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The Formation of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Eric Voegelin
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Extract

The Marxian idea of the great proletarian revolution that will end the pre-history of mankind and inaugurate its true history sprang into public effectiveness through the Communist Manifesto. Well known as is the progress of this idea after its formulation and publication of 1848, we know comparatively little about the process of its formation in the preceding decade. The main cause of this unsatisfactory state must be sought in the fact that the materials for a study of the genesis of he idea have been completely available only since 1932. In the meantime, the monographic literature on the subject has clarified many details; but a comprehensive study is still a desideratum.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1950 , pp. 275 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1950

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References

1 This study of “The Genesis of the Marxian Idea” is taken from the writer's History of Political Ideas to be published by the Macmillan Company of New York. It is a section from the chapter on “Gnostic Socialism: Marx” in Volume III.Google Scholar

2 Marx-Engels, Gesamtausgabe (Erste Abteilung), Volumes I-V, (1927 1932);Google Scholar and Marx, Karl, Der Historische Materialismus. Die Frühschriften, edited by Landshut, S. and Mayer, J. P., 2 volumes (Leipzig, 1932).Google Scholar

3 One of the best, though brief, analyses of the early thought of Marx is the “Einlei-tung” by Landshut, and Mayer, to their edition of the Frühschriften. Of great value are, furthermore, the sections on Karl Marx in Karl Loewith, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche (Zurich-New York, 1941).Google ScholarOf special interest for the philosophical anthropology of Marx is the section “Feuerbach et l'illusion religieuse” in Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Drame de L'Humanism Athée (Third Edition, Paris, 1945).Google Scholar The English reader will find a report of the content of Marx's writings up to 1847 in Adams, H. P., Karl Marx in his Earlier Writings (London, 1940). Unfortunately the author, while reporting the contents, has refrained from analyzing the problems of Marx.Google Scholar

4 Marx, Karl, über die Differenzen der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphi-losophie, Gesamtausgabe, volume I/1.Google Scholar

5 Op. cit., p. 10.Google Scholar

6 This is a note to the “Appendix” of the dissertation, entitled Kritik der plutarchi-schen Polemik gegen Epikurs Theologie. The Appendix itself is lost. The note is in op. cit., pp. 80 f.Google Scholar

7 Op. cit., p. 81.Google Scholar

8 Op. cit., pp. 64 and 131.Google Scholar

9 The choice of the subject for the dissertation was determined by this insight. Marx was interested in post-Aristotelian philosophy because of the parallel with his own post-Hegelian situation. The point is expressly mentioned, p. 131.

10 Marx characterizes the religious culture of the Middle Ages as “the age of realized unreason” (p. 9). In this argument lies the fallacy of Marx's thought. When philosophical speculation has become completely “concretized,” that is, when it has reached the impasse of a radically gnostic interpretation of the universe like Hegel's the only thing a spiritual realist can do is to drop gnosis and return to the original sources of order in the soul, that is, to the experiences of faith. The “necessity” under which Marx considered himself to be, does not stem from the philosophical situation but from the fact that he was in demonic revolt against God.

11 Op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

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13 Under this name go two pages of a notebook of Marx, , containing eleven theses “ad Feuerbach.” They are published in Gesamtausgabe, volume V, pp. 533–535.Google Scholar

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37 Deutsche Ideologie, op. cit., pp. 57 f. and 63 f.Google Scholar The reader should also compare Kapital, volume I (4th edition, 1890), pp. 39–46Google Scholar. The thought is substantially the same as in Deutsche Ideologie. There occur, however, such famous formulations as the Fetisch-cbarakter der Waarenwelt (p. 39), the very revealing comparison of the post-revolutionary Industrial society with the situation of the many-sided Robinson (p. 45), and the reflections on Christianity as the ideological environment in which the idea of the limited individual can thrive (p. 45 f.).Google Scholar

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44 The term is not yet used in the Manifesto, though the subject-matter is discussed.

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46 Op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

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