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 qualification 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)

“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)