In the Spring of 1843, Karl Marx begins work on a close exegetic study of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Law (1820), focusing on a portion of the subsection on “The State” (paragraphs 261-313).[i] He had nursed the idea for at while. In a letter to Arnold Ruge dated March 5, 1842, Marx had already expressed his desire to engage Hegels’ political philosophy, noting to Ruge: “Another article which I also intended for the Deutsche Jahrbücher is a criticism of Hegelian natural law, insofar as it concerns the internal political system. The central point is the struggle against constitutional monarchy as a hybrid which from beginning to end contradicts and abolishes itself. Res publica is quite untranslatable into German.”[ii] That is the work, with a slightly different emphasis, that Marx would conduct during the summer of 1843.

After completing the exegetic work on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx synthesized the resulting argument into an article, which he wrote during the period September 1843 to January 1844, and published in February 1844 under the title “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” (Zur Kritik der Hegel’schen Rechts-Philosophie. Einleitung) in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher. Marx’s article on Hegel is a call to revolution in Germany. Marx calls for total human emancipation through the dissolution of society and the universalization of the working class. He advocates for the radical overthrow, by force, of the social conditions that oppress ordinary German people. This follows logically and necessarily, Marx argues, from an analysis and criticism of Hegel’s philosophy of law and of the state.

The 1843 Manuscripts have given rise to important debates over questions of democracy and republicanism, and over the place of revolution in progressive movements. Solange Mercier-Josa’s book, Entre Hegel et Marx, produced stimulating exchanges in France, and Geoff Mann’s recent book on Keynesianism in the U.S., among others. This segment will explore these and other questions surrounding Marx’s critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in an effort to determine what more we can glean for present political struggles.

Core Readings

G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952)

Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right,” ed. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” 129-142, in Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right,” ed. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), available online at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm.

Geoff Mann, In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy, and Revolution (New York: Verso, 2017).

Solange Mercier-Josa, Entre Hegel et Marx. Points cruciaux de la philosophie hégélienne du droit (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), available online at https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/catalogue/livre/entre-hegel-et-marx/65993.

Étienne Balibar and Gérard Raulet, eds., Marx démocrate: le manuscrit de 1843 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2001), available at https://www.puf.com/marx-democrate-le-manuscrit-de-1843?v=19481.

Additional Readings

Miguel Abensour, La démocratie contre l’État. Marx et le moment machiavélien (Paris: Éditions du félin, 2012)

Norberto Bobbio, Studi hegeliani. Diritto, società civile, stato (Einaudi, 1997); Norberto Bobbio, “Gramsci and the conception of civil society,” in Gramsci and Marxist Theory, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979)

Richard Bourke, Hegel’s World Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023)

Jean Hyppolite, “La conception hégélienne de L’État et sa critique par Karl Marx,” Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, Nouvelle Série, Vol. 101 (1966 [1947]), 267-284

Domenico Losurdo, Hegel and the Freedom of Moderns, trans. Jon Morris and Marella Morris (Durham, NC: Duke University Press)

Solange Mercier-Josa, Pour lire Hegel et Marx (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1980).

Jacob Rogozinski, “À double tour (introduction à l’onto-logique de Marx),” in Le retrait du politique (Paris: Galilée, 1983)

Frank Ruda, Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation into Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Continuum, 2011)

Additional Resources

Jean-Christophe Angaut, Bakounine jeune hégélien. La philosophie et son dehors (Paris: ENS Éditions, 2007)

Étienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx (New and Updated Edition), trans. Chris Turner and Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2017)

Les Jeunes hégéliens. Politique, religion, philosophie. Une anthologie. Ed. Franck Fischbach (Paris: Gallimard, 2022)

David McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969).

Notes

[i] Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” 129-142, in Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right,” ed. Joseph O’Malley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

[ii] Karl Marx, “To Arnold Ruge in Dresden,” letter dated March 5, 1842, pp. 382-283, in Karl Marx-Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Volume 1 (Karl Marx: 1835-1843) (New York: International Publishers, 1975), at 382-383.