[Self-Estrangement]

We begin with a fact of contemporary economic life: The more wealth the worker produces, the more his production grows in power and scope, the poorer he becomes. The more commodities he creates, the cheaper a commodity he becomes. The more the world of things increases in value, the more in direct proportion the world of men loses value. The activity of labour does not just produce commodities, but also turns itself and the worker into a commodity, and it does this to the same extent that it produces commodities in general.

This fact simply expresses the following: The object that labour produces, labour's own product, confronts it as an alien thing, a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour that has taken the form of an object, labour that has made itself into a thing; it is the transformation of labour into an object. The actualisation of labour is its objectification [Vergegenständlichung]. But in present economic conditions, labour's actualisation carries with it the worker's loss of actualisation, labour's objectification is the worker's loss of the object and servitude to it, and instead of appropriation, there is for the worker estrangement [Entfremdung], alienation [Entausserung].

So much is labour's actualisation the worker's loss of it that this loss goes even to the point of death by starvation. So much is labour's objectification the worker's loss of the object that the worker is robbed even of the objects he needs for both his life and his work.

Big industry brings together in one place a crowd of people who are unknown to one another. Competition divides them in regard to their interests. But maintaining their wages, this common interest which they have against their master, unites them in a single thought of resistance – coalition. Thus, the coalition always has a double purpose, that of bringing the competition among them to an end, in order to be able to mount a general competition against the capitalist. If the first aim of the resistance was only to maintain wages, to the extent that the capitalists in their turn unite in the thought of repression, the coalitions, at first isolated, form themselves into groups and, in the face of the always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more important for them than the maintenance of wages. So true is this, that the English economists are all astonished to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages on behalf of the associations which, in the eyes of the economists, were established only to advance wages. In this struggle – veritable civil war – all the elements necessary for a coming battle are united and developed. At this point, the association assumes a political character.

Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the country into labourers. The domination of capital has created for this mass a common situation and common interests.

Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question Braunschweig, 1843

The German Jews desire emancipation. Which emancipation do they want? Civic, that is, political emancipation.

Bruno Bauer replies to them: nobody in Germany is politically emancipated. We ourselves are not free. How are we supposed to liberate you? You Jews are egoists if you demand a special emancipation for yourselves as Jews. You have to participate as Germans in the political emancipation of Germany, as human beings in the emancipation of humanity, and not perceive the special form of your oppression and your humiliation as an exception to the rule, but rather as confirmation of the rule.

Or do the Jews demand equality with the Christian subjects? In that case they recognise the Christian state to be justified, they acknowledge the regime of general subjugation. Why should your special yoke displease you when you are satisfied with the general yoke? Why should the Germans take an interest in the liberation of the Jews when the Jews take no interest in the liberation of the Germans?

The Christian state knows only privileges. In this state the Jews have the privilege of being Jews. As Jews they have rights which the Christians do not have. Why do they desire rights which they do not have and which the Christians enjoy?

If the Jew wishes to be emancipated from the Christian state, he demands that the Christian state renounce its religious prejudice.

Karl Marx (1818–1883) wrote no single work in which the essential themes of his political thought are spelled out, no work analogous to, say, Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, or Hegel's Philosophy of Right. To get the essentials of his political doctrine, one must read many of Marx's writings, both early and late, including not only things he published but also things left in manuscript form at his death. The editors of this series have decided to offer these writings in two volumes: the present one, which includes texts that pre-date The Communist Manifesto, which was published in February 1848, and a second, being edited by Dr Terrell Carver, which will include the Manifesto and writings subsequent to it.

Of Marx's writing of 1847 we include here two short pieces: an excerpt from the conclusion of Poverty of Philosophy, which was published in the middle of that year, and a speech he gave at the end of the year, shortly before he (and Friedrich Engels) began drafting the Manifesto. Our principal texts date from the period spring/summer 1843 to fall 1846. The first of these is Marx's ‘Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right’, excerpts from which are included here, and the last is chapter 1 of‘The German Ideology’. This latter text represents the culmination of a process that began in the earlier ‘Critique’ of Hegel: Marx's development of a complex insight which he called the ‘guideline’ (Leitfaden) for all of his subsequent theoretical work, and which others have dubbed his ‘materialist’ theory of history, society and politics (or ‘historical materialism’ etc.) – about the details of which we will say more below.