Marx entered active political life at the age of twenty-four as a liberal democratic journalist, the champion of political democracy. This period opens at the beginning of 1842, when he wrote his first published political article, and closes toward the latter part of the following year, when he became a communist. The development in between, which transformed him from a radical-democratic liberal into a revolutionary-democratic communist, is centered around his work for theRbeinische Zeitung(RZ) of Cologne, of which he became the editor in October 1842.

At the beginning of this period Marx’s main interest lay in and around...

During theRheinische Zeitungperiod, Marx’s constant concern with freedom of the press was not due only to the importance of this freedom. The censorship was not merely a topical issue; it was a daily threat. In January 1843 the authorities finally decreed the paper's suppression as of April 1. Some months before, Marx had written a friend:

. . . from morn to night we now have to endure the most frightful harassment by the censorship, missives from the ministry, difficulties with the provincial governor, complaints by the Diet, screams from the shareholders, etc., and I remain at the...

When Marx withdrew “from the public stage into the study,” it was to settle accounts with the political philosophy of Hegel, which blanketed all of the Young Hegelians’ thinking even while they revolted against his political conclusions. “The first work which I undertook for a solution of the doubts which assailed me,” said Marx’s 1859 account, “was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right. . . .”¹ This review was performed in a notebook into which Marx copied paragraphs from Hegel’sRechtsphilosophie* and then dissected each one more or less at length.

The difficulty offered by these notes...

During the same months that Marx was settling accounts with Hegel his private notebook, he was also trying to think out a political perspective for himself. Was he a socialist (communist), and if so, which the dozen socialisms or half-dozen communisms was he for? If he did like any of the existing isms, should he concoct one of his own? What elsecouldone do?

This was one of the important issues that emerged from the work done by Marx for the next periodical of which he became an editor. It was a journal with the ambitious, and unrealized, aim...

Marx applied the new direction, or supplied a practical example of it, in the first article he wrote for publication after leaving theRheinische Zeitung.Published in theDeutsch-Französiscbe Jahrbücher,the article dealt with a currently controversial political issue of the hour, with a “real struggle” going on in the political field. It identified itself with the progressive side in the struggle in order to direct the question toward the solution of the basic “social question.”

The issue was religious freedom, or rather, political freedom regardless of religion: the political emancipation of the Jews. Should Jews have the same civic,...

In the editorial exchange of letters in theDeutsch-Französische Jabrbücher,a good deal of space was taken up by a problem that need not detain us long: the perennial one of revolutionary confidence in the future (revolutionary optimism) versus despair and defeatism.

The first letter, by Marx, makes clear that the editors are for a revolution of some kind; the second letter, a reply by Ruge, is a ululating elegy or funeral dirge (as Marx calls it) on the impossibility of revolution in the fast-frozen political wasteland of Germany. Ruge’s letter is a classic cry of hopelessness and despondency over...

The same double number of theDeutsch-Französische Jahrbücherthat carried Marx’s three contributions also included two articles by a young man with whom Marx was only slightly acquainted, Friedrich Engels. This is the point where Engels’ road first meets Marx’s, though without converging as yet.

Engels’ contributions had a characteristic more important than anything they actually said: they brought England into the picture. All of Marx’s articles had been centered on Germany despite other allusions; that is what he knew about.* He was just discovering a second country, France, as it could not be got out of books; and the...

TheEconomic and Philosophic Manuscriptsscarcely mentioned a basic aspect of political theory with which Marx had been previously much concerned: the nature of the state. One might conclude that Marx was uninterested in it at this time, were it not for an important article which he published in the midst of working on the Manuscripts. This article was provoked by an unexpected event.

The relationship between the state and other elements of society had previously played an important part for Marx, as we have seen; naturally so, in view of its importance in Hegelianism. In previous chapters we have...

With Marx’s arrival at the theoretical level represented byThe German Ideology,there remains for consideration one more aspect of the political development of the young Marx.

We have kept the purely biographical side of Marx and Engels to a minimum, not because it is irrelevant to their political development after all, we are dealing with the thought of two individuals—but on the assumption that the reader will find this background elsewhere. However, there is one aspect that is not purely personal and not quite theoretical: it stands between these two categories in a fashion which is as unmistakable...

The Promethean rejection of injustice-by-power was only one side of the revolutionary character that Marx was developing. Aeschylus himself raised a pertinent question long before Lord Acton: “Who could endure you in prosperity?” It is the lackey Hermes who directs this sneer to Prometheus. Even in Olympus there were not a few who rebelled against Zeus in order to replace him as ruler. And even if Prometheus’ intentions were the best, who else could take the throne if the incumbent were ousted? The opponent of Zeus was merely a philanthropist, an early Owenite.

If the primary question was the revolutionist's...

Society involves relationships among people and groups of people—social relationships—of various sorts. One sort is economic relationships: relations between men in the process of making a living—the kind of relationships that Marx analyzed inCapitalfor a particular socioeconomic system. But if a society is to fulfill its economic needs, it needs another complex of relationships too—relationships required to organize or integrate the operation of the society as a whole.

These relationships include the political as distinct from the economic, but we run into a terminological problem at the outset. The wordpoliticalderives from the...

While the essence of the state is class domination based on means of forcible coercion, there is much more to the state than an essence.

“The state presents itself to us as the first ideological power over man,” wrote Engels.¹ Ideological? Is a body of armed men an ideological power? But it must be understood that the state is notmerelya body of armed men; if it were, it would be a much simpler institution: simpler to understand and simpler to overthrow. Its complexities are due to the fact that, for its own sake, it has to keep the...

In Part I we saw how the development of Marx’s political views intertwined a number of key problems. Prominent among them was the problem of democracy in all its shifting meanings. This will continue to be true throughout the ensuing chapters, for democracy is not a single problem but a complex of problems that permeates many other subjects.

Indeed, in a general way, Marx’s socialism (communism) as a political program may be most quickly defined, from the Marxist standpoint, as thecomplete democratization of society,not merely of political forms.* But the democratic movement of the nineteenth century began by...

It follows from the preceding chapter that in Marx’s view democratic forms are both an instrument and a danger for the bourgeoisie. They shift from one to the other depending on the course of social struggles taking place under those state forms.

Whenever democratic forms become inconvenient for ruling-class hegemony, making the state institutions of the status quo precarious, there is a tendency for the ruling class to sanction a shift to more authoritarian and despotic forms. The film of bourgeois development unwinds in a reverse direction: the freedoms that the liberal bourgeoisie once demanded are cut back; popular institutions...