, but is used in the sense or senses it derives from
its philosophical usage in German.
I have as far as possible avoided using the term 'Marxist',
because of its imprecise meaning. Nor have I followed the
current practice of translating the Russian word narodnik by
'populist'. In modern English this latter term has come to
replace the word 'demagogue', a meaning which is only barely
present in the Russian original. Narodnik, on the other hand,
had as one of its connotations 'nationalist', which is entirely
absent in 'populist'. I have accordingly left the word in its
Russian form.
I should like to extend my thanks to Paul Dukes, Jack Miller,
the late Alec Nove, Ian Thatcher, Stephen White and Bill Wal-
lace who read the typescript and gave valuable comments and
advice. My sincere thanks are also due to Grainne Twomey of
Macmillan for her support and assistance.
Introduction
It is something of a paradox that Marx's ideas, which were so
influential in the twentieth century, are so little understood.
Despite the many works that have been written on the subject,
how Marx's writings should be interpreted remains largely a
matter of opinion. That one of the main questions under dis-
cussion should be whether any great change occurred between
the 'young' and the 'mature' Marx is symptomatic of how little
is known. It would not arise if one could state with any cer-
tainty what Marx had set out to do, and how he intended to
achieve it.
Of course a serious difficulty is that Marx himself did not go
back to first principles to explain his system or state explicitly
what his purpose and his methods were. And even though his
intellectual biography has been studied in detail, this does not
reveal any gradual coming together of the ideas he was later
to propound. Marx's intellectual development takes place as
it were 'off stage', so that when commentators encounter the
first important document of Marx's thought, the Paris Manu-
scripts of 1844, they face a major exercise in interpretation.
One common reason why people do not explain precisely
the presuppositions of their thinking is that they are address-
ing an audience which knows these already. With the passage
of time, however, this kind of audience dies out, and is re-
placed by one which no longer shares the knowledge or as-
sumptions of the writer. As a result the writings in question
become progressively more enigmatic. The phenomenon is a
familiar enough one to historians. This certainly happened in
Marx's case, because even in his lifetime intellectual life
in Germany underwent profound changes which broke the
continuity that had produced the classic works of German
philosophy.
This being the case, one would expect the commentaries on
Marx's early works to devote considerable attention to recon-
structing the concepts and ideas which Marx found to hand
when he drew up his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
in 1844. But in fact they do not do this. Commentators on
the 1844 Manuscripts invariably interpret Marx's texts in
2 Marx and the Origins of Dialectical Materialism
present-day terms, and try to explain Marx's ideas with refer-

ence not to developments in the nineteenth century, but to
relatively familiar events of the twentieth. The only recent works
on Marx's ideas which have a historical dimension are David
McLellan's The Young Hegelians and Karl Mar£ and Leszek
Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism,2 to both of which we
shall presently return.
Why should it be, then, that writers on Marx have neglected
to pursue such an obvious avenue for investigation? Part of the
explanation must be the belief in a contemporary significance
of Marxism, and the consequent need to discuss the subject in
ahistorical terms. But more compelling explanations of the
lack of ahistorical approach emerge when one begins to exam-
ine what a historical treatment of Marx's ideas involves.
It is known that Marx's ideas were derived in some way from
Hegel. Consequently our investigation ought to trace the intel-
lectual developments leading from Hegel to Marx. But already
we run up against the difficulty that Hegel is as little under-
stood as Marx. That means that our destination is an unknown
and our starting point is also an unknown, and a notoriously
difficult one at that! There is no escaping the problem that to
approach Marx historically it would be necessary also to recon-
struct, if not Hegel's ideas, then at least what Marx thought
Hegel's ideas were.
But perhaps there is some help from Hegelian scholarship?
It could be that Hegelian scholars have done something in the
way of reconstructing some of the contemporary philosophical
ideas that Hegel worked with, or at least his terminology? As
a matter of fact - no. Hegelian scholars too like to modernize.
Charles Taylor, for example, in his exposition of Hegel's phi-
losophy repeatedly translates Hegel into Wittgenstein. 3 He
presumably has in mind an audience which is fully conversant
with Wittgenstein's ideas. But for the most part, when com-
mentators have treated Hegel's ideas historically they have done
this with reference to the classical Greek philosophers. 4 This is
to explain the origins of Hegel's famed dialectical method.
They are much less inclined to discuss what Hegel owed to his
immediate predecessors.
The need for investigations of pre-Hegelian German phi-
losophy to understand Hegel has been pointed out by Roger
Scruton, who observed that Hegel 'self-consciously related
Introduction 3
himself to his predecessors and left unexplained what they

had already explained'. 5 If anything Scruton understates the
importance of studying Hegel's predecessors, because - if we
may anticipate somewhat - the 'Categories' or the key con-
cepts which Hegel deduced in his Phenomenology and especially
in his Encyclopedia were not his categories. They were ones
which were either common to all thinkers of the day, or were
the products of various individual writers. The manner in which
they were incorporated into Hegel's system was his method of
commenting, often in a polemical way, on the philosophical
ideas with which he and his contemporaries were familiar. If,
however, one attributes all the categories in his system indis-
criminately to Hegel himself, then the whole point of what he
was trying to do is lost. And if, of course, it turned out that
Marx had been attempting something similar, then this in-
structive parallel would be missed.
The only recent work which does attempt to place Hegel in
the context of earlier German philosophy is Robert Solomon's
In the Spirit of Hegel.6 Solomon devotes the first section of his
book to an account of the philosophy of Kant, Fichte and
Schelling, and refers to these thinkers in the course of his
commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit. But contrary to
what one would expect, Solomon's purpose is not to elucidate
for his readers the modes of thought of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries and introduce them in this way
to Hegel's intellectual world. In fact he does the opposite, and
tries to bring both Hegel and his predecessors into the twen-
tieth century and make them speak in a modern idiom. This
might have some legitimacy if Solomon had first established
what Hegel and his predecessors were saying in their own idiom,
but there is no indication that this preliminary stage was even
envisaged. Thus, contrary to appearances, Solomon's book is
not a historical treatment of the subject.
A positive feature of Solomon's work, however, is that he
does try to define the philosophical terms used by Hegel. 7 This
is a profitable approach, because an essential preliminary to
understanding Hegel is to be able to make sense of the terms
he uses. But Solomon's efforts in this direction are under-
mined by the fact that he attempts to define Hegel's terms not
only in isolation from German thought, but even from each
other. The most obvious example is Hegel's use of the term
'Concept', which forms the core of his system. In the context

of the development of German nineteenth-century thought,
the way in which Hegel uses this term places him firmly in the
ranks of the rationalists. His defence of it has a pronounced
polemical edge.
To understand how Hegel's system is constructed, it is also
essential to know that the elements which constitute a Con-
cept are Universality, Particularity and Individuality.8 Solomon
fails to relate the Concept to these latter three terms, and to
distinguish Particularity from Individuality. In general Solo-
mon has not discovered that all of Hegel's terms are interre-
lated, and that it is impossible to give an adequate definition
of Hegel's vocabulary without expounding his system.
A historical treatment of Marx's ideas would also require an
examination of the Young Hegelian movement, in which Marx
and Engels were involved. But, despite its importance, the
subject has attracted few investigators. Yet, of all the episodes
in the history of nineteenth-century German thought, the Young
Hegelian movement is the best documented. The journal
around which the movement centred, Hallische Jahrbiicher (re-
named Deutsche Jahrbiicher in 1840) appeared daily between
1838 and 1842. Developments can therefore be studied as they
unfolded practically from day to day. The first scholar to take
advantage of this excellent source material was Ryszard
Panasiuk, whose Filozofia i panstwo was published in Warsaw in
1967.9 Panasiuk's meticulous study of Young Hegelian thought,
however, was unknown in the West, where conceptions of the
Young Hegelians took on their own idiosyncratic character.
The problem facing any would-be historian of Marx's pre-
decessors is the enormous complexity and variety of the mater-
ial and the difficulty of finding the way in which it ought to
be organized. After all, it would be relatively easy to provide an
exposition of a number of thinkers who had preceded Marx;
but it would be a pointless exercise unless one could follow
the unifying thread that would culminate in Marx's concep-
tions. The contradiction is that in order to recognize this
unifying thread when we found it, we would already have to
know what Marx's conceptions were. But in that case, since
Marx's ideas would already be understood, the kind of histor-
ical investigation which we envisage would be superfluous and
would leave us no wiser than when we started out.
Introduction 5
The writer who first provided Marx's ideas with an interpre-

tation and an associated history was Georg Plekhanov, whose
Development of the Monist View of History published in 1894 exer-
cised a far-reaching influence on succeeding generations of
Marx commentators. Plekhanov was the first to put forward
the conception that the essence of Marx's dialectic was the
synthesis of voluntarism or subjectivism on the one hand and
objective socioeconomic development on the other. As the
present study shows, Plekhanov's conceptions of Marxism arose
out of the political factional disputes of his day, and served
polemical ends. He wished to present his opponents, whom he
termed 'Narodniki', as 'subjectivists' of the same type as the
Young Hegelians Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner whom Marx
had criticized in his early works, The Holy Family in particular.
When he came to write his History and Class Consciousness in
1923 the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs drew heavily on
Plekhanov's work, which he referred to repeatedly.10 He praised
it in particular for the clarity with which it showed the 'con-
templative' and the 'practical' principles,11 concepts on which
Lukacs's own interpretation of Marx was to be based. Lukacs's
conceptions of Marx's dialectic were similar to Plekhanov's,
but they took into account the Leninist idea of political action
as a union of theory and practice. This synthesis or 'praxis' was
to be a leading concept in Lukacs's later works.
Lukacs quickly supplied his interpretation of Marx with a
historical dimension. This took the form of providing the
concept of 'praxis', which Marx had allegedly espoused, with
a history of development. The scheme was first put forward in
the article 'Moses Hess and the Problems of Idealist Dialectic'
published in 1926.12 In this article the Young Hegelian Moses
Hess was presented as a precursor of Marx, as he had been a
proponent of the philosophy of 'praxis'.
According to Lukacs, Hess had reconciled in his 'philosophy
of action' (Philosophic der Tat) two opposing extremes. On the
one side was the contemplative character of the Hegelian sys-
tem. The desire to make the Hegelian system practical led
Hess back to Fichte, whose philosophy, Lukacs implied, pos-
sessed the character of activity and represented the opposite
extreme to Hegel's. Lukacs added that this method of supple-
menting Hegel's philosophy had already been discovered by
August Cieszkowski, whose Prolegomena zur Historiosophie had
appeared in 1838. For both Cieszkowski and Hess, therefore,

Fichte supplied the element of movement, which when allied
with the contemplation of Hegel's system went to form the
philosophy of praxis later to be adopted by Marx.13
It is symptomatic of its Russian source of inspiration that
Lukacs's article compared the 'revolutionary utopianism' of
Fichte with the Russian Narodniki and Socialist Revolution-
aries. Taking into account the accepted view, established by
Plekhanov, that Bruno Bauer was the source of 'subjectivism'
in philosophy, Lukacs explained that the kind of subjectivism
he is speaking of was not that of Bruno Bauer - which Marx
in any case had condemned - but that of Fichte.14 According
to Marx in The Holy Family Fichte's self-consciousness, along
with Spinoza's Substance, went to form the Hegelian system.15
It was this kind of subjectivism, a modification of the type
discussed by Plekhanov, that Lukacs believed to be an element
in the philosophy of praxis. The allusion to Marx's aphorism,
moreover, was to be the only proof ever offered for the Young
Hegelian 'return to Fichte' which was later to become current
in Lukacs's writings.
Thus, by 1926 what was to become a familiar combination
of Fichte, Cieszkowski and Hess had already emerged. But how-
ever convincing the scheme of development propounded by
Lukacs may have seemed, it was not supported by the writings
of Fichte, Cieszkowski or Hess.
To interpret Fichte's philosophy as 'subjectivism' is, for one
thing, unjust and superficial. It is an interpretation that would
be difficult to sustain on the basis of what Fichte actually wrote.
The argument of Hess's main work The European Triarchy, more-
over, is somewhat removed from what Lukacs implies. As the
title suggests, the book concerns the three European nations,
Germany, France and England. In Hess's view, the achievements
of the Germans had been of an 'Inner' kind - the develop-
ment of philosophy from the Reformation to the recent disin-
tegration of the Hegelian school. The French, on the other
hand, had distinguished themselves in 'Outer' activities - in
political revolutions. Both types of activity, however, Hess
thought one-sided. It was only the English who had succeeded
in combining theorizing with practical pursuits, and it was that
country which provided the best hope for the future.16
The European Triarchy made no mention of Fichte, but Fichte
Introduction 7
was mentioned in Hess's 1843 essay entitled 'Philosophy of
Action'. There his name was invariably associated with that
of Baboeuf. This was because, in keeping with his conception
of an Inner-Outer parallel development of events in France
and Germany, he believed that Fichte was in German philoso-
phy what Bebeuf was in French politics. Fichte represented
atheism, while Babeuf represented communism. As Hess be-
lieved he could observe in France the end of the Restoration
epoch and the resurgence of political radicalism, a return to
the communism of Babeuf in the anarchism of Proudhon, he
professed to discern a parallel development in Germany. This
was the death of the 'Restoration philosopher' Hegel and the
'return to Fichte' in the atheistic writings of Feuerbach. 17 The
mention of Feuerbach in this connection is illustrative of the dif-
ficulty Hess experienced in finding any concrete example of a
return to Fichte. Not surprisingly, neither Lukacs nor any later
commentator has drawn upon Hess's stylized version of Euro-
pean history as evidence that a return to Fichte took place.
One may add that no special influence of Fichte is to be
found in Hess's own writings. The indications are that Hess's
'Philosophy of Action' came from a different source. The argu-
ment that fixity and restriction have their origin in the stand-
point of 'Reflection', and that activity, movement and freedom
presuppose 'Speculation' is one which has its origins in Schil-
ling's philosophy. For Hess, Fichte did not represent the active
counterweight to Hegel's system that Lukacs claimed.
And whereas Hess did mention Cieszkowski approvingly in
several places, it was not as a source of inspiration or influ-
ence, but as someone whose views coincided with those Hess
had put forward in his earlier work The Sacred History of Hu-
manity. Cieszkowski did not point Hess to Fichte, as Lukacs
claimed, but confirmed Hess in the opinions he already held.
Nevertheless, Hess's mention of Cieszkowski and the presen-
tation of this fact by Lukacs was sufficient to start a process
that was to propel a figure on the margins of the Young
Hegelian movement right to the centre of attention; and in
doing so to cause the mainstream of the Young Hegelian
movement to be all but overlooked, and with it the series of
developments that led from Hegel to Marx.
Cieszkowski had made a fleeting appearance in Hallische
Jahrbiicher in 1839 when his book Prolegomena to Historiosophy
(1838) had been reviewed.18 This work had attempted to apply

the Hegelian system, as Cieszkowski understood it, to human
history. He reproached Hegel for abandoning his own three-
fold division into thesis, antithesis and synthesis and propound-
ing a scheme of history with four great epochs. He also criticized
Hegel for omitting the future from his philosophy of history.
Cieszkowski divided history into three periods: the ancient
world, medieval and modern times, and the future. The first
period was that of feeling, the second that of knowledge, and
the third that of volition, the realization of beauty and truth
in the actual world.
A factor which gave some credibility to Lukacs's scheme of
Fichte-Cieszkowski-Hess was that, however mistakenly, those
thinkers appeared to be linked by an underlying theme, and
this appeared to show a dynamic of development. By contrast,
no alternative form of historical progression was offered for
any of the remaining, and much more significant, part of the
Young Hegelian movement.
When, for example, Karl Lowith published his study From
Hegel to Nietzsche in 193819 he arranged his material thematic-
ally and made no claim to establish a real historical sequence
of events. In Lowith's work each Young Hegelian writer is
treated individually. The same approach was adopted by all
Western writers who came after Lowith such as Horst Stuke,20
William Brazill21 and David McLellan.22 Each presented a se-
ries of studies of separate Young Hegelians, and each used as
source material the separately published writings of those
particular figures. In no case were the Hallische and Deutsche
Jahrbiicher used in any systematic way. Thus, the situation has
come about in which none of the studies of the Young Hegelian
movement available to the Western reader make any extensive
use of the main historical source for that movement, and all
find themselves in conflict with it on substantive matters of
fact.
The fragmented approach to the history of the Young
Hegelian movement allowed Lukacs's conceptions of German
intellectual development to gain momentum. Thus, Auguste
Cornu's extensive study of Marx's early intellectual develop-
ment published in 1955 presented the Young Hegelian move-
ment in the Lukacs manner, giving considerable prominence
to Cieszkowski's ideas and asserting that Hess, like the Young
Introduction 9
Hegelians in general, 'returned to Fichte in an attempt to go

beyond Hegel to transform the speculative philosophy into
a philosophy of action . . .'23 On the alleged 'return to Fichte'
by Hess or by any other Young Hegelian, Cornu offers no
evidence.
In 1961, along with Wolfgang Monke, Cornu edited a collec-
tion of Moses Hess's writings. In the Introduction to this vol-
ume the editors asserted that transformation of Hegelian
philosophy in the direction of the philosophy of action had
been initiated by Cieszkowski and that: 'In contrast to Hegel,
who treated history as the developmental process of objective
Mind, determined by immanent laws, Hess, along with the
Young Hegelians, thought that it was possible to subject his-
torical development to the human purposeful consciousness,
a modification which led back from Hegel to Fichte.' 24 The
evidence which was given for this statement was a reference
to Lukacs's 1926 article on Hess.25
In 1963 Horst Stuke published his doctoral dissertation on
The Philosophy of Action, which expounded the ideas of the three
thinkers August Cieszkowski, Moses Hess and Bruno Bauer.
Stuke followed Lukacs in his conception of the philosophy
of action, but his more empirical bent led him to encounter
a fact which ran directly counter to the considerable claims
made for Cieszkowski's importance in German intellectual
history. Stuke was only able to name three of Cieszkowski's
contemporaries who had been influenced by him. They were
Moses Hess, Alexander Bakunin and Alexander Herzen. 26
In his study of the Young Hegelians published in 1967
Ryszard Panasiuk devoted only a footnote to Cieszkowski and
his influence on Hess, remarking that apart from its mention
in The European Triarchy, Cieszkowski's book was not referred
to in any Young Hegelian publication or in any private corre-
spondence. 27 Significantly, the American scholar William Brazill,
whose book on the Young Hegelians was published in 1970,
found no reason to mention Cieszkowski at all.
The hint provided by Stuke's work might have suggested to
scholars at this point that Cieszkowski's importance had been
overestimated and stimulated them to question Lukacs's find-
ings. But this did not in fact happen. In his book The Young
Hegelians and Karl Marx published in 1969 David McLellan
credited Cieszkowski with having initiated a decisive turn in
the direction of the Young Hegelian movement, the 'Transition

from Thought to Action'. Having set out Cieszkowski's main
arguments, McLellan concluded:
Though there is no evidence that Cieszkowski's book was very widely

read, yet it certainly came to the notice of Herzen, who was overjoyed
on reading it to find himself in agreement with Cieszkowski on all
essential points. Hess refers to the Prolegomena often and borrows con-
siderably from it, and its emphasis on a philosophy of action was as
prophetic for the Young Hegelians in politics as Strauss's book had
been in religion. Thus it was Cieszkowski who gave the first impetus
to the process of swift secularisation that set in among the Young
Hegelians in the next few years.28
This is a remarkable passage, because instead of saying that

the people mentioned constituted almost all of the book's
known readers, McLellan implied that these same people were
only the outermost limits of an unknown but presumably ex-
tensive readership.
McLellan goes on to say that: 'Cieszkowski's book also re-
ceived an enthusiastic notice in the Hallische Jahrbiicher and it
was around this review and its successor the Deutsche Jahrbiicher,
that the Young Hegelian movement centred.' 29 The implica-
tions of this statement are that the favourable reception by
Hallische Jahrbiicher imparted a special significance to Prolegom-
ena, and that by being reviewed in this journal Cieszkowski's
book could become known to a wide audience among the
Young Hegelians. But in the first place, the notice of Julius
Frauenstadt, the reviewer, was hardly enthusiastic, and in the
second, Hallische Jahrbiicher reviewed upwards of a hundred
books during 1839. In fact Hallische Jahrbiicher consisted very
largely of book reviews, and these often provided contributors
to the journal with a convenient platform to propound their
own ideas and opinions. This was a common practice with the
journal's editor Arnold Ruge. In this way Hallische Jahrbiicher
left no one in any doubt about which works had special signifi-
cance for the Young Hegelians, and what the significance was.
Frauenstadt's review of Prolegomena, however, simply summar-
izes Cieszkowski's arguments without comment. Nor did any
writer anywhere during the five-year lifetime of the Hallische
and Deutsche Jahrbiicher discuss Cieszkowski's Prolegomena or the
ideas contained in it.
Introduction 11
This lack of interest, moreover, is entirely to be expected.

Because, as a reading of the Jahrbiicher reveals, the interest of
the contributors was concentrated not on Cieszkowski's theory
of history, but on Hegel's, which was being made public for
the first time in the edition compiled by Edward Gans.30 Hegel's
philosophy of history introduced some novel elements into his
system as it had been known hitherto, and this inspired Young
Hegelian writers to re-examine the Hegelian system in this
new light. The ideas which emerged as a result formed an
important part of Young Hegelian political thought. The
scheme proposed by McLellan is only sustainable if one ig-
nores the evidence of the Jahrbiicher, the main source for the
period.
In accordance with Lukacs's scheme, McLellan identified
Cieszkowski's ideas with Fichte's philosophy. He asserted that
Cieszkowski 'like the Young Hegelians after him is nearer to
Fichte than to Hegel. Fichte constantly opposed thought, con-
ceived by him as will in action, to present reality and consid-
ered its main task was to determine the future.' 31
In 1938 Lukacs defended his doctoral dissertation entitled
'The Young Hegel and the Problems of Capitalist Society' in
the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow. A revised German ver-
sion of the work was published in Switzerland in 1948 and in
East Germany in 1954.32 This was to be an extremely influen-
tial work because of the author's extensive knowledge of Ger-
man philosophy and literature, and the fact that he was the
first writer on Marx to have at his disposal the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. The appearance of the book
also preceded the postwar expansion of studies of Marx and
Hegel. No other writer, however, attempted a work to equal
the scale and depth of Lukacs's The Young Hegel
A central theme of The Young Hegel is to establish the line of
continuity between Hegel and Marx. Here too Lukacs's most
important predecessor was Plekhanov. The latter in his book
The Development of the Monist View of History had focused on
Hegel's and Marx's respective schemes of world history and
argued that elements of Marx's approach to history were al-
ready present in Hegel, though the latter's conceptions were
limited by his idealist outlook. In The Young Hegel Lukacs ar-
gued in the same fashion, taking as the element of continuity
between the two thinkers not history but political economy,
Hegel's anticipation of materialism being, according to Lukacs,

that Hegel was the only thinker of his time who undertook a
serious study of economics. 33
Lukacs took as his starting point the passage from the 'Eco-
nomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844' where Marx
declared that:
The greatness of Hegel's Phenomenology is then . . . that Hegel views
the self-creation of man as a process . . . and therefore that he con-
ceives the essence of labour and understands objective man, true,
because he conceives actual men as the result of their own labour?*
Lukacs took this passage to mean that Marx viewed Hegel's
philosophy as the analogue of British classical economics, but
he went on to interpret this idea in a very literal way, present-
ing Hegel's philosophy in the framework of his studies of British
economic thought. The progression from Hegel to Marx was
thereby a progression from economics conceived in an idealist
way to economics conceived materialistically.35 Lukacs's real
starting point was the traditional conception of Marx which
placed economics at the centre of his system; and his concep-
tion of a continuity between Hegel and Marx was one which
projected this interpretation of Marx back to Hegel.
In evaluating Lukacs's book it is important to take into
account the fact that Lukacs was not only concerned to estab-
lish the line of continuity between Hegel and Marx but also
to emphasize what current of thought had not produced the
Hegelian system. He wished to deny any suggestion that the
Romantic movement and especially Schelling had contributed
anything to the conceptions of Hegel or Marx. In this respect
The Young Hegel is a product of the controversies of the late
prewar period. It was written as part of the campaign Lukacs
was conducting against the 'irrationalist' currents of German
thought, whose origins Lukacs perceived in the philosophy of
Schelling and other Romantic writers. These ideas were elabor-
ated at length in the book The Destruction of Reason, to which
Lukacs's The Young Hegel provided the positive side of the
picture.
The Young Hegel is therefore a book part of whose very con-
ception is to provide a scheme of intellectual history which
excludes Schelling and the writers of the Romantic movement
- Schleiermacher, Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, Adam Miiller
Introduction 13
and Eduard Gorres - from the line of development that gave

rise to Hegel and Marx. The only thinker of the period who
is allowed to pass muster is Fichte, presumably because no
subsequent 'irrationalist' thinker turned to him for inspiration.
In this way The Young Hegel supplements Lukacs's 1926 arti-
cle on Hess. The two works taken together provide a consist-
ent view of philosophical developments extending from Fichte
to Hegel, then through Cieszkowski and Hess to Marx. The
scheme is summarized in The Destruction of Reason when Lukacs
explains that the Hegelian system had culminated in a 'per-
fected contemplation', the evocation of Aristotle's 'theoria'.
The period of disintegration of Hegelianism, moreover, cre-
ated the antagonism of two false extremes. One of these was
the idealist aspiration to overcome the contemplative summit
of the Hegelian system, deploying a subjective idealism that
had its source in Fichte's philosophy. This current included
the Young Hegelians Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and Moses
Hess. The other extreme was represented by Feuerbach, who
in attempting to overcome both subjectivism and Hegel's con-
templation, fell into the error of 'contemplative materialism',
condemned by Marx in his famous 'Theses on Feuerbach'.
Marx's 'dialectical materialism', according to Lukacs, was the
synthesis of the two extremes in 'praxis', the unity of theory
and practice. 37
The scheme has a certain internal consistency and plausi-
bility, but it has two serious weaknesses. The first concerns
factual accuracy. It demands that the writings of Fichte,
Cieszkowski, Hess and the Young Hegelians in general be in-
terpreted in the light that Lukacs suggests, even though, as
was indicated earlier, these writings do not support Lukacs's
assertions.
The second weakness is selectivity. Lukacs's presentation of
the line of continuity which led to Marx centres on a limited
group of thinkers, representatives of the 'philosophy of ac-
tion'. That leaves out of account the entire Romantic school
and the development of the Young Hegelian movement as
reflected in the Hallische and DeutscheJahrbiicher. In other words,
Lukacs would have us believe that Marx's ideas arose from an
offshoot of classical German philosophy, not from its central
growth.
The corollary of Lukacs's conception - and one which Lukacs
insists on explicitly - is that one need not look for any of

Marx's intellectual predecessors among the very substantial
group of thinkers he has designated as 'irrationalist', espe-
cially the adherents of Schelling.
But one does not have to search very far in this camp to
discover ideas that are entirely characteristic of Marx. This
can be illustrated by quoting from a book published in 1839
by Marx's teacher at Berlin University, Heinrich Steffens, a
follower of Schelling.
The human Individual is separated inwardly from every other, and for
that very reason is outwardly dependent on them. That is, he is sub-
ordinated to the law of Appearance. Thus, in history force becomes the
dominant factor, the veritable war of each against all and all against
each. But this force, whose origins coincide with those of individuation,
appears as a limitless force of Nature.38
This passage could easily come from Marx's Paris Manuscripts,

Alienation being discussed in the same words as Marx was to
use in that document. One can find similar passages in the
course of Anthropology which Marx studied under Steffens,
for example:
As soon as man selfishly separates himself from Nature, objects also
become separate from each other. And just as objects once separated
can be brought together again only by a rigid law, which is quite alien
to life and love, so in the same way thought, the divided soul, can be
related to objects only in an External way. And because this seems to
be an original state of affairs, man accordingly appears to himself in
a subservient light, as the product of his own shadow, as the creature
of his own ghost. . . For man's unity with himself is the Nature, which
is reconciled in him and with him in all spheres of activity. This is the
idea of paradise, which is just as certainly a part of human conscious-
ness when it embraces the human species, as it is recognised as con-
science in the inner Natural history of an Individual personality.39
According to one commentator on Marx's Paris Manuscripts,

Isztvan Meszaros, Marx's concept of Alienation has four main
aspects: (a) man's alienation from Nature; (b) man's aliena-
tion from himself; (c) man's alienation from his species being;
and (d) man is alienated from other men. 40 All of these are
present in Steffens and can be found in the passages above.
And one can add that mankind's own alienated self appearing
Introduction 15
as a war of each against all and as a force of Nature is also

characteristic of Marx's conceptions.
Another disciple of Schelling who might be mentioned in
this connection is Adam Miiller who developed a system of
political economy incorporating some of Schelling's concep-
tions. Contrary to Lukacs's assertion, Hegel was not the only
German thinker of the period who took up the study of eco-
nomics. Among the economic terms which Miiller used in a
philosophical context were 'use value' and 'exchange value',
later to be employed by Marx in a similar way. One could, as
the present study shows, multiply considerably the number of
examples where representatives of Schelling's philosophy con-
tributed in some way towards the body of ideas which formed
Marx's system. In fact in the Economic and Philosophical Manu-
scripts of 1844 Marx made use of the two terms Subsumption
and Potenz, exclusive in combination to Schelling. Both were
incorporated in Marx's later works.
Does this mean that Schelling, Steffens and Miiller are to be
considered the real inspirers of Marx's conceptions rather than
Fichte, Cieszkowski and Hess? Such a conclusion would be to
miss the point entirely of what Marx's relationship to his pre-
decessors was. Marx used existing ideas in the same way as Hegel
had used them - by incorporating them in his system. Marx's
originality was not in the intellectual material, but in the way
he used it. Like all the major thinkers of the period, Marx
took an existing corpus of ideas and presented it in a new way,
a way which represented the next logical step in relation to
previous intellectual developments. To understand what Marx's
project was we have to know what elements made up the cor-
pus of material Marx had at his disposal, and in what direction
contemporary intellectual developments were taking place.
In other words, the history of how Marx's ideas emerged,
the dynamic behind them, is inseparable from Marx's ideas
themselves.
Since such a dynamic of development requires to be found,
one which embraces a multiplicity of thinkers before Marx, it
is plainly inadequate, as most scholars do, to examine figures
in isolation from each other and in ignorance of conceptions
which passed silently from one to another.
Lukacs's arbitrary division of thinkers into those he is pre-
pared to countenance being predecessors of Marx, and those
he is not, obscures the overall direction which German intellec-

tual development took in the first decades of the nineteenth
century and Marx's place in it. One curious symptom of
Lukacs's approach is his explanation of the terms Entdusserung
(Externalization) and Entfremdung (Alienation) used by Hegel
and Marx. These, he claims are simply German translations of
the English word 'alienation', a term used in political economy
to signify the sale of a commodity. Lukacs added that as far as
he knew its first philosophical usage in German had been by
Fichte.41
Yet had the philosophical usage of Entdusserung and Entfrem-
dung been exclusively the property of the Fichte-Hegel-Marx
series, as Lukacs suggests, the passage cited above from Steffens
would have been impossible. Nor does it take a great deal of
perspicacity to see that Entdusserung and its opposite Erinnerung
are derivatives of the terms Outer and Inner, which are em-
ployed extensively by Hegel and by writers who both preceded
and followed him. (Their use by Hess has already been al-
luded to above.) The thinker who first made systematic use of
the terms was Schleiermacher, who features prominently in
Lukacs's list of 'irrationalist' writers, from whom the ideas of
Hegel - and a fortiori Marx - should not be traced. In this way
Lukacs misleads the reader not only on the immediate issue of
the origins and connotations of the terms Entdusserung and
Entfremdung, but also misrepresents the way in which the evo-
lution of German philosophy took place. Nevertheless it is
indicative of the extent of Lukacs's authority that the two terms
are still routinely translated into English indiscriminately as
'alienation'.
In Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism the inter-
pretation of Marx is that originated by Lukacs. Kolakowski
indeed states in his book that he believes Lukacs's interpreta-
tion of Marx's philosophy to be correct.42 The work accordingly
contains all the characteristic features of the Lukacs version,
elaborating sometimes in considerable detail general remarks
that Lukacs had made.
According to Kolakowski the elements of continuity link-
ing Marx to his predecessors were the perennial questions for
which classical German philosophy was an attempt to devise new
conceptual forms. The main question in this respect Kolakowski
thought to be that of the contingency (przypadkowosc) of human
Introduction 17
existence. This concept he derived from Aristotle and traced

through Plotinus, Eriugena, Eckhardt and Nicholas of Cusa,
the latter two thinkers first mentioned in this particular con-
text by Lukacs in his History and Class Consciousness.
The exposition proceeds smoothly until reaching the classical
German philosophers, where the flaws in the procedure become
plain. For in order to make the case for continuity along the
axis of contingency Kolakowski has to paraphrase the views of
thinkers from Kant onwards, since the writers in question them-
selves did not expound their ideas in these terms. And since
Kolakowski concentrates on those aspects of their work in which
he professes to trace the concept of 'contingency', his treatment
of philosophers like Kant and Fichte is somewhat contorted.
Kolakowski's exposition of Fichte's philosophy is especially
idiosyncratic, because it does not present it as the integrated
system it was conceived as being, reconciling materialism and
idealism in the manner of Spinoza's Substance. The treatment
of Fichte is fragmentary, and the implication is that he was an
idealist pure and simple, though one who first used the term
Entdusserung in a philosophical sense. As the inclusion of this
latter fact suggests, what Kolakowski is conveying to his readers
is not Fichte's philosophy as it was, but what Fichte's philoso-
phy is required to be for the purposes of the overall interpreta-
tion in the Lukacs spirit.
It is notable too that Fichte is the last thinker to be discussed
before Hegel. Schelling is omitted entirely. Nor is there any
mention of Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Adam Miiller, Eduard
Gorres or any representative of the Romantic movement. All
the figures Lukacs had refused to consider precursors of
Hegel or Marx Kolakowski ignores.
Hegel was one philosopher who did use the term 'contin-
gency' in the way Kolakowski has in mind, but Hegel was the
last thinker before Marx's time who did so. Kolakowski escapes
from this difficulty by asserting that 'this overcoming of con-
tingency is the same as freedom of Mind'. 43 This is nevertheless
a change of ground, and later thinkers are discussed not in
terms of contingency, but of 'praxis'.
The history of the Young Hegelian movement is thereby
interpreted as one which transformed Hegel's 'dialectic of
negation into a "philosophy of action" '. And, according to
Kolakowski, the essential part in this transformation was
played by none other than - Count August Cieszkowski.44 In

Kolakowski's view Cieszkowski's philosophy of action was
adopted by Hess, and through Hess it became 'the philosoph-
ical nucleus of Marxism'.45 In Kolakowski's view:
the essential part played by Cieszkowski in the pre-history of Marxism
is beyond dispute. For he expressed in Hegelian language and in the
context of Hegelian debates the future identity . . . of intellectual activity
and social practice. That after all is the seed out of which Marx's
eschatology grew. Marx's most often quoted saying: 'Philosophers have
only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to
change it' is nothing but a repetition of Cieszkowski's ideas.46
Kolakowski could have learnt from Panasiuk - or better still

from the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher - that this concep-
tion had no evidence to support it, but he preferred to repeat
the version of events proposed by Lukacs.
Associated with this interpretation of the Young Hegelian
movement is the alleged 'return to Fichte'. This, as one would
expect, is present in Kolakowski's account. There it is stated
that 'The Young Hegelians, especially in the second phase of
their development (1840-43), were to "Fichteanise" Hegel, if
one may so put it, by reintroducing the point of view of obli-
gation (Sollen) in their approach to history.'47 This assertion,
which is not documented, is probably indebted ultimately to
Lukacs's 1926 article on Hess.
It is made, moreover, in the course of discussing David
Strauss's book The Life of Jesus. Ironically, the argument of that
book - that the Gospel stories reflect the ancient practice of
expressing ideas in the form of imagery rather than abstract
concepts - owes nothing to Fichte, but a great deal to Schelling.
Because scholars are apt to accept the findings of one an-
other rather than put them to the test, the momentum behind
misconceptions about the origin of Marx's ideas remains un-
checked. Thus one finds that in recent works it is stated as fact
that Cieszkowski 'foreshadows Marx';48 that 'just as Cieszkowski
had revised Hegel, so Hess would revise Cieszkowski, and the
resulting doctrine would be passed on to inspire Marx';49 that
'the philosophy of practice of Fichte, Cieszkowski and Hess, is
also a foundation stone for Marxism';50 and that 'the futuristic
attitude expressed in Marx's practicalism originates in the
philosophy of August Cieszkowski'.51
Introduction 19
This represents the consensus of opinion on the origins of

Marx's thought. It has survived because it is the only existing
attempt to align Marx's ideas with those of other German
thinkers. It draws its sustenance not from first-hand evidence,
but the borrowings of one scholar from another. Yet the align-
ment is very poor in two directions. It does not extend for-
wards into Marx's project as a whole, but ends in the 'Theses
on Feuerbach'. And it does not extend backwards to illumin-
ate in an accurate way the dynamics of German philosophical
development that was to culminate in Marx's system.
From what has been said, some pointers emerge for how the
pitfalls mentioned above can be avoided.
1. The first and most obvious lesson to be drawn from
earlier attempts to trace the origins of Marx's ideas is that one
should not rely for matters of substance on the authority of
secondary sources alone. It is essential to verify everything,
wherever possible, with first-hand materials. This of course is
a much more lengthy and laborious process, but in the long
run it provides more reliable results.
2. The object of all research is to discover something that
was not known at the outset. In this case we are trying to
discover how Marx's writings should be interpreted. For that
reason it is contradictory to organize material into a sequence
that uses as a criterion of relevance an interpretation of Marx.
3. It is just as contradictory to do the opposite: to exclude
in advance an area of investigation simply because one is not
prepared to countenance the idea that a certain group of writers
should have contributed something to the evolution of Marx's
ideas. Since one does not know in advance what the result of
an investigation will be or where it will lead, no area can be
excluded beforehand from its purview.
The method followed in the present study takes these les-
sons into account. It uses as its point of departure the passage
in the letter from Marx to Engels dated 25 March 1868:
But what would old Hegel say if he heard in the next world that Uni-
versal [das Allgemeine] in German and Old Norse means nothing but
the common land, and the Particular [Sundre, Besondre] nothing but the
separate property divided off from the common land? So the logical
categories are coming damn well out of 'our intercourse' after all.52
The passage suggests that there is an element of continuity

between Hegel and Marx based on the terms 'Universal' and
'Particular'. It is then a matter of investigating what this con-
tinuity consisted in, how the two terms entered the German
philosophical vocabulary, what part they played in Hegel's
system, and how they were employed by Marx. In this way the
terms Universal and Particular can be used as the guiding
thread to trace the evolution of German thought between Kant
and Marx. By adopting this procedure the present study pro-
poses to obviate the difficulties noted above. This is believed
possible because:
1. The present study is based for the most part on primary
sources. This is for two reasons: one is the considerations of
method referred to earlier; the other is a matter of necessity.
Since no work on Hegel, Marx or the relationship between
them based on the terms Universal and Particular currently
exists, the present study inevitably has had to have recourse to
primary material.
2. It is fundamental to the character of the present study
that the interpretation of Marx which emerges does not pre-
cede but is the outcome of the investigation. The passage in
Marx's letter does not contain any interpretation either of his
own or of Hegel's work. There is simply a suggestion that the
terms Universal and Particular may be found in both, and that
they may be significant.
3. The method does not arbitrarily exclude any group of
writers or intellectual currents. It contains its own criterion of
selection, since it is concerned with those writers between Kant
and Marx who have used the terms Universal and Particular,
or the concepts associated with them.
One must hasten to add that although the terms Universal
and Particular serve as the starting point and the focus of this
study, they are not traced mechanically or in a narrow sense.
The great virtue of following the terms is precisely that they
lead inescapably to a number of other key concepts out of
which German classical philosophy was constructed. They lead
us directly to the dynamic of its development which we require
to examine.
Nor would it have been prudent to exclude individual think-
ers from the account who contributed substantially to this
Introduction 21
dynamic of development simply because they did not use the

terms Universal and Particular themselves, but some of their
derivatives. And there are cases where it is the very non-use of
the terms which is significant in the flow of development that
we are tracing. This applies especially to Marx after 1868 when
all such terminology began to be excised from his work.
As well as its methodological use, the method has two other
characteristics which may be mentioned.
1. Because Universal and Particular are widely used terms

by almost all the major thinkers between Kant and Hegel, one
finds that the line of continuity leads through the Romantic
movement in its early phase and includes the work not only of
Fichte, but also of Novalis, Schleiermacher, Friedrich Schlegel,
Joseph Gorres and Adam Miiller - in fact the entire group of
writers designated by Lukacs as 'irrationalist' and denied any
claim to be predecessors of Hegel or Marx. As subsequent com-
mentators have followed Lukacs in this practice, the group
of Romantic writers has not hitherto figured in any account
of how Hegel's or Marx's ideas arose. In this way the present
study breaks new ground in demonstrating that both Hegel
and Marx can be reached by way of the route declared impass-
able by Lukacs in his Destruction of Reason.
2. The pages of the Young Hegelian journals Hallische and
Deutsche Jahrbiicher reveal another reason why we have to trace
the ideas of Marx, Hegel and the Young Hegelians through
the Romantics. For the chief concern of writers in the main
source on the Young Hegelian movement is not what one
might assume it to be from existing literature on the subject.
It is not Fichte; it is not Cieszkowski; it is not Hess; it is not
subjectivism; and it is not the 'philosophy of action'. It is the
Romantics and Romanticism. Page after page, article after
article is devoted to that theme. Typically, the articles Marx
proposed to write for the Deutsche Jahrbiicher were to be on the
Romantics.
The preoccupation is easily explicable. The Young Hegelians
Ruge, Strauss, Feuerbach, Bauer, Vischer, Rosenkranz, Hess
and Marx had all come to Hegelian philosophy through the
Romantic writers and interpreted Hegel in those terms. But
the opponents of the Young Hegelians were also Romantics,
hence the campaign against Romanticism on the pages of the
journals. The ambiguity of an intellectual current which on

the one hand sustained Hegelian philosophy, but on the other
nurtured conservatism and oppression led the Young Hegelians
to use the metaphor of an irrational husk of Romanticism sur-
rounding a rational kernel of Hegelian philosophy. As events
unfolded, much of what belonged to the kernel was discovered
to be part of the irrational husk.
This central aspect of the Young Hegelian movement does
not appear in Lukacs's version of German intellectual develop-
ment. In this way the Romantic movement and the Young
Hegelian campaign against Romanticism are both excluded.
Yet these two phenomena are linked by an obvious line of
continuity. That line, moreover, passes through Hegel and ends
in Marx. The question must arise: can one not include Hegel
and at least the early Marx within that continuum? The answer
to that question is in the affirmative; but what is remarkable,
and testifies to the degree of Lukacs's influence, is that it has
never before been posed.
Examining the evolution of the terms Universal and Parti-

cular and the concepts associated with them is a method of
reconstructing the intellectual history of the Hegelian period.
In doing so, however, it is necessary to bear in mind that we
are dealing with philosophy not in its narrow modern sense,
but with systems of thought which embraced philosophical (in
its modern sense), theological, political, social and economic
aspects, which modern scholarship separates out and distrib-
utes to the various disciplines. This kind of fragmentation
renders much of the intellectual world of Hegel and Marx
inaccessible to modern scholarship. For in studying an age
which prided itself in bringing together different branches of
knowledge in a single system, it is quite inappropriate to im-
pose upon it disciplinary demarcations of later times. In fol-
lowing the ramifications of the Universal and the Particular it
will be necessary to cross and recross the boundaries of several
modern disciplines.
In tracing the evolution of the terms Universal and Particu-
lar from Kant to Hegel a definite pattern emerges. One discov-
ers that Particularity is associated with 'Nature' and Universality
with 'Society'. These were important associations for the man-
ner in which philosophical systems were constructed and how
Introduction 23
they handled such pairs of opposites as subject-object and

necessity-freedom.
It also emerges that the main areas of attention of thinkers
before Hegel can be classed under three heads. The first of
these, what one may call 'the science of the Universal and the
Particular', embraced theories of knowledge and abstract ques-
tions of method; Nature comprised the world of objects which
could be apprehended by knowledge; and Society constituted
the sphere of human affairs.
An encouraging discovery for the procedure adopted is that
this division of material is also the one that Hegel adopted for
his system. Hegel calls the science of the Universal and Par-
ticular 'Logic'; he retains the term 'Nature' for the correspond-
ing part of his system; but instead of Society Hegel prefers the
term Mind (Geist).
A related finding is that the material which Hegel groups
under these heads, the categories he links together, come from
his predecessors and contemporaries. In this way, Marx's sug-
gestion in his letter to Engels to follow the evolution of the
Universal and the Particular produces a coherent and instruc-
tive exposition of Hegel's system.
The advantage of this method, moreover, is that it makes
Hegel's philosophy comprehensible, and comprehensible in
early nineteenth-century terms. It approaches Hegel's system
through the less complex ideas of the writers of the Romantic
movement. Armed with these ideas and the terminology these
writers used, it is possible to observe how these elements were
used by Hegel and incorporated in his system. The investigation
acts, to use Hegel's simile, like a ladder by which the complexi-
ties of Hegel's system can be approached via the more acces-
sible conceptions of the Romantic movement. It is moreover
the same ladder as was used by Marx and his contemporaries.
Having examined Hegel's system in this way, one may ob-
serve that Marx had intended in a work entitled 'The Critique
of Political Economy' to construct a system on the same pat-
tern as Hegel's, though one in which the philosophical ideas
would be given a new interpretation suggested by recent ad-
vances made by Young Hegelian writers. In the course of the
present study it will be necessary to examine why the outcome
of Marx's efforts was Capital and not the proposed 'Critique of
Political Economy'.
It can be noted here that Marx's adoption of his predeces-

sors' practice of regarding Nature and Society as polar oppo-
sites has been overlooked in existing works concerned with
Marx's conception of Nature. In his History and Class Conscious-
ness Lukacs asserted that Nature was a 'societal category',53 and
this formulation was repeated by Alfred Schmidt in his mono-
graph The Concept of Nature In Marx.54
Schmidt's book, which subscribes to Lukacs's interpre-
tation of Marx's ideas as 'philosophy of praxis', is instructive
for the way it reveals how the misconception is sustained.
Schmidt asserts that: 'Nature interests Marx primarily as a fac-
tor in human praxis.' In support of this he quotes the sen-
tence from the 1844 Manuscripts that 'Nature too, taken
abstracdy, for itself, and fixed in its separation from man, is
nothing for man.' 55 Schmidt is obviously unaware that the con-
ception of 'fixing' something as an 'abstraction' is a hallmark
of Schelling's philosophy.
It has also escaped commentators on Marx that one requires
to know what Marx meant by Nature in order to discover what
he implied by the term 'human Nature', 'man being human
Nature'. 56 The 'Nature' in both usages is the same Nature. 57
There are rather few works which examine the development
of Marx's economic thinking. 58 Those which do exist all make
the mistake of assuming that Capital was the work which Marx
set out to write, and that his intentions were more or less
carried out. That is not the case: Capital was only a fraction of
what was intended, and the published version is a very poor
guide to the scheme Marx originally conceived in 1844. The
unfinished 'Critique of Political Economy', however, is a con-
tinuing attempt to bring the original idea to fruition.
That Marx intended to make use of materials he had col-
lected on the Russian economy in the second section of Capi-
tal is not well known, though this should by rights be an integral
part of the history of Marx's project. The only existing substan-
tial monograph on Marx's relations with Russia and the Rus-
sians is Haruki Wada's Marx, Engels and Revolutionary Russia,59
a small part of which has been translated into English and
published in Late Marx and the Russian Road, edited by T.
Shanin. 60 Wada's book is divided into sections which examine
in turn first Marx's and then Engels's contacts with the Rus-
sians. The subject is treated in exemplary detail and draws
Introduction 25
upon many first-hand sources. Wada's treatment of the sub-

ject, however, does not connect Marx's interest in Russia with
his continuing attempts to complete his 'Critique of Political
Economy', and lacking this unifying thread, becomes involved
in minor questions of chronology.
One might have thought that of all the aspects of Marx's life
it is his contacts with Russia and his preoccupation with that
country that would be the best known. At first sight it would
seem an obvious subject for Soviet historians. That this was
never the case indicates the existence of some conflict be-
tween historical evidence and Soviet doctrine on the subject.
In fact, it emerges that Marx's contacts in Russia, and those in
general who adopted his approach to Russian economic devel-
opment, were branded 'Narodniki' by Plekhanov and his asso-
ciates, who claimed to be the true followers of Marx. Plekhanov
of course was later to become Lenin's mentor, so that the
brand of 'Marxism' which was to become the Soviet Union's
official ideology was not something that Marx would have
endorsed.
In 1964 the American historian Richard Pipes published a
well-researched article61 arguing that until the last years of the
nineteenth century 'Narodnik' was a term applied to people
who tried to express the wishes and aspirations of the com-
mon people, but in the 1890s was a polemical label first at-
tached by Peter Struve to his opponents, who did not believe
that Russia was destined to undergo a capitalist phase of devel-
opment. Pipes also pointed out that the people whom Struve
classed as 'Narodniki' did not accept the designation. Pipes
was mistaken about who had first coined the term in its mod-
ern sense - it was not Struve, but Plekhanov - but in general
terms he was supported by the evidence.
Pipes's article ought to have brought about a radical revi-
sion in the way historians spoke of 'Narodniki' or 'Populists',
i.e. as though they had actually existed as an identifiable intel-
lectual current distinct from the Marxists. (In fact in the 1880s
Marxists were proud to call themselves 'Narodniki'.) But the
momentum behind the idea was such that Pipes's article fell
'stillborn from the press'. Historians continued - and continue
- to oppose Marxists to 'Populists'.
A book which encouraged them to do so was the study by
Andrzej Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism published in
1969, which disputed Pipes's findings.62 This influential work

has an interesting ancestry. It is in fact a translation of the
Introduction to The Social Philosophy of Russian Narodism, which
appeared in Warsaw in 1965.63 This was a two-volume collection
of writings by people conventionally designated as 'Narodniki'.
The collection was a modified version of the Soviet book
Narodnik Economic Literature (1958) edited by N.K. Karataev.64
Using Karataev's book as a basis, Walicki and his helpers trans-
lated the texts into Polish, adding many more, and supplying
notes and an extensive Introduction. Though litde known in
the West, Walicki's was a useful collection and contained some
documents of considerable rarity. In The Controversy over Capi-
talism the text of the Introduction is translated with a few
modifications and prefaced by some remarks on Pipes's article.
But the Soviet ancestry of Walicki's book left its mark on the
conceptions embodied in The Controversy over Capitalism. This
was especially pronounced in the characterization of Populism.
According to Walicki, Populism was a 'subjectivist' doctrine
derived from, among others, the Young Hegelians, 'especially
from B. Bauer'. 65 This was an idea that Plekhanov had first put
forward in his book The Development of the Monist View of History
in an attempt to discredit his opponents, to whom he had at-
tached the label 'Narodnik'. Plekhanov's portrayal of Narodism
had been perpetuated to become Soviet orthodoxy. By com-
mencing his study with a discussion of the 'subjective sociology'
supposedly espoused by Populists, Walicki gave the impression
that a 'Populist' current of thought had indeed existed, and that
it had been as Plekhanov claimed. Walicki seems unaware that
the designation 'Populist' and the attribution of 'subjectivism'
had a polemical origin, and that the people concerned had
denied Plekhanov's assertions unambiguously.
The study of Plekhanov is important in two respects. One is
that it elucidates the historical development of Marx's ideas in
Russia and their progression towards Leninism. The other is
that it reveals the origins of 'dialectical materialism' and shows
the source of several common, but mistaken, assumptions, about
Marx's ideas, about Hegelian philosophy and also about the
conceptions of the Young Hegelians.
It reveals in particular the manner in which Plekhanov at-
tempted to equate the 'subjectivism' of the Russian Narodniki
with that of Bruno Bauer and with the Young Hegelians in
Introduction 27
general. As the present study shows, this was done on quite
spurious grounds. Yet this and Plekhanov's related concept of
'dialectical materialism' as a synthesis of subjectivity and objec-
tivity were later to inspire Lukacs and his conception of 'praxis'.
The study of Plekhanov, therefore, provides the background
to the origin of Lukacs's ideas, and supplies the material for
their complete evaluation.
1 The Romantic Heritage
THE IDEA OF A SYSTEM
An underlying assumption common to all classical German
philosophers was that all branches of knowledge were inter-
related and constituted a single integral whole. Writers of the
time believed that there was not a plurality of sciences, but a
single, universal science. The impetus in this direction had
been prepared by Kant's predecessors, particularly by the Pietist
writers, who were a prolific source of many ideas in German
idealist philosophy. Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, for exam-
ple, declared that:
Whosoever will prepare himself for the coming golden age must see
the sciences in their true simplicity and undivided form . . . For the
separation of the sciences is the result of the corrupt times. The unifi-
cation of the sciences is part of the preparation for the golden age.1
Fichte was the thinker who set out most explicitly why knowl-
edge must necessarily take the form of a system. He believed
that knowledge was like a building; the structure could only be
added to if the foundation was sound; it would be a pointless
exercise to develop the sciences if they were based on a false
premiss. He thought of philosophy as the basic science, con-
cerned with providing all the other branches of knowledge
with a reliable starting-point. Fichte reasoned that there was
no science or field of knowledge which was entirely uncon-
nected with all the rest. For if the sciences were areas of expe-
rience completely divorced from one another, one would have
to learn afresh the principles upon which each one was based.2
Since one did not require to do this, it followed that knowl-
edge was not divided into a number of separate compartments,
but constituted an integral whole. This was an important con-
clusion for Fichte, because it enabled him to argue that the
principle which gave the whole of human knowledge its un-
derlying unity was at the same time the starting-point in cer-
tainty for all the branches of knowledge. This point of unity
Fichte termed the 'Self (das Ich) and this was the subject of
his major work the Science of Knowledge?
28
The Romantic Heritage 29
Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of

system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-
point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Think-
ers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of
knowledge which came from experience was not reliable.
Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete or
superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on some-
thing which had been established only empirically. The kind
of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be most
secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws
of Nature. These had been formulated without every occur-
rence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed,
so they did not summarize empirical information, and yet they
held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly
Universal in their application.
Although Kant had investigated the question of a priori
knowledge extensively, he himself had not set out his findings
in the form of a system, though he had left behind him some
pointers to how this might be done. In his three great critiques,
the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason and
the Critique of Judgement, Kant had explored the questions of a
priori knowledge, ethics and aesthetics respectively, and in each
of these three areas the universal applicability had emerged as
a criterion of each. Universality along with necessity was held
to be the essential characteristic of a priori knowledge; a moral
act was defined as one which could serve as a Universal law of
behaviour;4 and Universality was said to be the criterion of
objective beauty.5 If one took Universality as a starting-point,
one could say that this was the pivot around which the theory
of knowledge, ethics and aesthetics revolved.
It was left to Fichte to draw these conclusions, and to con-
struct a system in which the Self, the starting-point for all
reliable knowledge, was at the same time an ethical ideal. In
comparing his own system with Rant's philosophy, Fichte em-
phasized that his system started out from Universality and
proceeded towards Particularity, that is it started out from a
priori knowledge and progressed towards the empirical, from
the abstract to the concrete. 6
The choice of the term the 'Self implied that Fichte thought
of his starting-point in certainty as following in the tradition of
Descartes and Rousseau's Savoyard priest, who saw the Self

as the thing of which they could be most sure. It occurred to
Schelling, however, that one could free the starting-point of
the system from the Self by changing the shape of the system.
It should not be the pyramidal arrangement with the Abstract
Universal Self at the apex, descending to the Particular, the
empirical world, but should be cyclical in form so that it would
return to its point of departure. That would ensure that the
system was completely consistent with itself. In that way the
whole weight of the system would be brought to bear on jus-
tifying the starting-point. As Schelling stated: 'Every true sys-
tem .. . must contain the ground of its existence within itself;
and hence if there be a system of knowledge, its principle
must be within knowledge itself Or, stated more simply and
epigrammatically: 'A system is completed when it is led back to
its starting-point.' 7
There was a further implication of the system that Schelling
designed. That was that since the starting-point embodied the
principle of complete integration, of Absolute Identity, then
consistency demanded that the same principle be observed at
all points on the system. In other words what was true of the
system as a whole should also be true of its component parts,
and vice versa. Thus, for example, each element within Schel-
ling's system was cyclical; each returned to its point of departure.
An important contribution to the development of philosophi-
cal systems in Germany was also made by Fichte and Schelling's
contemporaries, the so-called Romantic School, formed in and
around Jena at the close of the eighteenth century. It brought
together a number of highly talented young people who looked
on all forms of human activity as constituting an integrated
whole. They believed that philosophy, science, poetry, religion,
art and politics all formed the constituent parts of a single
system of knowledge and that no branch of it should be pur-
sued in isolation from the rest. The members of this group
included Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm,
the poet Friedrich von Hardenberg, who wrote under the pseu-
donym Novalis, the novelist Ludwig Tieck and the theologian
Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Some members of the Romantic School engaged in various
pursuits. Novalis, for example, was at once poet, scientist and
philosopher. One important consequence of the idea that all
branches of knowledge were interrelated was the possibility of
constructing an encyclopedia in which this integration would

be achieved. The conception of such an encyclopedia was first
advanced by Novalis, who even made the preliminary sketches
of the form it might eventually take.8 The task, however, was
not achieved by any member of the Romantic school, but was
subsequently accomplished by Hegel.
Tieck brought philosophy and art together in his novels,
plays and short stories. He was adept at constructing in his works
different levels of meaning. He did this in various genres, but
most successfully in his collection of folk-tales (Volksmdrchen).
Tieck's use of the folk-tale as an artistic genre illustrated effec-
tively how the simple Marchen might contain as much depth as
any abstract philosophical disquisition, and they were in fact
designed to illustrate and comment upon the philosophical
ideas of the day.9 The structure of Tieck's works, moreover,
using different levels of reality, resembled the configuration of
both Fichte's and Schelling's philosophical systems.
Although the writers of the Jena circle set out to achieve
integration of all spheres of human activity, they did not nec-
essarily seek to do this individually. Rather they thought in
terms of pursuing their chosen sphere of activity in such a way
that it would complement those of their associates. Friedrich
Schlegel invented for the phenomenon the term 'Symphilo-
sophie.10 Heinrich Steffens, subsequendy one of Marx's teachers,
who attached himself to the circle at Jena, recalled:
What made the times so delightful at Jena was the unity which prevailed
among all those founders of a new school of literature. It was almost
like the unity which prevails in the organic world where one root puts
forth many forms, different in aspect, but in full agreement with one
another. They all felt that they had a common task to do and that they
could do it together. 11
This was the environment in which Hegel began his philo-
sophical career, and the system which he was to construct owed
a great deal to the fact that the ideas current in the Jena circle
had been formed with a view to their eventual integration.
REASON
In all philosophical systems from Kant onwards central place

was given to establishing the capabilities of human Reason,
what was accessible to the human mind. The ground-rules in
this area were laid down by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason,
and later philosophers took up the issues he had raised and
made use of the terminology he had employed.
Even Kant, however, built on conceptions inherited from
earlier German philosophers. The association of the key term
'Concept' with those of Universality and Particularity had first
been given currency at the beginning of the eighteenth cen-
tury by Christian Wolff. This was retained by Kant and passed
on to all his successors including Hegel and the Young Hege-
lians. What brought the three terms together was the way suc-
cessive philosophers believed Concepts were formed.
Wolff had stated that Concepts could be 'clear' or 'obscure'.
In the case of an individual object it was possible to form a
clear and precise Concept of it because it was distinguished by
Particular characteristics. The Concept of a species of objects
was less clear, since it did not include individual or Particular
characteristics, but only those which marked the species. If
one abstracted still further, general or Universal Concepts were
obtained corresponding to the genus, and contained still fewer
distinguishing characteristics. The more general the Concept
the less precise it became.12 Universality and Particularity, there-
fore, were terms originally applied to Concepts, and signified
their degree of abstraction, Universal being applied to the more
abstract Concepts, and Particular to Concepts of individual
objects.
The association of Universal with abstraction was implied by
Kant in the way he used the term in his three Critiques. It was
the Subsumption of Particularity. This sense of Universality
was also extremely important for Fichte, since the Self was
conceived as the highest point of abstraction in his system.
Both thinkers, moreover, treated the capacities of human
Reason in terms of the 'Concept'.
The sense in which the term 'Concept' was used was rather
wider at the beginning of the eighteenth century than in the
post-Kantian period. In his textbook on logic published in 1713
Wolff defined the Concept as 'any representation (Vorstellung) of
a thing in our thoughts'. 13 By his definition and by the exam-
ples he gave, Wolff made it clear that the term 'Concept' could
be applied not only to classes of objects, but also to individual,
Particular objects.
Whereas Wolff had referred to all ideas, from the most
rudimentary to the most sophisticated, as Concepts, Kant

established the threefold classification into 'Intuitions', 'Con-
cepts' and 'Ideas', corresponding to their degree of abstraction
and complexity. Intuitions were of singular objects, Concepts
were of classes of object, while Ideas were Concepts of general
rules or principles. Therefore Wolff's examples of Concepts of
individual things would have been classified by Kant as
Intuitions. 14
Kant's classification of Concepts corresponded to the dis-
tinctions he drew between the three faculties of the human
mind. The first of these was the Sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), which
represented the most rudimentary form of awareness. Above
this was the Understanding (Verstand), which was the power by
which thinking was possible, and which derived its material
from the Sensibility. The highest of the human mental facul-
ties was the Reason (Vernunft), the power to organize thought
in the form of general rules or Universal principles.
In Kant's conception of the three faculties of the human
mind the Sensibility dealt in Intuitions (Anschauungen), the
Understanding in Concepts [Begriffe) and the Reason in Ideas
(Ideen).15 This hierarchical scheme pervaded not only Kant's
philosophy, but those of his many followers including Fichte,
Schelling and Hegel.
The distinction between the Sensibility and the Understand-
ing was an important one for Kant since it allowed him to
argue that the function of the Understanding was to think,
that is to form and to combine Concepts, while that of the
Sensibility was to produce Intuitions of objects. Since, however,
the Understanding did not have direct knowledge of objects,
but only of the Intuitions of objects produced by the Sensibil-
ity, the Understanding could not form Concepts of objects as
such; there could be no Concepts of 'things-in-themselves'
(Dinge an sich). The human mind could not know things as
they actually were, only as they appeared. To know the things
in themselves would require a special type of Intuition, an
Intuition of the Understanding, or in Kant's terms an 'Intel-
lectual Intuition'. But by the very manner in which the human
mind was constituted, Kant argued, such an Intuition could
not possibly exist.16
Fichte, however, referred to the Self precisely as an 'Intellec-
tual Intuition', because he considered that at the highest point
of abstraction Subject and Object coincided: the knower and

the thing known were identical. Fichte took this to signify that
ultimately nothing was inaccessible to the human Reason.
Schelling used the conception of the Intellectual Intuition
to interpret the hierarchy of Ideas, Concepts and Intuitions in
a new way. He applied the term 'Intellectual Intuition' not to
the Self, but to the starting-point of his cyclical system, which
he also referred to as the 'Absolute'. In common with Fichte's
Self, Schelling held the Absolute to be the point at which Sub-
ject and Object coincided. He went on to state that the Absolute
Identity of Subject and Object was maintained throughout
the system, so that the division into Subject and Object was not
an Absolute, but a relative one. The same Subject and Object
substance pervaded the whole system, so that at no point were
either Subjectivity or Objectivity entirely absent.17
In everyday life, however, people thought and acted on the
assumption that there was an absolute distinction between the
subjective and the objective worlds. This was, Schelling argued,
because the Absolute, being an Intuition, was inaccessible to
the conscious Understanding. Seen from this point of view,
the original character of the Absolute was lost. Its characteris-
tics were distorted by the formation of Concepts. Hence the
ordinary consciousness could have no conception of the Abso-
lute Identity in which all apparent differences were grounded.
Schelling explained the process which took place when
Concepts were formed by elaborating on what the character of
the Intellectual Intuition was. Although Fichte had termed his
'Self an Intellectual Intuition, by regarding it as the highest
point of Abstraction, he had given it the attribute of a Concept.
But for Schelling it was the act of Abstraction giving rise to Con-
cepts which produced the unreliable common consciousness.
In Schelling's view the Absolute was an Intuition whose form
and content coincided perfectly. It was one with no determina-
tions or restrictions, therefore absolutely free and in a con-
stant state of motion and flux. How the apparent division into
Subjectivity and Objectivity took place was by creating a dis-
tinction between the activity and the result of that activity.
While the former was nothing but pure and undifferentiated
activity, the latter was something fixed, something determined.
It was, in Schelling's view, this act of determination which
created 'things', an objective world distinct from their subjective
apprehension. In this connection Schelling made use of the

fact that in German the words 'thing' (das Ding) and 'to deter-
mine' (bedingen) are cognate. By regarding the act of determi-
nation as a 'judgement' (Urteil) (literally 'original division')
Schelling was also able to argue that it was this which sepa-
rated the Concept from the Intuition. 18
For Schelling the Concept was 'that which arises for us when
we separate acting as such from the outcome'. Concepts, there-
fore, in his opinion, gave a fixed and static view of the world,
whereas from the point of view of the Absolute all was free-
dom and motion. He went on to explain that 'this separating
of an action from its outcome is called Abstraction . . . It is
Abstraction, therefore, that appears as the first condition of
Reflection.'19
'Reflection' was the term which Schelling applied to the
distorted viewpoint of the Concept and the Understanding. It
was an extremely useful conception for Schelling, because it
allowed him to argue that many of the problems which had
been insoluble to previous philosophers had been so because
they had started out from the point of view of Reflection, from
the standpoint of common consciousness. The true standpoint,
that of Reason, the Absolute, was that of the Intellectual Intu-
ition. This standpoint Schelling called 'Speculation', a term
later adopted by Hegel to characterize his own philosophical
method.
Hegel emphatically did not share Schelling's view of the
Concept, but that view was very influential in the first decades
of the nineteenth century. Its popularity was encouraged by
the decline in the appeal of rationalism after the Napoleonic
wars, and especially following the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
At that time rationalism was associated with the French Revo-
lution and its aftermath, and in Germany the Concept was
seen as embodying the rationalist spirit. In the political and
intellectual climate of the Restoration obscurantism and ex-
treme forms of religiosity were encouraged. There was a great
preoccupation with the subconscious mind and the insights it
allegedly offered into the mysteries of Nature.
Although Schelling's elevation of the Intuition at the expense
of the Concept put his philosophy in harmony with the times,
there was nothing inherently obscurantist about Schelling's
thought. His ideas, in fact, were interpreted by the Young
Hegelians in a rationalist spirit, and his treatment of the Con-

cept was utilized in their political thought.
Marx was to make extensive use of two of Schelling's terms
- 'Power' (a term taken from mathematics) or 'Level' (Potenz),
and 'Subsumption' (Subsumtion). The term 'Level' arose from
the fact that Schelling's Speculative method dictated that each
pair of opposites, such as Subjectivity and Objectivity, had to
be interpreted in terms of the Absolute. This meant that they
were relative and not Absolute opposites. Subjectivity there-
fore was the pole at which the Subjective element in the Identity
of Subject and Object dominated. Objectivity meant the pole
at which Objectivity dominated. The point at which the two
poles were in exact equilibrium or 'Indifference' was the Ab-
solute. Each of these three possibilities was referred to by
Schelling as a 'Power'.
Because each component part of the system had the same
characteristics as the system as a whole, the triadic pattern of
Identity and relative differences was repeated throughout, and
of course every triad returned to its point of departure - a
design later used by Hegel. It followed from this that Reflec-
tion and Speculation could also be regarded as members of a
triad of Powers, Reflection being the first and Speculation the
third. In order that there should be a third component of this
triad Schelling introduced the term 'Subsumption'.
NATURE
Nature was a term which boasted a plurality of meanings and

connotations long before it entered the German philosophical
systems of the nineteenth century. Its versatility in this respect
made it an extremely important element for all thinkers of the
period. Among these meanings were:
1. Nature as that which arose without human agency or
effort;
2. Nature as the physical world as a whole, the totality of
objects;
3. Nature as the essence of something;
4. Nature as an internal principle of motion;
5. Nature as the congenital or inborn characteristics or
traits of a person in contrast to the effects of education

or training;
6. Nature as the intrinsic and permanent qualities of things;
7. Nature as the pristine state of human society or history
before the development of civilization.
Kant was concerned with Nature in two main connections
and drew upon at least three of its meanings. In the context
of the Critique of Pure Reason Nature represented the totality of
phenomena accessible to the Understanding and able to be
expressed in Concepts. Nature for Kant could not of course
be the totality of things-in-themselves, because these could not
be known by the human Reason. It was only Appearances which
were available to the Understanding. And since the Under-
standing made phenomena comprehensible to itself by arrang-
ing them according to laws of necessity, the laws of Nature
were, therefore, laws of necessity. For Kant necessity was an
essential characteristic of Nature, and one which he thought
was reflected in one of its meanings, namely an 'inner princi-
ple of causality'.20
Nature was also a fundamental component of Kant's moral
philosophy. There it featured as the element which should not
be present in a moral act. For Kant considered that when people
followed their Natures they acted subjectively according to their
own Particular impulses and inclinations. The moral act, on
the other hand, was one made out of principle, in accordance
with the dictates of Reason.
Consistent with his position in the Critique of Pure Reason that
laws of Nature were laws of the Understanding, and that these
were necessary laws, Kant held that actions dictated by Natural
influences were made under compulsion, while those carried
out in accordance with Reason were made with completely
free choice. For whereas the Understanding operated in terms
of necessity, the Reason functioned according to laws of free-
dom. The moral action, therefore, was one which was made
freely, without any compulsion from Natural considerations,
such as self-interest or self-gratification. Kant's idea that Na-
ture stood at the opposite end of the spectrum from morality
and freedom was adopted by both Fichte and Hegel.
Because Reason was Universal, it followed that Nature as
the totality of objects of experience should be associated with
Particularity. The conception was widespread among writers

of the time that Nature was an infinite variety of forms. This
conception was contained in Kant's assumption that when peo-
ple followed their Natures they acted in an infinity of possible
ways. When they acted according to Reason, however, all freely
chose the same moral course of action. This was the sense of
Kant's 'categorical imperative': 'Act only on that maxim
whereby you can say at the same time that it should become
a Universal law.'21 The association of Universality with Reason
and Particularity with Nature was taken over by later thinkers,
and the premiss that Nature kept people apart, while Reason
was an integrative force, was one shared by most later writers
including Fichte, Hegel, the Young Hegelians and Marx.
Several writers also made use of the terms Kant had em-
ployed to contrast the necessary laws of the Understanding
and Nature with the freedom of Reason. He had referred to
the former set of laws as 'Theoretical' and the latter as 'Prac-
tical'. This was the sense which the Young Hegelians were to
attach to the term 'Praxis'.
The connotations associated with the term Nature by Kant
were all of a somewhat negative character. Nature was con-
trasted with freedom, cohesion and morality. These were fea-
tures which Fichte made more explicit, and in his system Nature
was invariably presented as something which ought to be over-
come, subdued or escaped from.
In Fichte's scheme of things Nature represented Particular-
ity, the objective world as a whole. Nature was characterized by
an infinite variety of forms, 'no one part of it exacdy the same
as another'. 22 To Fichte, Nature by itself had no order or cohe-
sion; this was supplied by the human agency, by the Self. In a
characteristic passage Fichte contended:
Philosophy teaches us to look for everything in the Self. Only through

the Self does there appear order and harmony in the dead, amor-
phous mass. Only men project regularity around them as far as the
eye can see - and where their gaze is extended order and harmony
prevail. Man's observation assigns to each object in the infinite variety
of forms its place, so that none shall displace the other; it imparts
unity to the infinite variety. Through it the earthly bodies are bound
together and become one organised body; by it the sun holds its
course . . .
In the Science of Knowledge Nature was represented as the

'non-Self, and in Fichte's view the ultimate objective of the Self,
mankind as rational beings, was to 'subject Nature to Reason'.
Although, Fichte conceded, men could never rid themselves
of Natural influences unless they became gods, it was an ideal
which should be striven towards, so that Reason might be at
one with itself, so that the identity 1 = 1 might be achieved.
Fichte shared with Kant the view that moral laws were iden-
tical for all human beings. Thus, to behave morally meant to
behave in such a way as to create social cohesion. To be ruled
by one's Nature, on the other hand, meant to go one's separ-
ate way.
To Fichte mankind in its pristine state, its so-called 'state of
Nature', could not be anything but in a deplorable situation.
For one thing it was governed by necessary Natural laws, it
behaved irrationally and immorally, and it existed in a condi-
tion of complete disunity, without Social ties.
On the absence of Social ties among men in their state of
Nature Fichte found that he was in agreement with Rousseau,
but whereas the latter considered man's state of pristine isola-
tion a highly desirable one, Fichte regarded it in quite the
opposite light. For Fichte freedom, rationality and progress
were all inseparable from the cohesive force of Society. Fichte
believed that it was Society which made equality possible. For
whereas Nature had created men unequal in terms of strength,
talent and skill, Society was capable of evening out and com-
pensating for these Natural inequalities.
Fichte was the writer among German thinkers of the period
whose hostility to Nature was most pronounced. His attitude
was later to be adopted by Hegel, but the philosophers who
followed Fichte developed new approaches to Nature, the most
notable being that of Schelling.
The pioneer in this direction was Schiller, who was unable
to agree with Fichte that the ultimate aim was to banish the
influence of Nature from human affairs altogether. He be-
lieved that in all spheres of human existence the Natural as
well as the Rational principle ought to find its place. In doing
so he confirmed Kant and Fichte's conception of Nature as an
infinity of forms in contrast to the cohesion of Reason: 'Rea-
son indeed demands unity, but Nature demands multiplicity,
and both systems of legislation claim man's obedience.' 24
Schiller also shared Fichte's view that man's primitive Nat-

ural state was one of selfishness, violence and isolation. At
the heart of his essay 'On the Aesthetic Education of Man' 25 was
the problem of how man could progress from this miserable
condition to a state of cultivation, sociability and freedom.
The solution to the problem, Schiller argued, was that through
aesthetic appreciation the man of Nature could achieve the
transition to Rationality and morality.
But, Schiller conceded, man's separation from his original
unity with Nature not only brought about progress but also a
great deal of anguish and self-doubt. While he was still at one
with Nature there had been for him no distinction between
himself and the world around him, no division into Subject
and Object. But in becoming detached from Nature man now
looked on it as something apart from himself, something with
an independent existence. It now became for him an object of
contemplation or Reflection.26
In describing the evolution of man's relationship with Na-
ture, Schiller had arrived at the conception of Reflection that
Schelling was to find so useful. Schelling in fact adopted Schil-
ler's portrayal of primitive man as at one with Nature, acting
upon it and reacting to it without pausing to contemplate his
identity in relation to it. Only when man ceased to be active
and began to Reflect on his situation did the separation from
Nature take place. This for Schelling was the same process of
Abstraction which separated Intuitions from Concepts.
Schelling's own conception of Nature was a deliberate par-
allel with his treatment of the human mental processes. In
Nature too his explanation was in terms of activity and the
result of the activity. Schelling recognized that his predecessors
had thought of Nature in terms of fixity, permanence, variety
and necessity. This, he explained, was only Nature considered
from the point of view of Reflection. From the viewpoint of
the Absolute, Nature was nothing but pure, undifferentiated
activity, or 'Production', as he also referred to it.
Seen from the point of view of Production, Nature was the
Identity of the act of Producing and the Product. Nature did
not exist in a finite state of Being, but of infinite Becoming.
To account for the apparent fixity and permanence of Nature,
that is the manner in which it appeared to Reflection, it de-
manded that Nature should contain within itself barriers to its
own infinite activity, that there should be points of arrest or

obstruction at which the infinite activity of Production was
transformed into definite Products.
Schelling compared these points of obstruction (Hemmungs-
punkte) to the eddies in a stream:
A stream flows in a straight line as long as it meets no resistance.
Where there is resistance an eddy appears. Each original Product of
Nature, each organisation, acts like such an eddy. For example, the
eddy is not static, but constantly changeable - but in each instant
reproduces itself anew. Therefore no Product in Nature is fixed, but
in each instant is renewed by the power of the whole of Nature (what
we see is not the existing, but the constant Reproducing of the Pro-
ducts of Nature).27
The conception of the Products of Nature as the points at

which the infinite Productivity of Nature was arrested enabled
Schelling to argue that the fixity and permanence of these
Products was in Appearance only. For 'each Product which
now appears to be fixed in Nature, will only exist for an instant
and should be conceived as being in continuous evolution, in
a perpetual state of change.' 28 Since each Product of Nature
was in a constant state of change, it contained within it the
infinite activity of the Absolute.
It must be remarked that although Schelling applied the
term 'evolution' to the infinite activity of Nature, he did not
do this in any Darwinian sense. In the course of their lifecycles
each Product of Nature simply produced and reproduced it-
self to infinity, without any development in its form. In this
way it displayed the characteristic property of Reason, in that
it returned precisely to its point of departure.
Just as Reflection could conceive of Nature only in its Prod-
ucts, not in its infinite Productivity, neither was the Absolute
continuity of Nature perceptible to the Reflective point of view.
Reflection could only conceive of Nature as a mechanical
succession or as an amalgam of discrete entities. This was how
Nature appeared to the Understanding. Schelling went on to
argue that the Reflective standpoint was a mechanistic one,
and its most characteristic theory of Nature was atomism.
In Schelling's day atomism was associated with rationalism,
and especially with French materialism. There was some jus-
tice in this. French thinkers of the eighteenth century like
d'Holbach in his System of Nature, had believed that Nature was

composed of an endless chain of causes and effects, and that
matter consisted of elementary particles which entered into
combination with each other.
The eighteenth century had seen the revival of interest in
Greek atomistic philosophy. This had been encouraged by the
posthumously published work of Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)
Syntagma Philosophicum (1658), which had propounded an
atomistic theory based on that of Epicurus.29 The significance
of atomism was noted by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert's
Encyclopedie (1751-1765). It was remarked that the great advan-
tage of this kind of philosophy was that it allowed 'a mechan-
ical explanation of the universe'. 30
The association of atomism with French rationalism rein-
forced the claim that rationalism was a product of Reflection,
and branded France as a country ruled by mistaken Concepts
of the Understanding. Atomistic philosophy, therefore, had
strong political overtones, and these were well known to Marx
when he embarked on his dissertation on Greek atomistic
philosophy in 1840.
In rejecting atomism, Schelling could claim support from
the scientific developments of his own day. In 1785 the Scots-
man James Hutton published his Theory of the Earth, on which
modern geology was to be based, arguing that chief among
the forces which had shaped the earth's surface was the action
of heat. At the time, however, the theory which won general
acceptance was that of Abraham Werner, who believed that
the earliest rocks had crystallized out of a primeval ocean and
that water had been the chief agent in forming the earth's crust.
Werner's doctrine was a convenient one for Schelling and
his followers such as Steffens and Schubert, 31 because of the
implication that the original state of the world, of Nature, had
been one of movement and fluidity, and that fixity and perman-
ence were later developments. Thus, for Schelling the forma-
tion of Products out of Nature's infinite flow of activity implied
the transformation from a fluid to a solid state, a transforma-
tion which he termed 'Crystallization' (Kristallisation). It was,
he thought, in the process of Crystallization that Nature ac-
quired the necessary laws to which it was subject.
In Schelling's view the higher forms of Crystallization were or-
ganic ones, and it was in these that purposive activity emerged.
This form of Nature had its culmination in the human Mind,

where in the Intellectual Intuition the Identity of Reason and
Nature became Absolute. Schelling was emphatic that Reason
and Nature, the Ideal and the Real, were not two separate
systems, but the same system. He reinforced this argument by
his conception of Nature as a 'dynamic continuity' of forms
(dynamische Stufenfolge), ascending from lower to higher Levels
(Potenzen) of organization.
The highest point of Nature, the Intellectual Intuition, was
at the same time the starting-point of Schelling's entire system.
Thus, the system met the requirement that it should return to
its point of departure. And because the starting-point in the
Absolute had been an absence of determinations or restric-
tions, so it ended at the highest point of Nature with complete
freedom. The Absolute as the Identity of Reason and Nature
Schelling called Mind (Geist) - later to be a key term for Hegel.
The most characteristic feature of Mind was freedom. For
Schelling the freedom of Mind was also the cohesive force of
Society. In an evocative passage he declared:
The medium in which Minds understand each other is not the air
which surrounds them, but the freedom which is common to them
all. Its reverberations penetrate the soul's innermost depths. Where
man's Mind is not filled with the consciousness of freedom, there all
spiritual bonds are broken, not only with his fellows, but with himself
as well. . .32
SOCIETY
Among German thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nine-

teenth centuries the term 'Society' had almost invariably strong
moral overtones. As a polar opposite of 'Nature', which was
something given or innate, Society was something which had
to be attained, either by moral perfection or by achievements
gained in the course of historical development.
This conception of Society went back to Pietist writers of the
seventeenth century. In noting that it was quite possible for
clergymen to be proficient in theology, but to lead dissolute
lives, they argued that theory was not enough; it was necessary
to perform good works. The early Pietists Phillip Jakob Spener
(1635-1705) and August Hermann Francke (1663-1727)
consequently urged that scholastic disputation should cease

and that pastors should devote all their efforts in instructing
their congregations in the message of the holy scriptures and
in providing examples of personal piety. Both insisted, how-
ever, that religion was not the exclusive preserve of the clergy;
it had been, they thought, only through the perversity of the
Roman Catholic Church that spiritual functions which were
properly the responsibility of all Christians had been allotted
solely to the clergy. The result had been that the laity had
become slothful and ignorant, and had neglected to study the
scriptures and to 'instruct, admonish, chastise and comfort
their neighbours'. It was, however, envisaged that a time would
come when the division between clergy and laity would be
reconciled and there would emerge what Spener called a
'Universal priesthood'. 33 The idea of the Universal priesthood
was an influential one in the writings of several thinkers in the
first decades of the nineteenth century. It was taken up by
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Joseph Gorres, Hegel and the Young
Hegelians. These later writers argued that not only ecclesiasti-
cal, but also secular hierarchies would disappear in the course
of historical development.
The Pietists believed that as people had a common Father,
their attitude towards each other ought to be as brothers and
sisters. This fellowship of family love imposed the obligation
that one member of the community should, in so far as he was
able, further the welfare of the others. 34 Besides encouraging
a highly developed sense of community, Pietism was deeply
interested in the kind of bonds which held the community
together. They wanted people to perform good works out of
Inner spiritual conviction and genuine concern for the well-
being of their fellows, not out of any Outer compulsion or for
personal gain, self-gratification or any other ulterior motive.35
These were conceptions which contained in embryo ideas which
Kant and Schleiermacher were to develop.
One found the same conception of the moral community in
Kant's ethical writings. Kant too believed that moral acts were
those which were carried out freely, in accordance with an
ethical principle, and that they should not be motivated by any
Particular interest.
In urging that people should not act towards others out of
their personal inclinations, Kant put forward the maxim: 'Act
in such a way that you treat humanity whether in your own

person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means,
but always at the same time as,an end.' 36 A human community
in which everyone acted in this way Kant called a 'kingdom of
ends'. It would be one in which no element of Nature deter-
mined the relations between people in the community. These
would be governed by Reason alone in the form of Universal
laws. The cohesive element binding together the members of
Kant's 'kingdom of ends' was what they all had in common:
their morality based on the categorical imperative. For Kant,
therefore, Reason and Universality were forces of cohesion for
humanity considered as 'an end in itself.
Fichte's ideas on Society were conceived as an elaboration
of Kant's, and this was clearly implied in his definition of
Society. By 'Society', Fichte stated, 'I mean the relationship of
reasonable beings to each other.' 37 It was, however, also Fichte's
opinion that:
The Social impulse belongs to the fundamental impulses of man. It is
man's destiny to live in Society - he must live in Society; he is no com-
plete man, but contradicts his own being if he lives in isolation.38
Fichte immediately added that man did not as yet live in So-
ciety as he had defined it, and he would only do so when,
instead of strength or cunning, Reason alone determined the
relationship between people. This time, Fichte thought, still
lay far in the future, and at present people inhabited a 'Par-
ticular, empirically conditioned form of society' called the
State.39 The existing form of political State, he believed, would
eventually disappear, because 'the aim of all government is to
make government disappear'. 40 In Society as Fichte conceived
of it there would be no element of compulsion to make peo-
ple behave morally.
Schiller's contrast between Society as it ought to be and the
State in its present form was more stark than Fichte's. The
separation of man from Nature was only one of the forms of
fragmentation suffered by humanity in its condition of Reflec-
tion. Specialization and the division of labour deprived men of
their wholeness of being and turned them into cogs in a
machine:
Eternally chained to one single minute fragment of the whole, man
himself grew to be only a fragment. With the noise of the wheel he
drives constantly in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his

being, and instead of imprinting Nature with his humanity, he be-
comes merely the imprint of his own occupation or his own special-
ised knowledge.41
But, as Schiller argued, h u m a n progress could have taken place
in n o o t h e r way, a n d in any case the future held o u t the h o p e
of an ample r e c o m p e n s e by restoring to m a n k i n d the whole-
ness of which it h a d b e e n so long deprived, together with the
fruits of the civilization that h a d b e e n so painfully acquired.
Schiller was o n e of the few writers of the period to discuss
the division of labour on a philosophical plane, a n d to char-
acterize m o d e r n Society as divided a n d fragmented - a condi-
tion which Hegel was to term 'Civil Society' or 'bourgeois
Society' (biirgerliche Gesellschaft). Schiller's association of Reflec-
tion with the division of labour also provided a convenient
explanation of why the viewpoint of Civil Society was necessar-
ily a distorted one.
As the origin of m a n ' s p r e d i c a m e n t lay in its separation
from Nature, Schiller believed that the Society of the future
would bring about a reconciliation between m a n a n d Nature.
Schiller, therefore, did n o t agree with Fichte that the aim of
Society should be the subjugation of Nature a n d its ultimate
elimination. In Schiller's view Society should hold Reason a n d
Nature in equilibrium. This kind of balance between N a t u r e
a n d Reason, in Schiller's view, should characterize n o t only
the State, but also the people who composed it. For, h e pointed
out:
whenever Reason tries to introduce the unity of the moral law into
any actually existing Society, she must beware of damaging the variety
of Nature. And whenever Nature endeavours to maintain her variety
within the moral framework of Society, moral unity must not suffer
any infringement thereby. The most successful arrangement is one
equally removed from uniformity and confusion. Totality of character
must therefore be found in any people which is capable and worthy
of exchanging a State of compulsion for one of freedom.42
T h e r e was in Schiller's a r g u m e n t the implication that the
achievement of the perfect State a n d the reintegration of the
h u m a n personality were i n t e r d e p e n d e n t . This line of reason-
ing was reinforced by the category of Individuality, which was
i n t r o d u c e d by Schleiermacher.
Individuality as conceived by the theologian Friedrich Schleier-

macher at the turn of the eighteenth century was a synthesis
of Universality and Particularity. It was to have several impor-
tant applications.
The stimulus towards Schleiermacher's discovery of Indi-
viduality was a similar consideration to the one which had led
Schiller to advocate a balance in Society between Reason and
Nature. This was that the moral implication of acting accord-
ing to Universal Reason was that everyone in an ideal Society
would behave alike, and that the ideal Society which was im-
plied was one of complete uniformity. It seemed to Schleier-
macher that one ought to be able to act morally and yet
preserve one's self-identity. This could be accomplished, he
believed, if one acted in accordance with one's Individuality.
An important characteristic of Individuality was that it was a
complex category which could be arrived at only through the
opposites of Universality and Particularity. Schleiermacher
conveyed this feature of Individuality by describing how he
himself had come to it.
The first stage, according to Schleiermacher, was 'the un-
worthy Particularity of sensuous animal life'. This he had early
rejected in favour of the Universality of Reason. Of this stage
Schleiermacher recalled:
For a long time I too was content with the discovery of Reason . . . I
believed that there is but a single right way of acting in every situation,
that the conduct of all men should be alike.43
Schleiermacher described how he had become dissatisfied with
Kantian ethics, finding it impossible to 'view humanity as an
undifferentiated mass'. It was at this point that he made his
discovery of Individuality. According to Schleiermacher:
Then there dawned on me what is now my highest Intuition. I saw
clearly that each person is meant to represent humanity in his own
way, combining its elements uniquely, so that it may reveal itself and
become actual in the infinite profusion of all that issues from its
womb.44
He went on to emphasize that this discovery of human Indi-

viduality was not a simple relapse into the 'sensuous animal
life' of Nature, which had preceded the discovery of Universal
Reason, but a new and higher stage of morality, one which
embodied the Universality of humanity within it as well as the

Particularity of the human personality. Schleiermacher was
now convinced that for people who acted morally there was
not one proper course of action which could be followed by
everyone, as Kant had believed, but as many as there were
Individuals.
Individuality thus was the third component in the cycle
Particularity, Universality, Individuality, in which the last ele-
ment represented the Identity of the first two. There were
obvious affinities with Schelling's system, which indeed had
been an influence on Schleiermacher, and later thinkers such as
Steffens and Hegel were able to capitalize on these similarities.
The conception of Individuality had important implications
for how the Social ideal was conceived by Schleiermacher and
later writers. For a community of Individuals was no longer a
homogeneous mass, but a fellowship embodying a Social cohe-
sion based on ethics, freedom and personal identity.
Schleiermacher also linked Individuality with Internal rela-
tions between people in contrast to the External relations
characteristic of Society as it presently existed. Schleiermacher
described the personal relationships of the Society based on
Individuality in the following terms:
The communication of holy thoughts and feelings would be an easy
interchange . . . A whispered word would be understood where now the
clearest expression cannot escape misconception. People could gather
together and enter the Holy of Holies who now busy themselves with
the most elementary things in the Outer courtyards. How much
pleasanter it is to exchange with friends and sympathisers completed
Ideas than go into the wilderness with the outlines barely sketched.
But how far from one another now are those persons between whom
such communication might take place! . . . The Outer boundaries of
their sphere of operations just touch, so that there is no void, yet one
never meets the other. A wise economy indeed!45
External and Internal (or Inner and Outer) were two key terms
which Schleiermacher borrowed from Pietist thought. The
Pietists and writers of Schleiermacher's times saw the contrast
most clearly in the difference between the Catholic and the
Protestant approaches to religion. The former was character-
ized by Outward ritual, whereas the latter appealed to the
Inner conscience. Several writers, including Schleiermacher,
contrasted the Catholic church hierarchy and its distinction
between priesthood and laity with the Protestant congregations,

where every man was his own priest, where the priesthood was
Internal and Universal. Schleiermacher looked forward to a
'priesthood of humanity', 46 which would be 'an Inner commu-
nity of Minds (Geister)\41 Protestantism was therefore seen as
an advance on Catholicism and suggested a historical progres-
sion from Outer to Inner, from hierarchy to democracy.
The contrast between Inner and Outer was used extensively
by adherents of the Speculative method. Because the method
took the desired result as its starting-point, it assumed the
Inner, leaving the Outer to be explained in some way. The
method thus dictated that there should be a progression from
the Inner to the Outer. Hegel contributed a name for this
progression; he called it 'Externalization' (Entdufierung) ,48 The
possibility arose that Externalized forms could take on an
independent existence quite at odds with the true Inner
Essence. The term for this state of affairs was 'Alienation'
(Entfremdung). Steffens used the two terms in this way in the
following passage:
Because Individuality does not emerge in its pure, but in a more or
less latent form, hidden and restricted, and because such restriction
brings with it isolation, true personalities become distant from each
other, and appear to each other as Externals for the senses. They do
not know each other as they are, only as they appear. This isolation,
which can become complete Alienation (Entfremdung) gives rise to all
those misapprehensions, which in action and thought mislead States
and individual persons, and evoke mutual hatred between them. 49
It was Schelling who first identified the Society of the future

with the Idea, and the existing State with the Understanding.
This was a scheme that Hegel was later to modify to his own
purposes. But the evidence suggests that Hegel and Schelling
were originally at one on the issue. In 1917 Franz Rosenzweig
published a remarkable document which he entitled 'The
Earliest System Programme of German Idealism'. It was com-
posed in or about 1796, and although it was in Hegel's hand-
writing, the ideas in it were clearly Schelling's.50 The part
dealing with relationships in Society is an obvious develop-
ment of the thought that 'the medium in which Minds under-
stand each other is not the air which surrounds them, but the
freedom which is common to them all'. It read as follows:
From Nature I proceed to the things created by man. Starting from

the Idea of humanity I shall show that there is no Idea of a State, be-
cause a State is something mechanical, and a machine cannot consti-
tute an Idea. Only something which is the object of freedom can be
classed as an Idea. We must therefore transcend the State! For every
State is bound to treat people as cogs in a machine, and that is some-
thing it must not do; it must therefore cease to exist. . . Absolute
freedom for all Minds (Geister) who carry the intellectual world within
their own beings and have no need to look for God or Immortality
outside themselves.51
The passage is remarkable, because in proposing a progres-
sion from Nature to Mind as 'the things created by man' it
anticipated the actual structure of Hegel's system. The con-
ception of Mind as the Identity of Reason and Nature, however,
was Schelling's. One can recognize too Schiller's interpreta-
tion of the division of labour as a manifestation of human
Reflection. Schelling's contribution was to equate the divisions
and machine-like laws of necessity with the Understanding and
the freedom of the future Society with the Idea, building
on Kant's contrast between laws of Reason and laws of the
Understanding.
Schelling did not develop his Social conceptions at any great
length, but what he did write is instructive, because it repre-
sents an early attempt to interpret the Social sphere in terms
of his Speculative system. One criterion of a perfect Society
would be, therefore, that each component part should have
the same characteristics as the system as a whole. As applied to
Society this implied that:
Every State is perfect to the degree in which each separate member,
while a means in respect of the whole, is at the same time an end. Pre-
cisely because the Particular is in itself Absolute, it is also in the Absolute
and an integral part of it. The reverse is also the case.52
This would seem to imply an egalitarian Society, but in another
passage Schelling suggested that a Society composed of Estates
could also be interpreted in terms of the categories of Reason.
The constitution of the State is a picture of the constitution of the realm
of Ideas. In this Absolute is the power from which everything emanates,
the Monarch. The Ideas are not the nobility or the common people,
because they are Concepts; these only have reality in relation to each
other: Ideas are people who are free. The only ones who truly constitute
Things are slaves and serfs.53
In this scheme of things the Idea, Concepts and Intuitions

were all present in the State simultaneously. This resembled
the pattern Hegel was to follow in his Philosophy of Right in
presenting Society in the light of his own philosophical system.
In Schelling's opinion the Society which was pre-eminently
that of the Understanding was the one created by the French
Revolution. As he pointed out:
The emptiness of Ideas, which is referred to as the Enlightenment, is
the thing most at variance with philosophy. One will have to admit that
the nation which has outdone all the others in elevating a pettifogging
Understanding over the Reason is the French.54
French Society was held to be one in which External, mechan-
ical relationships based on economic transactions dominated.
And of course the mechanical divisions in Society corresponded
to the mechanistic atomistic ideas which the French pro-
pounded as a philosophy.
In interpreting Social questions in philosophical terms the
work of Adam Miiller is particularly significant. In applying
Schelling's philosophical conceptions to economic questions
it anticipates to some extent what Marx was to attempt in his
Critique of Political Economy. As a critic of capitalism, however,
Midler's purpose could not have been more different from
Marx's. He was writing in the aftermath of Napoleon's inva-
sion of Prussia, when Stein and Hardenberg were introducing
reforms to strengthen the country. These measures abolished
the servile status of peasants, and eradicated the distinction
between noble and non-noble landed property, so that land
might change hands freely. The reforms also allowed every
noble to engage in burgher occupations and every burgher
and peasant at will to engage in the occupations of the other. 55
Miiller, in company with many Prussian nobles, opposed these
changes, seeing in them the same levelling tendencies which
had inspired the revolution in France. He sought, therefore,
to defend the feudal order against the principle of the free
play of market forces.
Although the idea that man was part of Society by Nature
had been put forward by the Scottish writer Adam Ferguson
(1723-1816) in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767),
Miiller was the first German thinker to make use of it and
challenge the commonly held assumption that men in their
Natural state were isolated individuals. For Miiller, therefore,

Society was something given, something which did not require
to be produced by history or human progress. This meant that
he had no need to maintain the distinction drawn by his pre-
decessors between the State as it presendy existed and the So-
ciety of the future. With Miiller State and Society were identical.
Midler's conception of the State owed a great deal to Schel-
ling's Speculative method, and though he did not contrast
Speculation with Reflection, he did the same thing in different
terms; he contrasted two approaches to Society: one which he
thought erroneous in that it regarded Society as a Concept,
and one which he believed correct, which recognized Society
as an Idea.
Also fundamental to Midler's approach was the concep-
tion of polarity, the idea that life and movement were imbued
in all things by the reciprocal action of opposing forces. This
idea had been the subject of Midler's first work, On Antithesis,
published in 1804 and was a recurring theme in his writings
on Society. It was because an Idea incorporated movement
through the action of opposites that Miiller considered that
the State or Society should be seen as an Idea rather than as
a Concept, which implied, as with Schelling, something static
and fixed.56
In Midler's view, a Concept grasped something once and for
all at a given instant, but both theories of Society and Society
itself changed constandy over time, and so ought to be studied
not statically, but in motion. Society for Miiller was not only an
association of contemporaries, but also an association of gen-
erations who had gone before and who would come after. Wise
statesmen, therefore, treated Society as an Idea; those less wise
saw it as a mere Concept and acted accordingly.
In Midler's opinion an example of the latter sort was
Frederick the Great. He had regarded the nation as nothing
more than a 'bundle of virtuosos and cultivated private indi-
viduals who happened to be living in proximity', and the State
only as 'a policing machine for External security'.57 Frederick
had created a centralized administration so that the instruc-
tions of the monarch could be carried out unimpeded in all
parts of the country. This unlimited sovereignty, in Midler's
view, ensured that all movement in the kingdom was from the
top downwards, but never in the opposite direction. Thus, he
argued, a constitution which regarded the State as a Concept

was a recipe for tyranny. A feudal type of State, on the other
hand, with its estates and corporations, ensured that power was
devolved, and that movement came not only from above but
also from below. The constitution which envisaged the inter-
action of opposing forces was an Idea and ensured freedom
for the citizens of the State.58
In speaking of France, Miiller was much less concerned with
the political constitution than with the property relations upon
which France's legal and economic systems were based. In
Midler's view there existed two contrasting types of property
ownership, the Roman and the feudal. Roman law recognized
absolute private property, so that the owner had absolute power
over his property to dispose of it as he thought fit. Feudal
property, on the other hand, especially landed property, in-
volved only the temporary use or the usufruct of the property.
Its continuation demanded the fulfilment of obligations by the
possessor of the property, and since some of these were to suc-
ceeding generations, the property could not be disposed of at
will. Whereas the Roman system of private property meant the
'unlimited despotism of persons over their property', 59 in the
feudal system 'the relationship of people to things was by no
means a one-sided, despotic one, but a reciprocal, republican
one'. 60 Whereas, in Midler's view, the feudal system had been
one of the great achievements of the Middle Ages, the Roman
system of private property was the one being revived by the
present generation. It was, therefore, Miiller thought, quite
wrong to see the French Revolution as being the conflict of
two political systems, when it was in fact the conflict between
two systems of ownership.61
The cardinal error of the Roman system of private property,
Miiller considered, was that in viewing property as a Concept,
it drew an absolute distinction between people and things.
The sense in which a thing could have the characteristics of a
person emerged from Midler's discussion of feudal property.
In the feudal system the owner had no unconditioned power
over his property; the power was limited by a force acting in
the opposite direction, so that an active interchange took place
between the owner and his property, just as if the property
had been another person. Miiller referred to this reciprocal
action as 'poetic ownership' (der poetische Besitz).62
The personal relationship was, moreover, a Social relation-

ship, one which drew the property into the life of the State;
private property, on the other hand, which recognized prop-
erty only as a thing, acted as though it were possible to remove
it from Society altogether and consign it to some completely
private sphere beyond the reach of Society. For that reason,
Miiller held that strict private property destroyed people's sense
of Society.63
It was, Miiller pointed out, an illusion that private property
could be entirely removed from the Social sphere, because if
it were to have any value it must enter into Social and personal
relationships with persons or with other properties. Value too
was an Idea rather than a Concept, and so possessed a dual
character, showing both public and private aspects. Any article
had first of all an individual value in so far as it was used or
enjoyed by an individual person. This kind of value Miiller
called its 'use value' (Gebrauchswert), a term adopted from Adam
Smith. But as the same article could also be bought and sold
or exchanged for other articles, it also had a Civil (biirgerlich)
or Social value. This was called by Miiller 'exchange value'
(Tauschwert), again following the usage of Adam Smith. This
latter kind of value allowed the article to enter into relation-
ships of a Social or personal kind. It could, according to Miiller,
'mediate between two people, make them come to terms, or
set them asunder, it could make comparisons and decisions in
the same way as a person, a judge'. 64 The two polar opposites
which the Idea of value contained, therefore, were (a) use
value, which embodied an article's private and individual char-
acter, and (b) exchange value, which contained its Social and
Universal character. 65 For Miiller the Universal character of ex-
change value was reflected in the Idea of money, which apart
from its use value as a precious metal, acted as the Universal
equivalent for the exchange value of all other commodities.
The greater the extent to which persons and goods entered
into Social or public relationships the greater would be the
circulation of money, and the more the latter could be re-
garded as a measure of the State's wealth and prosperity.66
This line of argument seemed to bring Miiller close to ad-
vocating the expansion of a money economy and the produc-
tion of goods for exchange. But this would have defeated his
purpose, since his intention was to try to halt the expansion of
market relations and to maintain the feudal order of Society.

He was able to reconcile this apparent contradiction by show-
ing that in the absence of feudal relations the market economy
would be a depersonalized slavery and would ultimately cease
to exist altogether. This involved Miiller in a critique of Adam
Smith and the laissez-faire school of economists.
In Midler's estimation the cardinal error of Adam Smith was
to treat national wealth as a Concept rather than as an Idea.
For that reason he had thought of production only in terms of
concrete objects and had left all other forms of production
out of the reckoning. And so, Miiller argued:
in order to satisfy this Concept the most fruitful thoughts of the states-
man, the most stimulating discourses of the scholar or cleric had to be
excluded from the sum of the productive work of the State.67
Miiller also believed that Adam Smith had overlooked the
fact that since agricultural operations took place according
to the seasons of the year, division of labour was according
to time, whereas that in industry was according to place.68 As
a result the fundamental difference between agriculture as
carried on by the landowning class and industry had escaped
Smith's notice. The neglect of scholars and landowners, two of
the estates forming the feudal hierarchy, Miiller argued, meant
that Adam Smith's economic doctrine ignored the personal
and Social aspects of the national economy. This had impor-
tant consequences for the future development of the economy,
because, as Miiller had already shown, the exchange value of
goods was determined by Social relationships. Without Social
relations there could be no value. According to Miiller:
The economists of the eighteenth century and their successors in the
nineteenth were both agreed that the true value of articles emerged
from an equilibrium between the supply of those articles and the de-
mand for them, in short that articles themselves would reciprocally
arrive at and guarantee true and stable values, if one allowed them to
fluctuate freely, if no person or law interfered with or obstructed their
movement. This doctrine proclaims the freedom of articles and - as
the history of the world will soon show - the slavery of persons.69
Miiller maintained that the expectation that the free play of
market forces would guarantee economic stability was quite
illusory, because 'things cannot be guaranteed by things'. 70
For it was persons in their Social relations which gave value to
things. In fact, the more one removed Social influences from

the action of the market, values would become less instead of
more stable. Midler's conclusion was that: 'The market. . . can
only exist so long as there remains an infinite sphere outside
the market. . . things only have a value as long as real people
know how to maintain them, use them, defend them.' 71
In an apocalyptic passage Miiller invited his readers to im-
agine what would happen if by some mischance the feudal
system of agriculture or the last remnants of relationships based
on personal service were to disappear:
Through the whole of Europe you would hear the complaint that
money was scarce and at the same time the completely contradictory
complaint about the worthlessness of that same scarce money, or about
the unprecedented increase in all prices. Do not fail to note that this
p h e n o m e n o n is not to be explained by the excess of currency, paper
etc.; it is obviously also a scarcity of this currency, as the high discount
rates in those countries which have only a paper circulation shows.
On the same market in the same hour you hear the equally justified
complaints about the inordinate rise in the price of money and about
the disproportionate cheapness of money, about the unaffordable price
of goods, and then again about the derisory price of goods. There is
a superfluity of money and goods, and at the same time an oppressive
scarcity of both; there is the greatest supply of everything, the greatest
demand for everything, and yet no equilibrium between the two. This
unhappy situation, with all its contradictions, is easily to be explained:
All values have sunk and continue to sink in geometric progression?2
Miiller was the first to suggest that capitalism was a self-

contradictory system, which, if allowed to develop to its logical
conclusion, to the formation of a world market, would under-
mine its own foundations and bring about its own destruction.
HISTORY
The conception of historical development was one which read-

ily emerged from the basic categories of German philosoph-
ical thought. The contrast between man in his isolated state of
Nature, fettered by its necessary laws, and man acting freely
according to the dictates of Reason in Society implied some
kind of progression from one condition to the other.
Most writers before Hegel placed this progression in Time,

and considered it to be historical. Kant, after all, had treated
both Time and Space as fundamental conditions in which all
human activity took place. He had regarded them as a priori
Intuitions, present in all other types of Intuition. Concepts
and Ideas, which were derived from Intuitions, of course had
to be interpreted as existing in Time and Space. Time, there-
fore, entered Kant's philosophical constructions at an early
stage of his exposition and at a very basic level.
Kant's successors did not quarrel with Kant's treatment of
Time and Space, and regarded such progressions as from
Nature to Society and from necessity to freedom as historical.
Hegel, however, introduced an important distinction between
logical and temporal progressions by removing Time and Space
from the constitution of the Concept and the Idea and trans-
ferring them to the realm of Nature. Since Hegel insisted that
History unfolded in Time and Space it acquired a more spe-
cialized sense than it had hitherto possessed.
History was the area furthest removed from Reason, the
main concern of philosophers. That gave it to some extent the
character of an afterthought. On the other hand, being con-
sidered after the categories of Reason, Nature and Society, it
benefited from having all these conceptions at its disposal. It
could therefore deploy quite complex constructions on, for
example, the Nature-Society, Particularity-Universality and
Necessity-Freedom axes. Fichte, Gorres, Miiller and Hegel all
used combinations of this kind.
The earliest introduction of a historical dimension into
philosophical categories was in the historical treatment of the
progression from Intuitions to Concepts. This was a significant
development, because it was to culminate in Young Hegelian
Christology, particularly in David Strauss's Life of Jesus.
It was J.G. Hamann who first put forward the idea that, his-
torically, Intuitions preceded Concepts. And since he believed
poetic images to be Intuitions, he maintained that poetic
expression antedated theoretical Abstraction. In Hamann's
epigrammatic terms:
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race, as the garden is older

than the field, painting than writing, song than declamation, parables
than syllogisms, barter than commerce . . .73
Hamann's idea that poetry was older than prose was en-
dorsed by Herder, Hamann's most illustrious follower. Herder
developed Hamann's idea into a general theory of how lan-
guage had developed in human history.74 It had evolved, he
thought, from an early stage when it had been full of poetic
imagery to a later stage when it had become abstract and
prosaic.75
The first published work by Schelling, the essay 'On Myths,
Sagas and Philosophemes of the Ancient World', which ap-
peared in 1783, used the distinction between Intuitions and
Concepts in a historical perspective to examine the connec-
tion between ancient mythology and modern philosophy. The
essay was a fusion of Kantian philosophy with the ideas of
Herder and Hamann.
Schelling distinguished two types of myth or legend, one
historical and the other philosophical. The first type was one
which communicated the history and traditions of a given
community from one generation to another. This type of myth
normally contained an element of truth, albeit in a poetically
exaggerated form. The second type of myth, the philosoph-
ical, was often in the form of a narrative, but was intended to
communicate an idea. This could not be done in Concepts,
because the language of primitive peoples had no vocabulary
to express generalizations or abstractions. It could only ex-
press concrete experiences, so abstract thinking had to be
couched in this form. This led to the creation of philosophical
myths, which, despite their appearance, contained no element
of historical fact. With the growth of civilization and the intro-
duction of abstract vocabulary, myths were replaced by philo-
sophy. According to Schelling:
The man of Sensibility contents himself with pictures. Only with pic-
tures of his life, his customs, and his mode of conduct does he connect
phenomena together . . . But where man awakens to higher things he
forsakes the images and dreams of his youth and seeks to make Na-
ture comprehensible to his Understanding. Previously he was the friend
or the son of Nature; now he is its law-giver. Previously he sought to
experience the whole of Nature; now he seeks to explain the whole
of Nature within himself. Before he looked for his image in the mirror
of Nature; now he looks for the scheme of Nature in his Understand-
ing, which is the mirror of everything.76
The two attitudes towards Nature which Schelling described,

one passive and one active, were allegorical references to Kant's
conception of the Sensibility and the Understanding. Man the
law-giver of Nature, who finds the scheme of Nature in his own
Understanding, was an allusion to a priori knowledge. Clearly
Schelling regarded the transition from Sensibility to Under-
standing as significant progress. He did not yet treat the emer-
gence of Concepts in terms of Reflection, as he was to do in
his later writings.
Friedrich Creuzer followed Schelling in his study of myths
and symbolism in the ancient world. His chief work Symbolism
and Mythology (1810-12) elaborated extensively the view put
forward by Schelling that myths and symbols were the ancient
world's equivalent of modern abstract Concepts. He pointed
out that in their original meaning myths did not necessarily
imply something untrue, that they could be used to express
complex philosophical ideas. According to Creuzer:
Plato expressed many serious ideas in the form of myths. In this philo-
sophical usage of the mythical, sagas take the place of discursive ex-
position. Both present their material in an ordered and successive
way, but whereas in the one the Understanding and the Reason make
a series of connected syllogisms, in the other Reason and Sensibility
operate in terms of successive Intuitions.77
This was a rather different view from the one Schelling had
put forward in his essay of 1783. There, Concepts had been
represented as an advance over Intuitions. But in accordance
with the more recent direction of Schelling's philosophy,
Creuzer regarded the Intuition as having a presentiment of
the Idea already within it, and to that extent having an advan-
tage over the Concept. Hegel accepted Creuzer's views on
mythology and incorporated them into his History of Philosophy.
The contrast between Concepts and symbols was applied to
legal theory by Friedrich von Savigny in his influential work
On the Call of Our Times for Legislation and Jurisprudence pub-
lished in 1814. There he argued that the time was not ripe for
a unified code of law for the whole of Germany. Single and
unified codes of law, Savigny believed, had been possible in
earlier times because people had not been burdened with legal
Abstractions. He claimed that the 'childhood age in the history
of peoples is poor in Concepts', and that in the absence of

Concepts 'people everywhere dealt in terms of symbols'.78
Savigny thought that law expressed in symbolic terms was in
no way inferior to that couched in modern Concepts. On the
contrary, while ancient law was clear and practical, modern
law was complicated and ambiguous. 79
Fichte's idea that the human race had yet to fulfil its destiny
of Social life required that his doctrine of Society should be
accompanied by a historical scheme of how he viewed the
development of Social relations. This was in fact a pattern of
historical development in which humanity progressed from
Nature to Society, the two opposing poles acting respectively
as the earliest and final stages in human history.
Fichte saw two ways in which humanity could progress from
its State of Nature to Society: one was by the progressive devel-
opment of political institutions; the other was by raising the
material and cultural level of humanity at large.
In Fichte's view, mankind in the course of its development
had produced a succession of different forms of State, the
earlier ones being more authoritarian and the later ones more
free and democratic. The earliest form of State, according to
Fichte, was despotism. In that form of State most of the popu-
lation had been excluded from any form of participation in
the government, and policies were adopted by the caprice of
the ruler alone, and not by any established procedures. This
type of government, Fichte believed, was characteristic of the
Asiatic nations, whose religions encouraged them to be sub-
missive to authority. In Europe the Turkish Empire still af-
forded an example of this type of State.80
The second phase in the evolution of the State was the type
established by the Greeks. In this type the degree of popular
participation was widened, and the caprice of the rulers was
curbed by the enactment of laws. The Romans carried the
principles of civic freedom and equality before the law still
further.81
The emergence of Christianity brought the development of
freedom and equality to a culmination. For in a State in which
Christian principles were put into practice there would be no
outward compulsion exerted on the citizens. They would act
freely in accordance with the dictates of Reason.82 And since,
in the eyes of God, all men were free and equal, in the Chris-
tian State no citizen could become the slave of another. 83
Human history had reached the stage of the Christian State,
but, Fichte confessed, 'I cannot think of the present state of
humanity as that in which it is destined to remain.' 84 For in his
view, even the Christian State fell far short of realizing man-
kind's Social destiny. For while it accepted that no Christian
could become a slave, it was still considered legitimate to enslave
non-Christians and non-Christian nations. Fichte, however,
paraphrasing Kant, thought that 'man may use irrational things
as means for the accomplishment of his purposes, but not
rational beings'. A truly equal Society would therefore be
achieved when it embraced the whole of humanity. For, ac-
cording to Fichte: 'It is the vocation of our race to unite itself
into one single body, all the parts of which will be thoroughly
known to each other, and all possessed of a similar culture.' 85
The raising and extension of culture and civilization was
the other means by which Fichte believed a true Society could
be achieved in the course of historical development. Cultural
advance was made by the subjugation of Nature. This was first
done on an individual basis, men applying whatever Natural
powers and talents they happened to have for the purpose.
When people formed Social groups the conquest of Nature
could take place more effectively and swiftly. In Social groups
people worked not just for themselves but also for each other,
and this reinforced the Social bond. This in turn contributed
towards the further subjugation of Nature.
Life in the Social group also meant that individuals within
it no longer needed to devote all their attention to all their
human requirements; they now had the opportunity to spe-
cialize their talents and skills. This division of labour of course
made ever more rapid progress possible, and it was, Fichte
considered, the duty of everyone to cultivate his talents and
work to the best of his ability for the betterment of his fellows.
In this way he could repay them for their contribution to his
welfare.
The increase in freedom would be accompanied by the
widening of the circle of participants involved in the common
effort; eventually this would be on a world scale and extend to
the whole of humanity. This, Fichte thought, would mean that
'every useful discovery made at one end of the earth will be at

once made known and communicated to all the rest.'86 In this
way, with its efforts combined and united, humanity could
progress to levels of culture and civilization undreamt of in
the present age.
The period from Napoleon's victory at Jena in 1806 to the
Congress of Vienna in 1815, corresponding to the second phase
of the Romantic movement, brought with it some important
implications for how Germans viewed the course of history.
The revolution in France, sweeping away the old regime and
establishing an egalitarian order, and the Stein and Hardenberg
reforms in Prussia leading, it was widely believed, in the same
direction, emphasized the contrast between the traditional feu-
dal and the new capitalist order. Adam Miiller had viewed the
transition from the former to the latter with disfavour; but it
was also possible, as Joseph Gorres did, to see it as a necessary
and desirable stage in the march of world history.
Joseph Gorres was a characteristic product of the Romanti-
cism of the post-Jena phase, when the opposition to the French
invasion had aroused expressions of German national aware-
ness and patriotism. Herder had already indicated that the
repository of the German national character was the Volk, the
common people, who were untouched by modern cosmopoli-
tan civilization, and who preserved in their traditions, handed
down from ancient times, a culture that was essentially Ger-
man. The collections of folk-tales and folk-poetry which Arnim,
Brentano, the Grimms and Gorres published, therefore, had
an immense contemporary significance. They played an im-
portant part in instilling a sense of national pride and national
unity based on a common cultural heritage. 87
The conception of the Volk, of a national identity cutting
across social groups, was one of the most powerful democratic
influences of the period, especially at the time of the so-called
Wars of Liberation, when social differences had been sub-
merged into the common endeavour against the external
enemy. It gave rise to a vision of a Germany united under a
democratic constitution, which inspired many of the younger
generation, and gave rise to the Burschenschaft movement among
the students, who felt that the political aspirations which had
been awoken by the Wars of Liberation had been frustrated by
the restoration which followed them.
Gorres viewed the Stein and Hardenberg reforms as a means

by which the Volk could be united into a single body by break-
ing down the social barriers which divided it. The unity of
the Volk, he believed, ought to be reflected in a constitution
which would incarnate the German national character. He pro-
pounded his ideas on the future of a united Germany in the
journal which he edited entided Die Rheinische Merkur.ss
The assassination of Karl August Kotzebue, a dramatist and
agent of Tsar Alexander I, by the student Karl Ludwig Sand in
March 1819 provided the German authorities with a conven-
ient pretext for taking measures against the student societies.
At its diet on 20 September 1819 the German Confederation
issued its Karlsbad Decrees outlawing the Burschenschaft and
prohibiting university professors from overstepping the bounds
of their profession by misuse of their influence on the minds
of the youth.89
Gorres replied to the Karlsbad Decrees in the pamphlet
Germany and the Revolution, which was the swan-song of the
radical wing of the German Romantic movement. In it he
claimed that the Congress of Vienna had cheated the people
of the promised German unity, and that the Confederation
was only a cypher. He applauded the action of the students in
furthering the cause of national unity, if only in university life.
He predicted that the Karlsbad Decrees would do nothing to
halt the inevitable march of history.90 History, according to
Gorres, was a progression from the kind of despotism which
had characterized the states of the ancient East to the freedom
and democracy which had developed in modern times. Orien-
tal despotism had given way to the classical world of Greece
and Rome. In Rome, according to Gorres, 'the struggle be-
tween the higher aristocracy and the people, which had been
only individual and transitory among the Greeks, acquired a
more Universal and less contingent character.' 91
In Gorres's view the social system of the Middle Ages was
feudal and hierarchical. The Reformation had destroyed the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the French Revolution had begun
the process of destroying hierarchies in the social and political
spheres. Gorres believed that this process was in great part an
economic one. The power of money, especially since the dis-
covery of America, had begun to replace power based on so-
cial status and the ownership of land. This had loosened the
bonds of the feudal hierarchy and was replacing the agrarian

nobility with a moneyed elite made up from the various Es-
tates (Stdnde) of feudal society. By acquiring an economic basis,
he thought, society was becoming freer, more mobile, and
losing the restrictions and rigidity imposed by the political
bonds of the feudal system.92
For Gorres the money economy and universal military serv-
ice pointed in the same direction; they both ended the artifi-
cial social divisions of the feudal system. One gave all Estates
the opportunity of wealth, the other the right to bear arms.93
The eventual culmination of the process he saw as:
. . . a time when through the power of money and industry all inequal-
ities in assets will even themselves out; when the disparity in the gifts
of Nature will be abolished through education; when all Estates will
be so fused together that every householder will be able to be at once
high-priest, commander-in-chief, and someone who augments and
fosters the well-being of the whole kingdom.94
The vision was comparable to the one which Marx was later to
describe in The German Ideology, of a future Society in which it
was possible to be a huntsman, a fisherman, a shepherd and
a critic all in the course of the same day.95
Gorres believed that all forms of social difference would be
eliminated in the course of historical development. The Ref-
ormation had already undermined hierarchies in the ecclesi-
astical sphere, and the course of history would accomplish the
same task in the secular realm. He compared the hierarchy of
Estates to the hierarchy of the Church and argued, in a man-
ner reminiscent of the Pietists, that just as the 'spiritual goods
were no longer the exclusive property of the priesthood', so
the aristocracy's monopoly of wealth and power would dis-
appear in the fullness of time. Christianity, Gorres pointed
out, taught that all men were equal before God.96
In this perspective the feudal order of the Middle Ages, in
which the power of the monarch was countered by the influ-
ence of the Estates, represented an advance in terms of de-
mocracy in comparison with earlier ages, the despotisms of the
ancient East and the classical societies of Greece and Rome,
but for Gorres it represented only a transitional stage towards
the complete democracy of the future, adumbrated by the
Reformation and the French Revolution.97
The conception that the feudal system of Estates was a guar-

antee of liberty reinforced the idea that human history was a
progression from despotism to freedom by making more pre-
cise how this transition would take place, and what exactly
despotism consisted in. For, by implication, a despotic regime
was one in which there were no feudal Estates, no independ-
ent seat of power between the sovereign and the subject. The
examples which came to mind were the despotisms of the
East. Thus, Gorres could point out that 'the most despotic
regime of all, the Turkish, had no nobility';98 and in one of his
pamphlets Franz Baader could note that 'in China, Turkey,
and in all other countries where despotism is fully developed
there is no other nobility than the misnamed service or official
nobility.'99 The transition from despotism to feudalism, there-
fore, would consist in the introduction of some intermediate
Estates between the sovereign and the people.
Like Gorres, Baader put forward a historical scheme which
envisaged the conflict of two opposing principles. In a pamphlet
published in 1814 he discussed two types of bond which brought
people together in Society. One kind was the bond of compul-
sion which was characteristic of a despotic regime, in which
individual people were motivated by self-interest and acted
like atoms in the mechanistic science of Kepler and Newton.
The other type of social bond was that of love and mutual
attraction which united the members of Society in free
association.
The French Revolution, Baader thought, had encouraged
the growth of Societies based on the atomistic, mechanical
bond; but he foresaw that in the future Societies based on
mutual attraction and love would prevail. Like Miiller, Baader
believed that inequality was necessary for Social cohesion, and
without it there could only be haphazard collections of separ-
ate individuals. In Baader's opinion: 'Union presupposes in-
equality between the uniting parties, since between equals only
aggregation takes place.'100
By the first decades of the nineteenth century a consensus
had emerged in Germany about the course which world his-
tory was taking. This was that the traditional feudal Society
based on Estates was being superseded by modern Civil Soci-
ety. This on the one hand signified greater social equality, but
on the other it meant that the bonds which held Society
together were no longer of a human kind, but of a material or

economic nature. Modern Civil Society was more democratic
than the feudal society which had preceded it. This in turn,
because of its Estate constitution, had provided more guaran-
tees for liberty than the despotic type of Society which still
survived in Eastern countries. The classical worlds of Rome
and Greece were intermediate types in terms of political struc-
ture between the Oriental and the feudal types. Looked at chrono-
logically this gave a series of Social orders as follows: Oriental
despotic, Classical, feudal and modern Civil (or Bourgeois).
This was the series which appeared in the historical schemes
of both Hegel and Marx.
The intellectual context in which this scheme of history gained
currency was the last phase of the Romantic movement, the
important period between 1815 and 1830, when much of
Hegel's philosophical writing took place, and when the Young
Hegelian movement originated. The interchange between late
Romanticism and Hegelian Rationalism was to be the stimulus
which produced Marx's first published works.
The Congress of Vienna in 1815 marked the beginning of
this last phase of the Romantic movement. It was one which
reflected the mood of reaction which spread throughout Eu-
rope in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Rationalism was
widely identified with revolution and subversion, and Catholi-
cism, which in the eighteenth century seemed to be on the
verge of extinction, enjoyed a new lease of life: the Catholic
Church was held to be the most effective force for keeping the
revolutionary spirit in check.
Along with the new obscurantism, fostered by the dread
that the horrors of revolution might recommence and by the
belief that the French Revolution had been originated by small
groups of malcontents, went an atmosphere of suspicion and
repression. There was an obsessive spying on individuals by
the authorities. 101 In Prussia agents were sent to sit in on
Schleiermacher's sermons; Stein was watched by the police.102
To escape arrest Gorres was forced to flee from his native
Rhineland, annexed by Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Stein
wrote to him in his exile complaining bitterly of the lack of
press freedom in Prussia.103
Of all the Romantics it was Miiller who was most in harmony
with the times and with the political conditions which prevailed.
He was summoned to Vienna in 1815 by Metternich, and sub-

sequendy collaborated with him in promoting Austrian poli-
cies throughout the rest of Germany. Both Metternich and
Miiller were determined to eradicate the kind of German
patriotism which had been encouraged by the Wars of Libera-
tion and voiced by Gorres in his Rheinische Merkur: the concep-
tion of a German Volk in a unified Germany.
After the publication of Germany and the Revolution Gorres
was forced to live in exile in Strasbourg. There he reverted
increasingly to the Catholic faith into which he had been born,
but had forsaken for most of his life. In 1824 he began to edit
the journal Katholik, and to contribute articles to it which elic-
ited the favourable response of Adam Miiller.104
Conversion to Catholicism was a characteristic feature of
the Romantic movement in its late phase. Adam Miiller became
a Catholic in 1805, Friedrich Schlegel in 1808; Tieck and August
Wilhelm Schlegel hovered for a time on the brink of conver-
sion, but never took the final step.
An important literary phenomenon in the last phase of the
Romantic movement, however, was the group of lyrical poets
based in Swabia, which included Ludwig Uhland, Gustav
Schwab, Eduard Morike and Justinus Kerner. Besides writing
poetry Kerner practised medicine in the town of Weinsberg.
There he studied the somnambulism of the peasant woman
Friederike Hauffe, and, while treating her with magnetism,
noted down her mysterious sayings. These were incorporated
into Kerner's book The Clairvoyante of Prevorst (Die Seherin von
Prevorst) published in 1829, a work reflecting the Romantic move-
ment's preoccupation with the subconscious mind.
Hegel was to refer to Kerner's book in one of his last writings
as an example of the irrationalism against which he had cam-
paigned for the whole of his working life. He had always tried
to emphasize in his own system that there were no short-cuts
to knowledge through the subconsciousness or by any other
route. Knowledge was acquired by the conscious mind working
conscientiously and systematically to master its material.
Hegel did this, moreover, in an increasingly adverse intellec-
tual climate, as rationalism fell into disrepute in the Restoration
era.
Hegel's philosophy was chiefly shaped by the disputes with
his early opponents - Schelling and Novalis. It was against
them that the barbs of the Phenomenology of Mind were directed.

But what Hegel took issue with were the irrationalist conclu-
sions of his colleagues and contemporaries. He did not dis-
pute the concepts and constructs which they used to reach
them. He set out to show, in fact, that if these categories were
presented correctly they would lead inescapably to rationalist
conclusions. That is why the building-blocks of Hegel's system
consisted of ideas which the Romantic writers had already made
familiar.
2 Hegel
LOGIC
As his early writings show, Hegel first set out on his philosoph-
ical career as a follower of Schelling. Although he continued
to propound the Speculative philosophy, he departed from
Schelling and his school on some key issues, which put a new
gloss on the Speculative method and placed it firmly within
the Rationalist camp. Hegel first made public his differences
with his immediate predecessors in the Phenomenology of Mind
published in 1806.
One major departure from Schelling and other Romantic
writers was Hegel's abhorrence of the current infatuation with
the unconscious mind. He felt this to be misguided, supersti-
tious and directly contrary to the proper methods of scientific
investigation. The idea that one could come into possession of
knowledge all at once by some mystic communion with Nature
was one that Hegel campaigned against all his life. He con-
tinually emphasized that reliable knowledge did not come easily;
it had to be earned through prolonged application and intel-
lectual rigour. It did not come immediately, 'like a shot from
a pistol', but unfolded gradually and in a rational order.
Above all Hegel believed that knowledge was gained only
through the working of the conscious mind. His system of phi-
losophy, in contrast to Schelling's, was a celebration of human
consciousness, or to be more precise, of Self-Consciousness,
since Hegel believed that humanity was concerned not only
with acquiring knowledge, but with proving the validity of that
knowledge. Hegel's system, therefore, was concerned not only
to justify consciousness, but to demonstrate that the knowl-
edge obtained by consciousness was true.
Hegel had no quarrel with the Romantics as far as the ideal
of knowledge was concerned. He too found inadequate the
kind of knowledge which was limited to Externals, and did not
penetrate the Inner Essence.1 He agreed with Schelling that
the kind of knowledge to be sought was like that of an inven-
tor in relation to his machine, a kind that so completely ab-
sorbed the thing into one's being that 'subject and substance'
69
were united. It was the kind of knowledge in which there could

be no question of there being an unknowable thing-in-itself,
because the knower and the thing known were inseparably
united in a single Subject-Object. In this respect Hegel shared
Schelling's Speculative method.
Where Hegel differed from Schelling was on how this kind
of knowledge was to be attained. Schelling and his followers,
in espousing the Subject-Object ideal and taking it as their
point of departure, resolutely dissociated themselves from
anything which fell short of it. They continually made the
point of condemning the kind of knowledge acquired by Re-
flection, through the Understanding and the Concept. It was
held that only the standpoint of the Intellectual Intuition, that
of the Reason and the Idea, was the sound and reliable one.
Schleiermacher, Steffens and Adam Miiller had all followed
Schelling in this view.
While Hegel accepted the Speculative viewpoint, he could
not blind himself to the fact that Speculative philosophy had
not appeared from nowhere, but had developed on founda-
tions laid by earlier philosophies, by philosophies of Reflec-
tion. Hegel was not only more tolerant towards his philosophical
predecessors, but held that the contributions they had made
were necessary ones in the progress towards the Speculative
point of view. Indeed, in so far as these contributions had
gone towards the creation of Speculative philosophy, they were
contained in that philosophy and were still valid. As Hegel
observed:
The more conventional opinion gets fixated on the antithesis of truth
and falsity, the more it tends to expect a given philosophical system
to be either accepted or rejected . . . It does not comprehend the diver-
sity of philosophical systems or the progressive unfolding of the truth.2
The history of philosophy had shown that although systems

based on Reflection were mistaken, they were capable of lead-
ing to the truth. If this were the case then it must mean - if
restated in more general terms - that Reflection was not com-
pletely divorced from Speculation. The two must be connected
in some rational way, and consequently there must be a route
from the one to the other.
What Hegel set out to do in his philosophy was to show that
Reflection and Speculation were connected, that it was possible
Hegel 71
to progress from the former to the latter, and indeed that the
route through Reflection was the only means of attaining
Absolute knowledge. The form which Hegel's demonstration
took was to link together in a continuous series all the catego-
ries of contemporary German philosophy, leading from the
most elementary to the most complex, culminating in the
Absolute Idea. In this way Hegel's system forms a compen-
dium of terms and concepts employed by his predecessors and
contemporaries. What was novel was the way in which Hegel
connected them together in a continuous chain.
To Hegel's contemporary readers, therefore, the philosoph-
ical categories which he used would be quite familiar from
other contexts, and only the way in which he had treated them
would be new. A modern readership on the other hand, un-
used to German philosophical terminology, would inevitably
attribute everything to Hegel, and so be unable to appreciate
what exactly his contribution had been. For by linking the
categories into a continuum Hegel contrived at the same time
to give them a fresh interpretation in keeping with his ration-
alist position and his critique of Schelling and the Romantic
school.
If all the categories were linked in a continuous chain so
that one could progress from the most elementary and Ab-
stract category to the Absolute, it meant that all the categories
along the way were simultaneously present in the Absolute. It
also implied that the Absolute was present to some extent in
even the most elementary category. This supported Hegel in
his opinion that one ought not to dismiss categories such as
Reflection, the Understanding and the Concept, as Schelling
and his followers did, because each had its own peculiar func-
tion in the acquisition of Absolute knowledge. On the subject
of the Understanding, for example, Hegel remarked: 'The
activity of separating out is the power and work of the Under-
standing, the most wonderful and mighty of powers . . .'3
Besides defending the Understanding and Reflection, Hegel
attached special significance to championing the Concept.
Considering the disdain with which Schelling and his school
treated the Concept, it can be appreciated that Hegel's depar-
ture was unexpected, not to say courageous. He was fully aware
of the reaction that his approach might evoke. In his Preface
to the Phenomenology of Mind he noted that:
Since I hold that science exists solely in the self-movement of the Con-
cept, and since my view differs from, and indeed is wholly opposed to,
current ideas regarding the nature and form of truth . . . it seems that
any attempt to expound the system of science from this point of view
is unlikely to be favourably received.4
Almost a decade later in his Science of Logic Hegel still found
it necessary to defend the Concept from current attitudes.
There he pointed out that:
for long it has been and still is in part a practice to heap every calumny
upon the Concept, to ridicule that which is the summit of thought,
and to regard as the highest peak both in the scientific and moral
spheres the renunciation of the Concept both as objective and as
method.5
Just as the Understanding led to Reason and Absolute knowl-
edge, Hegel would show that the Concept led to the Idea,
indeed that the Concept was the Idea though the Idea in an
inadequate stage of its development. His defence of the Con-
cept took into account the charge usually levelled against it by
Schelling and his followers. This was that the Concept gave a
distorted view of reality by presenting it as a fixed Abstraction
from actual existence. Countering this accusation led Hegel to
make some modifications to how a Concept was traditionally
understood.
This concerned how a Concept was constituted. All previous
writers had adhered to Kant's conception that Concepts were
generalized from Intuitions. One might, consequently, have
expected Hegel to argue that just as the Concept led to the
Idea, so the Intuition led to the Concept. Hegel did not do
this, specifically excluding the Intuition from the constitution
of the Concept. In his view, Kant had placed Intuitions and
Concepts in the same series because he had confused two
different sciences - Logic, to which the Concept properly
belonged, and Psychology, the true place for the Intuition. For
Hegel the stages anterior to the Concept were Being and Es-
sence. 6 That is, what preceded the Concept was not something
subjective, as the Intuition was, but objective categories of real
existence. This gave the Concept elements of both objectivity
and subjectivity.
Tracing the origin of the Concept through Being and Es-
sence allowed Hegel to argue that Concepts were not pure
Hegel 73
thought, Abstractions from Actual existence; Concepts were

Actual existence. To be sure, they did not embody all of exist-
ence, but what they contained was all that was Essential or sig-
nificant; what they left out was ephemeral and inconsequential.
The deduction of Essence from Being, through the interme-
diate category of Determinate Being (Dasein), served to estab-
lish that there was an important distinction to be drawn between
Being in general, Indeterminate Being (Sein) and Essential
Being (Wesen). In the former case what existed might be for-
tuitous or contingent, whereas in the latter the contingent
element was stripped away to retain what was of rational sig-
nificance, what was Universal. It was this latter element which
was incorporated in the Concept as Actuality, the highest cat-
egory of Essence.
Since what the Concept contained was existence which had
been refined or filtered to the level of Actuality, it was possible
for Hegel to declare in his famous epigram:
What is Actual is rational
What is rational is Actual.7
This was, Hegel maintained, an accurate summary of his
method. It signified that w7hat was Essential in existence could
be embodied in Concepts, and that what was contained in
Concepts was Actual existence.
Misapprehensions had arisen about the nature of the Ab-
straction performed by the Concept, because it was imagined
that it left all the real world outside it and consisted only of
Abstract Universality. In fact, Hegel pointed out, the Univer-
sality of the Concept was not Abstract at all, but concrete
Universality, that is - Individuality.8 For Hegel the Concept
possessed three elements or 'moments'. The first of these was
Universality in the conventional sense of the term, Abstract
Universality, Universality as such or 'in itself. It was, however,
accompanied by a second element, that of concrete content,
of Particularity, which Hegel designated as the 'for itself
moment of the Concept. The third moment was the synthesis
of the first two, the perfect equilibrium of Universality and
Particularity, of Abstraction and concrete content. This third
moment was Individuality, the Concept 'in and for itself.
Whereas traditionally the Concept had possessed only two
poles - Universality and Particularity - corresponding to
Abstraction and concrete content, Hegel's had three - Univer-

sality, Particularity and Individuality. The new element Hegel
had added to the Concept, Individuality, was a conception
taken from Schleiermacher. The point of equilibrium between
the Abstract and the concrete, 'concrete Universality', was
exactly the kind of synthesis of Universality and Particularity
Schleiermacher had conceived Individuality as being. That
the movement of the Concept should be characterized by
Individuality was another way of saying that the action of the
Concept was to sift out from the profusion of existence that
which was truly significant, to separate the Essential from the
merely accidental and contingent.
Schelling and his followers believed that the Concept gave
a distorted view of reality by presenting it not only as an Ab-
straction, but as a fixed Abstraction. Hegel for his part main-
tained that the Concept, far from being static, was the source
of all movement and development. It was this movement of
the Concept which linked together all the philosophical cat-
egories commencing with Being and ending with the Abso-
lute. Hegel termed this movement 'Logic' or 'dialectic'. It was
a movement which was present even in the very first series of
categories - Being, Nothing and Becoming - for in the last
of these Hegel had introduced the element of motion and
development.
Each series or cycle of categories contained three elements
corresponding to the moments of Universality, Particularity
and Individuality which made up the Concept itself. The pat-
tern was repeated from the initial rudimentary categories to
Hegel's entire system of philosophy. In this way Hegel ad-
hered to the principle of Speculative philosophy that what was
true of the system as a whole should be true of its constituent
parts. And since the moments of the Concept progressed from
Abstract Universality through Particularity to concrete Univer-
sality, the movement of the Concept was cyclical; it returned to
its point of departure. This cyclic character pervaded all levels
of Hegel's system.
The motor which drove the Concept towards the Idea was
Self-Consciousness. Since truth could be defined as the corre-
spondence of knowledge with its content, or more precisely
the correspondence of the Concept with its object, a compar-
ison was possible of how far Concept and object coincided.
Hegel 75
The Concept which corresponded completely with its object

was what Hegel termed an 'adequate Concept' or an Idea. So
long as things did not correspond to the Idea this was, in his
view, 'the side of their finitude or untruth according to which
they are objects, determined . . . either mechanically, chemic-
ally, or through an External end'. 9 The Idea, on the other hand,
being determined only by itself, was entirely free. Thus the
progress of the Concept towards the Idea was accompanied by
an increasing degree of freedom.
In tracing the movement of the Concept towards Absolute
knowledge in the The Science of Logic, Hegel divided his work
into two parts: the first, Objective Logic, deduced the catego-
ries from which the Concept was composed; the second part,
Subjective Logic, dealt with the movement of the Concept
towards the Idea. While Schelling considered Logic to be an
area in which Reason subordinated itself to the Understand-
ing, Hegel regarded it as the most fundamental of all the sci-
ences. It was the one in which the categories were deduced
from first principles, and as these categories were held to be
not simply forms of thought but the objective embodiment of
reality, Logic with Hegel acquired a new dignity and impor-
tance. It was by logical, or 'dialectical', operations, moreover,
that the Concept progressed towards the Idea, and in this
respect Hegel was able to present traditional formal logic in a
new light.
In Schelling's philosophy the unity of the Intuition had been
broken by the Judgement (the 'original division', Urteil). Hegel
used the same etymology to derive the Judgement from the
original unity of the Concept. This resolved the Concept into
its component elements: the Universal, the Particular and the
Individual. Judgements then took the form of permutations of
these terms arranged as subject and predicate, of the type:
The Individual is Universal;
The Universal is Individual.
From the Judgement Hegel proceeded to the syllogism, which
was composed of the same three elements, this time arranged
in triads of judgements corresponding to the major and minor
premisses and the conclusion. By this means Hegel signified
that logical operations took the form of the self-movement
of the Concept, and, conversely, that the path to truth lay
through the process of logical reasoning. The syllogism, which

Hegel looked upon as the general form of Reason, was one
which went through the same dialectical movement as the
Concept itself. It began with abstract Universality, progressed
to the negative pole, Particularity, and concluded with con-
crete Universality or Individuality.10
Logic was the kind of progression which became more con-
crete with each advance.
In the Absolute method the Concept preserves itself in its otherness,
the Universal in its Particularisation, in the Judgement and in reality.
It raises to each next stage of determination the whole mass of its
antecedent content, and in its dialectical progress not only loses noth-
ing and leaves nothing, but carries with it all that it has acquired,
enriching and concentrating itself upon itself.11
Hegel concluded his study of logic by discussing the highest

type of cognition, scholarly and scientific method. This too, he
pointed out, could be considered under the heads of Univer-
sality, Particularity and Individuality. Three approaches were
possible to the subject-matter. The first was that which at-
tempted to arrange its material under definitions; this was the
method of abstract Universality. It had the inadequacy of fail-
ing to offer any means of telling whether the criteria on which
the definitions were made were essential or contingent ones.
The second approach was classification, the attempt to dis-
cover general rules by ordering the materials according to the
characteristics they displayed. This was a method which took
Particularity as its point of departure. In Hegel's opinion the
true scientific method was a synthesis of both of these ap-
proaches. It was one which succeeded in apprehending the
concrete Universality, the Individuality of the subject-matter.
This was the way in which Absolute knowledge was achieved.
The discussion of scholarly and scientific method served to
convey that the aim of any investigation was to produce con-
crete Universality, the perfect synthesis of generalization and
empirical material. It would present of the material what was
truly essential, discarding the contingent and fortuitous. The
method, in other words, would perform at a high level of
consciousness the same function as the Concept did at the
level of Actuality. The dialectical method was identical to the
Concept, or as Hegel could claim, his system and his method
were one and the same.12
Hegel 11
The culmination of Hegel's system was the Concept which
coincided with itself, the Absolute Idea. It was the point where
complete identity of Subject and Substance was achieved. It
was also the place where it was possible to appreciate the way
the system had been constructed. At its conclusion it returned
to its point of departure. According to Hegel:
By reason of the Nature of the method which has been demonstrated,
science is seen to be a circle which turns in upon itself, one in which
mediation sends back the end to the beginning, the simple ground.
It is, moreover, a circle of circles', for each component part, as something
which incorporates the method, is Reflection in-itself, which, in so far
as it returns to its beginning, is at the same time the beginning of a
new component element.13
What Hegel said of sciences in general applied to his own
system. It was only possible to understand the system and what
its method was when the conclusion had been reached. This
confirmed Hegel's original proposition that the truth was in
the whole and that it could only be expounded as a system.14
There was, however, an important corollary to this idea:
since the rationality of the Concept's movement could only be
appreciated in retrospect, the movement was unpredictable.
One could know what had been rational, or what was rational,
but one could not predict the rational developments of the
future. Hegel referred to this peculiarity of Reason as 'the
cunning of the Concept' or the 'cunning of Reason'. 15 This
characteristic of Reason of course pervaded the entire system,
and was introduced at an early stage in the development of
the Concept - at the category of 'Measure' in the Objective
Logic. At this level the unpredictability of Reason took the
form of changes in quantity giving place suddenly to changes
in quality.16 The way in which the 'cunning of Reason' rendered
history unpredictable Hegel expressed in his memorable
epigram: 'Only at the gathering of dusk does the owl of Minerva
begin its flight.'
NATURE
The part played by Nature in Hegel's philosophical system was

determined by the way he had interpreted the Concept. Al-
though Hegel held that the categories anterior to the Concept,
Being and Essence, were objective ones, he excluded them

from the province of Nature. This meant that the movement
of the Concept was free of any Natural influence. It was, how-
ever, part of Hegel's argument that Self-Consciousness in the
form of the Concept should proceed by its own immanent
movement, not impelled by any External force. For Hegel,
Nature was that which was External to the Concept.
While Kant had identified the categories of Time and Space
with the Intuition and had considered the latter to be a con-
stituent of the Concept, Hegel excluded from the Concept not
only the Intuition, but also Space and Time. He placed these
categories within the realm of Nature. He intended that the
movement of the Concept should not be interpreted in spatial
or temporal terms. Thus, for example, the category of 'Becom-
ing' was not to be thought of in Time, but only in Logic.
Although denied the commanding position Schelling had
given it, Nature nevertheless played an important part in
Hegel's system. It was Nature which constituted the difference
between the Concept and its object, that which formed the
'inadequacy' of the Concept and made it fall short of the Idea.
In other words, Nature was the element of the Idea's untruth,
the 'self-degradation of the Idea'.
But, as Hegel argued, the falsity of an Idea was related in a
rational way to its truth, so that the false element contained
truth to some degree. Truth was thereby present to some extent
in falsity, and in the same way the Idea was present to some
degree in Nature. To Hegel the difference between the Idea
in Nature and the Idea itself was one of Outer and Inner
respectively. In his view one could derive from Nature knowl-
edge of the Idea in its Externals, but not in its Inner Essence.
Hegel found this conception of Nature to accord fully with
characteristics attributed to it by philosophers before Schelling,
namely profusion, necessity and contingency.17 Besides these
characteristics, Nature also showed Particularity. Nature was,
in fact, the element of Particularity in the triad which formed
the major divisions of Hegel's system: Logic, Nature and Mind.
Logic was the science of pure thought; Nature, that of the
physical world; and Mind, that of human affairs. The entire
cycle echoed the composition of the Concept, with Logic
representing Universality, Nature - Particularity, and Mind -
Individuality. Hegel introduced the transition from Logic to
Hegel 79
Nature by saying that the Idea in its Absolute freedom had

resolved to let the moment of Particularity go freely from itself
as Nature.
In these divisions of his system Hegel was clearly influenced
by Schelling's conception of the Subjective Subject-Object and
the Objective Subject-Object. For just as in the Logic it was
continually stressed that the categories were not subjective
abstractions, but were objective Actuality, so in Nature the
objectivity was not Absolute, because there was no part of Nature
in which the Idea was not to be found. Thus, for Hegel, the
classifications and laws to be found in Nature were not super-
imposed on it by the Understanding, as Kant and Fichte had
believed, but actually existed in Nature itself.
In stressing this rationality within Nature, Hegel drew upon
Goethe's views on the subject expressed in poetical form. In
1732 there had appeared a poem by Albrecht von Haller, The
Falsity of Human Virtues, in which he put forward the view that:
No mind in creation can penetrate the inner workings of Nature.
It is fortunate enough when it comes to know the outer husk.
In reply to this idea Goethe in 1820 had composed the poem
Certainly (Allerdings), which proclaimed that:
Nature has neither kernel
Nor husk.
Goethe's lines were quoted by Hegel in denying that Nature
could be divided into an outer husk and an inner kernel. 18
The metaphor of the kernel and the husk was later to prove
popular among the Young Hegelians.
In Hegel's view, rational thought would find a correspond-
ing rationality in Nature. This idea had a certain kinship with
Schelling's conception that the system of the Mind was the
System of Nature. Hegel, however, did not allow Nature the
same status as the Concept. In his view the system to be found
in Nature was the movement of the Concept with its character-
istic moments of Being, Essence and the Concept itself, but
Nature revealed this system only imperfectly. To cause it to
yield up the Idea, Nature had to be tamed and refined. In this
respect Hegel's conception of Nature came closer to Fichte's
than to Schelling's.
A major difference between Schelling and Hegel was that,
whereas Schelling regarded Nature as being in constant flux

and movement, Hegel took quite the opposite view: in Hegel's
system, movement came exclusively from the Concept, and it
was Nature which embodied rigidity and fixity. Hegel conse-
quently refused to entertain any evolutionary theories of Na-
ture, and he has been reproached by several commentators
on that account. The criticism is made on the assumption that
Hegel's philosophy of Nature would have no difficulty in ac-
commodating a theory of evolution. It is an assumption, how-
ever, which considers Hegel's philosophy of Nature in isolation
from his system as a whole, and especially from the doctrine
of the Concept. Since for Hegel Nature represented the re-
verse side of the Concept, movement and development could
not be attributed to Nature without at the same time modify-
ing greatly the treatment of the movement of the Concept, the
mainspring of the entire system. In other words, to incorpor-
ate a theory of evolution in Nature would involve the construc-
tion of quite another system than Hegel's.
Hegel had another compelling reason for regarding Nature
as something static. This concerned his use of the term Nature
to signify the essence of a thing or being. In speaking of the
Concept, for example, Hegel began by saying that the subject
he was about to deal with was the 'Nature' 19 of the Concept. This
usage suited Hegel's purpose because he wished to argue that
by its very Nature the Concept was an objective as well as a sub-
jective category, and that by its very Nature, or self-movement,
it must ascend towards the Idea. Thus, he stated that: 'its
objectivity or the Concept is therefore nothing other than the
Nature of Self-Consciousness.'20 'Nature' in this sense could be
nothing but a constant. The use of the term Nature in the
sense of essence was to be used most extensively in Hegel's
philosophy of history.
The movement of the Concept towards the Idea implied the
steady diminution of the Externality and otherness of Nature.
To Hegel this meant that Nature should be regarded as 'a
system of stages'. He cautioned at once against forming the
impression that the stages belonged to Nature; for they were
in fact stages of the Concept, 'whose changes give rise to all
development'. 21
The idea of Nature as a system of stages, however, allowed
Hegel to elaborate a scheme of Nature which had a structure
Hegel 81
very close to Schelling's in that it ascended from simpler forms

to the more complex, culminating in life itself. The scheme
had three main divisions: mechanics, physics and organics,
which could be thought of respectively as Universality, Particu-
larity and Individuality, or, in terms of the movement of the
Concept: Being, Essence and the Concept. Though subsequent
discoveries in science quickly rendered Hegel's scheme out of
date, Karl Rosenkranz, writing in 1837, was still able to observe
the symmetry and elegance of Hegel's philosophy of Nature in
relation to the rest of Hegel's system. Thus, he explained:
Because the Concept is the unity of the Universal, the Particular and
the Individual, each and every sphere of Nature must itself be the whole
of Nature, a relative Totality. Were this not the case, then there would
be no unity in Nature . . . This harmony appears so that in the lower
stages there is the anticipation of the higher, and in the higher - the
recollection of the lower.22
With the emergence of life, Nature reached its highest point,

and with the appearance of consciousness the transition was
made from Nature to Mind, which was the synthesis of Nature
and the Logical Idea, the moments of Universality and Particu-
larity respectively. As 'concrete Universality' or Individuality,
Mind was a sphere where freedom reigned, having left behind
the realm of Natural necessity. Since human Society came within
the category of Mind, this placed matters relating to human
Society above Nature, and thereby entirely within the realm of
freedom. In was in this light that Hegel regarded Society and
the State.
As far as Hegel was concerned humanity did not belong in
Nature, and ought to leave the Natural state as soon as possi-
ble. Like most of his contemporaries, Hegel believed that in
their Natural state men existed as individuals, and like Fichte
he took issue with Rousseau that men by Nature were free and
equal. In Hegel's opinion:
the familiar proposition that all men are equal by Nature contains the
misunderstanding of confusing what is Natural with the Concept.
Rather what should be said is that men by Nature are only unequal.23
Hegel thought that in humanity's Natural condition free-

dom and equality existed only as abstractions, and that the
earliest forms of Society were ones characterized by slavery

and inequality. Concrete Universal freedom and equality were
the result of the development of Self-Consciousness:24
But that this equality should be present, that it should be man - and
not as in Greece, Rome, etc., only some- that is recognised as a person
and legally regarded as such, this exists so little by Nature, that it is
rather only the product and result of the consciousness of the most
profound principle of Mind, and also of the Universality and develop-
ment of this consciousness.25
For Hegel, Natural man was man who did not correspond to the
Concept of humanity. The development of Self-Consciousness
was the process by which humanity came to accord with its
own Concept. In that process Social ties were formed, rational
institutions were created, and the sphere of freedom was
increased.
The conception that inequality, domination and slavery
were mankind's original condition, and that the development
of Self-Consciousness led to Universal equality and freedom,
was one that Hegel had first adumbrated in his Phenomenology
of Mind. There some of the most evocative passages were the
allegorical treatment of Self-Consciousness in terms of a mas-
ter and his slave. The implications of the mutual relationship
between these two personages unfolded to reveal how, ulti-
mately, the functions of the master and the slave coalesced,
External necessity thereby giving way to Internal freedom. In
his Encyclopedia Hegel showed that this dialectic of the Self-
Consciousness had its counterpart in human history. The fact
that humanity emerged from its warring state of Nature not
as a single entity, but divided into masters and slaves, meant
that there was not a single Self-Consciousness, but two Self-
Consciousnesses which encountered each other first at the level
of Appearance and Reflection, but subsequently recognized in
each other the true Inner human Essence.
When people recognized each other as fellow human be-
ings, and not as masters or slaves, there would then be what
Hegel termed 'Universal Self-Consciousness'. This in his view
was the destiny of humanity, but it had to be reached by a
difficult road. The 'struggle for recognition and the submis-
sion to masters is the phenomenon which gave rise to people's
social existence as the beginning of States'.26 Through the
Hegel 83
development of social life, by the spread of Rationality, and

especially by the extension of Christianity, it became possible
for people to regard each other not as alien objects, but to see
in each other the same Self-Consciousness as something Uni-
versal. This recognition abolished all distinction between mas-
ters and slaves.
Although this transition from the state of Nature to Univer-
sal Self-Consciousness formed the basis for Hegel's scheme of
history, he clearly did not regard the process as being purely
historical, in the sense of occurring in specific places or at
definite times. For time and space were categories of Nature,
while the development of Self-Consciousness had an essential
significance and belonged to the realm of Mind. This consid-
eration had an important bearing on how Hegel regarded the
related matters of Society and World History.
SOCIETY
Like other thinkers of his day, Hegel thought of Society in

ethical terms; and like them he believed that a philosophical
system ought to culminate in expounding the implications of
its basic tenets for the proper relationship between people and
the organization of Society. This idea was already present in
Kant's philosophy, but it was developed to a high degree by
Fichte, who made the Self not only the starting-point of his
system, but also the ideal to which Society ought to aspire.
Schelling took over from Fichte the conception that the
structure of Society followed that of the Mind, with its faculties
of Understanding and Reason, and he used it to draw a com-
parison between existing Society, the Society of the Under-
standing, and Society as it ought to be, the Society of Reason.
By the Society of the Understanding Schelling had particularly
in view French Society after the Revolution, with its atomiza-
tion and relationships based on commercial transactions. The
rigidity and mechanical movement of this kind of Society led
Schelling to equate it with the Concept. He thought of Society
proper in terms of a living organism, as an Idea. Adam Miiller
elaborated on this conception in great detail, and contrasted
Civil, or capitalist society based on the Concept with feudal
Society with its human bonds based on the Idea.
In his examination of Society in Philosophy of Right Hegel

followed Schelling and his disciples in regarding Society as
patterned on the faculties of the Mind. He also accepted the
premiss that Civil Society was to be associated with the Under-
standing, and that the ethical, free and human Social relation-
ship was to be equated with Reason. But whereas Schelling
and Miiller denounced the Society of the Understanding and
extolled that of the Idea, Hegel's approach, as in his Logic,
was to show that the Understanding was an essential phase in
the development of the Concept towards the Idea. In this case
he argued that Civil Society was an essential phase in the
development of the Concept towards Reason, which was
incarnated in the Idea of the State.
Hegel's view of Society had undergone a certain evolution
between his adherence to Schelling's philosophy and the con-
struction of his own system. This concerned his attitude to-
wards Civil Society. The evidence suggests that this had begun
by being as negative as Schelling's. The 'System Programme'
written in 1796 in Hegel's hand indicates sympathy with the
view that since the existing State was not an Idea, but a mecha-
nism which treated human beings like cogs in a machine, it
should cease to exist. Also, Karl Rosenkranz relates in his bio-
graphy of Hegel that in 1799 Hegel wrote a commentary, no
longer extant, on a German translation ofJames Steuart's book
An Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Steuart, a sup-
porter of mercantilism, presented a sympathetic account of
the workings of the capitalist system in Britain, but, according
to Rosenkranz, Hegel 'with noble passion and a host of inter-
esting illustrations . . . attacked the deadliness of this system
and sought to preserve man's soul in the midst of competition,
the mechanisation of labour, and commerce'. 27 Subsequently,
after reading Adam Smith, J.B. Say and David Ricardo,28 Hegel
lost none of the misgivings about the capitalist system, which
he shared with the writers of the Romantic school, but came
to regard it and the Civil Society associated with it as necessary
evils, as an essential stage in the development of the Idea.
There were striking parallels between Hegel's conception of
Civil Society and the traditional conception of the Understand-
ing. Both were regarded as forces for the creation of division,
and both made their appearance by shattering an original
unity and cohesion. In both Self-Consciousness and Society,
Hegel 85
Hegel took the condition of cohesion to be the original one.

In the development of Self-Consciousness the original unity
was 'sensuous consciousness'; in the development of Society,
the original cohesion was provided by the family. In the first
case the pristine unity was dissolved by the Understanding, in
the second by Civil Society.
In Hegel's view, therefore, the primary feature of Civil So-
ciety was its fragmentation, the disintegration of the Idea into
Particularity. The relationship of the members of this Society
was External and dictated by necessity. What held Civil Society
together was the 'system of needs', the fact that the livelihood
of one member depended on that of his fellows. It was such
that:
The Actual attainment of self-seeking ends is conditioned by Univer-
sality in such a way as to form a system of complete interdependence,
wherein the livelihood, happiness, and legal status of one individual
is interwoven with the livelihood, happiness, and rights of all. On this
system, individual happiness etc., depend, and only in this connected
system are they Actualised and secured. The system may be regarded
above all as the External State, the State based on need, the State as
the Understanding envisages it.29
Hegel went on to point out that the division of labour caused
the process of division and fragmentation to develop still fur-
ther and increased mutual dependence proportionately. The
labour itself became so simplified and 'abstract' that in many
cases it could even be performed by machines. On the other
hand the more abstract the labour, the more Universal it
became, so that from the Particularity of Civil Society the
element of Universality could emerge. This was of course true
more of industry than of agriculture, and in this respect Hegel
shared Adam Midler's opinion that there was an important
distinction to be drawn between agriculture and industry:
Town and country - the former is the seat of industry in Civil Society.
There Reflection arises and begins to separate people out from one
another; the latter is the seat of ethical life resting on Nature.30
Although Hegel could discern several elements in the work-
ings of Civil Society which gave rise to Universality, e.g. the
Universal dependence on money as a Universal means of ex-
change, it was not only from these that he traced the progress
from necessity to freedom in Society. He also saw the process
in the administration of justice, in the public authorities and

in the Corporations. These were institutions whereby the worst
features of Civil Society were mitigated and held in check.
Hegel was no economic liberal and had no wish to let the
forces of capitalism take their course.
Left to itself, Hegel believed, Civil Society would concen-
trate a disproportionate amount of wealth in a few hands,
while at the same time causing the great majority of people to
sink into ever-increasing poverty. The example of Britain was
an extremely depressing one, for there the poor had been left
to their fate and allowed to beg in the streets.31 The divergent
interests of producers and consumers, Hegel thought, might
come into conflict, and the public authorities had the duty to
maintain a fair balance between them. Prices of goods ought
to be reasonable, and the customer had the right not to be
defrauded. 32
There were some important Social functions, moreover,
which Hegel believed should not be left to individual initia-
tive. The education of children, for instance, was a matter for
public concern. Similarly, the care of families who had fallen
into penury, either by their own extravagance, or by the eco-
nomic operations of Civil Society, ought to be the business of
the public authorities rather than be left to private charity.
The other institution which Hegel saw as ameliorating the
excesses of Civil Society was the Corporation. This was an as-
sociation of workers and employers belonging to the same
industry, who had come together to further their common
interest and to afford each other mutual aid. The Corpora-
tion, therefore, performed the same kind of function with
regard to Civil Society as did the public authority; but whereas
the latter was something imposed from outside, the former
came from within Civil Society itself and was organized by its
members.
Through the Corporations and through the family the tran-
sition was made from Civil Society, the Society of the Under-
standing, to the State, the Society of Reason. According to
Hegel, the State was 'the Actuality of concrete freedom'. This
was because 'personal Individuality and its Particular interests
not only achieve their complete development. . . b u t . . . also
pass over of their own accord into the interest of the Univer-
sal.'33 For Hegel the State was thus an Idea; concrete freedom
was realized because the identity of the Universal interest with
Hegel 87
the Particular interests was Absolute, so that no collision could

take place between the two. The freedom embodied in the
State, therefore, was not simply a subjective and Particular
freedom, the freedom to follow a contingent or arbitrary im-
pulse, but the freedom which came from possessing a Particu-
lar Interest while knowing and willing the Universal.
The State itself was a combination of the elements which
made up the Concept. Thus, Universality was represented by
the legislature, the power which determined the Universal;
Particularity was represented by the Executive, the power which
subsumed single cases under the Universal. Individuality was
the crown, the power of ultimate decision, the Individual unity
which stood at the head of a constitutional monarchy. 34
Hegel, however, went on to emphasize that he did not ad-
vocate the doctrine of the separation of powers. For this pre-
supposed a hostile and apprehensive attitude of one power to
another. This was the view of the State from the standpoint of
the Understanding; the Speculative point of view, however, saw
the relationship of the powers to each other as in the Concept.
At this point Hegel reminded his audience that his doctrine of
Society and the State was only fully comprehensible in the
light of his Logic:
How the Concept and then, more concretely, how the Idea determine
themselves of their own accord and so posit their moments - Univer-
sality, Particularity and Individuality - in abstraction from one another,
is discoverable from my Logic, though not of course from the logic
current elsewhere. 35
Hegel envisaged the powers as logically connected to form

parts of an integral whole. It was their organic connection,
and not mutual suspicion, which ensured that the monarch
would not rule despotically and that the legislature and the
Executive would work in concert.
In speaking of the Executive, Hegel referred to the civil
servants as constituting the Universal estate. They were con-
cerned with furthering the Universal interests of Society, and
as the staff of the public authorities they acted in a way similar
to the officials of the Corporations in looking after the welfare
of the public. The activities of the one group of officials com-
plemented those of the other.
As far as the Legislature was concerned, Hegel believed that
this should be an assembly of Estates. There were, he thought,
three estates or classes of people in Civil Society: there was the

aristocracy, the agricultural estate based on the 'Natural prin-
ciple of the family'; the business estate made up of artisans,
manufacturers and merchants; and the Universal estate of civil
servants. The three together formed a Concept, since the
agricultural estate represented the original Natural unity, the
business class the fragmentation and Particularization of Civil
Society, and the civil servants the reconciliation of the two in
Universal concrete freedom. These estates, Hegel considered,
should be represented in the Legislature. Together they would
bring to the State the 'empirical Universal', the thoughts and
opinions of the many, which would serve to complement the
Universality of insight vested in the civil servants and the con-
crete Universality of the sovereign himself.36
Hegel did not agree with Adam Miiller, Schelling, Joseph
Gorres and others, who argued that Estates guaranteed liberty
by acting as a mediating force between the subject and the
sovereign. If, Hegel maintained, the Estates did indeed per-
form this function then it signified that the State was being
torn apart and was in the process of disintegration. The rela-
tionship between the Estates and the government was, he
thought, organic. The supposed opposition between the two
was only one of Appearance, of the Understanding. According
to Hegel:
It is one of the most important discoveries of Logic that a specific
moment, which, by standing in opposition, has the position of an
extreme, ceases to be such and is a moment in an organic whole by
being at the same time a mean. 37
In such cases Hegel no doubt saw his Speculative method as

being more consistent than Schelling's.
The symmetry between the structure of Hegel's Science of
Logic and his Philosophy of Right account for the way in which
Hegel conceived the relationship between the family, Civil
Society and the State. All three entities were present simulta-
neously as necessary moments in the development of the
Concept. No element of time or place was involved, so that
there was no suggestion that Hegel's Society developed or
evolved in time. He did not envisage Civil Society's being
superseded; it was a permanent and necessary fixture, just as
the Understanding and Reflection were necessary stages in the
unfolding of the Idea. Nor did Hegel see any development in
Hegel 89
the State, or in its relation to Civil Society. Each component

had its equivalent in the Logic, and so represented Rationality
in the sphere of Society.
Hegel no doubt thought it superfluous to add that what he
had described was not any Particular Society or State. It was
intended to be the Universal Idea of Society and the State, the
State as it appeared to Reason. In the Philosophy of Right Hegel
was engaged in the same kind of exercise as Fichte, Schleier-
macher, Adam Miiller, Schelling or Novalis when they wrote
on the theme of Society. But what gave Hegel's vision an added
realism, which caused it to be misunderstood as a justification
for the existing Prussian state, were three factors which were
rooted in his Logic.
The first of these was that he did not reject the Understand-
ing and Reflection, but incorporated them into his system,
and he proceeded in the same way with Civil Society, the Society
of the Understanding. Hegel's was consequently a Society
which, like many states in Europe of the period, had a capitalist
system. There was, therefore, in Hegel no emphatic rejection
of the Society of the Understanding, which characterized most
Romantic writers of the time.
There was also lacking in Hegel any prophetic vision of a
Society of the future in which the mechanical and necessary
ties of existing Society would be superseded and ties of hu-
manity and freedom take their place. But, as Hegel had shown
in his Science of Logic, the 'cunning of Reason' made prophecy
impossible. Reason could only be known in retrospect, so that
it was idle to try to predict developments in the future. Hegel
made no apology for this limitation on philosophy and poured
scorn on those who refused to recognize it:
Since philosophy is the exploration of the Rational it is for that very
reason the apprehension of the present and the Actual, not the erection
of a beyond, supposed to exist, God knows where, or rather which
exists, and we can perfectly well say where, namely in the error of a
one-sided, empty logic-chopping.38
At the end of his Preface to the Philosophy of Right Hegel
re-stated his reasons for the omission of any chiliastic visions
in a passage which is among the most striking in any of his
writings:
One word more on giving instruction about how the world ought to
be. Apart from anything else, philosophy always comes on the scene
too late for the purpose. As the thought of the world, it appears only
when Actuality has already completed its process of formation and is
in its finished state. What the Concept teaches is also necessarily the
lesson of history, which is that: it is only when Actuality is mature that
the ideal appears over against the real, and that the ideal apprehends
this same real world in its substance and builds it up for itself into the
shape of an intellectual realm. By the time philosophy paints its grey
in grey, life's frame has grown old; and by that grey in grey it can
never regain its youth, but merely become known. Only at the gathering
of dusk does the owl of Minerva begin its flight.39
In his refusal to set out any perspectives for the future of
Society Hegel displayed a certain amount of ambiguity. The
concept of Universal Self-Consciousness, which he had elabo-
rated on in the Encyclopedia, and which was the Rational out-
come of the development of Self-Consciousness from the slavery
and inequality of Nature, could be taken to be an ideal of
Society, comparable to Fichte's, Schleiermacher's or Schelling's.
But Hegel did not claim that his State embodied Universal
Self-Consciousness. Quite clearly, however, he thought that
religion in its Protestant form, with its belief in the equality of
all men before God, did. He was, moreover, of the opinion
that in this respect Church and State ought to be compatible. 40
After Hegel's death this ambiguity was to become a collision.
The third way in which the logic of Hegel's system emerged
in Hegel's political thought to give it a conservative direction
were the implications of the fact that Mind, being elevated
above the necessity of Nature, was a realm of freedom and
Rationality. This meant that Hegel had no means of account-
ing for irrationality or lack of freedom within the category of
Mind. He had accounted for these things in terms of Nature,
the self-degradation of the Concept or the inadequacy of the
Concept to the Idea, but Nature was not included within Mind.
As a result, the Philosophy of Right contained no criteria on
which existing institutions could be criticized, or grounds for
demanding political or judicial reform. This fact was noticed
by one of the book's first reviewers, the rationalist theologian
H.E.G. Paulus. Paulus put the question:
Are there no false laws that the philosopher and non-philosopher
might hate without thereby hating law as such? Certainly, according to
Hegel's doctrine every law must be a true one, by the mere fact of its
existence.**
Hegel 91
He went on to point out that if one followed the logic of

Hegel's teaching, then the Roman laws which regarded chil-
dren as slaves, and which Hegel had deplored, could never
have been abolished.
Paulus also indicated a fundamental inconsistency of Hegel's
position which arose likewise from the part played by Mind in
his system. This concerned Hegel's justification for applying
his philosophical method to the study of Society, his conten-
tion that just as it was necessary to reveal the rationality within
Nature it was necessary to do the same for the sphere of human
affairs. Hegel argued that:
So far as Nature is concerned people grant that philosophy should
study it,. . . that Nature is in itself rational and that the science of
Nature must investigate and make comprehensible this Actual ration-
ality present within it, not the formations and contingent p h e n o m e n a
which appear on the surface, but its eternal harmony, its immanent
law and essence. The ethical world, on the other hand, the State . . .
the realm of Mind is supposed rather to be left to the mercy of chance
and caprice, to be God-forsaken . . .42
It was quite proper in terms of Hegel's system to talk about

revealing the Rationality within Nature, because in Nature
Rationality was obscured through the inadequacy of the Con-
cept to the Idea. Rationality was not, however, supposed to
require revelation in Mind, because Mind was inherently Ra-
tional. There ought to be nothing which prevented the realm
of Mind, Society and the State from being manifestly Rational
and free. An explanation was required, therefore, of what it
was that concealed the Rationality in human affairs, what it
was that made the realm of Mind appear God-forsaken. Hegel
tackled this problem in connection with the elaboration of his
philosophy of history.
HISTORY
The Philosophy of Right concluded by discussing the relations

between States in respect of international law and the ultimate
court of judgement for these relations, world history. It was a
view of world history which Schiller had expressed in his fa-
mous dictum: 'The world's history is the world's judgement.'
In Hegel's view it could play this part because of its absolute

Universality. He went on to set out four stages by which this
absolute Universality was reached. The first of these was the
Oriental realm, one arising in Natural communities where there
was no inner division of functions, the ruler being at the same
time the high priest. The second stage was the Greek realm,
in which differentiation had begun, but only partially, since
the satisfaction of Particular needs was not yet comprised in
the sphere of freedom, but was relegated exclusively to a class
of slaves. In the next realm, the Roman, differentiation was
carried to a conclusion and ethical life was broken up into the
extremes of the private Self-Consciousness of persons on the
one hand and abstract Universality on the other. In the fourth
stage, the Germanic realm, the reconciliation of unity with
division took place, so that in that realm no conflict was expe-
rienced between objective truth and freedom, nor between
State, religion and philosophical science. All spheres Hegel
held to be compatible and mutually complementary.
World history as Hegel interpreted it was a process involving
the opposing poles of Universality and Particularity. He indi-
cated, however, that it had a further dimension: that it devel-
oped not only on an axis of Universality-Particularity, but also
one of Nature and Freedom. History took place in Space and
Time, both of which were categories of Nature. The progress
of Freedom, therefore, was inevitably refracted by the neces-
sity of Nature, especially in the earlier stages, when it had
newly left the province of Nature. That, according to Hegel,
was why the early historical stages were distributed about sev-
eral nations. Thus:
History is Mind clothing itself with the form of events or the immediate
Actuality of Nature. The stages of its development are therefore pre-
sented as immediate Natural principles. These, because they are Natural,
are a plurality External to one another, and they are present there-
fore in such a way that each of them is assigned to one nation in the
External form of its geographical and anthropological conditions.43
The principle of differentiation occupied two realms, while

that of reconciliation was incorporated in the single Germanic
realm which included most of the northern hemisphere, and
which embraced both medieval and modern times. This
periodization signified that in earlier ages Natural conditions
Hegel 93
exercised a greater influence than in those of more recent

times. History was therefore a rational process of a kind whose
rationality increased in proportion to the extent of its libera-
tion from Nature. It did not unfold in the threefold pattern
characteristic of the Concept, because the process could not
be entirely Rational, as it took place in Space and Time. Seen
from this point of view, World History as Mind was:
Nothing but its active movement towards Absolute knowledge of it-
self and therefore towards freeing its consciousness from the form of
Natural immediacy and so coming to itself.44
The theme of 'the coming to itself of Mind' and Mind's
freeing itself from Nature were mentioned only briefly in the
Philosophy of Right, but were treated much more fully in the
Philosophy of History which was published posthumously in 1837
by Eduard Gans from Hegel's manuscripts and notes taken at
his lectures. This added an entirely new dimension to Hegel's
system, and one, apparendy, unforeseen by contemporaries.
In his review of Gans's edition of The Philosophy of History
written in 1837, Karl Rosenkranz reported that before the book
appeared one of Hegel's followers Christian Kapp had been
attempting to present World History in the way he believed
the Hegelian system required. Thus, to Kapp's mind, the
Oriental realm corresponded to the category of Being; the
classical realm (a combination of the Greek and Roman worlds)
corresponded to Becoming; the modern world was represented
by the Concept. 45 In fact, soon after Rosenkranz wrote, August
Cieszkowski's book Prolegomena to Historiosophy appeared which
expounded the kind of threefold division of history Rosenkranz
had described.46
The scheme proposed by Kapp and Cieszkowski was one of
Rationality only, one which took the Logic as its structure, just
as the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Right had done.
Hegel's History of Philosophy had also arranged its material in
the familiar triadic form. It might have been expected, there-
fore, that the Philosophy of History would do the same. In fact,
Hegel sacrificed uniformity and in the Philosophy of History
produced a work that was a radical departure from his previ-
ous publications.
There were compelling reasons for doing this. For one thing
his material dictated it. Matching the Philosophy of Nature to the
Science of Logic was relatively easy, because Schelling had al-

ready provided the framework of the kind of 'system of stages'
that Hegel needed. Moreover, it was unnecessary to demon-
strate a particularly close correspondence between the catego-
ries of Logic and the phenomena of Nature, because by defi-
nition Nature was inadequate to the Concept; indeed too close
a correspondence would have defeated his purpose.
The Philosophy of Right, on the other hand, did require a
close match between its material and the Logic. In general this
had been achieved, because in the family, Civil Society and the
State it had been possible to demonstrate characteristics of the
movement of the Concept. It was generally accepted, more-
over, that Civil Society, the Society produced by the French
Revolution and described by Adam Smith, was the Society of
the Understanding; in this way too Hegel was able to build on
the work of his predecessors. The exercise, however, had not
been entirely successful. It had produced the kind of anoma-
lies that Paulus had noted, and on the evidence of the Preface
and the concluding section on World History, they were ones
that Hegel was well aware of.
Although World History fell within the category of Mind, it
would have been an impossible task to try to make it conform
to the self-movement of the Concept because of the great variety
and diversity of the material. Certainly some of it could have
been arranged in a threefold pattern, but the result would
have been artificial and arbitrary. Although the History of Phi-
losophy was in some respects a historical work, there the three-
fold arrangement of material was both desirable and feasible;
it was after all from the manner that philosophy had devel-
oped that Hegel had derived his method in the first place.
The presentation of World History, however, required a much
looser and more flexible framework than that provided by the
Logic.
By reintroducing Nature into the realm of Mind, Hegel was
able to present World History as a Rational process and yet
avoid forcing his material into a predetermined scheme, some-
thing which, as Rosenkranz pointed out, would have made
history into the 'dry repetition of logical categories'. 47 As a
result, unlike most of Hegel's works, the Philosophy of History
contained a great deal of narration, description and factual
information, making it the most accessible part of his system.
Hegel 95
In his Introduction to the Philosophy of History Hegel made

explicit the proposition first hinted at in the Philosophy of Right
that Nature was to be found in the realm of Mind:
We must first of all note that the subject we are dealing with, World
History, takes place in the realm of Mind. The world comprises both
physical and psychical Nature. Physical Nature also plays a part in
World History, and we shall certainly include some initial remarks on
the basic outlines of this Natural influence. But Mind and the course
of its development is the true substance of History. We are not con-
cerned here with Nature as something which also in its own peculiar
element constitutes a Rational system, but only in so far as it has a
bearing on Mind.48
Nature in the physical sense was the geographical setting
in which World History took place, and indeed Hegel devoted
a considerable amount of space in his Introduction to this
subject. In its relation to Mind, Nature was the External phe-
nomenal world of people taken singly, their pursuit of their
Particular private interests, their passions and their satisfaction
of their selfish impulses. In Hegel's view, people were not free
if they acted in response to these inclinations, for they acted
under the compulsion of their Natures. Men were only free
when they acted according to the dictates of Reason. Man,
therefore, was not free by Nature:
Freedom does not exist as original and Natural. Rather it must be first
sought and won . . . The state of Nature is . . . predominantly one of
injustice and violence, of untamed Natural impulses, of inhuman deeds
and feelings . . .49
History was thus a progression from Nature to Society and the
State, in which freedom was made Actual. History was the
progressive emancipation of humanity from the necessity and
irrationality of Nature.
But what set the process of World History in motion? Nature
was incapable of movement, and if the motive-force of History
was held to be the self-movement of the Concept, then the
material of History would have to be forced into a threefold
pattern. Hegel's solution was to employ the implication of
Nature in the sense of 'Essence'. In this way he could say that
History was Mind coming into its own. Its Nature impelled it
to cast off irrationality and necessity to emerge in an increas-
ingly pure form. Thus:
we can say that World History is the exposition of how Mind comes
to the consciousness of itself, what it is potentially. As the seed contains
in itself the whole Nature of the tree, the taste and form of the fruit,
so the first traces of Mind contain virtually the whole of History. 50
In other words, it was the Nature of Mind to become con-
scious of itself. Mind by its very Nature was Self-Conscious and
free, and it could not but be so. The truth would out. The
historical process was therefore the transition from what Mind
was potentially to what it was Actually. As Hegel indicated, in
this sense 'the Nature of an object is equivalent to its Concept'. 51
Hegel interpreted the two senses of Nature as Inner and
Outer. The Actualization of the former was achieved through
the action of the latter:
What we have called the principle, ultimate aim or end, or the Nature
and the Concept of Mind is only a Universal, an abstract. A principle,
a fundamental or a law is an Inner, which as such, however true it may
be in itself, is not yet completely Actual. What is implicit is a possibility,
a potentiality, but something which has not yet emerged from its Inner
existence. A second element is needed before it can attain Actuality
and that is realisation, Actualisation, which comes about through the
will, the activity of people generally. 52
Thus, in order to become Actual, Nature as the Concept,

the Inner, required the action of Nature the Outer, the phe-
nomenal world of passions and selfish interests. In Hegel's
words: 'Nothing great is achieved in the world without pas-
sion.' 53 This irony, 'the cunning of the Concept', was a dia-
lectic of Inner and Outer Nature which echoed that of
Self-Consciousness. As Inner Nature sloughed off the Outer,
the true Nature of humanity emerged, as Rational and free.
The movement in fact recalled the movement of the Concept
as it separated the essential from the inessential and contin-
gent to ascend towards the Rationality of the Idea and become
adequate to itself.
The development of freedom formed the stages in World History, so

that: The Orientals have not attained the knowledge that Mind or m e n
as such are free in themselves. And because they do not know this,
they are not free. They know only that one is free, but for that very
reason such freedom is mere arbitrariness, savagery and brutal passion;
a milder or tamer version of this is only an accident of Nature, and
Hegel 97
equally arbitrary. This One, therefore, is merely a despot, not a free

man. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks,
and therefore they were free, but they, like the Romans, only knew
that some were free, not that people as such are free. Even Plato and
Aristotle did not know this. The Greeks, therefore, not only had slaves,
on which their way of life and the maintenance of their splendid
freedom depended, but their freedom itself was for one thing only a
fortuitous, undeveloped, transient and limited bloom, and for another
a harsh servitude of all that is human and humane. The Germanic
nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realise that man
as such is free, that the freedom of Mind constitutes his innermost
Nature.54
This scheme of history, with its various stages - Oriental des-

potism, the classical world of Greece and Rome and the Ger-
manic world - bore a strong resemblance to the ones proposed
by Fichte and Gorres. Unlike the latter, Hegel did not make
a point of distinguishing between the feudal period and mod-
ern Civil or 'bourgeois' society. The distinction was neverthe-
less present in the Philosophy of History, the hierarchical feudal
and Catholic Middle Ages being contrasted unfavourably with
the egalitarian and Protestant modern Germanic age. Hegel's
use of Nature in the sense of Essence was at variance with his
former position that Reason could only be apprehended in
retrospect. For if one knew the Nature of something, and if
things acted according to their Natures, then one could pre-
dict how they would behave throughout all eternity. If man-
kind by Nature was free and equal, then the necessity of Nature
would ensure that it would be so in Actuality. If man had not
yet reached this condition, then the implication was that he
surely would, come what may. Significantly the Philosophy of
History ended with the statement: 'This is the point which
Consciousness has attained.' 55 The suggestion was that Con-
sciousness would continue in the same direction.
When the Philosophy of History appeared in 1837 it helped to
divide Hegel's followers into two camps, a more conservative
and a more radical group. It was to the latter that the work
gave encouragement. To the older generation of Hegel's fol-
lowers it must have seemed entirely out of keeping with Hegel's
system as they understood it. For by the time of Hegel's death
in 1831 it must have seemed that the three great pillars of
Hegel's system were in place: the Logic, corresponding to the
Universal, the Philosophy of Nature corresponding to the Par-

ticular, and the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right,
representing Mind, corresponding to the Individual. The En-
cyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, first published in 1817,
and which oudined Hegel's system as a whole, had confirmed
this arrangement. It had spoken of World History only from
the point of view of the method to be used in studying the
subject: that there ought to be a harmonious balance of gen-
eralization and empirical detail, an injunction entirely in keep-
ing with the Speculative method. Other works, such as the
History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Religion, simply con-
firmed and elaborated the expected threefold division.
The Philosophy of History, on the other hand, not only broke
with this established pattern, but treated the categories of Mind
and Nature in a novel way. It obliged contemporaries to re-
examine their interpretation of Hegel's philosophy in this new
light. It suggested in particular that Hegel's conception of the
State should be revised to take the conceptions of the Philoso-
phy of History into account. These were implications which were
welcomed more by the younger and more radical generation
than by Hegel's more conservative followers. The impact of
Hegel's Philosophy of History, however, was rather overshadowed
by the controversy surrounding David Strauss's Life of Jesus,
which had been published two years earlier.
By the time of Hegel's death his system existed in quite a
different intellectual environment from the one in which it
was first sketched out in the Phenomenology of Mind, completed
as the French troops entered Jena. Then his work could be
read, and was meant to be read, as a compendium - albeit a
critical one - of the ideas that had been current in the Jena
circle. By the 1830s, however, it had become more difficult to
see Hegel's system in this light due to the evolution of the
Romantic movement after the Napoleonic Wars. The rationalist
elements had been shed, and the more mystic aspects had come
to the fore. The Pietistic heritage, which had inspired some of
the Romantic movement's most characteristic philosophical
thought, had been abandoned in favour of Catholicism.
Schelling, in later life, concerned himself increasingly with
religious questions, and personal relations between himself and
Hegel deteriorated after 1807, so that their earlier period of
cooperation and identity of view was glossed over by both men.
Hegel 99
Schleiermacher had also revised considerably the views he had

held in the Jena circle. In his work The Christian Faith according
to the Principles of the Protestant Church, published in 1821, he
spoke of religious faith as a feeling, a sentiment, one which
conveyed the consciousness of an absolute dependence on
God. On the conception of faith as a feeling of dependence
Hegel commented that in that case 'a dog would be the best
Christian'. 56
The part played by Schleiermacher's first writings in the for-
mation of Hegel's idea of the Concept was obscured by the
fact that Schleiermacher tried to recast his earlier work in the
mould of his later conceptions of religion. According to Karl
Michelet he regarded his first writings as 'sins of his youth'
and the Speculative method as tantamount to pantheism or
atheism.57 Later editions of the early works were revised to
remove what Schleiermacher thought to be their heretical
element. From the second edition of Speeches on Religion, pub-
lished in 1806, the terms 'Universe' and 'Universal' were ex-
cised completely,58 thus breaking the continuity between the
Romantic school and Hegel in the evolution of the dialectical
method.
Hegel greatly deplored the directions the Romantic move-
ment had taken after the Jena period, especially its increasing
renunciation of Rationalism. He found the espousal of Catho-
licism in the Restoration period as an antidote to the threat
of revolution entirely repugnant. In the 1830 edition of the
Encyclopedia, for example, he observed that if Catholicism had
been praised as the religion which imparted stability to gov-
ernments, this was only because the governments in question
were implicated in injustice, moral corruption, barbarism and
bondage of the spirit.59 He found that it was just as necessary
to defend conscious rational thought in 1830 as it had been at
the start of the century, and the preface to the edition of his
Encyclopedia published in that year had some harsh things to
say of Justinus Kerner's book The Clairvoyante of Prevorst which
had appeared in the previous year.60
It was, however, Hegel's attack on the more radical wing of
the Romantic movement which received most attention from
later generations. This was in the preface to the Philosophy of
Right where Hegel denounced the superficiality of Jacob Fries,
the Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg University, who in
1817 had attended the festival organized by the student soci-

eties (Burschenschaften) at the Wartburg casde in Thuringia.
Fries had made a speech advocating a German constitution,
and in order that his readers might appreciate the full extent
of Fries's superficiality, Hegel quoted a portion of it:
In the people ruled by a genuine communal spirit, life for the discharge
of all public business would come from below, from the people (Volk)
itself; living associations, indissolubly united by the sacred chain of
friendship, would be dedicated to every single project of popular edu-
cation and popular science.61
This, according to Hegel, was the quintessence of shallow
thinking. It was the kind of programme advocated by Joseph
Gorres in his heyday, and constituted of course the very kind
of chiliasm that had been expressly excluded from the Philoso-
phy of Right.
In taking the side of the framers of the Karlsbad Decrees
against the student radicals and their supporters, Hegel had
laid himself open to the charge that he was a philosopher of
the Restoration. 62 That was very far from being the case, since
his Philosophy of Right, by incorporating Civil Society, fully ac-
cepted the necessity of the kind of economic order produced
by the Stein and Hardenberg reforms. The recognition too of
a constitutional monarchy as the political order sanctioned by
Reason was hardly reactionary, as Prussia at that time did not
have a constitution. His attitude towards the Catholic Church
and the feudal hierarchical order gave no comfort whatsoever
to the aristocratic reaction in Prussia. On the other hand, his
defence of the traditions of the Reformation and the Enlight-
enment put him profoundly out of step with his times.
The attention given in later decades to Hegel's political
stance in the Philosophy of Right served to obscure the fact that
no great gulf separated Hegel's philosophy from the democratic
and egalitarian current in the Romantic movement fostered by
the Wars of Liberation. As the Romantic movement became
increasingly associated with the obscurantism of the Restora-
tion in the decade after 1820, it ceased to hold any attraction
for the movement's democratic and radical wing, for those,
for example, who had sympathized with Joseph Gorres's stance
in Germany and the Revolution, but who would not follow him
into his Catholic mysticism. For such people it was Hegelian
Hegel 101
philosophy which seemed to be the ideology which best car-

ried on the radical current in the Romantic movement.
According to Karl Rosenkranz in his biography of Hegel,
after 1817 and especially after Kotzebue's assassination in 1819,
when arrests were made among the Burschenschaften, many of
their members came to Berlin and started to attend Hegel's
lectures. From this group there was formed a nucleus of his
most dedicated followers. Although he gave no names, Rosen-
kranz said that many could be given of people who had come
to Hegel's philosophy from the Burschenschaften. One of those
people was his friend Arnold Ruge. Even Rosenkranz himself,
however, had come to Hegelian philosophy via the Romantic
movement, 63 something typical of the younger generation of
Hegel's followers, who became known collectively as the 'Young
Hegelians'.
3 The Young Hegelians
Writing in 1840, Karl Rosenkranz could reflect that over the
past decade perceptions of Hegelian philosophy had under-
gone a fundamental change. For whereas formerly Hegelianism
had been regarded as the bulwark of both the Church and
State in Prussia, it was now considered to be heretical in reli-
gion and revolutionary in politics.1 The transformation he
referred to had been brought about by the excursions of the
Hegelian school into the fields of theology and political theory.
In the former case this concerned primarily David Friedrich
Strauss's Life of Jesus, published in 1835-6, and in the latter
case, the Hallische Jahrbiicher founded by Arnold Ruge and
Theodore Echtermeyer in 1838.
In the writings of the Young Hegelians theology and politics
never remained entirely separate and the two strands constandy
enriched and enlivened each other. This became especially
apparent in 1841, the year after Rosenkranz wrote, when the
theological works of Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach were
published. These were more radical then Strauss's had been
and appeared at a time when the Hallische Jahrbiicher had
launched a literary offensive against the Prussian state. The
critique of religion was thus complemented by a philosophical
critique of the state and was the point at which Young Hegelian
theology and politics coalesced.
YOUNG HEGELIAN CHRISTOLOGY
David Strauss's Life of Jesus was thus an important landmark in

the evolution of the Young Hegelians. Some light on why this
should have been the case was provided by T h e o d o r e
Echtermeyer in the first article to be included in the Hallische
Jahrbiicher. This was an account of the relationship between
philosophy and theology at Halle University based largely on
Echtermeyer's own observations dating back to the time when
he first entered the university as a philosophy student in 1824.
According to Echtermeyer, most of his fellow students as-
pired to a career in the Church, and as a result the Faculty of
102
The Young Hegelians 103
Theology was the biggest and most prestigious in the univer-

sity. It was followed by the Faculty of Law, the Faculty of Phi-
losophy coming third. At that time, moreover, philosophy was
unable to enjoy an independent existence, as it was dominated
by the theologians and was subordinated to their requirements.
Only in comparatively recent times had philosophy, in the
persons of Hermann Hinrichs, Julius Schaller and Arnold Ruge,
made a bid for its independence of theology.2
Hitherto the philosophers had tried as best they could to
avoid any conflict with the theologians. This had been the
policy of Karl Rosenkranz when he had been Professor of
Philosophy at Halle, and after his appointment to the Chair of
Philosophy at Konigsberg, it was continued by his successor,
Johann Erdmann. But it was not an easy course to follow,
because the theologians at Halle, at least from the time
Echtermeyer entered the university, had been hostile to Ra-
tionalism, both within their own faculty and in the Faculty of
Philosophy. In 1824 the work of the Halle Rationalist theolo-
gian Julius Wegscheider (1771-1849) had come under attack
with denunciations of a character very similar, in Echtermeyer's
estimation, to those later directed against David Strauss's Life
ofJesus?
In 1826 the anti-Rationalist Friedrich Tholuck was appointed
to the Chair of Theology. A proponent of Pietism who tried to
extend its influence, he found an ally outside the university
in the journalist Ernst Hengstenberg, a fellow Pietist, whose
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, founded in 1827, castigated all forms
of Rationalism as heresy or paganism. Prior to 1830 the anti-
Rationalist campaign of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitunghad been
directed against the two members of the theological faculty,
Wegscheider and Wilhelm Gesenius (1785-1842). 4
The anti-Rationalist climate in the theological faculty at Halle
created an oppressive atmosphere in the Faculty of Philoso-
phy, and, according to Echtermeyer, when Rosenkranz was at
Halle he had tried to gloss over his adherence to the Hegelian
school, which was the most manifest embodiment of Rational-
ism in Germany at that time. 5 In 1830 Hengstenberg and
Tholuck concentrated their attack on Hegel's philosophy. They
considered that by his depersonalization of God, his fusion of
the Deity in the Universality of Reason, Hegel had fallen into
the error of pantheism or even of atheism. These attacks
occasioned Hegel in the year before his death to include pas-

sages in the third edition of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences defending himself against these charges, a n d deplor-
ing the rising tide of obscurantism which they exemplified. 6
Hegel even m a n a g e d to turn the tables on his critics by sug-
gesting that it was they a n d n o t he who could jusdy be accused
of heresy. Referring t o j u s t i n u s Kerner's book The Clairvoyante
of Prevorst, he drew attention to the enthusiastic reception it
h a d b e e n given in anti-Rationalist circles. H e was thus able to
argue that:
Those who assert that they are in sole possession of the Christian spirit
and who demand that others accept their beliefs have still to drive out
the devils. On the contrary, many of them, like those who believe in
the Clairvoyante of Prevorst take excessive pride in being on good
terms with a rabble of ghosts, and stand in awe before them instead
of casting out and shunning these falsehoods of anti-Christian and
servile superstition.7
While his o p p o n e n t s strove to show that the Rationalism of

the Hegelian philosophy was inconsistent with religious ortho-
doxy, Hegel himself maintained quite the opposite. H e always
argued forcefully that Reason a n d the Protestant religion were
completely compatible, a n d that a religion which d e n i e d Rea-
son deprived people of their h u m a n dignity. This was the
a r g u m e n t which was e x p o u n d e d by the two theologians who
were first inspired by Hegel's system of thought, Karl D a u b
a n d Philipp Marheineke. It was the latter's contention, in fact,
that the most important task of the times was 'to reconcile
belief with knowledge and knowledge with belief. Marheineke's
book on Christian dogmatics, first published in 1819, attempted
to demonstrate that religion was n o t h i n g b u t a special m o d e
of thought. 8
T h e position that Hegelian philosophy was compatible with
o r t h o d o x religious belief began to be threatened when in 1830
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), an a d h e r e n t of the Hegelian
school, published his anonymous p a m p h l e t Thoughts on Death
and Immortality. T h e r e Feuerbach argued that the Christian
doctrine of personal immortality was inconsistent with the
Hegelian position that only the Universal was eternal. T h r e e
years later a n o t h e r Hegelian, Friedrich Richter, in a work
entitled The Doctrine of Last Things, also argued that the idea of
personal immortality did not accord with Speculative philo-

sophy. Richter's views were challenged by Karl Goschel, who
was at that time one of the leading representatives of the Hege-
lian school, and he found support in Julius Schaller, Johann
Erdmann and Georg Gabler, who all formed the nucleus of
what was later to be considered the right wing of the Hegelian
school. Some Hegelians, such as Marheineke, Rosenkranz and
Michelet, took up an intermediate position in the debate. This
was a pattern that was to be repeated in the controversies sur-
rounding David Friedrich Strauss's Life ofJesus?
The kind of attacks to which Hegelian philosophy was
subjected by its opponents gave increased poignancy to dis-
cussions within the Hegelian school on matters concerning
religion. For it meant that there was more at stake than mere
philosophizing. Works such as Feuerbach's, Richter's and
Strauss's could deprive Rationalism of its claim to be consist-
ent with religious teaching, and in this way give substance to
the accusations of heresy and atheism made by Hengstenberg,
Tholuck and their supporters. In the climate of the Restora-
tion charges of this sort could lead to the type of persecution
Wegscheider and Gesenius had suffered, to the loss of teach-
ing positions, or even worse.
Hegelians did not need to have deep religious convictions
to view with disquiet the appearance of works from within the
Hegelian school which highlighted the inconsistencies between
Rationalism and religious faith. The odium they would evoke
would extend not only to the authors of the books, but to all
Hegelians and to Rationalists in general. There was every in-
centive, therefore, for those who did not fully agree with Strauss
or who were in any way reluctant to accept its damaging im-
plications for established religion to say so as publicly and as
promptly as possible. The opponents of Hegelianism, on the
other hand, had everything to gain by making fully manifest
the heretical character of Strauss's work and exploiting it to
discredit the Hegelian school. In the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung
Hengstenberg welcomed its appearance as a sign that the Anti-
Christ hidden in Hegelian philosophy had finally dared to
show his true colours.10 Not surprisingly the publication of
Strauss's book was followed by the appearance of over sixty
books and pamphlets debating it, in addition to the many more
articles which appeared in newspapers and journals. 11
Although Strauss's Life ofJesus created such great dilemmas

for the Hegelian school, in fact there was litde specifically
Hegelian about the work itself. Strauss had come compara-
tively late to Hegel's philosophy and the main arguments of
his book were based on ideas which considerably antedated
Hegel's system. Strauss was typical of the Young Hegelians in
coming to Hegelianism via the Romantic writers. There is even
some irony in the fact that Strauss's Romantic background
had brought him into close quarters with the Clairvoyante of
Prevorst whom Hegel had denounced shortly before his death.
Like Schelling and Hegel, Strauss was a native of Swabia. In
his youth he and his friend Friedrich Theodor Vischer had
been associated with the group of Swabian poets that included
Uhland, Morike and Kerner. The latter had introduced Strauss
to the young woman whose utterances under hypnosis he was
recording in book form.12 The group of poets greatly admired
the Romantic school, especially Tieck, and considered them-
selves to be carrying on the Romantic tradition. 13 It was nat-
ural, therefore, that the first philosophers to be read by Strauss
were Jakob Bohme and Franz Baader. He then proceeded to
Schleiermacher whose dialectics, Vischer stated, prepared him
for the dialectics of Hegel.14
Strauss brought philosophy to bear on his analysis of the
New Testament writings, and it was in this light that he ap-
proached the accounts of the life of Jesus recounted in the
gospels. In Strauss's view there existed two main schools of
thought on the accounts of miracles which the gospels con-
tained. One was the view of the supernaturalists, who accepted
the accounts at face value, and the other was the view of the
Rationalists, like Paulus, who tried to explain away the mira-
cles in terms of natural occurrences. In Strauss's opinion both
views were mistaken: the gospel miracles were myths.
Strauss used the term myth in the sense that Schelling had
used it in his early essay 'On Myths, Sagas and Philosophemes
of the Ancient World'. He even followed Schelling's distinc-
tion between historical and philosophical myths. In Strauss's
view those contained in the gospel accounts were not histor-
ical myths - they were not poetic elaborations on actual histor-
ical events. They were philosophical myths, stories invented
by people who were unable to express themselves in abstract
Concepts, and as a result had to resort to sensuous imagery to
communicate their ideas. According to Strauss the authors of

the gospels belonged to a primitive Christian community which
only thought in concrete terms. Their unfamiliarity with ab-
stract Concepts had determined the character of the gospel
accounts of the life of Jesus. Thus, he explained:
One has to imagine a new community which worshipped its founder
all the more because his life had been curtailed so unexpectedly and
so tragically, a community pregnant with a host of ideas which were
destined to transform the world. It was a community of Eastern people,
people for the most part uneducated and who were incapable of
assimilating and expressing those ideas in an abstract form, in terms
of the Understanding and Concepts. They could only express them in
a concrete way, by the use of fantasy, in images and stories. Thus one
may realise that what was produced in those circumstances was some-
thing which had to emerge, i.e. a series of sacred narratives, by means
of which the entire corpus of new ideas stimulated by Jesus as well as
old ones which had been attributed to him were presented to the
Intuition as separate incidents of his life.15
Strauss went on to examine the accounts of Jesus' life con-

tained in the gospels and to demonstrate the existence of a
mythical treatment of the subject by applying the criterion laid
down by Schelling, that where a narrative lacked a 'necessary
causal sequence' (notwendige Causalzusammenhang), one was
dealing with mythology rather than truth. 16
The Hegelian content of The Life of Jesus was apparent in
the concluding section. There Strauss argued that infinity,
immortality and perfection were not the attributes of a single
individual at a given moment in history, but those of humanity
as a whole, of the human species (Gattung). While human indi-
viduals were finite, mortal and sinful, in the human species
Nature and Mind united to form the kind of 'Godmanhood'
which the gospels held to be the Nature of Christ.17
In examining the development of the Young Hegelians, how-
ever, it is important not only to consider the Hegelian elements
which Strauss's book contained, but also those which were
attributed to it. In his biographical sketch of Strauss in Hallische
Jahrbiicher Friedrich Vischer addressed himself to the question
of how Strauss's earlier mysticism had given way to the stand-
point of Hegelian philosophy, which he had adopted in The
Life ofJesus. According to Vischer it was but a short step from
the one to the other. For a belief in the gospel miracles
presupposed the existence of a God who only intervened in

the world at certain places and at certain times. It presup-
posed a God who related to the world in an External way. This
view of miracles was a mixture of superstition and uninspired
Enlightenment Understanding. The consistent mystic, on the
other hand, was conscious of the immanence of God in the
world and treated everything as miraculous. What this point of
view had in common with Speculative philosophy was the prin-
ciple of immanence, the position that God's relation to the
world was at all times and in all places the same. In this, mys-
ticism and Speculative philosophy were as one. In Vischer's
expression they were 'identical in content, but different in
form'. 18 And he explained:
In order to arrive at the Speculative truth Strauss had only to abandon

this mystic and therefore fantastic form, and with complete clarity com-
prehend the pure kernel of truth lying in the grotesque husk. He was
then able to become a Speculative philosopher.19
It must be said that, although Vischer's account of Strauss's

intellectual development contained much valuable factual in-
formation, the assertion that Strauss was mainly concerned
with the question of divine immanence is not borne out by
what he actually wrote in The Life of Jesus. There the evidence,
as indicated above, points to a straightforward application of
Schelling's methods to the gospel narratives. In fact, Vischer's
version of Strauss's relationship to the philosophers was a styl-
ized one, a version constructed to conform with the pattern of
an Inner and an Outer Nature that Hegel had suggested both
in his Philosophy of Nature and his Philosophy of History. Vischer
introduced the metaphor of the kernel and the husk into
currency and it was quickly taken up by other Young Hegelian
writers.
By making Strauss's mythological explanation of the gospels
hinge on the issue of immanence, Vischer was able to argue in
defence of his friend that:
Strauss campaigns not against, but for, the interests of religion prop-
erly understood. Strauss wants not less, but more God than the super-
naturalists . . . and the rationalist Christianity; he wants to know God
worshipped in spirit and in truth, not in letter, not in separate facts
and individuals.20
Whatever truth there might have been in the argument, it did

not convince the anti-Rationalists. It was a rearguard attempt
to reconcile the new current in Hegelian philosophy with re-
ligion, and was abandoned by Strauss's successors in the field,
Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach.
Initially Bruno Bauer had been an opponent of Strauss and
had defended the historical Christ and the doctrine of divine
incarnation. In 1840, however, there appeared his Critique of
the Evangelical History ofJohn and in 1841-42 his Critique of the
Evangelical History of the Synoptics. In these works he not only
attacked the orthodox view of the gospels, but criticized Strauss
for lack of consistency.
Ferdinand Baur had already drawn attention to the tenden-
tious character of John's gospel. In it the narrative element
only served as a framework for the doctrines presented; the
actions attributed to Christ were everywhere subordinated to
didactic requirements. The entire work, in fact, showed every
indication of having been written in accordance with a me-
thodical preconceived plan.21 Bruno Bauer found that this
tendentiousness was to be found not only in John's, but also
in the Synoptic gospels, and this convinced him that they were
a product not of the Intuition or Representation, as Strauss
had argued, but of Self-Consciousness.22 This was a more fun-
damental criticism of the gospels, because it meant that their
authors had not been unsophisticated yet sincere people, but
writers who had deliberately set out to achieve a desired effect.
In Bauer's opinion the gospels could not be the product of a
community, of tradition, because:
Tradition does not have hands to write, taste to compare, and judge-
ment to bring together what is coherent and to leave out what is
irrelevant. The Subject, Self-Consciousness possesses all these things,
and if they are also dedicated to the Universal and devoted to its service,
then the resolve goes to work and the elaboration from individual
facts takes place, so that the extent to which the work is complete, the
extent to which it is capable of going over into Universality is the
degree to which the author's intention is concentrated in it. Thus
once more we are confronted by Self-Consciousness!23
Bauer argued that the more the gospel writers succeeded in

bringing all the component elements into a harmonious whole,
the more they approached Universality, then the less tension
there would be between the doctrinal intentions of the author

and the factual material he was working with; there would be
a fusion of 'Subject' and 'Substance'. According to Bauer, in
the gospel narratives the tension of Subject and Substance had
been eliminated, so that they were entirely products of the
author's creativity, 'free creations of the Self-Consciousness'.24
In recognizing Self-Consciousness as the active force behind
the gospel narratives, Bauer argued that his own standpoint
was also that of Self-Consciousness and that therefore his point
of view was a consistent development of the Hegelian system.
He had, he said, in accordance with Hegel's method, risen
above the mere letter of the Bible to the ideas behind it, to the
Universal.25
In the same year that Bauer published his book on the
Synoptic gospels there appeared Ludwig Feuerbach's Essence of
Christianity, which also considered religion from a Hegelian
point of view. It was a work which took up Strauss's argument
that the infinite was not incarnated in any one individual, but
in the entire human species. This was a point of view which
Julius Schaller had addressed himself to in his reply to Strauss,
The Historical Christ and Philosophy published in 1838. Schaller
objected that the category of the species was one which applied
only to Natural existence. Unlike animals, however, people
had Self-Conscious Mind, which made a higher development
of humanity possible, so that the relationship of an individual
to humanity was not the same as the mindless relationship of
a specimen to the species. As humanity was characterized by
Mind, something absolute and infinite, it followed that the
human individual, who related to humanity as the part to the
whole, should through faith be able to appropriate the infinity
of Godhood to himself.26
Feuerbach accepted that Self-Consciousness, which distin-
guished mankind from the animals, was also the divine Essence,
but in his opinion what human Self-Consciousness consisted
in was the consciousness of itself as a species. In other words,
Feuerbach removed the category of Mind from Schaller's for-
mulation, and by so doing brought Self-Consciousness and
Nature into a more direct relationship. In Feuerbach's writ-
ings one finds that the critique of religion goes hand in hand
with the plea that the sphere of Nature should be extended to
areas that had hitherto been the preserve of Mind.
Feuerbach argued that the essence of Christianity was Self-

Consciousness, so that the proper object of man's conscious-
ness was his own true objective Self, not the individual Self,
but the Self as a species. The qualities which people attributed
to God, immortality, perfection, omnipotence, etc., were all
ones properly belonging to humanity as a species. There was
thus in truth no difference between the human and the divine
Essence; this was nothing but the difference between the human
Essence and the human individual. The religious consciousness
had been produced by Reflection, and hence religion was the
Reflection of man's own image. God was 'the mirror of man-
kind'. 27 Thus, in Feuerbach's view:
Religion is the schism of man with himself; he posits God as a being
over against himself. God is not what man is and man is not what God
is . . . But man objectifies in religion his own secret Essence. It must
therefore be communicated that this opposition, this schism between
God and man which gives rise to religion, is a schism of man with his
own Essence.28
As an individual, Feuerbach pointed out, man's powers were
limited; united with his fellows, they were infinite. As an indi-
vidual his knowledge was circumscribed, but as a social activity
of humanity as a whole, science was boundless. For Feuerbach,
therefore, God was nothing but the species-Concept (Gattungs-
begriff) of mankind, and the separation of God from people
nothing but the separation of people from each other, 'the
dissolution of the Social bond'. Faith separated people into
an Inner and an Outer. The way to overcome this separation,
Feuerbach thought, was through love, the opposite of faith; not
Christian love, because that was love of a Particular kind, but
love which by its Essence was Universal, one which could ap-
prehend the virtue within sin and the truth within falsehood.30
THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE YOUNG

HEGELIANS
Bauer's and Feuerbach's works on religion appeared at a time

of increasing political radicalism among the Young Hegelians;
but when the Hallische Jahrbiicher were founded in January 1838
they expressed complete support for the Prussian government.
In 1835 the new Archbishop of Cologne, Klemens August von

Droste-Vischering, had prohibited marriages between Protes-
tants and Catholics in the Rhineland, now part of Prussia.
Formerly no objection had been raised to the practice by the
Catholic Church. The Prussian government placed the Arch-
bishop under arrest, thereby making him a martyr for the
whole of Catholic Germany. A furious polemic was waged round
the issue, and over 300 pamphlets were published on the sub-
ject as well as a great many newspaper articles. One of the most
celebrated exchanges was the pamphlet Athanasius written
by Joseph Gorres and the reply to it by the Hegelian Heinrich
Leo.31
The appearance of the Hallische Jahrbiicher coincided with
the controversy surrounding the Archbishop's ban on mixed
marriages. It was an issue on which Ruge and Echtermeyer
could side without reservation with the Prussian government
whom they presented as the champion of freedom of con-
science against the bigotry of the Catholic Church.
In the Hallische Jahrbiicher's support for the Prussian gov-
ernment, however, there was an element of calculation. It was
highly desirable to have the powerful patronage of the Prussian
state when Rationalism was being hounded by Hengstenberg,
Tholuck and their many allies. The actions of Archbishop Droste-
Vischering, moreover, had, for the moment at least, given the
Rationalist camp something of an advantage, because their
opponents could be presented as being anti-Prussian and sub-
versive in regard to the Prussian state. To drive home this
advantage, what Ruge and Echtermeyer had to do was to equate
as far as possible their opponents with Catholicism and to
emphasize as much as they could their own adherence to the
Prussian Protestant tradition of religious toleration and free-
dom of thought in general. For this purpose, however, it was
necessary to extend the meaning of 'Protestantism' to include
Strauss's approach in his Life of Jesus, and the term 'Catholicism'
to encompass the attitude of Pietists like Hengstenberg and
Tholuck. Consequently the usage of both terms in Hallische
Jahrbiicher was somewhat idiosyncratic.
In their conception of Protestantism Ruge and Echtermeyer
drew heavily on Hegel's Philosophy of History. For them Protes-
tantism meant the dynamic process by which Reason emerged
in an increasingly pure form by casting off its less Rational
externals. Catholicism, on the other hand, was the religion of

Externals, a petrified dogma incapable of change and develop-
ment. In this light the recent works of Hegelian Christology
could be said to embody the Protestant spirit. Those who
opposed the progress of scholarship and science, however, and
adhered to unchanging dogmas and the letter of holy writ,
were to be numbered among the Catholics, even though they
might be Protestants or Pietists in name.
These arguments were put in the very first issue of Hallische
Jahrbiicher by Echtermeyer in his article on Halle University. In
speaking of the origins of the university in the sixteenth cen-
tury, he indicated that the principle it had been founded to
promote was in direct opposition to the 'fixity and immobility
of the Catholic Church'. 32 This principle was that of freedom
of thought, and it was one which lay at the very heart of the
Protestant religion. Halle, Echtermeyer pointed out, was a
university in Prussia, the German state in which the Reforma-
tion's ideals of toleration and religious freedom had estab-
lished their deepest roots. According to Echtermeyer:
Prussia . . . recognised the necessity of adopting the true and lasting

achievements of the Reformation, the principle which Luther also had
enunciated, that the mind must be free in the matter of belief, and
accordingly to transcend differences of particular evangelical confes-
sions, and with their transcendence to attain the principle (that of
freedom) which would go beyond religion to embrace all spheres of
intellectual life.33
Thus, in Echtermeyer's view, the freedom of conscience achieved

by the Reformation applied to all areas of intellectual endeav-
our, and consequently to such works as Strauss's Life ofJesus.
Although it was an article by Echtermeyer which launched
the journal and established its ideological orientation, the
moving spirit behind the Hallische Jahrbiicher was Arnold Ruge.
Having spent five years imprisoned in the Kolberg Fortress in
Pomerania for his participation in the Burschenschaft movement,
Ruge came to Halle University, where he had been a student,
in 1831. He lectured for some time on aesthetics. Until the
beginning of the 1830s Ruge had been an adherent of the
Romantic school, but between 1833 and 1837 he had been
introduced by Echtermeyer to Hegelian philosophy, of which
he became an enthusiastic proponent. 34 Ruge was an extremely
talented publicist, and under his direction the Hallische Jahr-

biicher became a journal of remarkable breadth and variety.
Ruge succeeded in attracting contributions from all the chief
representatives of the Hegelian school of the day, such as
Strauss, Rosenkranz, Vischer, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, Schaller
and Hinrichs. But he also received contributions from literary
figures like Robert Prutz and Heinrich Laube, and from a
variety of scholars in various fields, including the historian
Heinrich Leo. As the Hallische Jahrbiicherbecame increasingly
identified with the theological writings of Strauss, Bauer and
Feuerbach, and as the journal became more radical politically,
its circle of contributors gradually narrowed. Nevertheless, in
its half-decade of existence the Hallische Jahrbiicher (from mid-
1841 the Deutsche Jahrbiicher) had a brilliance and vitality which
made it worthy of its times and which gave it a lasting and
absorbing interest.
A considerable proportion of the material published in
Hallische Jahrbiicher consisted of book reviews, and among these
an important category was the reviews of volumes of Hegel's
collected works, which were then appearing under the editor-
ship of a number of prominent Hegelian scholars, including
Marheineke, Eduard Gans, L. Henning and H. Hotho. Some
of these works, like The Philosophy of History under Gans's
editorship, were appearing for the first time, so that the Hallische
Jahrbiicher interpreted them to the German reading public and
placed them in the context of the Hegelian system as it had
been hitherto known.
Among contributions of this kind were the two reviews of
Hegel's Philosophy of History by Karl Rosenkranz and Emil von
Meysenbug, both authors remarking on the departure made
in this work from the established pattern of Hegel's system.35
The same point was made in a more significant way by Julius
Schaller, who wrote a reassessment of Hegel's History of Philo-
sophy in the light of the subsequently published Philosophy of
History. He drew attention to the divergence between Logical
and Historical development, the former producing the cat-
egories more faithfully than the latter. The history of philoso-
phy followed the development of the Concept, but in a much
less pure form than the Logic, as it contained a Historical ele-
ment. It was this which led Schaller to conclude that 'not every-
thing which claimed to be philosophy was in fact philosophy.
In all times . . . the philosophical kernel, the real Speculative

knowledge, has always been accompanied by subjective opin-
ion, the arbitrariness of Particularity.'36 This was a conception
that Ruge and Echtermeyer would shortly put to extensive
polemical use.
Another notable article from the early period of Hallische
Jahrbiicher was Karl Rosenkranz's 'Ludwig Tieck and the Ro-
mantic School'. This essay not only dealt with Tieck, but pre-
sented a general survey of the Romantic movement, touching
upon most of its leading figures, writers such as the Schlegel
brothers, Novalis, Arnim, Brentano, Gorres, Schleiermacher
and Schelling, all of whom were spoken of appreciatively by
Rosenkranz. The Romantic writers had more than an academic
interest for him; they had played an important part in his own
intellectual development. In his autobiography he recalled that
he had first approached Hegel's philosophy in the light of
Novalis's writings.37 He had in his possession the copy of Ath-
enaeum on which Novalis had jotted down his plans for an
encyclopedia, a project that Hegel had brought to a conclu-
sion. Rosenkranz concluded his essay by indicating that in many
respects Hegel had continued themes which the Romantic
writers had first introduced. One such example was the Philoso-
phy of Right, which incorporated ideas of the Romantics on
Society.38
It is interesting to note in this connection what Rosenkranz
said in his review of the first volume of Hegel's collected works
which appeared in 1832. This was that:
From a faulty understanding of the history of philosophy that each
philosophy adds a new idiosyncrasy (Einseitigkeit) to the ones which
existed before, many people accuse Hegel's philosophy of having con-
tributed nothing new, whereas Schelling, Fichte, Kant, Leibniz etc.
enriched philosophy by establishing special principles. But if such a
new principle could be named as a basic tenet of Hegelian philosophy,
then this philosophy too would fall into the category of an idiosyncrasy
and would not really be Absolute. But that in its history philosophy
should reach the point of absolute perfection is in this intellectual
sphere as necessary as in any other, and it is just as inevitable that one
should appear as the bearer of the whole, the point where all the
various directions converge.39
In other words, Rosenkranz thought that Hegel's system
contained nothing that was particularly original, but that it
consolidated previous philosophical developments. This indeed

was the way in which Hegel himself had viewed his system,
particularly in his earlier writings, where he stressed the con-
tinuity of his own work with that of his predecessors. By 1840,
however, the continuity had become less obvious through the
polemics in which the Hallische Jahrbiicher became involved.
The campaign against the Archbishop of Cologne did not
proceed as Ruge would have liked, and the lines of demarca-
tion were not as clear-cut as he had intended. The contribu-
tion of Joseph Gorres to the pamphlet war surrounding the
Cologne affair was a book entitled Athanasius, in which he
asserted that Protestantism was the precursor of the French
Revolution, and therefore detrimental to political stability.40
Heinrich Leo wrote a reply to Gorres, but in doing so, in
Ruge's opinion, he accepted much of Gorres's case against
Protestantism. Although Leo was a Protestant and a follower
of Hegel, Ruge found that his approach to the Reformation
and to modern philosophy had much that was 'Catholic' about
it. He indicated points in common between Gorres and Leo in
an article in Hallische Jahrbiicher,41 and also in a separate pam-
phlet, Prussia and the Reaction.42
The title of Ruge's pamphlet was modelled on that pub-
lished by Gorres nineteen years earlier, Germany and the Revo-
lution, which must have inspired Ruge in his Burschenschaft
days. It was clearly intended as a reproach to Gorres for his
apostasy, and the pamphlet itself recalled Gorres's revolution-
ary past, and in this connection referred to him as the 'Odysseus
of German Romanticism'. 43 Ruge, for his part, tried to show,
as Echtermeyer had done, that the Prussian regime incarnated
the Rationalist spirit of the Reformation and the Enlighten-
ment. Its defeat by Napoleon had caused Prussia to return to
its world-historical mission and to carry out the Stein and
Hardenberg reforms, which had ensured its victory. Those who
wished to revert to the political and ecclesiastical systems of
the Middle Ages, on the other hand, were the opponents of
the new order in Prussia and the real enemies of the regime. 44
In this polemic about who was more dangerous to the Prus-
sian regime - Rationalists or anti-Rationalists - Ruge wrote
with the Prussian government in mind, for he hoped to prove
that his own brand of Hegelian philosophy would be as effec-
tive a legitimation as Hegel's philosophy had been in the past.
In return he hoped to gain a professorship at Halle University.

In this connection he believed that the success of the Hallische
Jahrbiicherwould make a favourable impression on the Minister
of Culture, Altenstein.45 This, however, became less likely when
Ruge and the Hallische Jahrbiicher were attacked by Heinrich
Leo in a pamphlet entided The Hegelings (Die Hegelingen). This
was a tract in which Leo set out to dissociate himself and Hege-
lian philosophy in general from the direction being taken by
Ruge, Feuerbach, Richter, Strauss and their followers. These
constituted a group, Leo asserted, which openly propagated
atheism, claimed that the resurrection and ascension of Christ
were myths, and were entirely secular in oudook. 46 The pam-
phlet was a severe blow to Ruge from within the Rationalist
camp, and one of which Hengstenberg and his Evangelische
Kirchenzeitung took full advantage to denounce the Young
Hegelians as a subversive group. The squabble which ensued
between Ruge and Leo was quickly ended at the insistence of
Altenstein.47
In February 1839 Ruge tried to account in philosoph-
ical terms for the meeting of minds between Gorres, Leo,
Hengstenberg and Tholuck. He did this in an article entitled
'Pietism and the Jesuits'. As the title implied, Ruge equated
Pietism in its modern form with the rigidity and Externality of
Catholicism. He believed that Pietism had changed consider-
ably since its foundation. In its original form, as propounded
by Spener and Francke, it had given life where there had only
been rigid orthodoxy, and had inspired Inner religiosity where
formerly there had been mere Outward ritual. Now, however,
the Inner kernel of Pietism had been replaced by its Outer
husk, and the resulting soulless dogmatism had found com-
mon cause with the most fanatical forms of Catholicism.48
At the end of 1839 Ruge and Echtermeyer launched a new
campaign in Hallische Jahrbiicher which was designed to strike
at all their opponents, Pietists and Catholics alike, and which
would at the same time justify the Christology of Strauss and
any further developments Rationalist philosophy might pro-
duce. It took the form of a series of articles under the general
title of 'Protestantism and Romanticism', and was the most
extensive and prominent feature of the Hallische Jahrbiicher
during the journal's existence.
In essence 'Protestantism and Romanticism', which bore the
subtitle 'Towards a Comprehension of the Times and their

Antitheses. A Manifesto', was an intellectual history of the
Romantic movement. It was written in terms of Schaller's con-
ception of how the history of philosophy ought to be reas-
sessed in the light of Hegel's Philosophy of History: that much
that had passed for philosophy was only subjective opinion,
not the true Rational kernel. For Ruge and Echtermeyer, Prot-
estantism and Romanticism were two opposing principles.
Protestantism represented the process by which Reason devel-
oped and freedom was increased. Romanticism, on the other
hand, represented the mental attitudes from which Reason
progressively separated itself: irrationality, fixity, rigidity and
unfreedom. In its process of development Protestantism was
the kernel of Reason, Romanticism its husk. In the series of
articles the two authors aimed to facilitate the process of sepa-
ration by providing a critique of Romanticism from the stand-
point of the Rational kernel.
The aims of 'Protestantism and Romanticism' were stated in
the following terms:
We have enunciated the principle of the Reformation as our own and
have rediscovered this principle in the highest theoretical expression
and elaboration in the newest philosophy. It is therefore necessary
here to indicate the historical development of the innermost kernel
of the Reformation to the philosophical consciousness, which is our
point of departure, but concentrating especially from the stage at
which both contemporary philosophy as well as the opposing turbid
basis of the emotions constitute distinct principles. The reformatory
process of self-liberation is already in and for itself a critique of the
turbid medium through which Mind progresses, in order to reach ever
higher forms. We have presupposed this turbid medium and have to
elaborate on it, especially at a phase of German intellectual life which
as a whole we designate by the name Romanticism. For what still ails
Protestantism and what still links it with Catholicism is the not as yet
fully overcome dualism of consciousness. But in the sphere which we
shall bring together under the general name of Romanticism, this
dualism, this conflict between Nature and Mind, Subject and Object,
Being and Thinking, appears in its most acute form and thereby shows
most decisively the point from which one can solve the impending
problems of our times and reconcile the schism between our Inner
and Outer situations. 49
'Protestantism' in this context was an amalgam of the term
used in its broader sense to include the latest developments in
Christology with the conception of Reason that Hegel had

elaborated in his Philosophy of History. 'Romanticism', too, was
used in a special sense; this was a Romanticism from which
the 'kernel' of Rationality had been removed. Ruge and
Echtermeyer's critique, therefore, was not of the Romantic
movement as it had actually evolved, but what Ruge and
Echtermeyer considered to be Romanticism's irrational mani-
festations. Both, however, were well aware that the philosophy
they themselves espoused had its roots in the Romantic move-
ment. Thus, for example, in the section on Novalis it was stated
that the 'Romantic' side of Novalis was only one aspect of his
work:
On the other side he is a foundation and a portent of the modern

philosophy, which is first visible in Schelling, then in Hegel who con-
tradicts both Schelling and Novalis. And with contemporary conscious-
ness there is produced not only a critique of Schelling, but also the
complete and authentic critique of Novalis. It was so difficult to separate
what was true and what was not in Novalis's exposition, because it was
necessary that the new principle should appear first in a defective,
mythical, mystical and fairy-tale form, encased in individual emotions
and fantasies.50
In characterizing Romanticism in terms of modern philoso-

phy, Ruge and Echtermeyer called it 'the subjective impulse of
the free self. Like Rationalism they considered this a product
of the Reformation, the subjective and individualist reaction
to the abstract and petrified Externality of the Catholic Church;
it was also, they thought, the assertion of national identity
against the abstract Universality and unity of Catholicism.
Romanticism had its seat in the emotions, in Nature, and there-
fore its attitudes were not based on the Universality of Reason,
but on the subjective impulses of the individual. Because the
freedom of Romanticism was subjective, Particular and Nat-
ural, it was not genuine freedom, and so Romanticism embod-
ied its 'unfree principle'. Reconciliation with Universal Rational
freedom was alien to it.51
It is worth noting that Ruge and Echtermeyer characterized
Romanticism on two distinct planes, one historical, in terms of
the emergence of Reason from the 'turbid medium', and one
logical, in terms of Universality and Particularity, subjectivity
and objectivity. This corresponded to the dimensions which
had recently come to light of the Hegelian system. There was

also an analogy to be drawn between the sifting out of Reason
from the 'turbid medium' and the movement of the Concept
in separating the Essential from the fortuitous and contingent.
Almost all the writers of the Romantic school could be
said to illustrate some aspect of this characterization, and it
was sufficiently broad to include people like Hengstenberg,
Tholuck, Gorres and Leo. Romanticism was a category which
comfortably embraced both Pietists and Catholics, as each could
be said to represent a moment in its development.
The breadth of the term enabled Ruge and Echtermeyer to
bring together the various preoccupations of the writers of the
Romantic school and do so without examining how these re-
lated to each other in a rational way. For the series of articles
did not suggest any great degree of coherence in the Roman-
tic school as a whole. The technique of the two authors was
simply to look for examples of 'emotions', 'Nature', 'the unfree
principle', 'subjectivity', etc. in the writers they examined. As
a result, the Romantic movement appeared fragmented, hap-
hazard and vague.
The impression that the Romantic movement lacked inter-
nal coherence was strengthened by a summary which appeared
towards the end of the series headed 'The Romantic Cat-
echism', and which purported to list the features of a true
Romantic. These were: a belief in Catholicism, nostalgia for
the Middle Ages and a preference for folk-poetry to that of
artistic creation. A Romantic should have an abhorrence for
the Enlightenment, for everything French and for Frederick
the Great. He should also believe that the world was in a state of
decline, and his every other word should be 'deep' or 'mystic'.52
The mystic character of 'Romanticism' was emphasized by
the chronological framework Ruge and Echtermeyer set out for
its development. They noticed four stages. The first stage, the
precursors of Romanticism, included, in addition to Hamann,
the Stiirmer und Drdnger, the eighteenth-century mystics Jung-
Stilling, Countess Gallitzin and Friedrich Stolberg. Novalis too
was assigned to this phase. The second stage was that of Ro-
manticism proper and included the Schlegels, Tieck, Creuzer,
Adam Miiller, Steffens, Arnim and Brentano. The third phase
comprised the epigones of Romanticism, among whom were
Uhland, Kerner, Gorres, Tholuck, Hengstenberg and Leo. The
fourth stage was to encompass developments in Romanticism

since 1830: Young Germany, neo-Schellingism and old-
Hegelianism.53 In fact, only the first two sections were executed
in any detail, leaving the main enemies unscathed beyond a
mere mention in the conclusion, so that the brunt of Ruge
and Echtermeyer's attack fell on the Romantics of the Jena
period.
The portrayal of Romanticism by Ruge and Echtermeyer
was a caricature, but it was written with artistry and persuasion.
It was consequently influential in forming all later conceptions
of the Romantic movement. During the nineteenth century
this conception of the Romantic movement was challenged by
Rudolf Haym's The Romantic School and Wilhelm Dilthey's Life
of Schleiermacher, both published in 1870. By that time, how-
ever, the conception of Romanticism as something irrational,
vague and amorphous had become well entrenched. 54
As well as the consequences for the history of the Romantic
movement, Ruge and Echtermeyer's series of articles also had
its effect on the history of Hegelian philosophy. It effectively
broke the continuity between the Romantics and Hegel, and
from then on the two appeared as polar opposites. In this way
it completed the process begun in Hegel's lifetime, whereby
Hegel and his former associates at Jena became increasingly
estranged. After 1840 the Hegelian system was no longer pre-
sented as the culmination of Romantic thought. Karl Rosen-
kranz, for example, did not develop the ideas he had put
forward in 'Ludwig Tieck and the Romantic School' in his
influential biography of Hegel published in 1844.
The most ironic aspect of the anti-Romantic campaign was
that Hegelians like Ruge, Rosenkranz, Strauss, Vischer, etc.
had all come to Hegelian philosophy via the Romantic move-
ment. In this respect they had undergone the same kind of
evolution as Hegel himself. No doubt they saw the rejection of
Romanticism as a relinquishing of the preoccupations of their
youth, and the progressive advancement of knowledge in a
more rational direction. But the anti-Romantic campaign also
ensured that the Young Hegelians would be the last genera-
tion to approach the Hegelian system with a Romantic per-
spective, something necessary if Hegel's philosophy was to be
fully understood.
It was, however, Hegel's system, and in particular the Philosophy
of History, which provided the key to the paradoxical relation-

ship of the Young Hegelians to the Romantics, the explana-
tion of how it was possible for the Young Hegelians on the one
hand tacitly to adopt the Romantics' central conceptions, and
yet outwardly to reject the Romantic heritage.
The anti-Romantic campaign was quickly taken up by Ruge
and Echtermeyer's supporters, one of the first to do so being
Karl Friedrich Koppen in an article which appeared in Hallische
Jahrbiicher in the summer of 1840, on the hundredth anniver-
sary of the accession to the throne of Frederick the Great.55
The article was expanded into a book which was published
the same year under the title of Frederick the Great and His
Opponents.™
As Ruge and Echtermeyer's 'Romantic Catechism' had indi-
cated, the Romantics disliked Frederick the Great; probably
the two authors had the writings of Novalis and Miiller in mind.
Koppen's book was a panegyric on Frederick and a celebra-
tion of much else that the Romantics deplored, principally the
Reformation and the Enlightenment. It also continued the
denunciation of Romanticism that Ruge and Echtermeyer had
initiated, but in more strident terms. Referring to the oppo-
nents of Hallische Jahrbiicher, Koppen declared that: 'It is as if
the whole of hell had opened up in order to repeat once more
the Walpurgis Night of the Middle Ages, if only as a farce.' 57
This phrase must have seemed a memorable one to Koppen's
friend Karl Marx, to whom the book was dedicated.
Besides extolling Frederick as an incarnation of Rational-
ism, of the Reformation and of the Enlightenment, Koppen
unearthed yet another aspect of the Prussian King's thought
which was anathema to the Romantics. This was the fact that
Frederick had been an admirer of the Greek atomistic philoso-
pher Epicurus. This philosophy had always been rejected by
Romantic writers, who saw in it the antecedents of eighteenth-
century French materialism and the mechanistic view of the
world and society. Friedrich Schlegel remarked that:
In the seventeenth century only the vilest of all the ancient systems,
the crude materialism of Epicurus, which resolves everything into pri-
mary corporeal atoms, found much favour - a circumstance of itself
amply sufficient to attest the degeneracy of genuine philosophy and the
decline of real science. Subsequently, this crude atomic theory, which
is basically nothing more than a revival of the teaching of Epicurus
augmented and supplemented by modern discoveries in the Natural
sciences, attracted a large number of followers, until it grew to be the

dominant philosophy of the latter half of the eighteenth century, espe-
cially in France, but also over the rest of Europe due to the prevalence
of the French language.58
Koppen did not dispute the connection between the French
Enlightenment and Greek atomism, but he saw it in a more
positive light. In his view: 'All the figures of the Enlightenment
are indeed related to the Epicureans in many respects, just as
from the opposite point of view the Epicureans have shown them-
selves chiefly to be the Enlightenment figures of antiquity.'59
Karl Marx returned the compliment, and in his doctoral dis-
sertation, which he submitted in 1840, he referred to Koppen's
study of Frederick the Great in respect of its treatment of
Greek atomic philosophy. The dissertation in fact examined
Epicurean philosophy in some detail, and compared it with the
atomic theory of Democritus. It has always been a source of
wonder to commentators that Marx seemed to prefer Epicurus'
theories to those of Democritus, when Democritus was, by
general consent, the better philosopher. But what Marx found
so significant about Epicurus' philosophy, and in particular his
conception that atoms deviate from the perpendicular as they
fall through space, is easily explained by observing the termi-
nology and framework which Marx used to expound Epicurus'
ideas.
Marx explained that in Epicurus' system 'the declination of
the atom represents the Concept of Abstract Individuality'.
'But in so far as the atom is considered as pure Concept, its
existence is empty space, annihilated Nature.' In other words,
Abstract Individuality was 'freedom from being, not freedom
in being'. The problem for Epicurus was how to explain the
transition from Abstract Individuality to the concrete Individu-
ality of reality.60
To do this Epicurus presupposed that the atoms had quali-
ties. But since 'it contradicts the Concept of the atom that the
atom should have properties', it followed that 'through the
qualities the atom acquires an existence which contradicts its
Concept; it is assumed as an Externalised being different from
its Essence'. In this way the transition was made from the world
of Essence to the world of Appearance. 61
Thus, 'only the atom with qualities is a complete one, since
the world of Appearance can only emerge from the atom which
is complete and Alienated from its Concept.' The contradiction
was finally resolved in the 'heavenly bodies', Epicurus' term for

the universe. For 'in them all antinomies between form and
matter, between Concept and existence . . . are resolved . . . The
heavenly bodies are therefore atoms become real', because
'matter having received into itself Individuality, form . . . has
ceased to be Abstract Individuality; it hats become concrete
Individuality, Universality.'62
Even from this brief summary one may readily observe that
Marx had translated Epicurus' atomism into Hegelian termi-
nology and made it conform with the pattern of Hegel's Logic,
so that the progress of the atom to the heavenly bodies paral-
leled that of the Concept to the Absolute Idea.
At first sight this seems a curious, if not dubious, exercise.
It was, after all, an anachronism to attribute Hegelian ideas
to Epicurus. But if one equated rationality with Hegel's philo-
sophy, and one wished to examine the inner rational kernel
within Greek atomism from which modern Speculative philo-
sophy grew, Marx's procedure made sense. The method in-
deed had been approved by Hegel himself. In discussing
mythology in his History of Philosophy Hegel agreed that it was
wrong to read into a myth 'theories unthought by the an-
cients'. But although 'in conscious thought the ancients had
no such theories before them . . . to say that the content was
not implicitly present is an absurd contention.' 63 In support of
this idea Hegel could refer to the work of his friend Friedrich
Creuzer. Marx had obviously set out to show the implicit pres-
ence of Hegelian philosophy in Greek atomism.64
The dissertation's mention of Pierre Gassendi, who had
revived interest in Greek atomism in the seventeenth century,
as well as its reference to Koppen's book with its discussion of
Greek atomism in connection with the French Enlightenment,
shows that Marx had also been considering the relationship of
French materialism to the Hegelian system. The results of these
researches were published in a rather different connection, in
the pamphlet The Holy Family, which appeared in 1845.
Koppen's book had ended with the words:
The heavens do not rest more securely on the shoulders of Atlas than
Prussia does on the development of the principles adhered to by
Frederick the Great. It is an old common belief that after a hundred
years people are born a second time. That time has now come.65
The prediction, however, was very far from being realized. In

1840 King Friedrich Wilhelm III died, to be succeeded by his
son Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The new King did not prove to be
a reincarnation of Frederick the Great; he was, on the con-
trary, a friend of Hengstenberg and of the Austrian Catholic
conservative Radowitz. He himself was of a deeply conservative
frame of mind, and lived in fear of the spread of revolution
from France. He was opposed to the Enlightenment, to Ra-
tionalism, and had a particular antipathy to Hegelian philo-
sophy, deploring the preponderance of Hegelians in teaching
posts in Prussian schools and universities.66
Even before his accession to the throne Friedrich Wilhelm
had urged Altenstein to appoint more anti-Rationalists to teach-
ing posts. The Minister of Culture, however, had seldom fol-
lowed his advice; indeed he had assured Ruge: 'As long as I
live academic discussion will be free.'67 Altenstein's death in
1840, however, removed the last obstacle to putting into prac-
tice the new King's policy in educational appointments.
Friedrich Wilhelm began by appointing as Altenstein's succes-
sor Joseph von Eichhorn, a man who shared his conservative
views and who willingly made the kind of appointments the
King desired.68
In the political climate of the Restoration Prussia had been
something of an exception in finding in Rationalism the legit-
imation of its regime. This had ensured that Hegelians dom-
inated the educational establishment at a time when there
was great pressure on teaching posts. The Hegelians, however,
had always been under attack by anti-Rationalist philosophical
schools, who tried to oust their Hegelian rivals by suggesting
that Rationalism was to be associated with atheism and revolu-
tion rather than with legitimacy, as it was almost everywhere
else outside Prussia.69
As teaching posts fell vacant Eichhorn filled them with anti-
Rationalists. Schelling was called from Munich to teach in the
University of Berlin in order that his philosophy would eradi-
cate 'the dragon-seed of Hegelian pantheism' from the minds
of the young. Friedrich Julius Stahl, a conservative philosopher
of law, was appointed to Berlin University to replace the lib-
eral Hegelian Eduard Gans. In 1842 Friedrich von Savigny, an
old adversary of Gans, was appointed Minister of Justice. Stu-
dents at Halle were severely reprimanded when they petitioned
the new King that David Strauss should be appointed Profes-

sor of Theology at the university. In March 1842 Bruno Bauer,
then lecturing at Bonn University, was deprived of his licence
to teach because in one of his works he had denied the divine
inspiration of the gospels.70
Being published in Leipzig in Saxony, the Hallische Jahrbiicher
had been outside the jurisdiction of the Prussian censor, but
in the summer of 1841 the new King issued an edict calling on
Ruge to submit the journal to censorship in Prussia. Rather
than comply with this requirement, Ruge moved to Dresden,
and from 2 July 1841 published his journal under the tide of
Deutsche Jahrbiicher.11
In his editorial Ruge indicated that the significance of the
new tide was a transition from the Particularity of Prussia to
the Universality of the entire nation. Somewhat paradoxically,
at the beginning of 1842 Friedrich Wilhelm relaxed the cen-
sorship regulations, though he tightened them up again the
following year. For most of 1842, therefore, a limited press
freedom prevailed, and during that time Marx in Cologne was
involved in editing the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung. He was
assisted by Moses Hess, a businessman's son who had studied
Hegelian philosophy and French socialist theories. The news-
paper attracted contributions from Young Hegelians in Berlin.
These had formed themselves into a society called 'The Free'
(Die Freien), of which Bruno Bauer, with his aura of martyr-
dom, was the most illustrious member. 72
Marx's own contributions to Rheinische ZeitungioMowed closely
the orientation of the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher, and in
February 1842 Marx sent Ruge as a contribution to Deutsche
Jahrbiicher an article on the Prussian censorship law. In March
of the same year he promised Ruge further contributions,
including one on the Romantics.73 The latter article was never
written, but references to Romanticism in Marx's contribu-
tions to the Rheinische Zeitung show that he fully supported
Ruge and Echtermeyer's anti-Romantic campaign. Like Ruge,
Marx had gone through a Romantic phase prior to his adoption
of the Hegelian standpoint. He was particularly well informed
about the Romantic school, having attended A.W. Schlegel's
lectures on literature at Bonn University, and having been taught
law at Berlin by Friedrich von Savigny and anthropology 74 by
Heinrich Steffens.75
As might be expected, the changes wrought by Friedrich

Wilhelm were accompanied by changes in the attitude of Ruge
and his associates towards the Prussian regime and towards
politics in general. The transformation, however, was not a
sudden one, nor brought about entirely by the accession of the
new Prussian king. As early as 1839 there had appeared in
Hallische Jahrbiicher signs of increasing disillusionment with the
Prussian government's lack of recognition for the stand taken
by the journal in the affair of the Archbishop of Cologne.
The first sign of Hallische Jahrbiicher*s opposition to the Prus-
sian state came in November 1839 with an article written by
Ruge and Echtermeyer entided 'Karl Streckfuss and Prussian-
ism'. It took the form of a review of a pamphlet written by Karl
Streckfuss, a senior civil servant, entided On the Guarantees of
the Present State of Affairs in Prussia (Uber die Garantien der
preussische Zustande). In it Streckfuss argued against the need
to introduce a constitution in Prussia, on the grounds that
freedom, welfare and progress were not secured by constitu-
tions but by the social and political structure which existed in
Prussia at that time. He stressed in particular the efficiency
and honesty of the civil service hierarchy, the impersonal char-
acter of which was a guarantee of its permanence. 76
Ruge and Echtermeyer for their part used Streckfuss's refer-
ence to the civil service hierarchy in order to show that the
Prussian state was not Protestant, but Catholic in character.
For in their view the civil service hierarchy was like the priest-
hood in the Catholic Church. The distinction, moreover, be-
tween officials and non-officials, corresponded to the Catholic
division into priesthood and laity, a division which was entirely
alien to the spirit of Protestantism. And just as in the Catholic
Church communion with God was possible through the me-
diation of the priesthood, so in the Prussian state the people
at large were excluded from any direct participation in polit-
ical affairs, these being the exclusive preserve of the officials.77
As a result, people in Prussia knew far more about events in
England or France than those affecting their own country. In
Hegel's terminology, their sphere of activity was restricted to
'Civil Society' and excluded from the 'State'. 78
For the Prussian citizen all political events and current
affairs occurred in a realm of which he had no knowledge. To
him it appeared as if all movement and development took
place behind a kind of screen, and he was only aware of im-

mobility and fixity. He knew nothing of change, only the
'present state of affairs'. To Ruge and Echtermeyer this signi-
fied that in Prussia the non-official laity experienced only the
theory of the State, not its praxis; only the Concept of the
state, not its Idea.79
The conclusion of the authors was that for Prussia to be
a truly Protestant state, the distinction between the secular
priesthood and laity must be abolished. Then participation
in public affairs would be open to everyone, theoretically by
'complete public Self-Consciousness' and practically by 'free
representation', i.e. freedom of the press and the establish-
ment of representative institutions.80
The idea of abolishing the secular as well as the ecclesiasti-
cal hierarchy was not of course a n e w one. It had been put
forward both by Hegel and by Gorres, and went back to the
Pietist conception of the Universal priesthood. In the Streckfuss
article Ruge and Echtermeyer employed it to present the case
for constitutional reform, but the events of 1840 put an end to
the Young Hegelians' interest in liberalism, and encouraged
them to view the abolition of the secular hierarchy in an in-
creasingly radical context.
Ruge was quick to link his critique of the Prussian govern-
ment with his campaign against Romanticism. In October 1839
he wrote to Rosenkranz:
I have praised the principle to them and raised the Concept of Prussia
to the heavens. Who will raise it to the Idea? They do not want any
principle, but imprecision, the divine laziness of Schlegel and the
quietism of the good Novalis . . .81
The suggestion that the Prussian state was a Concept rather

than an Idea, and that the former should be associated with
fixity and the latter with motion - a conception present in the
Streckfuss article - was not pure Hegelianism; it belonged rather
to Schelling. In subsequent months, however, Ruge was to
develop the idea more systematically, so that it came to form
the basis of his political philosophy. It had, moreover, parallels
with Feuerbach's philosophy of religion.
Ruge's later writings, however, modified in an important
respect the conception of the State he had advanced in the
Streckfuss article. There it had seemed appropriate to associate
the hierarchy of officialdom with movement, and the secu-

lar laity with immobility and rest, but in all his subsequent
writings Ruge reversed this pattern and equated the State ma-
chinery with fixity and rigidity, while associating Society as a
whole with movement and change. It was then possible to
contrast the rigidity of the State with the freedom, progress
and self-renewal of history. This brought Ruge to examine the
implications of Hegel's Philosophy of History for his doctrine
of the State, and towards a critique of the State which para-
lleled his critique of Romanticism carried out shortly before.
In an article in Hallische Jahrbiicher in June 1840 Ruge noted
that the principle of rational development that Hegel had
discovered in his Philosophy of History provided the key to un-
derstanding his doctrine of the State. For there were, in Ruge's
view, two elements in Hegel's thought: one was Logic, which
dealt in terms of Abstract categories, which were quite inde-
pendent of time and space, and which in that respect were
eternal and immutable. The other element was the one Hegel
had elaborated in his Philosophy of History: the development of
Rationality in time and space. It was, Ruge stated, a great
misconception to regard Hegel's system as a Logical one only;
it was essential to place his doctrine of the State in the context
of his Philosophy of History.
For Ruge this implied that whereas History should be re-
garded as the process of freedom's Becoming, the existing
State was its Determinate Being, a result or product Abstracted
from the living development of History. The relationship of
the State to History was of an Abstract Concept to a concrete
Idea. It was thus mistaken to think that the State would remain
fixed as a Concept; it must develop to be an Idea. In this way
there should be a shift from theory to praxis, from what was,
to what ought to be.82
Ruge thought that there were two kinds of statesmen, those
who were indolent and unfree, who feared all Becoming and
times of rapid change such as the Reformation, the French
Revolution and the Wars of Liberation, and statesmen who
were in harmony with such times and welcomed action and
agitation.83 It was the former kind, Ruge believed, who came
into conflict with the development of History; the latter who
were in step with it. It was, in Ruge's opinion, essential that
there should be no clash between philosophy and politics. For
he declared:
Our times are only understood by philosophy, and it is the task of our
times to see to it that they not only understand philosophy, but are
moved to action by it.84
There was in Ruge's conception of History as constant move-

ment and the State as an immobile Concept much that was
reminiscent of Schelling's system. It is significant, therefore, that
in his introductory article to the Deutsche Jahrbiicher he should
claim that in enlisting Schelling in their anti-Rationalist cam-
paign the new regime in Prussia was under a misapprehen-
sion, for in his earlier writings at least Schelling had taken the
side of Rationalism.85 The same point was made by Marx,86 and
when he wrote to Feuerbach in May 1843 he compared the
latter with Schelling.87
As Marx noted in this connection, Feuerbach's great service
to philosophy had been to replace Abstractions by Nature and
History, and he had done so in a way that Schelling had an-
ticipated. Feuerbach's writings on philosophy in fact paralleled
exactly those of Ruge on the State. Feuerbach, too, took up the
theme of the relationship in Hegel's system between the Logi-
cal categories and those which belonged to Nature or History.
His Essence of Christianity had shown that religion could be
explained in terms of human Nature, that 'the secret of the-
ology is anthropology'. 88 But in Feuerbach's view religion was
only a particular case; all Abstractions could be resolved into
human Nature, those of Hegel's system being no exception.
Feuerbach argued that philosophical Abstraction was the
same kind of Alienation of man's Essential species Nature as
religion, and that consequently Abstraction was a Reflection of
man's own Rational Nature. This meant on the one hand that
philosophy provided an insight into man's Essential Nature,
and on the other that Abstractions had no independent exist-
ence; all were ultimately reducible to empirical, Natural terms.
The search for a philosophy, therefore, which would be free of
all empirical features, which would transcend all place and
time, and would achieve Absolute Universality, was illusory and
futile. Universality itself was something empirical and Natural;
it was the essentially rational Nature of the human species, of
the whole of humanity.89
The impression that Abstractions had an objective existence
outside humanity arose from man's Alienation from Nature,
primarily from his own Social Nature. Thus, to the person in

isolation, Abstraction took on a real existence and a schism
was experienced between Nature and Reason. But, Feuerbach
pointed out, the real starting-point of philosophy was not in
Fichte's Self, but in the T and You' which underlay all forms
of rational human discourse, even discourse with oneself. For,
Feuerbach explained:
Empiricism rightly derives the origin of our ideas from the senses; only
it forgets that the most important and essential sense object of man
is man himself; it forgets that only in man's glimpse into man is the
light of consciousness and Understanding kindled. Idealism is there-
fore right when it looks for the origin of ideas in man; but it is wrong
when it wants to derive them from people in isolation, people existing
as beings in themselves, immobilized as Mind; in short, when it wants to
derive them from the T without a given sensuous You'. Only through
communication, only through conversation of people with one another
do ideas arise. Not alone, but only with others does one attain to
Concepts and Reason in general. Two human beings are needed for
the generation of man, of the intellectual as well as the physical one.
The communion of man with man is the first principle and criterion
of truth and Universality.90
In Feuerbach's view Hegelian philosophy, despite its claim
to have no premisses, was based on the same standpoint as
Fichte's, the T , taken in isolation from the rest of the human
species. It was therefore a philosophy of Abstraction or Reflec-
tion (to Feuerbach the two terms were synonymous). Its basic
fallacy was that:
To 'abstract' means to suppose the Essence of Nature outside Nature,
the Essence of the human being outside the human being, the Essence
of thinking outside the act of thinking. In that its entire system rests
on these acts of Abstraction, Hegelian philosophy has Alienated the
human being from his very self. . .91
In this connection Feuerbach mentioned in particular Hegel's
Logic. There, he said:
The third p a r t . . . is, and is indeed explicitly called the Subjective Logic,
and yet the forms of subjectivity that are dealt with in that section are
not allowed to be subjective. The Concept, the Judgement, the Syllog-
ism . . . are not our concepts, judgements and syllogisms. No, they are
objective, Absolute forms existing in and for themselves. So does
Absolute philosophy Externalize and Alienate (entdussert und entfremdet)
man from his own Essence and activity.92
In Feuerbach's estimation, therefore, the Concept was the

product of Reflection, an opinion arrived at forty years previ-
ously by Schelling. Feuerbach's use of the term 'Alienation' as
well as 'Externalization' implied that he regarded man's separ-
ation from Nature and from his fellows in the same light as
Schelling, Steffens and other members of the Romantic school
had done, as a morbid condition, and one eventually to be over-
come. Hegel, on the other hand, had looked on Externaliza-
tion as a necessary phase in the movement of the Concept.
Feuerbach thought that the false standpoint of Hegel's sys-
tem had prevented it from giving an adequate explanation of
the relationship of thought to existence. It had treated as subject
what ought properly to be predicate. This had caused Hegel
to confuse Universality with Individuality. Thus:
Thinking claims for itself what belongs not to itself but to Being.
Individuality, however, belongs to Being, Universality to thought.
Thought thus claims for itself Individuality - it treats Individuality -
the negation of Universality, the essential form of Sensibility, - as an
element of thought. So the 'abstract thought' or the Abstract Concept,
which has Being outside itself, becomes a 'concrete' Concept.93
Here Feuerbach did not employ the term 'Particularity', bas-
ing his argument on the contrast between Individuality and
Universality. Presumably he believed Particularity to be an
Abstract form of Individuality. His remarks on Hegel's method,
moreover, show that he himself only required two terms for
his own purposes. In fact the Young Hegelians as a movement
devoted their efforts towards showing that Mind, whether in
the form of religion or the State, could be resolved into Na-
ture and thought, or Nature and Abstraction.
Like Ruge, Feuerbach believed that the State was part of
History, and as such had only an empirical, Natural existence
in space and time, as opposed to an Absolute one. He therefore
gave support to Ruge's political philosophy by observing that:
Space and time are the first criteria of praxis. A people that excludes
time from its metaphysics and sanctifies the eternal, i.e. Abstract exist-
ence detached from time, as a consequence excludes time from its
politics and sanctifies the anti-historical principle of stability, a principle
contrary to right and Reason.94
In a letter to Ruge written in March 1843 Marx commented
that in his critique of Abstract philosophy Feuerbach had
'referred too much to Nature and too litde to politics'.95 In the

previous year, however, Ruge himself had made good the
deficiency and had applied Feuerbach's ideas to political
thought.
Ruge's article on Hegel's Philosophy of Right published in
Deutsche Jahrbiicher in August 1842 no longer sought simply
to reinterpret Hegel's political philosophy but to expose the
fallacy on which it was based. This was the assumption that
logical categories were entirely independent of any historical
context. This assumption pervaded the Hegelian system, but
in Ruge's view it was felt most acutely in the realm of politics,
because Hegel's Rational State dealt in terms of petrified time-
less logical categories, not with actual living people or real
situations. It was inevitable that a State which was ordered in
this way would come into conflict with real individuals and
their ideas - as indeed recent events had shown.96
Ruge acknowledged that the old antithesis between Protes-
tantism and Romanticism was inadequate to account for the
predicament which the tension between reality and Abstrac-
tion created. In the light of Feuerbach's investigations he now
believed that the polemic of the Young Hegelians against
Romanticism was '.. . nothing other than the concealed po-
lemic against Christianity',97 that is Christianity in Feuerbach's
sense of alienated human Essence. Protestant States, however
Rational they might be, so long as they dealt in timeless and
immutable categories Abstracted from real people, represented
no great advance on a State incorporating the Catholic prin-
ciple. To signify this discovery of a more general and more
deep-seated problem, Ruge now concentrated his attack on
what he termed the 'Christian State'.98 It was in an article
bearing this title that Ruge gave the fullest exposition of what
he believed to be the origin and character of the Christian
State.
The Christian State, Ruge explained, was the political con-
sequence of the illusion that there could be a Rationality which
was different and distinct from the reasoning of real, existing
people. The illusion was particularly insidious because it arose
from the power of human beings to abstract and make gener-
alizations. Abstractions, however, like all representations of
living processes, froze the movement and life, and produced
an object that was fixed and dead. A Concept was like a picture
of something - a river, a waterfall, a face - it was immobile and

lifeless. A Concept, moreover, was something generalized or
Universal, and Universal people or things did not exist; what
existed were real live individuals and particular concrete things.99
Philosophy, however, treated only Universals as true and
real, whereas it regarded actual people and things as false and
unreal. Christianity took the philosophical point of view to its
ultimate conclusion and worshipped as a Deity the supreme
Universality, the God who transcended all reality. But the great
truth contained in this illusion was that only human beings
had the power of Abstraction. In that activity man was com-
pletely free and sovereign. By Abstraction he could free him-
self from his earthly limitations and go beyond his present
situation.100
But people had become enslaved by a power which ought to
liberate them. They had fallen prey to the illusion that they
should try to conform to the Abstraction of themselves; they
were under the impression that the Abstractions were true
reality and that they themselves were but imperfect examples
of these Abstractions. The Christian State was produced by this
illusion; it was the Abstraction of the human community.101
The Christian State, Ruge thought, was a product of Reflec-
tion and Alienation, created by the absence of a real human
community and the prevalence of egoism and individualism.
He believed, therefore, that this Alienation would be over-
come by the emergence of the true community. Ruge still
thought of this in national terms, and in his estimation the
true community would be the German nation, and its birth
would rekindle the spirit of democracy and freedom that had
been released by the Wars of Liberation. All hierarchies would
be abolished and distinctions between laity and clergy would
disappear. The new world, he believed, would emerge out of
the old as a kernel from within its husk.102
Bruno Bauer also took up the question of the 'Christian
State', but in quite a different way from Ruge. Whereas Ruge
aligned his political philosophy with Feuerbach's theology,
Bauer found it possible to extrapolate a political theory from
the method he had used in examining the Synoptic gospels.
His treatment of the question therefore followed Hegel's ex-
position in the Phenomenology of Mind and traced the develop-
ment of Self-Consciousness through its various stages.
For Bauer the Christian State was that in which the theolo-
gical dominated the political element. This domination was
secured as a result of a life-and-death struggle in the same way
as in the Phenomenology the master had established domination
over the slave. A dialectic then ensued between the Church
and State, as a result of which there emerged a State which
was the 'free creation of Self-Consciousness', one in which the
conflict between spiritual and temporal spheres had been elim-
inated along with hierarchies in both Church and State. This
was the State of the future, one adequate to itself, no longer
Christian because no longer subject to the religious authority.103
The difference between Ruge's and Bauer's approaches to
the question of the 'Christian State' presaged divisions which
were soon to appear within the Young Hegelian camp and
cause its eventual disintegration. Marx also intended to con-
tribute to the discussion on the State in Deutsche Jahrbiicher with
a critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The journal, however,
had been discontinued before he managed to write his article,
but in the autumn of 1843 he did produce a lengthy manu-
script on Hegel's doctrine of the State.104 It is of considerable
interest because it forms a bridge between Ruge's political
ideas and Marx's own later economic writings.
MARX AS YOUNG HEGELIAN
Marx's critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right was a detailed

elaboration of ideas Ruge had put forward in his articles in the
Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher. In a close textual commentary
Marx found ample evidence that Hegel's State was an Abstrac-
tion, that it treated as logical categories qualities and attributes
which properly belonged to real living human beings, and that
Hegel had treated the Abstract Logical categories as real and
the people as unreal. For Hegel it was the Abstractions which
were the subject, the human beings the object.
Marx reinforced the points Ruge had made by pointing
out that Hegel's Philosophy of Right was not really the study of
Society, law and the State it purported to be. Hegel had not
composed it after making an objective study of legal or polit-
ical systems, but had modelled his exposition on the Logic.
Hegel had set out to show that the same categories he had
deduced in his Science of Logic could be applied to the sphere

of human activity, that politics and law could be treated in
terms of the Concept and its constituent elements of Univer-
sality, Particularity and Individuality.105 Marx was certain that
Hegel's exposition of The Philosophy of Right was determined by
'the Nature of the Concept' and was by way of being no more
than 'a parenthesis within the Logic'.
Marx found particularly significant the fact that Hegel should
treat the category of Universality in an Abstract way. Like
Feuerbach and Ruge, Marx thought of Universality as some-
thing real and concrete; it was the human quality that brought
people together in Society. Hegel, however, had attributed
this quality to the State, and treated it as something inhering
in the bureaucratic hierarchy of civil servants, the 'Universal
class'. According to Marx, however, the only 'Universal' qual-
ity of the bureaucracy was its secrecy, the mystery preserved
within itself by its hierarchical structure. Like Ruge, Marx
compared the bureaucracy to the priesthood of the Catholic
Church, one from which the laity was excluded. The exclusive-
ness of the bureaucracy meant that the Social quality of real
people was not only institutionalized in a separate organiza-
tion, but divorced completely from the Society to which it
essentially belonged. 107
Stripped of its real Social quality, Society existed as Civil
Society, which in Marx's view represented the 'principle of
individualism taken to its logical conclusion'. 108 In it people
did not relate to each other as fellow human beings, but acted
out of selfishness or caprice, as Particular entities impelled by
laws of Natural necessity. For Hegel these characteristics of
Civil Society demonstrated the necessity for cohesion and
Rationality to be provided through the mechanism of the State.
In Marx's view, however, Civil Society was also an Abstraction,
the Abstraction which deprived Society of its genuinely Social
characteristics, its real and concrete Universality.
It followed that if Universality were no longer Abstracted
from actual people, then there would no longer be any need
for a bureaucratic hierarchy. In other words:
The bureaucracy can be abolished only if the Universal interest be-

comes a Particular interest in reality and not merely in thought, in
Abstraction, as it does in Hegel. And this can take place only if the
Particular interest really becomes the Universal interest.109
In a Society which had overcome Abstraction there would be

no private interests which did not coincide with the interests
of Society as a whole. But how exacdy Abstraction came about
in Society, and how it was to be overcome, Marx at this stage
did not say.
An important aspect of Marx's approach to Hegel's political
philosophy was that he did not criticize Hegel on the grounds
that the Philosophy of Right gave a misleading account of the
political realities of the time. On the contrary, Marx's critique
was based on the assumption that Hegel had described fairly
accurately what actually existed, and that the Abstraction of
man's Social quality in the State was precisely the human pre-
dicament in the modern world. In Marx's view, 'Hegel should
not be blamed for describing the Essence of the modern State
as it is, but for giving the impression that what exists is the
Essence of the State'.110
Marx was also of the opinion that the Abstraction of the
State was a modern phenomenon, and was the product of
historical evolution. Whereas in modern times the separation
into public and private life was an Abstract one, in the Middle
Ages the division had been a real one. In Greece, Civil Society
had been the 'slave' of political society.111 This historical scheme,
with its reference to lordship and bondage and its progression
from real to Abstract divisions, had much in common with the
scheme outlined by Bruno Bauer in his article on the Chris-
tian State.
The opportunity for Marx to publish his ideas on the State
came with his move to Paris and the founding of the journal
Deutsche-Franzosische Jahrbiicher by Ruge and himself in 1844.
Contributors to this short-lived journal included Friedrich
Engels, Moses Hess, Georg Herwegh and Heinrich Heine. Marx
published two articles in it, one the 'Introduction to the Cri-
tique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' and the other a review of
some works by Bruno Bauer entitled 'On the Jewish Question'.
In the latter article Marx took up again the question of the
'conflict between the Universal interest and the private inter-
est, the split between the political State and Civil Society'.112
He explained that although man was a species-being, one in-
herently Universal, in modern times the Christian State had
arrogated to itself his spirit of community, so that 'society
appears as a framework extraneous to individuals'. He there-
fore concluded that:
Only when real, Individual man resumes the Abstract citizen into
himself and as an Individual man has become a species-being in his
empirical life . . . only when man has recognised and organised his
own forces as Social forces, so that Social force is no longer separated
from him in the political force, only then will human emancipation be
completed.113
This was the point Marx had reached in his manuscript
critique of Hegel's political philosophy, the conclusion that
the separation of man from his Social Essence would be over-
come if the division into Civil Society and the State could be
broken down. In the 'Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right' Marx had found a solution to the prob-
lem of how this was to be done, how the Particular and Uni-
versal interest were to be made to coincide.
The solution came from the interest in socialism that Marx
had developed while in Paris. He now believed that the prole-
tariat, a Particular estate in Civil Society, in pursuing its own
interests would necessarily bring about the liberation of hu-
manity in general. He therefore looked on the Proletariat as
the 'Universal estate'. According to Marx the hope for the
future lay:
In the formation of an estate . . . which is the dissolution of all estates,
a sphere which has a Universal character because of its Universal suf-
fering and which lays claim to no Particular right because the wrong
it suffers is not a Particular wrong, but wrong in general... a sphere
of Society which cannot emancipate itself from the rest, without
emancipating all other spheres of Society . . . The dissolution of Society
as a Particular estate is the proletariat}14
The role Marx had assigned to the proletariat, the fusion of
the Universal with the Particular and the creation of a Society
with truly human bonds, was one which had a long history in
German philosophy. Marx recognized this fact by declaring that:
Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the
proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy . . . The head of
this emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy
cannot actualize itself without the transcendence of the proletariat,
and the proletariat cannot transcend itself without the actualization
of philosophy.115
The discovery of the proletariat and socialism was the ad-
vance that Marx had made beyond an analysis of the existing
political system which was in all essentials the same as Ruge's.

The great insight he received in 1844 was that what could be
said about the Abstraction of the political system could equally
well be said about the Abstraction of the economic system.
This insight was supplied by Friedrich Engels in the article he
contributed to Deutsche-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, 'Outlines of a
Critique of Political Economy'.
The inspiration for Engels's article had been Feuerbach, in
particular his denial that Abstractions had any objective exist-
ence beyond the empirical material from which they general-
ized. Thus, Engels argued that economic categories such as
'trade' and 'value' were Abstractions from the real world. In show-
ing that the 'real value' of a thing was an Abstraction derived
from its empirical price he concluded:
Thus everything in economics stands on its head. Value, the primary
factor, the source of price, is made dependent on price, its own pro-
duct. As we all know, this inversion is the Essence of Abstraction; on
which see Feuerbach. 116
Like Feuerbach and Ruge, Engels conceived of the real
empirical world as being in constant movement, whereas Ab-
straction produced fixity and immobility. He viewed money as
a tangible example of Abstraction in this way. He observed:
The perpetual fluctuation of prices as is created by the condition of
competition completely deprives trade of its last vestige of morality. It
is no longer a question of value; the same system which appears to
attach such importance to value, which confers on the Abstraction of
value in money the honour of a Particular existence - this same system
destroys by means of competition the inherent value of all things, and
daily and hourly changes the value-relationship of all things to one
another. 117
This reference to money as an Abstraction was an anticipation

of the system that Marx was shortly to outline, and which was
to form the basis for his later economic analyses.
There are in fact a number of themes contained in Engels's
article which would be taken up by Marx in his Paris Manu-
scripts of 1944. The most important of these was the concep-
tion that the categories of political economy - competition,
trade, value, money, etc. - were Abstractions in the Feuer-
bachian sense from man's species-being. They were forms in
which man's essential character, his humanity, had been
Externalized. But because this real state of affairs was seen

'standing on its head', that is through the prism of Reflection,
the Abstraction was not recognized for what it was.
Once Externalized as economic categories, man's species-
being acted not as a humane force, but in a way as indifferent
to the human condition as a law of Nature. The economic
sphere, therefore, was the arena in which the opposing laws -
that of humanity and that of Nature - were played out. This
was also an idea developed in 1844 by Marx.
Engels was also the first to identify private property as the
force which had created the schism of the human essence into
its Natural and its human sides.118 Competition fragmented all
the parties involved in economic activity and set them against
each other. This resulted in consequences such as poverty and
ruin which were neither foreseen nor desired by anyone. The
solution Engels proposed was: 'Produce with consciousness, as
people, not as dispersed atoms without species consciousness,
and you will overcome all of these artificial and unacceptable
antagonisms.' 119 This outcome, Engels thought, would be at-
tained when the original division into Nature and humanity
had been overcome, and when mankind had been reconciled
with Nature and with itself.120 All of these ideas were to be
repeated by Marx in his Paris Manuscripts.
MARX'S POLEMICS WITH THE YOUNG HEGELIANS
Before proceeding to examine the evolution of Marx's system,

it is necessary to review briefly the polemics surrounding the
dissolution of the Young Hegelian school, as this had some
consequences for later perceptions of Marx's thought.
After being deprived of his academic appointment at Bonn
University, Bruno Bauer returned to his native Berlin and in
1843 began to issue a literary and philosophical journal enti-
tled Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. In company with his younger
brother Edgar he used the new journal to propound the doc-
trine of 'pure criticism' or 'Critical Criticism'. By this was meant
criticism with no particular object, all that remained when the
falsity of religion, the state and other existing institutions had
been exposed to philosophical critique. What was left of per-
manent value was criticism itself, criticism as such.
Bruno Bauer was encouraged in this view by the lack of

support he had received in the difficulties he had encoun-
tered following the publication of his book on the Synoptic
gospels. The public had remained indifferent to his fate and
unresponsive to his appeals to take up his cause. He accord-
ingly came to the conclusion that people in general were in-
dolent, superficial and complacent, in marked contrast to those
few who were inspired by the critical spirit. The contrast was
like a kernel of Self-Consciousness and progress within a husk
of unthinking faith and conservatism. The designation Bruno
and Edgar Bauer gave to this husk was the 'mass', and it rep-
resented the antithesis of pure or 'Critical Criticism'.121
The liberating role of criticism was canvassed by Edgar Bauer
in his book The Conflict of Criticism with Church and State, pub-
lished in 1844. The arguments deployed had many points of
contact with those of Ruge and Marx. He referred, for exam-
ple, to the bureaucrats as priests of the State, the custodians of
State secrets to which the citizenry at large were not party.122
He also saw the helplessness and passivity of the people within
the Christian State as a product of fragmentation and indi-
vidualism.123 The remedy Edgar Bauer proposed, however, was
quite different from either Marx's or Ruge's: it was 'Criticism'.
According to Bauer the revolution would begin when public
opinion recognized the Christian State as irrational. But on
what would replace the Christian State he was less certain,
since no one could know in advance the outcome of criticism.
He could only explain that:
If you ask me what is 'the free community', what it looks like and how
it is possible, to that I can give no answer; for to whom is it given
to think beyond his time? Our time is, however, only critical and
destructive.124
He was nonetheless able to add that:
History from now on is conscious, because humanity knows the principles
on which it moves forward and since now it has its goal before its eyes
- freedom.125
Bruno and Edgar Bauer represented a current of Young
Hegelian thought which had not strayed very far from Hegel's
system and was obviously deeply influenced by his conception
of Self-Consciousness and 'the cunning of Reason'. The Bauer
brothers had not followed Feuerbach's rejection of religion

towards a rejection of Abstraction in general, as had Marx and
Engels. On the contrary, they held pure thought to be the
ultimate reality.
Marx and Engels polemicized against the Bauer brothers in
a joint work, The Holy Family, published in 1845. Marx, who
wrote most of the book, objected that the Bauers' doctrine
reduced the act of transforming Society to a cerebral activity,
and in Marx's view:
Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order, but only beyond the
ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry out anything at all.
In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can exert practical
force.126
Marx was equally insistent that the Abstraction 'History' could
accomplish nothing either: progress was made by real living
human beings.
One chapter of The Holy Family was directed less at Bruno
Bauer as a thinker than as a historian of ideas. Marx found
that by following Hegel's History of Philosophy, which presented
developments in a schematic way, Bauer had been misled in
one of his works on the origins and development of eighteenth-
century French materialism. Accordingly, Marx took the op-
portunity to set matters right on the subject. It was one on which
he was particularly well informed because he had studied it in
connection with his dissertation on Greek atomism. The brief,
but highly informative, essay on French materialism allowed
Marx to demonstrate the great differences which existed be-
tween the a priori intellectual history of Self-Consciousness
and empirical intellectual history.
Since writing his dissertation Marx had discovered a new
significance in French materialism; it was the theoretical foun-
dation for the socialist doctrines with which he had recently
become acquainted. The socialism of Charles Fourier and
Robert Owen, he was able to point out, was derived from the
materialism of Condillac, La Mettrie and Helvetius. These
thinkers in their turn had been influenced by John Locke,
who had shown that all knowledge originated with the senses.
Marx therefore concluded:
No great acumen is required to see the necessary connection of
materialism with communism and socialism - from the doctrines of
materialism concerning the original goodness and equal intellectual

endowment of man, the omnipotence of experience, habit and educa-
tion, the influence of external circumstances on man, the great sig-
nificance of industry, the justification of enjoyment, etc. If man forms
all his knowledge, perception etc. from the world of Sensibility then
it follows that the empirical world must be so arranged that he exper-
iences and becomes accustomed to what is truly human in it, that he
experiences himself as a man.127
These and similar ideas, Marx said, were to be found in the
works of the oldest French materialists.
He added that the present context was not the place to
judge their ideas, thus suggesting that although he might sym-
pathize with their aims, he did not agree with their theories.
In his 'Theses on Feuerbach', which were written about the
same time as The Holy Family, Marx indicated what his objec-
tion to the standpoint of French materialism was. He remarked
that:
The materialistic doctrine concerning the change of circumstances and
education forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that
the educator must himself be educated . . ,128
This fallacy was one that Marx clearly expected to avoid in
constructing his own socialist theory. He could be confident of
doing so because the materialism he had espoused did not
belong to the French tradition but to the nineteenth-century
one of German philosophy. It was this philosophy which was
to be actualized by the proletariat as the Universal estate.
Max Stirner belonged to the same Berlin circle as the
Bauer brothers but took up a position at the opposite extreme,
arguing in his book The Ego and His Own that Feuerbach, in
overthrowing one Abstraction, God, to whom people were sub-
servient, had set up another Abstraction in its place - Man-
kind, which demanded a subservience just as great. According
to Stirner the individual was enslaved by all kinds of ghostly
Abstractions, such as Right, Truth, Science, etc., all demand-
ing his service and dedication. All these entities, in Stirner's
view, were phantoms, spectres which did not actually exist.
The only reality was the empirical concrete individual with his
own interests and desires.
A considerable portion of Marx and Engels's manuscript
'The German Ideology' was devoted to a polemic with Stirner,
or more precisely, to ridiculing his ideas. The fact that Marx

disagreed with Stirner is important, however, as an indication
of Marx's own approach to the question of Abstraction. Though
he might believe that Abstractions had no independent exist-
ence, he could not follow Stirner into thinking that they should
for that reason be ignored. As a form of Reflection they had
an important role to play in human affairs. In the system he
was shordy to elaborate Marx set out to show how Abstractions
arose in the realm of political economy and how ultimately
they would be overcome. It was this approach to Abstractions
which accounts for the peculiar mixture of philosophy and
economics which one finds in Marx's earlier economic writings.
4 Marx
MARX'S CONCEPTION OF THE CRITIQUE OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY
During the summer of 1844 Marx began to elaborate on the

idea Engels had outlined in the Deutsche-Franzosische Jahrbiicher.
In doing so he attributed to the workings of the economy the
features he had formerly associated with the state. In the
manuscripts he compiled at Paris it was no longer the state
which was fixed as an Abstraction outside of and in conflict
with man's Social quality, but the economic categories which
were Abstractions from man's Essential species-being.
The 1844 manuscripts have no systematic arrangement of
the material they contain, but they do set out the main fea-
tures of Marx's proposed critique of political economy. At the
centre of this critique is the conception that the categories
of political economy - trade, competition, capital, money, etc.
- are the Externalized expression of man's Natural species-
being. Of this central conception various implications are ex-
plored: what has brought about the Externalization of man's
Essential Nature; what is the character of this Externalization;
and how will it be overcome?
An important associated question is how one can possibly
know about this Externalization, which previous thinkers have
overlooked. This leads Marx to speak about the point of view
it is necessary to adopt in order to be able to judge what man's
true predicament is and what the future has in store. Doing
this involves Marx in a critical appraisal of previous thinkers,
principally Hegel, who was too much afflicted by the Abstrac-
tion experienced by mankind as a whole to arrive at the con-
clusion presently reached.
It was not only the conclusion itself, but the way it had been
arrived at that was important to Marx in setting out his ideas
in the Paris Manuscripts. It seemed to him not a chance dis-
covery, but one prepared by the whole development of phi-
losophy to date. Besides the recent developments that had
been made to Hegel's philosophy by the Young Hegelians,
especially by Feuerbach, Marx was much aware that Hegel's
145
philosophy itself was the culmination of all that had gone

before. In Marx's view Hegel's great virtue was that he had
been able to sift out what was essential from previous philoso-
phies and incorporate it into his own. Marx thus saw himself
as being on a pinnacle of philosophical development, and with
a great fund of philosophical ideas to draw upon, some from
the Young Hegelians, some from Hegel, and some from Hegel's
predecessors.
The basic contours of Marx's scheme followed those that
Engels had hinted at, and were pre-Hegelian. They were that
man had become estranged from his fellows and from Nature,
but that in the course of history he would re-appropriate his
true Essence and become one again with Nature and the rest
of humanity. This was like the schemes propounded by Schel-
ling or Steffens, but now it was reinforced by two elements
from Feuerbach's thought. One of these was species-being and
the other was Abstraction.
Species-being was the term Marx used extensively in the Paris
Manuscripts for man's Social being. Thus:
the proposition that man is Alienated from his species-being means
that each man is estranged from the others, and that all are estranged
from the human Essence. 1
The economic categories of Civil Society had their root in
man's Alienation of his Social essence. Man's activity in Civil
Society, that is his labour, was not a direct expression of his
species-being: it was 'Alienated labour' and the product it gave
rise to confronted man as something Alien and hostile. This
was private property. Alienated labour and private property,
Marx thought, were the source of all the other economic cat-
egories of Civil Society:
Just as we have arrived at the Concept of private property through an

analysis of the Concept of Alienated, Externalized labour, so with the
help of these two factors it is possible to deduce all the categories of
national economy, and in each of these categories, e.g. barter, competi-
tion, capital, money, we shall identify only a determinate and developed
expression of these basic constituents. 2
In later expositions of his scheme Marx was to substitute

'Abstract labour' for 'Alienated labour' and 'surplus value' for
'private property', as well as rearranging the order of his
Marx 147
categories considerably, but the underlying conception re-

mained unchanged.
As Engels had done, Marx found money to be the economic
category which most obviously represented the Alienation of
humanity. In money, in an Abstract, Externalized form, were to
be found all the limidess powers of the human community. Thus:
He who can buy courage is brave, even if he is a coward. Money is not
exchanged for a Particular quality, a Particular thing or for any Par-
ticular one of the Essential powers of man and Nature. Seen from the
standpoint of the person who possesses it, money exchanges every
quality for every other quality and object, even if it is contradictory;
it is the power which brings together impossibilities and forces contra-
dictions to embrace. 3
Following the example of Schelling and Hegel in his Philoso-

phy of History, Marx was able to argue that the phenomena of
Civil Society were only the Outer husk of man's species-being.
Inevitably man's true Social Nature would emerge, and Civil
Society would be superseded by a Society with truly human
bonds. In keeping with his espousal of socialism, Marx re-
ferred to this truly human Society as 'Communism'.
Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human
self-estrangement, and hence the true appropriation of the human
Essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man
to himself as a Social, i.e. human, being . . .4
He compared this conception of communism to that of recent
French socialist thinkers who sought to prove the feasibility of
a communist society by examples taken from history. This
empirical approach Marx thought inadequate, because it failed
to show that communism had an 'Essential' existence. But if
communism was the human Essence itself, then in a sense it
already existed, and had only to become actual. Civil Society
was thereby Communism in a Reflected or Alienated form.
It was Marx's case that if one penetrated beyond the Outer
appearances of Civil Society and interpreted its phenomena in
the right way, not from the point of view of Reflection or
Abstraction, one could find in them proof of man's Essential
species-being. If, in particular, industry was 'conceived as the
esoteric revelation of man's Essential powers', then, according
to Marx, 'we also gain an understanding of the human Essence
of Nature, or the Natural Essence of man.' 5
This understanding also supplied the reason why humanity

would of necessity progress from Civil Society to communism.
For the progression was one in which man became in actuality
what he already was, potentially or Essentially. It was an argu-
ment which made use of the meaning of Nature as Essence.
Thus, human Nature and human Essence were the same thing.
Marx's premiss was that human beings were Social by Nature,
human Nature being Social Nature.
Since man was Social by Nature, this Nature would come
into its own in the course of history. Human Nature was the
constant in the process, the driving force behind history and
the source of the Natural laws of necessity which governed it.
Whereas Hegel had viewed history as the process by which
man's rational Nature unfolded, Marx thought of it as the pro-
cess by which man reappropriated his Social Nature from the
External and Abstract form it had possessed in Civil Society.
A further constant in Marx's approach was his starting-point.
Since he regarded Civil Society as an Abstraction or Reflection
of man's Essential Nature, he started out from the assumption
that man was a Social being and at one with Nature; that is, he
took Society, or Communism, as his point of departure rather
than Civil Society. The mistake of modern political economy,
as well as Hegel, had been to adopt the standpoint of Civil
Society.
For Marx, therefore, Society, or Communism, was both the
outcome of human development and his own starting-point, a
presupposition and a result. In this respect Marx adopted the
Speculative method, though he did not refer to it by that name.
He called it 'Naturalism' or 'humanism':
Here we see how consistent Naturalism or humanism differs both
from idealism and materialism and is at the same time their unifying
truth. We see also that only Naturalism is capable of comprehending
the process of world history.7
Marx did, however, refer to the ancestry of his method by

saying that materialism 'perfected by the work of Speculation
coincides with humanism'. 8 The other way in which Marx re-
ferred to Communism as a return to the point of departure
was the expression 'the negation of the negation', and this was
retained in later writings. It was a process that in Marx's view
all previous writers including Feuerbach had understood in an
Abstract way.9
Marx 149
Communism, moreover, did not in Marx's opinion mean

absolute equality for all. This he termed 'crude communism',
the mere negation of private property. Communist Society was
to embody Individuality, so that the species-being of humanity
would be found in each Particular person.
It is above all necessary to avoid once more fixing 'Society'
as an 'Abstraction over against the Individual. The Individual
is the Social being.'10 Marx stressed that the species life and the
Individual life of people were not two different things. But of
necessity each Individual's life would be more Universal or
more Particular depending on circumstances.11 Here Marx drew
upon the familiar pattern of Speculative philosophy in which
each part of the system had the same characteristics as the
whole, distinctions being in terms of relative difference. It
occurred to Marx, however, that the identity between the
Individual and the species could not be complete, because
whereas death befell the Individual, the species was immortal.
Since Marx had adopted a variant of the Speculative method,
one which returned to its point of departure, it was to be
expected that the cyclical pattern would be repeated within
the exposition. This phenomenon was present in embryo in
the 1844 manuscripts in Marx's account of how the capitalist
system reproduced the workers:
The worker produces capital and capital produces him, which means
that he produces himself; man as a worker, as a commodity, is the
product of the entire cycle . . .12
This was an idea which Marx was to elaborate at much greater

length in later writings. It is significant, therefore, that it should
make its appearance at such an early stage in the development
of Marx's system: an indication of its importance. Much in the
evolution of Marx's system was concerned with examining how
this cycle operated.
The cycle in which the workers were reproduced had con-
siderable ideological significance for Marx, because it was
connected with the anti-Romantic campaign. As the capitalist
system expanded, it would engulf the countryside and remove
all distinction between industry and agriculture. It would de-
stroy the feudal system and transform all the Estates into the
two classes of capitalists and workers. The workers would be gen-
erated in the same cycle which broke down traditional agrarian
society.13
Marx described the encounter between capitalism and the

feudal order in terms of the conflict between Romanticism
and the Enlightenment, one in which the latter was bound to
win. His scheme of development clearly carried on the anti-
Romantic campaign of the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher. A
significant difference between Marx's view and Ruge's, how-
ever, was that whereas the latter saw the culmination of histor-
ical development in national terms, the former saw it on a world
scale.
Marx believed that the way man would re-appropriate his
Essence was through the further development of the economy,
by bringing to a logical conclusion the very process of Abstrac-
tion that had enslaved him. But the historical dimension in the
Paris Manuscripts is poorly developed, and - more significandy
- the proposed deduction of the economic categories was not
undertaken.
These omissions are connected with a peculiarity of the Paris
Manuscripts which distinguish them from all later writings by
Marx. It is that the term which Marx uses as a polar opposite
to Nature is not Society, as might be expected, but 'Human-
ity'. This follows the practice of Engels in his 'Outlines of a
Critique of National Economy', but numerous passages in the
manuscripts devoted to Nature and its treatment by Hegel also
show that Marx believed he could use Nature in conjunction
with Humanity in enough senses to deduce the economic cat-
egories dialectically.
He began to do this by deriving Humanity from Nature by
stating:
But man is not only a Natural being: he is a human Natural being; i.e.
he is a being for himself and hence a species being, as which he must
confirm and realise himself both in his being and in his knowing.14
This was followed by the very significant statement that:
Neither Nature - objective - nor Nature - subjective as it stands is
immediately adequate to the human Essence.15
Hegel's term 'adequate' in this context can only mean that
Marx intended to show by a dialectic of 'Nature-Humanity'
how man's Natural being would be aligned with his Essential
self. Marx thought of this evolution as a historical process, and
presumably because it took place entirely within the realm of
Nature, he called it the 'true Natural history of man'.
Marx 151
Marx promised to return to this subject later, but never did,

and the dialectic of 'Nature-Humanity' was never elaborated.
When he did take up the subject of man's historical evolution
again, this time along with Engels in 'The German Ideology'
(1845), the polar opposites used were the more conventional
'Nature-Society'.
The work by Marx which documents the abandonment of
species-being or Humanity in favour of Society is the famous
"Theses on Feuerbach'. There he remarks that Feuerbach him-
self had been guilty of Abstraction in the manner in which he
had treated human Essence. He had presented it in a 'fixed'
way by presupposing an isolated human individual. He had
therefore conceived human Essence only16 as 'species', 'as an
internal, dumb Universality which Naturally unites many in-
dividuals'.17 Marx, however, needed to introduce the element
of movement or development into the concept of human
Essence and so required a Universality which would also unite
individuals Socially. Hence he now defined Human Essence as
'the ensemble of Social relations'.18 This gave to human Essence
a Natural and a Social component, and the Nature-Society
dialectic was used successfully in 'The German Ideology' to
give Marx's scheme a historical dimension. And following ac-
cepted usage from Kant onwards, Marx identified Society with
'Praxis'. As he observed 'All Social life is essentially Practical.'19
In the 'Theses on Feuerbach' Marx noted that the defini-
tion of human Essence as 'the ensemble of Social relations'
gave a rather satisfactory model of how the Individual related
to Society. As this was as a part to the whole - as the Individual
to the species had been - the relationship was one of relative
difference. It avoided the misconception of earlier materialism
which explained individuality in terms of social conditioning.
But this doctrine Marx pointed out:
forgets that the circumstances are changed by men and that it is
essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, there-
fore, divide Society into two parts, one of which is superior to Society.20
For Marx, therefore, the Individual was changed by Society,
but was also an integral part of the Society which changed him.
The process could therefore be described as 'self-changing'
(Selbstverdnderung), and consequently Marx was able to retain
human Nature as the driving force behind his system.
To signal the fact that he now proposed to speak of human

development in terms of Society rather than 'species' Marx
referred to his standpoint not as 'humanism' or 'Naturalism'
but as 'human Society' or 'Social humanity'. He still thought
of it, however, as an extension of Speculation.
Where Speculation ends, in actual life, there real positive science
begins, the representation of practical activity, of the practical process
of development of men.21
And as a sign that he had made a real break with the Abstract
approach of all his philosophical predecessors he set out a
new criterion for the truth of his system. This was whether
what he wrote was confirmed by what actually happened in
real life, by the real economic system, and by whether events
in the real world took the direction Marx hoped and expected.
In this connection, in a much quoted and much misunder-
stood passage, he paraphrased what Ruge had said about
philosophy only understanding the present situation, not be-
ing moved to action by it: 'Philosophers have only interpreted
the world in different ways; the point is to change it.'22
Speculation implied Reflection, and it was as Reflection that
Marx regarded all philosophies up to and including Feuer-
bach's. From the standpoint of 'human Society' or praxis Marx
believed one could account for mistaken views of reality. This
could be done if one set out 'from real active men and their
active life-process and demonstrate the development of ideo-
logical Reflections and echoes of that process'. 23 In this con-
nection Marx used a simile that Hegel had first used in the
introduction to the Phenomenology of Mind and which had been
taken up by the Young Hegelians in their anti-Romantic cam-
paign. It was that of philosophy standing on its head. 'If, Marx
asserted, 'men and their circumstances appear upside down in
all ideology as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon is caused
by their historical life-process, just as the objects on the retina
are caused by their immediate physical life.'24
The image of philosophy standing on its head is one Marx
was to use repeatedly, and in preference to the term Reflec-
tion. When he spoke, in the second edition of Capital, of Hegel's
philosophy 'standing on its head', he meant that he regarded
it as a philosophy of Reflection or as 'ideology'. This was the
light in which Marx regarded philosophical ideas in general.
But he employed them in his system nevertheless, since they
Marx 153
had a validity, albeit of a distorted kind. They were echoes of

something in the practical world of everyday life. Thus, when
one finds in Marx's presentation of political economy phe-
nomena and processes which emulate philosophical ideas, this
is intentional and an integral part of Marx's method.
The Hegelian system was the main inspiration for Marx, be-
cause he intended to derive the categories of political economy
in the same manner as Hegel had derived the categories of
philosophy. The cyclical pattern of Speculative philosophy was
also to be employed. The example of money as an 'Abstrac-
tion' from man's Social being suggested parallels with Schel-
ling's conception of Nature or Concepts. The Paris Manuscripts
also show that Marx was intrigued by the contrast between
fixed capital and circulating capital, which are likewise sugges-
tive of Schelling's conceptions. This contrast was to reappear
in the first outlines of Marx's proposed 'Critique of Political
Economy'. The term 'Production', as used by Marx, also shows
the same characteristics as in Schelling; it is movement or act-
ivity which can at some point be fixed or objectified.
'The German Ideology', written in conjunction with Friedrich
Engels in 1845, was intended for publication, and so is couched
in a popular style which minimizes philosophical vocabulary.
Nevertheless the dialectic of 'Nature-Society' is quite visible.
The style makes the work seem less complex than it is, espe-
cially in its opening paragraphs. These establish man simultan-
eously as a Natural and a Social being. This is done in such a
way that Nature has precedence, and yet demonstrates that
what gives mankind its essence is the possession of a Natural
and a Social element. Thus:
One can distinguish man from the animals by consciousness, by reli-

gion or by anything one likes. They themselves begin to distinguish
themselves from the animals as soon as they begin to produce their
means of subsistence, a step required by their bodily constitution. By
producing their means of life men indirectly produce their material
life itself.. 25
Further, Marx and Engels go on to state that:
The production of life . . . now already appears as a double relation-

ship - on the one hand a Natural, and on the other a Social relation-
ship - Social in the sense that Individuals cooperate, no matter under
what conditions, in what manner, and for what purpose . . .26
As a Natural being, man can only exist by forming Social re-

lationships of production. Besides showing that man neces-
sarily has a Natural and a Social aspect, the first passage has
neatly derived the primary economic category: Production. The
term is hardly appropriate to describe how primitive people
feed themselves, but it is a term with a philosophical dimen-
sion. It is the one Schelling used to denote Nature as move-
ment or activity. That sense is not out of place in the given
context. Marx and Engels go on to show that Production,
though a Social relationship, initially had a mostly Natural
character. In the course of its development, however, it be-
came increasingly Social.
For Marx and Engels the course of human history was the de-
velopment of Production to its logical conclusion, when Social
productive relations would be on a global, 'world-historical'
scale. It represented a progression from Nature to Society. The
passage in 'The German Ideology' where this idea is enunciated
is a very interesting one from the point of view of Marx's later
methodology. It is as follows:
Furthermore, the division of labour implies a conflict between the
Interest of the single Individual or the single family and the common
(gemeinschaftlich) Interest of all Individuals, who interact with one
another. And this common interest does not exist only in the imagi-
nation as a Universal', but first of all in reality as a mutual inter-
dependence of those Individuals among whom the labour is divided.
And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of the fact
that so long as people remain in Society which is rooted in Nature, so
long therefore as the division between particular and common (gemein-
sam) interests remain, so long as activity is not divided u p voluntarily,
but Naturally, man's own act will be an alien power opposed to him
and enslaving him instead of being controlled by him. 27
From this passage one learns that to overcome Alienation

man must escape from Nature to Society via Production. But
also significant here is the fact that, though it would have
been appropriate, the pair of opposites Universal and Particular
have not been used. Instead the terms common-particular
(gemeinschaftlich/ gemeinsam-besondere) have been employed, and
Universal (Allgemeine) is placed in quotation marks. Moreover,
when he wrote The Poverty of Philosophy in 1847 Marx only used
the two terms Nature and Society, not Universal and Particular.
Marx 155
But when Marx drafted his first version of 'The Critique of

Political Economy' in 1857-58, Universal and Particular had
been restored to prominence and used in combination with
Nature and Society.
In this way, Marx's works from the Paris Manuscripts to the
first draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy' represent a
peculiar progression. The Paris Manuscripts contain only Na-
ture; the 'German Ideology' has the pair of opposites Nature-
Society, and only in the first draft of 'The Critique of Political
Economy' do the complete set of Universal-Particular and
Nature-Society appear.
Now, there is no question of Marx's being unfamiliar with
the use of the terms Universal and Particular, consequently
what one witnesses is a marked reluctance to employ them -
just as he had at first been reluctant to use the term Social.
The passage from 'The German Ideology' cited above indi-
cates why this was so. Marx regarded the concepts as Abstrac-
tions. They were thus something to be accounted for, and found
equivalents in the real world, but they ought not to be part of
his method. In the above passage in the context where he
would earlier have used Universal he chooses the more con-
crete equivalent, 'common'. Marx took a great deal longer to
become reconciled to the use of Universal and Particular than
he had to Society. After all, both Nature and Society could be
said to have an objective existence, but there was no getting
round the fact that Universal and Particular were Abstractions
par excellence.
It is sufficient to observe the ubiquitous use of Universal
and Particular in the first draft of 'The Critique of Political Eco-
nomy' to see why Marx returned to their use. They were essen-
tial to deduce even the most basic categories: the derivation of
exchange value, abstract labour and money all depended on a
Universal-Particular dialectic. While the polar opposites Na-
ture-Society had given a scheme of historical development,
they had not been productive in deducing the economic cat-
egories. In building a system on the Universal-Particular inter-
change Marx was adopting a method that had been proven by
Hegel as a reliable means of deriving philosophical categories.
The final result of his modifications was to elaborate a system
which was more traditional than the one he had first in mind.
The adjustments made by Marx between 1844 and 1857

represented no change of viewpoint. The project remained
the same: to demonstrate that 'the economic categories are
only the theoretical expressions, the Abstractions of the Social
relations of Production'. 28 But the precise means of carrying
out the project required to be modified in order to construct
a system that would link the economic categories together in
the desired way. It would have been easy for Marx to expound
his scheme of human development in a way similar to that
chosen by such writers as Fichte, Gorres or Hegel, that is as a
philosophy of history. It would, however, have ill suited his
purpose to analyse the Alienation of the human Essence
through Abstraction, by expounding his subject in an Abstract
way. The form of the work ought to correspond to its content;
it must on the one hand avoid being entirely empirical, but on
the other, it should not allow philosophical categories any
existence that was independent of the material they general-
ized. In Marx's view:
When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of

knowledge loses its medium of existence. At best its place can only be
taken by a summing-up of the most general results, Abstractions which
arise from observation of the historical development of men. Viewed
apart from real history, these Abstractions have in themselves no value
whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of his-
torical material to indicate the sequence of separate strata. But they
by no means afford a recipe or scheme, as does philosophy, for neatly
trimming the epochs of history. 29
Marx did, however, incorporate in his economic writings

a considerable number of 'Abstractions' of this kind, the vo-
cabulary and ideas taken from earlier philosophical systems.
The most obvious of these were the familiar polar opposites
Universal-Particular, Nature-Society, but a number of charac-
teristic borrowings from Hegel's and Schelling's systems can
also be recognized. This gives rise to the question: if Marx
believed that Abstractions had caused such serious misconcep-
tions in the past, why did he himself make such wide use of
them? Why did he not write as an economist purely and simply?
One could also pose this question in the following way: Why
didn't Marx adhere strictly to the approach he believed to be
right and forsake completely all those he knew to be wrong?
Marx 157
In this formulation the question had already been answered in

general terms by Hegel in his Phenomenology. There he had
argued that a consistent application of the Speculative method
precluded the antithesis of truth and falsity. After all, a com-
prehensive account of what was true should be able to explain
the errors that had been made through Reflection. And since
the truth had been arrived at via these Reflected views, these
also must contain some degree of validity.
Hegel's view of the relationship between truth and falsity
corresponds closely with the procedure Marx adopted in his
economic writings. Marx's use of borrowings from the Ger-
man philosophical tradition implied a belief that these ideas
had an important function in explaining how the real world
functioned. The cardinal mistake the philosophers had made,
in Marx's view, was that they had conceived the patterns and
processes they had discovered as mental constructs, as 'Ab-
stractions', and had ascribed to these an independent exist-
ence. But in fact, the mechanisms and processes revealed by
the philosophers had a real existence in the concrete everyday
world in which people made their living. It was in the realm
of political economy that philosophical Abstractions had their
origin and their real equivalents.
One must not lose sight of the fact that the audience Marx
had in mind was the same one as had been addressed by the
Hallische Jahrbiicher and its successors; that is, an audience that
would recognize the allusions to classical German philosophy
contained in his critique of political economy. It would have
occurred to such an audience that in Marx's presentation the
capitalist economy emulated patterns associated with the philo-
sophical systems of Hegel, Schelling and other thinkers of the
period. It was Marx's argument, however, that while the pat-
terns in philosophy and political economy were identical, it
was the latter that had primacy; the ideas of the philosophers
were a Reflected version of real processes in the economic
sphere. In other words, it was being which determined con-
sciousness and not the other way round. But Marx's work was
published too late to have the audience that would be aware
of the peculiar combination in it of philosophy and econom-
ics, and which would be able to make the crucial distinction
between what Marx had taken from his predecessors and what
he himself had added.
The attempt to bring together philosophical ideas and con-

crete economic data in a single system could not but be a
lengthy and demanding exercise. In Marx's own estimation he
spent a good fifteen years on study before beginning to write
his 'critique of economic categories'. 30 The process of writing
this critique began in 1857 and continued for the rest of Marx's
life. It was never completed, and only one volume of the first
section of his critique, the first volume of Capital, appeared
during his lifetime.
It is important for understanding Marx's purpose to realize
that although he became widely known as the author of Capi-
tal, this was not the work he set out to write, but only a portion
of it. As his letters at the beginning of 1858 show, he intended
to elaborate on the kind of critique of economic categories he
had outlined in his 1844 Paris Manuscripts. The critique would
be divided into sections or 'Books', on the same pattern as
Adam Smith's or John Stuart Mill's works on political economy,
and, like those works, it would be concerned with 'the principles
of political economy'. Marx's, however, would be a 'Critique
of Economic Categories', 31 as it would show the categories of
political economy to be Abstractions from man's species-
being. The title he originally gave to his work was 'The Critique
of Political Economy'.
By 1857 Marx had decided on what the Books composing
'The Critique of Political Economy' were to be and what order
they would follow. The Books and their order were:
1. On Capital
2. On Landed Property
3. On Wage Labour
4. On the State
5. International Trade
6. The World Market
It would also be necessary, Marx thought, to incorporate some-
where in the six Books some critical comments on previous
economists, David Ricardo in particular.32
Marx did not plan to publish the entire work at once. He
thought it would be more convenient to bring it out in the
form of small books, which could eventually be amalgamated
into completed volumes, just as Vischer had done with his
work on aesthetics.33 Vischer's Aesthetics had come out between
Marx 159
1846 and 1854 as 'Parts' and 'Sections', each unit comprising

well over a hundred pages. The complete work consisted of a
total of 1785 pages in three volumes.34
It very soon became plain, however, that the undertaking
was much bigger and more complex than Marx had antici-
pated, and 'Capital', which had been conceived as a 'Book'
grew to be a work, each of whose three sections comprised a
substantial volume. These three sections were: 1. The Produc-
tion Process of Capital; 2. The Circulation Process of Capital;
and 3. Profit and Interest. They were part of the original plan
of 'The Critique of Political Economy' and were eventually to
constitute the published volumes of Capital, the first appearing
during Marx's lifetime, and the other two published by Engels
after Marx's death.
Despite their physical bulk, the three published volumes of
Capital still made up only a fraction of the system Marx in-
tended to present to the public. Marx's ideas, therefore, can
best be reconstructed by following the evolution of 'The Cri-
tique of Political Economy', and discovering why the project
failed to come to fruition.
The outline for 'The Critique of Political Economy' written
in November 1857 made it clear that the themes of the six
Books were intended to form a connected logical sequence.
For these corresponded closely with how Marx saw the struc-
ture of his work. He proposed to begin with an examination
of the commodity. This would have two aspects: the character
of the commodity itself and the kind of social relations the
commodity both required and created. According to this plan:
The internal structure of production therefore forms the second sec-
tion; the concentration of the whole in the State the third; the inter-
national relation the fourth; the world market the conclusion, in which
production is posited as a totality together with all its moments, but
within which at the same time all contradictions come into play. The
world market then, again, forms the presupposition of the whole as
well as its bearer. Crises are the general intimation which posits beyond
the presupposition and the impulse which drives towards the adoption
of a new historic form.35
The idea of the world market as the culminating point of

capitalism and the one at which it gave place to a new social
order had been present in both the Paris manuscripts of 1844
and 'The German Ideology'. It was an idea inherited from

Adam Miiller, who had also seen the world market as the point
where the capitalist system reached its culmination.
The logical sequence which ran through the six Books of
'The Critique of Political Economy' was consequendy of su-
preme importance. For if it could be shown that 'the inherent
organic laws' within the capitalist system brought it to a point
of culmination in the world market, then its necessary collapse
would be demonstrated. It was in fact Marx's intention to show
that: 'The tendency to create the world market is directly given
in the Concept of capital itself.'36 In other words, the logical
deduction of the categories of political economy, from the
commodity to the world market, was at the same time a proof
that the capitalist system developed in a way that ensured its
own eventual destruction.
Abstract logical categories and the categories of political
economy had in common that they were Externalized human
Social Nature. On the one hand this meant that man's own So-
cial being confronted him like an Alien force of Nature, but on
the other hand it was because man's Essential Nature had been
Externalized in this way that it was possible to predict its course
in terms of Natural laws of necessity. If, Marx, considered:
there were no such laws the system of bourgeois production as a
whole would be incomprehensible (unbegreiflich). Here, therefore, it is
a matter of expounding the Nature of this specific mode of production,
consequently of its Natural laws.57
The Externalization of man's essential being as an Abstrac-

tion fixed it as a Concept and thus made it comprehensible
and necessary at the same time.
When Marx thought of capital as a Concept, it was on the
one hand in terms of fixity and Externalization, and on the
other in the Hegelian terms of Universality, Particularity and
Individuality. This emerged in the first outline of 'The Cri-
tique of Political Economy', where it was proposed to com-
mence with 'the Universal Concept of Capital', then proceed
to 'the Particularity of Capital'. Individuality emerged with the
formation of the world market. 38
The outline which Marx drafted next showed a closer inte-
gration of the three terms with the subject matter. It was as
follows:
Marx 161
I. Universality:
1. (a) The emergence of capital from money.
(b) Capital and Labour . ..
2. Particularizing (Besonderung) of Capital:
(a) Capital circulant, capital fixe; Turnover of
Capital.
3. The Individuality of Capital; Capital and Profit;
Capital and Interest. Capital as value, distinct from
itself as Interest and Profit.
II. Particularity:
1. Accumulation of Capitals.
2. Competition of Capitals.
3. Concentration of Capitals .. .
III. Individuality:
1. Capital as Credit.
2. Capital as Stock-Capital
3. Capital as Money Market. In the Money Market
Capital is posited in its Totality.39
This second outline is especially significant in that it shows
that Marx conceived not simply the capitalist system as a whole
in terms of Universality, Particularity and Individuality, but
also the various elements of which it was composed. This was,
moreover, the outline to which Marx later adhered, so that the
volumes one to three of Capital which were eventually pub-
lished constitute only the first cycle of capital, capital in its
Universality, or as it is habitually translated into English, 'Capi-
tal in General'.
Marx had in mind a system like Hegel's or Schelling's, one
which was homogeneous in the sense that each of its compo-
nent parts had the same characteristics as the system in its
entirety. This also applied to the fact that the outcome of the
system provided the presuppositions on which it was based.
Each element of the capitalist economy had the same cyclic
character. Thus, according to Marx:
Every precondition of the Social production process is at the same

time its result, and every one of its results appears simultaneously as
its precondition. All the production relations within which the pro-
cess moves are therefore just as much its products as they are its
preconditions.40
Within the b o u n d a r i e s of the State three such cycles were

envisaged, such that:
Capital is the economic power which dominates everything in bour-
geois Society. It must form the point of departure and the conclusion,
and has to be expounded before landed property. After both have
been examined in their Particularity, their interconnection must be
investigated.41
T h e cyclic character e x t e n d e d down to the capitalist system's
most elementary unit, the commodity. According to Marx:
the premiss, the starting-point, of the formation of capital and of capit-
alist production is the development of the product into a commodity
. . . It is as such a premiss that we treat the commodity, since we
proceed from it as the simplest element in capitalist production. On
the other hand, the product, the result of capitalist production, is the
commodity.42
T h e cyclical m e t h o d of exposition, Marx believed, corresponded
to the actual working of the capitalist system. In fact, many of
the movements he described were cyclical, since they c o n c e r n e d
the circulation of m o n e y or commodities, or cycles of repro-
duction a n d accumulation.
T H E FIRST DRAFT O F T H E 'CRITIQUE O F POLITICAL

ECONOMY'
As the commodity formed the starting-point n o t simply of the

first cycle b u t also of the system as a whole, it contained some
e l e m e n t of the o u t c o m e of the entire system - Society. This
was an i m p o r t a n t e l e m e n t of Marx's argument, because h e
wished to suggest that even in Civil or Bourgeois Society with
its fragmentation a n d division of labour, Society (or socialism)
was nevertheless present as m a n ' s essential Nature. In this
interpretation Civil Society was only a distorted a n d perverted
variant of Society proper, o n e in which the Social b o n d was
p r e s e n t in the form of the exchange of commodities. T h u s , for
Marx, the fragmentation of Society was n o t an absolute, b u t
only a relative fragmentation, since the basic Social fabric was
still intact. H e was able to maintain that:
private interest is itself already a Socially determined interest, which
can be achieved only within the conditions laid down by Society and
with the means provided by Society.43
Marx 163
In the first draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy' (often

referred to as the Grundrisse) Marx elaborated in considerable
detail the interconnection of several economic categories to be
covered in his six books. He had managed to explain how it
was that the Social connection between people, the power
which carried the capitalist system forward, came to exist in an
objectivized, Abstract form. He was also able to show how the
same Abstraction was reflected in the commodity. These two
things were both connected to the conception of money as the
Abstract form of Society which Marx had first propounded in
1844.
In Marx's view the characteristic feature of the capitalist
system of production was that it transformed the labour of
individuals into Abstract labour. The capitalist made his 'sur-
plus value' by producing commodities for sale. What made
these capable of being bought and sold was the fact that be-
sides being specific types of product, and so having a Particu-
lar use, they also had the common characteristic, irrespective
of what use value they might have, of being worth something,
that is of embodying value. Whereas use value was Particular
and concrete, exchange value was Universal and Abstract.
The labour which created this Abstract exchange value was
also Abstract, because, while Particular kinds of labour were
employed to create the value in the various types of product,
the exchange of commodities required that the labour embod-
ied in them should be reduced to a common denominator, to
labour in general. This Universalized kind of labour, 'socially-
necessary' labour, was an Abstraction. Marx explained:
This reduction appears to be an Abstraction, but it is an Abstraction
which is made every day in the social process of production. The con-
version of all commodities into labour time is no greater an Abstraction
than the resolution of all organic bodies into air.44
Abstract labour was the activity which constituted the ex-
change value: the two categories were thereby inseparably
linked in the commodity. As the nucleus of the capitalist sys-
tem, the commodity united in itself all the main structural
elements of Marx's system: Universality, Particularity, Nature
and Society. Thus:
[Exchange] value45 is the Social relation, their economic quality ... As
a value, every commodity is equally divisible; in its Natural existence
this is not the case. As a value it remains the same no matter how
many metamorphoses and forms of existence it goes through; in reality,

commodities are exchanged only because they correspond to different
systems of needs. As a value the commodity is Universal; as a real com-
modity it is Particular.46
This equation of exchange value with Society and Universal-
ity, and use value with Particularity was of course very close to
the scheme previously proposed by Adam Midler. Marx, how-
ever, never acknowledged any debt to Miiller, and indeed in
his published works and manuscripts repeatedly made dispar-
aging remarks about the 'Romantic' Miiller. The fact that he
did so on so many occasions over such a long period of time
suggests that Miiller formed part of Marx's constant reading.
By making the contrast between the Abstract quality of com-
modities as components of the economic system and their
empirical existence as concrete objects, Marx was able to intro-
duce the critique of Abstraction into the most basic compo-
nent of his system. At the same time, by treating this contrast
in terms of the established structural elements of Universality,
Particularity, Nature and Society, he had simplified his task of
linking the categories of political economy together.
An important use which Marx made of the four terms in his
first draft was to deduce the category of money. This arose
from the character of exchange value as an Abstraction from
use value, from the Natural characteristics of the commodity.
Money took this Abstraction one stage further and severed all
connection with the commodity's Natural form:
The same contradiction between the Particular Nature of the commod-
ity as product and its Universal Nature as exchange value, which created
the necessity of positing it doubly, as this Particular commodity and
the commodity's Particular Natural qualities and its Universal Social
qualities contains from the beginning the possibility that these two
separated forms in which the commodity exists are not convertible
into one another. The exchangeability of the commodity exists as a
thing beside it, as money, as something different from the commodity,
something no longer directly identified with it.47
Money thus existed as a Universal commodity alongside all

Particular commodities. And since exchange value represented
man's Externalized Social relation, money embodied this rela-
tion in its most Abstract form.
In his view of money as the Abstracted form of Man's Social
Marx 165
being, Marx retained the interpretation he had first put forward

in 1844. In the draft of 1857, however, he argued in addition
that if man's Social relation was Externalized as money, it could
not exist simultaneously as an actual community. Hence the
effect of money was to dissolve all pre-capitalist communities:
Monetary greed, or mania for wealth, necessarily brings with it the
decline and fall of the ancient communities. Hence it is the antithesis
of them. It is itself the community, and can tolerate none other stand-
ing above it. . . Where money is not itself the community, it must
dissolve the community.48
This, Marx added, presupposed the development of exchange

values.
Marx clearly agreed with Adam Ferguson against Rousseau
that men's Natural state was a Social one and not an existence
as isolated individuals. He was also convinced that capitalism
both presupposed and created Civil Society; so that it was an
essential part of his argument that the extension of capitalism
should dissolve the existing communities, be these tribes, clans
or peasant communes.
This position, however, posed an enigma: if money presup-
posed exchange value, and exchange value presupposed Civil
society, how could money have been found in the ancient
world at all? Indeed, how had any commodity-producing Soci-
ety been able to emerge?
Marx's solution to this problem involved showing that money
had three functions, only one of which was characteristic of
Civil Society. On the other hand it involved showing that an-
cient communities only gradually became involved in exchange,
and that it was only subsequently that the exchange became
commodity exchange. It was Marx's contention that:
Exchange begins not between individuals within a community, but
rather at the point where the communities end - at their boundary, at
the point of contact between different communities . . .49
Thus, exchange could begin while leaving the communities
intact; commodity exchange, however, would necessarily lead
to their dissolution and the formation of Civil Society.
The two functions of money which were not necessarily
concomitant with commodity exchange were (a) as a measure
of value, and (b) as a medium of exchange. In the first function,
Marx pointed out, money could be used as a measure of value

without that value being exchange value, that is being objec-
tified labour time. In that case the products whose value was
measured would not be commodities. In the second case, where
money was employed as a medium of exchange, this too fell
short of commodity exchange, because money simply served
as the intermediary in exchanging one product for another.
The third function of money, however, money as Abstract
exchange value, presupposed Civil Society and so proved de-
structive to the ancient communities. 50
Marx attached considerable importance to the difference
between how money circulated as a medium of exchange and
the way it circulated as exchange value or capital. It was in the
difference in cycle that the category of capital emerged from
the category of money. If money was employed as a means of
exchange pure and simple, the commodity owner exchanged
his commodity for money and, having obtained this money,
used it for the purchase of another commodity. The operation
began and ended with a commodity. The formula for the com-
plete transaction was: Commodity - Money - Commodity, or
in Marx's notation:
C- M- C
In his version of this operation contained in A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy published in 1859 Marx observed
that the C at the two extremes of the circuit had a different
relation to the M. The first C represented a Particular com-
modity. This was compared with money as the Universal com-
modity, and in the second phase money as the Universal
commodity was compared with an Individual commodity. The
formula C - M - C could therefore be reduced to the Abstract
logical syllogism:
P- U -I
where Particularity was the first term, Universality the second,
and Individuality the third.51 Here the parallel with Hegel's
Logic was especially close.
The cycle C - M - C began and ended with a commodity
Marx termed 'simple circulation' and did not necessarily pre-
suppose the existence of capital. This initially emerged from
circulation, and its starting-point as well as its result was money.
Marx 167
Capitalist circulation in its most Abstract form was the operation

of buying in order to sell, and constituted the cycle Money -
Commodity - Money or:
M - C-M
This was the first cycle in which exchange values appeared,
and historically corresponded to the formation of merchant
capital. In its early manifestations this variety of capital still left
the ancient communities intact, because the commercial op-
erations took place on their margins, perhaps by entire mer-
cantile peoples like the Lombards who specialized in trade, or
it might take place in the interstices of Society, as in Poland
where commerce was carried on by the Jews.52
Though commercial capital was the first form of capital, it
did not involve the production of commodities. Nor did the
circulation of commercial capital involve any necessary ele-
ment of repetition. The cycle need only be repeated until the
supply of available exchange values had been exhausted. The
process contained no Inner necessity by which the cycle re-
quired to be recommenced. In the case of merchant capital,
according to Marx, 'circulation . . . does not carry within itself
the principle of self-renewal'.53
For Marx, capital involved not simply the exchange of values,
but also the production of exchange values, that is it involved
the process by which exchange values arose in the first place,
that is the labour process. This, according to Marx:
is their point of departure, and through its own motion it goes back
into exchange value creating production as a result. We have there-
fore reached the point of departure again, production which posits,
creates exchange values; but this time production which presupposes cir-
culation as a developed moment and which appears as a constant process,
which posits circulation and constantly returns from it into itself in
order to posit it anew. 54
Thus, the factor which gave capital its specific character was
its inner dynamic as a system. The circulation of commodities
was fed by their production. This in turn dissolved existing
pre-capitalist communities, creating Civil Society and provid-
ing the propertyless class of proletarians whose labour would
be Abstracted and objectified in new commodities for circula-
tion. These were the interconnections which linked capital to
landed property and to wage labour, the categories to be treated

in Marx's second and third books.
Marx attached great importance to the distinction between
the 'original accumulation' of capital, the process which set
the circulation of capital in motion, perhaps with savings gar-
nered by the capitalist by non-capitalist means, and the circu-
lation process proper of capital, in which capital created the
conditions for its own continued reproduction and expansion.
In other words the circulation of capital returned to its own
point of departure, and in doing so acted as an organic sys-
tem. Each circuit of capital extended the social conditions to
which it owed its origins, so that: 'The production of capitalists
and wage-labourers is thus a chief product of capital's valor-
ization process.' 55
The circulation and reproduction of capital was therefore a
cumulative process which ensured that once established 'at
first sporadically or locally alongside' earlier modes of produc-
tion, such as craft and artisan labour, it would destroy these
and eventually establish production relations that were 'ad-
equate' to capital.56
Marx therefore envisaged two kinds of effect that capital
would have on pre-capitalist society. The first of these was
destructive. The ancient communities would be dissolved so
that the original collectivism of humanity would be frag-
mented and people would be dispossessed of their collective
ownership of land. This would render them propertyless and
separated from the objective conditions of production, which
henceforth appeared as something Alien and External. The
destruction of the communities thus created the conditions
for wage-labour.
The second effect of capital's circulation was more construc-
tive. It was the progressive reconstruction of all previously
existing society and economic forms on the capitalist model,
or what Marx termed a form 'adequate' to capital. The Hegelian
term implied that as it circulated capital would progressively
become more rational by eliminating any element which was
at odds with its own essence or Nature. Marx's implication was
that in this respect capital would act like a Concept.
The parallel could not be quite exact, because what Hegel's
Concept had become adequate to was itself, since the move-
ment of the Concept had been that of Self-Consciousness. Marx
Marx 169
therefore needed a term which would convey the idea of the

Concept's making something else adequate to itself. He there-
fore borrowed from Schelling the term 'Subsumption', so that,
for example, he could speak of the 'Subsumption of labour
under capital'.
Marx, however, believed that not only economic phenom-
ena were Subsumed under capital, but that 'many things are
Subsumed under capital which do not seem to belong to it
Conceptually'. That is, some things relatively remote from the
Concept of capital and neither 'posited by it' nor 'presupposed
by it' could be Subsumed under it.57 Subsumption, therefore,
had two important functions in Marx's conception of the cir-
culation of capital: it extended the sphere of capitalism by
breaking down the ancient communities and transforming their
populations into wage-labourers and capitalists, and it oper-
ated intensively to bring ever more spheres under the domina-
tion of capital. To indicate the degree to which something was
Subsumed under capital, Marx used the Schellingian term 'level'
or Potenz.58
An important use to which Marx put the conceptions of
Subsumption and Potenzen was to explain how the political and
legal institutions of a country had been brought into align-
ment with its economic system. The case in point was France,
the classic country of Civil Society, where the principles of the
free market, liberty and equality were given legal and political
expression. Marx accounted for the phenomenon thus:
The Universal interest is precisely the Universality of self-seeking in-
terests. Therefore, when the economic form, exchange, posits the all-
sided equality of its subjects, then the content, the individual as well
as the objective material which drives towards exchange, is freedom.
Equality and freedom are thus not only respected in exchange based
on exchange values, but also the exchange of exchange values is the
productive, real base of all equality and freedom. As pure ideas they are
merely the idealised expressions of this base; as developed in juridical,
political, social relations, they are merely this base at a higher level
(Potenz).59
In other words, the ideas of freedom and equality were Ab-
stractions from the exchange of commodities, while the em-
bodiment of the principles of liberty and equality in legal,
Social and political institutions was the Subsumption of these
areas under capital.
The conception of Subsumption was only outlined in the

first draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy'. But clearly
Marx found it very useful, as it was developed considerably in
second draft (1861-1863).
As presuppositions and consequences of the circulation
process of capital, the dissolution of the ancient communities
and the reconstruction of Society on capitalist principles were
part of the same process, so that:
Patriarchal as well as ancient conditions (feudal also) thus disintegrate

with the development of commerce, of luxury, of money, of exchange
value, while modern society arises and grows in the same measure. 60
This process, in Marx's view, did not stop at national boundaries.

It was the destiny of capital to 'conquer the whole earth for its
market'. 61 This aspect of capital was what Marx called its 'Uni-
versal tendency'. He explained it thus:
The more developed the capital. . . the more extensive the market
over which it circulates, which forms the spatial orbit of its circulation,
the more does it strive simultaneously for an even greater extension
of the market and for greater annihilation of space and time . . . There
appears here the Universal tendency of capital, which distinguishes it
from all previous stages of production. Although limited by its very
Nature, it strives towards Universal development of the forces of pro-
duction, and thus becomes the premiss for a new mode of produc-
tion . . .62
What linked the world market to the commodity was the Uni-
versality common to both. It was this Universality which could
justify the claim that 'the tendency to create a world market is
direcdy given in the Concept of capital itself.'63 The ascent
from the commodity to the world market was an ascent like that
in Hegel's Logic, one through ever higher levels of Universality.
Capital's drive towards Universality was also the impulse which
led to its own destruction. For, according to Marx:
The Universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers

in its own Nature, which will at a certain stage of development, allow
it to be recognised as being itself the greatest barrier to this tendency,
and hence will drive towards its own suspension. 64
A prominent element in the first draft of 'The Critique of

Political Economy' concerned the kind of barriers in the Nature
Marx 171
of capital which would eventually culminate in its destruction.

This was connected with the tendency noticed by previous
economic writers for the rate of profit to fall.
Marx explained this tendency by drawing a distinction be-
tween the capital which was expended on labour and that
which was expended on materials and machinery in the pro-
duction process. The first he called 'variable', and the second
'constant' capital. Now since exchange value was created only
by the objectification or 'crystallization' of living labour in
commodities, it followed that only variable capital was capable
of yielding up surplus value. Consequendy the greater propor-
tion of variable capital embodied in commodities the more
surplus value would result. But competition constantly encour-
aged the capitalist to increase the productivity of labour by
mechanization, so that constant capital was increased and vari-
able capital reduced. Living labour was replaced by labour
already crystallized in plant and machinery. The rate of sur-
plus value and therefore of profit, one of its varieties, conse-
quently fell.
Behind Marx's explanation for the falling rate of profit and
his conception of constant and variable capital (these terms
were exceptional in that they were not established economic
categories of his day) was the philosophical doctrine that all
development and progress had its source in human activity;
Nature, to which objects belonged, was incapable of develop-
ment. Living labour only could be the source of exchange value,
which, after all, was only man's Externalized Social Nature.
The theory of the increasing replacement of variable by
constant capital was convenient, because it presupposed a high
degree of mechanization and technical advance in industry, so
that by the time of its collapse capitalism would have completed
its civilizing mission. But also, since the remaining workers in
the highly mechanized industry were the only source of sur-
plus value, they would be exploited to the full. Therefore the
high level of capitalism's development would coincide with
the most extreme misery on the part of the workers. As Marx
pointed out:
the highest development of productive power together with the great-
est expansion of existing wealth will coincide with the depreciation of
capital, degradation of the labourer, and the most straitened exhaus-
tion of his vital powers. These contradictions lead to explosions, cata-
clysms, crises . . .65
It would be a situation, clearly, which was ripe for revolution.

Since the theory of the falling rate of profit involved the
subject of competition, 'the interaction of many capitals on
one another', Marx resolved to deal with the question in the
last section of 'The Critique of Political Economy', rather than
in the section devoted to the Universal Concept of capital. He
thought, however, that the division of capital into variable and
constant ought to be treated in the earlier section, and this
kind of distribution was maintained in subsequent drafts, so
that as Marx devoted an increasing amount of attention to the
section on the Universal Concept of Capital, he developed his
ideas on the falling rate of profit less fully.
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL

ECONOMY
In view of the complexity of the subject of capital, Marx found

that he would require two instalments to treat the 'Universal
Concept of Capital' or 'Capital in General'. The first instal-
ment to be published, therefore, the Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy Part I,66 which appeared in 1859, only dealt
with the commodity, money and simple circulation, as well as
commenting on how these subjects had been tackled by pre-
vious writers. The book was superseded in 1867 by Capital
Volume I, but its Preface had an independent interest and
importance, because there Marx set down in summary form
what he thought the characteristics of the finished Critique
would be. He did this in popular language, avoiding the tech-
nicalities he normally employed. The Preface has been habitu-
ally considered a convenient summary of Marx's most basic
ideas, but although it did have this character, it only summar-
ized Marx's system as it was developing at the start of the 1860s.
Some of the features it alluded to were later to be abandoned.
The Preface was written at a time when Marx was about
to embark on the second draft of 'The Critique of Political
Economy' in which he would develop the conceptions of
Subsumption and Potenzen at considerable length. The Preface
reflected this preoccupation, though the terms themselves were
not used. At the time of writing, however, Marx obviously
anticipated that later instalments of his Critique would eluci-
date the fleeting remarks he had made by way of introduction.
Marx 173
In the manuscript of the following instalments Marx ampli-

fied his conception of how liberty and equality were higher
Potenzen of the economic 'base' of exchange value, by speaking
about the character of the 'superstructure' which arose on this
base:
Once a Society exists in which some people live without working
(not taking part direcdy in the production of use values), it is clear that
the whole superstructure of Society has as its conditions for existence
the surplus labour of the worker. From this surplus labour the non
workers gain doubly: first, the material conditions of their lives . . .
Second, the free time which the non-workers have at their disposal,
either to fritter away or to engage in activities which are not directly
productive (such as wars, running the state), or to develop human
capabilities and levels (Potenzen) of Society (Art etc. science), which
have no directly practical aim . . . the development of human capabil-
ities is, on the other hand, based on the very thing which acts as a
restriction to this development. All hitherto existing Society has been
based on this antagonism.67
The terms 'base' and 'superstructure' were featured in the
Preface to the Critique, detached from the rather complex
conceptions of Subsumption and Potenzen from which their
validity derived:
In the Social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into
definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations
of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of
their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real base,
on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which cor-
respond definite forms of Social consciousness.68
Marx also expressed the belief that capitalist Society would be
the last of this 'antagonistic' kind.
The Preface made the important point that it was always
necessary to distinguish between the 'material transformation
of the economic conditions of production' which could be deter-
mined 'with the precision of Natural science' and the legal,
political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short the ideo-
logical forms, which could not.69 In this proposition Marx con-
firmed a fundamental principle of his method, namely that it
was through Nature and Natural laws that prediction was pos-
sible. And whereas economic phenomena contained this Nat-
ural element, those of the mind, which operated according to
the laws of freedom, did not.
A significant element in the Preface was Marx's brief com-

ment on world history to the effect that:
In broad oudine, the Asiatic, classical, feudal and modern bourgeois
modes of production may be designated as epochs in the progressive
economic development of Society.70
This was a periodization which was common to the philoso-
phies of history propounded by Fichte, Gorres and Hegel, and
one which had entered into the discussions on historical,
philosophical and political matters for at least half a century.
Some of the periods had acquired polemical and ideological
overtones, through such factors as the Enlightenment's predi-
lection for the classical era, and the Romantics' nostalgia for
the Middle Ages, which in the hands of Miiller had been turned
into a justification for preserving the feudal order and stem-
ming the tide of capitalist relations.
Marx's view of what was characteristic of these historical
epochs owed a great deal to contemporary conceptions. In
T h e German Ideology', for example, he had spoken of feudal
property as 'estate property' (stdndische Eigentum), as the 'hier-
archical division of landed property', 71 just as did most writers
of his day. Later, Marx became more concerned with the eco-
nomic aspects of feudalism, in serf labour as the precursor
of wage labour, just as slavery had given way to serfdom. His
view of feudalism as a hierarchical system of estates, however,
throws some light on what Marx meant by the 'Asiatic' mode
of production.
The apologists of feudalism had always argued that the hier-
archy of estates ensured individual freedom by interposing an
intermediary stratum between sovereign and subjects. The
absence of feudal estates made the country a despotism, like
the despotisms of the East, where the despot confronted his
individual subjects directly.
Marx was unable to endorse this view of Oriental despotism
in its entirety, because it assumed a Society consisting of isolated
individuals. He believed this assumption to be entirely false,
since before the capitalist era men lived in local communities.
With this modification, however, Marx accepted that Oriental
despotism consisted in the absence of intermediary social strata
between the communities and the sovereign power. In speaking
of India in a letter to Engels in 1853, Marx noted that:
Marx 175
the whole empire . . . was divided into villages, each of which possessed
a completely separate organisation and formed a little world in
itself... I do not think anyone could imagine a more solid foundation
for stagnant Asiatic despotism.72
A n d in the first draft of ' T h e Critique of Political Economy'
Marx h a d spoken of the Asiatic land forms with the despot as
'the comprehensive unity standing above all these little com-
munities', a n d of the 'despotic regime hovering over the litde
communities'. 7 3
At the time Marx wrote the Preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy his extensive investigations into Asian
a n d o t h e r forms of pre-capitalist economic a n d social organ-
ization still lay before him, so that what h e wrote there was
based largely o n what he assumed to be the case. A n d what h e
based his presuppositions u p o n was what h e h a d discovered
about the capitalist economic form. T h e Introduction to the
first draft m a d e this clear. T h e r e Marx claimed that:
Bourgeois Society is the most developed and complex historic organ-
isation of production. The categories which express its relations, the
comprehension of its structure and relations of production of all the
vanished forms of Society, the ruins and component elements of which
were used in the creation of bourgeois Society... The anatomy of
man is a key to the anatomy of an ape. The intimation of a higher
development among the subordinate animal species, however, can be
understood only after the higher development is already known. The
bourgeois economy thus supplies the key to the classical etc.74
T h e insight which the capitalist economy provided to earlier
economic forms was to be regarded as entirely in keeping with
the overall m e t h o d of using results as premisses.
Just as the capitalist system operated in terms of Natural
laws, Marx believed that pre-capitalist systems conformed to
laws of the same type, t h o u g h in his opinion 'the Natural laws
of the Asiatic, classical or feudal modes of production were
essentially different'. 75 Even the ancient community, which h a d
given rise to these modes, h a d its Natural laws of development.
For Marx the community itself was a p r o d u c t of Nature. Thus,
he reasoned:
Since we may assume that pastoralism, or more generally a migratory
form of life, was the first form of the mode of existence . . . human-
kind is not settlement-prone by Nature - then the clan community,
the Natural community, appears not as a result of, but as a premiss of

the communal appropriation (temporary) and utilisation of the land.76
In this first mode of production the Natural laws on which it

operated were directly those of human Nature. In later modes
the objective conditions of production became increasingly
separate and Alien from the producers, so that:
The historical process was the divorce of elements which u p till then
had been bound together; its result is therefore not that one of the
elements disappears, but that each appears in a negative relation to
the other. 77
How Marx envisaged the mechanism which brought about

the transition from one mode of production to another was
not dissimilar to the way in which he saw the lifecycle of cap-
italism, i.e. the process by which it circulated and reproduced
would also bring about its destruction. In the case of the ancient
community its success and expansion created new conditions
in which it could no longer survive in its existing form:
Thus the preservation of the ancient community includes the destruc-
tion of the conditions on which it rests, turns into its opposite . . . Not
only do the objective conditions change in the act of reproduction
e.g. the village becomes a town, the wilderness a cleared field etc., but
the producers change too, in that they bring out new qualities in
themselves, develop themselves in production . . .78
Marx must also have supposed that pre-capitalist forms of

economic organization came to an end in the same way that
capitalism would, i.e. by reaching a point of culmination be-
yond which they could progress no further. As he stated in his
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
No Social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces
for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior rela-
tions of production never replace the older ones before the material
conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of
the old Society.
Since all forms of economic organization operated according to

Natural laws of necessity, this was the logical conclusion. 79
Because each historical mode of production had its own
peculiar laws of Nature, it followed that human history as a
whole had a Natural law running through its entire course.
Marx 111
This was human Social Nature coming into its own in the
course of history. In this connection the phenomenon of
Subsumption had an important part to play. For the historical
process ensured that human Society was Subsumed under a
progressively higher mode of production. The final stage or
Potenz would be Subsumption under the force which governed
the historical process as a whole: man's Essential Social being.
Then man's actual existence would be identical with, or ad-
equate to, his Essential being.
Referring to ancient communities in the first chapter of the
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx added a
footnote to the effect that:
It is an absurdly biased view that is gaining ground at the present time,
according to which the form of communal property which has its
origins in Nature is a specifically Slavonic, or even exclusively Russian,
phenomenon. It is an early form which can be found among the
Romans, Teutons and Celts, and of which a whole collection of diverse
patterns . . . is still in existence in India.80
The source of the 'absurdly biased view' was the book by August
von Haxthausen, Studies on the Interior of Russia, which had
been published between 1847 and 1851.
At the time of writing in 1858 Marx had not actually read
Haxthausen's book, but he obviously knew of the author and
his work from other sources. And there was nothing in Haxt-
hausen's background that would have inclined Marx favour-
ably towards him. A native of Westphalia, Haxthausen was a
product of the Romantic movement. In his youth he had par-
ticipated with other members of his family in collecting folk-
tales, songs and sayings, some of which were included in the
collection of the Brothers Grimm, with whom the Haxthausens
were on most friendly terms. Unlike the Young Hegelians,
however, Haxthausen had not abandoned the Romantic out-
look in later life, finding himself quite at home with the con-
servative direction it had taken.81
In 1819 he had turned his attention to the study of agrarian
relations in the two northern German principalities of Pader-
born and Corvey. In 1829 he published the results of his inves-
tigations in a book entitled On the Agrarian Structure in North
Germany. This work was in its way a compendium of Romantic
ideas; in a manner similar to the Historical School of Savigny
and Eichhorn it extolled the traditional 'Individual and or-

ganic' relationship between peasants and landowners and
deplored any attempts to introduce new and uniform legisla-
tion based on 'Universal theories'. 82 Like Miiller, he was espe-
cially opposed to the introduction of capitalism into agriculture.
In Haxthausen's view:
Modern times with their dominant cult of the Understanding have
dared to regard agrarian relations in the light of Abstract one-sided
theory and desired to discover for them a general form of legislation.
The chief error consists in regarding agriculture as a profession, a
business, a branch of industry.83
Haxthausen's work found favour with the Crown Prince,
the future Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Encouraged by this influ-
ential patron, Haxthausen set about compiling a report on the
agrarian structure of other Prussian territories, and for this
service he was raised to the rank of Privy Councillor (Geheimer
Regierungsrat). In 1842 he was invited by Tsar Nicholas I to visit
Russia to make a study of the agrarian relations of that coun-
try. During 1843 and 1844 he travelled through various Rus-
sian provinces, and between 1847 and 1851 he published the
three volumes of Studies on the Interior of Russia.
As in his work on the agrarian structure of northern Germany,
Haxthausen's study of the Russian peasant commune had a
polemical edge against Universalist theory, on this occasion
against French socialist ideas. In Russia, Haxthausen declared, a
socialist revolution was impossible, because all the ideals advoc-
ated by revolutionaries in Europe were already realized in the
Russian peasant commune. According to Haxthausen:
In all the other countries of Europe agitators stir up social revolution
against wealth and property, the abolition of inheritance; equal division
of the land is their shibboleth! In Russia such a revolution is impos-
sible, because the Utopia of the European revolutionaries is already
there, fully embodied in the life of the people!84
This was a hazardous statement to make in 1847, but remark-
ably in the following year when most of Europe was shaken by
revolution, Russia along with Britain remained relatively tran-
quil. Haxthausen's authority gained considerably as a result.
Among the Russian intelligentsia the peasant commune
acquired an ideological significance. It was placed within
the framework of current German philosophy, whose every
Marx 179
development, as Haxthausen observed, was followed with keen

interest in Russia.85 To the Slavophiles, such as I.V. Kireevsky,
A.I. Koshelev, Yu.F. Samarin and A.S. Khomyakov, whom
Haxthausen met in Moscow,86 the commune imbued Russia
with a spirit of fellowship and cooperation which was entirely
lacking in the individualistic and egotistical societies of West-
ern Europe.
During the 1840s Alexander Herzen, in company with the
Westerner camp, placed too great a value on individualism to
agree with the Slavophiles on the superiority of Russia in this
respect over the West.87 Once in exile, however, Herzen's ideas
began to change in a direction more akin to the Slavophile
way of thinking. He now regarded Western Europe in the same
light as the Slavophiles - as the world of the past, now suffer-
ing decay and decrepitude. Russia, on the other hand, he
thought of as the embodiment of youth and vigour. Whereas
European society was enervated by petty-bourgeois individual-
ism, Russian society, based on the peasant commune, was inte-
grated and whole, so that communism was the natural condition
of the Russian people. It was with Russia, Herzen considered,
that the future lay.
Herzen expressed these ideas in a series of articles in French
between 1849 and 1850. In the article 'Le peuple russe et le soci-
alism^ he drew the contrast between Russia and Europe in a
particularly evocative way. He posed the question:
Will old Europe have the strength to infuse new blood into its veins and
fling itself headlong into the boundless future, to which it is being
precipitously borne by an irresistible force over the ruins of its ancestral
home, the fragments of past civilisations, and the trampled treasures
of modern culture? . . .
In the midst of this chaos . . . of a world falling into dust at the foot
of the cradle of the future, men's eyes involuntarily turn to the East.88
By the 'East' Herzen of course meant Russia, and he went on

to elaborate on the social solidarity of the Russian peasant com-
mune, which, he observed, had required the Prussian scholar
Haxthausen to bring it to public attention. 89 Marx, however,
was not prepared to give much credence to a conservative
Romantic patronized by the Prussian King whose ideas on
economic development were diametrically opposed to his own.
In a letter to Engels written on 8 October 1858 Marx observed
that when a revolutionary movement began to develop in Russia

'we shall have proof of the full extent to which the worthy
Privy Councillor Haxthausen has allowed himself to be hood-
winked by the "authorities" and by the peasants those author-
ities have trained.' 90
To Marx's mind, Haxthausen's book was objectionable be-
cause it encouraged the belief that communal forms of agrar-
ian organization were peculiar to Russia. His conception of
capitalism, however, required that this kind of organization be
ubiquitous, since it was the institution dissolved by capital in
its reproductive cycle and whose dissolution gave rise to the
propertyless worker, the Universal class destined to bring about
socialism. The suggestion by Alexander Herzen, therefore, that
socialism could be based on the Russian peasant commune
would to Marx have seemed bizarre in the extreme. It would
have appeared to take no account of Natural laws which gov-
erned the actual development of Society. In one of the notes
appended to the first edition of Capital Volume I, Marx ridi-
culed Herzen's ideas:
If on the continent of Europe the influence of capitalist production
continues to develop as it has done up till now, enervating the h u m a n
race by overwork, the division of labour, subordination to machines,
the maiming of women and children, making life wretched, etc., hand
in hand with competition in the size of national armies, national
debts, taxes, sophisticated warfare etc., then the rejuvenation of Europe
by the knout and the obligatory infusion of Kalmyk blood so earnestly
prophesied by the half-Russian and full Muscovite Herzen may become
inevitable. (This belletrist, incidentally, has noted that he made his
discoveries on 'Russian' communism, not in Russia, but in the work
of the Prussian Privy Councillor Haxthausen) .91
The implication was that Herzen's views were derived from so
disreputable a source as to condemn them out of hand.
THE SECOND DRAFT OF 'THE CRITIQUE OF

POLITICAL ECONOMY'
In August 1861 Marx resumed writing on the theme of 'Capi-

tal in General' at the point where his first instalment, A Con-
tribution to the Critique of Political Economy Part I, had left off. In
the process of working on the first draft he had decided to
Marx 181
divide 'Capital in General' into three sections: (a) The Pro-

duction Process of Capital; (b) The Circulation Process of
Capital; and (c) The Combination of the Two, or Capital and
Interest. This corresponded to the way in which the material
had been arranged in the first draft. Such matters as the com-
modity, the creation of surplus value and the transformation
of money into capital had come under the heading of 'The
Production Process of Capital', whereas themes such as the
reproductive cycle of capital, accumulation, the dissolution of
the ancient communities and the process of Subsumption had
been classed under 'The Circulation Process of Capital'. The
theme of the falling rate of profit had appeared in the third
section, called in the first draft 'Capital as Fructiferous. Trans-
formation of Surplus Value into Profit'. This distribution of
material was maintained from the first draft right to the pub-
lished versions of Marx's work, so that the way in which each
of the sections developed through the second and third drafts
can be followed with a great deal of precision.
The second draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy' was
written between August 1861 and March 1863. In this draft
Marx achieved a greater degree of systematization and integra-
tion than in the first. Whereas in the first draft topics such as
surplus value, reproduction, the rate of profit, etc. were en-
countered in relative isolation, the second draft attempted to
show how all of these phenomena were interconnected and
interdependent. In this way a transition could be made from
one category to the next. This had already been done with the
commodity, Abstract labour and money in A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, and was clearly the pattern which
Marx intended to continue. He also intended to make his
philosophical framework less obvious in this section than he
had in A Contribution to the Critique. In December 1861 he re-
marked in a letter to Engels:
My writing is progressing, but slowly. It was not possible in fact under
the circumstances to complete such theoretical matters quickly. How-
ever, it will be much more popular and the method more hidden than
in Part I.92
This was certainly the case. The second draft of 'The Critique
of Political Economy' was more lucidly written than either the
first draft or the Contribution to the Critique.
The manuscript commenced with a chapter on 'The Trans-

formation of Money into Capital', which amplified the explana-
tion given in the first draft of how exchange value was created
by the objectification of labour in commodities. Marx now
drew a distinction between the 'labour process' and the 'val-
orization process' (Verwertungsprozess), i.e. the process by which
wealth was created. The difference between the two processes
was that whereas the first created a product, a use value only,
the second created a commodity, a synthesis of use value and
exchange value.
The exposition of these two processes was a modification of
Schelling's conception of the Absolute, from which there
emerged a Real and an Ideal series. Marx, however, while he
thought in terms of two series, held one to be real and the
other the identity of the real and ideal. The labour process
belonged to the real series, for, in Marx's view: 'every real
labour is a Particular labour'; labour was real 'in so far as it
created use value'. 93 By implication that labour would have
been ideal which created exchange value only, but as exchange
value could not exist without use value, this was impossible.
The valorization process was therefore necessarily a unity of
real and ideal elements, a synthesis of Particularity and Univer-
sality. The description of the labour which simultaneously cre-
ated use value and exchange value through Abstraction was
also in the manner of Schelling. This was: 'exchange value
positing substance, the determined flowing activity, which fixes
itself as exchange value and creates it'.94
By drawing a distinction between the labour process and the
valorization process Marx wished to convey that the former
was anterior to and independent of the latter. The labour
process was an interchange between man and Nature; the
valorization process, on the other hand, was peculiar to the
capitalist mode of production, and in this the labour process
was Subsumed under the valorization process. This use of
Subsumption was introduced for the first time in the second
draft. The concept was to occur in several other connections
in the course of the draft and was employed as a major struc-
tural element to link together various economic categories.
The concepts of constant and variable capital were intro-
duced at a much earlier stage in the second draft than in the
first. In the second draft too these concepts were associated
Marx 183
with the distinction Marx drew between necessary and surplus

labour and absolute and relative surplus value.
Marx pointed out that even under a system of slavery not all
of the wealth created could be appropriated by the slave owners;
some part at least had to be expended on the maintenance of
the slaves. Thus, for part of his working day the slave worked for
his own livelihood. That part of the day when the slave worked
for himself Marx termed 'necessary labour', and that worked
for the slave-owner 'surplus labour'. In feudal society the dis-
tinction between necessary and surplus labour was more obvi-
ous, because the serf was allotted a portion of land to cater for
his own as well as his family needs, and this was separated
physically from the land which he tilled on the landowner's
behalf. In the case of the wage labourer the distinction was not
so obvious, but his working day could nevertheless be divided
into a part consisting of necessary and one of surplus labour.95
It was of course in the interest of the capitalist to increase
the time in which surplus labour was performed as much as
possible. There were two methods of doing this. One was to
lengthen the working day, and this produced what Marx called
'absolute surplus value'. The other method was by various
means to increase the productivity of labour, and thus create,
in Marx's terminology 'relative surplus value'.
Marx considered that there were three ways of increasing
the productivity of labour and so producing relative surplus
value. These were (a) cooperation, (b) the division of labour
and (c) the introduction of machinery. For Marx cooperation
meant the collaboration of several workers in performing a
single task. It was the simplest as well as the oldest form of
increasing the productivity of labour, one which was to be
found in pre-capitalist modes of production, especially in the
ancient East.96
The division of labour was cooperation taken a stage fur-
ther; it was the collaboration of many workers to produce
different parts of the same commodity. This was a specifically
capitalist method of increasing the productivity of labour and
reflected the fact that the three methods corresponded to the
historical evolution of modes of production.
Marx attached great importance in his second draft to the
division of labour as a characteristic of capitalist production,
because he held this to be the phenomenon that had created
Civil Society. He argued that 'the division of labour within the

factory corresponded to the division of labour in Society as a
whole, each mutually determining the other.' 97 While coopera-
tion could form part of the labour process taken independ-
ently, this was not the case with the division of labour: it
presupposed and was the result of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction. It presupposed, in other words, the Subsumption of
labour under capital.98
Marx's insistence, however, that the division of labour was a
form of cooperation and that Civil Society was a form of the
division of labour, communicated simply and economically the
idea which was basic to Marx's understanding of capitalism:
that behind the fragmentation of Civil Society the social fabric
remained intact; the fragmentation was not absolute.
The production of commodities of course demanded the
existence of Civil Society, so that the division of labour for its
increased productivity was directly linked to commodity pro-
duction. Indeed, in Marx's view the more the division of la-
bour progressed the more products were transformed into
commodities. The process made commodity production Uni-
versal and in doing so created the Universal laws according to
which the capitalist system functioned:
Therefore, on the one hand, if the commodity appears as the pre-
requisite for the formation of capital, so, on the other, the commodity
as the Universal form of the product in the same measure appears in
essence as a product and the result of capital. In other modes of pro-
duction products only partly take on the form of commodities. Capital,
however, of necessity produces commodities; it either produces its pro-
duct as a commodity or nothing at all. Therefore only with the develop-
ment of capitalist production i.e. only with the development of capital
do the Universal laws formulated in regard to the commodity begin
to operate e.g. that the value of a commodity is determined by the
Socially-necessary labour time contained in it.99
The third method of increasing the productivity of labour

was the use of machinery. This, as Marx had explained in the
first draft, increased the proportion of constant relative to
variable capital, causing the profit-rate to fall. This argument
was rehearsed in the second draft, Marx adding that in the
other two methods of raising labour productivity the propor-
tion of constant capital did not increase in this way. It was only
Marx 185
when the capitalist m o d e of production h a d reached its high-

est degree of sophistication that it e n c o u n t e r e d this 'antagon-
istic contradiction' which would eventually destroy it. T h e
implication was that as the m e t h o d of raising the productivity
of labour became increasingly adequate to the capitalist m o d e
of production, the capitalist system m o r e a n d m o r e e n t e r e d a
state of crisis from which a new a n d higher m o d e of produc-
tion would emerge.
In accordance with this conception, Marx linked the three
m e t h o d s of increasing labour productivity to the progressive
Subsumption of labour u n d e r capital. H e did this by making
a distinction between the 'formal' a n d the 'real' Subsumption
of labour u n d e r capital. Thus, the formal Subsumption of la-
b o u r u n d e r capital took place at a stage where only absolute
surplus value was produced. T h e real Subsumption of labour
u n d e r capital occurred when not only absolute, but also rela-
tive surplus value was created.
T h e two types of Subsumption had historical connotations,
as each represented a stage in the evolution of capitalist rela-
tions of production. O n its first appearance capital Subsumed
the labour process as it found it, that is to say it took over a
labour process developed by earlier m o d e s of production.
Although it b r o u g h t these processes u n d e r the control of cap-
ital, the actual m o d e of working remained u n c h a n g e d . It was
only with large-scale industry that specifically capitalist forms
of production appeared. This made possible the real Subsump-
tion of labour u n d e r capital. T h e use of machinery and the
application of scientific advances transformed the labour
process itself to r e n d e r it 'adequate' to the capitalist m o d e of
production. 1 0 0
In Marx's presentation the transition from formal to real
Subsumption of labour u n d e r capital took the form of an
interchange between master a n d slave, of lordship a n d bond-
age. For whereas earlier modes of production had been in
varying degrees ones of lordship and bondage, the slave and
the serf being forced to work by some outer non-economic
compulsion, the worker u n d e r capitalism was free from com-
pulsion of an External kind. T h e forces which enslaved the
worker were entirely Internal and economic ones. Whereas
the slave worked only u n d e r the spur of External fear, the
worker was impelled by his needs. And while the slave required
a master, the worker controlled himself by his own sense of

responsibility. In contrast to the slave the worker was more
productive, and since he received his subsistence in the form
of money, exchange value, the wage labourer was appropriate
to the capitalist mode of production. Large-scale industry with
its high degree of rationalization Subsumed the worker under
capital and made him adequate to the capitalist mode of
production. 101
Under the heading 'Productive and Unproductive Labour'
Marx put the concept of Subsumption to another important
use. This was to explain how labour which was not directly
involved in the production of commodities was progressively
brought within the ambit of capitalist relations. Increasingly,
Marx argued, even artistic creativity in capitalist society was
turned into commodities by being Subsumed under capital.
For example:
Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost for five pounds, was an unproductive
worker. On the other hand, a writer who turns out a work for his
publisher in factory-style is a productive worker. Milton produced his
Paradise Lost for the same reason as a silkworm produces silk. It was
the activity of his Nature. He later sold his product for £5. But the
Leipzig literary proletarian, who under the direction of his publisher,
puts together books (such as compendia on Economics) is a productive
ivorker, because his production is Subsumed under capital from the
outset and only takes place in order to valorize it.102
Marx could find in this aspect of Subsumption a parallel in
feudal Society in which 'even relations which are very remote
from the essence of feudalism take on a feudal expression'. 103
This was an aspect of Subsumption which could be described
in terms of base and superstructure, as Marx had done in his
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
THE 'THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE'
A considerable portion of the second draft of 'The Critique of

Political Economy' was taken up with the history of economic
theory, which Marx referred to as the 'Theories of Surplus
Value'. His intention was to place these historical excursions
after the section on 'The Production Process of Capital' in the
same way as he had appended a historical part to his Contribu-
tion to the Critique of Political Economy.104
Marx 187
The 'Theories of Surplus Value' was a work remarkable for

the way in which Marx approached the critique of the political
economists. He distinguished between the classical economists,
those such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Steuart, and
what he termed the 'vulgar' political economists, writers such
as J.B. Say, William Nassau Senior and John MacCulloch. In
the development of political economy, Marx considered, vul-
gar political economy had grown up around the classical vari-
ety like a kind of extrusion. He described the process as follows:
Only when political economy has reached a certain stage of develop-
ment and has assumed well-established forms - that is, after Adam
Smith - does the separation of the element whose Concept of the
phenomena consists of mere Reflection take place, i.e. does the vulgar
component becomes a special aspect of political economy. Thus Say
separates out the vulgar Concepts occurring in Adam Smith's work and
puts them forward in a distinct crystallized form. Ricardo and the fur-
ther advance in political economy brought about by him provide new
nourishment for the vulgar economist. . . the more economic theory
is perfected . . . the more it is confronted by its own, increasingly in-
dependent, vulgar element.105
Marx added that the classical economists, by concerning
themselves with forms of Alienation, had prepared the ground
for the critical economists who came after. The vulgar econo-
mists, on the other hand, had been most at home in just those
Alienated forms. Marx's critique of economic theory, there-
fore, consisted in using the achievements of classical political
economy to expose the errors of the vulgar element. This
was, consequently, a critique of the 'turbid medium' from the
point of view of the 'rational kernel', of a kind similar to that
conducted by the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrbiicher against
Romanticism.
It was while working on the 'Theories of Surplus Value' that
Marx first noted a historical fact which had an important bear-
ing on his conception of the circulation and reproduction of
capital. In order to explain why the British classical economists
James Anderson and David Ricardo started out from a view-
point which appeared strange to the Continental reader, that
there was no landed property to shackle any desired invest-
ment of capital in land, Marx wrote as follows:
Nowhere in the world has capitalist production since Henry VIII dealt
so ruthlessly with the traditional relations of agriculture, adapting and
subordinating the conditions to its requirements. In this respect
England is the most revolutionary country in the world. Wherever the

conditions handed down by history were at variance with, or did not
correspond to, the requirements of capitalist production on the land,
they were ruthlessly swept away; this applied not only to the position
of village communities but to the village communities themselves, not
only to the habitats of the agricultural population, but to the agricul-
tural population itself, not only to the original centres of cultivation,
but to cultivation itself.106
Later in the manuscript Marx referred to the Highland clear-
ances which had brought about the same result in Scodand.
Thus, in Britain at least, the ancient communities had been
dissolved not by the action of the circulation and reproduc-
tion of capital, but by the conscious action of governments,
landowners and clan chieftains.
If Marx was aware that this might cause difficulties for his
general scheme of capitalist development there was no sign of
it in the second draft. In later manuscripts, however, it made
itself felt in connection with attempts to deal with the relation-
ship between the circulation of capital and expanded repro-
duction or accumulation.
The second draft concentrated mainly on developing the
section on the 'Production Process of Capital'. The sections
on the circulation and profit and interest were treated more
sketchily. In the part of the manuscript devoted to circulation
Marx had reproduced that part of the first draft concerned
with the creation by capital of its own presuppositions and had
prefaced this by a new section on the circulation of capital
which expanded on the M - C - M formula introduced in the
section on the production process. At that stage he had not
begun to examine in detail how the circulation of capital
might create the class of proletarians by dissolving the village
communities.
THE THIRD DRAFT OF THE 'CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL

ECONOMY'
While working on the second draft, on 28 December 1862,

Marx wrote to his friend Ludwig Kugelmann that A Contribu-
tion to the Critique of Political Economy Part II was now nearing
completion. It would be published, however, not under that
Marx 189
title, but as a separate work to be called 'Capital'; 'A Contri-

bution to the Critique of Political Economy' would appear
only as a subtitle.107 On 29 May 1863 he informed Engels that
he intended to make a fair copy of his manuscript for publi-
cation.108 Instead, however, Marx began in July 1863 to work
on a fresh draft of the three sections of 'Capital in General'.
He had drawn up plans for the first and third sections in
January 1863. The plan for the first part was as follows:
1. Introduction. The Commodity. Money
2. The Transformation of Money into Capital
3. Absolute Surplus Value
(a) The Labour Process and the Valorisation Process
(b) Constant and Variable Capital
(c) Absolute Surplus Value
(d) The Struggle for the Normal Working Day
(e) Simultaneous Working Days (The Number of Simul-
taneously-employed Workers) The Sum of Surplus
Value and the Rate of Surplus Value (Size and
Height?)
4. Relative Surplus Value
(a) Simple Cooperation
(b) Division of Labour
(c) Machinery etc.
5. The Combination of Absolute and Relative Surplus Value.
Relation (Proportion) between Wage Labour and Sur-
plus Value. Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour
under Capital. The Productivity of Capital. Productive
and Unproductive Labour
6. The Transformation of Surplus Value back into Capital.
Original Accumulation. Wakefield's Theory of Colonies
7. Result of the Production Process
8. Theories of Surplus Value
9. Theories of Productive and Unproductive Labour109
This largely reflected the arguments put forward in the Sec-
ond Draft. It is significant that in this scheme the subject of
the 'Formal and Real Subsumption of Labour under Capital'
figured prominently in Chapter Five.
The only part of the third draft of 'The Production Process
of Capital' to survive was 'Chapter Six', which was entitled
'The Results of the Immediate Process of Production', and was
intended to serve as the transition to the section on the 'Cir-

culation Process of Capital'. Marx, however, omitted it from
the final version of Capital. The fact that the chapter on the
'Result of the Production Process' was numbered six and not
seven as indicated in the outline indicates that some redistri-
bution of material took place between the time the outline was
first drawn up and the completion of the manuscript in 1865.
In fact some themes allocated to Chapter Five in the oudine
were dealt with in Chapter Six. These include the 'Formal and
Real Subsumption of Labour under Capital' and 'Productive
and Unproductive Labour'. There was considerable continuity
between these sections of Chapter Six and the corresponding
sections of the 1861-3 draft of 'The Critique of Political Eco-
nomy', so much so that the two documents shared some pages
in common. 110
As Chapter Six had been conceived as a resume of the ar-
guments put forward in 'The Production Process of Capital',
it was in its way a culmination of the ideas put forward in the
earlier drafts. In Chapter Six, Marx achieved a high degree of
integration between his conception of the Subsumption of
labour under capital and that of productive and unproductive
labour. He had also linked the concept of Subsumption to
that of Alienation, and at the same time added poignancy to
the master and slave dialectic of the capitalist and worker:
What we are confronted with here is the Alienation of man from his
own labour. To that extent the worker stands on a higher plane than
the capitalist, since the latter has his roots in the process of Alienation
and finds absolute satisfaction in it, whereas right from the start the
worker is a victim who confronts it as a rebel and experiences it as a
process of enslavement.111
Chapter Six retained the argument put forward in both the

first and second drafts of 'The Critique of Political Economy'
that the commodity was both the premiss of capitalist produc-
tion and its result, that 'only as the basis of capitalist produc-
tion will the commodity become the Universal form of the
product'. 112 Marx added that 'and the more it evolves the more
will all the ingredients of production become absorbed as
commodities in the process'. 113 Chapter Six made it plain that
this absorption could be of two different types. One type of
absorption was the Subsumption of labour under capital and
Marx 191
the extension to unproductive labour of commodity produc-

tion. The other type of absorption was the Subsumption of
agriculture to capital in its cycle of reproduction and accumu-
lation as 'agriculture becomes a capitalistically run branch of
industry'.114 For although Chapter Six did not deal with the
dissolution of the ancient communities by the extension of
capitalist relations, it nevertheless maintained that the trans-
formation of surplus value back into capital created new capi-
tal and that this process of accumulation entailed the creation
of new wage labourers, so that:
The growth of capital and the increase in the proletariat appear, therefore,
as interconnected - if opposed - products of the same process.
This relation is not merely reproduced, it is produced on a steadily
more massive scale, so that it creates ever new supplies of workers and
encroaches on branches of production previously independent.115
Essentially, therefore, the two types of absorption or Sub-

sumption were the same. Marx clearly wished to imply that as
economic relations increasingly took on a capitalist character,
their scale increased and this brought them ever closer to the
world market and their point of culmination.
Because Chapter Six referred to A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy rather than to a Chapter One of the same
manuscript, it is clear that the third draft, like the second,
began with a chapter on 'The Transformation of Money into
Capital'. References to other chapters in Chapter Six and other
parts of the third draft of 'Capital in General' make it possible
to deduce that the manuscript to which it belonged had had
the following form:
1. The Transformation of Money into Capital
2. The Production of Absolute Surplus Value
3. The Production of Relative Surplus Value
4. The Further Investigation of the Production of Absolute
and Relative Surplus Value
5. The Accumulation Process of Capital
6. The Results of the Immediate Process of Production
The historical excursions mentioned in the outline drawn up

in 1863 had fallen out and were mentioned in Chapter Six as
being included in a separate Volume IV of Capital.1™
Marx's final conception of Capital had taken shape by 1866.

On 13 October of that year he wrote to Kugelmann to say that
the whole work would consist of the following parts:
Book I The Production Process of Capital

Book II The Circulation Process of Capital
Book III Forms of the Entire Process
Book IV On the History of the Theory
Marx intended that the first two of these Books would be

contained in a single volume.117
Even in this new arrangement of what was still 'Capital in
General' Marx had tried to make the first three Books follow
the cycle of Universality, Particularity and Individuality. This
was suggested in a note with which he prefaced the third Book.
The same note also indicated that he regarded the four books
as a cycle in which the 'Theories of Surplus Value' which
constituted the fourth Book should lead back to the point of
departure in Book I. The note stated that the forms of capital
which were dealt with 'progressively approach the form in which
they appear on the surface of Society, in the action of the
different capitals upon one another, in competition and in the
everyday agents of production'. 118 The subject of competition
was one which lay outside 'Capital in General'; it belonged to
the Particularity of capital. So Marx saw his Book III as leading
not only to his point of departure in the commodity, but also
as a transition to the second of his original divisions of capital.
Besides the plan for Book I, Marx had also drawn up in
January7 1863 the plan for Book III,119 and on the completion
of Chapter Six, he began to compose the manuscript of this
Book in the summer of 1864.120 This was to be the only manu-
script of Book III and was the one used by Engels to publish
Capital Volume III in 1894. Obviously in proceeding to Book
III directly after Book I, Marx planned to leave Book II until
last. In this way he would establish the parameters of his work
and fill in later how exactly they were reached. This would
ensure that the argument led in the desired direction.
By the autumn of 1865 Marx had almost completed the manu-
script of Book III. It was possible to write it quickly, because
although comparable in length to Book I, its content was far
less complex. In fact, it was derived from Book I. In it Marx
Marx 193
was concerned to demonstrate that the various forms of in-

come from capital, whether profit, interest, ground rent or
whatever, were all related to surplus value as species to genus.
They were Particulars, while Surplus value was the Universal.
All of them could be deduced from the formula M - C - M.
Some kinds of income came from the actual manufacture of
commodities, some from their sale, some from lending money
which the capitalist advanced to purchase materials, means of
production and labour. All forms of income were derived in
one way or another by expediting the operation M - C - M.
Some incomes were derived from speeding up the cycle; ground
rent was derived from providing it with an advantageous loca-
tion for its operation.
Book III was more concrete and detailed in character than
Book I. Whereas Book I had dealt with M - C - M, the pro-
duction and circulation processes in the Abstract, Book III wras
concerned with how these processes took place in time and
space. The relationship, therefore, between Book I and Book
III was of a hierarchy of abstraction, Book I representing the
apex and Book III the base.
An important function of Book II, therefore, was to act as a
transition between Books I and III. It had to introduce the
elements of time and space into the abstract treatment of M
- C - M in Book I. In this respect the arguments of Book III
determined the contents of Book II. As Marx noted in the
manuscript of the second chapter of Book III: 'To what degree
the circulation time influences the profit-rate, this is a ques-
tion we shall not raise in detail here (because Book II, in
which this problem will be dealt with specially, has still to be
written).' 121 In fact in the first half of 1865 Marx interrupted
his work on Book III to write Book II, producing a draft which
he later designated as 'Manuscript F. There were to be in all
eight manuscripts relating to Book II written by Marx between
1865 and 1880. They were drawn upon by Engels to compose
Volume II of Capital, published in 1885.122
Clearly, Book II was the Book which gave Marx the most
difficulty, and he never succeeded in completing it to his sat-
isfaction. Yet on the face of it this should have been the Book
which was the easiest to write. For its structure was already to
a great extent determined by Books I and III. The require-
ments of Book III dictated that it should begin by making the
formula M - C - M more concrete by introducing the ele-

ments of time and space. How Book II ended had already
been sketched out in the first and second drafts. It had to deal
with the circulation of capital in a broader sense, capital cre-
ating its own presuppositions by dissolving earlier economic
forms and reproducing capitalists and workers on an increased
scale. This was required both by Book I to establish the histor-
ical conditions of commodity production, and by Book III to
explain the origins of capitalist ground-rent, which Book III
assumed; and last but by no means least, it was required for
the transition to the second of Marx's original six Books in
which he would deal with the category of Landed Property.
'Manuscript F was a significant document, because it em-
bodied Marx's original conception of the 'circulation of cap-
ital'. This was a much more philosophical one than the rather
dry and technical conception of circulation which emerges
from Engels's compilation of Book II. In 'Manuscript F 'circu-
lation' functioned as a cardinal element in the system which
Marx had outlined in his first draft of 'The Critique of Political
Economy' in 1857-58.
It was circulation which represented the movement in the
entire cyclic system of capitalism, so that for Marx the part of
his critique devoted to this subject was an apotheosis of the
entire system. His account of circulation was, therefore, simul-
taneously a description of the system, its method as well as its
content. It was there that was to be found the most explicit
description of the cyclic character of his system:
Because the whole is a moving circle, each separate point goes through
its own circuit, one which functions simultaneously as the point of
departure and point of return; so that the circulation as a whole is
seen by each of these specific points as its own specific circuit i.e.
this circular movement by each of the determinate forms of capital,
each acting as the point of departure for the various metamorphoses
is a condition of the permanence of the process as a whole, and
consequently also of the circuit of each and every determinate form
of capital. 123
Since this was a real and not simply an Abstract circulation of
capital, each circuit was made up of a series of distinct but allied
forms, such as that in the circuit M - C - M. Capital took on in
turn the forms of money capital, productive capital and com-
modity capital, returning once more to its point of departure
Marx 195
in the form of money capital. In each of these cases the flow

of circulation was interrupted as capital acquired its determi-
nate forms. Marx thought of capital in a specific form as being
'fixed'.
If capital is thus in essence circulating capital. . . then at each moment
it is fixed. In so far as it is fixed as commodity capital it is not money
capital; in so far as it is fixed in the sphere of production as productive
capital, it is neither the one nor the other. The process of its repro-
duction is conditioned by this difference and the removal of this dif-
ference, by its flow, which experiences difficulties to a greater or lesser
degree or is arrested entirely if it is detained too long in one of these
spheres, or if it does not leave it at all, or if it leaves it only after having
overcome resistance.124
Here circulation emulated Schelling's conception of Nature as
infinite activity. A real as opposed to an Abstract circulation
meant for capital the interruption of the flow from one spe-
cific form to the next. For in the real world circulation took
place in time and space.
The time taken for capital to circulate was a limit placed on
the valorization process. Thus, Marx explained, if the circula-
tion time equalled zero then this limit would not exist. It in-
creased with each addition to the time of circulation.125 In this
way the rate of profit would be affected by the time of circu-
lation, the point noted by Marx while working on the manu-
script of Book III, and this in turn would give rise to the
various aspects of the capitalist system which were concerned
with curtailing the circulation time and which were discussed
in that Book.
The spatial aspect of circulation was related to the forma-
tion of the world market. With the development of an interna-
tional division of labour and production being undertaken for
increasingly distant markets, the circulation time would inevi-
tably lengthen, giving rise to a corresponding fall in the profit
rate.126
As the repeated references to the world market in 'Manu-
script I' suggest, Marx associated the circulation of capital with
its reproduction and accumulation. In this he followed the
classical political economists, the Physiocrats in particular, who
had first linked circulation with reproduction. 127 Expanded
reproduction or accumulation he regarded as a development of
simple reproduction, such that if one thought of reproduction
as a circle, then expanded reproduction was a spiral.128 It was,

moreover, a process which would reproduce its presupposi-
tions, the capitalists and workers on an extended scale.129 Sub-
sume the unproductive part of the population under the
productive and those hitherto unaffected by it under wage
labour. It would also Subsume more and more spheres of
production under capital. The process would at the same
time claim all countries of the world for capitalist commodity
production. 130
What 'Manuscript V failed to do, however, was to establish
any necessary connection between expanded reproduction of
capital and the extension of capitalist relations. It was one
thing to state in general that the two were connected, but
quite another to demonstrate that this must necessarily be the
case. None of the later manuscripts succeeded in doing this,
and the version of Book II published by Engels, which dis-
cussed expanded reproduction only on an abstract plane,
showed little sign that the attempt had ever been made.
To be unable to show that capital created its own presup-
positions, that it created Civil Society, was a serious difficulty
for Marx's overall scheme of capitalist development. Moreover,
it made the publication of Book I in its completed 1865 form
impossible. The concluding Chapter Six, and probably earlier
chapters, assumed the results which it had been impossible to
prove in Book II.
That there are so many drafts of Book II written over the
years shows that Marx did not at once abandon hope of join-
ing up the ends of his critique of capitalist categories. He
obviously assumed that the connection existed; it was simply a
matter of discovering how to demonstrate it logically.
CAPITAL VOLUME I
In fact when Capital Volume I was published in 1867 it con-

tained only Book I and not Books I and II as had been planned.
This version of 'The Production Process of Capital' consisted
of six chapters incorporating material from both the first and
second drafts, as well as including material which made its
appearance for the first time.
The first chapter, 'Commodities and Money', was based to
Marx 197
a large degree on the corresponding section of A Contribution

to the Critique of Political Economy, at least as far as the matter
included was concerned. But in comparison with the earlier
work the exposition in the first chapter of Capital was more
concentrated and more complex. This was because Marx had
superimposed on his discussion of use value, exchange value
and Abstract Social labour an explanation of how in the course
of exchange a single commodity could become the Universal
equivalent of all commodities, and how this Particular com-
modity could then be replaced by money, the Universal equiva-
lent which existed alongside commodities. Money, of course,
was the starting-point for the following section, the 'Exchange
Process of Commodities'. This derivation of the Universal
equivalent had already appeared in A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy, but in Capital it was integrated more closely
into the argument, so that it was able to function not only as
a logical deduction of money, but also of exchange value, whose
existence had been merely assumed at the start of the chapter.
This was a deduction of exchange value which returned to
its point of departure and whose Hegelian inspiration Marx
indicated. It allowed him to argue that the simple act of ex-
change of the kind 20 yards of linen = 1 coat was only what
took place on the surface. It was in fact the result of the divi-
sion of labour in Society and the production of Abstract Social
labour. The use values which were exchanged were thus the
outer manifestations of exchange value. The original position
whereby exchange value was an Abstraction from use value
had been reversed to make use value the Appearance-form of
the Abstract Universal exchange value.
The value relation, Marx argued, was one of Reflection, and
consequently commodities appeared to people in a distorted
light. The simple act of exchange concealed the complex Social
process which went on behind it. This was because the surface
phenomenon of exchange was identical with the result which
the process achieved. Consequendy what was a relationship
between people appeared to be a relationship between things.
Value, which was a Social relation, seemed to be a quality
residing in things. This kind of Reflection Marx termed 'the
fetishism of commodities', since he found in it an analogy with
the kind of view which produced religion. It was, he consid-
ered, forms such as commodity fetishism which constituted
the categories of bourgeois economy. They were Socially valid

and therefore objective forms of thought, ones appropriate
to that Particular historically determined Social mode of
production.
Marx achieved a remarkable degree of integration in his first
chapter by introducing his logical derivation of value from
first principles and then following its further implications, the
entire cycle being referred to as the 'Value Form'. On the debit
side, however, was the fact that the interweaving of the various
themes made the text a very difficult one to follow. As the
various references to Hegel's work in the footnotes show, Marx
was keenly aware that only readers who had some familiarity
with Hegel's system and its Schellingian presuppositions would
be able to appreciate the form which his argument took. And
by the 1860s that kind of knowledge was becoming increas-
ingly rare, as Engels pointed out when he read the proofs of
the first chapter.131
The solution Marx employed was to include an appendix
entitled 'The Value Form' at the end of the book, in which he
isolated the logical cycle concerned with the value form and
treated it as an independent subject, developing his argument
at greater length and in greater detail. It traced the value form
from the simple act of exchange (of the type 20 yards of linen
= 1 coat) to the phenomenon of commodity fetishism, the
whole being divided into short paragraphs, one leading logic-
ally to the next. Marx could then 'tell the "non-dialectical"
reader that he should skip pages x-y and read the appendix
instead'.132 Accordingly, the Preface to Capital contained the
requisite suggestion.133
If the 'non-dialectical' reader imagined that by opting to get
through the first chapter via 'The Value Form' he would avoid
Hegelian philosophy altogether, he was due for a disappoint-
ment. Even in this simplified version the argument still used
the concepts of Universality, Particularity, Nature and Society
as structural elements. Obviously Marx hoped that 'The Value
Form' would act as an introduction to the corresponding part
of Chapter One rather than as a substitute for it.
Marx's deduction of the value form allowed him to explain
the emergence of a Universal equivalent without any refer-
ence to money; this ultimate form of Universal equivalent was
only mentioned at the conclusion of the section dealing with
Marx 199
the commodity. The implication of this was that money was

not essential to the emergence of commodity exchange, since
any commodity could serve as the Universal equivalent. This
in turn meant that the various functions of money could no
longer be said to be related to the progressive dissolution of
the ancient communities and the formation of Civil Society, as
had been argued in the first draft. In the first chapter of Capital
the discussion of the effect of exchange had only a vestigial
existence. The ancient communities were now contrasted with
modern bourgeois Society in respect of the 'transparency' of
their relations of production, the absence in them of com-
modity fetishism.
The idea that exchange value in the form of money repre-
sented man's Alienated Social being, his Universality, and that
this would tolerate no community other than itself was not
developed in Capital, so that the appearance of commercial
peoples in the interstices of Society no longer functioned as a
significant stage in development.
Despite indications in A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy that the use of the concepts of Universality, Particular-
ity and Individuality would be extended to the section dealing
with the cycles C - M - C and M - C - M, Capital did not
discuss the circulation of money and commodities in these
terms. In Capital, in fact, the use of the three terms was largely
confined to the first chapter.
The third chapter 'The Production of Absolute Surplus
Value' followed the second draft of 'The Critique of Political
Economy' by drawing a distinction between the labour process
and the valorization process, but unlike the second draft did
not go on to discuss the Subsumption of labour under capital,
which had been the original point of the distinction. This had
the effect of impairing the transition from one economic cat-
egory to the next, or, from the reader's point of view, of reduc-
ing the clarity of the exposition.
Capital, on the other hand, reinforced Marx's earlier con-
ception of how man's Social Nature was Externalized by Alien-
ated or Abstract labour, how labour 'fixed' man's activity as a
Concept. Marx spoke repeatedly of labour's being 'crystallized',
'congealed' or 'objectified' in commodities.134 The process was
one of arresting a flow of activity in the way Schelling had
described:
During the labour process the workers' labour constantly undergoes

a transformation, from the form of unrest (Unruhe) into that of being,
from the form of motion into that of objectivity.135
What on the side of the worker appeared in the form of unrest now
appears, on the side of the product, as a fixed characteristic in the
form of being. He has spun and the product is a spinning.186
A new feature in Capital was that it introduced the term
labour power to designate labour functioning as a commodity
and having exchange value. The term 'labour' was reserved
for human activity as the source and creator of all value. Marx
was therefore able to maintain that labour had no value; it was
the sole originator of value.137 Labour here functioned as an
Absolute. The distinction between labour and labour power
provided Marx with a precise explanation of how surplus value
arose: the capitalist purchased labour power, but what he in
fact received was labour,138 not a mere commodity like any
other, but the unique power of human beings to create some-
thing of value. Marx elaborated on the distinction by includ-
ing a chapter on wages, which had not featured in any of his
earlier drafts.
The removal of the concept of Subsumption from the sec-
tion on the labour and valorization processes was not an iso-
lated occurrence. Apart from a passage in which formal and
real Subsumption of labour under capital were defined, all
references to Subsumption had been excised from Capital. This
was noticeable in the fifth chapter in which the three methods
of increasing the productivity of labour were discussed. Al-
though cooperation, the division of labour and machinery
received a great deal of attention, they were no longer pre-
sented as being progressive stages in the Subsumption of la-
bour under capital, and thereby linked to the Subsumption of
the labour process under the process of valorization. Chapter
Six, in which the formal and real Subsumption of labour under
capital had been developed in detail, and in which the action
of Subsumption in rendering various spheres of activity ad-
equate to commodity production was discussed, had of course
been discarded.
The elimination of the concept of Subsumption removed
much of the coherence that Marx had achieved in the second
draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy' and rendered the
various sections of the work more descriptive than in previous
Marx 201
drafts, a feature accentuated by the inclusion of a great deal

of factual and statistical material. But the absence of Sub-
sumption had consequences not only for the structure of
Capital, but for the interpretation of Marx's system as a whole.
For when he had written the Preface to A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy with its reference to 'base' and
'superstructure', he clearly imagined that his words would be
amplified by the entire work which was to follow, as indeed
happened in the second draft. The excision of Subsumption
from the exposition in the published version of Capital, how-
ever, left the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy high and dry in a splendid isolation that allowed read-
ers to draw the conclusion that the ultimate determinant in
human history was not the Social Nature of human beings, but
the structure of the economy. It created the impression that
Marx believed human Nature to be not a constant, but a vari-
able which was dependent on economic development.
It was in the Sixth and last chapter 'The Accumulation Pro-
cess of Capital' that the most profound revision of earlier con-
ceptions was to be found. Very litde remained of the argument
that in its cycle of reproduction capital created its own precon-
ditions on an ever increasing scale. The idea that in so doing
it dissolved the ancient communities was not to be found.
Where reproduction was mentioned, it was in time only, not
in space:
Its pure continuity, or simple reproduction, reproduces and perpetuates its
point of departure as its own result. . . The worker therefore constantly
produces objective wealth as capital. . . and the capitalist produces just
as constantly the . . . worker as a wage-labourer. This constant reproduc-
tion or perpetuation of the worker as a wage-labourer is the sine qua non
of capitalist production. 139
The perpetuation of capitalist relations in time, however,

was not accompanied by any treatment of expanded reproduc-
tion and its social consequences which had been discussed in
all earlier versions up to and including Chapter Six of the
third draft. The only trace of the idea was in the laconic remark:
The capital relation presupposes a complete separation between the
workers and the ownership of the conditions in which they do produc-
tive work. As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it
not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly
expanding scale.140
The destruction of ancient communities was indeed de-

scribed in Capital. This was in the section on 'The So-Called
Original Accumulation' ('so-called' because Marx thought it
really was original expropriation). 141 But this took the form of
a historical account of the expropriation of agrarian populations
in England and Scotland from the sixteenth century onwards
in the manner mentioned in the second draft. It was a destruc-
tion of the communities which did not emerge from the Na-
ture of capital, but from the consciously formulated policies of
the times. Original accumulation, moreover, only explained
how capital had begun to circulate, how the first cycles had
been made possible; it said nothing about circulation as a
continuous process.
The chapter on Original Accumulation was notable for pro-
viding an overall sketch of capitalist development and how it
would end. The capitalist system, Marx predicted, would lead
to the increasing Socialization of the workers, and at a certain
point this Socialization and the centralization of the means of
production would become incompatible with the capitalist husk.
At that point:
This husk is burst asunder. The knell of private property sounds. The
expropriators are expropriated.142
Private property, which had been the first negation of indi-

vidual private property, would in its turn be negated. As Marx
explained:
Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a Natural process,
its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It does not re-
establish private property, but it does indeed establish Individual prop-
erty on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era. . .143
These achievements of the capitalist era Marx held to be

cooperation and the possession in common of the land and
the means of production produced by labour itself. The indi-
cation that Marx expected capitalism eventually to be estab-
lished on a world-scale came not in the body of Capital, but in
the Preface. This was that:
Intrinsically it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of
development of Social antagonisms that spring from the Natural laws
of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these
Marx 203
tendencies winning their way through and working themselves out with
iron necessity. The country that is more developed industrially only
shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future!144
The exclusion of Chapter Six from the published version of

Capital signalized not only the elimination of Subsumption as
the process by which capital made labour adequate to itself,
but also that which extended the ambit of capital, expanding
capitalist Society at the expense of the ancient communities.
These two aspects of Subsumption had been brought together
in Chapter Six and shown to be part of the same process. It
was logical, therefore, that the rejection of the one should be
accompanied by the rejection of the other.
The result was not only to make Capital less coherent than
the previous drafts had been, but to deprive capital of its his-
torical dimension, that is the dynamic by which capital in-
creasingly created a Society adequate to itself. The structural
elements which had been so prominent in earlier versions
maintained only a vestigial existence in the published work,
and this was a much more descriptive, ambiguous and cau-
tious work than the manuscripts from which it had emerged.
Capital Volume I had managed to avoid making any definite
pronouncements on what the action of capital on earlier modes
of production was. But the question had only been postponed.
It was due to be tackled in Book II which Marx now planned
to publish together with Book III in the second volume of
Capital. His general argument depended on the supposition
that capital would erode agrarian communities. This was re-
quired for capitalist relations to emerge on a world scale, for
the Universal existence of wage labour and capital, and for the
full emergence of the capitalist system itself. For Marx be-
lieved that the laws of capitalism would operate in a pure form
only if they were unadulterated by the working of earlier modes
of production. In regard to the law, for example, that value
was determined by labour. Marx had written to Engels in 1858:
Value as such has no other 'stuff' than labour itself. The determination
of value, first suggested by Petty and clearly worked out by Ricardo, is
merely the most Abstract form of bourgeois wealth. In itself it already
presupposes: the dissolution of 1) Natural communism (India, etc.)
2) all undeveloped, pre-bourgeois modes of production not completely
dominated by exchange.145
MAURER
By the end of the 1860s Marx had decided that the premisses
of Petty and Ricardo had been determined by the peculiar
conditions in Britain, where the ancient communities had been
destroyed by force. But if Marx's argument was to have univer-
sal validity it required that capital should be able to create the
conditions for its own existence anywhere and everywhere.
After the first volume of Capital had been published, Marx,
in preparing the second volume, proceeded to study the rela-
tionship between capitalist development and agrarian commu-
nities in non-British territories. He naturally turned his attention
to Germany. There, since the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the subject of traditional agrarian relations had been
dominated by the work of Justus Moser, whose three-volume
History of Osnabriick had appeared between 1765 and 1824.
Moser, a conservative and opponent of the Enlightenment,
wished to see the existing agrarian relations of his native
Westphalia preserved, and supposed that these had existed
since time immemorial. His history of Osnabriick consequendy
embodied the premiss that the individual landownership which
then existed was the original state of affairs, and that the land
had been settled by peasants in separate farmsteads rather
than in villages. Communities, in Moser's view, were a later
development. 146 This idea had been accepted by Marx in the
1850s, and its influence was to be found in the first draft of
'The Critique of Political Economy'. It was an idea that Marx
had to reconcile with the conception that man in his Natural
state was part of a collective. He therefore advanced the opin-
ion that:
Among the Germanic tribes, where the individual family chiefs settled
in the forests, long distances apart, the commune exists, already from
outward observation, only in the periodic gathering-together of the
commune members . . . Among the Germanic tribes, the ager publicus
appears rather merely as a complement to individual property . . .147
Moser's conceptions first began to be questioned in the 1830s.

Already in 1821 the Danish scholar Olufsen had published a
monograph on early agrarian relations in Denmark using as a
starting-point existing field divisions.148 Olufsen's work was
Marx 205
developed by the German scholar Georg Hanssen, who in an

article published in 1835 suggested that, contrary to Moser's
view, individual landownership had not been prevalent among
the German tribes. Basing himself on a work by J. Schwarz
which had appeared in 1831 describing household commun-
ities (Gehoferschaften) in the Hunsriicken district of Trier, Hans-
sen argued that such communities were relics of an ancient
communal system which had existed among the Germanic
tribes.149
These studies were followed by the more comprehensive
work of Georg Maurer. He attached even greater importance
to the ancient communal organization, the Mark. In the first
of his works on the subject published in 1854 he advanced the
view that 'The first cultivation of the land was not carried out
by individuals, but by whole families and tribes.'150 Maurer
believed that the ancient community in the form of the Mark
organization had deeply influenced the structure of villages
and towns. It had also, he thought, determined the conditions
of seigneurial landownership, the manorial system and state
power itself. These various spheres he held to be all closely
connected, and he proceeded to deal with each of them in
separate works, two of which had been completed in 1868
when Marx commented on their significance in the letter to
Engels in March of that year:151
With regard to Maurer. His books are extraordinarily important. Not
only primeval times, but also the whole later development of free im-
perial cities, the immunity of landowners, the public authority, and the
struggle between the free peasantry and serfdom, are given in an en-
tirely new form.
He went on to state:
Human history is like palaeontology. On account of a certain judicial
blindness, even the best minds utterly fail to see things that lie right
in front of their noses. Later, when the moment has arrived, one is
surprised to find traces everywhere of what one had failed to see. The
first reaction against the French Revolution and the Enlightenment
bound up with it, was of course to see everything as medieval, Romantic;
even people like Grimm are not free from this. The second reaction is
to look beyond the Middle Ages into the primeval age of every nation,
and that corresponds to the socialist tendency, although those learned
men have no idea that the two are connected. And they are surprised
to find what is newest in what is oldest - even egalitarians to a degree

that would have made Proudhon shudder.
To show how much we all labour under this judicial blindness:
Right in my own neighbourhood, on the Hunsrucken, the old Germanic
system survived u p till the last few years. I now remember my father
talking to me about it from a lawyer's point of view! Another proof:
Just as the geologists, even the best, like Cuvier, have expounded
certain facts in a completely distorted way, so philologists of the calibre
of Grimm mistranslated the simplest Latin sentences because they were
u n d e r the influence of Moser . . . and others. E.g. the well-known pass-
age in Tacitus: Arva perannos mutant et superest ager\ which means: they
exchange the fields, arva... and common land (ager as ager publicus
contrasted with arva) remains over - is translated by Grimm, etc.: they
cultivate fresh fields every year and still there is always (uncultivated)
land left over!
So too the passage: 'Colunt discreti ac diversi'152 is supposed to prove
that from time immemorial the Germans carried on cultivation on indi-
vidual farms like Westphalian junkers. But the same passage continues:
Vicos locant non in mostrum morem connexis et cohaerentibus aedificiis:
suum quisque locum spatio circumdat';153 and such primitive German
villages still exist here and there in Denmark in the form described.
Obviously Scandanavia was bound to become as important for German
jurisprudence and economics as for German mythology. And only by
starting from there were we able to decipher our past again. Besides,
even Grimm, etc., find in Caesar that the Germans always settled as
tribal groups and not as individuals: 'gentibus cognationibusque, qui
u n o coierant.
What impressed Marx was not so much the fact that the
communal form of organization was so widespread, but that it
was so resilient. Later, in 1881, he was to use the survival of the
village community in the Trier region to prove that it was capa-
ble of surviving in a capitalist environment. Reading Maurer's
work confirmed what he must have suspected for some time:
that the reproductive cycle of capitalism did not necessarily
mean the destruction of the ancient communities. Henceforth
Marx adopted the point of view that the agrarian commune
could survive all economic development; it was only destroyed
by the deliberate application of force.
Marx had been slow to arrive at this viewpoint, though he
consoled himself with the thought that 'even the best minds'
could fail to see the obvious. What he called his 'judicial blind-
ness' (the phrase in English) was rooted deep in the evolution
of German thought. For the belief that capitalism would
Marx 207
inevitably strip away the traditional and feudal agrarian rela-
tions had its origins in the anti-Romantic campaign on which
his system had been based. To admit that these institutions
might survive meant adopting a point of view which had always
been the opposite of his own. His letter recognized that his
former anti-Romantic standpoint was no longer tenable.
But the implications of the resilience of the ancient commu-
nities were not wholly negative or destructive to Marx's scheme.
For if the communes existed or had existed in all parts of the
world, then it was clear that man was Social by Nature. Social-
ism thus became identical with man's Natural state. In other
words, a great deal of what Marx had been trying to argue
philosophically could be demonstrated by reference to history.
The recognition that empirical fact had replaced philosoph-
ical constructions was contained in the passage of the letter
directly following on the evidence of how the ancient German
tribes had settled:
But what would Hegel say if he heard in the next world that Universal
[das Allgemeine] in German and Old Norse means nothing but the
common land, and the Particular [Sundre, Besondre] nothing but the
separate property divided off from the common land? So the logical
categories are coming damn well out of 'our communication' after all.
'Our communication' was of course a reference to Feuer-
bach's argument that philosophical Abstractions had no exist-
ence outside human Society. It now turned out that even the
logical categories that Marx had retained as structural elements
in his system could be traced back to concrete phenomena of
Society. Marx never employed the terms Universality, Particu-
larity or Individuality again in his writings, and henceforth he
turned his attention increasingly to the study of agrarian com-
munities, especially those in Russia.
Marx's abandonment of the concepts Universality and Par-
ticularity as structural elements in his system was reflected in
the changes he made to the second edition of the first volume
of Capital, which appeared in 1872. In this edition the first
chapter was substantially altered in such a way as to reduce
drastically the occurrence of philosophical terminology, and
render what remained inessential to the argument.
The means Marx used to do this was to incorporate into
his first chapter the appendix he had included in the first
edition for the 'non-dialectical reader', 'The Value Form'. Most
references to Universality, Particularity, Nature and Society,

which Marx had thought indispensable even in 'The Value
Form', were eliminated in its transfer to the first chapter (or
'section' as it was now called). Any such references as remained
were those which could be understood in a non-philosophical
sense. And whereas in the first edition all technical philosoph-
ical terms had been emphasized by italicization or spacing,
these devices were not employed in the second edition, so that
any residual philosophical terminology was allowed to disap-
pear in the surrounding text.
In the second edition too the treatment of Subsumption was
reduced even further than in the first, leaving it as a mere
vestige. Nor did Marx repeat in the second edition the dispar-
aging comments he had made in the first on Herzen and
Haxthausen. This would hardly have been appropriate, since
he was increasingly coming to accept much of what they had
said about the Russian peasant commune.
For the French translation of Capital Volume I, which ap-
peared between 1872 and 1875, Marx rewrote several sections
and took the opportunity to bring to a logical conclusion the
changes he had made in the second German edition. Thus, in
the French version any trace which remained of philosophical
vocabulary performed a purely stylistic function.155 The passage
referring to Subsumption left in the second German edition
was eliminated.156
In the French version Marx returned to the question of the
manner in which the development of capitalism affected earl-
ier social and economic forms. In the chapter on Original
Accumulation he repeated what had been said in the two
German editions, namely:
The capitalist system is therefore founded on the radical separation
of the producers from the means of production. This separation is
reproduced on an increasing scale once the capitalist system has been
established.157
How the separation was reproduced on an increasing scale
Marx still did not elaborate upon. Presumably he reserved this
for treatment in Book II. He limited his discussion, therefore, to
how the capitalist system first got under way through the origi-
nal separation of the producer from the means of production.
In the first and second German editions Marx had stated:
Marx 209
The history of this expropriation assumes different aspects in different

countries, and runs through the various phases in different orders of
succession, and at different historical epochs. Only in England, which
we take as our example, has it the classic form.158
In the French version, however, Marx said of the expropriation
of the cultivators:
It has as yet been accomplished in a radical fashion only in England;

that country consequently will necessarily play the leading part in our
sketch. But all the other countries of Western Europe are going through
the same movement, although depending upon the circumstances this
movement may change its local colour, be confined within a narrower
circle, present a less well-defined character, or follow a different order
of succession.159
In the French version Marx presented the emergence of

capitalism through original accumulation more as an empir-
ical phenomenon, as a series of unique occasions in Western
Europe, a process lacking the element of Universality suggested
by the term 'classical form'. He reinforced this idea by adding
a note to illustrate the fact that movements were also possible
from the towns to the countryside:
In Italy, where capitalist production developed earlier than elsewhere,

feudalism also disappeared earlier. Therefore, in Italy in fact the serfs
were emancipated before they had time to acquire any prescriptive
rights to the land they possessed. A considerable proportion of these
proletarians, free as air, streamed into the towns, the majority of which
were a legacy of the Roman Empire and which their masters had long
preferred as places of residence. When the great changes which took
place in the world market (marche universel) at the end of the fifteenth
century deprived Northern Italy of its commercial supremacy, and
led to the decline of manufactures, a movement of the opposite kind
was produced. Workers from the towns were driven en masse into the
countryside, where small-scale cultivation, carried on in the form of
market gardening, was given an unprecedented stimulus.160
This note, unlike the passage to which it referred, was repro-

duced, with some variations, in the third German and later
editions of Capital.
The second German edition and the French translation of
Capital Volume I continued a process that had begun in the
preparation of the first edition, that of eliminating the
philosophical structure which had been built up in earlier

drafts. Thus, when Marx in the Postscript to the second edi-
tion made an explicit pronouncement on the relationship of
his work to Hegelian philosophy, he did so at a time when the
process of its elimination was already well advanced. Conse-
quently, the impression given was that the Hegelian influence
had come late and was superficial:
I criticized the mystifying side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty
years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just when I was
working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and
mediocre epigones who now talk in educated German circles began
to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses
Mendelsohn treated Spinoza, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly
avowed myself a pupil of the great thinker, and even, here and there
in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of
expression peculiar to him. The mystification which the dialectic suffers
in Hegel's hands by no means prevents him from being the first to
present its Universal forms of motion in a comprehensive and con-
scious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted
to discover the rational kernel within the mystical husk.161
T o be sure, Marx h a d d o n e m u c h m o r e than ' c o q u e t t e d '
with Hegel's form of expression, and Hegel's influence had
gone well beyond the chapter on the theory of value. These
comments, therefore, were not a statement of what Marx's
debt to Hegel (and other German philosophers) had been in
the past, but of how Marx wanted that debt to be understood
in the future, that is not as an essential part of his system, but
merely as a form of expression.
5 Marx and the Russians
The Postscript to the second edition to Capital Volume I showed
that by 1873 Marx had already acquired some familiarity with
economic literature in Russian. In it he referred to N.G. Cherny-
shevsky, N.I. Sieber and I.I. Kaufmann, the latter two authors
being cited in connection with the reception of Capital in
Russia. It so happened that just at the time when Marx had
discovered the significance of economic developments in Rus-
sia and was turning his attention to that country, some Rus-
sians were beginning to appreciate the relevance of Marx's
work for the new situation created in their country by the
abolition of serfdom in 1861. These two strands were closely
interwoven in Marx's relationship with Russia over the next
decade, so that Marx's study of Russia and the spread of his
ideas in that country are two themes which are inseparably
connected.
THE PEASANT REFORM OF 1861
The event which gave rise to both developments was the peas-
ant reform of 1861. The abolition of serfdom had been car-
ried out in such a way as to create the conditions for the
transition to wage labour, while keeping the peasant commune
intact. This was a unique combination, and offered an oppor-
tunity to study how the development of a capitalist economy
would affect the agrarian communities. This was, in addition,
the most carefully conceived peasant reform ever to have taken
place, as it was able to draw upon the experience of similar
measures in the past, and also to make use of all the develop-
ments in the science of political economy to date. It is impor-
tant to give some attention to the considerations which shaped
the legislation of 1861, because they not only constituted an
object of study for Marx, but also formed part of the intellec-
tual climate in which Marx's ideas took root in Russia.
The stimulus for reform came from Russia's defeat in the
Crimean War and the belief that the chief cause of this defeat
was the country's outmoded institutions and economic system.
211
The death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855 and the accession of

Alexander II created an atmosphere of optimism in which it
was hoped that the repressive and bureaucratic system of the
previous thirty years would come to an end, and that an era
of liberal reform would be instituted. It was recognized that
the reform which must precede all others was the abolition
of serfdom. Nothing could be done to reform the army, the
educational system or the judiciary as long as 22 million of
Russia's population remained outside the control of the state
as the private property of the landowners.
In the freer atmosphere of the first months of Alexander
II's reign projects for the emancipation of the serfs began to
be circulated among Russian liberals. At first these were in
manuscript form, but in the summer of 1856 B.N. Chicherin
and K.D. Ravelin sent their manuscripts secretly to London to
be published anonymously by Alexander Herzen's Free Rus-
sian Press.1 These and other materials were published between
1856 and 1860 in a series of volumes entitled Voices from Russia
which were smuggled back into the country. Chicherin and
Kavelin supplied the volumes with a general introduction in
which they dissociated themselves from Herzen's socialist ideas,
Chicherin pouring particular scorn on Herzen's conception of
the peasant commune as the embodiment of communism. 2
The emancipation projects published in Voices from Russia con-
tained the main points of the later legislation of 1861 and
provided the reasoning behind some of the major provisions.
The main difference between this and all previous emancipa-
tions was that its proponents were agreed that the peasants
should not simply be given their personal freedom, but that
they should be enabled to buy some or all of the land which
the landowner presently made available to them in return for
either labour service (barshchina) or payment in money or kind
(obrok). What prompted the scheme for a liberation with land
was the desire to avoid the formation of a landless proletariat,
which, rootless and impoverished, would be a threat to social
stability. Earlier emancipations, both abroad, as in Britain, and
those within the Russian Empire itself, as in the Baltic prov-
inces during 1817-19, were held to show the undesirability of
freeing the peasant without any means of livelihood.3 The pros-
pect Chicherin presented to his readers was a daunting one:
'Twenty-two million people', he warned, 'forcibly torn from
Marx and the Russians 213
the land, to which they are attached with all their being, will
hardly remain docile.
The same kind of consideration led the reformers to favour
the retention of the peasant commune: it would act as a sta-
bilizing factor in the midst of the far-reaching changes that
the abolition of serfdom would bring. Even those such as
Chicherin, who were dedicated to the principles of economic
liberalism and looked to a future in which the peasant com-
mune would give way to individual private ownership of the
land, favoured retaining the commune as a temporary measure.5
The lesson that Russian landowners had learnt from earlier
peasant liberations was that such measures were likely to leave
the wealth and power of the nobility undiminished, and that
their estates could survive just as well with free as with unfree
labour. Economic compulsion attached workers just as effec-
tively to the land as did legal constraints. In Russia, therefore,
most landowners, on realizing that serfdom would have to be
abandoned, tried to insist that the peasants should be given
personal freedom only, without any claim to the land which
they presendy cultivated.
The landowners feared that their economic future would be
threatened by liberating the peasantry with land. For if the ex-
serfs were able to sustain themselves and their families from
the land they received, then they would have no incentive to
work for the landowners on their estates. This was a difficulty
which the reformers took into account and the measures to
overcome it gave the reform in Russia some of its characteris-
tic features.
First, it was envisaged that there would be a period of tran-
sition between the existing state of affairs and complete free-
dom, during which the peasants would be obliged to carry out
the services they currently performed for the landowner. Sec-
ond, as the reformers pointed out, even with the land they
presently worked, very few peasants were self-sufficient, and
this position would not be changed by the liberation. More-
over, in order to raise money to pay his taxes and his dues to
the landowner the peasant would require to seek work with an
employer.6 The reformers were also prepared to reduce the
amount of land made available to the peasants below the area
they currently cultivated. The portions of land to be deducted
were known as otrezki (literally 'pieces cut off). Third, since it
was planned that the peasants would pay for the land they
received over a lengthy period of time, the need to raise the
money for the payments would compel the ex-serfs to seek
work in order to do this. As the Slavophile A.I. Koshelev
explained:
If anyone thinks that the people will not work because there is no need
to pay obrok, let me reassure them by saying that the serfs will probably
not become free for nothing, and that for many years they will have
to make payments for their liberation equal to what they now pay in
obrok?
The reformers could point out that since the landowners

would receive payment for the land immediately from the
government, and that this would be reimbursed by the peas-
ants over a number of years, the landowners would have at
their disposal sufficient ready money to cover the initial costs
of wages and equipment to begin running their estates using
hired labour. It was therefore greatly in the interests of the
landowners, it could be argued, that the peasants should be
liberated with, and not without, land. 8 The attitude of the
landowners, however, was seldom of enlightened self-interest:
when they saw that serfdom would have to be abolished they
tried to sell the freedom of their serfs as dearly as possible.
Any hopes the landowners might have entertained of a lib-
eration without land were dashed at the end of 1857 with the
Rescript to Nazimov, the Governor General of Vilna, Kovno
and Grodno. The nobility of the three Lithuanian provinces
had petitioned the Tsar for permission to liberate their serfs
without land on the pattern of the neighbouring Baltic prov-
inces. The Tsar in reply sent a Rescript to Nazimov on 20
November 1857. In approving the initiative taken by the nobil-
ity of the Lithuanian provinces he directed them to establish
provincial committees of the nobility to draft within six months
proposals for the 'improvement of the condition' of the serfs.9
The Tsar effectively ruled out any emancipation without land
by giving guidelines on what kinds of proposal these should
be. While all the land was recognized as belonging to the
nobility, the peasants were to be allowed to acquire their home-
stead (usad'ba) as their own property by making redemption
payments over a number of years. In addition the Emperor
proposed that in order that the peasants should have some-

thing to live on, and some means of fulfilling their obligations
to the state and the landowner, a parcel of land should be
made available to them in return for either obrok or work per-
formed for the landowner. Peasants would continue to be
settled in communes. 10
A few days after the Tsar issued his Rescript to Nazimov,
the Minister of the Interior, Lanskoy, sent copies of it with an
accompanying memorandum to the Marshalls of the Nobility
in all the provinces of the Empire.11 With some further prompt-
ing from the government, the committees of the nobility were
set up during the spring and summer of 1858. On 8 January
1859 the Emperor established a special committee to deal with
the peasant reform, and on 18 of February this was renamed
the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs. It was the Main Com-
mittee which was to receive and consider the schemes for
peasant emancipation submitted by the provincial assemblies.
The work of the provincial assemblies was completed by
the end of 1859 and their reports were submitted to the Main
Committee, whose Editorial Commissions were charged with
the drafting of the emancipation statutes, which were promul-
gated on 19 February 1861. Although the recommendations of
the provincial committees and the work of the drafting com-
missions had improved the terms of the reform for the nobil-
ity and made them more onerous for the peasants, the basic
principles advocated by the liberals had been adhered to.
Chicherin for one was entirely satisfied with the result, calling
it 'the best monument of Russian legislation'.12
By the provisions of the 'General Statute on Emancipated
Peasants' the ex-serfs acquired their personal freedom and the
right to dispose of their property. The landowners retained as
their property all lands previously belonging to them, but were
obliged to cede to the peasant the 'perpetual usufruct' of his
homestead, his usad'ba, that is his house, yard, adjoining build-
ings and garden. The peasants were also entitled to an arable
allotment whereby they might 'maintain themselves and fulfil
their obligations to the government and the landowner'. For
this they had either to pay a money rent or perform labour
services. They might not refuse to accept the rent of a plot of
land during the first nine years, during which they were 'tem-
porarily obligated'.
The General Statute drew a clear distinction between the

usad'ba and the allotment land. The ex-serf acquired the right
to purchase his homestead from the landowner, but the latter
could refuse to sell it unless the peasant also purchased his
statutory allotment of land. This proviso was of great service to
the landowners, especially in the less fertile northern prov-
inces, because as the ex-serfs had the option of abandoning
their tenancies after 1870, the landowner would be in danger
of being deprived of free labour or money rent. It was widely
invoked by the landowners, and twenty years after the reform
official returns showed that only one third of peasants in Russia
as a whole had voluntarily applied to purchase their allotments,
whereas in the industrial north the figure was only 16.5 per
cent.13
The amount of money to be paid for the homestead and
allotment land was linked to the rate of obrok in the region in
question. The sum for obrok multiplied by 16.6 defined the
value of the homestead and allotment. The government paid
four-fifths of the whole sum immediately to the landowner,
the remaining fifth being supplied by the purchaser. The
peasants then had to 'redeem' the government's loan by pay-
ing six per cent of the sum it had advanced every year for 49
years.
The landowner was entitled to retain at least one third of
the total area of his estate, and could make up this proportion
at the expense of peasant allotments by otrezki. The area of
land cultivated by the peasants was not only reduced in this
way, but access to grazing, streams, ponds, pathways and wood-
lands was now denied them, unless payment was made to the
landowner. 14
Except in certain western provinces, the ownership of the
allotments which the peasants redeemed was acquired not by
individuals or families, but by the commune. It was the com-
mune which was made responsible for the payment of the
redemption payments, taxes and obrok. The commune mem-
bers were made responsible for each other's conduct, particu-
larly in respect of financial commitments, by the system of
mutual responsibility or krugovaya poruka.15
The liberation statutes gave extensive powers of self-
government to the commune including the right to elect its
own officials. In addition a new tier of local government, the
volosf, had been established. This encompassed several con-

tiguous village communities and had an assembly, an elder
and a court, to all of which the corresponding institutions in
the individual communes were subordinate. In practice, real
power was in the hands of the 'arbiter of the peace', the mirovoy
posrednik, who was elected by the local nobility from among
their own number.
THE DEBATE ON THE PEASANT COMMUNE
The 1861 reform did much to bring the peasant commune to

public attention. A recent writer has pointed out that whereas
before 1850 only four works had been published in Russia on
the peasant commune, and by 1855 this figure had only risen
by one, in the five years between 1856 and 1860 the number
soared to 99. By 1880 it had reached a total of 546.16
It was Chicherin who stimulated much of the discussion
surrounding the peasant commune in the second half of the
1850s. In 1856 he published an article entided 'A Survey of
the History of the Development of the Agrarian Commune in
Russia' in the journal of the Westerners Russky vestnik which
challenged some of the deeply held beliefs of the Slavophile
school. Following Haxthausen, the latter had viewed the peas-
ant commune as an exclusively Russian form of social organ-
ization which would enable Russians to avoid the problems
which economic individualism had created in the West. This
view had been questioned in 1855 by Chicherin's teacher T.N.
Granovsky, who held that the commune was not peculiarly
Russian, but an institution common to all ancient peoples, but
which died out with the development of modern society.17 The
assumption remained, however, that the commune in Russia
was the survival of an ancient social order.
Chicherin's article undermined this assumption completely.
For from archival documents he had discovered that in medi-
eval Russia peasants had owned land, sold it, bequeathed it to
heirs and donated it to monasteries, all as individual private
property.18 This led him to conclude that a process of evolu-
tion had taken place by which an original patriarchal or con-
sanguine commune had developed into the modern type with
common ownership of land and periodic redivision.
The oldest type of commune, in Chicherin's opinion, had

been the consanguine (rodovaya) commune, in which land
had been owned by a group of people related by blood. This
had given way to the 'possessionary' (vladeVcheskaya) commune
with a single landowner, in which land could be alienated in
favour of another individual proprietor. The function of the
commune in this case, according to Chicherin, was purely eco-
nomic. The consanguine connection having been dissolved, it
was no longer an association of people whose ties originated
in Nature, but one united by a common obligation to the
landowner. 19
From the fifteenth century, concepts of the State began to
develop in Russia, and these new principles occasioned changes
in the commune. It was transformed from a possessionary insti-
tution into an estate (soslovie) and a State one, owing obliga-
tions not only to the landowner, but also to the government.
Between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries changes
were effected which facilitated the fulfilment of these obliga-
tions. One such change was the attachment of the peasants to
the land to meet the objections raised by communes that many
of their members had departed, increasing the tax-burden on
those who remained.
The culmination of this process was Peter the Great's poll-
tax which was introduced in 1722. It was this tax which, in
Chicherin's view, shaped the modern peasant commune and
gave it its characteristic features. Since the tax fell upon indi-
viduals, it followed that each one should receive a certain
portion of land to enable him to raise enough money to pay
it. And since the tax-burden was the same for everyone, it was
reasonable that the portion of land received ought also to be
equal. As, moreover, any increase in the population was liable to
create inequalities, repartitions were required to restore parity
to the land holdings. In the same year as his article appeared
Chicherin also published his findings in book form under the
title of Regional Institutions in Russia in the XVII Century.
I.D. Belyaev replied to Chicherin in the Slavophile journal
Russkaya beseda. In Belyaev's opinion the commune had not
been created by the government, but had arisen out of the way
of life of the Russian people; the government had only made
use of 'what already existed in the manners and customs of the
people'. 20 Like Chicherin, Belyaev published his views in book
form; his Peasants in Russia appeared in 1860.
Chicherin's views were not even generally accepted within

the Westerner camp. N.D. Kavelin in his review of Chicherin's
book expressed the opinion that the communes of the seven-
teenth century were the 'dilapidated and obscure remnants of
formerly vital historical elements', and 'the remains of histor-
ical forms whose origins lay deep in antiquity'. The historian
S.M. Soloviev also remarked on the way in which Chicherin's
presentation supposed a rapid replacement of one kind of
institution by another, rather than the gradual evolution and
transformation of a single institutional type.21 According to
Chicherin, however, though his opponents might dispute his
general approach to historical development, none of them
attempted to disprove his conclusions by the kind of detailed
study of documentary evidence that he himself had undertaken. 22
If there was controversy about the origins of the peasant
commune, there was a great deal more unanimity about its
future. By the time the debate on the commune was con-
ducted it was generally accepted that the institution was not
peculiarly Russian and that it had once existed in the coun-
tries of Western Europe. It survived in Russia only through
that country's social and economic backwardness. The impli-
cation was that if Russia were to follow the economic develop-
ment of the West then the commune must inevitably disappear.
The peasant reform of 1861 was widely held by Slavophiles
and Westerners alike to be a significant step in this direction.
The Slavophile Yu.F. Samarin, for example, was sure that in
the long-term the peasants would increasingly become landless
labourers and that the commune would probably give way to
the private ownership of land. In 1857 he wrote of the peasant
commune:
What the future has in store for it - whether it will develop into a
number of new, unprecedented phenomena or whether it will disap-
pear and give way to one of the forms of private ownership - we do
not and cannot know. We can only say that if the natural course of
economic development demands it, communal ownership will easily
become private ownership. In maintaining the commune now as a fact
of existence, we in no way bind ourselves to it in the future.23
While accepting that the commune was unlikely to survive

indefinitely, Samarin was strenuously opposed to any measures
designed to accelerate artificially the process of its dissolution.
He was convinced that its existence would ease considerably
the transition from serfdom to full civil rights for the peasantry.
And he pointed out that the commune provided a natural
basis for the system of mutual responsibility (krugovaya poruka),
the mechanism which ensured that the peasants' increased
financial responsibilities would be met.24
MARX AND CHERNYSHEVSKY
The only prominent writer in Russia at that time to advance

the view that the peasant commune was not destined to disin-
tegrate was N.G. Chernyshevsky. A follower of Feuerbach and
deeply influenced by German philosophy, Chernyshevsky dis-
cussed the future of the peasant commune in an article enti-
tled 'Critique of Philosophical Prejudices against Communal
Ownership' published in 1858. In it he challenged the widely
held assumption that communal landownership must inevit-
ably give way in the course of historical development to private
property in land.
He began by recalling that previously the peasant commune
had been the object of a mystical national pride in the belief
that it was an exclusively Russian, or at least exclusively Sla-
vonic, institution. Recendy, however, scholars had shown that
the agrarian commune as it now existed in Russia had for-
merly flourished among other European peoples. It was not
peculiarly Russian, and its survival was a sign of economic
backwardness.
According to Chernyshevsky, the conclusion drawn by or-
thodox economists was that since communal ownership was a
primitive form of agrarian relations, and private property a
more advanced type, there was every reason to prefer private
to common property. This was a logical position, and one
which implied that trying to preserve the peasant commune
would be to fly in the face of progress and the natural course
of historical development.
The argument deployed by Chernyshevsky in defence of the
commune was that historical development was not so simple as
the orthodox economists believed. The newest German philo-
sophy, that of Schelling and Hegel, had discovered that in all
spheres of existence the Universal pattern of development was
a return to the point of departure. Chernyshevsky stated:
We are not followers of Hegel, and even less of Schelling. But we re-
cognise that both of these systems have given great service to the science
of discovering Universal patterns of development. The basic result of
these discoveries is expressed in the following axiom: Tn respect of
form, the higher stage of development is similar to the initial one,
that which was its point of departure'. This is the essence of Schelling's
system; it was made more precise and detailed by Hegel.25
It was ironic, he added, that the opponents of communal

ownership should claim to be followers of Schelling and Hegel.
Here Chernyshevsky could have had in mind people like
Chicherin, Samarin or M.N. Katkov, all of whom were steeped
in German philosophy.
Chernyshevsky did not elaborate on why exacdy it should be
that development should take place in a threefold pattern with
the highest stage being a return to the point of departure. He
evidendy believed that Schelling and Hegel had demonstrated
this satisfactorily enough, and in any case the argument was
addressed to opponents who were familiar with Schelling and
Hegel's ideas.
Having established the general principle, Chernyshevsky
could now argue that private property was not the highest, but
only an intermediate stage in the development of property
relations. The highest form of landownership would be the
negation of private property, the return to the communal type.
There was every reason to retain the peasant commune, there-
fore, rather than to welcome its disintegration, because it could
bring about the direct transition to the highest form of prop-
erty ownership. As a socialist, Chernyshevsky saw in the com-
mune a means of attaining socialism without having to pass
through a capitalist stage. This objective conditioned his ap-
proach to economic questions in general.
In the sphere of economic theory Chernyshevsky's major
work was his translation of and commentary on John Stuart
Mill's Principles of Political Economy. This was originally pub-
lished in the journal Sovremennik in 1860, but appeared in
1869 and 1870 as Volumes III and IV of the edition of Cherny-
shevsky's writings published in Geneva. The work consisted
of two parts: (a) a translation of the first Book of Mill's treatise
with 'additions and notes' by Chernyshevsky, and (b) 'Studies
in Political Economy (according to Mill)', which was a brief
exposition of the second, third, fourth and fifth Books of Mill's

work with commentaries by Chernyshevsky.
According to Chernyshevsky the purpose of this voluminous
work was to save that section of the younger generation whose
main source of information was books in Russian from learn-
ing about Adam Smith's system from Franco-Russian versions
which distorted its meaning. He regarded Mill as the most
brilliant representative of the Smithian school and someone
from whom much could be learnt. But, at the same time,
Chernyshevsky could not accept the individualist assumptions
on which classical political economy was based, so that he
found it necessary not only to expound Mill's ideas, but also
to take issue with some of the most fundamental of them.
Mill's Principles lent themselves particularly well to this kind
of treatment. They represented a culmination of classical pol-
itical economy, and constituted a compendium of elements
contributed by previous writers of the Smithian tradition. They
contained, in fact, all the economic categories of which Marx
had set out to make a critique. Thus, one could find in Mill's
Principles the commodity, the labour theory of value, use value,
exchange value, capital, the falling rate of profit, etc.
On the other hand, Mill was no unqualified apologist of the
capitalist system. He was well aware of its more unpleasant
aspects, the 'trampling, crushing, elbowing', and he looked
forward to a fairer and more equitable system of distribution
for the fruits of industry. Like his teacher Thomas Malthus,
however, he always believed this to be dependent on the popu-
lation of the lower classes being kept in check. Mill also de-
voted some dispassionate, if not entirely sympathetic, pages to
discussing socialist and communist theories, and his defence
of private property against them lent dimension to his treat-
ment of the capitalist system.
Chernyshevsky was thus able to use Mill's principles in two
ways. He was able to take up and reinforce Mill's criticisms of
the capitalist system and use them as a platform for his own
socialist ideas. On the other hand, Mill's clear and compre-
hensive exposition of classical political economy could be used
by Chernyshevsky as a starting-point for demonstrating the
system's inherent irrationality and inhumanity.
Chernyshevsky repeatedly stressed the difference in approach
to economics between Mill and himself. This was that whereas

Mill adopted the viewpoint of economic individualism, Cherny-
shevsky espoused the point of view of society or humanity. In
Chernyshevsky's opinion:
Science regards all subjects from the point of view of humanity or
society, and when it speaks of benefit it must of course have in mind
the benefit of society, if no explicit reservation is made limiting the
sense of the word. 26
As a social science, political economy could do no other than

take society as its subject.27
It was to the benefit of society in Russia, Chernyshevsky
believed, to avoid the proletarianization of the peasantry. For
this reason he advocated that they be adequately provided
with land, and that the commune should be preserved. He
referred in his commentary on Mill's Principles to articles he
had published earlier in Sovremennik written in defence of
communal ownership. He thought it fortunate that the insti-
tution had survived in Russia and that it would continue to
survive if one did not 'contrary to any need and common sense
attempt to destroy it'.28 The commune, he considered, should
be preserved and improved to remove its disadvantages.29
In articles written before 1861 Chernyshevsky argued in fa-
vour of a low rate of redemption payment for peasant allot-
ments, and even for a redemption that would be paid by all
groups in society, since all would benefit from a liberated
peasantry. He was therefore bitterly disappointed by the actual
terms of the 1861 statutes. In 1862 he wrote an open letter to
Alexander II entitled Letters without an Address criticizing the
1861 reform. This was only published in 1874, eight years after
Chernyshevsky had been exiled to Siberia, convicted on dubi-
ous evidence of subversive activities.
The idea behind Letters without an Address was one he also
elaborated on in the novel Prologue, written in internal exile.
In it Chernyshevsky compared Russia after the Crimean War
to Prussia after Jena. The comparison was not in Russia's fa-
vour, for whereas the crushing defeat by Napoleon had led to
a fundamental reform of the Prussian system, the Crimean
defeat had not been serious enough to ensure that the Russian
reform would be thoroughgoing and fundamental. The Letters
without an Address made the same point without making the

comparison with Prussia. There Chernyshevsky simply indicated
that the Crimean war had not affected the Russian heardand:
'What was the Crimea, Taganrog or Kerch' for the inhabitants
of Great Russia?' Thus, respect for the old regime 'was only
shaken, but did not collapse'.30 There was consequendy very
little sense of urgency in the reforms that were carried out and
they were therefore perfunctory and superficial.
The military defeat had strengthened the hand of the liber-
als, who demanded the abolition of serfdom. The government
consequently carried out an alien programme, one at variance
with its own autocratic character. The changes made were there-
fore in form only, not in Essence. Chernyshevsky argued that
this External character of the reforms made them bureau-
cratic, since bureaucracy only dealt in Externals. He explained
the functioning of the Editorial Commissions in this way, show-
ing that the formal, bureaucratic reform had served to protect
the interests of the nobility.31
Marx first came to know of Chernyshevsky in 1867 through
A.A. Serno-Solov'evich, an associate of Chernyshevsky's living
in exile in Geneva. Serno-Solov'evich died in August 1869, but
by that time Marx had made contact with followers of
Chernyshevsky in Russia itself. This contact was with a group
of young men in St Petersburg consisting of N.I. Danielson,
G.A. Lopatin, N.N. Lyubavin and M.F. Negreskul. All but
Lyubavin were employed at the Society for Mutual Credit, where
Danielson was to remain for the rest of his working life. It was
a post which allowed Danielson to gain access to all kinds of
materials relating to the economic situation in Russia, and this
was to prove extremely useful to Marx. Danielson first wrote to
Marx in September 1868,32 and over the years was able to
supply him with books and journals necessary for the study of
Russian economic development. Among the first of these were
the works of Chernyshevsky.
Marx showed great interest in the essay 'Critique of Philo-
sophical Prejudices against Communal Ownership'. All the
stages in Chernyshevsky's argument were underlined, as was
the 'axiom' on which the argument was based: that 'In respect
of form, the higher stage of development is similar to the
initial one, that which was its point of departure.' This was
underlined by Marx on the two instances it occurred in the
text. He also noted with approval Chernyshevsky's qualifica-

tion that: 'of course, while the two forms are similar, the content
at the end is immeasurably richer and higher than at the
beginning.' 33
Marx read Chernyshevsky's commentary on Mill's Principles
of Political Economy with equal care, and here too Chernyshevsky's
ideas paralleled Marx's own. The commentary on Mill was a
critique of classical political economy from the point of view
of 'society' or 'humanity', and 'society', moreover, was conceived
in the concrete form of the peasant commune, a position Marx
had recently adopted.
It is significant that in such an extensive work Marx's
annotations show relatively few points of disagreement with
Chernyshevsky. Most of these, moreover, were on points
of factual detail, as when, for example Chernyshevsky stated
that Mill had been the first British economist to concern him-
self with the question of small peasant proprietorship. Here
Marx noted: 'It's a mistake.' 34 Marx evidently had a more
detailed knowledge of the history of economic thought than
Chernyshevsky, and he queried the latter's verdict that Mill's
sketch of economic history had been written in a masterly
fashion.35
On central issues of economic theory, on the other hand,
Marx's and Chernyshevsky's views largely coincided. Thus, Marx
noted with approval Chernyshevsky's proposition that: 'exchange
value as such belongs only to things produced by labour .m He also
approved of Chernyshevsky's conception of capital as objectified
labour:
Thus, the subject investigated by economic theory is labour in two forms,

one of them, in which it is productive activity, we have already spoken. Now
we must turn to another of its forms, called capital, where, once realised in
material products, it enables further production.^
Marx also followed Chernyshevsky's arguments against Mai thus

with interest, but showed some impatience when Chernyshevsky
resorted to mathematical arguments to support his case.38
Despite the fact that Chernyshevsky had not read Capital,
one can find in his commentary on Mill's book many parallels
with Marx's ideas. The great difference, however, between Marx
and Chernyshevsky was that whereas the latter's critique of
capitalism was ordered according to the structure of Mill's

Principles of Political Economy, Marx's critique was conceived as
a system in which the ordering of the categories was an essen-
tial element in the method used.
Marx made his high regard for Chernyshevsky known in the
Postscript to the second edition of Capital:
The Continental revolution of 1848 also had its reaction in England.

Men who still claimed some scientific standing and aspired to be some-
thing more than mere sophists and sycophants of the ruling classes
tried to harmonise the political economy of capital with the claims, n o
longer to be ignored, of the proletariat. Hence the insipid syncretism,
of which J o h n Stuart Mill is the best representative. It is a declaration
of bankruptcy by 'bourgeois' economics, which has already been illu-
minated in a masterly fashion by the great Russian scholar and critic
N. Chernyshevsky, in his Outlines of Political Economy according to Mill.59
This assessment of Chernyshevsky was matched by the ac-

count written by Lopatin in February 1873 of his meeting with
Marx in July 1870. Lopatin said that, having learnt Russian,
Marx:
came across Chernyshevsky's commentary on Mill's famous treatise and

some other articles by the same author. On reading these articles, Marx
formed a high regard for Chernyshevsky. He told me on several occa-
sions that of all the contemporary economists Chernyshevsky was the
only really original thinker. While all the rest were in fact only com-
pilers, his works were full of originality, force and depth, and were the
only modern works on that science which really deserved to be read
and studied. He said that Russians should be ashamed that not one
of them had so far cared to make such a wonderful thinker known in
Europe, and that the political death of Chernyshevsky was a loss for
the world of science not only in Russia, but in the rest of Europe . . .40
Marx in fact intended to make Chernyshevsky better known

in the West. In his letters to Danielson Marx informed him
that in addition to using Chernyshevsky's economic works in
the second volume of Capital,41 he wanted to write something
on Chernyshevsky's life and personality; he therefore asked
Danielson to provide the requisite information. 42 This was
done, but the projected biography of Chernyshevsky never
materialized.
THE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION OF CAPITAL
In the Introduction to a collection of letters Marx had written

to him, published in 1908, Danielson explained how this cor-
respondence had come about. He recalled that when he first
read Marx's Capital in 1867 he was so impressed that he began
at once to make arrangements to have it translated into Rus-
sian.43 He succeeded in finding a publisher, N.P. Polyakov, a
man with radical sympathies who specialized in publishing works
from Western Europe. All that remained was to find a translator.
Danielson's first letter to Marx in September 1868 informed
him of these arrangements. 44
Finding a suitable translator proved to be no easy matter.
Negreskul and Lyubavin first approached Bakunin, and al-
though the latter undertook the translation and accepted
payment in advance, his work was found to be inadequate and
only produced as a result of constant exhortation and after
great delays. In the spring of 1870 Lopatin went to Geneva
and on Polyakov's behalf released Bakunin from his undertak-
ing and recovered the money the publisher had advanced.45
After spending two weeks in Geneva, where he visited the
Russian Section of the International, led by N.I. Utin, Lopatin
went to Paris where he received a letter of introduction to
Marx from Paul Lafargue. He then crossed to England and
found lodgings in Brighton, from where he visited Marx in
London on 2 July 1870.46 Three days later Marx communicated
to Engels his impressions of the young Russian:
Lopatin visited me on Saturday; I invited him for Sunday (he spent
from 10 a.m. till 12 p.m. with us) and went back to Brighton, where he
lives, on Monday.
He is still very young, was 2 years in prison, then 8 months in a
fortress in the Caucasus, from where he escaped. He is the son of an
impoverished nobleman, and supported himself at St Petersburg Uni-
versity by giving lessons. Now he lives very miserably doing translations
for Russia . . .
He has a very critical mind, a cheerful character, stoic like a Russian
peasant who is content with what he has. His weak point is Poland. He
speaks like an Englishman - say an English Chartist of the old school
- would about Ireland. 47
This initial warmth was to grow into a lasting friendship. Later

Marx could say of Lopatin: 'There are few people in the world
of whom I am so fond and whom I esteem so much.' 48
With Marx's help, Lopatin made a thorough study of Capi-

tal. He became familiar not only with Volume I, but with the
overall structure of the work as a whole and what the remain-
ing volumes would contain. He impressed Marx by his under-
standing of how the argument and the arrangement of the
material would proceed. According to P.L. Lavrov:
There were few people of whom Karl Marx spoke to me with such
warmth as of Hermann Lopatin. There was, in his words, hardly any-
one who understood so well what he was doing and what he intended
to accomplish in the forthcoming volumes of his work as Lopatin did.
And in this respect the distinguished teacher of socialism was very
demanding of the people he befriended.49
The fact that Lopatin, and through Lopatin, Danielson under-

stood what was to be contained in the subsequent volumes of
Marx's work was very important. It meant that Danielson in St
Petersburg knew exacdy what kind of materials Marx required
and was able to supply them as they became available.
It was while studying Capital in this first-hand way that Lopatin
embarked on its translation into Russian. He did this in a most
thorough and systematic manner, taking great care to devise
suitable equivalents for the terminology Marx had used, and
checking quotations from the Blue Books with the original
text in the British Museum. Altogether Lopatin translated about
a third of the volume, comprising the chapters 'The Transfor-
mation of Money into Capital', 'The Production of Absolute
Surplus Value' and part of 'The Production of Relative Sur-
plus Value'.
Significantly, Lopatin began his translation from the second
chapter. By the summer of 1870 Marx had decided to rewrite
the first chapter, and he expected to have it ready by the time
the translation was finished. This turned out not to be the
case, and the Russian translation came out with the same first
chapter as the original German edition.50
Lopatin ended his translation work abruptly in November
1870. Marx's admiration for Chernyshevsky had convinced him
of the need to 'give back to the world the great publicist and
citizen'. Consequently he decided to try to rescue Cherny-
shevsky from Siberia. By 20 November Lopatin had returned
to Russia. But before setting out for Siberia he left his trans-
lation with Danielson, explaining Marx's intention to rework
the first chapter for the Russian version. As it happened,
Lopatin's rescue attempt failed and he himself was arrested

and imprisoned at Tobolsk. He was able to escape and make
his way abroad only in 1873.
The translation of Capital then fell to Danielson, who reached
the end of the volume in October 1871. As Marx was unable
to provide the new first chapter, it only remained to translate
the first version and the appendix 'The Value Form' which
accompanied it. These especially intricate sections Danielson
handed over for translation to Lyubavin. The completed Rus-
sian version was finally published in March 1872.51 Marx, who
by that time could read Russian fluendy, was delighted with
the translation and found the work of the three translators to
have conveyed his meaning exacdy.52
N.I. SIEBER
By the time the Russian translation of Capital appeared some

of the main ideas it contained had already been commun-
icated to the Russian reading public by N.I. Sieber's53 treatise
David Ricardo's Theory of Value and Capital in Connection with the
Latest Contributions and Interpretations, published in 1871. Among
the 'latest contributions and interpretations' the ideas of Marx
figured most prominently.
The rather cumbersome title of Sieber's dissertation con-
tained an element of ambiguity. It might be assumed from it
that the main emphasis was Ricardo's economics, and that
Marx's ideas were treated as something of an afterthought. In
fact, this was far from being the case: it was on Marx's theories
that the main attention was focused. The economic ideas of
Ricardo and his predecessors were viewed as stages in the
progress towards Marx's, and it was from Marx's position that
earlier economists were evaluated. Thus, early on in his work
Sieber stated that:
Value for Smith, MacCulloch, Mill etc. is a quality of things and not
of people; it is an intrinsic quality of things (MacCulloch). Certainly
value, or as these economists like to call it, 'exchange value' is for all
of them no more than a relationship between things . . .54
This quite clearly was Marx's point of view. But the context
also showed that it had not been arrived at simply by para-
phrasing Capital; Sieber had gone over the same ground as
Marx and had been able to confirm the latter's findings by his
own reading of the sources.
More important is the fact that the adoption of this quite
complex point of view had been achieved by following a sim-
pler and more direct route than Marx had done. It involved
no great philosophical sophistication. Sieber simply argued
that the distorted viewpoint of classical political economy, which
transformed social relationships into qualities of things, arose
from its being based on individualism. This led to the confu-
sion of the economic activity of an individual and the eco-
nomic activity of society as a whole. He gave as an example
Adam Smith's argument in favour of foreign trade, that: 'The
tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them
from a shoemaker . .. what is prudence in the conduct of every
private family can scarcely be folly in that of a great king-
dom.' 55 It was ironic, Sieber thought, that Adam Smith and his
school should take pride in having corrected the mercantilists'
error of confounding the wealth of an individual with the
wealth of a society, when they themselves had succumbed to
the same mistake.
Like Chernyshevsky, Sieber highlighted the individualist
assumptions of the classical economists by his own adoption
of a standpoint which took society as its point of departure. It
is impossible to say whether Chernyshevsky's ideas exercised
any direct influence in this regard, because although Sieber
almost certainly knew Chernyshevsky's works, censorship re-
strictions prohibited direct reference to them. However, the
standpoint of society adopted in David Ricardo's Theory of Value
and Capital was not the concrete collective of Chernyshevsky,
the peasant commune, but an altogether more abstract entity
with some echoes of German philosophy, which he referred to
as the 'social economy'. This Sieber contrasted with the 'indi-
vidual economy', an element corresponding to the character
of Robinson Crusoe used by Marx when he wished to throw
into relief the confusion between an individual's and society's
economic activities. In Sieber's later writings, however, his
conception of the standpoint of society moved closer to
Chernyshevsky's.
It was in explaining exactly in what ways the collective
economy differed from the individual economy that traces of
the German philosophical tradition could be discerned. Thus,
Sieber said, the collectivity of economies showed the influence

of the mutual action of the one upon the other. This type of
cooperation made them act like the parts of a machine in
regard to the economy as a whole. All the individual econo-
mies, moreover, were subordinated to the social economy as
parts to the whole. This hint of Schelling's conception of or-
ganisms represented the full extent to which Sieber thought
of society in philosophical terms. But he used the concept of
the organism in other connections, most notably in the way he
considered the different aspects of political economy related
to each other. This, for example, was the way in which Sieber
explained the importance of the labour theory of value for
classical political economy:
Before proceeding to the analysis of the productive and distributive

relations of economies, the way in which labourwas divided among them,
it was necessary to know the characteristics of the mechanism by whose
action these economies did not remain in isolation, but continued to
constitute a social whole. Therefore, in the eyes of the classical polit-
ical economists, the doctrine of value appeared to be the most general
department of political economy, that by means of which the other
departments of the science could be explained . . . Exchange relations
were inconceivable without value, but value was conceivable without
exchange relations.56
Sieber provided considerable information on the origins and

development of the labour theory of value, drawing on the
works of many writers from Locke and Hobbes to John Stuart
Mill and contemporary economists in France and Germany.
His admission that his knowledge of Italian economic literature
was deficient57 only served to emphasize his otherwise great
familiarity with a wide range of economic writing. His wide
reading enabled him to judge exactly what the contribution of
any given writer to economic theory had been.
While Ricardo had elaborated the idea that the value of
articles was determined by the amount of labour contained in
them, Marx, according to Sieber, had gone a stage further and
had explained how the division of labour in society had made
the concept of value necessary. It was essentially a social rela-
tionship, but because it was seen from the standpoint of the
individual economy, it appeared to be a quality of things, and
was so described by the classical economists.
Sieber devoted considerable space to expounding Marx's

conception of value, of the various functions of money, and of
the emergence of capital from the circulation of money and
commodities. In each case, Sieber indicated how Marx's ideas
went beyond those of his predecessors, Ricardo in particular,
and presented them in a fresh light. With regard to Marx's
categories of 'labour' and 'labour power', for example, Sieber
remarked:
We must note that distinguishing the different categories of 'labour'
and 'labour power', or the capacity to perform labour, and 'labour' or
the expenditure, the use of that capacity - obviously gives a completely
new meaning, and one more consonant with reality, to the distinction
Ricardo draws, between labour as a measure of value, and labour as a
commodity in its own right. Labour as a commodity, or labour power,
like every other commodity, purchases that quantity of goods which
contain in themselves as much labour as it took to produce the labour
power. But because labour power is objectified in a greater quantity
of goods than that which went to produce it, the labour cannot, in
Ricardo's expression, serve as a measure of the labour contained in
the former.58
To the extent that Sieber wrote about the classical school of
political economy from Marx's standpoint, he produced a work
which was analogous to Marx's own 'Theories of Surplus Value',
though in a shorter and better organized form. Sieber's work,
however, was more than this: it was at the same time an exam-
ination of the continuity which existed between Marx and
the classical economists. Sieber was concerned not simply with
the 'husk' of political economy, but the 'kernel' as well.
Sieber's exposition of Marx's ideas was remarkable for its
lucidity. Drawing upon both Capital and A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy, he succeeded in producing an
account of Marx's ideas that, while rendering them under-
standable, sacrificed little of their complexity. Nor had he
followed Marx slavishly. In the case of the theory of value he
had combined parts of the first chapter with the Appendix,
'The Value Form', to create an entirely new version which
greatly reduced the philosophical element. Sieber's originality
in this respect was obscured by the fact that Marx himself
followed the same course in the second edition of Capital.
In one passage Sieber alluded to the method he had used
to elucidate Marx's ideas:
This brief extract from the first chapter of Marx's work and the Appen-
dix to it at the end of the book contains, if I am not mistaken, the
most essential features of the author's doctrine of value and the general
characteristics of money. The peculiar language and the quite laconic
manner of expression does little to facilitate the comprehension of
his ideas, and in some cases has led to the accusation that he employs
a metaphysical approach to the investigation of value. With the excep-
tion of a few places in the chapter where perhaps some statements are
indeed made which do not really correspond to the truth, the accu-
sation seems to me unfounded. As far as the theory itself is concerned,
Marx's method is the deductive method of all the English school, and
both its faults and its merits are those shared by the best of the theo-
retical economists.59
Marx quoted the last sentence in this passage in the Postscript
to the second edition of Capital in defence against the charge
of metaphysics that had been laid against him.60
In response to Marx's request Danielson sent him Sieber's
book in December 1872.61 Marx was deeply impressed by it
and gave his verdict in the Postscript to the second edition of
Capital:
Already in 1871 Mr. N. Sieber (Ziber), Professor of Political Economy
at the University of Kiev in his book Teoriya tsennosti i kapitala D.
Rikardo (D. Ricardo's Theory of Value and Capital etc.) referred to my
theory of value, money and capital in its general outlines as a neces-
sary sequel to the teachings of Smith and Ricardo. What surprises the
Western European reader on reading this excellent work is the con-
sistent comprehension it shows of the purely theoretical standpoint.62
That this judgement was not given lightly is shown by the
fact that seven years later, in 1879, in commenting on a book
by Adolf Wagner which raised the question of Marx's relation-
ship to Ricardo, Marx noted:
Mr. Wagner could have discovered, both from Capital and from Sieber's
work (if he knew Russian) the difference between me and Ricardo,
who in fact concerned himself with labour only as a measure of value-
magnitude and on that account found no connection between his theory
of value and the essence of money.63
Here Marx obviously had in mind that part of Sieber's work

where Ricardo's and his own treatment of the categories of
labour were compared. In this respect, if in no other, Marx
placed Sieber's book on a par with Capital.
At the beginning of March 1874 Danielson wrote to Marx

informing him that Sieber had begun to publish a series of
articles entided 'Marx's Economic Theory' in the journal Znanie
(Knowledge), the object of the series being to 'popularise the
economic theories of the author and analyse them critically'.
Danielson had found the articles highly commendable and
was passing them on to Marx via Lopatin. 64 The series in fact
continued to appear sporadically in Znanie until 1877, and
when that journal was closed down the series was resumed in
Slovo during 1878. The four articles which appeared in Slovo
(The Word) were incorporated into a revised edition of David
Ricardo's Theory of Value and Capital and the resulting work
published in 1885 under the new tide of David Ricardo and
Karl Marx in their Socio-Economic Investigations.65
Among Marx's published notes there is reference to only
the first of Sieber's articles in Znanie. It refers to the only point
of criticism Marx found to make. This concerned Sieber's
defence of Marx against Karl Rossler, a German reviewer of
Capital, who had demanded to know why it should be that 'the
food in the stomach of a worker should be the source of sur-
plus value, whereas the food eaten by a horse or an ox should
not'. To this Sieber had replied that the subject of Marx's
investigation had been human society and not the society of
domestic animals; therefore it had been concerned only with
the kind of surplus value produced by human beings. On this
explanation Marx commented:
The answer - which Sieber does not find - is that because in the one
case the food produces human labour power (people), and in the
other - not. The value of things is nothing other than the relation in
which people are to each other, one which they have as the expres-
sion of expended human labour power. Mr. Rossler obviously thinks:
if a horse works longer than is necessary for the production of its
(labour power) horse-power, then it creates value just as a worker
would who worked 12 instead of 6 hours. The same could be said of
any machine.66
Marx's opinion in this matter arose from his general proposi-

tion that exchange value was exclusively the product of human
Society. Horses and oxen, like machines, belonged to Nature,
and could only give rise to use value.
THE POLEMIC ABOUT CAPITAL
In 1877 Sieber defended Marx's Capital against the criticisms

made of it by Yu.G. Zhukovsky in the journal Vestnik Evropy
(European Herald). Zhukovsky raised several objections to
Marx's work. As far as methodology was concerned, he had
the impression that Marx was still very much influenced by
Hegel, so his approach was formalistic. He dealt in terms of
philosophical categories, especially in the first chapter, paying
insufficient attention to the actual content of economic affairs.
Referring to the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Pol-
itical Economy, Zhukovsky expressed the belief that the abstract
Hegelian approach had also led Marx astray on historical fact:
the history of political thought showed that it was quite untrue
to say that 'mankind only set itself such tasks as it was able to
solve'.67
Like Rossler, Zhukovsky could not believe Marx's conten-
tion that only human labour created surplus value. He was of
the opinion that anything which bore fruit, be it a tree, live-
stock or the earth, all of these things were capable of provid-
ing exchange value. For Zhukovsky one of the main sources of
value was Nature. Another important source he believed to be
the way production was organized. The application of knowl-
edge and technique to the organization of labour was, in his
view, a basic method of creating value. But as knowledge and
organization were worthless without materials to work with,
Zhukovsky concluded that the combination of human organ-
ization and Nature was the true source of exchange value.68
The most significant of Zhukovsky's comments on Capital,
however, concerned the chapter on Original Accumulation.
He thought that Marx's account of the origins of capitalism,
the expropriation of the peasants and the formation of a pro-
letariat, had a fortuitous and anecdotal quality about it; Marx
had not presented the development of capitalism as a 'Natural
process'. He had traced the beginnings of capitalism in Eu-
rope to the liberation of the peasantry without land, but this
clearly implied that in other places, if the peasants were not so
liberated, then capitalism would not develop.
Zhukovsky also wondered whether Marx had not misinter-
preted the phenomenon of the expropriation of the peasantry
as a cause of capitalism when it was in reality an effect. In that

case the true origin of capitalism lay somewhere deeper and
more essential.70
It is ironic that these remarks could not have been made
about earlier versions of Capital. In previous drafts Marx had
argued exacdy that the expropriation of the peasantry was
both the presupposition and the result of capitalist produc-
tion. And while there might have been a fortuitous character
about the original accumulation, the subsequent circulation
and development of capital was regarded as nothing other
than a Natural process. The impression of fortuitousness had
been created by the removal of Subsumption from the pub-
lished version of Capital.
Sieber's reply appeared in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski
(Notes of the Fatherland) in November 1877. In regard to
Zhukovsky's objections to Marx's philosophical approach,
Sieber conceded that Marx would have done no harm by 're-
ducing somewhat the dialectical side of his exposition'. 71 But,
on the other hand, Sieber pointed out, in the case of value,
the metaphysical approach was necessary, because in capitalist
society perceptions of value were metaphysical. Marx's treat-
ment of value duly reflected this fact. Sieber then explained
how exchange value represented the essential unity of human-
ity through the prism of the division of labour and the frag-
mentation of society.72
Sieber's reply to Zhukovsky's idea that exchange value was
created not only by human labour, but also by Nature, showed
that he had given further consideration to Rossler's opinion that
animals too could create value. Sieber now, like Marx, held
that Nature alone was incapable of producing exchange value:
In the society of humans, which, as we know, is the only thing which
concerns social economy, the horse is the same as any steam, wind, or
any other given force of Nature . . .7S
Consequently, it was human labour which constituted the sole
source of exchange value, something, Sieber remarked, that
Zhukovsky as an authority on David Ricardo ought to know
quite well.
Sieber was eager to defend Marx against Zhukovsky's charge
that he had presented the origins of capitalism as a fortuitous
event rather than as a Natural process. Sieber quoted from the
Russian translation of Capital one of the few passages in which

Marx had retained the suggestion that the development of
capitalism was necessary and inevitable:
The small (medieval) means of production presupposes the fragmen-
tation of the land and the means of production. It excludes both the
concentration of the latter and the cooperation of labour in the given
process of production, the social control and the regulation of the
forces of Nature - in a word, it excludes the development of social
productive forces. It is compatible only with narrow, primitive con-
ditions of production and society. At a certain stage of development
it itself provides the material means within the society, passions and
forces which feel themselves fettered by that society. It has to be
destroyed and it is destroyed. Its destruction, the transformation of
the individualised and scattered means of production into socially-
concentrated ones, i.e. the transformation of the petty property of the
many into the vast property of the few. . . forms the original history
of capital.74
In Sieber's view this passage demonstrated three things: (a)
that Marx did not consider capitalist development to be in any
way accidental or fortuitous, but represented 'the necessary
consequence of the development of social cooperation'; (b)
that in Marx's opinion, despite the rift it created in society,
capitalist production constituted 'not a reactionary, but a pro-
gressive social phenomenon'; (c) that Marx obviously con-
sidered the expropriation of the small landowners and the
socialization of the workers to be one and the same phenom-
enon. Therefore one need not look for the kind of deeper
cause which would determine the capitalist order and the
expropriation simultaneously; the capitalist order implied ex-
propriation, but it also brought about the socialization of the
workers.
It is indicative of how well Sieber understood Marx's ideas,
that he could reconstruct accurately what Marx's original in-
tention had been, despite the fact that explicit indications of
it had been almost completely removed from the published
work. Sieber had correctly taken capitalism to be a Universal
relation of production, and that its development implied the
destruction of all earlier social and economic forms. As, more-
over, it led to the socialization of the workers and the creation
of socialist society, the development of capitalism should be
seen as a progressive phenomenon. As Marx had observed,
Sieber's understanding of theory was impressive. But the prob-

lem was that by the time Sieber wrote, some fundamental as-
pects of the theory he was defending had been abandoned by
its author.
Sieber was not the only defender of Marx's Capital against
Zhukovsky. The editor of Otechestvennye zapiski, N.K. Mikhay-
lovsky, who had written a favourable review of the Russian
translation of the work in 1872, also wrote an article in reply
to Zhukovsky's criticisms. It appeared in Otechestvennye zapiski
under the title of 'Karl Marx before the Tribunal of Mr. Zhu-
kovsky'. Danielson sent this article to Marx along with Sieber's
reply to Zhukovsky and one of a similar nature written in reply
to criticism of Capital by Chicherin. On 15 November 1878
Marx wrote to Danielson:
Of the polemics of Tshitcherin [i.e. Chicherin J.W.] and other people
against me, I have seen nothing, save what you sent me in 1877 (one
article of Sieber, and the other, I think of Michailoff, both in the
'Fatherlandish Annals', in reply to that queer would be Encyclopedist
Mr. Joukovski). Prof. Kovalevsky, who is here, told me that there had
been rather lively polemics on the 'Capital'. 75
M.M. Kovalevsky, another of Marx's Russian acquaintances,

had obviously exaggerated the scale of the polemic and the num-
ber of participants, for the articles Marx enumerated constituted
its entirety. The contribution by Mikhaylovsky, however, gave the
interchange especial significance because it highlighted the
question of the Universality of capitalism raised by Zhukovsky
and forced Marx to formulate where he now stood on the issue.
In his article Mikhaylovsky paid a great deal of attention to
the connection between the growth of capitalism and the
expropriation of the peasantry. Like Sieber, Mikhaylovsky
understood Marx to mean that he conceived the development
of capitalism not as a fortuitous occurrence, but as a Universal
process. But it was on this very point that he took issue with
Marx: Mikhaylovsky's position was that if the peasants were not
expropriated - as in Russia they were not - then capitalism
need not develop. He was unable to reconcile himself, there-
fore, with Marx's 'historico-philosophical theory' which decreed
that all countries must undergo a capitalist phase, and that
this phase would be 'progressive'.
Citing the passages in the chapter on Original Accumulation
in which Marx spoke of the expropriation of the peasants, the

establishment of capitalist private property and its subsequent
abolition by the 'negation of the negation', Mikhaylovsky held
this to be 'Marx's historico-philosophical view'. He then con-
sidered it from the point of view of a Russian who accepted
the validity of this theory. Such a person, Mikhaylovsky thought,
would have an ambivalent attitude towards the development of
capitalism in his country. For whereas on the one hand it would
bring the benefit of the socialization of labour and the eventual
'possession in common of the land and the means of produc-
tion produced by labour itself, on the other hand the cost of
this benefit in terms of human suffering would be enormous. 76
To illustrate the fact that the horrors of capitalism were
recognized by Marx himself, Mikhaylovsky somewhat mischie-
vously cited not any of the cases documented in the body of
Capital, but what he described as the 'irritable outburst' of the
author in the first edition of the work denouncing Herzen and
his conception of Russian socialism:
If on the continent of Europe the influence of capitalist production
continues to develop as it has done up till now, enervating the human
race by overwork, the division of labour, subordination to machines,
the maiming of women and children, making life wretched, etc . . . then
the rejuvenation of Europe by the knout and the obligatory infusion
of Kalmyk blood so earnestly prophesied by the half-Russian and full
Muscovite Herzen may become inevitable. 77
Mikhaylovsky interpreted Marx's attitude to Herzen as demon-

strating that the author of Capital refused to allow the possibil-
ity that any country might escape the terrible fate of capitalist
development - which indeed had been the case when Marx
first encountered Herzen's conception of socialism based on
the peasant commune.
But if, in Mikhaylovsky's view, all countries were fated to
undergo capitalist development to achieve the socialization of
labour, there would be a strange paradox in the case of Russia,
because what capitalism was supposed to achieve was there
already an established fact. It meant that in Russia the producer
would be separated from the means of production in order
that he should be later reunited with them - and all at the
tremendous human cost that Marx had described so graphically.
Mikhaylovsky emphasized the futility of this scheme of things:
All the 'maimings of women and children' etc. are still before us, and
from the point of view of Marx's historical theory, we should not
protest against these maimings, because it would be to act against our
own interests. On the contrary, we should rejoice at them as the steep
but necessary steps to the temple of happiness. It would be difficult
to reconcile that contradiction which would tear the soul of a Russian
disciple of Marx at every turn and at this or that individual applica-
tion. He must reduce himself to the role of an observer, with the
dispassionate equanimity of a Pimen recording in his chronicle the
facts of double-edged progress. He cannot take an active part in it. He
cannot condone the vile side of progress, but any activity answering
his moral demands would merely hinder and drag out that progress.
His ideal, if he is a follower of Marx, consists in, among other things,
the inseparability of labour and property, in the possession by the
worker of land, implements, and means of production. But at the
same time, if he really shares Marx's historico-philosophical views, he
should rejoice to see the separation of labour from property, the disso-
lution of the bond between worker and means of production as the
first step of the necessary, and ultimately beneficial process. He must
therefore welcome the overthrow of the principles of his own ideal.78
On reading Mikhaylovsky's article Marx wrote a reply in the

form of a letter to the editorial board of Otechestvennye zapiski.
The tone of the document reflected the fact that it was a
contribution to a debate, and so was more concerned with
refuting an opponent than explaining his thinking on the
origins and development of capitalism. It did summarize, how-
ever, some of the conclusions he had reached.
Marx began by denying that his remarks concerning Herzen
could serve as evidence of his own estimation of the efforts of
Russians to find a different path of development for their
country from that followed by Western Europe. As proof of
this Marx referred Mikhaylovsky to the Postscript to the sec-
ond edition of Capital where Chernyshevsky, who, like Herzen,
held that a non-capitalist path of development was possible for
Russia, was spoken of with approval. Thus, Marx claimed,
Mikhaylovsky might just as well conclude that the author of
Capital shared the views of Chernyshevsky as that he rejected
those of Herzen.
This was less an argument than a debating point. While for-
mally correct, it took no account of the evolution in views Marx
had undergone between the time he formed his opinion of
Herzen and when he formed his impression of Chernyshevsky.
Marx then alluded to his studies of Russia and stated his

conclusion that the development of capitalism in Russia was
not inevitable:
In order that I might be able to judge the matter of Russia's modern
economic development in an informed way, I learnt Russian and then
for long years studied official publications and other Russian materials
relating to this subject. I came to the following conclusion: if Russia
continues to follow the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose
the finest chance ever offered by history to any people and undergo
all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime.79
Marx then turned his attention to the question of the chap-
ter on original capitalist accumulation extensively discussed
by Mikhaylovsky. He emphasized that this did not 'claim to
do more than trace the path by which in Western Europe the
capitalist economic order emerged from the feudal economic
order'. Here Marx quoted the passage from the French edi-
tion of Capital to the effect that: 'It has as yet been accom-
plished in a radical fashion only in England. . . But all the
other countries of Western Europe are going through the same
movement.' The passage had appeared only in the French
translation of Capital published two years earlier.
On the implications of his study of capitalism in Western
Europe for Russia, Marx said the following:
If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of
the Western-European countries - and during the last few years she
has taken a lot of trouble in that direction - she will not succeed
without first having transformed a good part of her peasants into
proletarians; and after that, once taken into the bosom of the capital-
ist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peo-
ples. That is all.80
The question of how the peasants would be transformed into
proletarians was, however, left open. Marx seemed to suggest
that it would be included in the process of original accumula-
tion, for nothing was said about the proletariat's being a prod-
uct of capitalism's expanded reproduction.
In this connection Marx complained that Mikhaylovsky had
distorted his meaning:
But that is too little for my critic. He feels he absolutely must meta-
morphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western
Europe into a historico-philosophical theory of the universal path
(marchegenerate) every people is fated to tread . . . But I beg his pardon.

He is simultaneously honouring and shaming me too much. 81
This was an astonishing accusation. It imposed retrospectively

on Capital an interpretation completely at variance with the
spirit in which it was conceived. Marx had never regarded the
development of capitalism as merely historical, merely empir-
ical. He had conceived of capitalism as a Universal system, the
outward manifestation of man's inner species-being. Capital
had limited itself to the development of capitalism on the
historical plane only because Marx had been unable to dis-
cover the more essential and logical steps in the process.
Marx ended his letter by giving an example to illustrate the
proposition that history offered a great variety of possibilities,
making it impossible to employ a priori historical schemes:
In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the

plebeians of ancient Rome. They were originally free peasants, each
cultivating his own piece of land on his own account. In the course
of Roman history they were expropriated . . . What happened? The
Roman proletarians became not wage-labourers, but a mob of do-
nothings . . . and alongside them there developed a mode of produc-
tion which was not capitalist but based on slavery.82
Danielson, who translated Marx's letter from the original

French into Russian for publication in 1888, succeeded in
tracking down the parts of Capital in which the Roman prole-
tarians were allegedly alluded to. These amounted to the single
footnote Marx had inserted in the French translation. Like
the passage limiting the application of the treatment of the
development of capitalism to Western Europe, it had appeared
there for the first time.83
Marx did not actually send the letter to Otechestvennye zapiski.
It was discovered after Marx's death by Engels, who gave a
copy to Lopatin in 1883 to be passed on to Danielson for
publication. According to Danielson, Engels had told Lopatin
that Marx had wanted to send the letter, but 'had been per-
suaded not to'. 84 Danielson later gave the same information in
rather more detail, when he stated that Marx had written the
letter for publication in Otechestvennye zapiski, 'But - due to the
assurances of one of his Russian "scientific friends" that it could
not appear in a Russian journal - the letter was not sent. . .'85
The expression 'scientific friend' referred to M.M. Kovalevsky

and was contained in the letter from Marx to Danielson of
19 September 1879.
Engels explained elsewhere that Marx was afraid that his
name alone would threaten the existence of the journal in
which his reply appeared. 86 Danielson's emphasis in both cases
on the advice Marx received rather than on any objective prob-
lems of publication could indicate some scepticism on his part
about potential danger to the journal. In fact he had written
to Marx on 19 March 1877, specifically suggesting that the
latter should write an article on the peasant commune for
Otechestvennye zapiski?1
There was a difficulty that could not have escaped the notice
of Marx or Kovalevsky. It was that the number of Otechestvennye
zapiski directly following the one in which Mikhaylovsky's arti-
cle appeared contained the one written by Sieber against
Zhukovsky. This maintained that Marx believed development
of capitalism to be a Universal phenomenon. Publication of
the letter would have created a ridiculous and lamentable situ-
ation in which Marx would have appeared to support Zhukovsky's
interpretation of Capital and disown that of his 'supporter'
Sieber. As Mikhaylovsky later remarked:
Karl Marx's letter appeared only in 1888 and I do not know how Sieber,
by then deceased, would have reacted to the arguments in it. But at
that time, in 1878, he was firmly of the opinion that the process
formulated by Marx was universally obligatory.88
One may depend on it that the irony would not have been lost
on Mikhaylovsky - or the Russian reading public in general -
if the letter had been published a decade earlier.
Marx's remaining silent, however, had important conse-
quences for perceptions of Marx's doctrines in Russia. Marx
had done nothing to contradict the interpretation of his ideas
that Sieber had put forward in his reply to Zhukovsky. As far
as the Russian public were concerned, therefore, Marx had
propounded a universally obligatory scheme of economic de-
velopment. This perception was reinforced by the fact that
Mikhaylovsky had criticized Marx for proposing a 'historico-
philosophical theory' which was obligatory for all countries.
The implication could only be that this was indeed the character
of Marx's economic theory. Once established, the perception
acquired considerable momentum and resilience, so that even

when Marx's letter was eventually published it proved difficult
to shake.
MARX'S STUDIES OF RUSSIA
As Marx indicated in his letter to Otechestvennye zapiski, he had
for many years studied 'official and other publications' on the
subject of Russian economic development. Just how extensive
this study was can be judged from the catalogue of Russian-
language material in his possession which he compiled in 1881.
This was headed 'Russisches in my bookstall' and contained
115 titles comprising 150 separate volumes.89 When Danielson
invited Marx to write on the subject of Russian agrarian relations
in 1877, he could do so in the confidence that the latter w7as
as familiar with all the available sources on the subject as any
scholar in Russia.90
The Russian works Marx read covered three main areas of
investigation: (a) the history of the Russian peasant commune;
(b) the peasant reform of 1861; and (c) Russian economic dev-
elopment from 1861 to the present time. One may consider
Marx's study of Russia under these three heads.
(a) Relatively few of the Russian works Marx read were on
the history of the peasant commune. Those that were centred
round the debate between Chicherin and Belyaev. In March
1873 Marx requested Danielson to send him details of the
debate, indicating that his sympathies were not with Chicherin:
You would much oblige me in giving me some information on the views
of Tschitscherin, relating to the historical development of communal
property in Russia; and on his polemics on that subject with Bjeljaew
. . . all historical analogy speaks against Tschitscherin. How should it
come to happen that in Russia the same institution had been simply
introduced as a fiscal measure, as a concomitant incident of serfdom,
while everywhere else it was of spontaneous growth and marked a
necessary phase of development of free peoples?91
Danielson not only sent Marx the relevant works by Chicherin,
Belyaev and other authors, but accompanied them with a
lengthy disquisition of his own, complete with bibliography,
on how the controversy had developed.
Marx left no annotations in Chicherin's book, 92 but in

Belyaev's he made several notes. These show that he was inter-
ested to see on what grounds Belyaev based his argument that
communal landownership had existed prior to serfdom. Marx
in general found Belyaev's case unconvincing. He remarked in
one place:
In this paragraph on the mutual relations of the peasants there is
nothing about the division of the communal land. Again all the histor-
ical documents cited only refer to the second half of the fifteenth and
the sixteenth centuries. 93
Marx's impression of Belyaev's book was the same as Chiche-

rin's: it was unable to support its arguments with documentary
evidence.
Danielson continued to send Marx contributions to the dis-
cussion as they appeared. One such was Prince A.I. Vasil'chi-
kov's two-volume work Landownership and Agriculture in Russia
and other European States (1876). Though Marx was not greatly
impressed with the book because of its author's insistence on
the uniqueness of the Russian peasant commune, 94 it did raise
the question of how the transition from private to communal
landownership in Russia presupposed by Chicherin had been
accomplished. Chicherin replied in a book written jointly with
the historian V. Guerrier entitled Russian Dilettantism and Com-
munal Landownership (1878) to the effect that 'if there is a
lacuna in the sources then a lacuna must remain in the inves-
tigation', a passage noted by Marx as an admission that the
requisite evidence was not to hand. 95
An opinion which Marx clearly approved of was that of K.D.
Kavelin in his article of 1876 entitled 'Communal Ownership'.
In commenting on Chicherin's views, Kavelin stated:
This interpretation, being by character an expression of the Westerner

side of the argument, evoked great controversy in its day. Now, when
we know that communal landownership existed at some time or another among
all peoples, Mr. Chicherin's explanation has lost its significance. Never-
theless it remains to this day a very valuable contribution to the history
of our communal ownership by indicating the circumstances which enabled
this ownership to be preserved up to the present time, while under other circum-
stances it was replaced by private property in the Ukraine and in the territory
of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania?**
The fact that communal institutions were to be found among

all peoples made them not simply a historical, but an ethno-
graphical or sociological phenomenon. It was with this aspect
of ancient communities that Marx increasingly became involved,
particularly in connection with the researches of M.M. Kovalev-
sky, about which more requires to be said in due course.
(b) Marx devoted a considerable amount of attention to
examining how the 1861 legislation had been framed and what
its provisions were. He was deeply influenced in this respect by
Chernyshevsky's Letters without an Address and it was this essay
which provided the framework for his own interpretation of
the reform. His first attempt at writing on the subject, a draft
entitled 'On the Emancipation of the Russian Serfs', was a
summary of Chernyshevsky's Letters.91 His more detailed manu-
script entided 'Notes on the 1861 Reform and Russia's Post-
Reform Development', written probably in 1880-81, drew upon
a wider range of sources, but retained the same structure and
interpretation as Chernyshevsky's work.98
Marx's sources for the 1861 reform were extremely good.
His notes show that he had used Haxthausen's book The Agrar-
ian Constitution of Russia" and A.I. Skrebitsky's extensive four-
volume collection of documents on the reform, Peasant Affairs
in the Reign of Alexander II.100 These two works were connected
with one another, and shared a common first-hand source of
information. Haxthausen had always been an enthusiastic sup-
porter of peasant liberation in Russia, and he had made his
views known to Alexander II when the latter had visited Berlin
in 1857.101 Due to his keen interest in Russian affairs, Hax-
thausen was kept informed of how the reform was progressing.
The Chairman of the Editorial Commission, Ya.I. Rostovtsev,
sent him copies of all the relevant documents and the pro-
ceedings of the Commissions. These were the materials on
which Haxthausen's book The Agrarian Constitution of Russia
was based.
As Haxthausen required his materials translated into Ger-
man, he enlisted the help of the Russian ophthalmic surgeon
Alexander Skrebitsky, who was in Berlin on business in I860.102
Skrebitsky not only helped Haxthausen with the research for
his book, but edited and published the collection of docu-
ments that Rostovtsev had made available. Haxthausen's book
and Skrebitsky's collection were among Marx's main materials
in compiling the manuscript 'Notes on the 1861 Reform and

Russia's Post-Reform Development'. 103
It was from the reports of the Commission's proceedings in
Skrebitsky's collection that Marx found proof that the reform
of 1861 was deliberately designed to impose financial burdens
on the peasantry in order to make them dependent on the
landowners, so that the latter would continue to have plentiful
and cheap labour at their disposal. This aspect of the pro-
posed legislation was thrown into relief when two members of
the Commission objected to the inconsistency of making the
peasants' freedom dependent on their purchase of land.104
Marx found their intervention to be highly significant, as it was
symptomatic of the spirit in which the legislation was framed.105
(c) By far the most extensive and most detailed of Marx's
studies of Russia were on the period after 1861 and concerned
the consequences of the reform for Russia's economic devel-
opment. They concerned in particular the implications of the
reform for the circulation and accumulation of capital, and
the ways in which peasants were transformed into proletarians.
A work which had an important bearing on these questions
was the one which Marx first read in Russian. This was N.
Flerovsky's The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, a book
published in St Petersburg by Polyakov and sent to Marx by
Danielson in October 1869. Flerovsky was the pseudonym of
V.V. Bervi, the son of a professor of physiology at Kazan Uni-
versity. Bervi studied law there, and through his father's con-
nections became a high-ranking civil servant in St Petersburg.
But his opposition to arbitrary acts of repression by the gov-
ernment led to his arrest in 1862. Bervi spent many years in
internal exile, but he used his experiences to gather material
for his book on the life and economic situation of the com-
mon people in the various parts of Russia.
Despite its tide, Flerovsky's book mosdy concerned the
Russian peasants. It was these that he referred to as workers.
Like Marx he reserved the term 'proletarians' for those who
had been uprooted from the land and relied exclusively on
wages for a livelihood. Bervi was interested, moreover, in how
workers became proletarians, a feature of his work that Marx
found especially valuable. But besides this, Flerovsky's book
provided Marx with a wealth of information about the life and
culture of the population of the Russian Empire, both Russians
a n d the minority nationalities. As h e r e m a r k e d to Engels: 'this

is the most i m p o r t a n t book which has a p p e a r e d since your
Condition of the Working Class. T h e family life of the Russian
peasants - the awful beating to death of wives, the vodka a n d
the concubines is well described.' 1 0 6 This kind of description,
in Marx's opinion, m a d e a refreshing change from H e r z e n ' s
presentation of Russia as some kind of 'communistic Eldorado'.
In this connection Marx cited with approval Flerovsky's state-
m e n t that: 'We have few proletarians, b u t the mass of o u r
working class consists of workers whose lot is worse t h a n that
of any proletarian.' 1 0 7
Flerovsky m a d e it plain, however, that n o t all Russian peas-
ants were on the same economic level. Some of t h e m , t e r m e d
miroeds or 'eaters of the mir , were comparatively wealthy, so
that:
The entire peasant estate is divided into a few rich and a mass of poor
people; these rich ones plough tens of desyatinasof land, have hundreds
of horses, sell grain by the hundreds and even by the thousands of
puds, and firewood by the hundreds of sazhens.108
While rich peasants such as these could earn their living en-
tirely from the land, the p o o r e r ones could n o t because 'the
a m o u n t of taxes levied o n the peasantry is so great that they
c a n n o t pay it without earning wages'. And, as Flerovsky ex-
plained, wages would be paid by the miroed in advance so that
the peasant could m e e t his tax obligations, b u t in r e t u r n for
this favour the peasants had to work for half the n o r m a l wage
rate. 109
Taxation h a d the effect of increasing disparities between
rich a n d poor:
The peasant is not only forced to sell his labour at a loss to obtain
money in advance, but even in the case where he has saved enough and
has more produce than is needed to cover his next taxes, it only re-
quires his failure to find a buyer for his produce at the time he needs
to pay them, and he is ruined. He not only reduces the price of wheat
flour from 14 to 12 kopeks a pud, but not finding a purchaser obliges
him to sell it to the miroed for 10 kopeks or less.110
T h e following year raising money to pay the taxes would be
even m o r e difficult, a n d the peasant would be forced to sell
his livestock to the miroed at a very low price. T h e r e was in this
way, Flerovsky noted, a close link between the imposition of
high taxes by the government and the growing prosperity of

the miroeds.111
In Flerovsky's opinion, the most effective obstacle to the
increasing wealth and power of the rich peasants was commu-
nal landownership. If there were private property in land, he
believed, the miroeds could acquire the land from the poorer
peasants without restriction. At present, though they could
gain control of the best land, they were unable to make it their
private property. If they succeeded in doing this, Flerovsky
believed, 'then without doubt an enormous number of agrar-
ian workers would be transformed into proletarians'. 112 As the
force behind development in this direction was the govern-
ment's tax policy, his conclusion was that: 'The main reason
which compels the worker to resort to the capitalist is to pay
his taxes.' 1 The only solution, as Flerovsky saw it, was to abol-
ish all taxes and levies without exception.114
Marx was delighted with Flerovsky's book and as he wrote to
Engels:
What I like, among other things, in Flerovsky is his polemic against direct
taxes exacted from the peasants. This is exactly what was said by Marshall
Vauban and Boisguillebert. . . m
Marx's daughter Jenny in a letter to Kugelmann on 30 Octo-
ber 1869 indicated the use to which Flerovsky's book was to be
put: 'The book has come at an opportune time. Moor [i.e.
Marx J.W.] intends to publish the facts contained in it in his
second volume.' 116 As Marx had not read the book at that time,
not knowing sufficient Russian, its relevance for the second
volume must have been communicated to him by Danielson
and Lopatin.
Flerovsky's book had a lasting significance for Marx's studies
of Russian economic development, because the picture it pre-
sented was not contradicted by any of the other sources which
Marx used, and indeed, the detailed statistical materials which
he consulted served only to add substance to what Flerovsky
had said.
The most important statistical source Marx used was the
collection Reports of the Fiscal Commission. This Commission had
been established by the Ministry of Finance shortly before the
1861 reform to look into the way taxes and levies were col-
lected. It continued in existence until the early 1880s and in
that time issued something in the region of 70 volumes of its

findings. Between 1866 and 1875 twenty-two volumes had ap-
peared. It was in that year that Marx was sent ten of these by
Danielson.
On 28 November 1875 Danielson wrote:
I have now managed to get a copy of the Reports of the Fiscal Commis-
sion; it is at my disposal. This is a rare publication, one not intended
for the public. Knowing from 'our mutual friend' [i.e. Lopatin J.W.]
that you are now studying the economic situation of Russia, I am
sending you 10 volumes of these Reports (especially the most import-
ant, volume XXII). But I have these books on loan only for two or
three months .. ,117
The necessity to return the volumes no doubt accounts for

the very full notes which Marx took from the three parts of
Volume XXII between December 1875 and February 1876,
and clearly he found it as useful as Danielson had anticipated
he would.
The compilers of Volume XXII had been concerned with
examining the question of whether it would be advantageous
for the government to change the basis of taxation from the
poll tax (podushny nalog), first introduced by Peter the Great,
to a tax on the household (podvorny nalog). In examining the
implications of such a reform the tax commissioners investi-
gated in great detail, province by province, the economic situ-
ation of the peasantry and in particular how this was affected
by the system of taxation. In other words, the Reports of the Fis-
cal Commission examined more systematically and in infinitely
greater detail a question discussed by Flerovsky - though of
course, from a very different point of view.
The peasantry was the focus of the Fiscal Commission's in-
vestigation because the peasantry was the 'taxable estate', other
estates being free from the poll tax. The tax system was also
connected with peasant institutions in so far as the peasant
commune provided the framework for the system of mutual
responsibility (krugovaya poruka) whereby the whole commu-
nity was liable for the arrears of its members. This system, it
emerged from the Reports, was one the government was ex-
tremely loathe to give up.
The system of mutual responsibility was potentially disas-
trous for any of the more wealthy peasants, the miroeds. The
Liberation Statute of 1861, however, provided that any peasant

who could pay his redemption dues was free to leave the peas-
ant estate, become a 'townsman' (meshchanin) and so no longer
be liable to pay the poll tax. The tax commissioners noted that
this was a widespread phenomenon, especially in the Western
provinces.118
Since wealthier peasants tended to leave the commune, those
who remained were both less able to pay their taxes and more
likely to be called upon to make up the arrears of their neigh-
bours. On this Marx commented:
Such is the inner dialectic of mutual responsibility with the Russian
tax system: mutual guaranty - insolvency.119
This position was aggravated by the desire of members of the

same family to have independent allotments, so dividing up
the holdings into ever smaller and less economic parcels. Here
Marx noted:
The other point of the dialectic: with the abolition of serfdom the
patriarchal family disintegrates; but simultaneously communal owner-
ship, based on parcelled agriculture, leads to the worst consequences,
incompatible with this form (and especially with mutual responsibil-
ity) - to the parcelling out of property.120
The Reports of the Fiscal Commission served to substantiate
Flerovsky's opinion that the system of taxation in Russia con-
tributed gready to the circulation of capital in the country and
was responsible for turning workers into proletarians. The
Reports also revealed that between 1864 and 1875 the amount
of poll tax levied had increased by 80 per cent,121 a fact that
figured prominently in Marx's manuscript 'Notes on the 1861
Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Development'. But on the
other hand the Reports showed that the pressure of the tax
system exerted on the commune was a contradictory and com-
plex one. For the peasants who left it directly were the wealthier
ones, leaving those most likely to become proletarians within
it. Moreover, the same tax system which compelled the peas-
ant to become a wage labourer, also tied him to the commune
by the system of mutual responsibility, and this in turn gave
continued validity to communal landownership.
In 1875 a number of works appeared which highlighted
the pressures on the peasant commune, this time from the
viewpoint of the liberals who had so enthusiastically promoted

the reform: Samarin, Koshelev and Kavelin. All wrote in the
same disappointment that the measures introduced to stop
the proletarianization of the peasantry were coming under
threat. Both peasant landownership and the peasant commune
had been undermined in the decade and a half since the
reform. Their observations were noted at length by Marx.
Koshelev in his book On Communal Landownership in Russia
identified a threat to peasant communal landownership from
three quarters. The first was those landowners who had not
reconciled themselves to the abolition of serfdom. They were
resentful of communal ownership, because in protecting the
peasant against pauperism and vagrancy, it gave them a cer-
tain degree of independence which deprived the landowners
of cheap labour and the possibility of disposing of it at will.
The second threat to communal landownership came from
those liberals who saw the commune as a restriction on indi-
vidual freedom and personal mobility. The third threat came
from the aristocracy of the Baltic provinces and their support-
ers, who feared that in the wake of the system of mutual respon-
sibility communal landownership might be introduced into the
Baltic provinces, where individual property was the rule.122
Yu. Samarin and F. Dmitr'ev in the book Revolutionary Con-
servatism concentrated on the challenge to the 1861 reform
and the institutions it had established by the nobility. It was,
its authors believed, the intention of the nobles as far as pos-
sible to restrict the scope of the 1861 reform and to reassert
their control over the peasants by exerting their power in the
volosf courts and administrative apparatus. This regrouping of
the nobility, in Samarin's opinion, was a characteristic feature
of the abolition of serfdom in Russia and distinguished it from
similar reforms in Germany and the Baltic provinces.123
In his book What Shall We Be? N.D. Kavelin expressed the
belief that there was a court clique headed by P.A. Valuev, the
Minister of the Interior, and including the heir to the throne,
which had set out to undo as far as possible the reform of 1861.
It acted in the interests of the landowners and against those of
the peasantry. The clique had published its programme in the
journal Mir. Kavelin was of the opinion that:
This insignificant minority of the nobility understands that to create

an upper hereditary privileged estate, according to the recipe of Mir,
and give it social and political rights, means finally to deliver the com-
mon people into the hands of the worst part of the population - the
increasingly wealthy kulaks, the railway magnates, the former whole-
salers of wine, bribe-takers . . . in a word all kinds of parvenus, who
have warmed their hands at the treasury, the people, or by dealing in
shares, at the, stock-exchange and in speculation.124
The kind of flux in which the country found itself in the
wake of the 1861 reform and the emergence of new social and
economic alignments prompted the title of Ravelin's book and
its author to observe that:
the whole of Russia . . . is a kind of jelly - something like a mollusc or
even like a protoplasm. Nothing in this country is coherent or crystal-
lized; there are suggestions of constituent elements and organs of
social life, but nothing definite or determined.125
In 1880 Lavrov sent Marx P.E. Pudovikov's article from

Otechestvennye zapiski entitled 'The Indebtedness of the Private
Landowner' which amplified Ravelin's conception of a strong
connection between the landowners, the kulaks and the stock
market. The article began by explaining that since the payment
the landowners had received under the terms of the 1861
reform had been in government bonds, which had declined
rapidly in value, they had been left short of circulating capital
with which to run their estates. They had therefore no alter-
native but to borrow. But only a tenth of the money borrowed
was used to carry on agriculture; most of it was used to invest
in various credit and commercial-industrial enterprises, all de-
pendent on the 'exploitation of the land or the population'. 126
The landowner left this exploitation to an agent, the kulak,
who would run the estate profitably by cheating the peasants
he employed. Here Marx commented:
this scoundrel-plebeian, embryo bourgeois is the worthy and necessary
appendage to the noble, who exploits the peasant121
Marx obviously thought the indebtedness of the landowners

and its connection with the emergence of the kulaks highly
significant, for in February 1881 he wrote to Danielson:
The next thing to do - in my opinion - is to take up the wonderfully
increasing indebtedness of the landlords, the upper class representatives
of agriculture, and show them how they are 'crystallised' in the retort
under the control of the 'new pillars of society'.128
Danielson had at that time just sent Marx an article which

he had published in Slovo for October 1880. It was entided
'A Sketch of Our Post-Reform Social Economy' and had
grown out of the materials he had sent to Marx. The article
is of considerable interest, because in it Danielson, in advance
of Marx, attempted to set out a scheme of how the circula-
tion of capital applied to Russia's economic development since
1861.
A number of factors, Danielson considered, combined to
effect the circulation of capital in Russia. These included the op-
eration of state policy, the construction of railways, the increase
in the grain trade and the vast expansion of credit. Danielson's
article explained how these factors were interconnected.
He began by pointing out that in order to stimulate railway
construction the government subsidized private railway com-
panies. It provided them with the necessary capital, but re-
tained a proportion of their stocks and bonds for itself, at the
same time issuing railway securities whose dividends were to
come from the incomes of the railway companies involved.
The money raised from the sale of these bonds constituted the
so-called Railway Fund, out of which the loans and credits
were extended to the railway companies. 129
The finances of the Railway Fund appeared in the state
budget, and the cost of guaranteeing income to the sharehold-
ers and subsidising the companies could be seen to be about
a fifth of the entire state expenditure. The indebtedness of the
railway companies to the state increased considerably each
year.130
While the state provided most of the credit for railway con-
struction, the remainder was provided by private credit institu-
tions. After 1861 private banks and joint-stock companies had
proliferated, all stimulated by railway construction. Danielson
was of the opinion that at least some of the credit institutions
were financed by those railway companies whose income was
guaranteed by the state.131
In examining the income of the railway companies Danielson
found an apparent paradox, in that although their indebted-
ness to the state was considerable and increasing steadily, the
profits of the railway companies were enormous. The paradox
was to be explained by the fact that whereas the income from
the profitable companies was retained by the private companies,
the losses of the remainder were borne by the exchequer.
How, Danielson enquired, could such great losses to the

state be justified? The answer was in the enormous expansion
in trade which had taken place over the last decade or so,
especially the trade in grain. In the period in question the
export of grain had increased rapidly, and grain was the chief
item of freight carried by the railways. Danielson went on to
argue that not only the railways, but also the banks and the
credit institutions lived off peasant agriculture. And of course
it was from taxing the peasants that much of the government's
income was derived. It was by taxation that the producer was
separated from his product. 132
In Danielson's view both railways and the provision of credit
were the means by which the circulation of commodities took
place. In the West their appearance had given a stimulus to
commodity production, to the development of science and the
increased productivity of labour. In Russia the circulation of
commodities had had none of these effects. For, according to
Danielson, 'to maintain our economic independence we have
deployed our energies not on the development of capitalist
production itself, but on its result, on banks and railways.'133
The full significance of Danielson's article emerges when it
is read in conjunction with the fourth part of Marx's manuscript
'Notes on the 1861 Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Develop-
ment'. For this part of the manuscript, consisting for the most
part of sets of figures grouped under various headings, is in
fact an outline of Danielson's article. It uses Danielson's figures
(sometimes adjusting their arithmetic) and follows the struc-
ture of his work, arranging the material in practically the same
order as the original. The headings employed by Marx refer to
sections of Danielson's article, and the latter elucidates what it
was that Marx had in mind.
The fourth part of the manuscript has, in all, seven sections.
The first of these is concerned with state income and expend-
iture. It lists several items of each and notes that the state
budget had a sizeable deficit. The second section deals with
one particular item on the budget, the Railway Fund, which
was used to subsidize the railway companies. The third head-
ing deals with non-governmental sources of credit, the banks
and joint-stock companies. The fourth section concerns the
income from the railways and makes the point that while the
profits were pocketed by private individuals, the losses were
borne by the exchequer. 134
The fifth section is devoted to the increase in trade, especially

the export trade in grain, and the part played by the railways
in transporting the grain. The sixth section deals with the
indebtedness of the landowners and the expansion of agricul-
tural credit. In the seventh and final section Marx departs
slightly from Danielson's arrangement by bringing together
agricultural and other forms of credit to make an estimate of
the total volume of credit in the Russian economy.135
Danielson would no doubt have been extremely gratified if
he had known that he had elaborated a scheme that Marx was
quite prepared to incorporate into his own work. The seven
headings formed a logical progression which linked together
the main branches of Russia's economy. This progression rep-
resented the stages by which the circulation of capital took
place in the country. Although the outline did not explain
how the circulation of capital produced capitalists and work-
ers, Marx's suggestion to Danielson to examine the indebted-
ness of the landowners indicated how this might easily be
included. Moreover, the circulation scheme, and in particular
the existence of a large debt, indicated the state's compulsion
to tax the peasantry so heavily, and hence to call into being the
various social and economic consequences that this entailed.
The account of the circulation of capital in 'Notes on the
1861 Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Development' repre-
sented a significant departure from that in previous manu-
scripts. For here the circulation was not simply that of one
capital among many, but of the whole national economy. By
taking the nation as his unit, Marx seemed to indicate that the
circuit of capital by which the peasantry was increasingly ex-
propriated and which expanded the capitalist class was one
which was completed only on a national scale, and which in-
volved the agency of the government. In other words, capital
did not circulate in Russia locally, and one need not look in
the peasant communities themselves for the force which cre-
ated proletarians on the one hand and capitalists on the other.
This position was of course consistent with Marx's failure to
discover any instance of original accumulation that did not
involve state intervention.
An important work which Marx read and took notes from
was V.P. Vorontsov's The Fate of Capitalism in Russia published
in 1882.136 This probably appeared too late for Marx to take it
into account when he was working on his 'Notes on the 1861

Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Development'.
The author acknowledged his debt to Danielson's 1880 ar-
ticle 'A Sketch of Our Post-Reform Social Economy', and in the
course of his work examined the implication of the Russian
state's involvement in the circulation process of capital. Voront-
sov noted that large-scale industry existed largely through the
support of the government; it was supported by tariffs, subsi-
dies and state orders. The advantage it thus obtained enabled
it to undercut and ruin the small-scale domestic industries.
The resources to subsidize the large-scale industry, moreover,
was wrung from the peasantry by the tax system, which forced
them to sell their agricultural produce at disadvantageous
prices. The peasant commune no longer afforded its members
protection, as it became largely a mechanism for enforcing the
system of mutual responsibility. As a result peasants were
leaving it in increasing numbers. 137
The poverty of the population, Vorontsov argued, provided
large-scale industry with a very limited market for the sale of
its products, thus ensuring that it would continue to be an
artificial growth requiring state support. On the other hand,
foreign markets were closed to the products of Russian indus-
try, because the low productivity of labour in Russia made it
impossible for them to compete with goods produced abroad.
Internally, moreover, the productivity of Russian industry was
high enough for it to employ only a small proportion of the
peasants it had uprooted from the countryside.
Vorontsov thought, therefore, that in Russia capitalism did
not have the conditions requisite for its natural development,
and so had to be propagated artificially by the government.
He believed that these attempts were doing positive harm: by
destroying the existing economic organization, peasants were
being subjected to untold hardship and misery. He therefore
thought that the policy should be reversed.138
In noting the problem that Russia did not employ the peas-
ants it had uprooted, Vorontsov had discovered a piece of
evidence which confirmed that Marx's early conception of the
circulation of capital was untenable. For not only was it possi-
ble for capital to circulate without dispossessing the peasants,
but it was also possible for them to be expropriated without
their being transformed into industrial proletarians. There was
as a result no inevitability about the ambit of capitalism being

constandy extended. It followed that even the model of circu-
lation which Danielson (and Marx) had drawn up, involving
the Russian state, would not guarantee the expanded repro-
duction of capital.
Vorontsov's book was naturally controversial and evoked a
response, among others, from Sieber, who reviewed it in VoVnoe
slovo (Free Word) in 1882. Sieber agreed that the misery and
the poverty of the people were very great, but, he argued, this
was a necessary stage in the 'general development of civiliza-
tion'. If there were no displacement of people from the coun-
tryside to the towns, the concentration of population, the
building of railways, etc., Russia would still be in the same
condition as it had been in the reign of Ivan the Terrible. He
was convinced that:
the movement of capitalism is not an isolated or secondary phenomenon,

as the author asserts, but on the contrary, a Universal (universaVnoe) one,
encountered in every society at a certain stage of development. . .139
The terms in which Sieber argued against Vorontsov were

the same as those in which he had argued against Zhukovsky
in 1877. There too he had propounded the idea of a Universal
capitalism against the conception of a capitalism that was par-
ticular or contingent. In this respect Sieber remained true to
the original spirit that had inspired Capital, while Vorontsov
continued the line of investigation which had led Marx away
from the concept of capitalism as a Universal system.
By the time Marx came to draft his 'Notes on the 1861
Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Development' he was con-
vinced that economic processes alone could not account for
the dissolution of the peasant or primitive communities. This
was reflected in two documents which were produced in the
same period: his notes on M.M. Kovalevsky's Communal Land-
ownership and the drafts of his letter to Vera Zasulich. This
latter document, like 'Notes on the 1861 Reform and Russia's
Post-Reform Development', had the character of a summary of
Marx's economic researches on Russia. But it also showed the
influence of Kovalevsky's work, and can be understood only in
the light of the researches Kovalevsky carried out.
M.M. KOVALEVSKY
M.M. Kovalevsky, to whom reference has already been made,

was subsequently to become one of the pioneers of sociology
in Russia. But when Marx first met him in 1875 he was a young
man of 24 just starting out on his academic career. To gather
material for his dissertation 'Studies in the History of Judicial
Tariffs in France from the XIV Century to the Death of Louis
XIV', Kovalevsky spent three years in Western Europe: a year
in Germany, where he attended lectures by the constitutional
historian Gneist and the economist Adolf Wagner, and two
years in France, where he befriended the Russian positivist
philosopher G.N. Vyrubov. While still a student in Kharkov
Kovalevsky had been attracted to the ideas of Auguste Comte
and the positivist school, and this had deeply influenced his
approach to constitutional history. As he recalled, in his last
years of his student days:
I was interested then, as I am interested now, in the intimate connec-
tion between the growth of governmental institutions and the changes
in the social structure, which are in their turn brought about by the
evolution of economic orders. The history of institutions and the his-
tory of society - those are the themes which interested me most.140
Through Vyrubov Kovalevsky established contact with the

English positivist Herbert Spencer and a number of eminent
British scholars such as Walter Bagehot, John Morley and Sir
Henry Sumner Maine. Kovalevsky came to London to meet
them in 1875.
For Kovalevsky the most important of these contacts was
Maine, whose work he already knew from his student days and
no doubt thought of as an example of how the history of
institutions could be allied with that of society. Maine's first
major work of this type was Ancient Law (1861), but the one
which aroused more attention in Russia was his Village Commu-
nities in the East and West (1871). In the latter work Maine drew
on the writings of Haxthausen and Maurer, and in combina-
tion with his own knowledge of English social history and his
experience as a legislator in India, he was able to present the
peasant commune as a phenomenon in the general evolution
of society. He showed how it could adapt to the feudal system
and how its dissolution was concomitant with the rise of mod-
ern capitalist society. This kind of study had obvious implica-
tions for Russia, and with Maine's help and encouragement
Kovalevsky embarked on a similar type of study of his own,
though one more limited in scope. It was of the dissolution of
communal landownership in the Swiss canton of Vaud, and
was published in 1876 in Russian in London. A German ver-
sion was published in Geneva in the following year.141
Kovalevsky left the readers of his monograph in no doubt
about its relevance for all countries, and for Russia in particu-
lar. In the preface to the Russian edition he wrote that:
In the present work the reader will find the first attempt to distin-
guish the essential elements in the process of the gradual dissolution
of communal landowning, at least in its latest form, the collective
exploitation of meadows, pastures and woods.
Although the author has limited his field of investigation to the
agrarian relations in a single French canton of Switzerland, he permits
himself to express the conviction that the same elements will neces-
sarily be found by students of the history of agrarian relations in all
countries where the village community has given way to the manor.142
It was while in London that Kovalevsky encountered the
writings of two ethnographers of the day, the Scotsman J.F.
MacLennan and the American Lewis Morgan.143 These writers
led him to examine more closely than Maine had done the
relationship between the evolution of the family and the agrar-
ian commune. The results of this investigation were reflected in
his major work on the peasant commune, his Communal Land-
ownership: The Causes, Course and Consequences of its Dissolution,
which was published in Moscow in 1879.144
Marx was among the people Kovalevsky visited in London.
His first encounter, in the summer of 1875 at Marx's home,
however, left an unfavourable impression. According to Kovalev-
sky, Marx spent most of the time denouncing the Russian
emigres, principally Herzen and Bakunin.145 But in September
of that year Kovalevsky met Marx again in Karlsbad, and this
time a firm friendship was established between the two men.
When Marx returned to London Kovalevsky visited him almost
every week.
In a letter to his friend, the economist I.I. Yanzhul, dated
15 October 1875, Kovalevsky communicated his impression of
Marx at that time, and his opinion of Capital:
In Karlsbad I spent many happy hours in Marx's company. He is a

most noble and a most gifted person. It is a great pity that he was and
remains a Hegelian, and that therefore his scientific constructions are
built on sand. While in Karlsbad I read well over half of his book
which he presented me with, and I found in it fresh proof that any
departure from the positive method and, most of all the application
of the maxim: 'les grandes idees viennent du coeur inevitably lead to fre-
quent unconscious misconceptions. 146
It is interesting to observe that Kovalevsky did not look upon
Marx as a person who shared his conception that institutions
were shaped by society, and ultimately by economic orders. He
regarded the author of Capital as someone whose method was
altogether too idealist to produce reliable results.
In his memoirs, however, Kovalevsky emphasized the influ-
ence that Marx had exerted on his work:
My appointment as a professor at Moscow University brought an end
to my almost weekly exchange of ideas with the author of Capital, which
lasted for two years. At first we continued to exchange letters now and
again. When I visited London I resumed my visits, generally on Sundays,
and each time I would come away from the meetings with a new
stimulus for scholarly work in the field of the history of the economic
and social development of Western Europe. It is very likely that had
I not known Marx I would not have studied the history of landowner-
ship or the economic growth of Europe, but would have concentrated
my attention more on the development of political institutions, the
more so since these themes corresponded directly to the subject I
taught. Marx read my works and frankly gave his opinion on them. If
I deferred the printing of my first extensive dissertation on admin-
istrative law in France with special reference to juridical tariffs, this
was partly because of the unfavourable opinion Marx gave of my work.
He expressed more approval of my attempt to investigate the history
of the agrarian commune and to trace the development of family
types from ancient times using the data from comparative ethnology
and the comparative history of law.147
Kovalevsky's additional claim that Marx had 'largely deter-

mined the direction' of his scholarly work is somewhat exag-
gerated. For Kovalevsky's interest in the history of agrarian
communes had a dynamic of its own, and owed more for its
inspiration to Maine than to Marx. But there is no need to
doubt that Marx encouraged him in this interest and, one may
infer, influenced the direction the study took.
Marx's criticism was not the only obstacle Kovalevsky's
dissertation on juridical tariffs encountered. In 1877 Kovalevsky

returned to Kharkov to submit it, but was not allowed to do so
because of political considerations: presumably the university
authorities were worried by his subversive acquaintances. He
then went to Moscow University, where he began to lecture on
the history of law and where he presented a monograph he
had published on 'The History of Police Administration in the
English Shires from Ancient Times to the Death of Edward III'
as a new master's dissertation. He then went on to complete his
doctoral dissertation on 'The Social Structure of England from
the End of the Middle Ages' in 1880. All three of Kovalevsky's
dissertations were listed in Marx's 'Russisches in My Bookstall'.148
Kovalevsky lectured at Moscow University until his dismissal
in 1887 by Count I.D. Delyanov, the then Minister of Educa-
tion, who had set out to remove liberal elements or 'harmful
people' from the university.149 While at Moscow, Kovalevsky's
closest associates were the economists A.I. Chuprov, I.I. Yanzhul
and LI. Ivanyukov, and the linguist V.F. Miller. With the latter
during 1879-80 Kovalevsky edited the review Kriticheskoe obozrenie
(Critical Review), to which Marx subscribed. One of the books
reviewed was Chicherin and Guerrier's Russian Dilettantism and
Communal Landownership (1878). The review incensed Chi-
cherin, for in it Kovalevsky stated that Chicherin's views on
communal landownership had been derived from out-of-date
German textbooks and that he ignored the findings of mod-
ern scholarship that communal landownership was the origi-
nal form of property in land. The review led to an acrimonious
but inconclusive polemic between Chicherin and Kovalevsky
on the pages of Kriticheskoe obozrenie. The journal's becoming
the centre of controversy led to its closure after only two years
of existence.150
As Kovalevsky stated in his reminiscences, on returning to
Moscow he kept up correspondence with Marx. Unfortunately
Marx's letters to Kovalevsky have not survived. During one of
his trips abroad Kovalevsky left his letters in the care of Ivan-
yukov, who burnt them, fearing his house would be searched
by the police, a precaution which turned out to be unneces-
sary.151 But for that chance occurrence the part played by
Kovalevsky in the evolution of Marx's views on primitive com-
munities might have been better documented. Marx himself
recognized his importance when he replied to Danielson's offer
in September 1879 to send him Kovalevsky's Communal Land-

ownership that: T received Kovalevsky's book from himself. He
is one of my scientific friends who comes to London every year
to make use of the treasures of the British Museum.' After this
letter was published in 1908 Kovalevsky cited the term 'scien-
tific friend' with some satisfaction in his reminiscences of
Marx.152
Despite the appearance of being a largely factual work,
Kovalevsky's Communal Landownership had a highly complex
structure and dealt with the question of primitive communit-
ies at several levels. While the arrangement of chapters was
geographical, moving from Latin America to India and thence
to Algeria, the sequence enabled Kovalevsky to demonstrate by
examples taken from different parts of the world the way in
which the agrarian community had evolved through various
stages of development. In his introduction Kovalevsky explained
what these stages were, and how one gave rise to another. They
represented, he believed, the natural evolution of the com-
mune, the eventual outcome of which was its dissolution to
form modern society.153 But the commune could also be dis-
solved by artificial measures from outside, an aspect, Kovalevsky
thought, that Maine had neglected in his works. The need to
study the artificial means by which the agrarian commune had
been destroyed accounted for Kovalevsky's choice of examin-
ing agrarian relations in countries which had been subject to
foreign colonization.154
The great novelty of Kovalevsky's approach was that whereas
all previous Russian writers who had accepted the antiquity of
the peasant commune assumed that it had always existed in
the same form, Kovalevsky showed that the agrarian commune
with redistribution of the arable land was a comparatively re-
cent development in an evolution from more primitive types
of commune. For the most rudimentary forms Kovalevsky could
draw upon Morgan's account of the consanguine commun-
ities among the American Indians.155
For Kovalevsky studies such as Morgan's showed that the
most ancient form of society, that of nomadic hunters and
gatherers, did not consist of individuals or separate families,
but of a consanguine community whose members traced their
descent from a real or imagined common ancestor. These
communities held property in common, and only clothing and
weapons belonged to individuals.156 In Kovalevsky's view what

gave rise to this primitive communism was 'the impossibility of
a successful struggle with Nature other than by the combina-
tion of forces'.1 When hunting and gathering gave way to
agriculture and a setded existence, the communal mode of
agriculture was no more than the transfer to immovable prop-
erty of the 'legal ideas and institutions which had arisen under
the yoke of necessity' at an earlier period.158 Thus, although
Kovalevsky explicitly disagreed with Rousseau that men origi-
nally existed as individuals, unlike Marx he did not believe
that they were social by Nature. What Marx took as a premiss,
Kovalevsky regarded as something to be explained.
India provided examples of agricultural communes at a
variety of stages of development. The most primitive type was
the consanguine commune analogous to the zadruga of the
South Slavs, and in which the members lived together, worked
the land collectively and satisfied their wants from the com-
mon fund.159 This type survived only in the North and North
West of India, and not in its pristine state; it had divided into
branches, smaller sub-communes, which had only a loose con-
nection with each other. In the course of time, Kovalevsky
believed, the consciousness of the blood bond between the
branches of the consanguine commune gradually weakened.
In the consanguine commune and its offshoots land was
distributed according to the degree of relationship to the com-
mon ancestor. But in the course of time, through war, conquest
and changes in population, this criterion for land distribution
gradually died out and the claim to a share in the land came
to depend only on the amount actually tilled by each joint-
family. This gave rise to inequalities, which prompted the
demand for periodic redivision. The earliest redivisions in-
volved not only the cultivated land, but also the usad'ba, the
house, land and garden plot, but later this was considered to
be the private property of each joint-family and was not sub-
ject to redistribution.
At a later stage the cultivated land, too, was held as private
property, and only certain categories of land remained in
common ownership. This, according to Kovalevsky, was com-
parable to the situation in medieval Germany, England and
France, and was still to be found in Switzerland. The final
development was the transformation of the joint-family with
collective family property into the private, individual family of

the modern type.160 From this scheme of development Kovalevsky
could emphasize:
Thus, the equal redivision of communal land, a redivision carried out
at regular intervals of time, and often annually, is a comparatively late
phenomenon in the history of agrarian relations in India, and even at
the present time is encountered only in the North and North West
regions.161
The recognition that redivision was a comparatively late

development in the history of the agrarian commune brought
Kovalevsky, somewhat ironically, to a position rather close to
Chicherin's. Indeed Kovalevsky was later to support his argu-
ment that the mir was not the earliest form of commune by
reference to the fact that historians of Russian law had not
been able to find any trace of periodic redistributions of land
prior to the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the
seventeenth centuries. He distanced himself from Chicherin
by pointing out that the latter had identified the origin of com-
mon ownership of land with the establishment of serfdom.162
Against the background of the spontaneous evolution and
dissolution of the agrarian commune Kovalevsky examined the
effects upon it of foreign conquest. India again provided ex-
tremely suitable material for the study, because it had been
subjected to two types of foreign rule - that of the Muslims
and that of the British.
Muslim occupation had had very little effect on the rural
population of India: the peasants continued to own the land
as before and to administer their own system of customary
law.163 The revenue from the land, however, was now distrib-
uted according to Islamic law. Some taxes paid by the peasants
went towards 'wakuf (wakf) for the maintenance of the clergy
or philanthropic institutions; others went to form military
benefices (ikta) for the maintenance of army officers. The
benefices were for the lifetime of the recipient and on his
death reverted to the Sultan.
Under the Moghul Empire a system of zemindars or tax-
gatherers was established, the zemindar undertaking the collec-
tion of taxes from his district with the right of remunerating
himself for this service by making an additional levy on the
local population. Within each province the zemindarappointed
subordinate officials on terms similar to his own appointment,

so that a hierarchy of officials developed throughout the
Moghul Empire. Kovalevsky thought it significant that, as in
'commendation' found in Western Europe in medieval times,
small proprietors granted their proprietary rights to larger ones
in return for hereditary use of the land. 1 He was able to
conclude:
Of the four factors which are . . . usually recognised by historians of the
Middle Ages as the exclusive components of Germano-Roman feudal-
ism, three - the system of benefices, the farming out of offices, and
commendation - can be found in India. Of only patrimonial justice,
at least in the sphere of civil courts, can one say that it was not to be
found in the Empire of the Great Moghul. 165
Kovalevsky believed there was a fifth element in feudalism: the

system by which landowners had to be guarantors for the free
peasantry as well as their own serfs, a system Kovalevsky had
discussed in his dissertation on the police administration in
the English shires, but otherwise was only mentioned by the
historian Francis Palgrave.166
The idea that feudalism was an Asian as well as a European
phenomenon was one that Kovalevsky was later to repeat in
subsequent works,167 but Marx found it unconvincing. He com-
mented in his extensive notes on Kovalevsky's book:
Because Kovalevsky discovers in India 'the system of benefices', 'the
farming out of offices [the latter, however, is not purely feudal, as witness
Rome] and commendation, Kovalevsky finds in India feudalism in the
West-European sense. Kovalevsky forgets, among other things, serfdom,
which is not to be found in India, and which is an important factor.
[As for the individual role of protection (cf. Palgrave) not only of the
unfree but also of the free peasants - by the feudal lords (who act as
bailiffs), this plays only a minor role in India with the exception of
wakf] [of the poetry of the land (Bodenpoesie) characteristic of Romano-
German feudalism there is as little to be found in India as in Rome.
The land is never noble in India, so that it is not as if it cannot be sold
to commoners!] However, Kovalevsky himself finds a major distinction
in the absence of patrimonial jurisdiction, in particular in the sphere of
civil law in the Empire of the Great Moghul. 168
Although Kovalevsky had added his own, fifth, characteris-

tic of Western European feudalism, the responsibility of feu-
dal lords for both free peasants and serfs, he had omitted to
mention whether it existed in India or not. Marx had concluded
that it did not. The most significant aspects of Marx's com-
ment, however, are those which had not figured in Kovalevsky's
book - the 'poetry of the land' and the 'nobility' of the land.
The 'nobility' of the land, in the sense that it could not be
acquired by non-nobles, had been a feature of the agrarian
structure of Prussia before the abolition of serfdom, and one
which Marx had referred to in his Paris Manuscripts of 1844.
For Marx this kind of land was land which had been:
Alienated from man and now confronts him in the shape of a handful
of great lords . . . The land is individualised with its lord, it acquires
his status, it is baronial or ducal with him, has his privileges, his juris-
diction, his political position etc.169
This 'nobility' of the land was connected with the 'poetry' of

the land, a term Marx had employed when commenting in his
notes on Maurer's History of Villeinages in 1876. There he had
remarked that:
This disgusting poetry of landownership (Grundeigentumspoesie), character-
istic of the Germans exceeds in its reification of human relationships even
the poetry of capital (Kapitalpoesie). And it demonstrates in a striking
way the totally divergent character of landownership historically.
The Roman possessor was master over his slaves etc. not in his cap-
acity as a landowner, but as the owner of slaves; as a landowner he was
purely a private person. But with the Germans the land itself incorpor-
ates all social and corresponding legal qualities as attributes of itself.170
The term 'poetry' (Poesie) in this sense had first been coined
by Adam Miiller in an essay written in 1812 entided Poetic Posses-
sion (Derpoetische Besitz). In it Miiller elaborated his conception
of feudal as opposed to Roman property, by eulogizing the
kind of possession in which the thing possessed had an inde-
pendent existence and entered into a reciprocal relationship
with the possessor.171
Marx continued to think of feudalism in terms of a hierar-
chy of power, the devolution of authority distinguishing it from
Oriental despotism. Thus, in a passage where Kovalevsky de-
scribed the resistance of the central government in India to
attempts by benefice-holders to make their offices hereditary
and so establish independent power centres in the localities,172
Marx noted:
according to Indian law the ruling poweris not subject to division among
the sons; thereby a great source of European feudalism is obstructed.173
Later, in the drafts of his letter to Vera Zasulich, Marx was to

use the corollary of this idea; if one wanted to limit absolute
power, the method was to create independent local centres of
authority.174
With his account of the development of feudalism under
the Moghul Empire Kovalevsky concluded his treatment of the
spontaneous evolution of the agrarian commune. In that part
of his book dealing with the British rule in India he examined
the artificial causes of the commune's dissolution. In Kovalev-
sky's opinion the British misunderstood completely the Indian
system of landownership, as they were unable to conceive of
any way of owning land other than the one in their own coun-
try. They consequently tried to apply Smithian economics to
the Indian situation.175
The British believed that if a piece of land did not belong
to the state then it must belong to a private person. When the
Moghul Empire fell, they reasoned that the ownership of land
must have passed to the zemindars. They saw nothing odd in
such a vast amount of land being concentrated in so few hands,
because this was exactly the situation in Britain. In the cadastre
of Bengal in 1789-91 the Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis,
recognized the land of the province to be the property of the
zemindars.
The zemindars, who lacked sufficient capital, mostly sold the
land they had acquired so easily to urban entrepreneurs, who
in turn rented it on short-term leases to wealthier sections of
the agrarian population, to smaller capitalists. These, or money-
lenders eager to make as much profit from the land as quickly
as possible, exploited the peasants mercilessly, sometimes caus-
ing them to rise in rebellion. The British, applying the Smithian
policy of non-intervention in economic matters, did nothing
to protect the peasantry from the agrarian capitalists they had
created.176
In the North West provinces and the Punjab the British
administrators did recognize common ownership of land, but at
the same time the measures taken by them led to the swift col-
lapse of communal landownership. They introduced legislation
to make the peasants' cultivated allotments private property,

enabling them to be bought and sold. The result was to bring
about the expropriation of a large section of the peasantry.
For many peasants had to sell their land to pay off debts or to
meet fiscal obligations. Since under British rule taxation in-
creased significantly, peasants were often forced to sell their
allotments to pay their taxes.
Peasant land changed hands with increasing frequency.
Sometimes it was the village headman who succeeded in ac-
quiring this land for himself, but more often it was the urban
capitalist who accumulated the land put up for sale. Thus,
Kovalevsky concluded, the collapse of the peasant communes
did not lead to the formation of peasant smallholdings, but to
landownership on a large scale by a few proprietors. On the
attitude of the British to this phenomenon Kovalevsky wrote:
The most severe critics of the agrarian policy in Bengal and Madras can-
not find praise enough to extol it in the North-West provinces and the
Punjab. In their words, the British administration did all in its power
to retain the system of common landownership hallowed by history.
If this system continues to disappear year by year, this is no more than
the operation of the inevitable law of economic development, which
demands sooner or later the transfer of communal land to the owner-
ship of private proprietors of immovable property, the transfer whose
results can only be advantageous to the country, making possible the
improvement in methods of cultivation and consequently leading finally
to the increase of the region's general productivity . . .
If anyone expresses any regrets at the passing of these social forms,
it is only out of considerations of a scholarly character. Because of it,
they think, the historian-jurist is deprived of those few remnants of
the archaic life-style, without the observation of which the study of the
ancient history of institutions is incomplete. It does not enter into any-
one's head that what is to blame for the collapse of communal land-
ownership must be admitted first and foremost to be the whole British
agrarian policy, and that the result of the mere fact of the disappear-
ance of the agrarian communes is the strengthening of the scarcely-
restrained hostility of the agrarian population towards the foreign
rulers, which no doubt constitutes the most dangerous side of the Bri-
tish Eastern question.177
Kovalevsky mentioned Sir Henry Sumner Maine as the scholar
he had in mind who expressed regrets of a 'scholarly charac-
ter' at the demise of communal landownership in India.178
Marx paraphrased Kovalevsky's observations in the follow-

ing terms:
British officials in India, as well as critics like Sir Henry Maine who rely
on them, describe the dissolution of communal ownership of land in
the Punjab as if it took place as the inevitable consequence of economic
progress despite the affectionate attitude of the British towards this
archaic form. The truth is rather that the British themselves are the
chief (active) culprits responsible for this dissolution - to their own
danger.179
In Kovalevsky's view communal landownership in India would

eventually disappear, bringing in its wake the social conflicts
seen elsewhere: large landownership on the one hand and a
landless proletariat on the other. The patriarchal would give
way to an individualist order, the principle of mutual aid to that
of free competition with its necessary opposite pole, govern-
mental aid for people unable to work or lacking the means to
make a living.1
In showing how the establishment of private property in land
had led to the expropriation of the peasantry, whether in India
or the other areas he dealt with, Mexico, Peru, and Algeria,
Kovalevsky always had the Russian situation in mind. Towards
the end of his book he drew the parallel explicitly:
In all places where the capitalist system is on the point of develop-
ment we encounter the dismal fact of the exploitation of the rural
population by small moneylenders and neighbouring landowners, who
dispose of free capital. For 20, 30, sometimes 100 per cent interest,
the Russian peasant obtains from the 'kulak' the sum necessary to pay
the taxes demanded by the government. In his turn, the landowner,
exploiting the peasant's straitened circumstances, makes a contract
with him in order to work for the whole period of hay-making and
grain-harvesting for a third or a half of the real rate, paid in advance
and going into the bottomless chasm of the state treasury. . .181
Marx noted down this passage in German without com-

ment.182 What it contained was hardly new to him, and could
have come from almost any of the works he had read on Russia's
post-reform economic situation, beginning with Flerovsky's
Condition of the Working Class in Russia. Evidence of the impor-
tance of government fiscal policy in the expropriation of the
peasantry had accumulated by the time that Marx first met
Kovalevsky in 1875, and in that year he had received the Re-

ports of the Fiscal Commission from Danielson, which documented
the phenomenon in great detail. The topic could not but have
been one discussed by Kovalevsky and Marx when they met in
London between 1875 and 1879. Kovalevsky certainly knew of
Marx's study of the Reports.185
Although Kovalevsky clearly deplored the artificial destruc-
tion of the peasant commune everywhere it took place, as he
was to deplore the Stolypin legislation of 1906, he did be-
lieve that the commune was fated to disappear in the course
of historical development. Therefore, he argued in the Intro-
duction to Communal Landowning that what he had said of the
Canton of Vaud had a universal application:
The destruction of communal landowning took place and still takes
place through the operation of conflicts which arise between the in-
terests of the more prosperous and those of the less prosperous, and
also between the interests of those with private property, who have
separated themselves out from the commune and those who remain
in it with property held in common . . . Everywhere the change-over
from common to private property is brought about by the same phe-
nomenon encountered the world over - the conflict of interests.185
Marx began his notes on Kovalevsky's book only from the

first chapter, and so omitted to comment on this conception,
but the drafts of the letter to Vera Zasulich show that he rec-
ognized the 'conflict of interests' as the main internal force
for change in the dissolution of the commune. 186
Kovalevsky's discovery that the repartitional commune was
the outcome of a previous evolution encouraged Marx during
1880-83 to investigate the preceding forms of social organiza-
tion. Recent ethnological studies had made this possible, and
Marx read several works of this kind. They included Morgan's
Ancient Society (1877), John Budd Phear's The Aryan Village in
India and Ceylon (1880), Sir Henry Sumner Maine's Lectures on
the Early History of Institutions (1875) and Sir John Lubbock's
The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man (1870).
Marx summarized Morgan's book in no less detail than he
had done Kovalevsky's, but he introduced few of his own ideas
into his notes. However, a passage in Ancient Society which he
found especially significant was the author's prediction that
modern forms of property relations, which had an existence of
their own beyond human control, would eventually come to

an end, and that society would be organized on a higher plane.
According to Morgan: it 'will be a revival, in a higher form, of the
liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.nB7 This was an
idea which echoed both Chernyshevsky's conception of his-
torical development and his own, first expressed in his letter to
Engels of 25 March 1868, when he had associated the 'socialist
tendency' with the 'primitive age of every nation'. Morgan's
work had reinforced this idea by translating it into concrete
terms.
A book which appeared too late for Marx to read was Sieber's
Studies in the History of Primitive Economic Culture, published in
1883. In it Sieber had made use of a large number of accounts
by European travellers of primitive peoples in various parts of
the world. He also drew upon most of the scholarly works on
the subject then available, studies by Maine, Bachofen, Morgan,
Laveleye, MacLennan and Kovalevsky.
A great part of Sieber's work was devoted to nomadic hunt-
ing and fishing peoples, examining how these and other activ-
ities were carried on collectively wherever they had been
recorded. He also showed that among these peoples private
property was unknown: this had developed gradually and at
higher cultural levels, first in relation to movable, and subse-
quently to immovable property. Sieber emphasized, however,
that even the most primitive peoples were well aware of prop-
erty and considered themselves to own collectively the territ-
ory over which they hunted. 188
Sieber believed that the principles of collectivism were car-
ried over from the nomadic to the setded condition, and viewed
the practice of equalization of allotments and the redivision
of the land in this light. Unlike Kovalevsky, he did not regard
these phenomena as the product of later evolution and the
weakening of the consanguine principle.
Although Marx did not have the opportunity to read Sieber's
book, there is every reason to suppose that he was familiar
with at least its main arguments. In his memoirs the Russian
economist N.A. Kablukov stated:
In the second half of 1880 I lived in London, studying every day in the
library of the British Museum and spending some time in the company
of N.I. Sieber, who was then working on his book Studies in the History
of Primitive Economic Culture, on which we talked a great deal. I went
with him several times to visit K Marx and F. Engels, who made us very
welcome and introduced us to their families.189
Marx himself referred to these meetings. In a letter to Danielson
dated 19 February 1881 he wrote:
Last month we had here Russian visitors, amongst others Prof. Sieber
(now settled at Zurich) and Mr. Kablukoff (Moscow). They were all day
long studying at the British Museum.190
It is more than likely that Sieber discussed with Marx what
he was working on at the British Museum, particularly as Sieber
and Kovalevsky were acquainted. Sieber's Studies in the History
of Primitive Economic Culture were therefore probably influenced
to some degree at least by Marx's comments. They in any case
anticipated to a remarkable degree the direction of Marx's own
studies. Kovalevsky for one thought that Sieber's work deserved
to be better known in Western Europe. As he remarked:
since their author did not trouble to have his works published in lan-
guages accessible to the scholarly world, it is not surprising that the
name of this pioneer in the field of explaining ancient culture in terms
of production and exchange should remain unknown to historians of
Marxism.191
MARX'S LETTER TO VERA ZASULICH
In February 1881 the young Russian socialist Vera Zasulich

wrote to Marx from her exile in Geneva to enquire if it were
true, as his disciples in Russia asserted, that the agrarian com-
mune was an archaic form bound to disappear in the course
of history, or was it possible that it could serve as a basis for a
socialist society. The answer to this question, Zasulich assured
Marx, was crucial for Russian socialists. For if the peasant
commune could serve as a basis for socialism, then all their
efforts would be bent towards its preservation; if not, then all
that remained would be to conduct propaganda among the
urban workers and wait for capitalism in Russia to develop to
a point that would make a socialist revolution possible.
On 8 March Marx sent in reply a short letter similar to the
one he had drafted in response to Mikhaylovsky's article in

Otechestvennye zapiski four years earlier. It contained the same
quotations from the French version of Capital and concluded
by stating that:
The analysis in Capital therefore provides no reason either for or against
the viability of the Russian commune. But the special study I have
made of it, and for which I drew upon original source materials, has
convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration
in Russia, but in order that it might function as such, the harmful
influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and then
assure it of the normal conditions for spontaneous development.192
The preparatory drafts which Marx made for the letter,

however, attempted to give a much fuller account of how the
Russian commune might develop in the light of its past history
and the economic situation in which it now found itself. These
drafts have a special interest, because apart from 'Notes on the
1861 Reform and Russia's Post-Reform Development' they are
the nearest Marx came to setting down in writing the results
of his studies on Russia.
There were four drafts in all, the last closely approximating
the text of the actual letter. The remaining three drafts con-
tain disjointed ideas rather than any coherent argument and
repeat themselves frequently even within the space of a single
page. The drafts are in effect a compilation of a dozen or so
themes, sometimes differendy worded or presented in alterna-
tive combinations, but always easily identifiable. Often these
themes or ideas are built around a key word or phrase such as
'arteU, 'new pillars of society', 'conflict of interests', 'isolated mi-
crocosm', etc. This makes it comparatively easy to group to-
gether ideas of the same kind and place them in the context
of Marx's studies of Russia.
The character of these drafts as a review of over a decade's
work studying the agrarian commune is made plain by the
evidence Marx used to show the vitality of the commune:
Scattered examples survived the vicissitudes of the Middle Ages and
have maintained themselves up to the present day - e.g. in my native
region, the district of Trier.193
Here, as in his letter to Engels of 25 March 1868, this fact was

mentioned in connection with the work of Maurer. There, too,
he had first expressed the idea that the ancient form of social
organization might be a model for socialism; in the drafts, how-
ever, he could cite Morgan as an authority for this idea:
In the words of an American writer. . . 'the new system' to which
modern society is tending 'will be a revival, in a superior form, of an
archaic social type'. We should not, then, be too frightened by the
word 'archaic'. 194
In the light of his reading in the intervening period, Marx

was able to develop the analogy with archaeology he had used
in his letter to Engels to signify the coexistence of different
social formations:
The archaic or primary formations of our globe itself contains a series
of layers from various ages, the one superimposed on the other. Sim-
ilarly, the archaic formation of society exhibits a series of different
types [which together form an ascending series], marking progressive
epochs. The Russian agrarian commune belongs to the most recent
type in this chain. 195
This was a conception which invited comparison with the propo-
sition in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy that the 'progressive epochs' in the economic devel-
opment of society took place in sequence, no new one appear-
ing before the existing one had exhausted all its possibilities
for development. That conception, however, had presupposed
the Subsumption of one economic order under another, a
presupposition Marx had been forced to abandon when he
recognized the viability of archaic communes in a capitalist
society.
In the context of the letter to Zasulich, the coexistence of
different social epochs referred to different stages in the evo-
lution of the agrarian commune, for he went on to say that in
the Russian type:
Already, the agricultural producer privately owns the house in which
he lives, together with its complementary garden 196
In fact, one of the main themes of Marx's letter was the gen-
eral evolutionary scheme of the communes, and the place in
this scheme occupied by the Russian agrarian commune. Ac-
cording to Marx the earliest type of primitive communities
were those based on the natural consanguinity of their mem-
bers. The transition from this type of community to the agrarian
commune he believed very significant, because it was then 'more

capable of adapting, expanding, and undergoing contact with
, 1Q7
strangers .
There was also an evolution of the agrarian commune itself.
Originally there had been communal housing and collective
habitation. Production had been in common and the produce
distributed among the members, as had been the practice
before the change-over to a pastoral or settled existence.
Redivision of the land had originally involved the dwelling-
house, but at a later stage this, with its attached garden, had
become personal property. Subsequently the arable land was
converted into private property, leaving the forests, pastures
and waste land no more than communal appendages of pri-
vate property. The final stage was to make these too private
1QR
property.
This was the pattern of development that Kovalevsky had
put forward in Communal Landownership and which Marx had
carefully noted in his summary of it.199 Whereas Kovalevsky
had stressed the part played by newcomers in diluting the
consanguine principle, Marx chose to concentrate on the
corollary: that with the disappearance of the consanguine
principle, the agrarian commune became more adaptable and
could accept strangers into its midst.
Along with Kovalevsky's scheme of the commune's develop-
ment Marx had adapted his main thesis that the factor which
undermined communal landownership the world over was the
emergence of a 'conflict of interests' within the communes.
Marx saw this conflict of interests arising from the creation of
movable private property.
. . . movable private property . . . gradually differentiates the commune
members in terms of wealth and gives rise to a conflict of interests .. .20°
The eventual fate of the commune depended on whether

or not the conflict of interests was allowed to emerge. This in
turn hinged on how far the evolution from the communal to
the individualist principle had progressed and whether it could
be arrested before the tendency towards privatization had
become irreversible. The presence of the two principles Marx
referred to as the 'inner dualism' of the commune. He consid-
ered this dualism to be on the whole beneficial:
It is easy to see that the dualism inherent in the 'agricultural commune'
may give it a sturdy life: for communal property and all the resulting
social relations provide it with a solid foundation, while the privately-
owned houses, fragmented tillage of the arable land, and the private
appropriation of its fruits, all permit a development of individuality
incompatible with conditions in the more primitive communities. 201
He added, however, that the same dualism could be a source
of the commune's disintegration; everything depended on the
historical context in which the commune found itself.202
As far as the present historical context in Russia was con-
cerned, Marx thought it was advantageous in so far as Russia,
unlike India, had not fallen prey to a foreign power. Here Marx
paraphrased Kovalevsky's comments on Sir Henry Maine:
One has to be on one's guard when reading the histories of the pri-
mitive communities written by bourgeois authors. They do not shrink
from anything, even from falsehoods. Sir Henry Maine, for example,
who enthusiastically collaborated with the English government in its
violent destruction of the Indian communities, hypocritically tells us
that the government's noble efforts to maintain the commune suc-
cumbed to the spontaneous power of economic laws!203
In the same connection Marx stated:

As regards the East Indies . . . everyone except Sir H. Maine and his
like is aware that the suppression of communal landownership was
nothing but an act of English vandalism which drove the indigenous
population backward rather than forward.204
Clearly Marx did not believe that the agrarian commune

was doomed by spontaneous economic laws, nor that the de-
struction of the commune was a step forward in historical
progress. His position in that respect, one may remark, was
exactly the opposite of what he had written in 1853, when in
the New York Daily Tribune he had concluded that whatever
England's crimes in India had been, she was nevertheless 'the
unconscious tool of history' in bringing about a social revolu-
tion in that country by dissolving the village communities. 205
The change in interpretation was a symptom of the change in
Marx's system of thought over the years.
Apart from Russia's fortune of escaping the fate of a colony,
Marx thought that the historical circumstances in which the
agrarian commune found itself were in general unfavourable.
Here he referred in particular to the fiscal pressure which the

commune experienced, and drew upon the material he had
used in compiling his draft 'Notes on the 1861 Reform and
Russia's Post-Reform Development'. He alluded to the 'huge
public debt, mostly financed at the peasants' expense, along
with the enormous sums which the State (still at the peasant's
expense) provided for the "new pillars of society"'. The tax
burden, as had emerged from many sources, was a force for
the dispossession of the peasantry:
In order to expropriate the agricultural producers, it is not necessary
to drive them from the land, as happened in England and elsewhere;
nor to abolish communal property by some ukase. If you go and take
from the peasants more than a certain proportion of the product of
their agricultural labour, then not even your gendarmes and your army
will enable you to tie them to their fields206
The same process of circulation involving the state, which

created the proletarians, also gave rise to the 'new pillars of
society', the emergent bourgeoisie. Thus, the 'more well-to-do
minority of the peasants must be formed into a rural middle
class, and the majority simply converted into proletarians'. 207
The general circulation of capital in the country, especially
the tax-burden imposed on the peasantry, affected the course
of evolution taken by the commune:
This oppression from without unleashed the conflict of interests
already present in the commune, rapidly developing the seeds of its
disintegration. 208
This presentation of events represented an amalgam of con-

ceptions from his reading of materials on the Russian economy
and from Kovalevsky's writings.
Doubtless with the information supplied by Samarin,
Koshelev and Kavelin in mind, Marx was able to state that 'a
powerful conspiracy is waiting in the wings' to finish off the
commune. 209 The liberals also, he revealed, wished to see the
commune abolished.210 In the circumstances, the way to save
the commune was by a revolution211 which would interrupt the
present circulation of capital and divert resources into the
communes. 212
Marx believed that if such a revolution took place, Russia
would be well placed to construct a socialist system on the
basis of the commune, because it existed contemporaneously
with Western capitalism. Had this not been so, and Russia had
been isolated from the world, then the communes would have
had to perish to give way to the capitalist system, so that its
high level of economic development could be reached. But as
this was not the case, Russia could 'reap the fruits with which
capitalist production had enriched humanity without passing
through the capitalist regime . . ,'213
One must note here that although Marx spoke of Western
capitalism's domination of the world market,214 he did not
suggest at any point that the commerce with Western capital-
ism might lead to the dissolution of the agrarian commune
rather than its enrichment. Indeed, he could hardly have done
so, since he had discovered that primitive communes could
thrive in a capitalist environment. The kind of circulation of
capital which destroyed the communes was the internal one
involving taxation by the state. If the world market could have
drawn Russia so easily into its orbit and transformed its popu-
lation into proletarians and bourgeoisie, then Capital would
have been completed in the 1860s and Marx's special study of
peasant communes would have been unnecessary.
In the drafts of his letter to Vera Zasulich Marx referred
several times to another obstacle to socialist development in
Russia. This was the fact that:
The isolation of the agrarian communes . . . this localised microcosm . . .
leads to the formation of a centralised despotism over the communes. 215
This was the pattern of Oriental despotism that Marx had

spoken of in his first draft of 'The Critique of Political Economy'
and which he had taken over from the Romantic writers, par-
ticularly from Adam Miiller. The solution was to prevent the
sovereign power confronting the communes directly, by the
introduction of an intermediate estate or stratum. This is in
fact what Marx proposed, drawing on his knowledge of Rus-
sian institutions:
All that is necessary is to replace the volosf, a government institution,

with an assembly chosen by the communes themselves - an economic
and administrative body serving their own interests. 216
The conception of Oriental despotism was one of the older

ideas in the drafts of the letter to Vera Zasulich. Most, how-
ever, were fairly recent, and a high proportion of them were
derived from Kovalevsky's work. Thus at the end of his life

Marx was still in the process of learning about the evolution of
society and its relation to economics. Yet the more he relied
on empirical studies like Kovalevsky's or Morgan's the less ap-
plicable his original theoretical framework became. But at the
same time, one had to assume that every empirical study would
be supplanted by another and so ad infinitum. One encoun-
tered the limitations of knowledge based on experience that
the German philosophical tradition had tried to overcome.
In his studies of primitive society Marx had been led some
distance from the question of the circulation of capital from
which he had started out. And the evidence of his writings
suggests that in his last years there was little prospect of his
being ready to incorporate his findings into Book II of Capital.
It is nevertheless important to bear in mind that it had been
the questions of the circulation of capital and original accu-
mulation which had led Marx to study the agrarian commune
and its predecessor, the consanguine community. For Marx
the question of how capitalism originated was equivalent to
enquiring how capital began to circulate and how its circuits
were made possible: for Marx capital was necessarily circulating
capital. After his death, however, Marx's studies of the consan-
guine community were to be detached from his conception of
the circulation of capital, and would acquire an existence of
their own. The same process was to consign Marx's studies
of Russia to oblivion and make room for interpretations of his
ideas that had little in common with his own intentions.
6 Engels
Although Engels knew Russian, he did not subscribe to Marx's
view of the importance of Russian conditions for the study of
capitalist development. On the contrary, he considered Marx's
preoccupation with Russia to be an unnecessary diversion which
only served to postpone the completion of the remaining Books
of Capital. He had once remarked that he would gladly take all
the Russian materials Marx had accumulated and throw them
on the fire.1 After Marx's death Engels was horrified to dis-
cover that so much work remained to be done on Books II and
III of Capital for publication, and he made it manifest to
Danielson that he held him responsible for the lack of progress.2
When Engels himself prepared Volumes II and III of Capital
for publication he made no attempt to incorporate into them
any of the Russian material on which Marx had spent so much
time. Engels explained that in view of his advanced age and
the pressure of work, it would be impossible for him to begin
from scratch the kind of Russian studies that Marx had pur-
sued. Accordingly, in 1884, he made Lavrov a gift of Marx's
extensive Russian library.3 Engels was of necessity committed
to the assumption that Marx's Russian studies were marginal
to his overall project, and that the remaining volumes of Capital
could be published without the incorporation of the Russian
material. This departure was much deplored by those who
recognized the significance of Marx's Russian studies.
In July 1884 Kovalevsky wrote in a letter to Lavrov:
You know, of course that Marx's notes on Russia, made in the past few
years, are not to go into Volume II. What if one were to insist that they
be printed, at least in extract, in your journal? His notes on the Reports
of the Fiscal Commission are in all probability extremely interesting. 4
As might be expected, Danielson was very disappointed by

Engels's decision.5 So too was Chuprov, who knew the extent
and importance of Marx's Russian studies. In a letter to Daniel-
son of 11 January 1886 he remarked that:
It would be a very great pity indeed if Marx's enormous preparatory

work were to disappear without trace. Couldn't one ask the Editor to
281
publish these works, if even in the form of fragmentary notes, if not

all, then at least those containing the imprint of their author's thoughts
and personality. 6
Engels, however, did not take this course, and Volumes II and
III of Capital appeared much as they had first been drafted in
the 1860s.7 The only mention Engels made of Marx's Russian
studies was a short paragraph in the Preface to Volume III,
where he stated:
For the section on ground-rent during the 1870s Marx carried out en-
tirely new specialised studies. For years he had been studying, in original
language, the statistical reports that the Russian 'Reform' of 1861 had
made unavoidable, as well as other publications on landed property that
his Russian friends put at his disposal as fully as anyone could desire.
He made extracts from these and intended to make use of them in
a new version of this section. In view of the great diversity of forms
both of landed property and exploitation of the agricultural producers
in Russia, this country was to play the same role in the section on
ground-rent as England had done for industrial wage-labour in Volume
I. Unfortunately, Marx was not able to carry out this plan. 8
In Marx's presentation, ground-rent was one of the various

forms of surplus value. To class his studies of Russia under this
head was to reduce their significance immeasurably. It made
their omission from Capital seem no doubt regrettable, but a
relatively minor matter, certainly not one which would affect
the overall argument of the work.
The publication of Capital in this form had far-reaching
implications for the public perception of what Marx's ideas
were. Ostensibly the three volumes of Capital were not only
individually complete, but together formed a logical sequence.
But because Marx never succeeded in completing the logical
chain, the work was to remain enigmatic and subject to many
interpretations.
The exclusion of Marx's Russian material not only kept from
the public domain a great part of his activity, but also glossed
over the problem which had originally led Marx to undertake
the study of Russian conditions. Engels's decision to omit the
Russian material, therefore, suggests that he did not fully
understand the kind of difficulties Marx had encountered when
writing Capital, and therefore the kind of structure the work
Engels 283
was intended to have. Engels apparendy had litde patience

with theoretical niceties. In a letter to Bebel in August 1883 he
said that Marx had kept quiet about his lack of progress with
Capital because he knew that otherwise he, Engels, 'would give
him no peace, day or night, until the book was finished and
in print'. 9 Clearly Engels attached more importance to publi-
cation than to finding solutions to problems and was not averse
to cutting theoretical corners.
Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State (1884) was a product of this attitude. According to Engels
it was written at Marx's behest, as the latter had 'planned to
present the results of Morgan's researches in connection with
the conclusions arrived at by his own . . . materialist investiga-
tion of history and thus to make clear their whole significance.'10
While it is entirely probable that Marx encouraged his friend
to complete the study he had begun on ancient society, it is
most unlikely that he wished to present Morgan's work in the
way Engels described. Marx had not thought of Morgan in
isolation, but in connection with Kovalevsky's findings, and
with his own earlier studies of peasant communes.
Engels's book, on the other hand, was centred chiefly on
Morgan's work, and concentrated mainly on the evolution of
the family and the changes in the position of women in soci-
ety. Peasant communes were given no more than a passing
mention, so that the relationship of Morgan's book to Marx's
economic writings was not revealed. Works which might have
pointed to this relationship, such as Kovalevsky's Communal
Landownership and Sieber's Studies in the History of Primitive
Economic Culture, were not mentioned by Engels in his book.
The Origin of the Family appeared the year after Marx's death,
and to produce it so quickly had meant consulting rather few
sources. In June 1891 after preparing the fourth edition of the
work Engels admitted in a letter to Laura Lafargue:
I had to read the whole literature on the subject (which, entre nous, I
had not done when I wrote the book - with a cheek worthy of my
younger days, and to my great astonishment I find that I had guessed
the contents of all those unread books pretty correctly - a good deal
better luck than I had deserved. 11
According to Hans-Peter Harstick, who examined Engels's

preparatory materials for The Origin of the Family, the notes
Engels made for the first edition of the book comprised only
26 pages, with extracts from MacLennan, Lubbock, Giraud-
Teulon, Bancroft, Agassiz and Bachofen.12 Though he utilized
later works of Kovalevsky for the fourth edition, Engels never
made use of Communal Landownership or Sieber's Studies in the
History of Primitive Economic Culture. He also ignored the ques-
tions they had raised of how the consanguine gave rise to the
agrarian commune, and how the latter dissolved to form mod-
ern bourgeois society.
But if Engels had detached ancient society from Capital,
he suggested in Origin of the Family another context in which
it might be placed. This was Marx's early writings, produced
jointly with Engels. Morgan's work, Engels held, reflected ideas
which had earlier appeared in 'The German Ideology' and The
Communist Manifesto. Indeed, in the 1888 English edition of
the Manifesto Engels appended to the statement 'The history
of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle'
the note:
That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social
organisation existing previous to recorded history, was all but unknown.
Since then, Haxthausen disclosed common ownership of land in Russia,
Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic
races started in history, and by and by village communities were found
to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from
India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive Communistic
society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Morgan's crowning discovery
of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dis-
covery of these primitive communities society begins to be differentiated
into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace
this process of dissolution in The Origin of the Family . . ,13
The elimination of the distinction between consanguine and

agrarian communes thus gave rise to the conception of 'prim-
itive communism'. This could then head the list of historical
stages given by Marx in the well-known passage from his Pref-
ace to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and
form the outline of the 'materialist conception of history'.
The theme of a 'materialist conception of history' was quite
an old one with Engels. He had spoken of Marx's Preface in
these terms when he reviewed Marx's book in 1859.14 In praising
the historical element in both Marx and Hegel, he contrasted
Engels 285
this with the 'fixed categories' of the old metaphysics, which

he now believed to be challenged by a new 'natural-scientific
materialism', which was 'almost indistinguishable theoretically
from that of the eighteenth century' and enjoyed the advan-
tage of 'having a richer natural-scientific material at its dis-
posal, particularly in chemistry and physiology'.15
That categories (or Concepts) were not fixed but subject to
historical change was of course common ground to Engels
and Marx, being the lesson they had learnt from Feuerbach.
Marx had concentrated his attention on the implications of
the economic categories being historical, but Engels in the
1860s set out to apply the principle to the categories of natural
science. He was stimulated in this enterprise by the appear-
ance in 1869 of Darwin's Origin of Species, which showed that
Nature as a whole was subject to evolution.
This created a significant difference between how Engels
and Marx treated Nature. Although he greeted Darwin's book
enthusiastically, the conception of Nature in Marx's scheme
was pre-Darwinian.16 Nature was treated as fixed and static, the
human species being regarded as the only source of move-
ment and development. In fact a central element of his thought
concerned the interchange between the fixity of Nature and
the free movement of Society. It was the latter which in Marx's
view was the driving force of history.
For Engels, however, there was no need to look for a source
of movement outside Nature. Whereas, he pointed out, the
conception was prevalent among the French of the eighteenth
century, as well as with Hegel, of Nature as a whole moving
in narrow circles and remaining unchanged, 'in more recent
advances of social science . . . Nature also has its history in
time'. 17
According to Engels, Nature had been thought immutable
because it had been studied 'metaphysically', not 'dialectically'.
People had fallen into the habit of:
observing Natural objects and Natural processes in their isolation, de-
tached from the whole vast interconnection of things; and therefore
not in their motion, but in repose; not as essentially changing, but as
fixed constants; not in their life, but in their death.18
This idea is easily recognizable as being derived from Schelling's

conception of the Speculative, as opposed to the Reflective
point of view. Where Schelling would have used the term

'Speculative', Engels employed the term 'dialectical'. In the
same way, 'Reflective' had been replaced by 'metaphysical'.
Engels put forward this conception of 'dialectics' principally
in Anti-Duhring, the polemical work he wrote in 1878 to de-
fend Marx's ideas against the criticisms of Eugen Duhring.
They also appeared in the popular pamphlets Ludwig Feuerbach
and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888) and Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific (1892). Although Engels intended to elab-
orate his ideas on Natural science in a special work, the 'Dia-
lectics of Nature' remained in fragmentary, manuscript form.
One does not find in Engels the kind of argumentation that
Schelling supplied to support his Speculative philosophy.
On the other hand, one should not expect Engels to justify
his dialectical point of view by philosophical argumentation.
For in his opinion dialectics was not a product of philosophy,
but 'the science of the general laws of motion and develop-
ment of Nature, human society and thought'. 19 In other words,
dialectics was in the very Nature of things and everything fur-
nished proof of the dialectical point of view. For the purposes
of the polemic with Duhring, Engels was concerned to demon-
strate that Marx's work confirmed the validity of this viewpoint.
Engels accordingly formulated his conception of dialectics,
not as a philosophical system, but as a series of 'general laws
of motion'. Among these laws he mentioned the interpenetra-
tion of the poles of the antithesis, the mutual relationship
between quality and quantity, and the 'negation of the nega-
tion'. 20 The examples Engels gave of the last rule made it clear
that what he had in mind was the return of processes to their
point of departure, the creation by them of their own presup-
positions. The dialectical laws of motion, in fact, consisted of
the principles of the Speculative method, common to Schelling
and Hegel, presented as a series of individual maxims.
Engels had retained in his conception of Nature the idea of
irreducibility. Nature was what it was. So that for Engels the
question: why should Nature display, for example, the nega-
tion of the negation? could have no answer. It was simply in
the Nature of things that it did.
Since Nature had its own dialectical laws of motion, its own
history, Engels had no need to resort to Society to account for
historical progress. Society, in Engels's conception, was not the
ultimate driving force of history; it was economic conditions:
Engels 287
It was seen that flypast history, with the exception of its primitive stages,
was the history of class struggles; that the warring classes of society are
always the products of the modes of production and of exchange - in
a word, of the economic relations of their time; that the economic
structure of society always furnishes the real base, starting from which
we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole super-
structure ofjuridical and political institutions as well as of the religious,
philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period.21
This passage, of course, paraphrased the famous one in Marx's

Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. But
whereas for Marx behind the economic base lurked human
Society, the economic structure being only the externalized
form of man's species-being, for Engels the economic base was
the ultimate determining factor.
'Society' for Engels became not a determining factor, but
one determined. It appeared only in the form of antagonistic
classes, the outlook of each being determined by the economic
base. With Engels, history was no longer centred in human
Society, but outside it in the economic structure.
Although there was a considerable difference between Marx's
and Engels's respective conceptions of Nature and Society,
Engels gave to understand in his writings that they were iden-
tical. His pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical
German Philosophy gave support to this view by presenting the
history of the Young Hegelian movement in such a way as to
trace the development of his own rather than of Marx's ideas.
This was a significant move, because some of the basic concep-
tions to appear in Marx's work had first been formed in this
period. It only required Engels's interpretation of it to be
accepted for these conceptions to be obscured. This occurred
quite easily, because, as Engels himself remarked in his pam-
phlet, he was writing about an era which was quite foreign to
the present generation.
At the heart of the Ludwig Feuerbach pamphlet was the con-
tention that the main issue at stake as far as the Young Hegelians
were concerned was the conflict between 'idealism' and 'ma-
terialism'. The two points of view were distinguished by their
different approaches to Nature:
Those who asserted the primacy of Mind to Nature . . . comprised the

camp of idealism. Those who regarded Nature as primary belonged to
the various schools of materialism.22
This presentation of events was of course very far removed

from what the actual development of G e r m a n philosophy in
the first decades of the n i n e t e e n t h century h a d b e e n . I n d e e d
all writers from Fichte to Marx h a d t h o u g h t of their systems as
reconciling the opposing pairs of materialism a n d idealism.
A n d while it is true that Feuerbach a n d Marx spoke of their
ideas as materialist, what they m e a n t by this was simply that
they d e n i e d Abstractions any existence i n d e p e n d e n t of their
empirical content. In fact in o n e place Engels accepted this
conception:
It was decided mercilessly to sacrifice every idealist quirk which could

not be brought into harmony with the facts conceived in their own
right, and not in a fantastic interconnection. And materialism means
nothing more than this.23
Nevertheless for the most part Engels took materialism to

m e a n the primacy of Nature over Mind, a n d h e interpreted
the works of David Strauss a n d Bruno Bauer in this light:
The controversy between the two was carried out in the philosophical
guise of a battle between 'self-consciousness' and 'substance'. The
question whether the miracle stories of the gospels came into being
through unconscious-traditional myth-creation within the bosom of
the community or whether they were fabricated by the evangelists
themselves, was magnified into the question whether in world history
'substance' or 'self-consciousness' was the decisive operative force . . .24
T h e implication h e r e - b u t an entirely false o n e - was that

Strauss's 'substance' signified a materialist a p p r o a c h , a n d
Bauer's 'self-consciousness' an idealist a p p r o a c h to religion.
In a statement clearly m e a n t to apply to Marx a n d himself,
Engels asserted that: T h e main body of the Young Hegelians
was, by the practical necessities of the struggle against posi-
tive religion, driven back to Anglo-French materialism.' 2 5
T h e idea that h e a n d Marx h a d at that time e m b r a c e d Anglo-
French materialism was reinforced by the statement that Dar-
win's discovery, which h a d m a d e a historical conception of
Nature possible, h a d 'removed all the one-sidedness of F r e n c h
materialism'. 2 6
Engels's writings, which were ostensibly p r o d u c e d to m a k e
Marx's ideas m o r e accessible, in fact h a d the opposite effect.
Ludwig Feuerbach obscured how Marx's ideas h a d e m e r g e d from
Engels 289
the development of German philosophy, and The Origin of the

Family concealed their eventual evolution. But more destruc-
tive was the conception of dialectics that Engels had introduced.
For by deriving it from Nature he had made it inaccessible to
rational investigation. He had transformed dialectics from the
realm of logic to that of belief.
Engels's works were a decisive influence at the end of the
nineteenth century for the perception of Marx's ideas at that
time. Marx's two main theoretical published works were A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital, so
that his system appeared to be a largely economic one with a
rudimentary historical dimension. It was Engels's writings which
supplied Marx's works with a philosophical underpinning; but
this was soon felt to be inadequate, and well before the end of
the nineteenth century attempts were being made to supple-
ment Marx's economic ideas with the philosophical framework
they apparently lacked.
In 1874 Engels had made a brief study of Russian social and

economic conditions, but unlike Marx's, his purpose had been
of a political and tactical nature, and had therefore only a
tenuous connection with his philosophical viewpoint. The
occasion was the publication of a pamphlet by P.N. Tkachev
entitled The Aims of Revolutionary Propaganda in Russia. Tkachev,
a Russian Blanquist who had fled to Western Europe in 1873,
had considered forming an alliance with Lavrov and contrib-
uting to his journal Vpered! (Forward!), but had declined to do
so for reasons which he set out in his pamphlet.
Tkachev believed that Lavrov's emphasis on the necessity
for revolutionaries to educate the masses and raise their level
of consciousness distracted them from the urgent task of car-
rying out an immediate revolution to overthrow the existing
regime. He thought that the implication of Lavrov's propagan-
distic methods would be to postpone revolution indefinitely,
and in the meantime allow the suffering of the people to
continue. Lavrov, in Tkachev's opinion, had confused peaceful
progress, which involved the majority of the population, with
revolution, which involved only a minority of activists or agita-
tors. He was deluding himself that there could be 'bloodless
revolutions of which Lassalle had dreamt, the idea on which
the present Western European workers' movement was based
and on which the German programme of the International

was founded'. Tkachev urged that since the peasant commune
was about to be dissolved and capitalist relations develop in
Russia, the revolution should not be postponed. 27
Engels, stung by Tkachev's criticism of the International,
and seeing in them similarities to Bakunin's, tried to ridicule
the pamphlet and its author in a series of articles in Volksstaat.
Tkachev, however, replied in a reasoned and effective way in
a pamphlet entitled An Open Letter to Mr. Friedrich Engels. This
elaborated on the argument he had previously put forward
and reinforced his case by pointing out ways in which Russian
conditions differed from those in Western Europe and made
an immediate revolution both more essential and more feasible.
These included the absence of both a proletariat and a
bourgeoisie, the lack of civd rights, and the fact that the state
did not represent any particular class, but, as it were, 'hung in
the air'. On the other hand, these same factors, Tkachev ar-
gued, made it possible for a revolution to succeed in Russia at
the present time. The capitalist order had not yet become
entrenched; the state's lack of class support made it vulnerable
to a revolutionary takeover, and the Russian people, because
of their collective institutions, were 'communists by instinct'.
They were therefore nearer to socialism than the people of
Western Europe. But time was of the essence: the encroach-
ments of capitalism would eventually erode these advantages.
Revolution should not be postponed. 28
With Marx's encouragement Engels replied to Tkachev in
an article in Volksstaat entitled 'On Social Relations in Russia'.
This attempted to answer Tkachev's case in a more serious way
than the previous article had done. To avoid the charge of
ignorance of Russian conditions, Engels had read some books
from Marx's collection of Russian materials, and no doubt
discussed the matter with Marx. The result was that while the
article sparkled with erudition about Russia, it showed a ten-
sion between the needs of the polemic and the results of Marx's
studies.
Countering Tkachev's arguments required that Engels's ar-
ticle should show that Russian conditions were by no means
unique, and that they were only variations on the Western
European pattern. This case was in fact made, Engels indicat-
ing that the commune and the artel were not peculiar to Russia,
Engels 291
but h a d formerly existed in all E u r o p e a n countries. As far as

Tkachev's presentation of the Russian State was c o n c e r n e d ,
Engels c o n t e n d e d that:
When Mr. Tkachev assures us that the Russian State has no 'roots in
the economic life of the people', that i t . . . 'hangs in the air', me thinks
it is not the Russian State that hangs in the air, but rather Mr. Tkachev.29
T h e conclusion of Engels's article, however, foreshadowed

the position Marx was to a d o p t in his reply to Otechestvennye
zapiski a n d his letter to Vera Zasulich: it allowed the possibility
of basing socialism in Russia on the peasant c o m m u n e a n d so
avoiding the capitalist stage. But with Engels there was an
i m p o r t a n t proviso:
This . . . can only happen if, before the complete break-up of communal
ownership, a proletarian revolution is successfully carried out in West-
ern Europe, creating for the Russian peasant the preconditions re-
quisite for such a transition, particularly the material conditions which
he needs if only to carry through the transformation in his whole
system of agriculture which the transition necessarily demands.30
This idea went a considerable way towards admitting Tkachev's

case, that the socialist revolution in Russia could be different
from that in the West if carried out with sufficient speed. T h e
factor remaining to c o u n t e r Tkachev's position was the insist-
ence that the revolution in Russia would have to coincide with
o n e in the West. Engels did n o t explain why the 'material
conditions' must necessarily be provided by a socialist rather
than a capitalist Europe, as Marx was later to suggest. But that
this was for polemical rather than purely theoretical reasons is
suggested by Engels's remark that:
It is sheer nonsense for Mr. Tkachev to say that the Russian peasants,
although 'proprietors' are 'nearer to socialism' than the propertyless
workers of Western Europe. It is quite the contrary. If anything can
save Russian communal property... it is precisely a proletarian revo-
lution in Western Europe.31
Presumably for the same consideration the insistence on the

need for a revolution in Western Europe to save the Russian
c o m m u n e was maintained in the foreword to G.V. Plekhanov's
translation of the Communist Manifesto published in 1882,

carrying the signatures of both Marx and Engels, but the origi-
nal manuscript written in the hand of the latter:32
If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolu-

tion in the West, so that the two complement each other, the present
Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting-point for
a communist development.33
In September 1883 Engels handed over to Lopatin a copy of

Marx's letter to Otechestvennye zapiski for publication in the
Russian press.34 This, however, proved difficult to achieve, as
journals were at that time being closed down by the authori-
ties. In March 1884 Engels sent a second copy for publication
to Vera Zasulich in Switzerland. She replied to Engels that she
had translated it and that it would soon appear in print, but
no publication resulted. 35 In 1885 Lopatin managed to have
lithographed copies of the letter made by the 'People's Will'
party. They bore the explanation: 'In view of the appearance
in our revolutionary literature "more Marxist than Marx", we
print this letter as an interesting document which has not yet
been made public.' 36 Most of the copies, however, were seized
by the police.
In 1881 Lopatin arranged to have Marx's letter published in
the Geneva journal edited by Lavrov, Vestnik Narodnoy Voli
(Bulletin of the People's Will), Lavrov stating in his introduc-
tory note that:
We have had this letter in our possession for some time, but knowing
that Friedrich Engels had given it to other people for printing in
Russian, we refrained from publishing it. It has not yet appeared in
the Russian emigre press. Last year it was published in Russia by our
comrades, but most of the copies were seized by the police. Now we
have received from our comrades a translation into Russian with the
request to publish it, as they did not succeed in distributing it, and
[it] has aroused considerable interest among the socialist youth.37
The translation was by Danielson, who continued to try to secure

its publication in one of the journals appearing legally in Russia.
With Chuprov's help he finally succeeded in having it printed
in Yuridichesky Vestnik (Juridical Bulletin) in August 1888.
Danielson was delighted with the letter's anti-universalist tone,
Engels 293
and he found its appearance timely since, as he recalled, 'in

the 1890s there emerged in our country a doctrine against
which Marx fought in such forceful expressions, and about
which [I] often had to write to Engels'. He added that 'some
of its representatives still consider this campaign of Marx's
against such a supra-historical doctrine a departure from his
own theory . . ,'38 It emerges from Danielson's correspondence
with Engels that the latter was in great measure a subscriber to
the universalist doctrine Marx and Danielson had campaigned
against.
Danielson's exchange of letters with Engels began immedi-
ately after Marx's death. It was in large measure concerned
with the publication of Volumes II and III of Capital. Danielson
arranged to have the proofs sent to him as they became avail-
able. He then translated them into Russian, so that the Rus-
sian versions of Volumes II and III appeared in the same years
as the German originals, that is, in 1885 and 1894 respectively.39
Danielson also kept Engels informed about economic devel-
opments in Russia, reporting to him the kind of information
which had interested Marx, and which he himself had used in
his article published in 1880. There was a lively exchange of
views in 1891 and 1892 between the two men on the subject
of Russian economic development, prompted by the great
famine in Russia in 1891, and Danielson's conviction that it
had been brought about by the way capitalism had been fos-
tered in the country.
Like Vorontsov, Danielson believed that Russia's late entry
into the capitalist arena had created special problems. He too
believed that the low productivity of labour had deprived Russia
of any chance to dispose of her industrial products on the
foreign market. The development of capitalism in Russia, there-
fore, was dependent on its internal market. By destroying the
handicraft industries and forcing the population to buy arti-
cles it had formerly produced for itself, capitalism created an
internal market, but at the same time, by failing to employ
the peasants it had uprooted, it had deprived the market of
the purchasing power necessary to buy the goods produced. The
famine of 1891 had been the result: peasants had roamed
throughout the country looking for work or a means of sustain-
ing themselves. Millions had died in the attempt. According to
Danielson:
Before the present disaster we had 'liberated' 20-25% of our peasants.

They wandered everywhere in search of work. You see them in Siberia,
in Central Asia, in the Caucasus, in Brazil. What are they to do? Go
to a factory? But we know that the number of workers employed in
modern industry is constantly decreasing.40
Danielson recognized the problem as one of capital circula-
tion, and found support for his ideas in the recently published
Volume II of Capital, where Marx noted the contradiction in
capitalism that 'the workers as buyers of commodities are
important for the market. But as sellers of their own commod-
ity - labour power - capitalist society tends to keep them down
to the minimum price.' 41
The person Danielson mentioned in his letters as holding
the universalist, supra-historical point of view was Sieber. He
told Engels:
There are economists who consider the course of development of our
economic condition very desirable and progressive, because it leads to
capitalism, which is a necessary step towards universal well-being. The
late N.I. Sieber, for example, was wont to say that 'the Russian peasant
must be boiled in the factory cauldron' if we are to reach our economic
paradise.42
But because, Danielson argued, only a small proportion of the
peasants found employment in capitalist undertakings, what
took place was not the steady formation and expansion of the
capitalist system, but the ruin of the country and the starvation
of its population.
Engels's response to Danielson was essentially the same as
Sieber's had been to Vorontsov: that the processes taking place
in Russia were in no way different from those undergone in
every other country where capitalism had developed, and were
part of the inevitable march of capitalism. Danielson was espe-
cially incensed by Engels's remark that: 'Russia will be a very
different country from what she was even on 1st January 1891.
And we will have to console ourselves with the idea that all this
in the end must serve the cause of human progress . . ,'43
Danielson must also have felt a certain exasperation when
Engels tried to convince him that:
They are ruined as peasants; their purchasing power is reduced to a
minimum, and until they, as proletarians, have settled down into new
conditions of existence, they will furnish a very poor market for the
newly-arisen factories.44
Engels 295
Engels did n o t seem able to appreciate that Danielson's point

was that in Russia most peasants h a d n o prospect of settling
down to a new existence as proletarians.
A significant kind of argument which Engels deployed against
Danielson was that of authority, citing the opinion of Marx. In
this case it was the foreword to the Russian edition of the
Communist Manifesto - which itself h a d b e e n at least partly
inspired by a controversy of the same kind. ' T h e r e is n o doubt',
Engels wrote:
that the commune and, to a certain degree, the arteV, contained in
themselves the embryo which in certain circumstances could have
developed and saved Russia from the necessity of undergoing the
torments of the capitalist regime. I fully subscribe to our author's [i.e.
Marx's J.W.] letter occasioned by Zhukovsky. But both in his opinion
and in mine the first necessity for this condition was a push from outside
- the change in the economic system of Western Europe, the destruc-
tion of the capitalist system in those countries where it first began.
Our author in the famous foreword to the famous old Manifesto writ-
ten in January 1882 to the question: could not the Russian commune
serve as the point of departure for a higher social development an-
swered thus: if the change in the economic system in Russia coincides
with a change in the economic system in the West 'so that the two
complement each other, then modern Russian agriculture could serve
as the point of departure for a new social development'.45
T h e debate between Engels a n d Danielson was to b e c o m e
public when Danielson set out his views in the book Studies in
Our Post-Reform National Economy, published in 1893, a n d Engels
r e s p o n d e d in a Postscript to his On Social Relations in Russia,
which a p p e a r e d early in the following year.
7 Plekhanov
Rather than Danielson's, the writings of G.V. Plekhanov were
decisive in determining how Marx's ideas were perceived in
Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Unlike Danielson,
Plekhanov was a product of the Russian revolutionary move-
ment of the 1870s, and his approach to theoretical questions
was intimately linked to his views on the kind of action he
thought that revolutionaries ought to undertake. For that rea-
son, the evaluation of Plekhanov's conception of Marxism is
inseparable from the history of the factional disputes which
took place in the revolutionary movement from the end of the
1870s to the mid-1890s.
THREE REVOLUTIONARY CURRENTS OF THE 1870S
In the 'going to the people' movement, in which Plekhanov

participated there were two main currents. One, followers of
Lavrov, were the so-called 'propagandists', who believed that
the peasantry had to be educated in the principles of socialism
before a revolution was possible. The Bakuninists or 'rebels'
(buntari), the other current, thought that only 'agitation' among
the peasants was required, that they had no need of educa-
tion. Russian peasants required no instruction in socialism
because they already possessed socialist instincts instilled into
them by their lives in the commune. For the Bakuninists the
revolutionaries only supplied the match which would ignite
the peasants' revolutionary energy, causing them to rise in the
kind of social revolution which had its precedent in the great
rebellions of Razin and Pugachev. According to Plekhanov,
the 'rebels' or Bakuninists, to which he belonged, were the
majority among the young intellectuals, the Lavrovists seeming
less active and radical and attracting fewer adherents. 1
Despite their differences on tactics, both groups believed in
the necessity of a social revolution, and held that political
change by itself was futile. Both therefore strongly opposed
any kind of political action, any concession in this direction
being regarded as a betrayal of principle. The only group which
296
Plekhanov 297
did believe in political action were the followers of Tkachev.

As the seizure of power Tkachev envisaged did not require
mass participation, but the activity of a small revolutionary
elite, he saw no need for 'going to the people'. His ideas, how-
ever, found litde support among the young intelligentsia of
the day.
Tkachev was one of the first Russian writers to introduce
some of Marx's ideas to the Russian reading public. In 1865 in
reviewing Yu.G. Zhukovsky's book Political and Social Theories of
the XVI Century he cited a passage by the author to the effect
that: 'what we call law is the economic principle given defini-
tion, made into a universally obligatory rule'. On this Tkachev
commented that the idea was not new, and as early as 1859
had been well expressed by the well-known German exile Karl
Marx in his book A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Tkachev, quoting the corresponding passage concerning the
economic base and the political and juridical superstructure,
remarked that the idea had become common among almost
all right-thinking people. 2
Tkachev, however, was to make an exception in the case of
Russia. In Russia, unlike in the West, the State did not express
the economic interests, but hung in the air. For that reason a
coup d'etat by a revolutionary elite had an increased chance of
success. This was the idea Engels had rejected, arguing that
the State in Russia did not differ in kind from States in West-
ern Europe.
In the 1870s Marx's ideas were more commonly found in
conjunction with the doctrine of political indifferentism. The
memoirs of E. Serebryakov, written in 1894, provide the infor-
mation that there were at that time people referring to them-
selves as 'Marxists' who had emerged from Lavrov's supporters.
These 'rejected propaganda among the peasants, pinning their
hopes on forming a revolutionary (?) organisation among fac-
tory workers, but at the same time denying the necessity of any
political struggle.' 3 These were in all probability the kind of
'disciples' that Vera Zasulich referred to in her letter to Marx
of 1882. Serebryakov mentioned these Marxists in connection
with their objection in 1876 to a student demonstration be-
cause it had put forward political demands.
The rejection by the Marxists of political action arose
from their understanding of Marx's conception of base and
superstructure. For since, as they reasoned, the political and

juridical spheres were conditioned by the economic one, it
followed that the transformation of the economic and social
system could only be brought about by changes in the eco-
nomic base. And while the changes in the economic base could
change the political structure, the reverse was not the case;
political action was powerless to affect the economic founda-
tions of the whole edifice.
This argument was not confined to the Marxist faction of
the Lavrovist camp; it was widely held throughout the Russian
revolutionary movement, including the Bakuninist 'rebels'.
Support for the idea had been provided by Bakunin himself,
who declared that Marx's conception of base and superstruc-
ture was the most fruitful of his ideas.4 Marx, however, did not
subscribe to apoliticism, and he and Engels were exasperated
by Bakunin's idea that 'to commit a political act. . . would be
a betrayal of principle.' 5 Disagreement on this matter was one
of the elements contributing to the dissolution of the Interna-
tional. Marx finally succeeded in having Bakunin expelled, but
the latter nevertheless continued to command a great deal of
sympathy and support in Russia, so that his ideas inspired the
largest contingent of the young people who went 'to the peo-
ple' in the mid-1870s.6
The 'going to the people' episode met with little success.
Agitation among the peasants led to no rebellion, and the
peasantry in general proved to be impervious to socialist propa-
ganda. Mass arrests of the young revolutionaries took place,
followed by long terms of imprisonment and banishment to
Siberia. The lesson drawn by the revolutionaries was that their
efforts needed better organization, and that a society should
be established for the purpose. The society which came into
being as a result was known as 'Land and Liberty' (Zemlya i
Volya). A journal of the same name began to appear in Octo-
ber 1878, one of whose editors was Plekhanov. The first number
of Zemlya i Volya set out the principles on which the organiza-
tion was intended to operate.
The orientation of 'Land and Liberty' was Bakuninist, and
Zemlya i Volya began by indicating points of difference between
this standpoint and those of the Lavrovists on the one hand
and the followers of Tkachev on the other. While the former
paid no attention to political agitation, the latter devoted all
Plekhanov 299
its attention to a conspiratorial seizure of power.7 Plekhanov's

colleague on the editorial board, S.M. Kravchinsky (Stepniak),
then explained how 'Land and Liberty' saw its function, and
what he thought the relationship between the revolutionaries
and the masses ought to be:
Revolution is the business of the popular masses. History prepares them.
Revolutionaries have no right to control anything. They can only be
instruments of history, the means of expressing the people's aspirations.
Their role consists only in organising the people in the name of its
aspirations and demands, and to advance it in the struggle to bring
them about; to facilitate and accelerate that revolutionary process,
which, in accordance with the irresistible laws of history, is taking place
at the present time. Outside that role they are nothing; within it they
are one of the most powerful factors in history.8
In this passage Kravchinsky elaborated on the fundamental

tenet of what was the original meaning of the term narodism:
that revolution was the business of the people themselves and
that the function of revolutionaries was to give expression to
actual popular demands. In other words, the revolutionaries
must not try to impose upon the common people aims which
the intelligentsia believed to be in their objective or long-term
interests. The popular ideals to be striven for must be concrete
and immediate. As Kravchinsky expressed it, they must be ideals
'as they have been created by history in a given time and in a
given place'. 9 The name 'Land and Liberty' had been chosen
for the organization, as these were the two most constant and
widespread demands of the Russian people.
The basic concept of Narodism was to be encountered in
various formulations apart from the one employed by Krav-
chinsky, the most common of these being: 'The emancipation
of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes
themselves.' This was the original meaning of Narodism, and
in view of the Slavophile connotations later attributed to it, it
is important to note that this formulation was actually the
opening sentence of the General Rules of the International,
drawn up by Marx.10 'Land and Liberty' supported the princi-
ples of the International because of the adherence to it of the
Bakuninists.11
In the third and fourth issues of Zemlya i Volya in 1879 Plek-
hanov published an article entitled 'The Law of the Economic
Development of Society and the Tasks of Socialism in Russia',

which reflected his theoretical position at that time. As the
title implied, it was concerned with establishing a relationship
between the intentions of socialists and what social and eco-
nomic development made objectively possible.
Plekhanov divided socialists into three categories, correspond-
ing to Auguste Comte's threefold division of world history into
a theological, a metaphysical and a positivist stage. There was
a progression in terms of how far the socialists took objective
factors into account. Thus, the theological socialists were those
who, like Tkachev, thought it a matter of seizing power and
then 'showering the subjects with a series of beneficial de-
crees'. The characteristics of the socialists of the metaphysical
stage Plekhanov took from Sieber's article 'On Cooperation'
in Slovo for January 1877. These were the socialists of the 1830s
and 1840s, who composed 'an enormous number of plans in
the interest of the majority of the population for the coopera-
tive constitution of the future society'. On these plans Plek-
hanov, using the yardstick of Narodism, commented: 'In so far
as these views were conditioned by changing the old formula
of the revolutionaries "all for the people" by adding that it
should also be done by the people, they were a step forward . . .'
They had not, however, paid sufficient attention to the laws of
social development. This could not be said of the last category
of socialists, those belonging to the positivist stage. These, ac-
cording to Plekhanov, were Rodbertus, Engels, Marx and
Duhring. The author of Capital had performed an especially
useful service, in Plekhanov's view, for:
Marx shows us how life itself indicates the necessary reforms in the eco-
nomic cooperation of a country, how the forms of production itself
predispose the minds of the masses to accept socialist teachings, which
until this necessary preparation exists, would be incapable not only of
making a revolution but even of forming a more or less significant
party. He shows us in what forms, and within what limits socialist
propaganda can be considered to be a waste of energy.12
What Plekhanov had in mind here was the scope Marx had
assigned to revolutionaries in the Preface to Capital where he
said that 'Even when a society has begun to track down the
Natural laws of its m o v e m e n t . . . it can neither leap over the
Natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree.
Plekhanov 301
But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.' The scope for
revolutionary propaganda was in this shortening and lessening
of the birth-pangs.
On this basis Plekhanov then attempted to judge what the
chances for revolutionary propaganda in Russia might be. In
this enterprise the direction of his argument was conditioned
by the fact that he had before him not Marx's Capital, but
Sieber's article in Slovo, and Sieber had mistranslated the first
part of the quotation from Marx as 'when a society has got
on the track of the Natural laws of its development, it can
neither leap over nor remove by legal enactments the Natural
phases of its development'. 13 That is, Sieber had transformed
the sentence to mean not that a society had discovered the laws
of its development, but had come within the jurisdiction of these
laws.
This was in fact how Sieber had interpreted the idea, and he
had gone on to explain that the Natural phases of development
Marx had referred to were:
none other than the specific forms of social cooperation. They succeed
each other by force of a necessary and ineluctable law of internal social
development, and so cannot be replaced by any other forms of cooper-
ation whatsoever. One cannot invent entirely a form of social structure,
or return to a previous one, just as it is impossible to jump from hand-
icraft, past manufacture, to the factory; or from the factory to manu-
facture. The form is given by life itself.14
Plekhanov, in accepting this scheme of things, found an argu-
ment which allowed the possibility of a socialist revolution in
Russia without the country's having to pass through all the
necessary phases.
The argument was that Russia had not yet fallen upon the
fatal path of necessary development. Western European soci-
ety had only done so when the agrarian commune there had
fallen victim to feudalism. In Russia this had not happened.
The commune was still extant, and for that reason socialism
based on the commune was still possible. Thus, Plekhanov
argued:
so long as the agrarian commune is maintained by the majority of our
peasantry, we cannot consider that our country has entered the path
of that law by which capitalist production becomes an obligatory station
on its line of progress.15
The continued existence of the peasant commune was clearly

important at this stage for Plekhanov's conception of a social-
ist revolution in Russia. In January 1880 he contributed to
Russkoe Bogatstvo (Russian Wealth) a detailed and thoughtful
review of Kovalevsky's book Communal Landownership. He be-
gan by outlining Kovalevsky's conception of how the commune
had evolved from the consanguine group to the agrarian com-
mune, and how the latter disintegrated through the increasing
encroachment of private property and the conflict of interests.
In the light of this scheme of evolution, Plekhanov reasoned,
the future of the commune looked bleak.16
But, he argued, the scheme Kovalevsky had oudined had
been arrived at by empirical means. He had shown what had
taken place, but he had not demonstrated that this took place
necessarily by the action of any universally applicable laws of
society.
He drew attention to the fact that Kovalevsky had provided
no reasons for the emergence of private property in primitive
society. It could only be shown to have occurred, but it could
not be connected with any general rule. It remained no more
than an empirical fact. And, Plekhanov argued, 'however wide-
spread such facts might be, it is very risky to elevate them to
the status of world phenomena.' 17
'PEOPLE'S WILL' AND 'BLACK REPARTITION'
Conflict within 'Land and Liberty' arose as the question of

political terror began to make inroads on the society's apoliti-
cal stance. The most celebrated instance occurred after 'Land
and Liberty' had staged a demonstration in Kazan Square in
St Petersburg on 6 December 1876 and many participants had
been arrested. One student, who had been taken prisoner, was
flogged mercilessly for a trivial offence. As a reprisal Vera
Zasulich shot and wounded General Trepov, the Governor of
St Petersburg. For this act she was put on trial, but was acquit-
ted in April 1878, to the great delight of her many sympathiz-
ers. An attempt by the authorities to rearrest her failed, and
Zasulich escaped to Geneva, from where she wrote her letter
to Marx in 1881.
Zasulich's action provided a stimulus to revolutionaries to
Plekhanov 303
use assassination as a political weapon against the State. The

mood was reinforced by the armed resistance to arrest mounted
by I.M. Kovalevsky and his group in Odessa, and especially by
the arrival in St Petersburg of A.K. Soloviev with the plan of
assassinating Alexander II. This plan was put into action on
2 April 1879, but it failed to achieve its purpose.
These developments were most unwelcome to many mem-
bers of 'Land and Liberty', who regarded assassination as a
political act, and as such contrary to the principles upheld by
the organization. Terror was considered by them as an excep-
tional measure, one of self-defence, but not as a weapon against
the State. The point had been made by Kravchinsky in his
editorial in the first issue of Zemlya i Volya. He had explained
that:
We must remember that we shall not achieve the emancipation of the
working masses in this way. Terror has nothing in common with the
struggle against the foundations of the existing order. Only a class can
rise against a class; only the people itself can destroy a system. Therefore
the main weight of our forces must work among the people. Terrorists
are nothing more than a security detachment, designated to defend
those workers against the treacherous blows of their enemies. To direct
all our forces into the struggle against State power would mean to
abandon our chief, constant goal to pursue an incidental and provi-
sional one.18
Kravchinsky repeated the same arguments after he had as-

sassinated the Chief of Gendarmes, General N.V. Mezentsev,
in August 1878. In a pamphlet published to explain his action,
Kravchinsky emphasized that: 'We are socialists. Our aim is to
destroy the existing economic structure, to eliminate economic
inequality, which constitutes, in our view, the root of all human-
ity's sufferings. Therefore political forms in themselves are a
matter of complete indifference to us.' He reinforced this latter
point with reference to a popularized version of the idea of
base and superstructure: 'It is not political slavery which gives
rise to economic slavery, but the other way round.' 19
But theoretical questions aside, events were carrying the
revolutionaries increasingly towards a terrorist campaign against
the government. In November 1878 Lopatin reported to Engels
that: 'Socialist propaganda among the peasants has apparently
all but ceased. The most energetic of the revolutionaries have
intuitively gone over to a purely political struggle, though they

still have not the moral courage to admit this openly.' 20
Plekhanov was the most irreconcilable opponent of the new
trend, and defended the 'Land and Liberty' apolitical ortho-
doxy against the innovators. The conflict between the two points
of view caused considerable friction within the organization.
The element of factional animosity is an important ingredient
in Plekhanov's approach to theoretical questions and goes to
explain the polemical spirit in which most of his articles are
written.
The question of tactics was debated at the 'Land and Liberty'
congress in Voronezh in July 1879. A formal compromise was
reached: it was agreed that the existing programme should be
left unchanged, but that the political struggle against the gov-
ernment be stepped up. The setdement, however, was short-
lived, and a month after the congress the organization split
into two groups. That with the more political orientation took
the name People's Will (Narodnaya Volya), and that represent-
ing the non-political Narodnik orthodoxy called itself 'Black
Repartition' (Cherny Peredel). Plekhanov joined the latter or-
ganization, becoming editor of its journal Cherny Peredel.
The first issue of Cherny Peredel (January 1880) carried a
leading article by Plekhanov setting out the principles of the
new organization and reflecting his own views at the time. It
set out reasons for political abstentionism and the need for
social radicalism in terms of base and superstructure:
Because we regard the economic relations of society to be the base of
all the rest, the root cause not only of all phenomena of political life,
but also of the mental and moral constitution of its members, radical-
ism must, in our view, be first and foremost economic radicalism . . . an
economic agrarian revolution will inevitably bring in its wake a trans-
formation of all other social relations.21
All other measures, Plekhanov argued, however radical they

might appear, were in fact retrograde, because they not only
presupposed the continued existence of the State, but action
through its agency.
With regard to the State, Plekhanov's views were wholly an-
archist. He saw Russian history as the struggle between two
opposing principles, the popular-communal and the State-
individualist. Whereas the Russian people upheld the principle
Plekhanov 305
of democracy and collectivism, as long as it had existed the

State had been in conflict with it. Until now the State had
been victorious in its struggle with the people and had con-
fined them in the iron ring of its organization. Elaborating on
this idea, Plekhanov went on to assert that the Russian State
was the artificial creator of capitalism in Russia, an idea he was
later to ridicule in his adversaries.
The conception of the State put forward by 'People's Will'
in its journal Narodnaya Volya was more consistent with the
idea of a political revolution. That presented in the leading
article of Narodnaya Volya, No. 1 (1 October 1879) by L.A. Tik-
homirov was, like Plekhanov's, of an organization standing
above society:
Our State is quite unlike those in Europe. Our State is not a commission
of representatives of the ruling class, as it is in Europe, but it is an in-
dependent organisation existing for its own sake, a hierarchical, dis-
ciplined organisation which would keep the people in economic and
political slavery even if we had no exploiting classes in our country.22
In the second issue of Narodnaya Volya Tikhomirov expanded

on the part played by the Russian State by oudining its func-
tions in the economy - how it destroyed handicraft industry
and encouraged capitalist industry by its protectionist policy,
and how it had expanded the railway network by exploiting
the peasants.23 These economic functions of the State enabled
Tikhomirov to establish the important theoretical point that
by attacking the State the revolutionaries would at the same
time be attacking the economic system. The political revolution
would be simultaneously an economic and social revolution.
Thus Tikhomirov could prove that in opting for the political
struggle 'People's Will' had not in the least abandoned the
ideals of 'Land and Liberty'. According to Tikhomirov:
It is understood that in calling the party to a struggle against the State,
to a political revolution, we in no way renounce the social and economic
revolution. We say only that with the State structure we have the pol-
itical and social revolutions merge completely into each other, and that
the one is inconceivable without the other.24
This argument was of course supported by all the economic writ-

ings of the time, such as Danielson's, which stressed the part
played by the State in the circulation of capital in the country.
Tikhomirov's ideas were taken up by N.I. Kibalchich in an

article entitled 'The Political Revolution and the Economic
Question' in Narodnaya Volya, No. 5, dated 5 February 1881.
Kibalchich, too, contrasted State power in Europe, which rep-
resented class interests, with that in Russia, which could create
or destroy classes. In this way he, like Tikhomirov, saw the
coming revolution as being at once a political and economic
one. It was, he thought, only the People's Will organization
which had appreciated this synthesis of political and economic
revolutions fully, and had adapted its tactics accordingly.
In a manner reminiscent of Plekhanov's article in Zemlya i
Volya Kibalchich made a threefold classification of Russian
socialist opinion, but in this case according to the position of
the given ideological current on the economic and political
struggles. At the one extreme were the followers of Tkachev
'who attached excessive importance to political forms, seeing in
them the power to make any kind of economic transformation
simply by issuing orders from above and having them carried
out by the subjects or citizens from below.' In this kind of revo-
lution from above the people were not required to play any
active part, and their participation might even be discouraged.25
To the second category belonged those socialists who stood
at the opposite extreme and attributed only minimal impor-
tance to the political factor. These, like 'the fraction . . . whose
literary organ is Cherny Peredel', denied that political institu-
tions had any influence on economic relations. These were
people who thought it useless and even harmful for socialists
to waste any effort at all on the political struggle.
The third and final category consisted of 'People's Will',
which had avoided the excesses of the other two positions.
According to Kibalchich:
Finally there is the synthesis of both these one-sided opinions, the view
which, recognising the close connection between and the reciprocal
action of the political and economic factors, considers that there can
neither be an economic revolution without certain political transforma-
tions taking place, nor, on the other hand, can there be free political
institutions established without a certain historical preparation in the
economic sphere. 26
For Kibalchich, therefore, 'People's Will' represented a synthesis

of the two polar opposites: Tkachev and 'Black Repartition'.
Plekhanov 307
On Plekhanov's arguments in Cherny Peredel Kibalchich added

the following comment:
People who do not subscribe to the political part of our programme
often refer to Marx, who in his Capital showed that the economic rela-
tions and institutions of a given country lie at the base of all other social
forms - political, juridical etc.; hence they conclude that any change
in economic relations must take place only as a result of a struggle in
that same economic sphere, and that therefore no political institution,
no political revolution is capable of either hindering or promoting an
economic revolution.27
But, Kibalchich pointed out, these conclusions were not drawn

by Marx himself. The disciples of Marx had gone further than
their teacher, and from his essentially true statement they had
drawn absurd practical conclusions. As proof that the teacher
did not think in the same way as his disciples, Kibalchich cited
a passage from Marx's Civil War in France where the historical
significance of the Paris Commune was defined in the follow-
ing terms: 'The political form was at last discovered under
which to effect the liberation of labour . . . The Commune was
therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economic foun-
dations upon which the existence of the classes rests, and
therefore of class rule.' 28
The first number of Cherny Peredel to which Kibalchich was
responding was one reprinted abroad in October 1880 after
the copies of the first printing had been seized by the tsarist
police in the autumn of 1879. To avoid arrest Plekhanov had
left Russia on 3 January 1880 and fled to Switzerland, settling
in Geneva, where he defended the position of 'Black Repar-
tition' among the emigre revolutionary community.
This became increasingly difficult in view of the successes
of 'People's Will', especially the assassination of Alexander II
on 1 March 1881 by a group including Kibalchich, Ignacy
Hryniewicki, S.L. Perovskaya and A.I. Zhelyabov. Political
abstentionism proved difficult to justify, and in the debates in
Geneva most people took the part of 'People's Will'. Even
more galling for Plekhanov was the fact that the members of
'Black Repartition' in emigration - Lev Deich, Vera Zasulich,
Ya.V. Stefanovich and P.B. Akselrod - all felt increasing affinity
with 'People's Will', and after 1 March 1881 joined forces with
it.
On the other hand, 'Black Repartition' had failed to make

any impact in Russia. This was the verdict of friend and foe
alike. Vera Figner of 'People's Will' called the members of
'Black Repartition' in the villages 'shepherds with no sheep'.
Akselrod in the autumn of 1880 pointed out that 'Black
Repartition' had no right to be called a party because it had
'no organisation or general plan of action'. He added that
'the "People's Will" programme is simpler and the aims much
more concrete than ours. Besides, they have unity and con-
spiratorial experience. We have neither the one nor the other.' 29
Altogether 'Black Repartition' had turned out to be something
of a fiasco.
In Geneva Plekhanov read as much as he could of Marx and

Engels's writings - including, as Kibalchich had suggested,
Marx's Civil War in France.™ In 1882 he translated the Communist
Manifesto for the Russian Social-Revolutionary Library, a series
of works on socialist theory by various authors under the gen-
eral editorship of Lavrov, Lev Hartmann and N.A. Morozov.31
At the start of 1882, on beginning his translation of the Com-
munist Manifesto, Plekhanov suggested to Lavrov that Marx and
Engels should be requested to supply the new Russian edition
with a foreword. Lavrov duly wrote to Marx with this request,
explaining that the Manifesto was being translated by 'a certain
young man (Plekhanov), one of your most ardent followers'.32
On 23 January Marx sent Lavrov the manuscript of the fore-
word signed by Marx and Engels and written in Engels's hand.
Because, however, Plekhanov's command of German was not
very great and his translation of the Manifesto was making slow
progress, Lavrov gave Vera Zasulich, who knew German well,
the foreword to translate.33
This was soon complete, and as Zasulich had established
close relations with 'People's Will', the translation of the fore-
word appeared in the February 1882 issue of Narodnaya Volya.
Its concluding paragraph containing the prognostication that
'the present Russian communal ownership of land may serve
as the starting-point for a communist development' was itali-
cized, and in the commentary which accompanied the transla-
tion Zasulich wrote:
We have pleasure in including the 'foreword' in view of the consider-
able scholarly and practical interest in the questions it raises. It is
Plekhanov 309
especially pleasant for us to note the concluding words: we see in them

confirmation of one of the basic propositions of the theory of'People's
Will' - confirmation based on the researches of such authoritative
scholars as Marx and Engels. The long-awaited continuation of Marx's
celebrated work (Capital) will of course develop with the requisite
fullness, among other things, the propositions which the 'foreword'
could only touch upon.34
The foreword was Marx's first public pronouncement on
the possibility of socialism in Russia being founded on the
peasant commune. Zasulich, in viewing it as confirmation of
the ideas of 'People's Will', obviously interpreted the docu-
ment in the light of the letter she had received from Marx a
year earlier. She was well aware too of the bearing of Book II
of Capital on the question. She could have discovered this
from Lavrov, who had Lopatin as his informant. Zasulich also
mentioned Book II of Capital in this connection in her letter
to Engels of 5 October 1884, acknowledging receipt of Marx's
letter to Otechestvennye zapiski.^
Plekhanov's translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared
in print in June 1882. The introduction which he added indi-
cated a significant shift of his views in a direction suggested by
Kibalchich. The Manifesto was useful, Plekhanov stated, in cau-
tioning Russian socialists against two equally dangerous ex-
tremes: one was the rejection of political activity, and the other
was the neglect of the people's economic interests.36 As appen-
dices to his translation Plekhanov attached extracts from The
Civil War in France and the General Rules of the International,
beginning with the declaration: 'The liberation of the working
classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.'37
Each of these documents thus corresponded to one of the two
principles he had referred to: the political struggle, and the so-
cial revolution to be accomplished both for and by the people.
Plekhanov's introduction also contained an indication that
he was abandoning the idea that Russia's route to the socialist
revolution would be different from that in the West:
It is true that up to the present time the conviction has been quite wide-
spread among us that the tasks of Russian socialists differ essentially
from those of our Western-European comrades. Notwithstanding the
fact that the final goal must be the same for socialists of all countries,
the rational attitude of our socialists to the peculiarities of the Russian
economic structure is possible only with a correct understanding of
the Western-European social development. The works of Marx and

Engels provide an indispensable source for studying social relations in
the West.38
These words were visibly out of step with the foreword writ-
ten by Marx and Engels and with the construction put upon
it by Vera Zasulich a few weeks earlier.39 Plekhanov's inclina-
tion was obviously to follow Sieber's interpretation of Marx's
ideas, and to argue that the capitalist stage was an obligatory
one for every country. This meant ignoring Marx's own utter-
ances to the contrary - those contained in the letter to Zasulich,
of which he had been sent a copy,40 and the foreword to his
own translation of the Communist Manifesto.
It would, however, have been quite impossible for Plekhanov
to disregard entirely what Marx and Engels had said. And in
fact in his pamphlet Socialism and the Political Struggle written in
1883 Plekhanov referred to the foreword of the Russian edi-
tion of the Communist Manifesto, saying that it disproved 'the
absurd conclusion attributed to Marx's teaching that Russia
must go through exactly the same phases of historical and
economic development as the West'.4 But although Plekhanov
stated what Marx's view was, he made no attempt to explain
why he held it or how that particular opinion fitted into the
general pattern of Marx's system of thought.
SOCIALISM AND THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE
By 1883 a wave of arrests had seriously weakened 'People's

Will'. Lopatin went to Russia in a vain attempt to revive it. He
was arrested in 1884 and was sentenced to twenty years impris-
onment. In Geneva members of Plekhanov's group, encour-
aged by Lavrov, tried to bring about a reconciliation between
'Black Repartition' and 'People's Will'. The journal of the new
joint organization was to be Vestnik Narodnoy Voli (Bulletin of the
People's Will). Its editors were to be Lavrov, Plekhanov and
Tikhomirov. The joint organization never materialized be-
cause the terms of merger were unacceptable to Plekhanov. On
12 September 1883 he formed a new group, 'The Liberation
of Labour' (Osvobozhdenie Truda). It planned to issue a series
of publications under the general title of the 'Library of
Plekhanov 311
Contemporary Socialism', and the first item to be published

was Plekhanov's pamphlet Socialism and the Political Struggle.
In Socialism and the Political Struggle Plekhanov no longer
interpreted Marx within a Bakuninist framework, and to that
extent could think of himself as a 'Marxist'. He lost no time,
however, in assuring his readers that he had not aban-
doned his Narodnik ideals; that he still subscribed as much as
before to the principle that 'the liberation of the working
classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves'.42
Plekhanov did not regard Narodism and Marxism as being
incompatible. Quite the contrary: his argument in Socialism
and the Political Struggle hinged on the essential compatibility of
the two things.
Plekhanov admitted in his pamphlet that on the issue of the
political struggle he had been wrong; that political absten-
tionism was an entirely erroneous political tactic. He acknowl-
edged that 'in the disputes which took place in the "Land and
Liberty" organisation about the time of the split the members
of "People's Will" were perfecdy right.. ,'43 This admission recog-
nized the ignominious failure of 'Black Repartition' as a revo-
lutionary organization, and must have been a painful one for
Plekhanov to make. In Socialism and the Political Struggle, however,
it was used as a starting-point for a new ideological offensive
against 'People's Will' and a justification for the 'Liberation
of Labour' group.
Plekhanov's argument mirrored the structure of Kibalchich's
article 'The Political Revolution and the Economic Question'
and also of his own essay in Zemlya i Volya, 'The Law of the
Economic Development of Society and the Tasks of Socialism
in Russia'. He made a threefold division of Russian socialist
currents, this time using 'Black Repartition', 'People's Will'
and 'Liberation of Labour'. His case was that in emphasizing
objective social and economic factors 'Black Repartition' had
been one-sided in its approach. By its neglect of the limita-
tions objective factors placed on political action, however, 'Peo-
ple's Will' had been equally one-sided. It had made the mistake
of making the break with Narodism complete. According to
Plekhanov, 'People's Will' was the child of a time of transition.
Its programme was the last produced 'in the conditions which
made our one-sidedness inevitable and therefore justified'.
'Liberation of Labour' represented the synthesis which overcame

the one-sidedness of the other two groups. Thus Plekhanov
could claim:
. . . our revolutionary movement, far from losing anything, will gain a
great deal if the Russian Narodniks and the Russian 'People's Will' at
last become Russian Marxists and a new, higher, standpoint reconciles
all the groups existing among us, which are all right each in its own way,
because despite their one-sidedness each of them expresses a definite
need of Russian social life.44
In other words, Plekhanov claimed that his 'Liberation of
Labour' group occupied the ground that Kibalchich had re-
served for 'People's Will'. In so doing he placed 'People's
Will' in the position Kibalchich had allotted to Tkachev's or-
ganization. In Plekhanov's following polemical work, Our Dif-
ferences, he was to equate explicidy 'People's Will' with Tkachev
and refuse to admit any difference between them.
In presenting 'People's Will' as a synthesis of opposing ap-
proaches to political and economic factors, Kibalchich had
also indicated that in this way it responded to the way in which
State power and the economy were combined in Russia. For Plek-
hanov too the synthesis of 'Liberation of Labour' corresponded
to the way he thought politics and economics combined in
an objective synthesis. It was this synthesis which enabled him
to justify political action theoretically, and at the same time to
provide a convenient interpretation of Marx's ideas.
Plekhanov's point of departure here was the argument he
had used to justify political abstentionism based on the idea of
base and superstructure. 45 He now recognized this argument
to be misconceived because it assumed a chain of causality in
a single direction. But, as he had learnt from Engels's Anti-
Duhring, cause and effect might be interdependent. Thus,
Plekhanov concluded, not only would the economic base de-
termine the political superstructure, but the political superstruc-
ture could influence the economic base. He could therefore
observe:
History is the greatest of dialecticians . . . in the course of its progress . . .
an effect becomes a cause and a cause an effect. Arising from the
economic relations of its time, the political might of the bourgeoisie
in its turn served, and still serves, as an indispensable factor for the
further development of these relations.46
Plekhanov 313
In this way the justification of the political struggle provided

Plekhanov with a meaning which he could attach to the term
'dialectic', and a framework for the interpretation of the ideas
of Marx and Hegel.
By the time he translated the Communist Manifesto Plekhanov
had accepted all the assumptions of the Russian disciples of
Marx which Vera Zasulich had described in her letter to the
author of Capital. He had become convinced that the agrarian
commune in Russia was doomed, that the country was des-
tined to undergo a capitalist phase, and that henceforth the
main revolutionary force would be the urban workers. These
were all positions which flowed from the interpretation of Marx
propounded by Sieber.
They were positions which added to the consistency of Plek-
hanov's arguments. He made it clear that although he accepted
the political struggle, it did not mean that he accepted the
aims and objectives of 'People's Will', that is the seizure of
State power. This was the policy Plekhanov considered to be
Jacobin and Tkachevist. It was also thereby a manifestation of
the 'one-sidedness' of 'People's Will', and while it supported
the claim of 'Liberation of Labour' to be a synthesis, Plekhanov
out of consistency had to oppose it.
The policy, however, was supported by the persuasive argu-
ments of Tikhomirov, Kibalchich and others that the Russian
State, unlike those in the West, did not express economic
interests, but was the creator of economic structures. The role
of the State in the Russian economy was testified to by most
economic writers of the day. The contrast between the Russian
and European State had recently been elaborated on by
Plekhanov himself.
The logical way of undermining that case was to argue, as
Engels had done against Tkachev, that the Russian situation
did not really differ from that of Western Europe. In Socialism
and the Political Struggle Plekhanov launched his first offensive
against 'Russian uniqueness'. He explained it as an illusion
created by comparing Western capitalist production with Rus-
sian original accumulation.
The idea of Russian uniqueness received a new elaboration, and

whereas previously it had led to a complete rejection of politics, it now
turned out that the exceptionalism of Russian social development
consisted precisely in economic questions being and having to be solved

in our country by means of State interference. The extremely wide-
spread ignorance here in Russia of the economic history of the West
provided the reason why nobody was amazed at 'theories' of this kind.
The period of capitalist accumulation in Russia was contrasted with
the period of capitalist production in the West, and the inevitable
dissimilarity between these two phases of economic development was
cited as a most convincing proof of first, our idiosyncrasy and, second,
the appropriateness of the 'People's Will' programme determined by
that idiosyncrasy.47
This meant that for Plekhanov the offensive against the tactics
of 'People's Will' and disproving Russian 'uniqueness' went
hand in hand.
Plekhanov's own political position took into account both
Russia's future capitalist development and the avoidance of
Jacobinism or Blanquist tactics. He envisaged that the revolu-
tionary class would be the workers and he admitted that there-
fore the revolution was some considerable time in the future.
This was especially the case since Plekhanov envisaged that
political power would be acquired by the workers themselves
and not by a revolutionary elite acting on their behalf, as he
accused 'People's Will' of proposing. The result of seizing power
by conspiratorial means could only lead, Plekhanov argued, to
the rule of an elite of intelligentsia over the mass of workers.
One would then have a revival in socialist dress of ancient
forms of authoritarian and despotic regimes, the only differ-
ence being that natural production was managed not by Peru-
vian 'sons of the sun' and their officials, but by a socialist caste.
This to Plekhanov's mind would be the result of abandoning
the maxim: 'the liberation of the working class is the business
of the working class itself adhered to by the 'Liberation of
Labour' group. This was the element of 'Black Repartition'
that had been retained in the new synthesis.
Lev Tikhomirov replied to Plekhanov's pamphlet in the
second issue of Vestnik Narodnoy Voli in 1884 with an article
entitled 'What Do We Expect from the Revolution?' The fea-
ture of Plekhanov's argument which had struck Tikhomirov
most forcefully was the contention that socialism in Russia
would only come after a capitalist phase. 48 This was not a so-
cialist programme, he thought, which took as its point of de-
parture the country as it actually existed, but as Plekhanov
Plekhanov 315
thought it ought to be. Plekhanov was in the situation of hav-

ing to create the class in whose name he wished to act. To do
this, moreover, he had to write off the peasants, the working
people who actually existed but, not being proletarians, did not
qualify for Plekhanov's attention. If capitalism were really the
indispensable preparation for socialism, then to be consistent
Plekhanov ought to give up all thought of socialist activity and
do all he could to promote capitalist development. He could,
for example, help the liberals to obtain a constitution. But in
that case what difference would there be between a socialist
and a bourgeois?
For Tikhomirov the idea that it was necessary to go through
the 'school of capitalism'49 was but one step removed from
collaboration with capitalism. And until capitalism had run its
course one presumably limited oneself to propaganda among
the workers, still a mere 500,000 people out of a total popu-
lation of 100 million - and three-quarters of these were not
actually proletarians. To make matters worse, Tikhomirov
pointed out, the number of workers was not increasing but
remaining static. Industry was developing only with great dif-
ficulty, and with the help of the State.
In Tikhomirov's view, just because capitalism had prepared
the ground for socialism in the countries of Western Europe
that did not mean that the same process would take place in
Russia. It did not mean that the organization of production by
competing private companies was the only or the best means
of socializing the workers. In Russia the State played a bigger
part in the organization of industry than private capital did.
This had to do with the availability of markets. Whereas when
industry developed in the West private companies had exten-
sive internal and external markets with little serious competi-
tion to face, Russian industry, developing later, had little in
the way of an internal market and on external markets had to
face the formidable competition of European and American
producers. 50
Although, according to Tikhomirov, the Russian government
had done everything in its power to foster the development of
the bourgeoisie, this class remained weak both politically and
economically. If the tsarist government was overthrown it would
be incapable of imposing its rule on the country. The revolu-
tion would therefore be one which would bring a popular
government to power. As for the accusation that 'People's Will'

intended to seize power and rule by decree, Tikhomirov con-
tended that Plekhanov's mode of argument was to refute things
which his opponent had never said. There was no question
of 'People's Will' imposing an authoritarian regime like the
Peruvian 'sons of the sun' on the population. The government
would be subject to popular control, and there would be no
political compulsion. Socialist measures would be introduced
by economic incentives, similar to those which the tsarist gov-
ernment had used to foster capitalism. Socialism, Tikhomirov
maintained, was inevitable in Russia in the near future, not by
the development of capitalism and the formation of a prole-
tariat, but by the transfer of land and State power to the peas-
ants and working people in general.
OUR DIFFERENCES
Tikhomirov's article did not extend its scope beyond the points
Plekhanov had raised in Socialism and the Political Struggle. It
dealt with these systematically and concisely. Plekhanov's re-
sponse to 'What Do We Expect from the Revolution?', how-
ever, was the rather diffuse pamphlet Our Differences (1884),
which set out both to counter Tikhomirov's arguments and to
place them in what Plekhanov claimed to be their context in
Russian intellectual history.
In Our Differences Plekhanov repeated the assertion voiced in
Socialism and the Political Struggle that the 'Liberation of Labour'
group was a synthesis of 'Black Repartition' and 'People's Will'.
He professed to find the latter organization indistinguishable
in its tactics from Tkachev's, and to find many similarities
between Tikhomirov's 'What Do We Expect from the Revolu-
tion?' and Tkachev's Open Letter to Mr. Friedrich Engels. He ac-
cused Tikhomirov of proposing to replace the initiative of a
class with that of a committee, and predicted that this could
only lead to the creation of a political monster similar to the
ancient Chinese or Peruvian empires, to the 'revival of tsarist
despotism with a communist lining'. 51
Plekhanov devoted a great deal of attention to discrediting
the social and economic presuppositions of the 'People's Will'
programme, that in Russia the State played a much greater
Plekhanov 317
part in promoting economic developments than was the case

in the West. He did not attempt to dispute this central propo-
sition, but sought to undermine it by directing his arguments
at related but different positions and ascribing these to his
opponents in the manner Tikhomirov had indicated. Thus,
the contrast between Russia and Western Europe as regards
the part played by the State in the economy became in
Plekhanov's presentation the doctrine of Russia's 'national
uniqueness'. He then proceeded to refute this doctrine as
though it was the one that Tikhomirov and 'People's Will'
actually held. He gave examples to show that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries the State had been interventionist
in several countries in Western Europe. Consequently it could
not be said that in this respect Russia was unique. This was
certainly true, but it was not relevant to the point that Tikho-
mirov was making.
For Tikhomirov the reason why State intervention was nec-
essary in Russia was the difficulties facing the circulation of
capital in Russia. Tikhomirov, as Plekhanov noted, had used
the information in V.P. Vorontsov's book The Fate of Capitalism
in Russia, which drew attention in particular to the problem of
markets. Vorontsov was the writer who took up the most ex-
treme position on the development of Russian capitalism, but
even he only argued that State intervention was necessary to
overcome the obstacles to capitalism arising from its late ap-
pearance in Russia. He did not say that capitalism did not or
could not exist in Russia. Plekhanov, however, argued as if the
position held by his opponents was that there was no capitalist
development in Russia, and that such development could not
take place because of the country's 'uniqueness'. Ironically,
the main work Plekhanov cited in support of his arguments
was Danielson's article 'A Sketch of Our Post-Reform Economy'.
Danielson, whom Plekhanov judged to have 'a more thorough
knowledge of our economy . . . than all the Russian revolution-
aries and conservative exceptionalists put together', 52 was in
basic agreement with Vorontsov, but it was only when his book
appeared in 1893 that Plekhanov assigned him to the category
of 'exceptionalist'.
Although the question of the viability of the peasant com-
mune had not been raised by Tikhomirov, and although Narod-
naya Volya had repeatedly mentioned how the government's
economic policies were undermining the commune, Plekhanov

produced facts and figures to show that the Russian agrarian
commune was actually in decline. The implication was that
'People's Will' maintained that the commune had everywhere
remained immune to capitalist influence.
Plekhanov's method was effective, because the false posi-
tions ascribed to his opponents taken together had a certain
cogency: a belief in a special historical destiny for Russia; the
impossibility of a capitalist development; and the inviolability
of the peasant commune. Taken as a whole the theoretical
position of 'People's Will' seemed in this light to be a kind of
neo-Slavophilism.
The great and far-reaching significance of Our Differences, how-
ever, was in terminology. Whereas in Socialism and the Political
Struggle Plekhanov had referred to himself as a Narodnik, and
had reproached 'People's Will' for a 'complete and all-round
denial of Narodism', 53 he now referred to the adherents of
'People's Will' as Narodniks, and the neo-Slavophile doctrines
they allegedly professed as 'Narodism'. The term now became
detached from the principle that 'the liberation of the work-
ing class is the business of the working class itself. This prin-
ciple, Plekhanov claimed, his own organization still upheld,
but the conspiratorial 'People's Will' denied.
The advantage of attaching the label 'Narodnik' to his
adversaries, who thought of themselves as 'socialists', 'social-
revolutionaries' or even 'Marxists', was that they could be rep-
resented as a single current or sect within Russian socialism,
and not its mainstream. Plekhanov reinforced this idea by trac-
ing the origins of 'Narodism' from Herzen and Chernyshevsky.
These, he claimed, had formed the 'theoretical amalgam from
which our Narodism . . . arose'. 54
The corollary of the Narodnik label was of course that
Plekhanov and his organization represented the main current
of European socialism in Russia. The plain fact was, however,
that prior to Plekhanov the vast majority of Russian socialists,
in company with Marx and most serious economic writers,
held that the development of capitalism in Russia was only
possible with State support. The belief that Russia would be-
come a capitalist country thanks to historical necessity was one
held at that stage only by a numerically insignificant and un-
successful emigre group, though one would find it hard to
deduce this from a reading of Our Differences.
Plekhanov 319
PLEKHANOV AND HEGEL
The polemic with Tikhomirov ended well for Plekhanov.

Tikhomirov did not reply to Our Differences with any detailed
refutation. In 1886 he simply inserted a short paragraph in the
bibliographical section of Vestnik Narodnoy Voli noting the
publication of Plekhanov's book and explaining why he would
not enter into any polemic with the author. It was impossible,
he.said, to do this briefly, and if one were to analyse in detail
the method of argument employed 'it would be necessary to
say much more about Mr. Plekhanov than about the questions
he had raised.' To answer Plekhanov would require making
attacks on his character, and this was something the journal
had resolved not to do on its pages. In any case, Tikhomirov
believed, there was no real need for him to defend himself or
'People's Will' against Plekhanov's accusations, because their
falsity would be obvious to any dispassionate reader. 55
In the short term Tikhomirov was right: Our Differences was
not well received among Russian revolutionaries either in Russia
or in emigration. 56 But as Plekhanov's book remained unan-
swered, in the longer term it acquired credibility, especially
after 'People's Will' had been weakened and dispersed by mass
arrests, imprisonment and internal exile. A decade after it was
published a new generation of readers could take its presen-
tation of 'Narodism' at face value.
Plekhanov was also fortunate that in the aftermath of the
exchange between himself and Tikhomirov it was not his repu-
tation which suffered, but Tikhomirov's. By 1887 Tikhomirov
had become disillusioned with revolutionary politics and in
the following year withdrew publicly from the movement, ex-
plaining his decision in a pamphlet entided Why I Ceased to be
a Revolutionary. He was then open to charges of treachery and
perfidy, Plekhanov being prominent among his accusers. The
result of Tikhomirov's change of heart was that his side of the
polemic was discredited, and this was the implication that
Plekhanov strove to emphasize.57
In 1889 Plekhanov published a pamphlet entitled A New
Champion of Autocracy in connection with Tikhomirov's defec-
tion from the revolutionary movement. Its purpose, however,
was not only to attack Tikhomirov, but to propound Plekhanov's
philosophical views. He had been studying German philoso-
phy, especially Hegel, and had intended to write a work on the
subject for the 'Library of Scientific Socialism'. He had been

dissuaded from doing so, however, on the grounds that litera-
ture aimed at the workers had a higher priority. The pamphlet
on Tikhomirov, therefore, offered a convenient pretext for an
essay on philosophy.
Plekhanov's point of departure was Tikhomirov's denial of
the doctrine, common among revolutionaries, that the present
era was one of destruction and that it would be followed by an
epoch of construction. Tikhomirov thought this scheme of things
mistaken, because it did not correspond to the way change
actually came about. In his opinion:
in real life destruction and creation go hand in hand, being even in-
conceivable without one another. The destruction of one phenomenon
originates, properly speaking, because in it, in its place, something
different is being created. On the other hand the formation of the
new is nothing but the destruction of the old.58
This conception, Plekhanov argued, arose from the erroneous

idea that Nature did not make leaps.
Plekhanov, in reply, produced some examples of what he
considered to be 'leaps' in Nature - water changing into ice,
the development of an insect from a chrysalis, etc. - and then
appealed to the authority of Hegel, citing a passage from the
Science of Logic where the author discussed the maxim that
'Nature does not make leaps.' In this passage Hegel pointed
out that changes in Being took place not only by the transfor-
mation of one quality into another, but also by the transforma-
tion of quantitative differences into qualitative ones and vice
versa, changes where gradualism was interrupted. Plekhanov
continued his quotation - which no doubt he had been di-
rected to by Engels's Anti-Duhring - as follows:
At the basis of the doctrine of gradualism lies the impression that what
exists already exists in reality and is only imperceptible due to its still
small magnitude. In exactly the same way, in speaking of gradual de-
struction one imagines that the non-being of a given phenomenon or
that new phenomenon which is to replace it, already exists, although
it is still imperceptible . . . But in this way one eliminates all conception
of creation and destruction . . . To explain creation or destruction by
the gradualness of change means to reduce the whole matter to a
tedious tautology and to envisage creation and destruction as things
which have already taken place.59
Plekhanov 321
Plekhanov was subsequently to consider 'dialectical leaps' as

an integral part of dialectics, and this idea was to pass into
later conceptions of how Hegel's philosophy ought to be inter-
preted. It is ironical that the idea of 'leaps' should have be-
come associated with a philosopher who did so much to stress
the element of continuity in all things, so it is worthwhile to
examine how Plekhanov's interpretation was arrived at.
The passage was one that Plekhanov had translated from
German into Russian. In other words, he had been forced to
say what he thought it meant in his own language. His trans-
lation therefore constituted an interpretation of what Hegel
had said. But if one compares the translation with the original
it is possible to observe that there was a dimension to Hegel's
argument that Plekhanov had entirely missed. In the passage
in question Hegel rejected the idea that creation or destruc-
tion could be explained in quantitative terms at the level of
Determinate Being or Actuality. He insisted that they should
be accounted for by transitions from one level of Being to
another. Thus:
The belief that creation comes about gradually is based on the sup-
position that what is being created is already there, sensibly, or in gen-
eral Actually, and is imperceptible only on account of its smallness of
magnitude. In the case of gradualness of destruction the supposition
is that the non-Being or the Other, which is about to emerge instead,
is likewise already there, but is as yet imperceptible. And by 'there' in
this connection one does not mean that the Other is present as an
implicit (an sich) something else, but that it is there as Determinate
Being, albeit in an imperceptible form. Creation and destruction are
thereby eliminated, or the in itself, the Inner, in which something is
before it becomes Determinate Being, is changed into a smallness of
External Determinate Being, and differences in Essence or Concept
are transformed into Outer differences of mere magnitude. The at-
tempt to make creation and destruction comprehensible in terms of
the gradualness of change has the tediousness of a tautology; for it
makes creation and destruction actions already completed, and it
reduces change to a mere alteration of an Outer difference. In this
respect it really does become a tautology. 60
In other words Hegel was not saying that things were created
or destroyed by 'leaps' pure and simple, but that creation and
destruction ought to be accounted for in terms of the devel-
opment of the Concept. He was concerned to show that in
changes from quantity to quality and vice versa the 'cunning of

the Concept' operated at even the most fundamental levels of
existence.61
Plekhanov's translation reflected very poorly the argument
Hegel had put forward. No attempt had been made to include
terms such as Determinate Being, Actuality, Concept, Inner or
Outer on which the argument rested, though these were cen-
tral to Hegel's system as a whole. The inference that must be
drawn is that their use was not appreciated by Plekhanov, and
that his understanding of the Hegelian system was not very
profound. In a generation, however, which was no longer fa-
miliar with the assumptions of German idealist philosophy,
Plekhanov's opinions were to prove influential and his inter-
pretation of Hegelian dialectics to become widely accepted,
not only in Russia, but in Western Europe as well.
Plekhanov was to repeat his conception of dialectical 'leaps'
in 1891 in his article in Die Neue Zeit 'On the Sixtieth Anniver-
sary of Hegel's Death'. This was the work which established
Plekhanov's standing in Europe as an authority on Hegel. 62
There, too, he cited the passage from Hegel's Science of Logic,
but because it was a German publication, the quotation was
left in the original, and it was not obvious how little Plekhanov
had understood it.
The article on Hegel began by predicting that a revival of
academic interest in Hegelian philosophy was bound to take
place as it was from this philosophy that Marx's ideas had
developed. It was in fact as a precursor of Marx that Plekhanov
was interested in Hegel, and his article was one of the first to
treat Hegel in this light. It was consequently very likely to
influence those who later followed in his footsteps.
Plekhanov went about his study of Hegel as a precursor of
Marx in a quite direct way, looking in Hegel's writing for what
he thought to be the embryo of Marx's ideas. His starting
point was therefore not Marx's ideas, but his own understand-
ing of what those ideas were. Not surprisingly Plekhanov's article
on Hegel was a mirror of his own philosophical conceptions.
The work Plekhanov was most concerned with in his article
was Hegel's Philosophy of History; it was in this he thought that
most of Marx's thought had originated. Considering the im-
portance this work had had for the Young Hegelians, it is
significant to note that by Plekhanov's day all knowledge of
Plekhanov 323
how it had related to the Hegelian system had been lost.

Plekhanov, moreover, was apparendy unaware of the claim of
Speculative philosophy to unite idealism and materialism, or
that Mind was composed of Logos and Nature. He referred to
Hegel's conception of history, 'the exposition and embodiment
of the Universal Mind' as 'the purest idealism'.63
It was this idealism, Plekhanov believed, which created the
inconsistencies in Hegel's approach to history. As an example
he cited Hegel's attitude to animal worship. There was one
approach to animal worship in the case of the Indians and
another in the case of the Egyptians, though it was the same
animal worship. As proof of his contention Plekhanov quoted
Hegel as having said of the Indians: '. . . the Indian is unable
to conceive an object in its rational definition, since this re-
quires Reflection', whereas of the Egyptians he said: '. . . in the
animal world the Egyptians saw the Inner and the Incompre-
hensible . . .'64 Clearly, what had eluded Plekhanov was the pro-
gression from the immediacy of Nature and the Intuition to
the Understanding and Reflection, ideas which Hegel had as-
similated into his system and which lay at its very basis.
But more characteristic of Plekhanov's approach to Hegel's
philosophy of history was his attempt to read into it what he
thought to be Marx's doctrine of base and superstructure. He
quoted Hegel to the effect that:
The Slav nations were agrarian (Hegel's emphasis). But this condition
carries with it the relationship of master and slave. In agriculture the
impulse of Nature is overwhelming, human industry and subjective
activity are less to be found in this work. That is why the Slavs were
slower and had greater difficulty in arriving at the basic feeling of the
subjective Self, to the consciousness of what is Universal. . . and they
were unable to take part in the emancipation that was beginning. 65
Here Hegel was referring to the association of agriculture with

Nature and compulsion, in contrast to urban industry, which
was identified with Universality and freedom. To Plekhanov,
however: 'By these words Hegel tells us outright that the expla-
nation of the religious views and all the emancipation move-
ments that arise among a particular people must be sought in
that people's economic activity.'66
Hegel of course said no such thing. Plekhanov not only
severely misrepresented Hegel, but also misunderstood how
Hegel's ideas had been passed on to Marx. He was misled by

a superficial resemblance to assume that Hegel was speaking
in terms of base and superstructure, and that it had been this
aspect of Hegel's thought that Marx had adopted.
According to Plekhanov, it was the use Hegel had made of
economics that had freed him somewhat from the limitations
of idealism. In this respect he had been able to point the way
forward for the materialists who succeeded him. For, Plekhanov
explained, post-Hegelian materialism could not simply be a
return to the 'naive metaphysical materialism of the eight-
eenth century', which held that human judgement governed
history. In the sphere of historical explanation it had to turn
first and foremost to economics. To have done otherwise would
not have been progress but retrogression compared with
Hegel's philosophy of history.67
For Plekhanov, therefore, the recognition of the economic
factor as the main one in historical development was what
distinguished post-Hegelian - or as he termed it 'dialectical' -
materialism from 'metaphysical' materialism. Following Engels,
Plekhanov understood 'materialism' not in the way that
Feuerbach and Marx had used the term - the denial that
Abstraction had any existence independent of the concrete
phenomena it generalized - but as the primacy of Nature
over Mind. In his understanding of the term 'metaphysical'
Plekhanov again followed Engels who in Ludwig Feuerbach at-
tributed the term to Hegel, who he said had used it to denote
those thinkers who, 'failing to understand the development of
phenomena', had represented them to themselves as 'petri-
fied, disconnected, incapable of passing one to another'. This
was a point on which Engels was rather misleading. Hegel
would have referred to the point of view described as 'Reflec-
tive', as opposed to Speculative; he did not use the term 'meta-
physics' in his system as such, but reserved it to designate the
pre-Kantian philosophers. It was not therefore a term which
led to any deep understanding of Hegel's own ideas. Plekhanov
in regarding 'metaphysical' materialism as 'petrified' and 'dis-
connected' saw in the economic factor the distinguishing fea-
ture of 'dialectical materialism', the elements of change and
development. 68
Whereas for Hegel and Marx the term 'dialectical' had been
synonymous with 'logical' or 'rational', for both Engels and
Plekhanov 325
Plekhanov it had acquired the more specialized meaning of

the standpoint which considered phenomena in development,
motion or interconnection. Plekhanov had gone so far as to
specify that the development and change was not gradual or
continuous, but one characterized by 'leaps'. 69
The latter part of this article, however, showed that although
Plekhanov followed Engels's terminology, he interpreted it in
the light of his own intellectual evolution. For his main con-
cern, as in Socialism and the Political Struggle, was the relation-
ship between objective factors and the possibility of human
action. He was anxious to show that although historical devel-
opment was determined by the economic factor, there was still
room for political action. According to Plekhanov, dialectical
materialism was a doctrine which appreciated that economic
necessity and freedom of action formed a synthesis so that
necessity and freedom were recognized as being interdepend-
ent. In practice this meant that once people knew the laws by
which history operated they would be able to use them to
transform history from an unconscious process to a conscious
one. 70
The problem of consciously applying Reason to historical
development had of course been raised by Hegel, and had
been the starting-point for Marx's economic studies. Plekhanov,
however, summarily dismissed Hegel's dictum concerning the
owl of Minerva as an 'extreme position' and asserted that 'on
the basis of what is and what is becoming obsolete modern
materialism can judge what is coming into being.' 71
PLEKHANOV AND THE YOUNG HEGELIANS
Plekhanov's conception of what constituted 'dialectical materi-

alism' was not greatly sophisticated. It consisted of his discov-
ery that the economic base not only determined the political
superstructure, but that the political superstructure could in-
fluence the economic base. If one spoke instead of base and
superstructure in terms of necessity and freedom, the basic
idea was not altered. Although it might be embellished with
Hegelian terminology, it was very far from being Hegelian.
Engels, however, was quite impressed by Plekhanov's article,
and his words of praise were communicated by Rautsky to the
author. Plekhanov in turn wrote to Engels expressing admira-

tion for the latter's Ludwig Feuerbach, and in this way a corres-
pondence between Plekhanov and Engels was begun in 1893.72
In 1888 Engels had published his pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach
and the End of Classical German Philosophy and had added as
an appendix Marx's famous 'Theses on Feuerbach'. Plekhanov
translated Engels's pamphlet and the accompanying Theses
into Russian, and this translation was published in Geneva in
1892. Besides some explanatory notes, mainly on the Young
Hegelian movement, Plekhanov added to Engels's pamphlet
an appendix of his own - a translation of the chapter of The
Holy Family written by Marx entitled 'The Critical Battle against
French Materialism'. Before the appearance of Ludwig Feuerbach
this chapter had been Plekhanov's principal source for Marx's
early ideas, and it was the point of departure for the researches
he conducted on Marx and the Young Hegelians in the early
1890s. These researches were to serve as a weapon against the
'subjectivism' of his 'Narodnik' opponents in the last decade
of the nineteenth century.
Marx's chapter on French materialism had been published
in Kautsky's Die Neue Zeit in 1885. In his introduction to the
chapter Kautsky had explained that he thought it worth while
to reproduce it because, like the polemics against Proudhon
and Duhring, it served as an exposition of Marx and Engels's
ideas. It was also a chapter which formed an integral whole
and could be read outside the context of the entire book, a
work which was now long out of print. 73
Plekhanov had summarized the chapter the same year for
the journal Nedelya (The Week), but the summary had not
been published. References, however, to French materialism
as a precursor of 'dialectical materialism' began to appear in
Plekhanov's writings from his essay 'On the Sixtieth Anniver-
sary of Hegel's Death' (1891) onwards, and this tendency was
reinforced by the appearance of Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach,
which contained several references to French materialism of
the eighteenth century. Plekhanov therefore understood Marx's
excursion into French materialism not as a dispute with Bruno
Bauer on intellectual history, as it had been, but as Marx's
espousal of French materialism in a polemic against the prin-
ciple of 'self-consciousness' adopted by the Bauer brothers. As
Plekhanov 327
Plekhanov saw what he took to be close similarities between
the ideas of the Bauer brothers and those of Lavrov and
Mikhaylovsky, he set out to utilize Marx's polemic against his
own 'Narodnik' adversaries. He attempted this first in the notes
to his translation of Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach. There he wrote:
We shall note that the abstract radicalism of the Bauer brothers recalls
in many respects our Russian 'subjective method in sociology': those
same unceasing references to 'criticism' and to the 'critical spirit'
(called 'critical thought' in our country); the same inability to penetrate
by thought into the critical process which goes on within social relation-
ships themselves and which determines the 'self-consciousness' of the
people. It would be very interesting and very instructive to devote an
article to drawing a parallel between the arguments advanced by Edgar
Bauer . . . against Hegel, on the one hand, and the objections raised
by Nikolay Mikhaylovsky against Spencer, on the other.74
Clearly Plekhanov intended to draw such a parallel himself.

If he could show that Marx had long ago disposed of the kind
of ideas Mikhaylovsky now propounded, it would furnish proof
that Mikhaylovsky and other 'Narodniks' had no claim to be
followers of Marx. By the time Plekhanov was writing his notes
to Engels's pamphlet, moreover, he had been put somewhat
on the defensive in this respect, since Marx's letter to Otechest-
vennye zapiski had been published shortly before, in 1888, and
was now common property.
It is remarkable that only in the 1890s did Plekhanov begin
his offensive against the 'subjective method', which later was
held to be an essential component of Narodnik doctrine. His
opposition was belated because the 'subjective' method in
sociology had first appeared twenty years earlier, around 1870
with the early writings of Lavrov and Mikhaylovsky. The point
was, however, that it was only in 1892, the year after the great
famine in Russia, that Mikhaylovsky began to make use of
Marx's letter to campaign against the Russian 'Marxists', who
in his view showed a reprehensible indifference to the plight
of the common people because of their conviction that one
should not try to interfere with the Natural course of economic
development. Plekhanov replied with a campaign against the
'subjective method'.
'SUBJECTIVE SOCIOLOGY'
The expression 'subjective method in sociology' gave a rather

misleading impression of what the ideas of Lavrov and Mikhay-
lovsky were. It was probably applied because both authors were
concerned to show the shortcomings in the 'objective' method
in the science of society which had become prevalent in the
1860s.
The distinction between the laws of Nature and the laws of
Society, so fundamental to the German writers of the late eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries, was not observed by
later writers on society such as Auguste Comte and Herbert
Spencer, who likened sociological laws to those of Natural
science. This point of view was reinforced by the appearance
of Darwin's theory of natural selection, and the doctrines of
classical political economy in particular were given a fresh
justification by the striking parallel between the Darwinian
struggle for existence and the phenomenon of economic com-
petition. It was one, indeed, to which Darwin had drawn atten-
tion when he stated that he had derived inspiration for his
theory from Mai thus's doctrine of population. 75
Mikhaylovsky noted that the term 'Natural' as applied to the
liberal doctrine of laissez-faire had become equated with 'Natu-
ral' in Darwin's 'Natural selection',so that the distinction between
men and the rest of Nature had been lost. The conclusion
drawn by Social Darwinists was that human intervention in
the 'Natural course of events' was undesirable and ultimately
harmful. One writer cited by Mikhaylovsky opposed poor relief
and popular education on these grounds. 76
Mikhaylovsky, however, thought it absurd that the science of
society should advocate the abstention by human beings from
interference in the Natural processes of society. He argued
that:
The obvious meaning which one could attach to the expression 'the
Natural course of events' is the non-intervention of men. Given a cer-
tain combination of forces, if we do not intervene in the further devel-
opment of this combination, then this will be the Natural course of
events. But in that case we should have to admit that the Natural
course of events exists when and where there are no people, because
man by his every step, by the mere fact of living, changes, one way or
another, the given combination of forces.77
Plekhanov 329
In other words, the 'objective' method in social science or

political economy demanded that people should pretend they
did not exist, that they act as though they were not really
present in the world, in order that in this way the element of
'subjectivity' should be eliminated.
This was hardly 'natural' behaviour on the part of human
beings, and as Mikhaylovsky pointed out, men by their very
essence changed natural processes. They were teleological
creatures. They set themselves aims, they made judgements,
and these 'subjective' aspects of human nature were as much
the proper province of social science as the 'objective' processes.
Mikhaylovsky looked on 'objective' social science as more
than a mistaken method. He saw in it man's denial of his own
essence as the product of a historical epoch in which human
beings really did feel that their being was centred outside them-
selves. He referred to the malady as 'eccentrism', and contrasted
with it the anthropocentrism and egocentrism of primitive
man.
An aspect of 'eccentrism' was its fragmentation of the indi-
vidual personality through the division of labour. Here Mikhay-
lovsky developed his ideas in relation to Spencer's. For whereas
Spencer saw progress in society, as in a living organism, in
terms of the ever greater specialization of its members,
Mikhaylovsky argued that as society as a whole became more
differentiated or 'heterogeneous', the individuals who com-
posed it became less differentiated and more 'homogeneous'.
This was the consequence of the increasing division of labour.
In Mikhaylovsky's view, primitive society was almost com-
pletely homogeneous. All its members were occupied with the
same tasks, possessed the same knowledge, and shared the
same customs. But while society as a whole was homogeneous,
each of its members was heterogeneous:
He is a fisherman, a hunter and a herdsman; he knows how to make
boats and weapons, how to build himself a hut, and so on. In a word,
each member of primitive, homogeneous society combines in himself
all the powers and capacities which can develop, given the cultural
level and the local physical conditions of the time.78
But as society became more complex, as it divided into rul-

ers and ruled, and subsequently into the various trades and
professions, its heterogeneity increased and, correspondingly,
the homogeneity of its members. In this connection Mikhay-

lovsky quoted Schiller to the effect that 'by eternally occupying
himself with some fragment of the whole, man himself be-
comes a fragment'. 79 Mikhaylovsky suggested, however, that at
some future time the eccentricity and fragmentation of society
would be overcome. The process by which this would be ac-
complished furnished Mikhaylovsky with his definition of
'progress':
Progress is the gradual approach to the integral individual, to the fullest
possible and most diversified division of labour among man's organs,
and the least possible division of labour among men. Everything that
impedes that advance is immoral, unjust, pernicious and unreasonable.
Everything that diminishes the heterogeneity of society and thereby
increases the heterogeneity of its members is moral, just, reasonable
and beneficial.80
In these ideas Mikhaylovsky came reasonably close to the

philosophical foundations which Marx's system presupposed,
and in fact Mikhaylovsky in his writings of 1869-70 referred
approvingly to Marx's Capital as a work in which the laws of
Society and the laws of Nature were clearly distinguished. 81
Mikhaylovsky, however, had never believed that progress re-
quired that individuals had to be fragmented in order to be
made whole again, so in company with the Russian socialists of
the 1860s and 1870s he rejected the idea that a capitalist stage
in Russia was necessary. He did not idealize the peasant com-
mune, but he defended it against critics who claimed that it
stifled individual freedom. He thought it offended less in this
respect than the division of labour in industrialized countries.
He also thought that so long as the Russian peasants had the
collective ownership of their land they would not be reduced
to the lamentable state of workers in the West. This was the
consideration that led him to deplore the historical scheme in
Capital, which held the expropriation of the peasantry to be a
necessary stage in the development of Society.
Lavrov developed his ideas at the same time as Mikhaylovsky,

and in the same direction. He too was concerned to show that
writers like Comte and Spencer were mistaken in thinking that
the methods of natural science could be applied to the study
of human society. Lavrov's early interest had been Hegelian
Plekhanov 331
philosophy,82 so that he brought to the evaluation of Positiv-

ism and Darwinism the ideas of the German idealists, includ-
ing the distinction they had drawn between the laws of freedom
and the laws of Nature, between theoretical and practical
philosophy.83
Lavrov's most influential work, his Historical Letters, was first
serialized in the journal Nedelya in 1868-69. In it he began by
distinguishing three epochs in man's attitude to Nature. The
first, that of primitive man, was subjective and egocentric,
regarding himself as the centre of the universe. The second,
corresponding to Mikhaylovsky's 'eccentrism', was the era in
which human beings regarded themselves as one of the many
phenomena of Nature. The third era was, in the Hegelian
pattern, in its way a return to the first, a reversion to subjec-
tivity, but a subjectivity which took account of the objectivity of
Nature.
Like Mikhaylovsky, Lavrov considered that a true science of
society ought not to restrict itself to phenomena which could
be established 'objectively', but should take into account the
fact that human beings had ethical ideals, and classified the
events of history according to whether or not they promoted
or impeded the realization of those ideals. Human beings were
therefore conscious of progress in history, but, as Lavrov empha-
sized, progress was a subjective phenomenon; it was entirely alien
to Nature or things in themselves.
In common with Fichte, Lavrov held that it was man who
imposed order on Nature:
For man Universal laws rather than individual facts are important be-
cause he understands things only by generalising them. But science with
its Universal laws of phenomena is characteristic only of man, while
outside man there are only simultaneous and successive concatenations
of facts, so minute and detailed that man can scarcely even perceive
them in all their minuteness and detail.84
As in science, so in history: the selection of what was signifi-

cant or progressive was a subjective, human, choice, and had
no place in Nature.
Lavrov's definition of what constituted progress, seen from
this subjective, anthropocentric, viewpoint was: 'the physical,
intellectual and moral development of the individual; the in-
corporation of truth and justice in social institutions'. This
definition was rather different from Mikhaylovsky's, because

Lavrov considered the division of labour in society as a neces-
sary and progressive development. He held that if society were
as uniform as Mikhaylovsky desired, any new idea or initiative
would have to come from all members of society simultane-
ously for any kind of progress to be made. The realization of
Mikhaylovsky's vision would mean that each successive genera-
tion of humanity would be identical to the one that had gone
before. Lavrov believed that it was precisely from specialized
spheres of human knowledge that progress came, through the
agency of 'critically-thinking individuals'.85
Lavrov maintained that the 'critically-thinking individuals',
the privileged, educated minority of humanity, were the crea-
tors of progress, and also the people who enjoyed its fruits.
The vast majority of humanity had no share in the benefits of
progress, and indeed the cost of producing the privileged and
enlightened minority had been the exploitation and depriva-
tion of the majority.
This method of achieving progress seemed to Lavrov to be a
necessary law of Nature. But once a certain degree of civiliza-
tion had been achieved, the system became unnecessary and
it became the moral obligation of critically-thinking individu-
als to bring it to an end and extend the fruits of progress to
the rest of humanity. In this way they would repay the debt of
the minority to the majority.
In Lavrov's view it was the duty of critically-thinking indi-
viduals to seek each other out, to unite and organize them-
selves into a force capable of bringing truth and justice into
social institutions. The time had come, he believed, for 'cool,
conscious workmen, calculated strokes, rigorous thinking and
unswerving patient action'. 86 It was with these thoughts ringing
in their ears that many young people in the 1870s went out to
repay their debt to the majority by 'going to the people'.
According to Lavrov, being mainly concerned with socio-
logical questions in relation to economic questions in relation
to ethics and history, he had not himself devoted any of his
works to economic questions, considering himself in this area
'a follower of Marx from the time of first acquaintance with
his theory'. This would be in the early 1870s, as it was in 1870
that he first met Marx and Engels. In fact Lavrov's later works
show that he easily assimilated Marx's economic analysis into
Plekhanov 333
the framework of the 'subjective method' he had outlined in

Historical Letters. As Mikhaylovsky had discovered, Marx's Cap-
italwas at one with the cardinal point of the 'subjective method':
that the laws of Nature and the laws of society were not iden-
tical.
PLEKHANOV AND THE EARLY MARX
Plekhanov's attempt to discredit the 'subjective method' was
directed mainly against Mikhaylovsky, because it was he in the
1890s who entered into polemics with the 'followers of Marx'
in Russia. Plekhanov, moreover, had always maintained cordial
personal relations with Lavrov. But it was Lavrov's version of
the 'subjective method' which made the better target for
Plekhanov's attack because the references in Historical Letters
to 'critically-thinking individuals' provided the basis for com-
parison with the Bauer brothers. Lavrov had specifically criti-
cized Mikhaylovsky's theory for leaving this element out of
account. Plekhanov was therefore able to achieve his purpose
only by telescoping the respective theories of Lavrov and
Mikhaylovsky, the one into the other.
But even the resemblance between the Bauers' and Lavrov's
thought was only superficial, and Marx's criticism of the Bauers
was not applicable to Lavrov's ideas. For the Bauers had writ-
ten as though 'criticism' itself was capable of changing the
world, and Marx's objection had been intended to show that
mere ideas could not accomplish anything; in order to put
them into force 'men are needed who can exert practical force'.
This was something with which neither Lavrov nor Mikhaylovsky
would have disagreed. Much of their efforts was devoted pre-
cisely to the question of how force could best be applied to
change the existing state of affairs.
A dispassionate comparison of Lavrov and Mikhaylovsky with
the Bauers would not have yielded the kind of results Plekhanov
suggested, but the superficial similarity allowed him to score a
point in his polemic. He suspected that there might be more
valuable ammunition in the other chapters of The Holy Family,
but he had been unable to obtain the book when he had
compiled his notes to Engels's pamphlet. In 1891 he had written
to Rautsky to enquire if he might borrow his copy of The Holy
Family, but Kautsky had replied that the copy he had used
belonged to Engels, and that he had consulted it while he was
in London. 87 In 1893, however, a means presented itself by
which Plekhanov could gain access to this rare work by Marx
and Engels.
In June 1892 Alexander Voden, a young Russian, passed
through Geneva on his way to London. Plekhanov gave him
the task of copying out as much as possible of The Holy Family
in the British Museum. He also asked Voden to pay a visit to
Engels to see if he could obtain more of Marx's early works
that he might use against the 'subjectwists'. Plekhanov schooled
Voden, who knew German well and who had some grounding
in philosophy, in the history of the Young Hegelians, as he knew
it, and its bearing on the campaign against the 'Narodniks'.
Voden's account of his trip to London in 1893 provides a
unique insight into the gulf which was opening between the
way Plekhanov interpreted Marx's ideas and the way Engels
understood them.
Voden's memoirs reveal that Engels was not at all enthusi-
astic about helping Plekhanov attack 'Narodism' by using Marx's
early works. He disapproved strongly of the polemic, because
he thought it needless and gratuitously divisive. He therefore
disliked Plekhanov's Our Differences, considering the less acri-
monious Socialism and the Political Struggle the better work. He
advised Plekhanov through Voden to take up the study of the
agrarian question in Russia, not as a polemic, but in a serious
and scholarly manner. 88
As someone long familiar with Russian writers and members
of the Russian revolutionary movement, it is significant that
Engels did not think it possible to refer to everyone who did
not accept the inevitable development of capitalism in Russia
as a 'Narodnik'. Voden recalls that when Engels enquired what
the views of the 'Narodniks' might be:
I - on Plekhanov's advice began with Vorontsov. Engels expressed
doubt that one could, without polemical exaggeration, place in the
same category not only the active members of 'People's Will', but also
his correspondent Danielson.89
Engels stressed that any studies undertaken should not

employ the method of taking quotations from Marx to justify
any particular viewpoint. Questions had to be thought out
Plekhanov 335
independently, as Marx would have done. This proposition of

course put Voden in an awkward position, because the main
point of his mission was to collect material by Marx suitable
for quotation, in order to use Marx's authority against the
'subjectivists'. Obviously aware of this, Engels allowed Voden
to see the manuscript of 'The German Ideology', but with the
injunction not to take notes for quotation. 90 The prohibition
was largely superfluous, because Voden encountered the prob-
lem that was to beset many a student of Marx: the latter's
illegible handwriting.
Engels mentioned to Voden that he was expecting him to
ask the 'usual question' about the meaning of Marx's letter to
Otechestvennye zapiski He himself saw nothing unclear about
the letter. It expressed Marx's and his own belief in the desir-
ability of a political and agrarian revolution in Russia occur-
ring simultaneously with a revolution in the West. In this respect
Engels repeated what he and Marx had said in the preface to
the Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto in 1882. He
thought that it would be superfluous to attach any commen-
tary to the letter, because any unprejudiced reader would see
the meaning of Marx's letter for himself, and on the preju-
diced reader no commentary would have any effect. He be-
lieved, further, that any commentary would serve to evoke new
disputes, and the opposing sides would appeal to him to adju-
dicate, something he was determined not to do. 91
Engels obviously changed his mind on this point rather
quickly. For soon after Voden's visit, in January 1894, he pub-
lished a Postscript to his On Social Relations in Russia which did
contain a commentary on Marx's letter. The new element in
the situation was the publication of Danielson's book92 Studies
in Our Post-Reform National Economy in 1893, based on the let-
ters he had written to Engels. This elaborated Danielson's side
of the dispute, and Engels no doubt considered it appropriate
to make his own views known.
The Postscript, which was approximately equal in length to
the original work, attempted to dispose of any suggestion that
Russian development was different in kind from that of West-
ern Europe, and it dealt very harshly with those who had ques-
tioned the inevitability of capitalism in Russia. These, such as
Herzen and Tkachev, Engels said, regarded Russians as the
'chosen people'. Chernyshevsky, according to Engels, had only
placed such high hopes on the peasant commune because he

had not read Marx's works, especially Capital.93
For the first time Engels supplied a rationale for the insist-
ence in the 1882 foreword to the Communist Manifesto on a
'push from outside' in the form of a revolution in Western
Europe. The reason was that in the course of centuries the
Russian peasant commune had not shown any sign of evolving
into anything higher; a stimulus in this direction, therefore,
must necessarily come from outside.94
As for Marx's letter to Otechestvennye zapiski, Engels contended
that Marx's surmise that Russia might avoid the capitalist stage
and proceed directly to socialism based on the peasant com-
mune was enunciated at a particular juncture, when the pos-
sibilities for a revolution were especially favourable. That
moment had now long passed. In the meantime capitalism in
Russia had taken root and the country was destined to un-
dergo the same economic development as had the nations of
Western Europe. 95
The tenor of Engels's Postscript was not very far removed
from Marx's attitude in the 1850s to Herzen's idea of Russian
socialism as expressed in his remark in the first German edi-
tion of Capital Volume I, which indeed Engels quoted at length.
It was a strong affirmation of Marxism as a Universalist doc-
trine and the consignment of Universalism's Russian oppo-
nents to the category of Slavophiles. When Danielson persisted
in his views, Engels wrote to Plekhanov.
As for Danielson, I fear he is a lost cause ... It is impossible to discuss

anything with the generation of Russians to which he belongs, which
still believes in a spontaneous communist mission, which is supposed
to distinguish Russia, the real holy Russia, from other profane peoples.96
Engels's attitude towards Danielson was significant, because it

accepted Plekhanov's contention that all those who did not
accept the inevitable development of capitalism in Russia should
be placed in the same category as Herzen, Tkachev and the
Slavophiles.
For Plekhanov it was a heaven-sent opportunity. By July of
1894 Vera Zasulich had translated On Social Relations in Russia,
complete with its Postscript, and the result was published as a
Plekhanov 337
pamphlet entided Friedrich Engels on Russia. In his preface to

the pamphlet Plekhanov left his readers in no doubt about the
significance of Engels's essays:
Engels has explained the real sense of the famous 'Karl Marx's letter
to Mikhaylovsky'. When this letter became known to Russian revolu-
tionaries many of them imagined that the author of Capital regarded
the Russian peasant commune in almost the same way as Bakunin,
Tkachev and other Utopian socialists with a Slavophile lining. 98
Engels, in Plekhanov's view, had shown in the accompanying

articles that this view was utterly false.
MIKHAYLOVSKY'S ATTACK ON MARXISM
At the time of Voden's visit to Engels in 1893 Russian Marxists

had been experiencing acute embarrassment by the publica-
tion of Marx's letter. In June 1892 Mikhaylovsky summarized
it as follows:
. . . Marx did not present his formula of the capitalist process as a 'passe-
partout of a historico-philosophical theory': he stated only that having
embarked on this route, every country, including Russia, would have
to submit to the laws of economic development he had formulated,
and further, that the outcome in each individual case was determined
by the particular historical conditions of the country concerned, and
that he did not consider it at all obligatory for Russia to embark on
the capitalist path. Even the expropriation of the people, which was
the necessary condition for capitalist development did not necessarily
lead to that result; depending on the historical conditions it might
lead to something quite different. 99
Mikhaylovsky was able to point out that this was quite different
from what many Marxists in Russia maintained, and he was
not surprised to learn that Marx had not considered himself
to be a 'Marxist'.100
Mikhaylovsky recalled in this connection Sieber's reply to
Zhukovsky, which had been the most authoritative statement
in Russian of the universal validity of the pattern of economic
development set out in Capital. He went on to consider the
grounds on which Sieber had based his universalist conception.
It emerged that the difference of opinion between himself

and Sieber had not only been expressed on the pages of
Otechestvennye zapiski, but had been debated face to face. Ac-
cording to Mikhaylovsky he had been able to discover from
this encounter that Sieber's universalist conception of capital
was derived from Hegelian philosophy:
I became acquainted with Sieber at the beginning of 1878, when he
paid a visit to St Petersburg. In any case, it was soon after the appear-
ance of Zhukovsky's article on Marx and our own in reply. An out-
standing specialist in his field, Sieber struck me as a complete novice
in philosophy, in which he was attracted by Hegel via Marx and Engels.
I remember, so to say, the appetite with which he expounded the
famous illustration of the threefold Hegelian formula, whose allure I
had experienced myself in my youth: 'Take a grain of barley, sow it
- the seed gives out a shoot, which is the negation of the seed, because
it destroys it. But then the further development of this negation leads
to the negation of the shoot in its turn, a negation which is, moreover,
a return to the first stage: the stalk ends in an ear, a multiplicity, a
collection of seeds'. And the same process, seemingly, took place in
all spheres of existence, including that of human relations.101
The illustration of the Hegelian triad by means of the seed

of barley - as Mikhaylovsky indicated elsewhere102 - was taken
from Engels's book AntirDuhring. This had been published in
1878, and a copy had been passed by Kovalevsky to Sieber.103
In the following year Sieber had published an extensive ac-
count of the book in Slovo. When Sieber met Mikhaylovsky in
1878, therefore, he would have certainly been preoccupied
with Engels's work. Mikhaylovsky added that:
As a novice in Hegelianism he was relentless, and the history of the
grain of barley, negating itself in the stalk, in order that this negation
should be negated in the ear, was for him the archetype of Russian
and every other kind of history. A decent man, probably never having
knowingly harmed anyone in his life, he did not balk at the sufferings
and miseries which accompanied the second stage of the Hegelian
triad - they were inevitable and would be repaid a hundredfold at the
dawn of the new era. 'Until the peasant is boiled down in the factory
cauldron, we shall get nowhere', Sieber used to say.104
True as this account might be, it was somewhat unfair to

Sieber, because the source of his conviction that capitalism was
Universal was not Anti-Diihring, but his general understanding
Plekhanov 339
of Marx's work. In any case, his article of 1877 in which his

classic statement of capitalism's Universality was made, could
owe nothing to Engels's book, which was only published in the
following year. Mikhaylovsky, with his precise dating of when
his discussion with Sieber took place, would have been aware
of that, but he was less interested in the reasoning Sieber had
used before the appearance of Anti-Diihring than after, because
it was the arguments contained in Anti-Diihring that contem-
porary Russian Marxists had come to apply to the question of
Russia's future economic development.
It was on its approach to the future that Mikhaylovsky's ob-
jection to Russian Marxism was based. He agreed that when
Marx spoke of the past and the present of capitalist develop-
ment he was on sure ground. He had researched these aspects
thoroughly and the exposition in Capital was documented with
abundant factual material. In these areas the philosophical
framework played no real part whatsoever. It could be removed
like a pair of gloves or like a lid from a dish, and the work
would lose nothing by it.105 But this could not be said about
how capitalism would develop in the future. Here there was no
documentation, only reference to the 'immanent laws' of capi-
talism, leaving the argument to be carried by the philosophical
framework alone. Mikhaylovsky had in mind the brief refer-
ences in the first volume of Capital to the expropriation of
the expropriators, the 'negation of the negation'. 106
Mikhaylovsky's remarks about the future of capitalism could
of course never have arisen if Marx had succeeded in complet-
ing his work in the way first intended. He would have shown
that both theoretically and in practice the process of expanded
reproduction steadily and necessarily extended the sphere of
capital's circulation. The philosophical framework would have
been completely submerged. Even with the extensive modifi-
cation to this plan in the light of how circulation actually took
place in Russia the exposition would have been factual, and
philosophical constructions would have played no part in the
argument. But because neither of these possibilities had been
carried out, the feature of Marx's work noted by Mikhaylovsky
had arisen. If one took the view that Marx's scheme of capital-
ist development meant that capitalism would develop every-
where, the problem arose about how one could be sure this
would be the case. The lack of any other kind of proof placed
the burden on philosophical constructions. This in turn gave

Engels's Anti-Diihring particular importance.
In Germany, Mikhaylovsky pointed out, popularizations of
Marx's work were creating the impression that a scheme of
historically inevitable social development had actually been
scientifically proved, that Marx 'had discovered the true mean-
ing of history and explained to humanity its past, present and
future'. It was asserted, and believed, that Marx had proved
that the course of history did not depend upon men; its foun-
dation was the various forms of production and exchange.
All else - religion, philosophy, science, art, political and juridi-
cal forms, customs and manners - all this was the constantly
changing result of the class struggle, the superstructure above
the economic base. These were the principles of 'economic
materialism'.107
The laws of history as presented by the theory of 'economic
materialism' were irresistible, and clearly indicated the path
that humanity had to follow. The capitalist form of production
destroyed the feudal order, but this in turn revealed its own
internal contradictions and gave rise to a class struggle. After
the era of capitalist development had run its course the epoch
of peace and bliss on earth would prevail.108
But, Mikhaylovsky enquired, in what work did Marx expound
this 'materialist conception of history'? Not in Capital, where
only the past and present of capitalism was discussed. In fact
Marx had written no such work, as indeed previous writers
had noted. 109 But some of Marx's followers, principally Engels
and Kautsky, had popularized the concept of such a historical
theory. It was not, however, one which had a scientific founda-
tion, but was a product of Hegelian philosophy.
In Mikhaylovsky's view 'economic materialism' was a perni-
cious theory, because it dealt in terms of irresistible and inevit-
able laws of historical development. The Marxists who espoused
it were passive spectators of events, of the 'maiming of women
and children' that capitalism caused. They adopted attitudes, in
fact, like those he had spoken of in his article of 1877 defend-
ing Marx against Zhukovsky. Some took the doctrine to a bizarre
logical conclusion, and in 1891 had tried to stop help being
given to the famine victims, because such aid would 'obstruct
the process of capitalist accumulation'. 110 For Mikhaylovsky
'economic materialism' represented a variant of the cult of the
Plekhanov 341
'natural course of events' he had condemned in Spencer and

followers of the 'objectivist' school.111
As Mikhaylovsky believed that 'economic materialism' was
an excrescence of Hegelian philosophy, he devoted an article
in 1894 specially to pointing out the artificiality and absurdity
of the proposition that the tripartite system of development
was universal. He pointed out that even Hegel had not ad-
hered to a threefold division of world history, and he reminded
his readers that the literary critic Belinsky, who had espoused
Hegel's system, finally became disillusioned with its 'reconcili-
ation with reality' and wrote to his friend Botkin declaring that:
the fate of the individual is more important than the whole world and
the fate of the Chinese Emperor [i.e. Hegel's Universality] . . . I thank
you humbly, Egor Fedorich [Hegel], and I bow down to your philo-
sophical nightcap; but with all due respect to your philosophical
philistinism, I have the honour to inform you that even if I were to
reach the highest possible level of development, I should still ask you
for an account of all the victims of life and history, of chance, super-
stition, Inquisitions, Phillip II, and so forth . . .112
Mikhaylovsky cited Belinsky's letter in connection with Sieber
and Marxists in general who espoused the conception of the
'natural course of events'.
While making no specific reference to Plekhanov's attempt
to class every writer who denied the necessity of capitalist
development in Russia as a 'Narodnik', Mikhaylovsky made it
quite clear that he himself did not accept the designation. In
an article published in October 1893 he investigated the term
in connection with those writers who considered themselves to
be Narodniks. He knew of only two such people. One was Voron-
tsov, and the other was the recently deceased Yuzov-Kablits.
From a comparison of their writings, however, it emerged that
by the term 'Narodism' each understood something entirely
different.113
On the suggestion that 'Narodism', whatever it might be,
was derived from Slavophilism, Mikhaylovsky denied that this
was even true of Vorontsov:
Mr. Vorontsov began with an analysis of economic facts, which led him
to the conclusion . . . that the path of economic development taken . . .
by Western Europe is not obligatory for Russia. This was the position
of the Slavophiles, and later of a group of writers who had nothing in
common with the Slavophiles except for this point.114
It was on this point that Mikhaylovsky found himself in agree-

ment with Vorontsov, and on it he supported Vorontsov against
the Russian Marxists. But he was adamant that: 'rejecting
Marxism certainly does not mean declaring oneself a Narodnik'
and that it was 'not at all obligatory to choose between these
two doctrines'. 115
THE MONIST VIEW OF HISTORY
It was in reply to Mikhaylovsky that Plekhanov wrote his major

work of the period, The Development of the Monist View of History.
It was published in St Petersburg at the end of 1894 under the
pseudonym of 'Beltov'. Unlike most of his previous works this
was a legal publication, so both the name of the author and
the tide of the book had to meet the needs of the Russian
censorship. Originally Plekhanov had expected the work to be
published outside Russia, and had intended to entitle it 'Our
Differences Part II'.116
The contents of the book reflect the various issues raised by
Mikhaylovsky in his articles between June 1892 and October
1894. The first chapter which Plekhanov set about writing was
eventually to be the concluding one of the book. This dealt
with Marx's letter to Otechestvennye zapiski, the issue which
Mikhaylovsky had raised first. The earliest drafts of this chap-
ter were written over the winter of 1892-93, and they show
how Plekhanov planned to respond to Mikhaylovsky before
Engels's Postscript became available.117
At this stage Plekhanov found two arguments to deploy against
Mikhaylovsky. The first was that Marx's letter to Otechestvennye
zapiski was not really a letter at all, but only a preliminary draft.
Its standing was further diminished by not actually having been
sent to the journal for publication. The other argument was
that the document contained nothing new or surprising. For
Marxists had always known that Marx's historico-philosophical
theory was contained not only in his account of the origins of
capitalism in Western Europe, but in every chapter of Capital.
It was also set out clearly and succinctly in the Preface to the
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.118 By this interpre-
tation, Marx's objection in his letter to Otechestvennye zapiski
Plekhanov 343
was not that Mikhaylovsky had attributed to him a historico-

philosophical theory that he did not have, but that Mikhaylovsky
had found this theory only in a single chapter of Capital.
Plekhanov himself probably considered these arguments rather
specious, and in the published version of The Monist View they
were dropped in favour of the arguments put forward by Engels
in his Postscript to his reply to Tkachev.
Judging by the remarks on 'subjectivism' in the notes to
Ludwig Feuerbach written in June 1892 Plekhanov had also
decided to attack Mikhaylovsky on a more theoretical level.
The material collected by Voden and the attempt to equate
Mikhaylovsky with the Bauer brothers constituted another major
element of The Monist View. But the full severity of Mikhaylov-
sky's criticisms of 'economic materialism' and its progenitor,
the Hegelian system, did not appear until January 1894.
Plekhanov's reply to these criticisms formed the third element
in the book.
The Monist View of History was thereby a kind of running battle
with Mikhaylovsky, and indeed, as appendices to the second
edition show, it was a batde which continued after the book
was published. Despite this polemical character of the work, it
incorporated several ideas found in Plekhanov's earlier writ-
ings, and he obviously intended that it should give a systematic
exposition of what he considered the Marxist viewpoint to be.
The rather confused structure of the book, however, suggests
that the two different purposes of the book came into conflict.
At the heart of the systematic part of the work was the con-
tention that 'dialectical materialism' was the solution to the
problem other philosophies had tackled unsuccessfully, namely
how to account for the interconnection of environmental fac-
tors and intellectual influences on the development of society.
Metaphysical materialism in the eighteenth century and dia-
lectical idealism in the form of German philosophy had made
important contributions to solving the problem, but each had
been one-sided in its own particular way. These shortcomings
had been eliminated in 'dialectical materialism', which was the
synthesis of metaphysical materialism and dialectical idealism:
Holbach and Helvetius were metaphysical materialists. They fought against

metaphysical idealism. Their materialism gave way to dialectical idealism,
which in its turn was overcome by dialectical materialism.119
The structure of this argument was reminiscent of that of

Socialism and the Political Struggle, where it was shown that
Plekhanov's point of view was the synthesis of two one-sided
positions. This structure would have emerged more clearly in
The Monist View if Plekhanov had limited himself to the three
chapters: 'French Materialism of the Eighteenth Century',
'Idealist German Philosophy' and 'Modern Materialism'. But
in addition to these Plekhanov included two further chapters:
'French historians of the Restoration' and 'Utopian Socialists',
thus giving five headings in all, and so obscuring the underly-
ing tripartite structure.
The key to this sacrifice of symmetry is probably to be ex-
plained by the terms of the polemic with Mikhaylovsky. Plekha-
nov's reaction to Mikhaylovsky's criticism of the Hegelian triad
was to say that the triad had no independent significance,
that even Hegel's arguments did not depend on it, that it was
simply the 'totality of experience'. Since Plekhanov took this
view, it would not have been appropriate to reply to Mikhay-
lovsky in a book with a tripartite structure. But Mikhaylovsky
did not raise his objection to the triad until January 1894,
by which time the systematic element in Plekhanov's book
would already have been conceived. As a result, The Monist View
explicidy denies the importance of the tripartite form, but
implicitly upholds it.
The systematic part of The Monist View was also conceived as
polemical, and it was in this connection that the identification
of Mikhaylovsky with Bruno Bauer related to the tripartite
scheme. Marxism or 'dialectical materialism' had taken its
dialectical element from German philosophy and its material-
ism from the French materialists of the eighteenth century.
Bruno Bauer belonged to the idealist strand of Hegelian phi-
losophy, so that Marx's criticism of Bauer in The Holy Family
was the critique of idealism from the point of view of French
materialism in its new dialectical mould. Since idealism and
subjectivism were the same thing, Marx's criticism could be
applied to the subjective method of Lavrov and Mikhaylovsky.
The eclectic idealism of the Bauer brothers was the basis of the terrible,
and, one may say, repulsive self-conceit of the 'critically-thinking' Ger-
man 'intellectuals' of the 1840s; today, through its Russian supporters,
it is breeding the same defect in the intelligentsia of Russia. The
merciless enemy and accuser of this self-conceit was Marx . . .12°
Plekhanov 345
Plekhanov then reproduced some of the criticisms of the Bauers

copied out of The Holy Family by Voden, and asserted that the
lines he had quoted might just as well have been directed
against the Russian 'subjectivists'.
Probably as a result of Mikhaylovsky's remarks on the sub-
ject, the term 'Narodnik' appeared rather infrequently in The
Monist View, and usually in the phrase 'Narodniks and subject-
ivists'. Nevertheless, in the book, Plekhanov insinuated that
the idea that Russia might have a non-capitalist future was a
manifestation of 'subjectivism', a subjectivism which did not
wish to countenance reality as it existed. This served to iden-
tify Narodism with subjectivism, and once made, the connec-
tion between these two things was to prove remarkably constant.
In The Monist View Danielson figured no longer as an ally, but
as an opponent. He, however, was not referred to as a Narodnik,
but as a 'Utopian', a category he shared with Chernyshevsky.
It was of course important for Plekhanov to distance Cher-
nyshevsky from Marx's ideas. For as a precursor of 'Narodism'
it would have been most inconvenient to recognize in Cherny-
shevsky an economist whose work was comparable to Marx's.
In The Monist View, therefore, Plekhanov tried to show that
Marx and Chernyshevsky had little in common. 121 In a separate
work Plekhanov elaborated this view at considerable length,
making a detailed comparison between Marx's Capital and
Chernyshevsky's commentary on Mill. He concluded that Cherny-
shevsky's economic ideas were closer to Mill's than to those of
the author of Capital.122
It was in relation to the critique of 'utopian' socialists that
Plekhanov introduced a concept of human Nature which was
the logical extension of Engels's and his own interpretation of
'base' and 'superstructure'. In Plekhanov's view, earlier writers
on social questions had been accustomed to explain various
phenomena by reference to 'human Nature'. But, according
to Plekhanov, the qualities of human Nature explained noth-
ing at all, and this had been one of the important discoveries
made by German idealism:
The great idealists of Germany - Schelling and Hegel. . . already well
understood how unsatisfactory was the point of view of human Nature.
Hegel made caustic fun of it. They understood that the key to the ex-
planation of the historical advance of humanity must be sought outside
human Nature. This was the great service which they rendered.128
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Plekhanov asserted,

human Nature, which had formerly been thought of as a con-
stant, was recognized to be a variable.124
According to Plekhanov, this important discovery of the
German idealists had been incorporated into Marx's system:
The great scientific service rendered by Marx was that he . . . regarded
man's Nature itself as the eternally changing result of historical pro-
gress, the cause of which lay outside man.125
This was a very significant departure from the view Marx had
taken of human Nature. For him human Nature had been
something constant. Human Nature was Social Nature, and its
process of coming into its own was the driving force of history.
For Plekhanov human Nature was a variable and would be
moulded by historical influences from outside. Thus, the cen-
tre of human essence, in his view, was located somewhere
outside human beings. Human Nature, moreover, could no
longer be held to be the driving-force of history.
Before the appearance of Darwin's theory the objection would
have immediately been raised to Plekhanov's conception that
he had left himself without a force which could explain the
movement of history. But as Engels had made plain, in the
light of Darwin's discoveries, Nature itself had the capability of
movement and development. It was simply a matter of viewing
the evolution of society as an extension of that of the Natural
world for the problem of historical development to be resolved.
Since the comparison between Darwin and Marx was constantly
made, and indeed had been encouraged by Marx himself,126
Plekhanov's conversion of human Nature from a constant to
a variable could easily pass without comment.
It was, however, an enormous change from Marx's original
conceptions, and made many of them inaccessible. What
meaning could one attach to the term 'Externalization', when
human Nature as such was external? And without the concept
of Externalization the significance of how capital was External-
ized human Nature was lost. Similarly, it was ironic to speak of
capitalism as 'dehumanizing' when the 'Marxist' doctrine it-
self was one which thought of human beings as essentially
subordinated to external forces.
Although Plekhanov argued that the seat of human Nature
was outside human beings, he did not envisage the influence
Plekhanov 347
as being unidirectional. Indeed the precise way in which the in-

terconnection of man with his environment took place was what
he held to be the great discovery of 'dialectical materialism'.
As in Socialism and the Political Struggle, where Plekhanov had
put forward the view that a reciprocal action took place be-
tween the economy and the political structure of a country, in
The Monist View he asserted that a reciprocal action took place
between the economic base of society and its ideological super-
structure. He agreed that this was in apparent contradiction
with what Marx had said, but went on to argue that for Marx
the economy of society and its psychology represented two
sides of the same phenomenon, 'the production of life'. This
created both the psychology and the economy of society, so
that the latter was itself something derivative.127
Thus, for Plekhanov, the economic base and the ideological
superstructure interacted through the mediacy of a third ele-
ment, 'the production of life' or the 'productive forces'. This
latter term he held to be synonymous with 'the instruments of
labour'. So in Plekhanov's view:
Once the state of productive forces is determined, the questions of
the social environment are also determined, and so is the psychology
corresponding to it, and the interaction between the environment on
the one hand and the minds and manners on the other.128
Plekhanov had anticipated the observation that, since ad-
vances in the technology of the implements of labour depended
on intellectual effort, it was ultimately the human mind which
brought about historical progress. This idea he rejected with
the argument he had used in Socialism and the Political Struggle,
that this was a case in which cause could not be separated
from effect.129
In Plekhanov's view, the attempt to separate phenomena
into cause and effect was a sign of the metaphysical outlook.
Interconnections, on the other hand, would be well under-
stood by people capable of dialectical thinking.
Plekhanov's method thus involved reducing the ideological
base and the ideological superstructure to a kind of Absolute
economy-ideology. He envisaged the same kind of relationship
to be true of external Nature and human Nature. In this re-
spect human history was the mutual interaction between these
two things. Thus, Plekhanov could say of man:
'acting on the external world, he changes his own Nature'. In these few
words is contained the essence of Marx's whole theory of history.130
Here Plekhanov employed a genuine quotation from Marx's

Capital, and, finding it useful, cited it on other occasions. As
it stood it suggested that Marx believed human Nature to be
a variable. It was, however, the only such quotation that
Plekhanov was able to find, but the very next sentence shows
that this was not Marx's meaning at all, for he continued: 'He
develops the potentialities [Potenzen] slumbering within it and
subjects the play of its forces to his own sovereign power.'131
As far as Marx's letter to Otechestvennye zapiski was concerned,
Plekhanov interpreted this as Engels had done in his pam-
phlet On Social Relations in Russia. To Marx's proposition that
if Russia continued to pursue the path it had done since the
emancipation of the peasantry it would become a capitalist
country, and subject to the same laws of capitalism 'as other
profane peoples' had done, Plekhanov asserted that there were
no grounds for supposing that Russia would leave the course
of capitalist development it had embarked upon in 1861. Those
who thought that such grounds existed, Plekhanov classed as
'subjectivists'.132
On the subject of Sieber there was a significant exchange
between Plekhanov and Mikhaylovsky. In the first edition of
The Monist View Plekhanov denied any knowledge of Sieber's
preoccupation with dialectical development. Mikhaylovsky in
reply cited a passage from Sieber's 1879 article on Anti-Diihring
in Slovo:
Engels's book deserves particular attention both because of the con-

sistency and aptness of the philosophical and socio-economic concepts
it expounds, and because, in order to explain the practical application
of the method of dialectical contradictions, it gives several new illus-
trations and factual examples, which in no small degree facilitate a
close acquaintance with this so much praised and at the same time so
little understood method of investigating the truth. It would probably
be right to say that this is the first time in the lifetime of so-called
dialectics that it is presented to the reader in such a real light.183
This clearly showed that Sieber had indeed been impressed by

Engels's interpretation of dialectics. But to refute Mikhaylovsky's
contention Plekhanov in an appendix to the second edition
Plekhanov 349
of The Monist View continued the quotation from Sieber as

follows:
However, we for our part shall refrain from passing judgement as to
the applicability of this method to the various branches of science,
and also as to whether it constitutes - as far as any real meaning can
be attached to it - a simple variation or even prototype of the methods
of the theory of evolution or universal development. It is in this latter
sense that its author regards it; or at least he strives to indicate a
confirmation of it with the help of those truths achieved by the theory
of evolution. And it must be admitted that in a certain respect quite
a considerable resemblance is revealed.134
Sieber quite correctly observed that in Anti-Diihring Engels
was trying to reconcile German philosophy of Nature with the
discoveries made by Darwin. Plekhanov, however, was con-
cerned to show that even having read and translated large
portions of Engels's book, Sieber still remained ignorant of
the significance of Hegel in the development of modern eco-
nomics, and even, in general, of whether dialectics could be
suitably applied to the various branches of science.135
The passage which Plekhanov quoted from Sieber was to
have far-reaching consequences for how the history of Marx's
ideas in Russia were presented. For the interpretation placed
upon it by later historians was that it demonstrated, by equat-
ing dialectics with the theory of evolution, that Sieber could
not have understood dialectics, and therefore could not have
understood Marx's ideas. This conception was first voiced by
V.V. Vorovsky in 1908, and repeated by most writers who men-
tioned Sieber since.136 The effect was to diminish the promin-
ence of Sieber as a pioneer of Marxism in Russia and to leave
Plekhanov unchallenged as 'the father of Russian Marxism'.
8 Struve
In the early 1890s Plekhanov was joined by another campaign-
er against 'Narodism' in the person of Peter Struve. Earlier a
social Darwinist,1 he had adopted Marx's economic doctrine
in Sieber's interpretation, and had become convinced that,
like Western Europe, Russia must pass through a capitalist
stage.2 He was unconvinced by Vorontsov's and Danielson's
arguments, and in a review of the latter's book predicted that
the difficulties of rural development were short-term ones and
would be overcome with the further development of capital-
ism. Industry would take up the displaced peasants, and the
rural population would decline from 80 to nearer 50 or 40 per
cent. 3
Struve took up the campaign against 'Narodism' at greater
length in his book Critical Remarks on Russia's Economic Develop-
ment (1894), a work which was influential in determining the
character of early Russian Marxism. This was formed in large
measure in response to what Struve imagined 'Narodism' to
be. He derived this from Plekhanov's Our Differences,4 and in
his Critical Remarks applied the term to the category of writers
Plekhanov had previously designated as 'Narodnik'. Struve,
moreover, had no qualms about including Mikhaylovsky, Lavrov
and Danielson in this category, along with Vorontsov and Yuzov-
Kablits. He was nonetheless aware that use of the term re-
quired some justification, particularly as his definition of it
included the most influential writers of the 1860s, 1870s and
1880s. Struve defined 'Narodnik' in the following way:
The theory of a unique economic development for Russia, or simply the

belief in such a development, constitutes the essence of that current
whose representatives - despite all their differences in view in this or
that separate (sometimes very important) issue - can be brought to-
gether under the general heading of Narodism.5
This theory, Struve went on to state, had two basic sources.

These were (a) the doctrine which gave importance to the role
of the individual in history; and (b) the belief in the specific
national character and spirit of the Russian people, and espe-
cially in its historical destiny.6
350
Struve 351
It was this latter characteristic, Struve judged, which placed

the Narodniks in the same group as the Slavophiles, so that
the present campaign against economic uniqueness was a
continuation of the earlier dispute between Westerners and
Slavophiles. He considered the Narodniks, moreover, to be
the ideologists of natural economy and primeval equality in re-
fusing to recognize the inevitable progression to an economy
based on the market and exchange. 7 In their opposition to
capitalism the Narodniks, without realizing it, were simply
reproducing the 'economic romanticism' of Western Europe. 8
Struve's Critical Remarks was a most characteristic work of
the times, in that it explicitly abandoned the attempt to show
the necessary expansion of capital in terms of its circulation,
and advocated that the question be approached in terms of
'economic materialism'. It is interesting to note that in 1893
attempts were made by L.B. Krasin and V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin)
to argue for the inevitability of capitalism in Russia in terms of
Marx's second volume of Capital. Lenin's paper, however, 'On
the So-Called Market Question' was only able to show expanded
reproduction in mathematical terms, but as the author himself
pointed out, 'the explanation of how capitalism develops in gen-
eral does not in the least help to elucidate the question of the
"possibility" (and necessity) of the development of capitalism
in Russia.'9 That was what both Lenin and Krasin inevitably
failed to do.
In Struve's Critical Remarks his second chapter, entided
'Historico-Economic Materialism', documents graphically the
switch of attention from the question of capital's circulation to
a materialist conception of history. Struve referred to this con-
ception as 'economic materialism', and he implied that this
was an aspect of Marx's thought that had been obscured by
the 'Narodnik' writers.
Struve drew attention to the fact that Mikhaylovsky, Vorontsov
and other 'Narodniks' had all focused their attention on how
capital began to circulate, on 'original accumulation', and had
regarded this as the only historical aspect of Marx's work. He
quoted Mikhaylovsky as saying in his article against Zhukovsky
that:
In the sixth chapter of Capital there is a paragraph headed 'The

So-Called Original Accumulation'. Here Marx intended to give a
historical sketch of the first steps of the capitalist production process,

but he gave something much more: a whole historico-philosophical
theory.10
This was of course one of the offending passages that Marx had
protested against in his letter to Otechestvennye zapiski. But Struve
did not reproduce Marx's reproaches at having a 'historico-
philosophical theory' attributed to him. Quite the contrary.
According to Struve, Mikhaylovsky had done Marx the injust-
ice of minimizing the full extent of his historico-philosophical
theory.
Surely the elucidation of the capitalist order does not exhaust the
historico-philosophical theory of Marx? No, because in that case it
would not be a historico-philosophical theory, but only an explana-
tion of the causal connections between different sides of the given
historical process. Marx's historical philosophy enters into his doc-
trine of the origin of the capitalist order, but it is wider than that; it,
according to the intention of its author, embraces all possible changes
in social forms, both in the past and in the future; it is a bold attempt
to explain the whole historical process from a single principle. The
history of capital, expounded in the famous tract Capital, is only a
brilliant illustration of the general historico-philosophical theory. And
if the Russian publicists have not noticed this, the circumstance demon-
strates either that they have badly assimilated the spirit of the writer
to whom they so often refer, or they are insufficiently acquainted with
his literary activity in its entirety.11
Here Struve had in mind the Communist Manifesto and especially
the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
For Struve the latter work provided not only the historical
stages which constituted the 'historico-philosophical theory',
but also an indication of the motive force behind the histor-
ical process. This was the economic structure of society. 'Eco-
nomic facts' Struve considered to be 'the first link in the causal
chain that we call history or social evolution'.12 It was this
primacy accorded to the economic factor, presumably, which
caused the historical theory to be referred to as 'economic
materialism'.
Struve of course knew about Marx's letter to Otechestvennye
zapiski, but he did not attach any theoretical significance to it.
Because it referred to the second half of the 1870s, he thought
it no longer applicable. In the intervening period a great deal of
economic development had taken place in Russia, particularly
in railway construction, so that there was now no longer any
Struve 353
question of the country's avoiding the capitalist stage. Here

Struve referred to Engels's Postscript to his reply to Tkachev,
where the same point had been made. 13
Struve was certainly right in thinking that Marx's earlier
works did presuppose a general scheme of historical develop-
ment, but 'historical materialism' was very far from what this
scheme had been. Struve was very conscious, as indeed were
other writers of the time, of the discrepancy between the great
scope and application claimed for 'economic materialism' and
the fleetingness with which it was treated in the actual writings
of Marx or Engels.14 He had to admit too that the doctrine still
lacked a 'purely philosophical basis'. But these were deficien-
cies that Struve was willing to make good from the works of
sociologists and philosophers of his day.15
Because Plekhanov's Monist View appeared practically simulta-

neously with Struve's Critical Remarks, its interpretation of Marx's
ideas was by no means universally accepted, and the term 'eco-
nomic materialism' for many years enjoyed a wide currency.
Some of Marx's supporters in Russia, like N. Valentinov, were
more impressed by Struve's book than Plekhanov's. Like Struve,
he viewed Marx's teaching as lacking a philosophical founda-
tion, and thought it a challenge to make good the defect.16 A.V.
Lunacharsky, too, was later to recall that in 1898 he and his
friends:
were all deeply interested in the philosophical side of Marxism, and we

were eager in this respect to strengthen its epistemological, ethical and
aesthetical sides, without resorting to Kantianism, on the one hand
. . . or succumbing to that narrow French Encyclopedist orthodoxy on
which Plekhanov was trying to base the whole of Marxism.17
For Lunacharsky, and no doubt for many others at the time,

Plekhanov's use of eighteenth-century French materialism
represented only one of a number of possibilities for adding
a philosophical element to 'economic materialism'. The pre-
sumption in this case was that 'economic materialism' was a
deterministic doctrine of universal application, just as Struve
had represented it.
Writing a decade after the events, in the 'days of freedom'
in 1906, S.I. Mitskevich recalled the impression made by
Plekhanov's and Struve's books at Moscow University:
The winter of 1894-95 was also a very lively one. In the autumn there
appeared Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State, and soon afterwards the first legal Marxist book, P.B. Struve's
Critical Remarks. In December 1894 Beltov's The Monist View of History
was published. These books, especially the last, created a sensation.
The Marxists were jubilant that finally Marxism had made its appear-
ance in legal literature, and moreover in such a brilliant form as Beltov's
book. The Narodniks were indignant at the way Beltov's book had
dealt with the leading lights of Narodism; but the book was read avidly
all the same, and converted many to Marxism. 18
Mikhaylovsky's protests notwithstanding, from the vantage point

of 1906 the debate appeared to have involved only two parties:
the Marxists and the Narodniks.
To a more dispassionate but highly knowledgeable contem-
porary observer the division into Narodnik and Marxist fac-
tions seemed both artificial and unnecessary. In February 1895
Kovalevsky wrote to Plekhanov to thank him for his monograph
on Chernyshevsky, and added:
The book by N. Beltov also came practically simultaneously with the

one by Struve, sent by a professor in St Petersburg. I hope that these
theoretical disputes do not cause division in the numerically small camp
of radical-socialists - which would of course only bring aid and comfort
to their enemies. 19
Kovalevsky tactfully feigned ignorance that Beltov was Plek-

hanov's pseudonym.
Mitskevich went on to mention that about the same time as
Struve's and Plekhanov's books were published there appeared
in Moscow three hectographed volumes of the work by V. Il'in
(Lenin) 'What the Friends of the People Are And How They
Fight against the Social Democrats'.
Only the first and third parts of Lenin's 'Friends of the
People' have survived, and of these it is the first part which
deals chiefly with theoretical matters, the third part being more
statistical. Like Plekhanov's Monist View it set out to refute the
charges Mikhaylovsky had levelled against the Russian Marxists
in his articles published between 1892 and 1894.
Having written 'Friends of the People' in the spring of 1894,
Lenin had not read Plekhanov's Monist View, though he was ob-
viously familiar with Our Differences20 and was fully in agreement
Struve 355
with Plekhanov's point of view. Like Plekhanov Lenin believed

that 'economic materialism' was not an apt term to apply to
the ideas of Marx and Engels:
. . . where have you read in the works of Marx or Engels that they
necessarily spoke of economic materialism? When they described their
world outlook they called it simply materialism.21
This was somewhat different from Plekhanov's view, as was
Lenin's opinion of what constituted dialectics:
What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method - as opposed to
the metaphysical - is nothing other than the scientific method in
sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in
a state of constant development. . P
These statements tended to undermine Plekhanov's case, and

make it less certain precisely what the Marxist position was.
Even within Lenin's essay there were to be found quite di-
vergent ideas about what constituted Marx's teaching. On the
one hand, in order to counter the 'subjectivists', Lenin argued
in terms of 'historical necessity' and 'determinism'; but on the
other hand, in the light of Marx's letter to Otechestvennye zapiski,
he had to deny that there was anything inevitable about the
development of capitalism in Russia. 'No Marxist', he asserted:
ever argued anywhere that there 'must be' capitalism in Russia 'be-
cause' there was capitalism in the West and so on. No Marxist has ever
regarded Marx's theory as some universally compulsory philosophical
scheme of history, as anything more than the explanation of a particular
socio-economic formation.23
This was quite untrue. Sieber had argued thus, and Struve was
still doing so. In fact before the publication of Marx's letter to
Otechestvennye zapiski all Russian Marxists would have thought
in these terms.
In Lenin, as in Plekhanov, there was a tension between the
logic of the 'Marxist' case that capitalism must develop in Russia
because it was a universal system, and the specific statement
made by Marx that his economic analysis could not serve as a
basis for saying that capitalism must develop in Russia. Lenin
got round the problem by avoiding the question of inevitabil-
ity and simply trying to show that capitalism had developed in
Russia.24 But the philosophical problem of a doctrine which
both propounded and denied historical necessity was always to

elude comprehension.
Lenin wrote his 'Friends of the People' soon after the ap-
pearance of Mikhaylovsky's discussion on the term 'Narodism',
so that despite the impression created by Mitskevich and later
writers, Lenin did not refer to his opponents indiscriminately
as 'Narodniks'. In fact the caution he exercised in this respect
probably accounts for the somewhat curious tide of his essay.
Lenin was quite aware of the original, specialized, meaning of
the term, 25 and how Struve had adopted its changed sense
from Plekhanov's Our Differences.2^ Lenin referred to Narodism
in its original sense as 'social-revolutionary' Narodism - an apt
term as the original Narodniks had thought of themselves as
'social-revolutionaries'.
Lenin's attitude towards this 'social-revolutionary' Narodism
is very significant, because he viewed it in a far from favour-
able light. He saw it as a submission to all that was worst in the
lives of the common people, an acceptance of 'the ideas of the
peasant, and in exact accordance with his desires, make a
general principle of the birch and wife-beating. . ,'27 He had
obviously considered carefully the implications of being a revo-
lutionary in the old 'Land and Liberty' sense of voicing the
aspirations of the people, and concluded that these aspira-
tions might not be ones which could be considered in any way
admirable.
At the time Lenin was writing, Social-Democratic groups were
appearing in various parts of Russia - in St Petersburg, Mos-
cow, Vilna, Nizhny Novgorod, Tula, etc. Mitskevich belonged
to the one in Moscow. They were largely study groups of workers
assisted by members of the intelligentsia. Overwhelmingly the
attitude of the intellectuals towards the workers was as that of
the Narodniks had been towards the peasants; they believed
their function was to articulate the demands and aspirations of
the working class. The organizer of the workers' circle in St
Petersburg between 1889 and 1892, M.I. Brusnev, recalled:
The idea that the liberation of the working class was the affair of the
working class itself was introduced by us into all of the workers' circles
and was completely assimilated by our workers, even by those who were
not in positions of leadership.28
Like the Narodniks, the early Social-Democrats upheld the prin-

ciple of Marx's International.
Struve 357
Vera Zasulich's pamphlet Studies in the History of the Interna-

tional Working Men's Association, published in 1889, illustrates
the continuity between Narodism and Social Democracy, while
at the same time demonstrating that the author was aware of
a continuity of another kind - that in Marx's conception of
how the workers' movement ought to be organized. In discuss-
ing how the constitution of the International was drawn up at
the inaugural meeting in 1864, Zasulich recounted how the
supporters of both Blanqui and Mazzini had favoured some
kind of centralized and conspiratorial organization. Marx, on
the other hand, was against this proposal, predictably, Zasulich
thought, because much earlier, in the Communist Manifesto, he
had already enunciated the principles that the communists
'had no interests separate from those of the proletariat as a
whole'. They did not 'set up any sectarian principles of their
own by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement'.
It was, therefore, Zasulich believed, entirely consistent that Marx
should draft a constitution for the International embodying
the principle that 'the emancipation of the working classes
must be conquered by the working classes themselves'.29
Although the idea of workers' self-sufficiency was a common
one in Russian socialist literature of the 1890s, it was to be encoun-
tered less frequently by the turn of the century. The process by
which it became suspect and ultimately downright heretical 30
coincides with the emergence and triumph of Leninism. This
process lies outside the scope of the present work. Let it suf-
fice to indicate that the divergence between Marx's original
orientation and the doctrines propounded by his Russian fol-
lowers continued to widen, especially as with the passage of
time the influences which had produced Marx's ideas faded
into oblivion.
Conclusion
If one returns to the letter Marx wrote to Engels on 25 March
1868 and views it in the context of what preceded it and what
followed, it emerges that the document marked an important
juncture in Marx's attempt to write his 'Critique of Political
Economy'. The letter pointed both backwards and forwards -
backwards to the German philosophy which had first inspired
the 'Critique', and forwards to the study of primitive societies,
which, Marx believed, would enable him to complete it. The
letter also marked a turning point in Marx's conception of
socialism. Whereas formerly this had been provided by philo-
sophy, it was now in terms of ancient communities. He had
not been able to see ancient society in this way before, because
his judgement in this respect had been blinkered: he had al-
ways associated the search for a social ideal in the past with
Romanticism, against which he and other Young Hegelians
had campaigned in the days when the idea for the 'Critique'
was first conceived. The letter, therefore, signified a reorienta-
tion towards the Romantic movement, to which Marx had
belonged in his youth.
The letter's mention of the Universal and the Particular
serves to indicate the degree to which Marx saw his 'Critique
of Political Economy' as a continuation of the German philo-
sophical tradition. He had obviously encountered these terms
in pre-Hegelian writers, and was aware that they were much
older than the Hegelian system. Both Hegel and himself had
taken up the Universal and the Particular and had used them
in the same way - as a means of linking together categories: in
Hegel's case philosophical categories, in Marx's categories of
political economy. Marx's 'Critique' was in fact patterned on
Hegel's Logic, but in a way which had been determined by the
evolution of Young Hegelian thinking.
Hegel's philosophy was composed of an amalgam of ele-
ments taken from his predecessors and contemporaries. He
regarded his system as a culmination of all that had gone
before, and believed that it contained within it the most essen-
tial components of all previous systems. Hegel's achievement
was to link together ideas from different sources and combine
358
Conclusion 359
them into an elegant and symmetrical whole. The precise

nature of his achievement, however, would only be apparent
to contemporaries who were familiar with the philosophical
systems Hegel had drawn upon. With the passage of time the
appreciation of what was Hegel's and what belonged to other
thinkers was lost.
Hegel's followers, including Ruge, Feuerbach and Marx, were
all well placed to know what the component elements of Hegel's
system were, being well acquainted with Kant, Fichte, Schelling
and the writers of the Romantic movement. But in their con-
flict with the Prussian authorities the Young Hegelians found
it convenient to contrast Hegel's rationalism with what they
held to be its opposite in the attitude of the Romantics. In this
way the continuity between the Romantics and Hegel became
obscured, despite the fact that the Young Hegelians them-
selves had all come to Hegel through the Romantic writers,
and interpreted Hegel in that light.
The Young Hegelians found particularly useful Schelling's
idea that abstractions were 'crystallizations' of activity and
movement. Ruge could argue that the state structure was a
petrification of the movement of history. Feuerbach presented
abstract philosophizing, including the philosophy of Hegel, as
abstraction of real human relationships. Marx's insight was
that the categories of political economy - commodities, cap-
ital, money, etc. - were the abstract, 'Externalized' or crystal-
lized forms of what human Nature actually was when it was
not perverted by the divisions of society as it presently existed.
He believed that the categories of political economy were the
Externalized and Alienated forms of man's essential Nature.
In his 'Critique of Political Economy' Marx set out to per-
form a similar task to the one Hegel had performed in his
Logic, that is to take the categories - in Marx's case the categor-
ies of political economy - and show that they could be linked
together into a unitary system. He intended to show that the
most elementary category, the commodity, necessarily led to
the most complex, the world market; that the tendency to create
the world market was directly given in the concept of capital
itself.
Adam Miiller had already argued that when capitalism
reached its point of culmination, when nothing else but capi-
talist relations existed, commodities would lose their values
and the entire system would collapse. Marx, in sharing this

opinion, thought that at its point of culmination capitalism
would give way to the social relations which were concealed
within it. This would be Society as Schelling, Schleiermacher,
Steffens and Novalis had conceived of it; this would afford co-
hesion between people, but at the same time allow Individu-
ality to flourish. It would not be a crude egalitarian communism.
The conception of Marx's 'Critique of Political Economy'
was first outlined in his Paris Manuscripts of 1844 and then
elaborated in three drafts written between 1857 and 1866. Like
Hegel, Marx saw his work as the culmination of earlier philo-
sophical developments. The Hegelian element in the 'Critique
of Political Economy' was the linking of the categories into an
integrated system. As with Hegel's, the progression was to be
one from Abstraction to Individuality. This was in two senses.
It would begin from the most abstract aspects of capitalism
and proceed to the most concrete. And it would signify the
advance of humanity from its state of Abstraction to that of
Individuality, when its true Social Nature was revealed.
The economic categories Marx chose to link together were
those which had philosophical overtones. By this parallel be-
tween the real world and the realm of ideas Marx intended to
signify that earlier philosophical writers had correcdy identi-
fied the processes taking place in everyday life, but had con-
ceived these in a Reflected or Abstract way. Marx set out to
show the philosophical constructions in their true significance.
He sought to demonstrate that the progressive shedding of
Reflection in the development of philosophy and its passing
over into political economy was paralleled in the real world by
the progression of capitalism from its initial concept to the
world economy and thence to the supersession of civil society
and the re-integration of the human community.
From Schelling Marx took the conception of capital as the
crystallization of man's activity, or more precisely, of his la-
bour. This was Externalized, and appeared separated or Alien-
ated from him as a force of Nature. But because it took this
form, capitalism, or externalized human Nature, could be stud-
ied in terms of Natural laws of necessity, and its future devel-
opment predicted with certainty.
Marx also made use of Schelling's related ideas of Subsump-
tion and Potenzen. When capital first appeared it was in an
Conclusion 361
environment still dominated by the economic, social, legal,

etc. institutions of feudalism. But as it went through its process
of circulation, capital performed two operations to subsume
existing modes of production and bring them into conformity
with its peculiar requirements. One operation was extensive
and the other intensive. In the first case Subsumption extended
the sphere of capital's operations, and in this way spread it
over a steadily increasing portion of the earth's surface until
eventually the world market was created. In the second case
capital would Subsume existing society under itself, creating
the atomization and division of labour characteristic of civil
society. It would encroach increasingly on areas not directly
connected with the economy and bring more and more spheres
of activity within the ambit of commodity production. The
natural laws of capital would come to operate in an atmos-
phere of diminishing restrictions. There were clearly different
degrees to which labour or society could be subsumed under
capital, and these degrees or levels Marx termed Potenzen, a
term borrowed from Schelling. The passage in the Preface
to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy alluding to
the 'base' and 'superstructure' of society was a popularized
version of Marx's conception of Subsumption and Potenzen.
From the Speculative philosophy of Schelling and Hegel
Marx derived the conception of capitalism as a cyclical system,
both as a whole and in its component parts, one which re-
turned to its point of departure and whose results were also its
presuppositions. In this respect philosophy was the abstract
reflection of everyday life. The way in which capital created its
own presuppositions, Marx believed, was that as it circulated it
created the classes of proletarians and capitalists which were
necessary for its existence. Each cycle increased the numbers
of both.
In retrospect it is possible to see that this inexorable expan-
sion of capitalism throughout the world did not take place as
Marx envisaged. Countries did not all become uniformly cap-
italist. Economic development was much more scattered and
episodic. But in the 1840s and 1850s, when capitalism in Eu-
rope was making impressive headway, and seemed to be carry-
ing all before it in the rest of the world, it could doubtless be
readily believed that capitalism was destined to become the
universal system.
If Marx had been able to publish his 'Critique of Political

Economy' at the time he conceived of it, it would have ap-
peared in its proper context - as a work in the tradition of
Young Hegelian thought, as a study which took Feuerbach's
conception of abstraction to its logical conclusion by bringing
the form of the work into alignment with its content. The
mechanics of research and writing caused the work to appear
twenty years too late, in a different context, and in a much
modified variant.
Around 1866, while working on the third draft, Marx found
that he was unable to demonstrate that the circulation process
of capital necessarily involved the extension of capitalist rela-
tions. Moreover, in all the examples he had of traditional social
relations being dissolved and replaced by capitalist ones, the
agency had not been the circulation of capital, but the inter-
vention of the state. In fact, in Marx's native region in Ger-
many the old agrarian system had been able to coexist with
capitalism and had survived until very recent times.
In the version of Capital Volume I which Marx published in
1867 almost every reference to Subsumption and Potenzen was
removed. He also eliminated almost completely the idea that
capitalism was necessarily an expanding system. This process
of revision was continued in the second edition of Capital
published in 1872, and in the French translation completed
in 1875. The original scheme for the 'Critique of Political
Economy' had to be abandoned by 1866, but Marx still hoped
to be able to adjust his exposition to take into account the way
in which capital actually began its circuits, and how capitalist
relations emerged out of traditional society. Marx's approach
was now much more empirical, and he no longer professed any
general scheme of social or economic development. His state-
ment in 1877 that he had no 'historico-philosophical theory'
was an accurate summation of his views.
Russia in the 1870s provided an excellent example of how
this occurred, because the Reform of 1861, unlike previous
measures of the kind in other countries, had left the tradi-
tional village communities intact, and had not dispossessed
the peasants, turning them into proletarians, but had provided
them with a certain amount of land with which to support them-
selves. It was therefore possible to observe what the processes
Conclusion 363
were which destroyed the peasant communes and deprived

the peasants of their land.
The discovery which Marx made quite quickly was that the
agrarian population was dispossessed through the action of
the fiscal policies of the Russian government. The peasants'
need to raise money to pay taxes set in motion a train of
consequences which led to the impoverishment of one group
of peasants and the enrichment of another. On the other hand,
the collective ownership of the land and collective responsibil-
ity for the payment of taxes helped to sustain the vitality of the
peasant commune and put an obstacle in the path of develop-
ing capitalist relations.
Marx was now aware that economic and social processes did
not necessarily act in concert; so besides the economic devel-
opment of Russia, it was necessary to examine the dynamic
which governed the behaviour of the agrarian commune. Marx
undertook this investigation in conjunction with the young
Russian scholar Maxim Kovalevsky. The research carried out
by Kovalevsky established that the peasant commune in Russia
was not primeval, but an institution which had evolved out of
earlier forms of social organization. Kovalevsky's study of the
dissolution of the commune in various parts of the world served
to confirm the hypothesis Marx had put forward in his letter
to Engels of 25 March 1868: that economic forces alone did
not disrupt primitive communities. These could survive per-
fectly well in a capitalist environment. What did destroy them
was the consciously formulated policies of the state or an oc-
cupying power.
Marx's extensive studies of village communities largely con-
firmed the hypothesis he had first expressed in his letter to
Engels of 25 March 1868, that capitalism did not necessarily
destroy all in its path. The same letter contained the first sug-
gestion that social relations of the future would have a great
deal in common with the way ancient societies were ordered:
that socialism would be a revival of ancient communities in a
higher form. This was a belief which Marx shared with Russian
socialist thinkers of the time - with Herzen, Chernyshevsky
and their followers. Like them, Marx believed that it was pref-
erable if capitalism could be avoided and existing social rela-
tions preserved. Once Marx had abandoned the idea of the
'universalizing' mission of capitalism its development seemed

no longer necessary or desirable. He voiced these ideas in his
letters to the editorial board of Otechestvennye zapiski and to
Vera Zasulich. He only made them public, however, in the
foreword to the Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto
published in 1882.
Public perceptions of Marx's ideas, however, did not keep
pace with its new orientation. These were influenced more by
the body of the Communist Manifesto, the Preface to the Contri-
bution to the Critique of Political Economy, and the Preface to the
first edition of Capital, which all spoke in terms of capital as
the universal system, as the obligatory economic system for
every country. This might have been rectified if Marx had sent
his letter to Otechestvennye zapiski in 1877. But since he did not,
the replies by Sieber and Mikhaylovsky to Zhukovsky's review of
Capital were allowed to confirm the impression that Marx be-
lieved the development of capitalism in Russia to be unavoidable.
At the time of Marx's death only a fraction of his 'Critique
of Political Economy' had been published - only the first part
of 'Capital in General'. Volumes II and III of Capital edited by
Engels were taken from manuscripts drafted in the 1860s, and
these did not take into account the work Marx had done on
Russia between 1870 and 1880. It would probably have been
extremely difficult for Engels to have done otherwise. There
was no obvious way the scheme of circulation suggested in the
Russian materials could be integrated into the drafts Marx had
left.
In editing Volumes II and III of Capital Engels took the path
of least resistance, and utilized manuscripts which were in a
comparatively advanced state of preparation. But they did not
integrate fully with each other, nor with Volume I. They incor-
porated the kind of non sequitur which had prevented Marx
completing 'Capital in General' in the 1860s. Engels seems to
have been less concerned that Marx's work made sense than
that it should be published.
Engels's own writings - Anti-Diihring, The Origin of the Family
and Ludwig Feuerbach - each in its own way served to disguise
what Marx's original intentions had been, and why he had
taken up the study of primitive communities. But Engels en-
sured that Marx's legacy to the world would not be in an
incomplete and fragmentary form, but would have every
Conclusion 365
appearance of a finished and all-embracing system. The price

that was paid for this success was that at its very heart Marxism
did not make sense. Any attempt to follow the reasoning of
Capital was doomed to failure, because the ends of the logical
chain did not join up at a crucial point in the argument. Its
lack of inner coherence also meant that a variety of interpre-
tations were possible, and ensured that Marxism required inter-
preters: it generated a 'priesthood' and a 'laity'.
Russia was the country in which the hierarchy of priesthood
and laity took deepest root. This was paradoxical, because
among the Russians were people who had either collaborated
with Marx in his studies or had an excellent knowledge of his
work - people like Danielson, Kovalevsky, Lavrov, Sieber and
Mikhaylovsky. One might have expected that the followers of
Marx in Russia would have carried on his investigations into
the circulation of capital and its impact on the peasant com-
mune. But Russian Marxism did nothing of the kind. It disso-
ciated itself from these questions, and embraced the doctrines
of 'historical materialism' and 'dialectical materialism'. And
the originator of this version of Marxism was not any of Marx's
collaborators, but Plekhanov.
If one enquires how and why this revolution took place,
the answer does not lie in any originality or profundity of
Plekhanov's thinking, but in his skill as a propagandist and
polemicist. He was able to attach the label 'Narodnik' to all
those who believed that it was possible and desirable for Russia
to avoid the capitalist stage. He did this, moreover, in the
knowledge that Marx had shared this opinion.
Ostensibly going back to the Hegelian roots of Marx's ideas
for inspiration, Plekhanov elaborated a theory which he termed
'dialectical materialism'. This was not so much a variant of
Marx's original ideas as their antithesis. Whereas Marx placed
real human Society at the centre of his system and made it the
motive force of history, 'dialectical materialism' made human
Nature a variable, and placed the driving force of history outside
man.
In his campaign against 'Narodism', Plekhanov had initially
defended the original meaning of the term, the proposition
that the liberation of the working class was the affair of the
working class itself. This was in its way a restatement of the
declaration in the Communist Manifesto that the communists
had no interests separate and apart from those of the working

class as a whole. These two pronouncements were consonant
with the fact that the most fundamental aim of Marx's system
was to overcome Abstraction. It would have been inconsistent
to condemn Abstraction by the State and then endorse it by
a political party which claimed to represent the objective in-
terests of the workers, interests Abstracted from their actual
aspirations.
The Russian Marxism which developed in the 1890s emerged
from the polemic against 'Narodism' and the principle that 'the
liberation of the working class was the affair of the working
class itself. A closer inspection of this 'Narodism', both in its
intellectual and organizational aspects, would reveal that it has
much to do with principles which Marx himself professed.
Soviet ideology, as the eventual outcome of the campaign
against 'Narodism', was committed to a form of Marxism which
came about not simply by the transfer of Marx's original ideas
to a different historical and national environment, not simply
by their reinterpretation, but by misrepresenting what they
were and how they had originated.
It is clear that studies of Marx's ideas which take their starting-
point in 'dialectical materialism' will not yield reliable results.
The assumptions contained in 'dialectical materialism' distort
the original orientation of Marx's system and the elements
which composed it.
It would be unjust, however, to lay all the blame on Plekhanov
and his followers for the misinterpretations which Marx's ideas
suffered. The changes he introduced may have been more
calculated and more cynical, but they were not unique. Engels
before him had expounded Marx's ideas according to his own
lights. But the ground had been prepared by Marx himself,
whose discoveries forced him to revise earlier expectations and
to modify his writings accordingly. These revisions were made
silently, and the account he gave subsequently of the relation-
ship of his system to that of Hegel was misleading to no small
degree. The process which led to Plekhanov was initiated by
Marx himself.
The irony is that from the vantage point of the present day
Marx's attempts to revise his initial conceptions may well have
been misplaced. Until the last decades of the twentieth cen-
tury it was true that capitalism did not constitute a Universal
Conclusion 367
system. Commodity exchange was not the rule in Third World

countries. It was excluded from the countries of the socialist
bloc. Even in the industrialized countries of the West there
were significant state sectors of the economy in which market
relations were restricted.
But in recent years capitalism has been on the march. It has
made deep inroads in the Third World. Its development has
been encouraged in the former socialist countries of the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And in the West policies of
privatization and deregulation have been carried out and more
and more areas of national life have been modelled on market
relations. The process of Subsumption has been set in motion.
One might say that the main corrective Marx had to make to
his original scheme was to allow for the input of human activity
into the manner in which Subsumption operated. Capitalism
seems set to become the Universal economic system through-
out the world, and to subordinate all spheres of human life to
its circulation and reproduction. If it does so then one can
expect that it will reach its point of culmination in the way
Marx believed it would.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. David McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, 1969).
2. Leszek Kolakowski, Giowne nurty marksizmu: powstanie-rozwoj-rozktad,
3 vols (Paris, 1976); Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its
Origins, Growth and Dissolution, translated by P.S. Falla, 3 vols (Oxford,
1981).
3. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, 1975).
4. E.g. G.R.G. Mure, A Study of Hegel's Logic (Oxford, 1950); W.T. Stace,
The Philosophy of Hegel (New York, 1955); Manfred Baum, Die Entstehung
der Hegelschen Dialektik (Bonn, 1986).
5. Times Literary Supplement, 21 October 1984.
6. Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford, 1983).
7. Ibid., pp. 166 ff.
8. Charles Taylor's standard account of Hegel's thought makes only the
following short reference to the terms in connection with the discus-
sion of the Concept: 'The universal is shown here to be in inner rela-
tion to the particular (das Besondere). Sometimes, however, it is related
to the individual (das Einzelne); and sometimes to both; for Hegel uses
this analysis of the universal in a host of contexts; like many Hegelian
terms it expresses a theme with many variations.' Charles Taylor, Hegel
(Cambridge, 1975), p. 113.
9. Ryszard Panasiuk, Filozofia i panstwo: Studium mysli polityczno-spoiecznej
lewicy heghxuskiej i mtodego Marksa 1838-1843 (Warsaw, 1967).
10. Geschichte und Klassenbeiuuptsein, Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. II, pp. 39, 165,
314, 320, 325, 337, 341, 345, 598, 607.
11. Ibid., p. 314.
12. Georg Lukacs, 'Moses Hess und die Probleme der idealistischen Dia-
lektik', Archiv fur die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung,
Vol. XII, 1926.
13. Ibid, pp. I l l ff.
14. Ibid., pp. 107, 109.
15. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Werke (MEW) (Berlin, 1956- ), Vol. II, p. 147.
16. Moses Hess, Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften 1837-1850, Heraus-
gegeben und eingeleitet von Auguste Cornu and Wolfgang Monke
(Berlin, 1961), pp. 75 ff.
17. Ibid, p. 223.
18. A. von Cieszkowski, Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (Berlin, 1838);
J. Frauenstadt, Hallische fahrbucher fur Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1839,
pp. 476-88.
19. K. Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century
German Thought, trans. David E. Green (London, 1965).
20. H. Stuke, Philosophic der Tat (Stuttgart, 1963).
21. WJ. Brazill, The Young Hegelians (Yale University Press, 1970).
368
Notes to Introduction 369
22. D. McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, 1969).
23. Auguste Cornu, Karl Marx et Friedrich Engels: Leur vie et leur oeuvre,
Vol. I (Paris, 1955), p. 242.
24. Moses Hess, Philosophische und sozialistische Schriften 1837-1850, pp. XVIII,
XXI.
25. Ibid, p. 463.
26. Horst Stuke, Philosophie der Tat (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 85.
27. Panasiuk, p. 116.
28. David McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx, p. 11.
29. Ibid, pp. 11-12.
30. G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie der Geschichte, Herausgeben
von Dr. Eduard Gans (Berlin, 1837).
31. Ibid, pp. 10-11.
32. D. Lukach, Molodoy GegeV i problemy kapitalisticheskogo obshchestva
(Moscow, 1987), p. 3.
33. Lukacs, Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 138.
34. G. Lukacs, Derjunge Hegel: Uber die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Okonomie,
Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. VIII (Neuwied, 1967), p. 29.
35. Ibid, p. 138.
36. Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 9.
37. Die Zerstorung der Vernunft, Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. IX, p. 162.
38. H. Steffens, Christliche Religionsphilosophie (Berlin 1839), p. 140.
39. H. Steffens, Anthropology, Vol. I (Breslau, 1822), pp. 15, 184-5.
40. Istvan Meszaros, Marx's Theory of Alienation (London, 1970), p. 14.
41. Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 658.
42. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. Ill (Oxford, 1981), p.
297.
43. Kolakowski, Gtowyie nurty marksizmu, Vol. 1, p. 75, original emphasis;
Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 1, p. 70.
44. Gtowne nurty marksizmu, Vol. 1, p. 89; Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 1, p. 85.
45. Gtowne nurty marksizmu, Vol. 1, pp. 90, 145; Main Currents of Marxism,
Vol. 1, pp. 86, 144.
46. Gtozone nurty marksizmu, Vol. 1, pp. 91-2; Main Currents of Marxism,
Vol. 1, p. 88.
47. Giowne nurty marksizmu, Vol. 1, p. 88; Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. 1,
p. 84.
48. Alain Besancon, The Intellectual Origins of Leninism (Oxford, 1981),
p. 90.
49. Laurence S. Stepelevich, 'Between the Twilight of Theory and the
Millennial Dawn: August von Cieszkowski and Moses Hess', in Laurence
S. Stepelevich and David Lamb (eds), Hegel's Philosophy of Action (At-
lantic Highlands, NJ, 1982), p. 220.
50. Michael Lowy quoted in C.J. Arthur, Dialectics of Labour: Marx and his
Relation to Hegel (Oxford, 1986), p. 105.
51. Nicholas Churchich, Marxism and Alienation (London, 1989), p. 181.
52. MEW, Vol. XXXII, p. 52.
53. Georg Lukacs Werke, Vol. II, pp. 18, 410.
54. A. Schmidt, Der Begriff der Natur in der Lehre von Marx (Frankfurt am
Main, 1962), pp. 9, 57.
370 Notes to Chapter 1
55. Ibid, p. 20.
56. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) (Berlin, 1975- ),
1/2, p. 295.
57. See, for example, N. Geras, Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a
Legend (London, 1983).
58. E.g. Roman Rosdolsky, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen KapitaV,
2 vols (Frankfurt am Main, 1974); Ernest Mandel, The Formation of the
Economic Thought of Karl Marx (London, 1971); VS. Vygodsky, K istorii
sozdaniya 'Kapitala' (Moscow, 1970).
59. Wada Haruki, Marukusu, Engerusu to kakumei Roshia (Tokyo, 1975).
60. T. Shanin (ed.), Late Marx and the Russian Road (London, 1984).
61. Richard Pipes, 'Narodnichestvo: A Semantic Inquiry', Slavic Review,
Vol. XXXIII, No. 3, September 1964.
62. Andrzej Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism (Oxford, 1969).
63. Filozofia spoieczna narodnictwa rosyjskiego: Wyborpism, ed. Andrzej Walicki,
2 vols (Warsaw, 1965).
64. N.K. Karataev (ed.), Narodnicheskaya ekonomicheskaya literatura (Mos-
cow, 1958).
65. Filozofia spoieczna narodnictwa rosyjskiego, p. xxix; The Controversy over
Capitalism, p. 36.
CHAPTER 1 THE ROMANTIC HERITAGE
1. Quoted in Hans-Joachim Mahl, Die Idee des goldenen Zeitalters im Werk

des Novalis (Heidelberg, 1965), p. 350.
2. J.G. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, ed. I.H. Fichte, 8 vols (Berlin, 1845-46).
Vol. I, pp. 40-60.
3. Ibid.
4. I. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. V (Berlin, 1908), p. 30.
5. Ibid, p. 179.
6. J.G. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. I, pp. 332-3.
7. Schelling, Schellings sammtliche Werke, ed. K.F.A. Schelling, 10 vols (Stutt-
gart and Augsburg, 1856-61), Vol. Ill, p. 628.
8. R. Haym, Die romantische Schule (Berlin, 1870), p. 352.
9. K. Rosenkranz, 'Ludwig Tieck und die romantische Schule', Hallische
Jahrbiicher, Nos. 155-163, 1838, pp. 1233-1302, esp. pp. 1291-2.
10. Athenaeum 1789-1800, Herausgeben von August Wilhelm Schlegel und
Friedrich Schlegel, reprint (Stuttgart, 1960), p. 203.
11. H. Steffens, Was ich erlebte, Vol. IV (Breslau, 1841), pp. 122-3.
12. Hans Werner Arndt, 'Einfuhrung', Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke,
Vol. I (Hildesheim, 1965), p. 19.
13. Christian Wolff, 'Vernunftige Gedanken von den Kraften des menshch-
lichen Verstandes und ihrem richtigen Gebrauche in Erkenntnis der
Wahrheit', op. cit, p. 123.
14. G.S.A. Mellin, Encyclopddisches Worterbuch der kritishchen Philosophie,
Vol. I (Zullichau and Leipzig, 1797), p. 486.
15. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 320, B 377.
16. Ibid, B 307.
Notes to Chapter 1 371
17. Schelling, Werke, Vol. IV, pp. 353-4.

18. Werke, Vol. Ill, p. 506.
19. Ibid.
20. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 446.
21. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. V (Berlin, 1908), p. 421.
22. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 314.
23. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. I, pp. 412-13.
24. Friedrich Schiller, Werke, Nationalausgabe, eds L. Blumenthal and
B. von Wiese (Weimar, 1943- ), Vol. XX, pp. 316-17.
25. First published in Die Horen in 1795.
26. Schiller, Werke, Vol. XX, p. 394.
27. Schelling, Werke, Vol. Ill, p. 18.
28. Ibid, p. 19.
29. A. Cobban, In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Mod-
ern History (London, 1960), p. 75.
30. J. Erhard, L 'idee de Nature en France dans la premiere motitie du XVIIF siecle
(Paris, 1963), p. 70.
31. For Steffens the whole history of the earth's development was 'the
inner transformation from fluidity to rigidity, from water into metal'.
H. Steffens, Anthropologie (Breslau, 1822), p. 57; H. Steffens, Beytrdge
zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde (Freiberg, 1801), p. 16. Schubert
thought that the earth had evolved from an 'amorphous fluid state
to an increasingly solid condition'. G.H. Schubert, Ansichten von der
Nachtseite der Naturwissenschaft (Dresden, 1808), p. 105.
32. Schelling, Werke, Vol. I, p. 443.
33. P.C. Erb (ed.), Pietists: Selected Writings (London, 1983), pp. 35-6.
34. Ibid, p. 60.
35. Ibid, p. 37.
36. I. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. V, p. 429.
37. J.G. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 302.
38. Ibid, p. 306.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid, p. 323.
42. Ibid, p. 318.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid, p. 420.
45. Ibid, pp. 13-14.
46. F. Schleiermacher, Uber die Religion (Berlin, 1799), p. 12.
47. Friedrich E.D. Schleiermacher, Werke, eds Otto Braun and Johannes
Bauer (Aalen, 1967), Vol. IV, p. 437.
48. In English both Entdufierung and Entfremdung are habitually translated
as 'Alienation'. This is in accordance with the idea put forward by
Georg Lukacs and accepted by modern writers that the two terms are
simply German translations of the English word 'alienation'. See C.J.
Arthur, Dialectics of Labour: Marx and his Relation to Hegel (Oxford,
1986), p. 147. This is clearly wrong, since it dissociates Entdufierung
from aufier, and from the contrast between Inner and Outer.
49. H. Steffens, Christliche Religionsphilosophie (Berlin, 1839), pp. 45-6.
50. There is considerable dispute about whether the 'Systemprogramm'

should be attributed to Schelling or Hegel. The main arguments for
both sides are collected in Jamme, C. and Schneider, H. (eds), Mytho-
logie der Vernunft: Hegels 'altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus'
(Frankfurt am Main, 1984). I am inclined to believe that Schelling was
the author, because the ideas contained in the 'Systemprogramm'
were characteristic of his intellectual biography. It was he who origi-
nated the conception that the State was an Idea. Thus, even if Hegel
did compose the 'Systemprogramm', he could only have been elabo-
rating on a conception which belonged to Schelling.
51. F.W.J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokuments, Vol. I, 1775-1809, ed. Horst Fuhr-
mans (Bonn, 1962), pp. 69-70; C. Jamme and H. Schneider, Mythologie
der Vernunft: Hegels 'altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus' (Frank-
furt am Main, 1984), pp. 11-12.
52. Schelling, Werke, Vol. V, p. 232.
53. Ibid, pp. 260-1.
54. Ibid, p. 258.
55. G.S. Ford, Stein and the Era of Reform in Prussia, 1807-1815 (Gloucester,
Mass, 1965), p. 203.
56. Ibid, p. 20.
57. A. Muller, Schriften zur Staatsphilosophie, ed. Rudolf Kohler (Munich,
1923), p. 85.
58. Ibid, pp. 94, 105-6.
59. A. Muller, Elemente der Staatskunst, ed. Jakob Baxa (Jena, 1922), Vol. I,
p. 155.
60. Ibid, p. 160.
61. Ibid, p. 265.
62. A. Muller, Ausgewdhlte Abhandlungen, ed. Jakob Baxa (Jena, 1921),
pp. 104-5.
63. Ibid, p. 267.
64. Ibid, p. 351.
65. Ibid, p. 405.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid, p. 35.
68. Muller, Elemente der Staatskunst (Jena, 1922), Vol. II, p. 27.
69. Muller, Ausgewdhlte Abhandlungen, p. 90.
70. Ibid, p. 87.
71. Ibid, p. 89.
72. Ibid.
73. Hamann, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. II, p. 197; R.G. Smith, J.G. Hamann
1730-1788: A Study in Christian Existence (London, 1960), p. 70.
74. R. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken (Berlin, 1880),
Vol. I, pp. 139-40.
75. J.G. Herder, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. I, ed. B. Suphan (Berlin, 1877), p. 153.
76. F.W.J. Schelling, 'Uber Mythen, Sagen und Philosopheme der altesten
Welt', Schelling, Werke, Vol. I, pp. 33-4.
77. F. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, Vol. I (Leipzig and Darmstadt,
1843), pp. 563-4.
78. F. von Savigny, Vom Berufunsrer Zeitfiir Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft

(Heidelberg, 1814), pp. 9-10.
79. Ibid, pp. 10-11.
80. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. VII, pp. 175-7.
81. Ibid, pp. 179-84.
82. Ibid, pp. 188, 210.
83. Ibid, pp. 195-6.
84. Fichte, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. II, p. 265.
85. Ibid, p. 271.
86. Ibid, p. 272.
87. H. Levin, Die Heidelberger Romantik (Munich, 1922), p. 92.
88. R. Saitschick, Joseph Gorres und die abendldndische Kultur (Breisgau, 1953),
pp. 26, 101-2.
89. J. Baxa (ed.), Adam Mutters Lebenszeugnisse (Munich, Paderborn,
Vienna, 1966), Vol. II, p. 277.
90. J. Gorres, 'Teutschland und die Revolution', Gesammelte Schriften, Vol.
IV (Munich, 1856), pp. 150-1; G. Mann, The History of Germany since
1789 (Penguin, 1974), pp. 106-8.
91. 'Wachstum in Historie',J. Gorres, Gesammelte Schriften (Cologne, 1926),
Vol. Ill, p. 379.
92. Ibid, p. 405.
93. Gorres, 'Teutschland und die Revolution', p. 209.
94. Ibid, p. 215.
95. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Selected Works (Moscow, 1969), Vol. 1, p. 36.
96. Gorres, 'Teutschland und die Revolution', pp. 206-9.
97. Gorres, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. Ill, pp. 374-402.
98. Gorres, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IV, pp. 217-18.
99. F. Baader, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. V, p. 290.
100. F. Baader, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 15.
101. F.B. Artz, Reaction and Revolution in Europe 1814-1832 (New York, 1934),
pp. 7-11.
102. Ibid, p. 142.
103. Saitschick, op. cit, pp. 39, 44.
104. Baxa, op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 735, 789.
CHAPTER 2 HEGEL
1. G.W.F. Hegel, Phdnomenologie des Geistes, Gesammelte Werke, eds Friedrich

Hogemann and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg, 1981- ), Vol. IX, pp. 3 1 -
2.
2. Ibid, p. 10.
3. Ibid, p. 27.
4. Ibid, p. 48.
5. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XII, pp. 16-17.
6. Ibid, p. 19.
7. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 14.
8. Ibid, p. 22.
9. Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 175.

10. Ibid, p. 247.
11. Ibid, p. 250.
12. Ibid, p. 249; Phdnomenologie, p. 41.
13. Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 252.
14. Phdnomenologie, pp. 19-22.
15. Encyclopddie, § 209; Wissenschaft der Logik (2nd edn, 1832), Gesammelte
Werke, Vol. XXI, p. 332.
16. Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XI, pp. 215-20.
17. Naturphilosophie, Werke, ed. P. Marheineke et al, Vol. IX, Part 1, p. 28.
18. Ibid, pp. 20-1; Gegel', Entsiklopediya fibsofskikh nauk, Vol. II, Filosofiya
prirody (Moscow, 1975), pp. 627-8; D.R. Wiswall, A Comparison of Se-
lected Poetic and Scientific Works of Albert von Halter (Berne, 1981), pp.
163-8.
19. Wissenschaft der Logik, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XII, p. 11.
20. Ibid, pp. 18-19.
21. Hegel, Encyclopddie, § 249.
22. K. Rosenkranz, Kritische Erlduterungen des Hegel'schen Systems (Kdnigs-
berg, 1840), p. 101.
23. Hegel, Encyclopddie, § 539.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid, § 433.
27. K. Rosenkranz, Hegels Leben (Berlin, 1844), p. 86.
28. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts, Samtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 159.
29. Ibid, § 183.
30. Ibid, § 256.
31. Ibid, § 245.
32. Ibid, § 236.
33. Ibid, § 260.
34. Ibid, § 273.
35. Ibid, § 272. See also § 31.
36. Ibid, § 301.
37. Ibid, § 302.
38. Ibid, p. 13.
39. Ibid, p. 17.
40. Encyclopddie, § 552.
41. M. Riedel (ed.), Materialen zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie, Vol. I (Frankfurt
am Main, 1975), p. 64.
42. Philosophie des Rechts, p. 7.
43. Ibid, § 346.
44. Ibid, § 352.
45. K. Rosenkranz, Kritische Erlduterungen des Hegel'schen Systems, p. 156.
46. August Cieszkowski, Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, Berlin, 1838. It was
reviewed in Hallische Jahrbiicher (1839), No. 60.
47. Ibid.
48. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte Werke, ed. P. Marheineke et al, pp. 1 9 -
20.
49. Ibid, p. 41.
50. Ibid, p. 21.
51. Ibid, p. 41.
52. Ibid, p. 26.
53. Ibid, p. 28.
54. Ibid, p. 21.
55. Ibid, p. 446.
56. W. Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1978),
p. 232.
57. Carl Michelet, Geschichte der letzten Systeme in Deutschland von Kant bis
Hegel, Vol. I (Berlin, 1838), p. 60.
58. A.L. Blackwell, Schleiermacher's Early Philosophy of Life (Furman Univer-
sity, Greenville, 1982), pp. 199, 226.
59. Encyclopddie, § 552.
60. Encyclopddie, p. 24.
61. Hegel, Samtliche Werke, Vol. VI, p. 8.
62. R. Haym, Hegel und seine Zeit: Vorlesungen uber Entstehung, Wesen und
Werth der Hegel'schen Philosophie (Berlin, 1857), pp. 359-89.
63. K. Rosenkranz, Von Magdeburg bis Konigsberg (Berlin, 1873), pp. 134-5.
CHAPTER 3 THE YOUNG HEGELIANS
1. K. Rosenkranz, Kritische Erlduterungen des Hegel'schen Systems (Konigsberg,

1840), pp. XI-XII.
2. Th. Echtermeyer, 'Die Universitat Halle', Hallische Jahrbiicherfur deutsche
Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1838, pp. 666-71.
3. Ibid, pp. 675-6.
4. F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. W. Hastie (Edinburgh, 1889), p. 214.
5. Echtermeyer, op. cit, p. 672.
6. Ibid, p. 676; R. Panasiuk, Filozofia i panstwo (Warsaw, 1967), p. 25.
7. G.W.H. Hegel, Encyclopddie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, ed.
J. Hoffmeister (Leipzig, 1949), p. 24.
8. J.F. Sandberger, David Friedrich Straufi als theologischer Hegelianer
(Gottingen, 1972), p. 55.
9. Rosenkranz, op. cit, pp. 348-50, VIII; Panasiuk, op. cit, pp. 27-8.
10. J.E. Toews, Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805-
1841 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 243.
11. Panasiuk, op. cit, p. 29.
12. 'Doktor Strauss charakterisirt von Fr .Vischer', HallischeJahrbiicher, 1838,
p. 1096.
13. Ibid, p. 1095.
14. Ibid, pp. 1104-7.
15. D.F. Strauss, Das Lebenjesu, kritisch bearbeitet, Vol. I (Tubingen, 1835),
pp. 71-2.
16. Ibid, p. 19.
17. D.F. Strauss, Das Lebenjesu, Vol. II (Tubingen, 1836), pp. 734-5.
18. Vischer, op. cit, pp. 1099-100.
19. Ibid, pp. 1100-1.
20. Ibid, p. 1102.

21. Lichtenberger, op. cit, p. 383.
22. B. Bauer, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, Vol. I (Leipzig,
1841), p. XIV.
23. Ibid, p. 71.
24. Ibid, pp. XV, 71.
25. Ibid, p. XX.
26. J. Schaller, Der historische Christus und die Philosophie. Kritik der Grundidee
des Werkes: Das Lebenjesu von Dr D.F.Straufi (Leipzig, 1838). Review by
W. Vatke, Hallische Jahrbiicher, 1838, pp. 2271-6.
27. L. Feuerbach, Samtliche Werke, eds F. Jodl and W. Bolin, Vol. VI, p. 78.
28. Ibid, p. 41.
29. Ibid, p. 297.
30. Ibid, pp. 309, 320.
31. F. Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Vol. IV
(Freiberg, 1937), pp. 133-42.
32. Hallische Jahrbiicher, 1838, p. 1.
33. Ibid.
34. Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchbldtter aus den Jahren 1825-1880,
ed. Paul Nerrlich, Vol. I (Berlin, 1886), pp. 179,187, 233; H. Rosenberg,
'Arnold Ruge und die "Hallischen Jahrbucher"', Archiv fur Kultur-
geschichte, Vol. XX, No. 3, 1930, pp. 284-5.
35. K. Rosenkranz, Review of G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophie
der Geschichte, Herausgeben von Dr. Eduard Gans, Berlin, 1837, Hallische
Jahrbiicher, 1838, pp. 132-156; Emil von Meysenbug, 'Die Philosophie
der Geschichte in ihrer gegenwartigen Ausbildung. Eine positive Kritik
dieser Disciplin', Hallische Jahrbucher, 1839, pp. 2414-47.
36. J. Schaller, Review of G.W.F. Hegel Vorlesungen uber die Geschichte der
Philosophie. Herausgeben von Dr. K.L. Michelet. 3 Bde. Berlin, 1833-
36, Hallische Jahrbiicher, 1838, p. 662.
37. K. Rosenkranz, Von Magdeburg bis Konigsberg (Berlin, 1873), p. 186.
38. K. Rosenkranz, 'Ludwig Tieck und die romantische Schule', Hallische
Jahrbucher, 1838, p. 1299.
39. K. Rosenkranz, Kritische Erlduterungen des Hegel'schen Systems (Konigs-
berg, 1840), p. 9.
40. P.F. Stuhr, Review of J. Gorres, Athanasius, Regensburg, 1838, Hallische
Jahrbiicher, 1838, p. 483.
41. A. Ruge, 'Sendschreiben an J. Gorres von Heinrich Leo', Hallische
Jahrbucher, 1838, pp. 1169-204.
42. A. Ruge, Preussen und die Reaktion: Zur Geschichte unserer Zeit (Leipzig,
1838).
43. Ibid, p. 144.
44. Ibid, pp. 32, 34, 41.
45. Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchbldtter, p. 73; Panasiuk, op. cit,
p. 44; Rosenberg, op. cit, p. 287.
46. H. Leo, Die Hegelingen: Actenstilcke und Belege zu der s.g. Denunziation der
ewigen Wahrheit (Halle, 1839), pp. 2-3.
47. Arnold Ruges Briefwechsel und Tagebuchbldtter, p. 167.
48. A. Ruge, 'Der Pietismus und die Jesuiten', Hallische Jahrbucher, No. 31
(5 February) - No. 36 (11 February), 1839, pp. 241-288.
49. A. Ruge and Th. Echtermeyer, 'Der Protestantismus und die Romantik.
Zur Verstandigung uber die Zeit und ihre Gegensatze. Ein Manifest',
Hallische Jahrbiicher, No. 246 (14 October), 1839, p. 1961.
50. Hallische Jahrbucher, 1839, p. 2152.
51. Hallische Jahrbucher, 1839, pp. 1963-4, 1968.
52. Hallische Jahrbiicher, 1840, p. 446.
53. Ibid, p. 511.
54. Rosenberg, op. cit, p. 304.
55. F. Koppen, 'Zur Feier der Thronbesteigung Friedrich II', Hallische
Jahrbiicher, 1840, pp. 1169-97.
56. C.F. Koppen, Friedrich der Grosse und seine Widersacher: Eine Jubelschrift
(Leipzig, 1840).
57. Ibid, p. 2.
58. F. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, Vol. VI, pp. 252-3.
59. Koppen, op. cit, p. 41.
60. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) (Berlin, 1975- ),
1/1, p. 47.
61. Ibid, p. 53.
62. Ibid, pp. 55-6.
63. G.W.F. Hegel, Geschichte der Philosophie, Werke, Vol. XIII, p. 99.
64. On 31 May 1858 Marx wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle in connection with
the latter's book on Heraclitis: '.. . about eighteen years ago I attempted
a similar work on . . . Epicurus - namely the portrayal of a complete
system from fragments, a system which I am convinced . . . was . . . -
only implicitly (an sich) present in his work, not consciously as a sys-
tem.' Karl Marx Frederick Engels Werke (MEW) (Berlin, 1956- ), Vol.
XXIX, p. 561.
65. Koppen, op. cit, pp. 171-2.
66. G. Mayer, 'Die Anfange des politischen Radikalismus im vormarzlichen
Preussen', Zeitschrift fur Politik, No. 6 (1913), pp. 12-14.
68. Mayer, op. cit, p. 14.
69. J.E. Toews, Hegelianism, p. 88.
70. Panasiuk, op. cit, pp. 142-3.
71. Ibid, p. 143.
72. F. Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of his Life, trans. Edward Fitzgerald
(Ann Arbor, 1973), pp. 35-6.
73. Marx to Ruge, 27 April 1842, MEGA2 I I I / l , p. 26.
74. This was not of course anthropology in the modern sense. It included
Steffens's ideas on the formation of the earth, the Natural sciences,
and Society based on Individuality. The published version of his lec-
tures is H. Steffens, Anthropologie, 2 vols (Breslau, 1822).
75. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (Oxford, 1978), pp. 3, 9; Karl
Marx Friedrich Engels Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 703.
76. Panasiuk, op. cit, p. 109.
77. 'Karl StreckfuB und das PreuBenthum. Von einem Wurtemberger',
Hallische Jahrbucher, 1839, pp. 2100-1.
78. Ibid, p. 2093.
79. Ibid, p. 2100.
80. Ibid.

82. A. Ruge, 'Zur Kritik des gegenwartigen Staats- und Volkerrechts',
Hallische Jahrbucher, 1840, pp. 1211.
83. Ibid, p. 1204.
84. A. Ruge, 'Friedrich von Florencourt und die Kategorieen der poli-
tischen Praxis', Hallische Jahrbucher, 1840, p. 2254.
85. Deutsche Jahrbucher, 1841, p. 5.
86. MEGA2 1/1, pp. 89-90.
87. MEGA2 I I I / l , pp. 58-9.
88. L. Feuerbach, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. II, p. 222.
89. L. Feuerbach, 'Kritik der Hegel'schen Philosophie', HallischeJahrbucher,
1839, pp. 1724-6.
90. L. Feuerbach, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. II, p. 304.
91. Ibid, p. 239.
92. Ibid, p. 280.
93. Ibid, p. 288.
94. Ibid, p. 233.
95. Marx to Ruge, 13 March 1843, MEGA2 I I I / l , p. 45.
96. A. Ruge, 'Die Hegelsche Rechtsphilosophie und die Politik unsrer
Zeit', Deutsche Jahrbucher, 1842, p. 762.
97. A. Ruge, 'Die wahre Romantik und der falsche Protestantismus, ein
Gegenmanifest', Deutsche Jahrbucher, 1842, p. 677.
98. A. Ruge, 'Der christliche Staat. Gegen den Wirtemberger uber das
PreuBenthum', Deutsche Jahrbiicher, 1842, pp. 1065-6.
99. Ibid, p. 1067.
100. Ibid, pp. 1067-8.
101. Ibid, p. 1068.
102. Ibid, pp. 1070-2.
103. B. Bauer, 'Der chrisdiche Staat und unsere Zeit', Hallische Jahrbucher,
1841, pp. 537-58.
104. MEGA2 III/I, pp. 22, 24.
105. MEW, Vol. I, p. 216.
106. Ibid, pp. 212-13, 217.
107. Ibid, pp. 222, 248-9.
108. Ibid, p. 285.
109. Ibid, p. 250.
110. Ibid, p. 266.
111. Ibid, pp. 233-4.
112. Ibid, pp. 355-6.
113. Ibid, p. 370.
114. Ibid, p. 390.
115. Ibid, p. 391.
116. Ibid, p. 508.
117. Ibid, p. 515.
118. Ibid, p. 513.
119. Ibid, p. 515.
120. Ibid, p. 505.
121. Panasiuk, op. cit, pp. 198-9.
122. E. Bauer, Der Streit der Kritik mit Kirche und Staat (Berne, 1844), p. 214.
123. Ibid, p. 204.

124. Ibid, p. 264.
125. Ibid, p. 268.
126. MEW, Vol. II, p. 126.
127. Ibid, p. 138.
128. MEW, Vol. Ill, pp. 5-6.
CHAPTER 4 MARX
1. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2), (Berlin, 1975- )

1/2, p. 376.
2. Ibid, p. 374.
3. MEGA2, 1/2, p. 322.
4. Ibid, p. 389.
5. MEGA2, 1/2, p. 396.
6. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Werke (MEW), Vol. II, p. 138.
7. Ibid, p. 296.
8. MEW, Vol. II, p. 132.
9. MEGA2, 1/2, pp. 275.
10. Ibid, p. 267.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid, p. 377.
13. Ibid, p. 254.
14. Ibid, p. 296.
15. Ibid.
16. The word 'only' here is important. It implies that although Feuerbach
was wrong to conceive human essence entirely in terms as species-
being, this element was nevertheless present.
17. MEW, Vol. Ill, p. 6.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid, p. 7.
20. Ibid, pp. 5-6.
21. Ibid, p. 27.
22. Ibid, p. 402.
23. Ibid, p. 26.
24. Ibid. The metaphor of the camera obscura is used by Ruge and
Echtermeyer, who speak of 'the camera obscura of the Romantic view-
point'. (HallischeJahrbiicher, 1839, No. 270, p. 2157.)
25. Ibid, p. 21.
26. Ibid, pp. 29-30.
27. Ibid, pp. 32-3.
28. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Collected
Works (MECW), Vol. VI, p. 165.
29. Ibid, p. 27.
30. Marx to Lassalle, 12 November 1858, MEW, Vol. XXIX, p. 566.
31. Marx to Lassalle, 22 February 1858, ibid, p. 550.
32. Ibid, p. 551.
33. Ibid, p. 550.
34. F.T. Vischer, Aesthetik oder Wissenschaft des Schonen, 3 vols (Reutlingen,
Leipzig and Stuttgart, 1846-1854).
35. MEGA2 I I / l . l , pp. 151-2.
36. MEGA2 I I / l . l , pp. 320-1.
37. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2269.
38. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 187.
39. Ibid, p. 199.
40. MEGA2 II/3.4, p. 1505.
41. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 42.
42. MEGA2 II/3.4, p. 1302.
43. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 89.
44. K. Marx, Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (Berlin, 1859), p. 7; MEGA2
II/2, p. 107.
45. Here and elsewhere in his writings prior to 1872 Marx regarded the
terms 'value' and 'exchange value' as synonymous. He made this ex-
plicit in the second draft of his 'Critique of Political Economy'. There
he explained: 'If we employ the word value without further designa-
tion, it is always to be understood as exchange value' (MEGA2 II/3.1,
p. 9). In the first edition of Capital there is a note to this effect:
'Hereafter when we use the word "value" without any further qualifi-
cation, what is meant is always exchange value' (Das Kapital, Hamburg,
1867, p. 4; MEGA2 II/5, p. 19). In the second edition of Capital Vol.
I (1872) Marx attached a somewhat different meaning to the term
'value'. He indicated that his earlier statements to the effect that a
commodity was a combination of use value and exchange value were
not stricdy true, since exchange value was the relationship of one
commodity to another, and could not exist in isolation. Consequendy,
what each separate commodity consisted in was a combination of use
value (which could exist by itself) and 'value' - 'the Appearance form
of the commodity distinct from its Natural form' (MEGA2 II/6, p. 92).
46. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 76. My emphasis J.W.
47. Ibid, p. 81.
48. Ibid, p. 147.
49. Ibid, p. 38.
50. Ibid, pp. 134 ff.
51. MEGA2 II/2, p. 164.
52. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 176; II/2, pp. 67-8.
53. MEGA2 II/2, p. 64.
54. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 178.
55. Ibid, p. 414.
56. Ibid.
57. MEGA2 II/1.2, p. 415.
58. In Schelling's system each pair of relative opposites along with the
higher unity in which they found their identity formed a triad whose
members were termed 'powers' or Potenzen. The primary set of Potenzen
was that comprising Reflection, Subsumption and Reason. By this triad,
Schelling incorporated in his system the concept to which the Specu-
lative method owed its existence. Schelling defined Subsumption as
the opposite of Reflection: Just as the first Potenz is the presentation
of Essence in Form, so we designate the one which illuminates Form

and presents it as Essence as the second Potenz. This one is character-
ised by the presentation of Form in Essence by the taking up of the
finite into the infinite, and which, in contrast to the first Potenz, we
shall call Subsumption' (Schelling, Werke Vol. IV, p. 420). Since Marx
regards human Social Nature as the thing to which all else is ulti-
mately Subsumed, and the driving force of human history, he - like
Schelling - sees Subsumption as the counter to Reflection.
59. Ibid, p. 168. See also MEGA2 II/2, p. 60.
60. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 91.
61. MEGA2 II/1.2, p. 438.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid, pp. 320-1.
64. Ibid, p. 323.
65. MEGA2 11/1.2, p. 624.
66. Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie Erstes Heft, Berlin, 1859.
67. MEGA2 II/3.1, pp. 167-8.
68. K. Marx, Zur Kntik der Politischen Oekonomie, p. V; MEGA2 II/2, p. 100.
69. Zur Kritik, p. V; MEGA2 II/2, p. 101.
70. Zur Kritik, p. VI; MEGA2 II/2, p. 101.
71. MEW, Vol. Ill, pp. 24-5.
72. Marx to Engels, 14 June 1853, MEW, Vol. XXVIII, p. 267.
73. MEGA2 I I / l . l , pp. 380-1.
74. MEGA2 I I / l . l , p. 40.
75. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2269.
76. MEGA2 II/1.2, p. 379.
77. Ibid, p. 406.
78. Ibid., pp. 397-8.
79. MEGA2 II/2, p. 101.
80. Zur Kntik, p. 10; MEGA2 II/2, p. 113.
81. Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. XI (Leipzig, 1880), pp. 119-20.
82. A. von Haxthausen, Ueber die Agrarverfassung in Norddeutschland und
deren Conflicte in der gegenwdrtigen Zeit (Berlin, 1829), pp. 50-1.
83. Ibid, p. 188.
84. A. von Haxthausen, Studien uber die inneren Zustdnde, das Volksleben und
insbesondere die landlichen Einrichtungen Russlands, Vol. I (Hannover,
1847), p. XII.
85. Ibid, p. 83; Studien..., Vol. II (Hannover, 1847), pp. 554-5.
86. Haxthausen, Studien. . ., Vol. Ill (Hannover, 1852), p. 3.
87. A.I. Gertsen, Sobranie sochineniy, Vol. II, p. 288.
88. A.I. Gertsen, Sobranie sochineniy, Vol. VII, pp. 274-5.
89. Ibid, pp. 301-2.
90. MEW Vol. XXIX, p. 360.
91. MEGA2 II/5, p. 625.
92. Marx to Engels, 9 December 1861, MEW Vol. XXX, p. 207.
93. MEGA2 II/3.1, pp. 48, 56.
94. Ibid, p. 77.
95. Ibid, pp. 162-90.
96. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2144.
97. MEGA2 II/3.1, p. 286.
98. Ibid, p. 233.
99. MEGA2 II/3.1, p. 286.
100. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2142.
101. Ibid, p. 2144.
102. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2173.
103. Ibid, p. 2180.
104. MEGA2 II/3.5, p. 1862.
105. MEGA2 II/3.4, p. 1499.
106. MEGA2 II/3.6, p. 2299.
107. Marx to Kugelmann, 28 December 1862, MEW, Vol. XXX, p. 639.
108. Marx to Engels, 29 May 1863, MEW, Vol. XXX, p. 350.
109. MEGA2 II/3.5, pp. 1861-2.
110. Arkhiv K. Marksa i F EngeVsa, Vol. II (VII), pp. XIII-XIV.
111. Ibid, p. 466.
112. Ibid, p. 182.
113. Ibid, p. 178.
114. Ibid, p. 184.
115. Ibid, p. 170.
116. V. Vygodsky, L. Mis'kevich, M. Ternovsky, A. Chepurenko, 'O period-
izatsii raboty K. Marksa nad "Kapitalom" v 1863-1867 gg.\ Voprosy
ekonomiki, 1981, No. 8, p. 142; Ocherki po istorii "Kapitala" K. Marksa
(Moscow, 1983), p. 102.
117. Marx to Kugelmann, 13 October 1866, MEW, Vol. XXXI, p. 534.
118. MEW, Vol. XXV, p. 33.
119. MEGA2 II/3.5, p. 186.
120. Ocherki, pp. 151-2.
121. MEGA2 II/4.2, p. 225; V Vygodsky, L. Mis'kevich, M. Ternovsky, A.
Chepurenko, 'O periodizatsii raboty K. Marksa nad "Kapitalom" v 1863-
1867 gg.\ p. 104.
122. A.Yu. Chepurenko, 'Iz istorii vtoroy knigi "Kapitala" Marksa', Ocherki,
pp. 206-48.
123. MEGA2 II/4.1, p. 178.
124. Ibid, p. 178.
125. Ibid, p. 205.
126. Ibid, p. 208.
127. Ibid, p. 163.
128. Ibid, p. 353.
129. Ibid, pp. 172-3.
130. Ibid, pp. 190, 208.
131. Engels to Marx, 16 June 1867, MEW, Vol. XXXI, p. 303.
132. Marx to Engels, 22 June 1867, MEW, Vol. XXXI, p. 306.
133. Das Kapital (Hamburg, 1867), pp. VII-VIII; MEGA2 II/5, pp. 11-12.
134. See MEGA2 II/5, pp. 136, 140, 160.
135. Ibid, p. 136.
136. Ibid, p. 132.
137. Ibid, p. 435.
138. Ibid, p. 143.
139. Ibid, pp. 461-2.
140. Ibid, p. 575.

141. MEGA2 II/4.1, p. 412.
142. MEGA2 II/5, p. 609.
143. Ibid, pp. 609-10.
144. Ibid, p. 12.
145. Marx to Engels, 2 April 1858, MEW, Vol. XXIX, p. 315.
146. V.G. Veber, Istoriograficheskie problemy (Moscow, 1974), pp. 37-41.
147. MEGA2 11/1.2, pp. 387-8.
148. A. Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundations of European Civilisation
(London, 1937), p. 13.
149. Ibid.; Veber, op. cit, p. 45.
150. G. Maurer, Einteitung zur Geschichte der Mark-, Hof, Dorf-, und Stadt-
Verfassung und der bffentlichen Gewalt (Munich, 1854), p. 3.
151. At the time this letter was written the works by Maurer which Marx
had read were Einteitung zur Geschichte der Mark-, Hof, Dorf, und Stadt-
Verfassung und der bffentlichen Gewalt (Munich, 1854) and Geschichte der
Markenverfassung in Deutschland, 2 vols (Erlangen, 1865-66). See H.
Harstick, Karl Marx uberFormen vorkapitalistischer Produktion (Frankfurt/
New York, 1977), p. 246.
152. Their tillage is separate and apart.
153. They do not lay out their villages with the buildings connected and
joined together, as is our custom; each surrounds his dwelling with a
clear strip of land.
154. In clans and kinship groups, which setded together.
155. MEGA 2 11/7 contains a full textual comparison of the second German
edition and the French translation of Capital
156. K Marx, Le Capital, traduction de MJ. Roy, entierement revisee par
l'auteur (Paris, 1872-5), p. 220; MEGA2 II/7, p. 855.
157. Le Capital, p. 315.
158. MEGA2 II/5, p. 576.
159. Le Capital, p. 315; MEGA2 II/7, p. 634.
160. Ibid.
161. K. Marx, Das Kapital, 2nd edn (Hamburg, 1872), p. 822; MEGA2
II/6, p. 709.
CHAPTER 5 MARX AND THE RUSSIANS

1. B.N. Chicherin, Vospominaniya: Moskva sorokovykh godov (Moscow, 1929),
p. 172.
2. 'Pis'mo k izdatelyu', Golosa iz Rossii, Vol. I (London, 1856) (Reprint
Moscow, 1974), p. 23.
3. B.N. Chicherin, 'O krepostnom sostoyanii', Golosa iz Rossii, Vol. II
(London, 1856), p. 177.
4. Ibid, p. 180.
5. Ibid, p. 144; N.A. Tsagolov, Ocherki russkoy ekonomicheskoy mysli perioda
padeniya krepostnogo prava (Moscow, 1956), pp. 282-4.
6. 'Ob osvobozhdenii krest'yan v Rossii', Golosa iz Rossii, Vol. V (London,
1858), p. 49; Tsagolov, op. cit, pp. 220, 225.
7. Quoted in Tsagolov, op. cit, p. 226.

8. Ibid, p. 226.
9. A. Skrebitsky, Krest'yanskoe delo v tsarstvovanie Imperatora Aleksandra II,
Vol. I (Bonn, 1862), pp. I-II.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid, pp. III-IX.
12. B.N. Chicherin, Vospominaniya: Moskovsky universitet (Moscow, 1929),
p. 12.
13. 'Peasant Proprietors', Quarterly Review, Vol. 151, No. 302, 1881, p. 441.
14. Ibid, p. 439.
15. Ibid, p. 437.
16. V.A. Aleksandrov, SeVskaya obshchina v Rossii (XVII-nachalo XIX v.),
(Moscow, 1976), p. 3.
17. B.N. Chicherin, 'Obzor istoricheskogo razvitiya sel'skoy obshchiny v
Rossii', Opyty po istorii russkogo prava (Moscow, 1858), p. 4.
18. B.N. Chicherin, Vospominaniya: Moskva sorokovykh godov, pp. 262-3.
19. Chicherin, 'Obzor . . .', p. 24.
20. V.A. Kitaev, Ot frondy k okhraniteVstvu: Iz istorii russkoy liberaVnoy mysli
50-60 kh godov XIX veka (Moscow, 1972), p. 78.
21. Ibid, p. 78.
22. Chicherin, Vospominaniya: Moskva sorokovykh godov, pp. 264-5.
23. Yu.F. Samarin, Sochineniya, Vol. II (Moscow, 1878), p. 171.
24. Samarin, Sochineniya, Vol. Ill (Moscow, 1885), p. 454.
25. N.G. Chernyshevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol. V, p. 362.
26. Chernyshevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol. IX, p. 155.
27. Ibid, p. 87.
28. Ibid, p. 403.
29. Ibid, p. 403.
30. Arkhiv K. Marksa i F EngeVsa, Vol. XI, p. 178.
31. Ibid, pp. 181-94.
32. K Marks, F. EngeVs i revolyutsionnaya Rossiya [hereafter MERR] (Mos-
cow, 1967), pp. 158-9.
33. B. Nikolaevsky, 'Russkie knigi v bibliotekakh K Marksa i F. Engel'sa',
Arkhiv K. Marksa iF EngeVsa, Vol. IV (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), p. 391.
34. N.G. Chernyshevsky, Izbrannye sochineniya, Vol. II (Moscow-Leningrad,
1937), p. LXIII.
35. Ibid, p. XX.
36. Ibid, p. XV. Marx's emphasis.
37. Ibid, p. XXXIV. Marx's emphasis.
38. Ibid, p. XLVIII.
39. Das Kapital, 2 edn (Hamburg, 1872), pp. 816-17.
40. German Aleksandrovich Lopatin (1845-1918) (Petrograd, 1922), p. 71.
41. MERR, p. 281.
42. Ibid, p. 278.
43. Pis 'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, trans. G.A. Lopatin
(St Petersburg, 1908), p. 1.
44. MERR, p. 158.
45. Ts.I. Grin, Perevodchik i izdateV Kapitala' (Moscow, 1985), pp. 66-9.
46. O.A. Saykin, Pervy russky perevodchik Kapitala' (Moscow, 1983), pp. 14-
20.
47. Marx to Engels, 5 July 1870, Karl Marx Frederick Engels Werke (MEW),
Vol. XXXII, p. 520.
48. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (MECW), Vol. 44, p. 386.
49. V.F. Antonov, Russky drug Marksa (German Aleksandrovich Lopatin)
(Moscow, 1962), p. 37.
50. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikh EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. II.
51. MERR, p. 233.
52. Ibid, p. 240.
53. Details of Sieber's life can be found in L.M. Kleynbort, Nikolay Ivanovich
Ziber (Petrograd, 1923).
54. N.I. Sieber, Teoriya tsennosti i kapitala D. Rikardo v svyazi s pozdneyshimi
dopolneniyami i raz'yasneniyami. Opyt kritiko-ekonomicheskogo issledovaniya
(Kiev, 1871), pp. 10-11.
55. Ibid, p. 13; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Everyman, Vol. I, p. 13.
56. Sieber, op. cit, p. 3.
57. Ibid, p. 52.
58. Ibid, p. 261.
59. Ibid, pp. 169-70.
60. Das Kapital, 2 edn (Hamburg, 1872), pp. 818-19.
61. MERR, pp. 278-9.
62. Das Kapital, 2 edn (Hamburg, 1872), p. 818.
63. MEW, Vol. 19, p. 358.
64. MERR, p. 311.
65. N.I. Sieber, David Rikardo i Karl Marks v ikh obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskikh
issledovaniyakh (Moscow, 1937), p. II.
66. Letopisi marksizma, 1927, No. IV, p. 61.
67. Yu. Zhukovsky, 'Karl Marks i ego kniga o kapitale', Vestnik Evropy,
Vol. V, 1877, pp. 67-72.
68. Ibid, pp. 75-7.
69. Ibid, p. 103.
70. Ibid, pp. 103-4.
71. N.I. Sieber, Izbrannye ekonomicheskieproizvedeniya, Vol. I (Moscow, 1959),
p. 562.
72. Ibid, p. 564.
73. Ibid, p. 568.
74. Ibid, pp. 583-4.
75. Marx to Danielson, 15 November 1878, Letters of Marx and Engels.
Presented by N.F. Danielson. The British Library, Department of Manu-
scripts; MECW, Vol. 45, p. 343; Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikh EngeVsa
k Nikolayu-onu, p. 16; MERR, p. 352.
76. N.K. Mikhailovsky, 'Karl Marks pered sudom g. Yu. Zhukovskogo',
Otechestvennye zapiski, No. X, 1877, pp. 322-4.
77. Ibid, pp. 325-6.
78. Ibid, p. 326.
79. 'Lettre sur le Developpement Economique de la Russie', Le mouvement
socialiste, Vol. VII, No. 93, 1902, p. 970; MECW, Vol. 24, p. 199.
80. 'Lettre sur le Developpement Economique de la Russie', p. 971; MECW,
Vol. 24, p. 199.
81. 'Lettre sur le Developpement Economique de la Russie', p. 971; MECW,
Vol. 24, p. 200.
82. Ibid, pp. 200-1; 'Lettre sur le Developpement Economique de la

Russie', pp. 971-2.
83. Ocherkipo istorii Kapitala'K. Marksa (Moscow, 1983), pp. 336-7; Pis'ma
Karla Marksa i Fridrikh EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. 113.
84. Danielson to N.A. Kablukov in Moscow, 4 June 1888, Ocherki po istorii
Kapitala' K. Marksa, p. 366.
85. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikh EngeVsa k Nikolay-onu, p. 114.
86. Ts.I. Grin, op. cit, p. 132.
87. MERR, p. 339.
88. N.K Mikhaylovsky, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol. VII (St Petersburg,
1909), p. 327.
89. Russkie knigi v bibliotekakh K Marksa i F. EngeVsa (Moscow, 1979), p.
XVII; Karl Marks Fridrikh Engel's Sobranie sochineniy, Vol. L, pp. 375-81.
90. MERR, p. 339.
91. Marx to Danielson 22 March 1873, Letters of Marx and Engels, British
Library Department of Manuscripts.
92. Copy in International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (IISG).
93. Nikolaevsky, op. cit, p. 403.
94. Ibid, pp. 407-10; Russkie knigi v bibliotekakh K Marksa i F. EngeVsa,
pp. 34-5.
95. Arkhiv K. Marksa i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XII, p. 163.
96. K.D. Kavelin, 'Obshchinnoe vladenie'. Offprint from Nedelya, Nos.
3-7, 1876. Marx's copy in IISG, p. 4 (Marx's emphasis).
97. Arkhiv K Marksa i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XI, pp. 18-20.
98. Arkhiv K Marksa i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XII, p. 5.
99. A. von Haxthausen, Die Idndliche Verfassung Russlands (Leipzig, 1866).
100. A.I. Skrebitsky, Krest'yanskoe delo v tsarstvovanie Aleksandra II, 4 vols
(Bonn, 1862-8).
101. R. Stupperich, Jurij Samarin und die Anfdnge der Bauerbefreiung in Russland,
2nd edn (Wiesbaden, 1969), pp. 41-2, 102.
102. Skrebitsky, op. cit. Vol. I, p. A; Haxthausen, Die Idndliche Verfassung
Rufilands (Leipzig, 1866), p. VI; R.P. Konyushaya, Karl Marks i
revolyutsionnaya Rossiya (Moscow, 1985), p. 103.
103. Arkhiv K Marksa i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XII (Moscow, 1952), p. 3.
104. Skrebitsky, op. cit, pp. LXXXVIII, XCVIII.
105. Arkhiv K Marksa i F EngeVsa, Vol. XII, p. 4.
106. MERR, p. 25.
107. Ibid.
108. N. Flerovsky, Polozhenie rabochego klassa v Rossii (St Petersburg, 1869),
p. 45.
109. Ibid, p. 46.
110. Ibid, p. 48.
111. Ibid, pp. 82-4.
112. Ibid, p. 79.
113. Ibid, p. 303.
114. Ibid, p. 58.
115. Marx to Engels, 12 February 1870, MEW, Vol. XXXII, p. 443.
116. Russkie knigi v bibliotekakh K Marksa i F. EngeVsa, p. 29.
117. MERR, p. 324.
118. Arkhiv K Marksa i F EngeVsa, Vol. XVI, p. 8.

119. Ibid, p. 45.
120. Ibid.
122. Ibid, pp. 140-1.
123. Arkhiv K. Marksa i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XI, p. 54.
124. Ibid, p. 113.
125. Ibid, p. 107.
127. Ibid, p. 80.
128. Briefe uber Das Kapital', p. 256; MERR, p. 437.
129. Nikolay-on (N.F. Daniel'son), 'Ocherki nashego poreformennogo
obshchestvennogo khozyaystva', Slovo, October 1880, p. 79.
130. Ibid, p. 80.
131. Ibid, p. 85.
132. Ibid, p. 96.
133. Ibid, p. 103.
134. Arkhiv K. Marks i F. EngeVsa, Vol. XII, pp. 23-5.
135. Ibid, pp. 25-8.
136. Konyushaya, Karl Marks i revolyutsionnaya Rossiya, pp. 156, 177, 180,
215, 234, 240, 242, 243-4.
137. N.K. Karataev (ed.), Narodnicheskaya ekonomicheskaya literatura (Mos-
cow, 1958), pp. 475-81.
138. Ibid, p. 472.
139. N.I. Sieber, Izbrannye ekonomicheskie proizvedeniya, Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1959),
p. 673.
140. M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Moya zhizn', Istoriya i istoriki. Istoriografichesky ezhegodnik
1973 (Moscow, 1975), p. 277.
141. Ocherk istorii raspadeniya obshchinnogo zemlevladeniya v kantone Vaadt (Lon-
don, 1876); Umriss einer Geschichte der Zerstuckelung der Feldgemeinschaft
im Kanton Waadt (Zurich, 1877).
142. Ocherk istorii raspadeniya obshchinnogo zemlevladeniya v kantone Vaadt,
p. I.
143. I. Ivanovsky, M.M. Kovalevsky (Petrograd, 1916), p. 7; B.A. Kaloev M.M.
Kovalevsky i ego issledovaniya gorskikh narodov Kavkaza (Moscow, 1979),
p. 10.
144. M.M. Kovalevsky, Obshchinnoe zemlevladenie, prichiny, khod i posledstviya
ego razlozheniya (Moscow, 1879).
145. M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Moe nauchnoe i literaturnoe skital'chestvo', Russkaya
mysl', No. 1, 1895, p. 71.
146. A.P. Kazakov, Teoriya progressa v russkoy sotsiologii kontsa XIX veka
(Moscow, 1979), p. 100.
147. M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Dve zhizni', Vestnik Evropy, No. 7, 1909, p. 19.
148. Karl Marks Fridrikh Engel's Sobranie sochineniy, Vol. L, pp. 379-80.
149. Ivanovsky, op. cit, p. 12.
150. B.N. Chicherin, Vospominaniya, pp. 69-71; Kaloev, op. cit, p. 14.
151. Maksim Kovalevsky 1851-1916. Sbornik statey (Petrograd, 1918), p. 17.
152. MECW, Vol. 45, p. 409; M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Dve zhizni', Vestnik Evropy,
No. 7, 1909, p. 11.
153. Kovalevsky, Obshchinnoe zemlevladenie, p. III.

154. Ibid, pp. VI-V1I.
155. Ibid, pp. 29-30.
156. Ibid, pp. 27-32.
157. Ibid, p. 34.
158. Ibid, p. 27.
159. Ibid, p. 75.
160. Obshchinnoe zemlevladenie, pp. 85-7.
161. Ibid, p. 81.
162. M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Le passage historique de la propriete collective a la
propriete individuelle', Annales de Vlnstitut International de Sociologie,
Vol. II, Paris, 1896, p. 181.
163. Obshchinnoe zemlevladenie, pp. 129, 132.
164. Ibid, p. 149.
165. Ibid, p. 153.
166. Ibid, p. 153.
167. See his Sovremenny obychay i drevniy zakon, Vol. I (Moscow, 1886), p. 32;
Ekonomichesky rost Evropy do vozniknoveniya kapitalisticheskogo khozyaystva,
Vol. I (Moscow 1898), pp. 384-6.
168. H.-P. Harstick, Karl Marx uber Formen vorkapitalistischer Produktion:
Vergleichende Studien zur Geschichte des Grundeigentums 1879-80 (Frank-
furt/New York, 1977), p. 76.
169. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2) 1/2, p. 230.
170. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Marx-Engels-
Nachlass B 134, p. 21; Harstick, op. cit, p. 150.
171. Adam Muller, Ausgewdhlte Abhandlungen, ed. Jakob Baxa (Jena 1921),
pp. 104-5, 122.
172. Kovalevsky, op. cit, p. 136.
173. Harstick, op. cit, p. 69.
174. D. Rjazanow, 'Vera Zasulic und Karl Marx', Marx-Engels Archiv, Vol. I
(Frankfurt am Main, 1926), p. 324.
176. Ibid, pp. 163-6.
177. Ibid, pp. 193-4.
178. Ibid, p. 184.
181. Ibid, p. 225.
183. Kovalevsky to Lavrov, July 1844, Russkie sovremenniki o K Markse i F.
Engel'se, p. 206.
184. L. Bazylow, Ostatnie lata Rosji carskiej: Rzqdy Stolypina (Warsaw, 1972),
pp. 219, 284.
186. Rjazanow, 'Vera Zasulic und Karl Marx', p. 322.
187. K. Marx, Ethnological Notebooks, ed. L. Krader (Assen, 1975), p. 139.
Marx's emphasis.
188. N.I. Sieber, Izbrannye ekonomicheskie proizvedeniya, Vol. 2 (Moscow, 1959),
p. 206.
189. Russkie sovremenniki o K. Markse i F. Engel'se, p. 78.
190. MECW, Vol. 46, p. 64.
191. M.M. Kovalevsky, Sovremennye sotsiologi (St Petersburg, 1905), p. 308.
192. Rjazanov, 'Vera Zasulic und Karl Marx', pp. 34 1-2; MECW, Vol. 46,
p. 72.
193. Rjazanov, pp. 320, 336; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 350, 366.
194. Rjazanov, pp. 320, 326; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 350, 353-4.
195. Rjazanov, pp. 332, 336, 320; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 363, 366, 350.
197. Rjazanov, pp. 321, 333, 337; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 351, 363, 367.
198. Rjazanov, p. 321; MECW, Vol. 24, p. 351.
200. Rjazanov, op. cit, p. 333; MECW, Vol. 24, p. 363.
205. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969),
pp. 498-9.
206. Rjazanov, op. cit, p. 327; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 354-5.
208. Rjazanov, p. 327; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 354-5.
209. Rjazanov, pp. 328-9; MECW, Vol. 24, p. 364.
214. Rjazanov, p. 323; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 352-3.
CHAPTER 6 ENGELS
1. P. Lafargue, 'Personliche Errinnerungen an Friedrich Engels', Die neue

Zeit, Vol. XXIII/2, p. 560. See also Engels's letter to F.A. Sorge of 29
June 1883, Karl Marx Frederick Engels Werke (MEW), Vol. XXXVI, p. 46.
2. Pis 'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, trans. G.A. Lopatin
(St Petersburg, 1908), p. V.
3. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Vol. 47, p. 88.
4. Russkie sovremenniki o K Markse i F. Engel'se, p. 206.
5. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. V.
6. Ocherki po istorii Kapitala' K. Marksa (Moscow, 1983), p. 363.
7. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. V.
8. MEW, Vol. XXV, p. 14.
9. Engels to Bebel, 30 August 1883, MEW, Vol. XXXVI, p. 56.
10. Friederich Engels, Der Ursprung derFamilie, des Privateigenthums und des
Staats, Vierte Auflage (Stuttgart, 1892), p. VII.
11. H.-P. Harstick, Karl Marx uber Formen vorkapitalistischer Produktion:

Vergleichende Studien zur Geschichte des Grundeigentums 1879-80 (Frank-
furt/New York, 1977), p. XLVIII.
12. Ibid.
13. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 108-9.
14. MEW, Vol. XIII, p. 469.
15. Ibid, p. 511.
16. Marx interpreted Darwin in his own terms: 'It is notable that Darwin
recognises among the beasts and plants his own English society with
its divisions of labour, competition, opening of new markets, "inven-
tions" and Malthusian "struggle for existence". This is Hobbes's bellum
omnium contra omnes, and it reminds one of Hegel in his Phenomenol-
ogy, where civil society appears as a "spiritual animal kingdom", while
the animal kingdom appears to Darwin as civil society. ..' Marx to
Engels, 18 June 1862, Briefe uber Das Kapital', p. 105.
17. F. Engels, Herrn Eugen Dixhring's Umwalzung der Wissenschaft, 2nd edn
(Zurich, 1886), pp. 9-10.
18. Ibid, p. 6.
19. Anti-Diihring, p. 133.
20. F. Engels, Dialektik der Natur, MEGA2 1/26, p. 175.
21. Anti-Diihring, p. 11.
22. F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen
Philosophie (Stuttgart, 1888), p. 17.
23. Ibid, p. 43.
24. Ibid, p. 11.
25. Ibid, p. 12.
26. Ibid, p. 25.
27. P.N. Tkachev, Sochineniya, Vol. II (Moscow, 1976), pp. 18-23.
28. Filozofia spoieczna narodnictwa rosyjskiego: Wybor pism, ed. A. Walicki,
Vol. II (Warsaw, 1965), pp. 496-500.
29. MERR, p. 65; MECW, Vol. 24, pp. 42-3.
30. MERR, p. 70; MECW, Vol. 24, p. 48.
31. Ibid, MERR, p. 70.
32. I.N. Kurbatova, Nachalo rasprostraneniya marksizma v Rossii (Moscow,
1983), p. 35.
33. MEW, Vol. XIX, p. 296.
34. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. 114; Ts.I. Grin,
Perevodchik i izdatel' Kapitala' (Moscow, 1985), p. 133.
35. MERR, pp. 500, 504.
36. Ibid, p. 765.
37. Vestnik Narodnoy Voli, No. 5, 1886, p. 214.
38. Pis'ma Karla Marksa i Fridrikha EngeVsa k Nikolayu-onu, p. XIII.
39. Ibid, p. VI.
40. Danielson to Engels, March 1892, MERR, p. 601.
41. MEW, Vol. XXIV, p. 318.
42. Danielson to Engels 7 July 1892, MERR, p. 619; Karataev, op. cit,
p. 569.
43. Engels to Danielson, 15 March 1892, Briefe uber Kapital', p. 339; MERR,
p. 600.
44. Engels to Danielson, 22 September 1892, Briefe uber Das Kapital',

p. 354, original in English; MERR, p. 625.
45. Engels to Danielson, 24 February 1893, MERR, p. 645.
CHAPTER 7 PLEKHANOV
1. G.V. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, ed. D. Ryazanov, 24 vols (Moscow, 1923-
27), Vol. Ill, p. 129.
2. P.N. Tkachev, Sochineniya, Vol. I (Moscow, 1975), p. 100.
3. E. Serebryakov, 'Obshchestvo "Zemlya i Volya"', Materialy dlya Istorii
Russkogo Sotsial'no-Revolyutsionnago dvizheniya, Vol. XI (Geneva, 1894),
p. 26.
4. S.H. Baron, Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford, 1963),
p. 50; Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, trans. E. Fitzgerald
(Michigan, 1962), p. 404.
5. Engels to T. Cuno, 24 January 1872, Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected
Works, Vol. 44, pp. 306-7; Michael Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (Cam-
bridge, 1990), esp. pp. 198-217.
6. V. Bogucharsky, Aktivnoe narodnichestvo semidesyatykh godov (Moscow,
1912), p. 85.
7. Zemlya i Volya, 25 October 1878, Revolyutsionnaya zhurnalistika semi-
desyatykh godov XIX veka (Rostov-on-Don, n.d.), p. 70.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid, p. 72.
10. K Sivkov, 'Deystvitel'nye raznoglasiya mezhdu gruppoy "Osvobozh-
deniye truda" i partiey "narodnaya volya"', L. Deutsch (ed.), Gruppa
'Osvobozhdenie Truda', Vol. V (Moscow, 1926), pp. 2 3 - 4 .
11. Serebryakov, op. cit, p. 9; Iz programmnykh statey (Chernogo Peredela'
(Geneva, 1903), p. 3; O.V. Aptekman, 'Cherny Peredel', Pamyatniki
agitatisionnoy literatury, Vol. I (Moscow-Petrograd, 1923), p. 99.
12. Revolyutsionnaya zhurnalistika, p. 147.
13. N.I. Sieber, David Rikardo i Karl Marks v ikh obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskikh
issledovaniyakh (St Petersburg, 1897), p. 395.
14. Ibid, p. 396.
16. G.V. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. I, p. 82.
17. Ibid, p. 87.
19. Quoted in M.G. Sedov, Geroichesky period revolyutsionnogo narodnichestva
(Moscow, 1966), p. 71.
20. MERR, pp. 353-4.
21. G.V. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. I, pp. 114, 116.
22. Literatura sotsial'no-revolyutsionnoy partii 'Narodnoy voli' (1905), p. 7.
23. Ibid, pp. 78-9.
24. Ibid, p. 80.
25. Ibid, p. 337.
26. Ibid, p. 338.
27. Ibid, p. 338.
28. Ibid, p. 338; Karl Marx Frederick Engels Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 223.
29. V.A. Tvardovskaya, 'G.V. Plekhanov i "Narodnaya volya" (K probleme
krizisa narodnicheskogo mirovozzreniya)', V.A. Laverychev (ed.),
Gruppa 'Osvobozhdenie truda' i obshchestvennfrpoliticheskaya bor'ba v Rossii
(Moscow, 1984), p. 101.
30. Tvardovskaya, op. cit, p. 95.
31. W. Geierhos, Vera Zasulic und die russische revolutiondre Bewegung
(Munich-Vienna, 1977), p. 135.
32. MERR, p. 457.
33. Geierhios, op. cit, p. 248.
34. Literatura sotsial'no-revolyutsionnoy partii Narodnoy voli', p. 558.
35. MERR, p. 504.
36. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. I, p. 151.
37. Manifest kommunisticheskoy partii Karla Marksa i Fr. EngeVsa (Geneva,
1882), p. 48.
38. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. I, p. 151.
39. It is significant that Plekhanov did not accept Zasulich's translation of
the crucial final sentence in the foreword. Zasulich had accurately
translated it as: 'If the Russian revolution becomes the signal for a
proletarian revolution in the West, so that the two complement each
other, the present Russian communal {obshchinnoe for Gemein-) owner-
ship of land may serve as the starting-point for a communist develop-
ment' {Literatura sotsial'no-revolyutsionnoy partii 'Narodnoy voli', p. 558).
Plekhanov's rendering was: 'If the Russian revolution becomes the
signal for a workers' revolution in the West, so that the one supple-
ments the other, the present Russian ownership of land may serve as
the starting-point for a communist development' {Manifest kommuni-
sticheskoy partii Karla Marksa i Fr. EngeVsa (Geneva, 1882), p. VIII).
Plekhanov had omitted the important word 'communal' or 'common'.
40. Russkie sovremenniki o K Markse i F. Engel'se, pp. 193-4.
41. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. II, p. 48.
42. Ibid, p. 27.
43. Ibid, p. 39.
44. Ibid, p. 71.
45. Ibid, p. 48.
46. Ibid, pp. 52-3.
47. Ibid, p. 41.
48. L. Tikhomirov, 'Chto nam zhdat' ot revolyutsii?', Vestnik Narodnoy Voli,
No. 2, 1884, p. 228.
49. Ibid, p. 235.
50. Ibid, p. 240.
51. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. II, p. 306.
52. Ibid, p. 234.
53. Ibid, p. 41.
54. Ibid, p. 152.
55. Vestnik Narodnoy Voli, 1886, No. 5, p. 40.
56. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. Ill, p. 3.
57. Ibid, p. 82.
58. G. Plekhanov, Novy zashchitnik samoderzhaviya (Geneva, 1889), p. 3.
59. Ibid, p. 10.
60. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XI, p. 219.
61. Hegel illustrates this passage by the example of a State which collapses
when the number of its citizens exceeded a certain number. The
example given to illustrate the term the 'Cunning of the Concept' is
a State which collapses when its territory exceeds a certain area.
Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XXI, p. 332.
62. See GegeV i filosofiya v Rossii (Moscow, 1974), p. 235.
63. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. VII, p. 34.
64. Ibid, p. 36.
65. Ibid, p. 40.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid, p. 44.
69. Ibid, pp. 51-2.
70. Ibid, p. 50.
71. Ibid, p. 47.
72. MERR, pp. 648-9.
73. K. Kautsky, 'Der franzosische Materialismus des 18. Jahrhunderts von
Karl Marx', Die Neue Zeit, Jahrgang III, p. 385.
74. F. Engel's, Lyudvig Feyerbakh, trans. G. Plekhanov (Geneva, 1892),
p. 90; Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. VIII, p. 376.
75. N.K. Mikhaylovsky, Sochineniya, Vol. I, p. 379.
76. Ibid, p. 439.
77. Ibid, p. 329.
78. Ibid, p. 32.
79. Ibid, p. 35.
80. Ibid, p. 150.
81. Ibid, pp. 170, 183, 426.
82. P.L. Lavrov, Filosofiya i sotsiologiya, Vol. I (Moscow, 1965), pp. 43-461.
83. Ibid, pp. 575-634, esp. pp. 592, 619, 631.
84. P.L. Lavrov, Filosofiya i sotsiologiya, Vol. II, p. 46.
85. Filozofia spoieczna narodnictwa rosyjskiego: Wybor pism, ed. Andrzej Walicki,
Vol. I (Warsaw, 1965), pp. 170-2.
86. P.L. Lavrov, Filosofiya i sotsiologiya, Vol. II, p. 122.
87. Filosofsko-lieraturnoe nasledie G.V Plekhanova, Vol. II (Moscow, 1973),
p. 147.
88. A. Voden, 'Na zare "legal'nogo marksizma": (Iz vospominaniy)', Letopisi
marksizma, No. 4, 1927, pp. 94-5.
89. Ibid, p. 91.
90. Ibid, p. 93.
91. Ibid, pp. 91-2.
92. MERR, p. 722.
93. A. Voden, 'Na zare "legal'nogo marksizma": (Iz vospominaniy)', Letopisi
marksizma, No. 4, 1927, p. 113.
94. Ibid, p. 115.
95. Ibid, p. 121.
96. Engels to Plekhanov, 26 February 1895, Briefe iiber Das Kapital', p. 369;
MERR, p. 722. Original in French.
97. Fridrikh Engel's o Rossii, 1) Otvet P.N. Tkachevu (1875) 2) Posleslovie

k nemu, Perevod s nemetskogo V. Zasulich (Geneva, 1894); Kurbatova,
op. cit, p. 64.
98. Fridrikh Engel's o Rossii, pp. III-IV; Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. IX,
pp. 30-1.
99. Mikhaylovsky, Sochineniya, Vol. VII, p. 327.
100. Ibid, p. 729.
101. Ibid, pp. 323-4.
102. Ibid, p. 765.
103. M.M. Kovalevsky, 'Dve zhizni', Vestnik Evropy, No. 7, 1909, p. 10.
104. Mikhaylovsky, op. cit, p. 327.
105. Ibid, pp. 772, 896, 759-60.
106. Ibid, p. 771.
107. Ibid, p. 734.
108. Ibid, p. 735.
109. Ibid, p. 736.
110. Ibid, p. 731.
111. Ibid, pp. 727, 773.
112. Ibid, pp. 765, 897-8.
113. Ibid, pp. 675, 677-8.
114. Ibid, p. 672.
115. Ibid, p. 683.
116. Kurbatova, op. cit, p. 133.
117. Literaturnoe nasledie G.V. Plekhanova, Vol. IV, p. 3.
118. Ibid, pp. 29-32.
120. Ibid, p. 156.
121. Ibid, p. 95.
122. Plekhanov, Sochineniya, Vol. VI, pp. 75, 109, 114.
124. Ibid, p. 140.
125. Ibid, p. 160.
126. See K. Timeryazev, 'Darwin and Marx', in D. Ryazanoff, Karl Marx:
Man, Thinker and Revolutionist (London, 1927), pp. 163-75.
128. Ibid, p. 208.
129. Ibid, p. 163.
130. Ibid, p. 160.
131. MEW, Vol. XXIII, p. 192. There is a corresponding passage in the first
draft of the 'Critique of Political Economy' which reads as follows: 'In
the act of reproduction itself not only are the objective conditions
changed e.g. the village becomes a town, the wilderness a cleared field
etc, but the producers change too, in that they bring out new quali-
ties from within themselves, develop through production new powers
and ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language'
(MEGA2 II/1.2, p. 398). Here it is clearer that the qualities in people
brought out by the changes in production had been there in the first
place.
132. Ibid, pp. 263-4.
133. Ibid, p. 298; N.I. Sieber, Sobranie sochineniy, Vol. II (St Petersburg,
1900), p. 718.
134. Plekhanov, op. cit, pp. 298-9; Sieber, op. cit, p. 718.
135. Plekhanov, op. cit, p. 299.
136. P. Orlovsky [V.V. Vorovsky], K istorii marksizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1919),
pp. 15-16; A.L. Ruel', 'Ziber kak ekonomist', in N.I. Sieber, David
Rikardo i Karl Marks v ikh obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskikh issledovaniyakh
(Moscow, 1937), p. LII; N.A. Tsagolov, 'Vydayushchiysya russky ekono-
mist N.I. Ziber', N.I. Sieber, Izbrannye ekonomicheskie proizvedeniya, Vol.
I (Moscow, 1959), p. 21.
CHAPTER 8 STRUVE
1. R. Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Left, 1870-1905 (Cambridge, Mass, 1970),

p. 76.
2. Ibid, p. 59.
3. P. von Struve, 'Zur Beurtheilung der kapitalistischen Entwickelung
Russlands', Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt, No. 1, 1893, pp. 2-3; Pipes, op.
cit, pp. 91-2. In fact, by the First World War, Russia's agrarian popu-
lation was still above 80% It was only in the 1950s that the urban
population of the Soviet Union rose above the 40% mark. See Russky
kalendar' na 1916 g (Petrograd, 1916), p. 84; D. Lane, Politics and
Society in the USSR, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1978), p. 592.
4. See Struve, 'Zur Beurtheilung . . .', p. 1.
5. P. Struve, Kriticheskie zametki ob ekonomicheskoy razvitii Rossii (St Petersburg,
1894), p. 2.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid, p. 166.
8. Ibid, p. 132.
9. V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol. I, p. 82.
10. P. Struve, Kritecheskie zametki, p. 44.
11. Ibid, p. 45.
12. Ibid, p. 42.
13. Ibid, p. 180.
14. See, for example, P. Nikolaev, Aktivny progress i ekonomichesky materializm
(Moscow, 1892), p. 129; M.V Nechkina, Russkaya istoriya v osveshchenii
ekonomicheskogo materializma (Kazan', 1922), p. 26.
15. Ibid, p. 46.
16. N. Valentinov (Volsky), Encounters with Lenin (London, 1968), p. 226.
17. A.V. Lunacharsky, Vospominaniya i vpechatleniya (Moscow, 1968), p. 26.
18. Tekushchiy moment (Moscow, 1906), p. 3.
19. Literaturnoe nasledie G.V. Plekhanova, Vol. IV, p. 288.
20. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy, Vol. I, p. 609.
21. Ibid, p. 149.
22. Ibid, p. 165.
23. Ibid, p. 195.
24. Ibid, p. 198.
25. Ibid, p. 283.
Notes to Chapter 8
Ibid, p. 281.
Ibid, pp. 203-4.
M.I. Brusnev, 'Pervye revolyutsionnye shagi L. Krasina', Leonid Borisovich
Krasin ('Nikitich'). Gody podpol'ya. Sbornik vospominaniy, statey i dokumentov
(Moscow-Leningrad, 1928), p. 69.
V. Zasulich, Ocherki istorii Mezhdunarodnago Obshchestva Rabochikh
(Geneva, 1889), pp. 7-9.
The principle of workers' self-sufficiency and their independence of
the intelligentsia was elaborated in the work of the Russian socialist
philosopher Alexander Bogdanov. See J.D. White, 'From Marx to
Bogdanov', Co-Existence, October 1978, pp. 187-206.
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von Halter, Berne, 1981.
Woehrlin, William F, Chernyshevsky: The Man and the Journalist, Cambridge,
Mass, 1971.
Wood, Allen W , Karl Marx, London, 1981.
Zamyatin, V.N, Ekonomicheskie vzglyady N.G. Chernyshevskogo, Moscow, 1951.
Zayonchkovsky, P.A, Otmena krepostnogo prav a v Rossii, 2nd edn, Moscow,
1968.
Index
Absolute Bagehot, Walter 259
in Fichte 30, 34 Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich 9,
in Hegel 71, 76-7, 79, 87, 9 2 - 3 , 227, 260, 290, 296, 298, 311, 337
115, 124, 131-2 Bancroft, Hubert 284
in Schelling 30, 34, 36, 40, 43, 50, Base and Superstructure 173, 201,
182 297-8, 312, 323-5, 340, 345, 347,
Abstraction 32-4, 57, 59, 106-7, 119, 361
129, 142-8, 151-3, 155-6, 160, Bauer, Bruno 5, 6, 9, 13, 21, 26, 102,
163-4, 166-8, 181-2, 193-5, 197, 109, 110-11, 114, 126, 134-5, 137,
199, 203, 207, 288, 324, 360, 362, 140-3
366 Bauer, Edgar 140-3
in Feuerbach 130-2, 139 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 109
in Hegel 71, 73, 74, 81, 87, 96, 129 Bebel, August 283
in Marx 123-4 Becoming 40, 74, 78, 93, 129
in Schelling 34, 35, 40, 58, 72, 74, Being 40, 72-4, 78-9, 81, 93, 118,
79 132, 320-1
Actuality 73, 76, 79, 85-6, 89-90, 92, Belinsky, Vissarion Grigor'evich 341
95-7, 321-2 Belyaev, Ivan Dmitrivich 218
Adequacy Bervi, Vasily Vasil'evich 247-9
in Hegel 72, 75, 78, 94, 96, Black Repartition 304, 306-8, 310-11,
in Marx 150, 168, 185 314, 316
Agassiz, Jean 284 Bohme, Jakob 106
Akselrod, Pavel Borisovich 307-8 Boisguillebert, Pierre 249
Alexander I 63 Botkin, V.P. 341
Alexander II 212, 214-15, 223, 246, Brazill, William 8, 9
303 Brentano, Clemens 62, 115, 120
Algeria 270 Brusnev, M.I. 356
Alienation {die Entfremdung) 14, 16, Burschenschaften 62-3, 101, 113, 116
134, 371
in Feuerbach 130-2 Caesar, Julius 206
in Marx 124, 146-7, 154, 156, 160, Capital 23-4, 159-60, 162, 167-72,
168, 176, 187, 190, 199, 267, 182, 184, 186-9, 191, 194-5, 199,
359-60 202-3, 222, 225, 228, 232, 237,
in Steffens 14, 49 251, 278, 346
Altenstein, Karl von 117, 125 constant and variable 171-2, 182,
Anderson, James 187 184, 189
Anti-Diihring 286, 312, 320, 338-40, Capital 23-4, 152, 158-9, 161, 172,
348-9, 364 180, 189-91, 193, 196-204,
Appearance 14, 37, 82, 88, 123, 197, 207-11, 225, 227-9, 232-5,
380 237-43, 249, 258-61, 274,
Aristotle 13, 97 279-84, 289, 293-4, 300-1, 307,
Arnim, Achim von 62, 115, 120 309, 313, 330, 333, 336-7, 339-40,
Asiatic Society 174-5, 183, 267 342-3, 345, 348, 351-2, 362,
Atomism 41, 42, 65, 122, 124, 142 364-5, 380
Categories 3, 19, 23, 67
Baader, Franz Xaver 65, 106 of philosophy 3, 19, 23, 50, 56-7,
Babeuf, Gracchus 7 68, 71, 74-5, 79-80, 92, 94, 114,
Bachofen, Johann Jacob 272, 284 129-30, 133, 135
408
Index 409
Categories - continued Condillac, Etienne 142
of political economy 139, 145-7, Congress of Vienna 35, 62, 63, 66
150, 154-6, 158, 160, 163, 166, Contingency 16, 73, 78, 120
171, 175, 181-2, 196, 198-9, Contribution to the Critique of Political
207, 232, 235, 285, 358-60 Economy 166, 172-3, 176-7,
Catholicism 44, 48-9, 66-7, 87-8, 180-1, 186, 188, 191, 197,
100, 112-13, 116-17, 119-20, 125, 199-200, 232, 275, 284, 287, 289,
127, 133, 136 297, 342, 352, 361, 364
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Gavrilovich Cornu, August 8-9
211, 220-6, 228, 230, 240, 246, Cornwallis, Charles 268
272, 318, 335, 345, 354, 363 Corporations 86-7
Chicherin, Boris Nikolaevich 212-13, Creuzer, Friedrich 59, 120, 124
215, 217-19, 238, 244-5, 262, 265 Critique of Political Economy, A 23-5,
Christian State 61, 133-5, 137, 141 51, 189-90, 153, 155, 158-60, 186,
Christianity 60, 64, 83, 97, 99, 104, 358-9, 362, 364
106, 110-11, 133-4 First draft of 162, 163, 170-2, 175,
Christology 57, 117, 119 190, 194, 196, 204, 279, 394
Chuprov, Aleksandr Ivanovich 262, Second draft of 170, 172, 180-8,
281-2, 292 190, 196, 199-200
Cieszkowski, August 5-11, 13, 15, 18, Third draft of 188
21, 93 Critique ofJudgement 29
Circulation of capital 166-8, 170, Critique of Practical Reason 29
172, 176, 181, 187-8, 190, 192, Critique of Pure Reason 29, 32, 37
194-5, 199, 202, 232, 247, 251, Crystallization 42, 359-60
253, 255-7, 278-80, 294, 339, in Marx 171, 187, 199, 253
361-2, 364-5 in Schelling 42
Civil Society 51 Cunning of Reason/of the Concept
in Hegel 46, 65-6, 83-6, 88-9, 94, 77, 89, 96, 141
97, 100, 127, 136-8 Cuvier, Georges 206
in Marx 146-8, 162, 165-7, 169,
184, 196, 199, 360, 390 D'Alembert, Jean 42
Clairvoyante of Prevorst 104 Danielson, Nikolay Frantsevich 224,
Commodity 149, 159-60, 162-7, 226-9, 233-4, 238, 242-5, 247,
169-72, 181-2, 183-4, 186, 249-50, 253-7, 262, 271, 273, 281,
189-90, 192-200, 232, 255, 294, 292-6, 305, 317, 334-6, 345, 350,
359, 380 365
fetishism 197, 199 Darwin, Charles 41, 285, 288, 328,
Communism 142, 147-9, 316, 360, 392 331, 346, 349, 350, 390
Communist Manifesto 284, 292, 295, Daub, Karl 104
308-10, 313, 335-6, 352, 357, Deich, Lev 307
364-5, 392 Delyanov, Ivan Davydovich 262
Competition 139-40, 171-2, 192 Democritus 123
Comte, Auguste 259, 300, 328, 330 Descartes, Rene 30
Concept {der Begriff) x, 4, 32, 35, 37, Despotism 53, 63-6, 97, 174-5, 267,
42, 50-2, 57-60, 70, 107, 111, 114, 279, 314
120, 123-4, 128-36, 146, 153, 160, Deutsche Jahrbucher 114, 126, 130, 133,
168-70, 172, 187, 285, 321-2, 359 135, 150, 187
in Feuerbach 132 Deutsche-Franzosische Jahrbucher 137,
in Hegel 4, 35-6, 70-84, 87-8, 139, 145
9 0 - 1 , 93-6, 99 Dialectic 74-5, 82, 96, 106, 135, 150-1,
in Kant 33, 37 153, 155, 198, 210, 236, 251, 285-6,
in Muller 52-5 289, 312-13, 321-2, 347-9, 355
in Schelling 34-5, 40, 50-1, 58-9 Dialectical Materialism 13, 26-7,
in Wolff 32, 33 324-6, 343-4, 365-6
410 Index
Diderot, Denis 42 Ferguson, Adam 51, 165
Dilthey, Wilhelm 121 Feudalism 51, 53, 55, 62, 6 4 - 5 , 83,
Dmitr'ev, F. 252 97, 149-50, 174, 183, 186, 207,
Droste-Vischering, Clemens August von 259, 266-8, 301, 340, 361
112, 116, 127 Feuerbach, Ludwig 7, 13, 19, 21, 102,
Duhring, Karl Eugen 286, 300, 326 104-5, 109-11, 114, 117, 128,
130-4, 136, 139, 143, 145-6, 148,
Echtermeyer, Theodor 102-3, 112-13, 151-2, 207, 220, 285-8, 324, 359,
115-16, 118-22, 126, 128, 379 362, 379
Eckhardt, Master 17 Theses on 151, 326
Economic materialism 340, 343, 351, Fichte, Johann Gotdieb 3, 5-9, 11, 13,
353, 355 15-18, 21, 28-31, 33-4, 38-40,
Eichhorn, Johann Albrecht Friedrich 45-6, 57, 6 0 - 1 , 79, 81, 83, 89-90,
125, 178 97, 115, 131
Encyclopedia 31, 41, 82, 90, 98-9, Figner, Vera Nikolaevna 308
104, 115, 353 Flerovsky, N , see under Bervi, V.V.
Engels, Friedrich ix, 4, 23, 137, Fourier, Charles 142
139-40, 142-3, 146-7, 150, 153, Francke, Auguste Hermann 43
159, 174, 179, 181, 189, 192-3, Frauenstadt, Julius 10
196, 198, 203, 205, 227, 242, Frederick the Great 52, 120, 122-5
248-9, 272-5, 281-95, 297-8, 300, Freedom 7, 37-40, 40, 43, 53, 57, 61,
303, 308-10, 312-13, 316, 320, 65, 79, 81, 87, 92, 95-6, 110,
324-7, 332, 334-40, 342-3, 345-6, 112-13, 118-19, 129, 134, 141,
348-9, 353-5, 358, 363-4, 366 169, 173, 323, 325, 330
Enlightenment 51, 108, 116, 120, French Revolution 35, 51, 53, 62-6,
122-5, 150-1, 174, 204-5, 321, 83, 94, 116, 125, 129, 205
381 Friedrich Wilhelm III 125
Epicurus 42, 122-4, 377 Friedrich Wilhelm IV 125, 126-7
Erdmann, Johann Eduard 103, 105 Fries, Jacob 99
Eriugena, Johannes Scotus 17
Essence 36, 49, 110, 133, 139 Gabler, Georg Andreas 105
in Feuerbach 111, 130-1, Gallitzin, Princess 120
in Hegel 69, 72-3, 78-82, 95, 97 Gans, Eduard 93, 114, 125
in Marx 123, 137-8, 145-8, 150, Gassendi, Pierre 42, 124
156, 160, 177, 195, 224 German Ideology, The 64, 143, 151,
Essence of Christianity 110 153-5, 160, 174, 284, 335
Estate 51, 6 4 - 5 , 87-8, 149, 218, 279 Gesenius, Wilhelm 103
Evangelische Kirchenzeitung 103, 105, 117 Gneist, Rudolf von 259
Exchange Value, see under Value, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 79
Exchange Gorres, Johann Joseph 13, 17, 21, 44,
External 49, 51-2, 69, 113, 117, 119, 57, 62-7, 88, 97, 100, 112, 115-17,
224 120, 128, 156, 174
in Hegel 75, 78, 80, 85, 92, 95 Goschel, Karl Friedrich 105
in Marx 148, 185 Granovsky, T.N. 217
in Schelling 51 Grimm, Brothers 62, 177, 205-6
in Schleiermacher 48 Grundrisse, see under Critique of Political
in Steffens 14 Economy, First draft
Externalization {die Entdusserung) 14, Guerrier, V. 245, 262
16, 49, 346, 359, 360, 371
in Feuerbach 131-2, 140 Haller, Albrecht von 79
in Hegel 49 Hallische Jahrbucher 4, 7, 8, 10-11, 13,
in Marx 123, 145-7, 160, 165, 168, 18, 21, 102, 107, 111-17, 122,
171, 199, 287 126-7, 129, 135, 150, 157, 187
in Steffens 49 Hamann, Johann Georg 57-8
Index 411
Hanssen, Georg 205 Individuality {das Einzelne) 4, 14, 132,
Hardenberg, Karl August von 51, 178, 360, 368
62-3, 100, 116 in Hegel 4, 73-6, 78, 81, 87, 98
Harstick, Hans-Peter 283 in Marx 123-4, 136, 138, 149, 151,
Hartmann, Lev Nikolaevich 308 160-1, 166, 192, 199, 207
Haxthausen, August von 177-8, 180, in Schleiermacher 46-8
208, 217, 246, 259, 284 in Steffens 49
Haym, Rudolf 121 Inner {das Innere) xi, 6, 7, 16, 44,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 2-9, 48-9, 108, 111, 117-18, 185,
11-13, 15-23, 26, 31-2, 34, 39, 321-3
46, 48-51, 57, 66-92, 101-21, in Hegel 69, 78, 82, 96
124-38, 141, 145-8, 150, 153, in Schleiermacher 48
155-6, 160-1, 168, 174, 197-8, Intellectual Intuition 33-4, 43, 70,
207, 210, 220-1, 235, 261, 284-6, Intuition 57, 59, 72, 109, 323
313, 319-26, 330, 338, 340-1, in Hegel 78
343-5, 349, 358-60, 365-6, 372, in Kant 33
393 in Schelling 35, 40
Heine, Heinrich 137 Irrationalism 12, 14, 21, 67-8, 104,
Helvetius, Claude-Adrien 142, 343 109, 116, 125, 130
Hengstenberg, Ernst 103, 105, 112, Ivanyukov, Ivan Ivanovich 262
117, 120, 125
Henning, Leopold von 114 Judaism 137, 167
Herder, Johann Gottfried 58, 62 Judgement 35, 75-6, 131
Herwegh, Georg 137 Jung-Stilling, Heinrich 120
Herzen, Aleksandr Ivanovich 9, 10,
179-80, 208, 212, 239, 240, 248, Kablukov, Nikolay Alekseevich 272-3
260, 318, 335-6, 363 Kant, Immanuel x, 3, 17, 20-2, 28-9,
Hess, Moses 5-10, 13, 15-16, 18, 21, 31-2, 37-9, 44-5, 47, 50, 57-9, 61,
126, 137 72, 78-9, 83, 115, 151, 324, 353,
Hinrichs, Hermann 103, 114 359
Historical materialism 283, 353, 365 Kapp, Christian 93
History 5, 8, 56-7, 59, 61, 63, 8 2 - 3 , Karataev, N.K. 26
91-8, 114, 129-30, 132, 141-2, Karlsbad Decrees 63, 100
177, 285, 287, 312, 323-5, 331, Katkov, Mikhail Nikiforovich 221
340, 346, 348 Kaufmann, Illarion Ignat'evich 211
History of Philosophy (Hegel) 94, 98, Kautsky, Karl 325-6, 333-4, 340
114, 124, 142 Kavelin, Konstantin Dmitrievich 212,
Hobbes, Thomas 231, 390 219, 245, 252-3, 278
Holbach, Paul Heinrich 42, 343 Kepler, Johann 65
Hotho, Heinrich Gustav 114 Kerner, Justinus 67, 99, 104, 106, 120
Holy Family, The 124, 142-3, 326, Khomyakov, Aleksey Stepanovich 179
333-4, 344-5 Kibalchich, Nikolay Ivanovich 306-9,
Hryniewicki, Ignacy 307 311-13
Humanity 61, 81, 96, 139-40, 146, Kireevsky, I.V. 179
149-50, 223, 225, 332, 340, 360 Kolakowski, Leszek 2, 16-18
Hutton, James 42 Koppen, Karl Friedrich 122-4
Koshelev, Aleksandr Ivanovich 179,
Idea 33-4, 50-5, 57, 128-9 252, 278
in Hegel 70, 7 4 - 5 , 78-9, 81, 83-5, Kotzebue, August von 63, 101
88, 96 Kovalevsky, I.M. 303
in Kant 33 Kovalevsky, Maksim Maksimovich 238,
in Schelling 70 243, 246, 258-65, 268-73, 276-8,
Idealism 131, 287-8, 323, 343-4 280-1, 283-4, 302, 338, 354, 363,
India 264-70, 277 365
412 Index
Krasin, Leonid Borisovich 351 Marheineke, Philipp 104-5, 114
Kravchinsky, S.M. (Stepniak) 299, 303 Marx, Jenny 249
Kugelmann, Ludwig 188, 249 Marx, Karl ix, x, 1-6, 11-16, 18-25,
36, 38, 42, 51, 64, 66, 122-4, 126,
Labour 155, 163, 167, 171, 173, 130, 132-3, 135-44, 145-73, 176,
181-3, 185, 189-90, 193, 197, 179-83, 189-201, 204-7, 211, 220,
199-200, 202, 222, 225, 231-2, 293 222, 224-30, 232-49, 251, 253-58,
abstract 146, 155, 163, 181, 199 260-2, 264, 267, 270-1, 273-82,
division of 45-6, 61, 85, 162, 285, 287, 288-93, 295, 297-302,
183-4, 189, 195, 200, 236-7, 307-13, 318, 322-4, 326-7,
239, 329-30, 332 332-42, 344, 346-9, 352-3, 355,
power 200, 232, 234, 294 357-8, 360-1, 363-7, 381, 390
Lafargue, Laura 283 Materialism 41, 122, 124, 142-3, 148,
Lafargue, Paul 227 283-5, 287-8, 323-4, 326, 343-4,
Land and Liberty 298-9, 302-5, 311, 353, 355
356 Maurer, Georg Ludwig von 204-6,
Lanskoy, S.S. 215 259, 267, 274, 383
Lassalle, Ferdinand 289, 377 Mendelsohn, Moses 210
Laube, Heinrich 114 Meszaros, Isztvan 14
Lavrov, Petr Lavrovich 228, 253, 281, Metaphysics 236, 285-6, 300, 324, 343
289, 292, 296-8, 308-10, 327-8, Metternich, Prince von 67
330-3, 344, 350, 365 Mexico 270
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von 115 Meysenbug, Emil von 114
Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich 5, 25-6, 351, Mezentsev, N,V. 303
354-7 Michelet, Karl Ludwig 99-100
Leo, Heinrich 112, 114, 116-17, 120 Middle Ages 53, 63-4, 97, 116, 120,
Laveleye, Emile de 272 122, 137, 174, 205, 237, 266, 274
Liberation of Labour 310-14, 316 Mikhaylovsky, Nikolay Konstantinovich
Liberation of the serfs 238-41, 243, 274, 327, 328-33,
in Prussia 51, 267 337-45, 348, 350, 352, 354, 356,
in Russia 223, 235, 246, 250, 253, 364-5
282, 348 Mill, John Stuart 158, 221-3, 225-6,
Locke, John 142 229, 231, 345
Logic 72, 74-6, 78-9, 81, 84, 87-9, Miller, V.F. 262
93-4, 114, 129-30, 133, 135 Milton, John 186
Lopatin, German Aleksandrovich 224 Mind 17, 23, 43, 49-50, 78-9, 81,
Lowith, Karl 8 83-4, 90-7, 110, 118, 131-2,
Lubbock, John 271 287-8, 323-4
Ludivig Feuerbach and the End of Classical Mir 213, 217-20, 223, 225, 230,
German Philosophy 286-8, 324, 244-5, 252, 257-8, 265, 274-5,
326-7, 343, 364 278-9, 290-1, 309, 313, 318, 330,
Lukacs, Georg 5-9, 11-13, 15-18, 336-7, 363, 365
21-2 Mitskevich, S.I. 353-4, 356
Lunacharsky, Anatoly Vasil'evich 353 Moghul Empire 265-6, 268
Luther, Martin 113 Money 54, 56, 63-4, 139, 147, 155,
Lyubavin, Nikolay Nikolaevich 224, 161-5, 167, 170, 182, 189, 191,
227 194-6, 199, 228, 232
Monist View of History, The Development of
MacCulloch, John Ramsay 187 the 342-5, 347-9, 353-4
McLellan, David 2, 8-11 Monke, Wolfgang 9
McLennan, John Ferguson 260, 272 Morike, Eduard Friedrich 67, 106
Maine, Sir Henry Sumner 259-61, Moser, Justus 204
263, 269-72, 277 Morgan, Lewis 260, 263, 271-2, 275,
Malthus, Thomas 222, 225, 328, 390 280, 283-4
Index 413
Morley, John 259 Particularity {das Besondere) x, xi, 4,
Morozov, N.A. 308 19-23, 29-30, 32, 38, 47-8, 50, 57,
Muller, Adam 12, 15, 17, 21, 51-7, 62, 111, 115, 119, 132, 136, 138, 139,
65-7, 70, 83-5, 88-9 358
Mythology 58-9, 106-7, 117, 124 in Hegel 4, 73-6, 78-9, 81, 85,
87-9, 92, 95, 98, 368
Napoleon 35, 51, 62, 66, 98, 116, 223 in Marx 147, 149, 155, 160-4, 166,
Narodism xi, 5, 6, 25-6, 299-300, 182, 192-3, 197-8, 207-8
304, 311-12, 318-19, 326-7, 334, Paulus, H.E.G. 90, 94, 106
341-2, 345, 350-1, 354, 356-7, Peasant commune, see under Mir
365-6 People's Will 304-14, 316-19, 334
Nature xi, 14, 22-4, 28, 35-43, 47, Perovskaya, Sof'ya L'vovna 307
50, 107, 119, 140, 235-7, 264, 320, Peter the Great 218, 250
323-4, 327-33, 341, 345-50, 360, Petty, Sir William 203-4
365, 380 Phear, Sir John Budd 271
in Engels 140, 285-301 Phenomenology of Mind, The 68, 71, 82,
in Feuerbach 110, 130-3 98, 134-5, 152, 157, 390
in Fichte 38-9, 60-1 Philosophy of History 93-5, 97-8, 108,
in Hegel 69, 77-83, 85, 88, 90-7 112, 114, 118-19, 122, 129, 322
in Kant 37-8 Philosophy of Nature 93, 98, 108
in Marx 123, 136, 145-8, 150-1, Philosophy of Religion 98
153-5, 160, 162-5, 170-1, 173, Philosophy of Right 84, 88-91, 93-5,
175-7, 180, 182, 186, 195, 198, 100, 115, 133, 135-8
201-4, 207-8, 218, 381 Pietism 28, 43-4, 64, 98, 103, 112-13,
in Schelling 40-3, 58-9 117, 120, 128
in Schiller 39-40 Physiocrats 195
Nazimov, Vladimir Ivanovich 214-15 Pipes, Richard 25-6
Negreskul, M.F. 224, 227 Plato 59, 97
New Testament 106, 134, 141, 288 Plekhanov, Georgiy Valentinovich 5-6,
Newton, Isaac 65 11, 25, 27, 291, 296, 298-327, 333-4,
Nicholas I 178 336-7, 341-50, 353-6, 365, 392
Nicholas of Cusa 17 Plotinus 17
Novalis 12, 17, 21, 30-1, 67, 89, 115, Polyakov, Nikolay Petrovich 227
119, 122, 128, 360 Populism see Narodism
Potenz 360-2
Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph 28 in Marx 169, 172-3, 177, 348
Olufsen, Dane 204 in Schelling 36, 43, 380-1
Origin of the Family, Private Property and Poverty of Philosophy, The 154-5
the State 283-4, 289, 354, 364 Praxis 5, 6, 13, 17, 24, 27, 38, 129,
Otechestvennye zapiski 236, 240, 242-4, 132, 151-2
253, 274, 291-2, 309, 327, 335-6, Priesthood 127, 136
338, 342, 348, 352, 355, 364 Private property 53-4, 140, 146, 149,
Our Differences 312, 316, 318-19, 334, 202, 221-2, 270
350, 354, 356 Production 55, 153-4, 225, 237, 276,
Outer, the {das Aussere) xi, 6, 7, 16, 340, 347, 352
48-9, 78, 96, 108, 111, 117-18 in Marx 156-7, 170, 173, 176-7,
Owen, Robert 142 184-6, 188, 190, 192-6, 202, 208
in Schelling 40-1
Palgrave, Francis 266 Protestantism 48-9, 90, 97, 104,
Panasiuk, Ryszard 4, 9, 18 112-13, 116, 118, 127
Paris Commune 307 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph 7, 206, 326
Paris Manuscripts of 1844 1, 11, 12, 14, Prussia 51, 62, 66, 89, 100, 102,
15, 24, 139-40, 145-51, 153, 155, 111-13, 116, 122, 125-8, 130, 179,
158-9, 163-4, 267, 360 223-4, 267
414 Index
Prutz, Robert 114 Samarin, Yury Fedorovich 179, 219,
Pudovikov, P.E. 253 252, 278
Pugachev, Emilyan 296 Sand, Karl 63
Savigny, Friedrich Karl von 59-60,
Radowitz, Joseph Maria von 125 125-6, 177
Rationalism 35, 66 Say, Jean-Baptiste 84
Razin, Stenka 296 Schaller, Johann 103, 105, 110,
Reason 31, 33, 37-9, 43, 45, 5 0 - 1 , 114-15
56-7, 59-60, 70, 72-3, 75-7, 79, Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 3,
83-4, 86, 89-91, 93-7, 100, 112, 14-15, 3 0 - 1 , 34-6, 39-43, 49-51,
118-20, 129-33, 136, 380 58-9, 67, 69-72, 74-5, 78-81,
Reflection 7, 35-6, 134, 140, 144, 157, 83-4, 90, 94, 98, 106, 115, 119,
285-6, 323-4, 360, 380 125, 128, 130, 132, 146-7, 153-4,
in Feuerbach 111, 131-2 156, 161, 169, 182, 195, 198-9,
in Hegel 70, 71, 77, 82, 85, 88-9 220-1, 231, 285, 345, 359-61, 372,
in Marx 147-8, 152, 187 380-1
in Schelling 35, 40-1 Schiller, Friedrich 39-40, 45-7, 50,
in Schiller 40, 46 91, 330
Reformation 63-4, 113, 116, 118-19, Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 30, 67,
122, 129 115, 120, 126
Reproduction of capital 168, 176, 181, Schlegel, Friedrich von 12, 17, 21,
187-8, 195, 241, 339 30-1, 67, 115, 120, 122, 128
Restoration 35, 99, 100, 102, 105, 125, Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst
344 12, 16, 21, 44, 46-9, 66, 70, 74,
Rheinische Zeitung 126 89-90, 99, 106, 115, 360
Ricardo, David 84, 158, 187, 203-4, Schmidt, Alfred 24
229-34, 236 Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich 42, 371
Richter, Friedrich 104-5, 117 Schwab, Gustav 67
Rodbertus-Jagetzow, Johann Karl 300 Schwarz, J. 205
Roman Catholicism, see under Science of Logic, The (Hegel) 72, 75,
Catholicism 87-9, 93, 96-7, 124, 131, 135-6,
Rome 209, 242, 266-7 166, 170, 320, 322, 358-9
Romantics 12-13, 17, 21-3, 31-1, Scruton, Roger 2 - 3
62-3, 66, 68-70, 71, 89, 99-101, Self, the (das Ich) 28-30, 33-4, 38-9,
106, 113, 115-22, 126, 128-9, 83, 111, 131, 323
132-3, 149-50, 152, 164, 174, Self-Consciousness 69, 74, 78, 82,
177, 179, 187, 205, 207, 279, 84-5, 90, 92, 96, 109-11, 134-5,
358-9 141-2, 168, 288
Rosenkranz, Karl 21, 81, 84, 93-4, Senior, William Nassau 187
101-3, 105, 114-15, 121, 128 Sensibility 33, 58-9
Rosenzweig, Franz 49 Serebryakov, E. 297
Rossler, Constantin 234-6 Serno-Solov'evich, A.A. 224
Rostovtsev, Yakov Ivanovich 246 Shanin, T. 24
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 30 Sieber, Nikolay Ivanovich 211, 229-38,
Ruge, Arnold 10, 21, 101-3, 112-22, 243, 258, 272-3, 283-4, 286, 294,
125-30, 132-3, 135-6, 139, 141, 300-1, 310, 313, 337-9, 341,
150, 152, 359, 379 348-50, 355, 365
Russia 177-80, 207, 211-13, 216-17, Skrebitsky, Aleksandr Il'ich 246-7
220, 223-4, 238-9, 241, 244, Slavophiles 179, 214, 217, 219, 318,
247-8, 253, 256, 258-60, 274, 336-7, 341, 351
277-81, 302, 305-7, 309-10, Smith, Adam 54-5, 94, 158, 187, 222,
313-14, 316-19, 322, 330, 334, 229, 230, 233, 268
336-7, 339, 341-2, 344-5, 348-50, Socialism 126, 138, 142, 147, 162, 178,
355, 363, 365 180, 205, 212, 221, 237, 239, 272,
Index 415
Socialism - continued Struve, Petr Bemgardovich 250, 351,
275, 278-9, 286, 291, 296, 300-3, 353-4, 356
309, 311, 315-16, 318, 330, 336, Stuke, Horst 9
344 Subjectivism 6, 13, 26, 326-9, 331,
Socialism and the Political Struggle 333, 335, 343-5, 348, 355
310-11, 313, 316, 318, 325, 334, Subsumption 32, 36, 236, 275, 360,
344, 347 362, 367
Society xi, 22-3, 39, 43, 44-9, 51-2, in Marx 169-70, 172, 177, 181-2,
54_7, 6 0 - 1 , 64-6, 81, 83-6, 184-6, 189-91, 196, 199-201,
89-91, 95, 111, 115, 131, 225, 203
230-1, 237, 285-7, 290, 328, 330, in Schelling 36, 380-1
333, 346, 360, 381 Surplus Value 163, 171, 181, 185-6,
in Fichte 39, 45, 60-1 189, 191, 199-200, 228, 234-5
in Marx 135-8, 146-56, 160-5, Syllogism 57, 75, 131, 166
170-1, 173-80, 184, 192, System 28-31, 36, 70, 77, 81, 83, 94,
197-203, 207-8 116, 140, 152, 158, 161, 162, 164,
in Schelling 49-50 168, 184, 194, 195, 208, 222, 288,
in Schiller 46 289, 322, 323, 346, 360
see also Civil Society
Solomon, Robert 3 - 4 Tacitus 206
Soloviev, A.K. 303 Taylor, Charles 2, 368
Soloviev, Sergey Mikhailovich 219 Thing-in-itself 33
Speculation 7, 49, 105, 108, 115, Tholuck, Friedrich 103, 105, 112, 117,
124, 149, 153, 157, 285-6, 323-4, 120
361 Tieck, Ludwig 30, 31, 67, 106, 115,
in Hegel 69-70, 74, 88, 89-90, 91, 120, 121
95 Tikhomirov, Lev Aleksandrovich
in Marx 148, 152 305-6, 310, 313-17, 319-20
in Schelling 35-6, 50 Time and Space 57, 78, 129, 132, 170,
Spencer, Herbert 259 193, 195
Spener Philipp Jakob 43-4, 117 Tkachev, Petr Nikitich 289-91, 297-8,
Spinoza, Benedictus de 6 300, 306, 312-13, 316, 335-7, 343,
Stahl, Friedrich Julius 125 353
State 140-2, 218, 278-9, 302-6, Trepov, F.F. 302
313-18, 366, 393
in Bruno Bauer 135-6 Uhland, Ludwig 67, 106, 120
in Fichte 60-1 Understanding {der Verstand) 33-4,
in Hegel 81-2, 85-92, 94-5, 98 37-8, 41-2, 5 0 - 1 , 58-9, 107-8,
in Marx 135-8, 158-9, 162, 173 131, 178, 323
in Muller 52-6 in Hegel 70-2, 75, 83-6, 88-9, 94,
in Ruge 127-30, 132-4 in Kant 33
in Schiller 45-6, 50 in Schelling 41, 5 0 - 1 , 58-9
Stefanovich, Ya.V. 307 Universality {das Allgemeine) x, xi,
Steffens, Heinrich 14, 31, 42, 48-9, 19-23, 32, 37-8, 44-5, 47-9, 54,
70 57, 63-4, 103, 109-11, 119, 124,
Stein, Karl 51, 6 2 - 3 , 66, 100, 116 126, 128, 130-2, 134, 220-1,
Steuart, James 84, 187 237-8, 241-3, 258, 293, 297, 312,
Stirner, Max 5, 13 323, 331, 336-7, 339, 341, 349,
Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold 120 355, 358
Stolypin, Petr Arkad'evich 271 in Fichte 30
Strauss, David Friedrich 10, 18, 21, 57, in Hegel 4, 19, 73-6, 78,
98, 101, 105-10, 112, 114, 117, 81-2, 84-90, 92, 96, 98-9,
121, 126, 288 368
Streckfuss, Karl 127-8 in Kant 29
416 Index
Universality - continued Vorovsky, V.V. 349
in Marx 19, 136-8, 143, 149, 151, Vyrubov, G.N. 259
155, 161, 163-4, 166, 169-70,
172, 178, 180, 182, 184, 190, Wada, Haruki 24-5
192-3, 197-9, 203, 207-10 Wagner, Adolf 233, 259
Usad'ba 214-16, 264 Walicki, Andrzej 25-6
Utin, N.I. 227 Wars of Liberation 62, 100, 129, 134
Wegscheider, Julius 103, 105
Valentinov, N. 353 Werner, Zacharias 42
Valorization 168, 182, 195, 199-200 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2
Value 54-6, 139, 155, 161, 163-7, Wolff, Christian 32-3
169-71, 173, 182-3, 189, 197-8, World Market 56, 158-60, 170, 191,
200, 207, 222, 229, 231-2, 234-6, 195, 279, 359, 361
380
Exchange 54, 155, 163-7, 169-71, Yanzhul, I.I. 260, 262
173, 182, 197, 199, 200, 380 Young Hegelians 4 - 1 1 , 13, 18, 21-3,
Use 54, 163-4, 173, 182, 197, 32, 35-6, 38, 57, 79, 101, 102-44,
380 145-6, 152, 177, 287-8, 322, 326,
Surplus 163, 171, 181, 185-6, 189, 334, 358-9, 362
191, 199-200, 228, 234-5 Yuzov-Kablits, I. 341, 350
Valuev, PA. 252
Vasil'chikov, A.I. 245 Zasulich, Vera Ivanovna 258, 268, 271,
Vestnik Narodnoy Voli 310, 314, 319 273, 275, 279, 291-2, 297, 302,
Vischer, Friedrich Theodor 21, 106-8, 307-10, 313, 336, 357, 364, 392
114, 121, 158 Zemlya i Volya, see under Land and
Voden, A. 334-5, 337, 343, 345 Liberty
Volost' 217, 279 Zhelyabov, Audrey Ivanovich 307
Vorontsov, Vasily Pavlovich 256-8, Zhukovsky, Yuly Galaktionovich 235-8,
293-4, 317, 334, 341-2, 350 243, 258, 295, 297, 337-8, 340, 364
Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism
James D. White
ISBN: 9780230374218
DOI: 10.1057/9780230374218
Palgrave Macmillan
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KARL MARX AND THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1917-21: A Short History

M First published in the United States of America 1996 by

socialist or not. But what, in any case, was Marx's contribution

been necessary not only to standardize their translation, but to

present-day terms, and try to explain Marx's ideas with refer-

himself to his predecessors and left unexplained what they

'Concept', which forms the core of his system. In the context

The writer who first provided Marx's ideas with an interpre-

appeared in 1838. For both Cieszkowski and Hess, therefore,

(1838) had been reviewed.18 This work had attempted to apply

Hegelians in general, 'returned to Fichte in an attempt to go

the direction of the Young Hegelian movement, the 'Transition

Though there is no evidence that Cieszkowski's book was very widely

This is a remarkable passage, because instead of saying that

This lack of interest, moreover, is entirely to be expected.

Hegel's anticipation of materialism being, according to Lukacs,

and Eduard Gorres - from the line of development that gave

insists on explicitly - is that one need not look for any of

This passage could easily come from Marx's Paris Manuscripts,

According to one commentator on Marx's Paris Manuscripts,

as a war of each against all and as a force of Nature is also

he is not, obscures the overall direction which German intellec-

existence. This concept he derived from Aristotle and traced

played by none other than - Count August Cieszkowski.44 In

Kolakowski could have learnt from Panasiuk - or better still

This represents the consensus of opinion on the origins of

The passage suggests that there is an element of continuity

dynamic of development simply because they did not use the

1. Because Universal and Particular are widely used terms

journals. The ambiguity of an intellectual current which on

Examining the evolution of the terms Universal and Parti-

they handled such pairs of opposites as subject-object and

It can be noted here that Marx's adoption of his predeces-

upon many first-hand sources. Wada's treatment of the sub-

1969, which disputed Pipes's findings.62 This influential work

Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of

Descartes and Rousseau's Savoyard priest, who saw the Self

constructing an encyclopedia in which this integration would

In all philosophical systems from Kant onwards central place

rudimentary to the most sophisticated, as Concepts, Kant

of abstraction Subject and Object coincided: the knower and

apprehension. In this connection Schelling made use of the

Hegelians in a rationalist spirit, and his treatment of the Con-

Nature was a term which boasted a plurality of meanings and

traits of a person in contrast to the effects of education

Particularity. The conception was widespread among writers

Philosophy teaches us to look for everything in the Self. Only through

In the Science of Knowledge Nature was represented as the

Schiller also shared Fichte's view that man's primitive Nat-

own infinite activity, that there should be points of arrest or

The conception of the Products of Nature as the points at

d'Holbach in his System of Nature, had believed that Nature was

This form of Nature had its culmination in the human Mind,

Among German thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nine-

consequently urged that scholastic disputation should cease

in such a way that you treat humanity whether in your own

drives constantly in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his

But, as Schiller argued, h u m a n progress could have taken place

Individuality as conceived by the theologian Friedrich Schleier-

He went on to emphasize that this discovery of human Indi-

embodied the Universality of humanity within it as well as the

between priesthood and laity with the Protestant congregations,