Conspectus of the Book The Holy Family by Marx and Engels

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THE HOLY FAMILY, OR CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL CRITICISM

AGAINST BRUNO BAUER & CO.

BY FREDERICK ENGELS AND KARL MARX

FRANKFORT-ON-MAIN

LITERARY PUBLISHING HOUSE

(J. RÜTTEN)

1845

This little book, printed in octavo, consists of a foreword (pp. III-IV) (dated Paris, September 1844), a table of contents (pp. V-VIII) and text proper (pp. 1-335), divided into nine chapters (Kapitel). Chapters I, II and III were written by Engels, Chapters V, VIII and IX by Marx, Chapters IV, VI and VII by both, in which case, however, each has signed the particular chapter section or subsection, supplied with its own heading, that was written by him. All these headings are satirical up to and including the “Critical Transformation of a Butcher into a Dog” (the heading of Section 1 of Chapter VIII). Engels is responsible for pages 1-17 Chapters I, II, III and sections 1 and 2 of Chapter IV, pages 138-142 (Section 2a of Chapter VI) and pages 240-245 (Section 2b of Chapter VII):

i.e., 26 pages out of 335.

The first chapters are entirely criticism of the style (t h e w h o l e ( ! ) first chapter, pp. 1-5) of the Literary Gazette [[Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Bruno Bauer—in their foreword Marx and Engels say that their criticism is directed against its first eight numbers]], criticism of its distortion of history (Chapter II, pp. 5-12, especially of English history), criticism of its themes (Chapter III, pp. 13-14, ridiculing the Gründlichkeit of the account of some dispute of Herr Nauwerk with the Berlin Faculty of Philosophy), criticism of views on love (Chapter IV, 3 by Marx), criticism of the account of Proudhon in the Literary Gazette ((IV,4) Proudhon, p. 22 u. ff. bis 74. At the beginning there is a mass of corrections of the translation: they have confused formule et signification, they have translated la justice as Gerechtigkeit instead of Rechtpraxis, etc.). This criticism of the translation (Marx entitles it—Characterisierende Übersetzung No. I, II u.s.w.) is followed by Kritische Randglosse No. I u.s.w., where Marx defends Proudhon against the critics of the Literary Gazette, counterposing his clearly socialist ideas to speculation.

Marx’s tone in relation to Proudhon is very laudatory (although there are minor reservations, for example reference to Engels’ Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher).

Marx here advances from Hegelian philosophy to socialism: the transition is clearly observable—it is evident what Marx has already mastered and how he goes over to the new sphere of ideas.

(36) “Accepting the relations of private property as human and rational, political economy comes into continual contradiction with its basic premise, private property, a contradiction analogous to that of the theologian, who constantly gives a human interpretation to religious conceptions and by that very fact comes into constant conflict with his basic premise, the superhuman character of religion. Thus, in political economy wages appear at the beginning as the proportionate share of the product due to labour. Wages and profit on capital stand in the most friendly and apparently the most human relationship, reciprocally promoting one another. Subsequently it turns out that they stand in the most hostile relationship, in inverse proportion to each other. Value is determined at the beginning in an apparently rational way by the cost of production of an object and its social usefulness. Later it turns out that value is determined quite fortuitously, not bearing any relation to cost of production or social usefulness. The magnitude of wages is determined at the beginning by free agreement between the free worker and the free capitalist. Later it turns out that the worker is compelled to agree to the determination of wages by the capitalist, just as the capitalist is compelled to fix it as low as possible. Freedom of the contracting Parthei” [this is the way the word is spelled in the book] “has been supplanted by compulsion. The same thing holds good of trade and all other economic relations. The economists themselves occasionally sense these contradictions, and the disclosure of these contradictions constitutes the main content of the conflicts between them. When, however, the economists in one way or another become conscious of these contradictions, they themselves attack private property in any one of its private forms as the falsifier of what is in itself (i.e., in their imagination) rational wages, in itself rational value, in itself rational trade. Adam Smith, for instance, occassionally polemises against the capitalists, Destutt de Tracy against the bankers, Simonde de Sismondi against the factory system, Ricardo against landed property, and nearly all modern economists against the non-industrial capitalists, in whom private property appears as a mere consumer.

“Thus, as an exception—and all the more so when they attack some special abuse—the economists sometimes stress the semblance of the humane in economic relations, while, more often than not, they take these relations precisely in their marked difference from the humane, in their strictly economic sense. They stagger about within that contradiction without going beyond its limits.

“Proudhon put an end to this unconsciousness once for all. He took the humane semblance of the economic relations seriously and sharply opposed it to their inhumane reality. He forced them to be in reality what they imagine themselves to be, or, more accurately, to give up their own idea of themselves and confess their real inhumanity. He therefore quite consistently represented as the falsifier of economic relations not one or another particular type of private property, as other economists have done, but private property as such, in its entirety. He has done all that can be done by criticism of political economy from the stand-point of political economy.” (39)

Herr Edgar’s reproach (Edgar of the Literary Gazette) that Proudhon makes a “god” out of “justice,” Marx brushes aside by saying that Proudhon’s treatise of 1840 does not adopt “the standpoint of German development of 1844” (39), that this is a general failing of the French, and that one must also bear in mind Proudhon’s reference to the implementation of justice by its negation—a reference making it possible to have done with this Absolute in history as well (um auch dieses Absoluten in der Geschichte überhoben zu sein)—at the end of p. 39. “If Proudhon does not arrive at this consistent conclusion, it is owing to his misfortune in being born a Frenchman and not a German.” (39-40)

Then follows Critical Gloss No. II (40-46), setting out in very clear relief Marx’s view—already almost fully developed—concerning the revolutionary role of the proletariat.

...“Hitherto political economy proceeded from the wealth that the movement of private property supposedly creates for the nations to an apology of private property. Proudhon proceeds from the opposite side, which political economy sophistically conceals, from the poverty bred by the movement of private property, to his conclusions negating private property. The first criticism of private property proceeds, of course, from the fact in which its contradictory essence appears in the form that is most perceptible and most glaring and most directly arouses man’s indignation—from the fact of poverty, of misery.” (41)

“Proletariat and wealth are opposites. As such they form a single whole. They are both begotten by the world of private property. The question is what particular place each occupies within the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.

“Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the contradiction, self-satisfied private property.

“The proletariat, on the other hand, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, the condition for its existence, that which makes it the proletariat, i.e. private property. That is the negative side of the contradiction, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.

“The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-alienation. But the former class feels happy and confirmed in this self-alientation, it recognises alienation as its own power, and has in it the semblance of human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in its self-alienation; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existnece. To use an expression of Hegel’s, the class of the proletariat is in abasement indignation at this abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its conditions of life, which are the outright, decisive and comprehensive negation of that nature.

“Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian, the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter, that of annihilating it.

“In any case, in its economic movement private property drives towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, of which it is unconscious and which takes place against its will, through the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, misery conscious of its spiritual and physical misery, dehumnaisation conscious of its dehumanisation and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounced on itself by begetting the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounced on itself by begetting wealth for others and misery for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.

“When socialist writers ascribe this historic role to the proletariat, it is not, as Critical Criticism would have one think, because they consider the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete in the fully-formed proletariat; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman and acute form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through the no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need—the practical expression of necessity—is driven directly to revolt against that inhumanity; it follows that the proletariat can and must free itelf. But it cannot free itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment considers as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is irrevocably and clearly foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organisation of bourgeois society today. There is no need here to show that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historic task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity.” (42-45)

CRITICAL GLOSS NO. 3

“Herr Edgar cannot be unaware that Herr Bruno Bauer based all his arguments on ‘infinite self-consciousness’ and that he also saw in this principle the creative principle of the gospels, which, by their infinite unconsciousness, appear to be in direct contradiction to infinite self-con- sciousness. In the same way Proudhon considers equality as the creative principle of private property, which is in direct contradiction to equality. If Herr Edgar compares
French equality with German self-consciousness for an in- stant, he will see that the latter principle expresses in Ger- man, i.e., in abstract thought, what the former says in French, that is, in the language of politics and of thoughtful
observation. Self-consciousness is man’s equality with himself in pure thought. Equality is man’s consciousness of himself in the element of practice, i.e., therefore, man’s consciousness of other men as his equals and man’s attitude to other men as his equals. Equality is the French expression for the unity of human essence, for man’s consciousness of his species and his attitude towards his species, for the practical identity of man with man, i.e., for the social or human relation of man to man. As therefore destructive criticism in Germany, before it had progressed in Feuerbach to the consideration of real man, tried to solve everything definite and existing by the principle of self-consciousness, destructive criticism in France tried to do the same by the principle of equality.” (48-49)
“The opinion that philosophy is the abstract expression of existing conditions does not belong orginally to Herr Edgar. It belongs to Feuerbach, who was the first to de- scribe philosophy as speculative and mystical empiricism, and proved it.” (49-50)
“‘We always come back to the same thing... Proudhon writes in the interests of the proletarians.’ He does not
write in the interests of self-sufficient criticism or out of any abstract, self-made interest, but out of a massive, real, historical interest, an interest that goes beyond crit-
icism,that will go as far as a crisis. Not only does Proud- hon write in the interests of the proletarians, he is himself a proletarian, un ouvrier. His work is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat and therefore has quite a different historical significance from that of the literary botchwork of a Critical Critic.” (52-53) “Proudhon’s desire to abolish non-owning and the old form of owning is exactly identical to his desire to abol- ish the practically alienated relation of man to his ob- jective essence, to abolish the political-economic ex- pression of human self-alienation. Since, however, his criticism of political economy is still bound by the pre- mises of political economy, the reappropriation of the ob- jective world is still conceived in the political-economic form of possession. “Proudhon indeed does not oppose owning to non-owning, as Critical Criticism makes him do, but possession to the old form of owning, to private property. He declares posses- sion to be a ‘social function.’ In a function, ‘interest’ is not directed however toward the ‘exclusion’ of another, but toward setting into operation and realising my own powers, the powers of my being. “Proudhon did not succeed in giving this thought appro-
priate development. The concept of ‘equal possession’ is a political-economic one and therefore itself still an alienated expression for the principle that the object as being for man as the objective being of man, is at the same time the existence of man for other men, his human relation to other men, the social behaviour of man in relation to man. Proudhon abolishes political-economic estrangement within political-economic estrangement.” (54-55)
[[This passage is highly characteristic, for it shows how Marx approached the basic idea of his entire “system,” sit venia verbo, namely the concept of the social relations of production.]] As a trifle, it may be pointed out that on p. 64 Marx devotes five lines to the fact that “Critical Criticism” trans- lates maréchal as “Marschall” instead of “Hufschmied.” Very interesting are: pp. 65-67 (Marx approaches the labour theory of value); pp. 70-71 (Marx answers Edgar’s charge that Proudhon is muddled in saying that the worker cannot buy back his product), 71-72 and 72-73 (spec- ulative, idealistic, “ethereal” (ätherisch) socialism—and “mass” socialism and communism).

p. 76.	(Section 1, first paragraph: Feuerbach disclosed real mysteries, Szeliga—vice versa.)
p. 77.	(Last paragraph: anachronism of the n a ï v e relation of rich and poor: “si le riche le savait!”)
pp.79-85.	(All these seven pages are extremely interesting. This is Section 2, “The Mystery of Speculative Con- struction”—a criticism of speculative philosophy using the well-known example of “fruit”—der Frucht—a crit- icism aimed directly a g a i n s t H e g e l as well. Here too is the extremely interesting remark that Hegel “very often” gives a real presentation, embracing the thing itself—die S a c h e selbst—within the speculative pre- sentation.)
pp. 92, 93—	f r a g m e n t a r y remarks against Degradie rung der Sinnlichkeit.
p. 101.	“He” (Szeliga) “is unable ... to see that industry
	and trade found universal kingdoms that are quite different from Christianity and morality, family hap- piness and civic welfare.”
p. 102.	(End of the first paragraph—barbed remarks on the significance of notaries in modern society.... “The notary is the temporal confessor. He is a puritan by profes- sion, and ‘honesty,’ Shakespeare says, is ‘no puritan.’ He is at the same time the go-between for all possible purposes, the manager of civil intrigues and plots.”)
p. 110.	Another example of ridiculing abstract specula- tion: the “construction” of how man becomes master over beast; “beast” (das Tier) as an abstraction is changed from a lion into a pug, etc.
p. 111.	A characteristic passage regarding Eugène Sue: owing to his hypocrisy towards the bourgeoisie, he ideal- ises the grisette morally, evading her attitude to mar- riage, her “naïve” liaison with un étudiant or ouv-
	rier. “It is precisely in that relation that she” (gri- sette) “constitutes a really human contrast to the sanc- timonious, narrow-hearted, self-seeking wife of the bourgeois, to the whole circle of the bourgeoisie, that is, to the official circle.”
p. 117.	The “mass” of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries was different “von vorn herein.”
pp. 118-121.	This passage (in Chapter VI: “Absolute Cri- tical Criticism, or Critical Criticism in the Person of Herr Bruno.” 1) Absolute Criticism’s First Campaign. a) “Spirit” and “Mass”) is e x t r e m e l y important: a criticism of the view that history was unsuccessful owing to the interest in it by the mass and its reliance on the mass, which was satisfied with a “superficial” com- prehension of the “idea.”

“If, therefore, Absolute Criticism condemns some- thing as ‘superficial,’ it is simply previous history, the actions and ideas of which were those of the ‘masses.’ It rejects mass history to replace it by critical history (see Herr Jules Faucher on Topical Questions in Eng- land).” (119)
“The ‘idea’ always exposed itself to ridicule inso- far as it differed from ‘interest.’ On the other hand, it is easy to understand that every mass ‘interest’ that			NB
asserts itself historically goes far beyond its real limits in the ‘idea’ or ‘imagination’ when it first comes on the scene, and is confused with human interest in general. This illusion constitutes what Fourier calls the tone of each historical epoch” (119)—as an illus- tration of this the example of the French Revolution (119-120) and the well-known words (1 2 0 in fine):
“With the thoroughness of the historical action, the size of the mass who perform it will therefore increase.”			NB

How far the sharpness of Bauer’s division into Geist and Masse goes is evident from this phrase that Marx attacks: “In the mass, not somewhere else, is the true enemy of the spirit to be sought.” (121)

Marx answers this by saying that the enemies of prog- ress are the products endowed with independent being (verselbständigten) of the self-abasement of the mass, although they are not ideal but material products existing in an out- ward way. As early as 1789, Loustallot’s journal had the motto:

Les grands ne nous paraissent grands Que parceque nous sommes à genoux. Levons-nous!

But in order to rise (122), says Marx, it is not enough to do so in thought, in the idea.

“Yet Absolute Criticism has learnt from Hegel’s Phen- omenology at least the art of converting real objective chains that exist outside me into merely ideal, merely sub- jective chains existing merely within me, and thus of converting all exterior palpable struggles into pure struggles of thought.” (122)

In this way it is possible to prove, says Marx bitingly, the pre-established harmony between Critical Criticism and the censorship, to present the censor not as a police hangman (Polizeischerge) but as my own personified sense of tact and moderation.

Preoccupied with its “Geist,” Absolute Criticism does not investigate whether the phrase, self-deception and pithlessness (Kernlosigkeit) are not in its own empty (windig) pretensions.

“The situation is the same with ‘progress.’ In spite of the pretensions of ‘progress,’ continual retrogressions and circular movements are to be observed. Far from suspecting that the category ‘progress’ is completely empty and abstract, Absolute Criticism is instead so ingenious as to re- cognise ‘progress’ as being absolute, in order to explain retrogression by assuming a ‘personal adversary’ of progress, the mass.” (123-124)

“All communist and socialist writers proceeded from the observation that, on the one hand, even the most favourable brilliant deeds seemed to remain without brilliant results, to end in trivialities, and, on the other, all progress of the spirit had so far been progress against the mass of mankind, driving it to an ever more dehumanised situation. They therefore declared “progress” (see Fourier) to be an inadequate abstract phrase; they assumed (see Owen, among others) a fundamental flaw in the civilised world; that is why they subjected the real bases of contemporary society to incisive criticism. This communist criticism immediately had its counterpart in practice in the movement of the great mass, in opposition to which the previous historical development had taken place. One must be acquainted with the studiousness, the craving for knowledge, the moral energy and the unceasing urge for development of the French and English workers to be able to form an idea of the human nobility of this movement.” (124-125)

“What a fundamental superiority over the communist writers it is not to have traced spiritlessness, indolence, superficiality and self-complacency to their origin but to have denounced them morally and exposed them as the opposite of the spirit, of progress!” (125)
“The relation between ‘spirit and mass,’ however, has still a hidden sense, which will be completely revealed in the course of the reasoning. We only make mention of it here. That relation discovered by Herr Bruno is, in fact, nothing but a critically caricatured culmination of Hegel’s conception of history; which, in turn, is nothing but the speculative expression of the Christian-Germanic dogma of the antithesis between spirit and matter, between God and the world. This antithesis is expressed in history, in the human world itself, in such a way that a few chosen individuals as the active spirit stand opposed to the rest of mankind, as the spiritless mass, as matter.” (126)
And Marx points out that Hegel’s conception of history (Geschichtsauffassung) presupposes an abstract and absolute spirit, the embodiment of which is the mass. Par- allel with Hegel’s doctrine there developed in France the theory of the Doctrinaires (126) who proclaimed the sovereignty of reason in opposition to the sovereignty of the people in order to exclude the mass and rule alone (allein).
Hegel is “guilty of a double half-heartedness” (127): 1) while declaring that philosophy is the being of the Abso- lute Spirit, he does not declare this the spirit of the philo- sophical individual; 2) he makes the Absolute Spirit the creator of history only in appearance (nur zum Schein), only post festum,only in consciousness.
Bruno does away with this half-heartedness; he declares that Criticism is the Absolute Spirit and the creator of his- tory in actual fact.
“On the one side stands the Mass, as the passive, spirit- less, unhistorical material element of history; on the other— the Spirit, Criticism, Herr Bruno and Co. as the active ele- ment from which all historical action arises. The act of the transformation of society is reduced to the brain work of Critical Criticism.” (128)
As the first example of “the campaigns of Absolute Crit- icism against the Mass,” Marx adduces Bruno Bauer’s attitude to the Judenfrage, and he refers to the refutation of Bauer in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
“One of the chief pursuits of Absolute Criticism consists in first bringing all questions of the day into their right setting. For it does not answer, of course, the real questions—but substitutes quite different ones.... It thus distorted the ‘Jewish question,’ too, in such a way that it did not need to investigate political emancipation, which is the subject-matter of that question, but could instead be satisfied with a criticism of the Jewish religion and a des- cription of the Christian-German state.
“This method, too, like all Absolute Criticism’s original- ities, is the repetition of a speculative verbal trick. Spec- ulative philosophy, in particular Hegel’s philosophy, must transpose all questions from the form of common sense to the form of speculative reason and convert the real question into a speculative one to be able to answer it. Having distorted my questions and having, like the cate- chism, placed its own questions into my mouth, specul lative philosophy could, of course, again like the catechism, have its ready answer to each of my questions.” (134-135)

In Section 2a (...“‘Criticism’ and ‘Feuerbach’—Damna- tion of Philosophy...”)—pp. 138-142—written by Engels, one finds Feuerbach warmly praised. In regard to “Criti- cism’s” attacks on philosophy, its contrasting to philosophy the actual wealth of human relations, the “immense content of history,” the “significance of man,” etc., etc., right up to the phrase: “the mystery of the system revealed,” Engels says:
“But who, then, revealed the mystery of the ‘system’? Feuerbach. Who annihilated the dialectics of concepts, the war of the gods known to the philosophers along? Feuer- bach. Who substituted for the old rubbish and for ‘infinite self-consciousness’ not, it is true, ‘the significance of man’—as though man had another significance than that of being man—but still ‘Man’? Feuerbach, and only Feuer- bach. And he did more. Long ago he did away with the very categories that ‘Criticism’ now wields—the ‘real wealth of human relations, the immense content of history, the struggle of history, the fight of the mass against the spirit,’ etc., etc.
“Once man is conceived as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only ‘Criticism’ can invent new categories and transform man himself again into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth,’ it ‘wages no battles.’ It is man and not ‘history,’ real living man, that does all that, that possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims.If Absolute Criticism, after Feuerbach’s brilliant reasoning, still dares to reproduce the old trash in a new form...” (139-140) etc.—then, Engels says, this fact alone is sufficient to assess the Critical naïveté, etc.
And after this, in regard to the opposition of Spirit and “Matter” (Criticism calls the mass “matter”), Engels says:
“Is Absolute Criticism then not genuinely Christian- German? After the old contradiction between spiritualism
and materialism has been fought out on all sides and over- come once for all by Feuerbach, ‘Criticism’ again makes a basic dogma of it in its ugliest form and gives the victory to the ‘Christian-German spirit.’” (141)

In regard to Bauer’s words: “To the extent of the prog- ress now made by the Jews in theory, they are emancipated; to the extent that they wish to be free, they are free” (142), Marx says:

“From this proposition one can immediately measure the critical gap which separates mass profane communism and socialism from absolute socialism. The first proposition of profane socialism rejects emancipation in mere theory as an illusion and for real freedom it demands besides the idealistic ‘will,’ very tangible, very material conditions. How low ‘the Mass’ is in comparison with holy Criticism, the Mass which considers material, practical upheavals necessary, merely to win the time and means required to deal with ‘theory’!” (142)

Further, (pp. 143-167), the most boring, incredibly caviling criticism of the Literary Gazette, a sort of word by word commentary of a “blasting” type. Absolutely noth- ing of interest.

The end of the section ((b) The Jewish Question No. II. pp. 142-185)—pp. 167-185 provides an interesting answer by Marx to Bauer on the latter’s defence of his book Juden- frage, which was criticised in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. (Marx constantly refers to the latter.) Marx here sharply and clearly stresses the basic principles of his entire world outlook.

“Religious questions of the day have at present a social sig- nificance” (167)—this was already pointed out in the Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher. It characterised the “real position of Judaism in civil society today.” “Herr Bauer explains the real Jew by the Jewish religion, instead of explaining the mystery of the Jewish religion by the real Jew.” (167-168)

Herr Bauer does not suspect “that real, worldly Judaism, and hence religious Judaism too, is being continually pro- duced by present-day civil life and finds its final develop- ment in the money system.”

It was pointed out in the Deutsch-Französische Jahr- bücher that the development of Judaism has to be sought “in der kommerziellen und industriellen Praxis” (169), —that practical Judaism “vollendete Praxis der christlichen Welt selber ist.” (169)

“It was proved that the task of abolishing the essence of Judaism is in truth the task of abolishing Judaism in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of the present-day practice of life, the summit of which is the money system. ” (169)

In demanding freedom, the Jew demands something that in no way contradicts political freedom (172)—it is a question of political freedom.

“Herr Bauer was shown that it is by no means contrary to political emancipation to divide man into the non-re- ligious citizen and the religious private individual.” (172)

And immediately following the above:

“He was shown that as the state emancipates itself from religion by emancipating itself from state religion and leaving religion to itself within civil society, so the indi- vidual emancipates himself politically from religion by re- garding it no longer as a public matter but as a private matter. Finally, it was shown that the terroristic attitude of the French Revolution to religion, far from refuting this conception, bears it out.” (172)

The Jews desire allgemeine Menschenrechte.

“In the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher it was expounded to Herr Bauer that this ‘free humanity’ and the ‘recognition’ of it are nothing but the recognition of the selfish, civil individual and of the uncurbed movement of the spiritual and material elements which are the content of his life situation, the content of civil life today; that the Rights of Man do not, therefore, free man from religion but give him freedom of religion; that they do not free him from property, but procure for him freedom of prop- erty; that they do not free him from the filth of gain but give him freedom of choice of a livelihood.

“He was shown that the recognition of the Rights of Man by the modern state means nothing more than did the recognition of slavery by the ancient state. In fact, just as the ancient state had slavery as its natural basis, the modern state has civil society and the man of civil society, i.e., the independent man connected with other men only by the ties of private interest and uncon- scious natural necessity, the slave of labour for gain and of his own as well as other men’s selfish need. The mo- dern state has recognised this as its natural basis as such in the universal Rights of Man.” (175)

“The Jew has all the more right to the recognition of his ‘free humanity’” “as ‘free civil society’ is of a thoroughly commercial and Jewish nature and the Jew is a necessary link in it.” (176)
That the “Rights of Man” are not inborn, but arose histor- ically, was known already to Hegel. (176)
Pointing out the contradictions of constitutionalism, “Criticism” does not generalise them (faßt nicht den allge- meinen Widerspruch des Constitutionalismus). (177-178) If it had done so, it would have proceeded from constitu- tional monarchy to the democratic representative state, to the perfect modern state. (178)
Industrial activity is not abolished by the abolition of privileges (of the guilds, corporations, etc.); on the con- trary it develops more strongly. Property in land is not abolished by the abolition of privileges of landownership, “but, rather, first begins its universal movement with the abolition of its privileges and through the free division and free alienation of land.” (180)
Trade is not abolished by the abolition of trade privileges but only then does it become genuinely free trade, so also
with religion, “so religion develops in its practical univer- sality only where there is no privileged religion (one calls to mind the North American States).”
...“Precisely the slavery of bourgeois society is in ap- pearance the greatest freedom....” (181)
To the dissolution (Auflösung) (182) of the political existence of religion (the abolition of the state church), of property (the abolition of the property qualificatio for electors), etc.—corresponds their “most vigorous life, which now obeys its own laws undisturbed and develops into its full scope.”
Anarchy is the law of bourgeois society emancipated from privileges. (182-183)

... C) CRITICAL BATTLE AGAINST

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

“The ideas”—Marx quotes Bauer—“which the French Revolution gave rise to did not, however, lead beyond the order that it wanted to abolish by force.
“Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. Ideas cannot carry anything out at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who dispose of a certain practical force.” (186)
The French Revolution gave rise to the ideas of communism (Babeuf), which, consistently developed, contained the idea of a new Weltzustand. In regard to Bauer’s statement that the state must hold in check the separate egotistic atoms, Marx says (188-189) that the members of civil society are, properly speaking, by no means atoms, but only imagine themselves to be such, for they are not self-sufficient like atoms, but depend on other persons, their needs continually forcing this dependence upon them. “Therefore, it is natural necessity, essential human properties, however alienated they may seem to be, and interest that hold the members of civil society together; civil, not political life is their real tie.... Only political superstition still imagines today that civil life must be held together by the state, whereas in reality, on the contrary, the state is held together by civil life.” (189) Robespierre, Saint-Just and their party fell because they confused the ancient realistically-democratic society, based on slavery, with the modern, spiritualistically-democratic representative state, based on bourgeois society. Before his execution Saint-Just pointed to the table (Tabelle a poster? hanging) of the Rights of Man and said: “C’est pourtant moi qui ai fait cela.” “This very table proclaimed the rights of a man who cannot be the man of the ancient republic any more than his economic and industrial relations are those of the ancient times.” (192) On the 18th Brumaire, not the revolutionary movement but the liberal bourgeoisie became the prey of Napoleon. After the fall of Robespierre, under the Directorate, the prosaic realisation of bourgeois society begins: Sturm
und Drang of commercial enterprise, the whirl (Taumel) of the new bourgeois life; “real enlightenment of the land of France, the feudal structure of which had been smashed by the hammer of revolution, and which the numerous new owners in their first feverish enthusiasm now put under all-round cultivation; the first movements of an industry that had become free—these are a few of the signs of life of the newly arisen bourgeois society.” (192-193)

CHAPTER VI. ABSOLUTE CRITICAL CRITICISM,

OR CRITICAL CRITICISM

IN THE PERSON OF HERR BRUNO

. . . 3) ABSOLUTE CRITICISM’S THIRD CAMPAIGN. . .

d) CRITICAL BATTLE AGAINST FRENCH MATERIALISM

(195-211)

[[This chapter (subsection d in the third section of Chap- ter VI) is one of the most valuable in the book. Here there is absolutely no word by word criticism, but a completely positive exposition. It is a short sketch of the history of French materialism. Here one ought to copy out the whole chapter, but I shall limit myself to a short summary of of the contents.]] The French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and French materialism are not only a struggle against the exist- ing political institutions, but equally an open struggle against the metaphysics of the seventeenth century, namely,
against the metaphysics of Descartes, Malebranch, Spin- oza and Leibnitz. “Philosophy was opposed to metaphys- ics as Feuerbach, in his first decisive attack on Hegel, opposed sober philosophy to drunken speculation.” (196)
The metaphysics of the seventeenth century, defeated by the materialism of the eighteenth century, underwent a vic- torious and weighty (gehaltvolle) restoration in German phi- losophy, especially in speculative German philosophy of the nineteenth century. Hegel linked it in a masterly fashion with the whole of metaphysics and with German idealism, and he founded ein metaphysisches Universalreich. This was fol- lowed again by an “attack on speculative metaphysics and metaphysics in general. It will be defeated for ever by mater- ialism, which has now been perfected by the work of specu- lation itself and coincides with humanism. Just as Feuerbach in the theoretical field, French and English socialism and co- mmunism in the practical field represented materialism coin- ciding with humanism.” (196-197) There are two trends of French materialism: 1) from Des- cartes, 2) from Locke. The latter mündet direkt in den Soc- ialismus. (197) The former, mechanical materialism, turns into French nat- ural science. Descartes in his physics declares matter the only sub- stance. Mechanical French materialism takes over Descartes’ physics and rejects his metaphysics. “This school begins with the physician Le Roy, reaches its zenith with the physician Cabanis, and the physician Lamet- trie is its centre.” (198) Descartes was still living when Le Roy transferred the mechanical structure of animals to man and declared the soul to be a modus of the body, and ideas to be mechanical movements. (198) Le Roy even thought that Descartes had concealed his real opinion. Descartes protested. At the end of the eighteenth century Cabanis perfected Cartesian materialism in his book Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme. From the very outset the metaphysics of the seventeenth century had its adversary in materialism. Descartes—Gas- sendi, the restorer of Epicurean materialism, in England— Hobbes. Voltaire (199) pointed out that the indifference of the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century to the disputes of the Jesuits and others was due less to philosophy that to Law’s financial speculations. The theoretical movement towards materialism is explained by the practical Gestaltungof French life at that time. Materialistic theories corresponded to materialistic practice. The metaphysics of the seventeenth century (Descartes, Leibnitz) was still linked with a positive (positivem) content. It made discoveries in mathematics, physics, etc. In the eighteenth century the positive sciences became separated from it and metaphysics war fad geworden. In the year of Malebranche’s death, Helvétius and Cond- illac were born. (199-200) Pierre Bayle, through his weapon of scepticism, theore- tically undermined seventeenth-century metaphysics. He re- futed chiefly Spinoza and Leibnitz. He proclaimed atheistic society. He was, in the words of a French writer, “the last metaphysician in the seventeenth-century sense of the word and the first philosopher in the sense of the eighteenth cen- tury.” (200-201) This negative refutation required a positive, anti-meta- physical system. It was provided by Locke. Materialism is the son of Great Britain. Its scholastic Duns Scotus had already raised the question: “ob die Materie nicht denken könne?”He was a nominalist. Nominalism is in general the first expression of material- ism. The real founder of English materialism was Bacon. (“The first and most important of the inherent qualities of matter is motion, not only as mechanical and mathematical movement, but still more as impulse, vital spirit, tension, or ... the throes (Qual) ... of matter.”—202) “In Bacon, its first creator, materialism has still concealed within it a naïve way the germs of all-round development. Matter smiles at man as a whole with poetical sensuous brightness.” In Hobbes, materialism becomes one-sided, menschen- feindlich, mechanisch. Hobbes systematised Bacon, but he did not develop (begründet) more deeply Bacon’s fund- amental principle: the origin of knowledge and ideas from the world of the senses (Sinnenwelt).—P. 203. Just as Hobbes did away with the theistic prejudices of Bacon’s materialism, so Collins, Dodwell, Coward, Hartley, Priestley, etc., destroyed the last theological bounds of Locke’s sensualism. Condillac directed Locke’s sensualism against seven- teenth-century metaphysics; he published a refutation of the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Malebranche. The French “civilised” (205) the materialism of the English. In Helvétius (who also derives from Locke), materialism was given a properly French character. Lamettrie is a combination of Cartesian and English mat- erialism. Robinet has the most connection with metaphysics. “Just as Cartesian materialism passes into natural sci- ence proper, the other trend of French materialism flows directly into socialism and communism.” (206) Nothing is easier than to derive socialism from the premis- es of materialism (reconstruction of the world of the senses— linking private and public interests—destroying the Geburts- stätten of crime, etc.). Fourier proceeds immediately from the teaching of the French materialists. The Babouvists were crude, immature materialists. Bentham based his system on the morality of Helvétius, while Owen takes Bentham’s system as his starting- point for founding English communism. Cabet brought com- munist ideas from England into France (populärste wenn auch flachste representative of communism) 208. The “more scientific” are Dézamy, Gay, etc., who developed the teach- ing of materialism as real humanism. On pp. 209-211 Marx gives in a note (two pages of small print) extracts from Helvétius, Holbach and Bentham, in or- der to prove the connection of the materialism of the eight- eenth century with English and French communism of the nineteenth century. Of the subsequent sections the following passage is worth noting: “The dispute between Strauss and Bauer over Substance and Self-Consciousness is a dispute within Hegelian speculation. In Hegel there are three elements: Spinoza’s Substance, Fichte’s Self-Consciousness, and Hegel’s ne- cessary and contradictory unity of the two, the Absolute Spirit. The first element is metaphysically disguised nature in separation from man; the second is metaphysically disguised spirit in separation from nature; the third is the metaphysical- ly disguised unity of both, real man and the real human race” (220), and the paragraph with its assessment of Feuer- bach: “In the domain of theology, Strauss quite consistently expounded Hegel from Spinoza’s point of view, and Bauer did the same from Fichte’s point of view. Both criticised Hegel insofar as with him each of the two elements was falsified by the other, while they carried each of the elements to its one-sided and hence consistent development.—Both of them therefore go beyond Hegel in their Criticism, but both of them also remain within the framework of his specu- lation and each represents only one side of his system. Feuer-
bach was the first to bring to completion and criticise Hegel from Hegel’s point of view, by resolving the metaphysical Absolute Spirit into ‘real man on the basis of nature,’ and the first to bring to completion the Criticism of religion by sketching in a masterly manner the general basic features of the Criticism of Hegel’s speculation and hence of every kind of metaphysics.” (220-221)
Marx ridicules Bauer’s “theory of self-consciousness” on account of its idealism (the sophisms of absolute idealism— 222), points out that this is a periphrasing of Hegel, and quotes the latter’s Phenomenology and Feuerbach’s criti- cal remarks (from Philosophie der Zukunft, p. 35, that philosophy negates—negiert — the “materially sensuous,” just as theology negates “nature tainted by original sin”).

The following chapter (VII) again begins with a series of highly boring, caviling criticisms [1). Pp. 228-235]. In section 2a there is an interesting passage. Marx quotes from the Literary Gazette the letter of a “re- presentative of the Mass,” who calls for the study of reality, of natural science and industry (236), and who on that account was reviled by “criticism”: “Or”(!), exclaimed “the critics” against this representa- tive of the Mass,—“do you think that the knowledge of his- torical reality is already complete? Or (!) do you know
of any single period in history which is actually known?” “Or does Critical Criticism”—Marx replies—“believe that it has reached even the beginning of a knowledge of histori- cal reality so long as it excludes from the historical move- ment the theoretical and practical relation of man to na- ture, natural science and industry? Or does it think that it actually knows any period without knowing, for example, the industry of that period, the immediate mode of pro- duction of life itself? True, spiritualistic, theological Crit- ical Criticism only knows (at least it imagines it knows) the major political, literary and theological acts of his- tory. Just as it separates thinking from the senses, the soul from the body and itself from the world, it separates history from natural science and industry and sees the origin of history not in vulgar material production on the earth but in vaporous clouds in the heavens.” (238)					No- ta be- ne
Criticism dubbed this representative of the mass a mas- senhafter Materialist. (239) “The criticism of the French and the English is not an abs- tract, preternatural personality outside mankind; it is the real human activity of individuals who are active members of society and who as human beings suffer, feel, think and act. That is why their criticism is a the same time practical, their communism a socialism in which they give practical, tangible measures, and in which they do not only think but even more act; it is the living real criticism of existing society, the discov- ery of the causes of ‘decay’.” (244) [[The whole of Chapter VII (228-257), apart from the pas- sages quoted above, consists only of the most incredible capti- ous criticisms and mockery, noting contradictions of the most petty character, and ridiculing each and every stupidity in the Literary Gazette, etc.]] In Chapter VIII (258-333) we have a section on the “Crit- ical Transformation of a Butcher into a Dog”—and further on E u g è n e S u e ’ s Fleur de Marie (evidently a novel with this title or the heroine of some novel or other) with certain “radical“ but uninteresting observations by Marx. Worth mentioning perhaps are only p. 2 8 5 — against Eugène Sue’s defence of the prison cell system (Cellularsystem). “The mystery of this” (305) (there was a quotation from Anekdota above) “courage of Bauer’s is Hegel’s Phenom- enology. Since Hegel here puts self-consciousness in the place of man, the most varied human reality appears only as a definite form, as a determination of self-consciousness. But a mere determination of self-consciousness is a ‘pure category,’ a mere ‘thought’ which I can consequently also transcend in ‘pure’ thought and overcome through pure
thought. In Hegel’s Phenomenology the material, sensuous, objective bases of the various alienated forms of human self-consciousness are left as they are. The whole destructive work results in the most conservative philosophy [sic!] because it thinks it has overcome the objective world, the sensuously real world, by merely transforming it into
a ‘thing of thought,’ a mere determination of self-con- sciousness, and can therefore dissolve its opponent, which has become ethereal, in the ‘ether of pure thought.’ The Phenomenology is therefore quite consistent in ending by re- placing all human reality by ‘Absolute Knowledge’ — Knowledge, because this is the only mode of existence of self-consciousness, and because self-consciousness is con- sidered as the only mode of existence of man;—Absolute Knowledge for the very reason that self-consciousness knows only itself and is no more disturbed by any objective world. Hegel makes man the man of self-consciousness instead of making self-consciousness the self-consciousness of man, of the real man, and therefore of man living also in a real objec- tive world and determined by that world. He stands the world on its head and can therefore in his head dissolve all limita- tions, which nevertheless, of course, remain in existence for e- vil sensuousness, for real man. Moreover, everything which betrays the limitations of general self-consciousness— all sensuousness, reality, individuality of men and of their world— is neccessarily held by him to be a limit. The whole of the Phe- nomenology is intended to prove that self-consciousness is the only reality and all reality....” (306)
...“Finally, it goes without saying that if Hegel’s Phe- nomenology, in spite of its speculative original sin, gives in many instances the elements of a true description of hu- man relations, Herr Bruno and Co., on the other hand, provide only an empty caricature....” (307)

“Thereby Rudolph unconsciously revealed the mystery, long ago exposed, that human misery itself, the infinite ab- jectness which is obliged to receive alms, has to serve as a plaything to the aristocracy of money and education to satisfy their self-love, tickle their arrogance and amuse them. “The numerous charitable associations in Germany, the numerous charitable societies in France and the great num- ber of charitable quixotic societies in England, the concerts, balls, plays, meals for the poor and even public subscriptions for victims of accidents have no other meaning.” (309-310) And Marx quotes from Eugène Sue: “Ah, Madame, it is not enough to have danced for the be- nefit of these poor Poles.... Let us be philanthropic to the end.... Let us have supper now for the benefit of the poor!” (310) On pp. 312-313 quotations f r o m F o u r i e r (adultery is good tone, infanticide by the victims of seduction — a vicious circle.... “The degree of emancipation of woman is the natural measure of general emancipation....” (312) Civ- ilisation converts every vice from a simple into a complex, am- biguous, hypocritical form), and Marx adds:
“It is superfluous to contrast to Rudolph’s thoughts Fourier’s masterly characterisation of marriage or the
works of the materialist section of French communism.” (313) P. 313 u. ff., against the political-economic projects of Eugène Sue and Rudolph (presumably the hero of Sue’s novel?), projects for the association of rich and poor, and the organisation of labour (which the state ought to do), etc.—e.g., also the Armenbank [7)—b) “The bank for the Poor” pp. 314-318] = interest-free loans to the unem- ployed. Marx takes the f i g u r e s of the project and exposes their meagreness in relation to need. And the idea of an Armenbank, says Marx, is no better than Sparkas- sen..., i.e., die Einrichtung of the bank “rests on the delusion that only a different distribution of wages is needed for the workers to be able to live through the whole year.” (316-317) Section c) “Model Farm at Bouqueval” 318-320, Ru- dolph’s project for a model farm, which was praised by “Criticism,” is subjected to devastating criticism: Marx de- clares it to be a utopian project, for on the average one Frenchman gets only a quarter of a pound of meat per day, only 93 francs in annual income, etc.; in the project they work twice as much as before, etc., etc. ((Not interesting.))
320: “The miraculous means by which Rudolph accomp- lishes all his redemptions and marvellous cures is not his fine words but his ready money. That is what the moralists are like, says Fourier. One must be a millionaire to be able to imitate their heroes.

“Morality is ‘Impuissance mise en action.’ Every time it fights a vice it is defeated. And Rudolph does not even rise to the standpoint of independent morality based at least on the consciousness of human dignity. On the contrary, his morality is based on the consciousness of human weakness. He represents theological morality.” (320-321) ...“As in reality all differences boil down more and more to the difference between poor and rich, so in the idea do all aristocratic differences become resolved into the opposi- tion between good and evil. This distinction is the last form that the aristocrat gives to his prejudices....” (323-324) ...“Every movement of his soul is of infinite importance to Rudolph. That is why he constantly observes and appraises them....” (Examples.) “This great lord is like the members of ‘Young England,’ who also wish to reform the world, to perform noble deeds, and are subject to similar hysterical fits....” (326)

Has not Marx in mind here the English Tory philanthropists who passed the Ten Hours’ Bill?