Karl Marx and the Shadow of Hegel

Karl Marx was a syncretic and enigmatic writer who fused dozens of philosophical traditions, both metaphysical and anti-metaphysical, into a world philosophy that attempted a coherent overview of the human condition. The sheer complexity and volume of his works have left Marxist thought open to a wide range of interpretations. This series offers new translations of Marx's works from the original manuscripts, arranged chronologically, including rare and unpublished manuscripts. Marx was a prolific writer, publishing dozens of massive works and drafting a dozen books that were never completed. Marx published a dozen articles in the New-York Daily Tribune, now the New York Times, as well as countless pamphlets and essays in various journals and magazines. In 1864, after years of commenting extensively on the Civil War, he wrote a letter directly to Abraham Lincoln on his re-election. This series resurrects these manuscripts with new life in unabridged, literal translations directly from the original manuscripts into modern American English. Perhaps no other pol-econ writer needs a fresh analysis of the original works than Marx, for his ideas and counter-ideas are as relevant as ever. Many have strong opinions about Marx, but few have ever read the original manuscripts.

In 13 volumes, we present the complete works of Marx, starting with his doctoral dissertation:

1841 Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie

This manuscript is Marx's Doctorate Thesis. It is one of the most critical texts to understand the foundation of Marx's political theories. Here he elaborates his initial, basic dialectical understanding of perception through a de-mysticized Epicurean Naturalism. This is an anachronistic re-interpretation of Epicurean cosmology through the lens of Hegelianism. He creates a dichotomy between Epicurus and Democritus, although he admits that "Epicurus borrowed his physics from Democritus." The "rationality" Marx advocates for is inherently an amoral and misanthropic form of anti-logos reason, or in Hegelian terms, it is missing the Geist, the Super-rational "glue" that enables human reasoning in the first place. This work, as with all of Marx's writings, it deeply anti-socratic and thus anti-existentialist in his denial of Self-Consciousness (mimicking Schopenhauer & Nietzsche): "If self-consciousness, which knows itself only under the form of abstract generality, is elevated to the status of absolute principle, then the door is opened to superstitious and unfree mysticism".

He is attempting the same project as Nietzsche- to completely collapse the Subject-Object paradigm between essence and existence. He believes that this hyper-rational, anti-metaphysical Cosmology is the only foundation of a functioning society: "form struggled with matter; the one determination cancelled the other, and it was precisely in this contradiction that abstract-singular self-consciousness felt its nature objectified. The abstract form, which fought with the abstract matter under the form of matter, was itself. Now, however, when matter has reconciled itself with form and has become independent, the individual self-consciousness emerges from its pupa and proclaims itself as the true principle and opposes nature which has become independent".

In light of this Aristotelian, One-World Materialism, the very idea of morality becomes an illusion, for the only real is the material. The spheres of human experience, including suffering, become irrelevant. His manipulation of the Hegelian dialectic would be the foundation of his genocidal creed.

1844 Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844

Published posthumously in the 1930’s from his estate, these manuscripts are incomplete and were abandoned for larger projects he began to undertake with Engels. They survive only as fragments written between April and August 1844. The material is in draft form, and repeats itself several times because some of it was originally divided into columns, much like Kant’s critique do, which is an editor’s formatting nightmare. The preface for these three manuscripts is a part of the third manuscript, but is a fitting introduction for all three.

1844 Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie

Originally printed in the journal Deutsch-Französische Jahrbiicher in Paris in 1844, this critical manuscript contains the famous phrase "Religion is the opium of the masses". Oddly enough, the full manuscript did not survive and is missing the first 39 pages, which have never been found. So this manuscript begins with the introduction, and then skips to paragraph 261.

1845 Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik

The Holy Family is Marx's first foray into building his dialectical materialism, while still attacking the modern Hegelians.The main title itself is mocking Bruno Bauer's "Pure Criticism", which Marx parodies with the nonsense "Critical Criticism". This is the first publication Engels and Marx published together, only one year after meeting in person in 1844.  Here he is attacking other Hegelians and Critical Philosophy writ large, arguing against Hegel's idealistic dialectic for his own dialectal Epicurean Materialism which he began to outline in his Ph.D. Thesis "Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie" in 1841. Marx believed that Critical Philosophy in general (kritische Philosophie), which sees the most fundamental task of Philosophy as primarily judging the possibility of knowledge before asserting any claim of knowledge itself, as misguided in its Platonic Ontology. The entire work is a polemic against "The Holy Family" of young Hegelians, mocking and insulting them on every page. He uses sarcastic parody, nearly Horatian satire, specifically towards Christianity- "Criticism so loved the masses that it sent its only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life". Ultimately, he declared these dilettante philosophers "false prophets" and himself the true prophet of Atheistic, Skeptical and Materialistic Humanism. Here he also argues that the only way to deal with "the Jewish problem" is by eradicating Christianity and all metaphysical beliefs because the "bourgeois morality" gets in the way of implementing a true, final solution to the muddying of pure European nationality by the existence of the Jews. Here we see the foundations of the National-Socialist movement which declared "there is no God but the German people" and started eradicating millions in the name of Humanism and Progress.

1845 Die deutsche Ideologie

A new translation into American English of Marx's early manuscripts from 1845-46 published first under the title "Die deutsche Ideologie". Written across the years 1845 & 46, this collection of writings by Marx and Engels were published in the early 20th century from his estate. The bulk of these were written by Marx but some parts by Engels, Moses Hess, Joseph Weydemeyer and Roland Daniels. Die deutsche Ideologie is considered a key work in the development of historical materialism. Engels noted that this work contained his first sketch of Historical Dialectical Materialism, although you see elements of this in his 1841 Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie, his doctoral thesis, and his early criticisms of Hege's Philosophy of Right, his 1844 Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie.

1847 Das Elend der Philosophie (Volume VI)

Marx's 1847 "Das Elend der Philosophie" or "The Misery of Philosophy". This has historically been translated as "The Poverty of Philosophy", but in this translation it is rendered "The Misery of Philosophy since it is Marx's reply to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's 1847 "The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Misery".

Originally published in French under the title "Misère de la philosophie. Réponse a la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon" in 1847 in Paris, the German version was published in 1884 in Stuttgart.

1848 Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (Volume VII)

Marx's infamous 1848 "Manifest der kommunistischen Partei" translated from the original manuscripts, unabridged with the 7 prefaces for different translations Marx and Engels published across Europe.

The vast impact this work has had on world history is impossible to fully understand, Marx writes in the preface here "At the present time it is undoubtedly the most widespread, the most international product of all socialist literature, the common program of many millions of workers of all countries from Siberia to California.”

1849 Lohnarbeit und Kapital (volume VIII )

This text is based on lectures from 1847 that Marx gave to the German Workers' Association in Brussels. It was originally published in five articles for a German magazine in 1849. The series was not fully printed due to the political situation, was eventually published separately in Zurich in 1884, and from there was distributed in a number of languages. This manuscript outlines Max's theories of wage labor. "Lohnarbeit" is "Wage-Labor" but in English it is separated into two words for clarity.

1857  Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Volume IX)

Marx' famous "Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie" which would be used as the basis of the infamous Das Kapital.

On the Critique of Political Economy is a foundational text which was used to create Das Kapital in three bands (volumes) in 1867, 1885 and 1894. The work is primarily economic as it focuses on the value of commodities as both value and exchange value as a quantitative-qualitative measure of physical and abstract work.

1867 Das Kapital

I. Band: Der Produktionsprozeß des Kapitals (Volume X)

Das Kapital was printed in three editions by Engels- this is the first. This first band concerns the production process of capital. Das Kapital is so famous, the title often remains translated even in English and other languages. This work, published in three volumes, created the intellectual foundation and justification of the greatest genocides ever committed in human history across the 20th century.

II. Band: Der Zirkulationsprozeß des Kapitals (Volume XI)

Das Kapital was printed in three editions by Engels- this is the second. This volume is subtitled "The Circulation Process of Capital". The second "band" (volume) was printed in Hamburg in 1885. Here he explains his analysis that the sum of commodities "W" into labor power "A" and means of production "Pm" (W = A + Pm) is better formulated as W ‹ A + Pm. Das Kapital is so famous, the title often remains translated even in English and other languages. This work, published in three volumes, created the intellectual foundation of the greatest genocides ever committed in human history across the 20th century.

III. Band: Der Gesamtprozeß der kapitalistischen Produktion (Volume XII)

Das Kapital was printed in three editions by Engels- this is the third. This volume is subtitled "The overall process of capitalist production". The third "band" (volume) was published after Marx and Engels died in 1894, unfinished. Das Kapital is so famous, the title often remains translated even in English and other languages. This work, published in three volumes, created the intellectual foundation of the greatest genocides ever committed in human history across the 20th century.

Volume XIII: The Minor Works of Marx

Minor Works: 
1842 Bemerkungen über die neue preußische Zensurinstruktion
1842 Die Verhandlungen des 6. rheinischen Landtags
1842 Das philosophische Manifest der historischen Rechtsschule
1844 Zur Judenfrage

1845 Thesen über Feuerbach

1848 Forderungen der Kommunistischen Partei in Deutschland

1851 Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte

1857 Formen, die der kapitalistischen Produktion vorhergehen

1862 Der Amerikanische Bürgerkrieg