Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 1, Works of Karl Marx 1835–1843
My introduction as well as the General Introduction to these 50 volumes is here: https://medium.com/@chrisvgeorge64/royal-road-to-science-bc062cc0847b
Now to dive in to Volume One, works of the “Young Marx” (roughly ages 17–25), roughly covering the biographical period before his marriage to Jenny (though they had a seven year engagement before marriage) and before Karl met Friedrich Engels.
Again I will start with a helpful link from History is a Weapon to quote from the Preface of Volume One: http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/cw/volume01/preface.html
“The first volume of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains works and letters written by Marx between August 1835 and March 1843. The volume is divided into four sections — works, letters, preparatory material and youthful literary experiments in prose and verse, the material in each section being arranged chronologically. Relevant biographical documents are supplied in the appendices.
These writings reflect Marx’s early, formative period, the path of intellectual development that led an inquiring young man, inspired while still at the gymnasium by the idea of serving the common good, to the forefront of the philosophical and political thought of his day. This was the time when Marx, as a student first at Bonn and then at Berlin University, was deeply engaged in the study of law, history and philosophy, which he combined with trying his strength in the sphere of creative writing. In these years Marx evolved his atheistic and revolutionary-democratic beliefs and began his activities as a contributor to and, later, editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. His work on this newspaper initiated a new stage in the formation of his ideas which was to result in his final and complete adoption of materialist and communist positions.”
Volume One begins with juvenilia: “Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession”; “Letter from Marx to his Father”; and his “Wild Songs” (including a poem about a fiddler and Satan that perhaps the “young Charlie Daniels” may have been interested in during his less reactionary “Uneasy Rider” phase.)
I found them like non-essential curios that I am glad were translated and had a tone of youthful enlightened college-student optimism that is harder to detect in a later Marx who lived through failed revolutions, a severe skin disease, poor nutrition, and the deaths of four children. He was downright bright-eyed!
After this followed the work that takes-up the most significant chunk of the first Volume — and that I found the most challenging thing I’ve read by the “Young Marx” so far — his Doctoral Dissertation, “Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.” The actual dissertation covers pages 25–108 of this Volume as well as pages 403–509 for the extant volumes of his notebooks for that project.
Of interesting biographical note, the dissertation was dedicated “To his dear fatherly friend, LUDWIG VON WESTPHALEN” as “a token of filial love”. Perhaps this was an attempt to continue to court his daughter, Jenny, by honoring her aristocratic father again, ultimately a successful venture to the extent they were eventually able to marry.
The truth is, I found this entirely challenging and mostly not rewarding. Because Marx is an entertaining writer, there were enough passages to allow me to push through, but I wouldn’t recommend this dissertation for anyone except ancient philosophy buffs and Marxologists. His arguments are cogent enough to follow, but the topics are largely outside of my knowledge, and even worse, somewhat outside my interests. I would have preferred if his dissertation focused on Hegel or Spinoza.
By far the most interesting of the political entries of Volume One to me was Marx’s work as a journalist and editor of the Rheinische Zeitung für Politik, Handel und Gewerbe aka Rheinische Zeitung (“Rhenish Newspaper.”)
Marx’s ascension in the Rheinische Zeitung was quick but the life of the paper was short. It was founded January 1st 1842 and Marx joined as a writer on May 5th. He was made editor by October 1842. He resigned on March 17th 1843 in protest of censorship and it entirely closed by the authorities two weeks later. Its readership was relatively small (in the thousands) and these are not works that look like mass-audience writing in general.
But in this short period of time, Marx started to put his philosophical ideals into the inevitable conflict of living in the conservative Prussia ruled by the “romanticist on the throne”, Frederick William IV who inherited a tradition of censorship from his more downright reactionary father, Frederick William III. I am no historian of Prussia, but my general understanding is FW IV denied the creation of an elected legislative national assembly in the pre-1848 period, instead empowering a “United Committees” of provincial estates, who generally inherited familial powers from medieval knights and lords. Suffice it to say, the kids today would not confuse Freddie with a “woke radlib.” Meanwhile, Marx did end up in the minority radical liberal faction within the newspaper, rising to editor even with apparently a moderate liberal majority around him.
I will group the pieces I found most interesting and useful together below in three areas: works on censorship, an early materialist work on “thefts of wood”, and an essay on “The Free”.
- Censorship
Based on the large sample of at least the extant works within MECW V1, Marx spent a significant amount of his time at the newspaper defending the right of the newspaper, and newspapers generally, to publish. These pieces were Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction, Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly First Article, Debates on Freedom of the Press and Publication of the Proceedings of the Assembly of the Estates, The Leading Article in №179 of the Kölnische Zeitung, Cabinet Order on the Daily Press, Renard’s Letter to Oberpraesident von Schaper, The Ban on the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung Within the Prussian State, Justification of the Correspondent from the Mosel, and a final defeated Announcement.
The particular arguments Marx uses are somewhat instructive of both his philosophical approach at the time, as well as his growing practical ability to make logical (and possibly even opportunistic) arguments, especially against the hypocrisy of censors. They also show the start, at least in writing, some of his infamous cutting wit. At times it was hard for me to recognize if Marx was using arguments he didn’t particularly believe in to point out flaws in his opponents and/or hide his more radical beliefs — or that he simply wasn’t Karl Marx with radical beliefs yet.
Varying his approach to make similar points against censorship gave him an opportunity to write polemics with different literary devices. For example, he managed to fit three puns into the very first paragraph of his July 10, 1842 piece aiming to defend Young Hegelians from Prussian and church attack : 1. calling his newspaper an “information sheet” (“intelligenz”), which can mean both “intelligentsia” and “information”; 2. claiming their paper’s motto could be “per aspect ad astra”, a German+Latin pun that the “rough path to the stars” are also an oyster, and 3. that a political denunciation would also be an advertisement (a pun via the German “Anzeige.”) A few paragraphs later he ads a pun that this essay is both “leading” and “ailing”, like a meal without “spirits” leaving you without “a trace of spirit.” A little later, “presumption” is punned with “audacity” to describe the mockingly horrific situation an entirely free press that could presumably and recklessly harm the “weak eyes” of some of the populace who needed to be protected by cautious censors.
When not making dad jokes, Marx uses this essay to then undermine the argument that a newspaper cannot make philosophical arguments against a so-called Christian state. Noting even the Pope (“with profound intelligence”) refused to join a quasi-religous union of states making “religion the state emblem of Europe” (because the Christian church, and not diplomacy, is the “link between people”), Marx says the true theocracy must be ruled by the God of the religion or at least their legitimate representative (e.g. Jehovah, the Dalai Lama.) But in Protestantism, where there is no supreme head of a church, a theocracy would simply be the religion of rule, “the cult of government’s will.” And this would mean the religiously marginalized (“Catholic inhabitants of poor green Erin” or “Hugenots before the French Revolution”) cannot appeal to the dominant religion, but to “ Rights of Humanity” — which argues for a state of human nature. Marx doesn’t argue for communist atheist states at this point by any means, but points out the hypocrisy of actual Christian-states like the Byzantines or the ancien regime being “bad states” — while no Christian would argue that their earthly goal is indeed a bad state.
Marx finishes the first of these newspaper entries, Comments on The Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction, with the Tacitus quotation “Rara temporum feticitas, ubi quae velis sentire et quae sentias (“It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.”)
After pouring all these essays into the paper, Marx saw the writing on the wall and it all ended:
The undersigned declares that, owing to the present conditions of censorship, he has retired as from today from the editorial board of the Rheinische Zeitung.
Cologne, March 17, 1843
Dr. Marx
But the reaction by his peers to Marx’s various pieces on censorship were glowing: “The appearance of Marx’s article in the press raised a favourable response in progressive circles. Georg Jung, manager of the Rheinische Zeitung, wrote to Marx: ‘Your articles on freedom of the press are extremely good…. Meyen wrote that the Rheinsche Zeitung had eclipsed the Deutsche Jahrbücher … that in Berlin everybody was overjoyed with it’…In his comments on the article published in the Rheinische Zeitung Arnold Ruge wrote: “Nothing more profound and more substantial has been said or could have been said on freedom of the press and in defence of it”.
2. Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly. Third Article. Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood
This first attempt at a materialist work of Marx was part of a series on the proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly in summer 1841. Marx’s instinct is shown here in protecting the interests of the lower classes against an elite for the first time, even if his later, well, Marxist language wasn’t developed yet. From the end notes: “Work on this and subsequent articles inspired Marx to study political economy. He wrote about this in the preface to his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859): “‘In the year 1842–43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. Debates of the Rhine Province Assembly on the theft of wood and the division of landed property; the official polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasident of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Mosel peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions.’”
Before getting to the thrust of the essay, I will first point out the wide-ranging series of references made by Marx throughout roughly 20 pages: late medieval criminal codes, 5th-9th century common law of the “barbaric” German tribes, the Oracle of Dodona (where a temple of Zeus had a magical oak tree), the Little (essentially theocratic) Parliament of Cromwell, the pirates of Borneo, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Goethe, and The Spirit of Law by Montesquieu. It makes one wonder how much of the intended (probably well educated) audience had the ability to understand so many references.
Marx first says this will be about the Rhine Assembly but an “earthly” (unlike an earlier censored piece on censorship) question of landed property. And he says that a challenge is he doesn’t even have an actual draft of the law (the Prussian Junkers apparently didn’t have a “Sunshine Act”), leaving him but a “truncated torso”, and a report that looks like “an attempt at mystification.”
What drove the creation of the law in the first place? A “deputy of a Knightly estate” argued “It is precisely because the pilfering of wood is not regarded as theft that it occurs so often.” Marx says “The Assembly has to decide whether it considers pilfering of wood as theft; but if the Assembly does not declare it to be theft, people could believe that the Assembly really does not regard the pilfering of wood as theft. Hence it is best to leave this ticklish controversial question alone. It is a matter of a euphemism and euphemisms should be avoided. [Then] The forest owner prevents the legislator from speaking, for walls have ears.”
After all, the Assembly has urban deputies as well as forest owning deputies deciding if the pilfering of fallen dry wood is the same crime as the theft of live, still growing timber. The logic is ultimately applied that these things are the same: the stealing of wood from someone else. And what of the logic of the actual value of the amount of wood “stolen” from a land owner’s forest? A commission spokesperson thought it would be “unpractical” to determine wood values to fix punishments. The forest owner demands more however. Marx: “do you consider then that you can conclude that the Assembly completely excluded value in determining punishment? That would be an ill-considered, unpractical conclusion! The forest owner — we shall deal with this later in more detail — does not merely demand to be compensated by the thief for the simple general value. He even gives this value an individual character and bases his demand for special compensation on this poetic individuality. We can now understand what the commission’s spokesman understands by practical. The practical forest owner argues as follows: This legal definition is good insofar as it is useful to me, for what is useful to me is good. But this legal definition is superfluous, it is harmful, it is unpractical, insofar as it is intended to be applied to the accused on the basis of a purely theoretical legal whim. Since the accused is harmful to me, it stands to reason that everything is harmful to me that lessens the harm coming to him. That is practical wisdom.”
Going further back, Marx talks about the unique form of property that the forests relate to, comparing the impact of the abolition of monasteries on the clergy — as opposed to the peasants — to that of the forest situation: “We can make this clear by taking the monasteries as an example. The monasteries were abolished, their property was secularised, and it was right to do so. But the accidental support which the poor found in the monasteries was not replaced by any other positive source of income. When the property of the monasteries was converted into private property and the monasteries received some compensation, the poor who lived by the monasteries were not compensated. On the contrary, a new restriction was imposed on them, while they were deprived of an ancient right. This occurred in all transformations of privileges into rights. A positive aspect of these abuses — which was also an abuse because it turned a right of one side into something accidental — was abolished not by the accidental being converted into a necessity, but by its being left out of consideration.
These legislations were necessarily one-sided, for all customary rights of the poor were based on the fact that certain forms of property were indeterminate in character, for they were not definitely private property, but neither were they definitely common property, being a mixture of private and public right, such as we find in all the institutions of the Middle Ages. For the purpose of legislation, such ambiguous forms could be grasped only by understanding, and understanding is not only one-sided, but has the essential function of making the world one-sided, a great and remarkable work”
In contrast to much of these early works, you see here a theory of history and property in those two paragraphs that one could imagine appearing later in Capital or of the Monthly Review crew or even in Silvia Federici or Ellen Meiksins Wood.
As for a physical representation of poverty and wealth and now the law treats them differently than the reality of nature, Marx continues, “It will be found that the customs which are customs of the entire poor class are based with a sure instinct on the indeterminate aspect of property; it will be found not only that this class feels an urge to satisfy a natural need, but equally that it feels the need to satisfy a rightful urge. Fallen wood provides an example of this. Such wood has as little organic connection with the growing tree as the cast-off skin has with the snake. Nature itself presents as it were a model of the antithesis between poverty and wealth in the shape of the dry, snapped twigs and branches separated from organic life in contrast to the trees and stems which are firmly rooted and full of sap, organically assimilating air, light, water and soil to develop their own proper form and individual life.”
The metaphor becomes stark reality again by quoting an urban minister that berries that were once customarily picked by children for poor families have instead become the monopoly of commerce to be dispatched by the barrel to Holland, turning a common property (or at least a renewable form of quasi-public property in a privately seized land) into the realm of purely private property interests.
Marx then shifts his attention from property type to the proposed punishments for the pilfering of wood, which he finds so harsh as to “inspire more repugnance than the offence itself”, turning the alleged criminals from mere wood-pilferers into “an enemy of wood”(!) Marx then describes how legislation inspired by self-interest is really inspired by “cowardice.”
A supplement five days later in the paper continues that “town and countryside and the princely estate have had their say” and “Instead of smoothing out the difference between the rights of the infringer of forest regulations and the claims of the forest owner, they found that this difference was not great enough.” The state indeed took pains to make sure the rights of the smaller forest owners and larger forest owners were equal under the law — even while widening the gap between “infringer” and “owner.”
A further supplement in November exclaims that “Crime becomes a lottery in which the forest owner, if he is lucky, can even win a prize” due to a new paragraph adopted into the law (over the opposition of an urban deputy) that a “special sum” could be added to a fine, paid to the forest owner, beyond the value of pilfered wood. Marx wonders if this could be turned into a sort of insurance business, where a crime could be a source of income for industry, as punishment is based on a payment to the landowner instead of a fine “public penalty” (e.g a fine paid to the government instead.) Perhaps forest owners could leave out stacks of wood on the edge of the forest to gain a larger return than by selling it to industry.
A final supplement has Marx take us from the Rhineland to China to France to the Kamchatka peninsula to the Tidong people and back in his final addition his argument. And then from Spain to Cuba and back again: “The savages of Cuba regarded gold as a fetish of the Spaniards. They celebrated a feast in its honour, sang in a circle around it and then threw it into the sea. If the Cuban savages had been present at the sitting of the Rhine Province Assembly, would they not have regarded wood as the Rhinelanders’ fetish? But a subsequent sitting would have taught them that the worship of animals is connected with this fetishism, and they would have thrown the hares into the sea in order to save the human beings.”
The assembly passed the law. More lasting than that, Marx started to see a class basis for the logic of the state — the forest owners relied on a direct argument of using the repressive state for their own benefit — rather than any lofty, philosophical ideal.
3. The Free
On a lighter note, one of the most exciting pieces of prose in this volume was this very brief “journalistic” entry, aimed at “The Free”, a group of Young Hegelians led by the infamous (at least to Marxists) Bruno Bauer. It’s entertaining enough that I will put the entire piece here:
The Elberfelder Zeitung and, from it, the Didaskalia contain the news that Herwegh has visited the society of “The Free”, but found it beneath all criticism. Herwegh has not visited this society, and therefore could have found it neither beneath nor above criticism. Hemegh and Ruge found that “The Free” are compromising the cause and the party of freedom by their political romanticism, their mania for genius and boasting, and this moreover was frankly stated by them and perhaps may have given offence. Consequently, if Herwegh did not visit the society of “The Free”, who as individuals are excellent people for the most part, it was not because he upholds some other cause, but solely because, as one who wants to be free from French authorities, he hates and finds ludicrous the frivolity, the typically Berlin style of behaviour, and the insipid aping of the French clubs. Rowdiness, blackguardism, must be loudly and resolutely a repudiated in a period which demands serious, manly and soberminded persons for the achievement of its lofty aims.
Marx then notes that if “The Free” see a restroom with the word “gentlemen” on it, to simply ignore the sign and enter — for there is no restroom with the sign “blackguard” on it.
After the newspaper pieces is a smaller selection of letters than what would later be published in entire additional volumes. In this case, 11 letters, the majority of which were to Young Hegelian Arnold Ruge.
The letters to Ruge are useful to the extent that they help capture Marx’s state of mind both about the closing of his newspaper and about the controversies with “The Free.”
Regarding the newspaper closing to Ruge and his current personal situation, Marx writes “Nothing has surprised me. You know what my opinion of the censorship instruction has been from the outset. I see here only a consequence; in the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung I see a definite advance of political consciousness, and for that reason I am resigning. Moreover, I had begun to be stifled in that atmosphere. It is a bad thing to have to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.
As I wrote to you once before, I have fallen out with my family and, as long as my mother is alive, I have no right to my property. Moreover, I am engaged to be married and I cannot, must not, and will not, leave Germany without my fiancée. If, therefore, the possibility arose that I could edit the Deutscher Bote with Herwegh in Zurich, I should like to do so. I can do nothing more in Germany. Here one makes a counterfeit of oneself. If, therefore, you will give me advice and information on this matter, I shall be very grateful.
I am working on several things, which here in Germany will find neither censor nor bookseller, nor, in general, any possible existence. I await an early reply from you.
The last of the large sections is “Early Literary Experiments” which include 1.) six poems to Jenny; 2.) a more complete book of verse dedicated to Karl’s father (an additional 80 pages); and 3.) “Some Chapters from Scorpion and Felix, A Humoristic Novel.”
- From the Albums of Poems Dedicated to Jenny von Westphalen
Though I found it thoroughly charming in an earlier letter to Ruge that Karl mentioned he was “head over heels” for Jenny, seeing him put this loving emotion into poetry wasn’t an enjoyable read. The coupled verses were there, as was the inspiration, but the poet’s skill seems…limited. For example:
“See! I could a thousand volumes fill,
Writing only ‘Jenny’ on each line…
Truly I would write it down as a refrain,
For the coming centuries to see —
LOVE IS JENNY, JENNY IS LOVE’S NAME.”
2. Early literary experiments continue with a group of ballads, fables, poems, and ditties, dedicated to his father. This also is unlikely to ever make, say, a two volume Marx collection. A sample:
“Medical Student Psychology.
Who eats a supper of dumplings and noodles,
Will suffer from — nightmares, oodles and oodles”
3. As for Scorpion and Felix, it seems to have the elements of comedy, but I frankly have no clue what is actually happening here, in that what remains of it reads like punchlines without effective set-ups:
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!” said Richard III. “A husband, a husband, myself for a husband,” said Grethe…
“It is either Boniface or a pair of trousers!” cried Merten.”…
“I fear misfortune, a great misfortune! Call a priest!”…
“O admirable victim of profundity! O pious constipation!”
I have read that Balzac was possibly Marx’s favorite author, but I didn’t see any parallels in terms of literary style in this.
The Appendices contain a great variety of miscellany: Marx’s birth certificate; a college essay on John 15: 1–14; letters from father Heinrich Marx to Karl; various official university documents; and an university essay written in Latin asking “Does the Reign of Augustus Deserve to be Counted Among the Happier Periods of the Roman Empire?” (short answer: etiam?)
A certificate of maturity from Trier mentions Marx at age 17 having “good” moral behavior, “very good” German, “fairly satisfactory” speaking in Latin and Greek, a “wealth of thought and deep inside into the subject matter” of Latin composition but “overladen with irrelevance” and grammatical errors, and “fairly good” French. His Hebrew skills were left unmarked. His religious knowledge of the Christian faith is “fairly clear and well grounded” and (something that would have shocked Engels while editing Volume 2 of Capital) his mathematics knowledge was “good” as well. His knowledge of physics, however, was only “moderate.”
Finally there are end notes, confusingly listed as “editors footnotes” at the back of the book (true throughout the MECW.) There are 220 of them in V1, and they’re incredibly useful. I recommend reading them each and every single time you see one, even if you were to skim actual entries (note: I skimmed nothing and it was especially rough reading about atoms in the Epicurean notebooks.) They shouldn’t be confused with same-page-footnotes that exist in the MECW— those footnotes generally note things like references to theater or translation issues, where the end notes typically provide longer political and historical context.
History is a Weapon did not print the helpful list of figures of names from mythology and literature that Marx references. If you’re super hardcore you may want to read something like Bulfinch’s Mythology along with Hegel’s “big four” works to prepare for these early Volumes, but this index was enough for me (though I did re-read The Phenomenology of Spirit in anticipation of my mail arriving.) There is also a name index for historical and living figures referenced by Marx, which is great quite wide ranging and impressive: you may know Augustine, Bacon, and Cervantes but do you know Apollodorus of Athens, Bulis the Spartan, or Chamisso the Romantic poet? Taken together, these 20+ pages of name-references show a solid classical education and hyper-focus on current events that would serve Marx for the rest of his life.
The last letter is from Jenny to Karl, signed off “…adieu now. Parting is painful. Good-bye, my one and only beloved, black sweet, little’hubby. ‘what, how! Ah! You knavish face. Talatta, talatta good-bye, write soon, talatta, talatta.”
Up next!
Volume Two is probably the volume I am least familiar with of the entire MECW: that of the YOUNG ENGELS.
