Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T15:40:18.534Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Young Marx on Feudalism as the Democracy of Unfreedom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2023

Dimitrios Halikias Open the ORCID record for Dimitrios Halikias [Opens in a new window]
Dimitrios Halikias*
Affiliation:
Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
*
Email: dhalikias@g.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Karl Marx consistently contrasts the alienation and egoism of bourgeois, capitalist society with the holism and intimacy of medieval feudalism. In his critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of right, he cryptically terms medievalism the ‘democracy of unfreedom’, arguing that feudalism embodied an integration of political and economic life that the fragmented modern constitutional state abandons. Focusing on writings from the early 1840s, this article examines Marx’s account of feudalism to better understand his early democratic theory and its relationship to his account of human emancipation. While Marx rejects feudal nostalgia and insists on the revolutionary progress brought by capitalism and liberal constitutionalism, he nonetheless believes that medievalism models a partial unity of political and economic life that ‘true democracy’ will restore and radicalize.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , March 2024 , pp. 281 - 304
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Unless otherwise noted, translations of Marx and Engels are taken from Marx and Engels collected works (MECW) (50 vols., New York, NY, 1975–2004). Where available, citations are given to Marx–Engels Gesamtausgabe 2 (MEGA) (Berlin, 1975–). For texts not published in MEGA, citations are given to Marx–Engels Werke (MEW) (Berlin, 1957–68). All emphases in quotations appear in the original texts.

2 Karl Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’ (1843), MECW, iii, p. 160; MEGA, i/2, p. 145.

3 Karl Marx, ‘Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law’ (1843), MECW, iii, p. 32; MEGA, i/2, p. 33.

4 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 30; MEGA, i/2, p. 32.

5 Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E., eds., The Brenner debate: agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Jones, Gareth Stedman, Karl Marx: greatness and illusion (Cambridge, 2017), p. 271Google Scholar. Alvin Gouldner termed this alleged incoherence the ‘nuclear contradiction’ at the heart of Marx’s thinking: see The two Marxisms: contradictions and anomalies in the development of theory (New York, NY, 1980), pp. 32–40. Leszek Kolakowski similarly described the Marxist project as torn between three master motifs: scientific rationalism, humanist personalism, and Promethean voluntarism: see Main currents of Marxism (New York, NY, 2005), pp. 335–41.

7 Leopold, David, The young Karl Marx: German philosophy, modern politics, and human flourishing (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 183–235CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Moggach, Douglas, ‘German republicans and socialists in the prelude to 1848’, in Douglas Moggach and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., The 1848 revolutions and European political thought (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 216–35Google Scholar.

8 Breckman, Warren, Dethroning the self: Marx, the young Hegelians, and the origins of radical social theory (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 258–97Google Scholar.

9 Moggach, ‘German republicans’, p. 229; Leopold, Young Marx, p. 261.

10 Leopold, Young Marx, p. 254, notes resonances between Marx’s perfectionist interpretation and the tradition of neo-Roman republican liberty. Roberts, William Clare, ‘Marx’s social republic: political not metaphysical’, Historical Materialism, 27 (2019), pp. 41–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 45, identifies Marx’s primary aim as securing freedom from dependence, and he starkly suggests that Marx’s apparent embrace of the positive liberty of democratic self-determination is as theoretically central for Marx as are his views of phrenology.

11 Avineri, Shlomo, The social and political thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rubel, Maximilien, ‘Notes on Marx’s conception of democracy’, New Politics, 1 (1962), pp. 78–90Google Scholar.

12 Alexandros Chrysis, ‘True democracy’ as a prelude to communism: the Marx of democracy (Cham, 2018).

13 Richard Hunt, The political ideas of Marx and Engels: Marxism and totalitarian democracy, vol. i (Pittsburgh, PA, 1974). Hunt’s interpretation is shaped by his Cold War context, yet his core argument is supported by more recent work emphasizing Marx’s commitment to universal suffrage and parliamentarism: see Monahan, Sean, ‘The American workingmen’s parties, universal suffrage, and Marx’s democratic communism’, Modern Intellectual History, 18 (2021), pp. 379–401CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shoikhedbrod, Igor, ‘Marx and the democratic struggle over the constitution in 1848–9’, History of Political Thought, 43 (2022), pp. 357–81Google Scholar.

14 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist manifesto (1848), MECW, vi, p. 507; MEW, iv, p. 483.

15 Ibid., MECW, vi, p. 492; MEW, iv, p. 470.

16 Ibid., MECW, vi, pp. 514–17; MEW, iv, pp. 489–92. On Saint-Simon’s debt to reactionary thinkers, see Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: an intellectual biography, vol. i (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 73–5.

17 Karl Marx, ‘British rule in India’ (1853), MECW, xii, p. 132.

18 Karl Marx, ‘Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law: introduction’ (1844), MECW, iii, pp. 175–6; MEGA, i/2, p. 171.

19 Marx and Engels, Communist manifesto, MECW, vi, p. 487; MEW, iv, p. 465.

20 Sperber, Jonathan, Karl Marx: a nineteenth-century life (New York, NY, 2013), pp. 206–7Google Scholar.

21 Karl Marx, Poverty of philosophy (1847), MECW, vi, pp. 178–9; MEW, iv, pp. 144–5.

22 Ibid., MECW, vi, pp. 174–5; MEW, iv, p. 140.

23 Karl Marx, ‘Future results of British rule in India’ (1853), MECW, xii, p. 222. Marx and Engels are generally equivocal on imperialism. If imperialism overcomes feudalism, it is to be supported, but if self-determination overcomes feudalism, then it is to be supported. A parallel argument recurs in their treatment of free trade. In Germany, where industrialization lags behind, they favour protectionism to strengthen the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy. In England, where industrial development is advanced, free trade serves a revolutionary role by heightening conflict between labour and capital. Karl Marx, ‘Draft of an article on Friedrich List’s book’ (1845), MECW, iv, p. 280; MEGA, i/4, pp. 474–6; Karl Marx, ‘Speech on free trade’ (1848), MECW, vi, p. 465; MEW, iv, pp. 457–8; Friedrich Engels, ‘Speeches in Elberfeld’ (1845), MECW, iv, pp. 256–64; MEGA, i/4, pp. 518–38.

24 Marx, ‘Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter’ (1847), MECW, vi, pp. 220–34; MEW, iv, pp. 191–203; Friedrich Engels, ‘The civil war in Switzerland’ (1847), MECW, vi, pp. 367–74; MEW, iv, pp. 391–8.

25 Karl Marx, ‘Moralising criticism and critical morality’ (1847), MECW, vi, pp. 332–3; MEW, iv, p. 352.

26 Marx, ‘Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter’, MECW, vi, p. 228; MEW, iv, p. 197. Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 155; MEGA, i/2, p. 150.

27 Thomas, Paul, Karl Marx and the anarchists (London, 1980), p. 177Google Scholar.

28 Marx and Engels, Communist manifesto, MECW, vi, p. 491; MEW, iv, p. 469.

29 Cohen, Jean, Class and civil society: the limits of Marxian critical theory (Amherst, MA, 1982), p. 35Google Scholar.

30 Marx and Engels, Communist manifesto, MECW, vi, p. 487 (modified translation); MEW, iv, p. 464.

31 As Marx remarks in the 1844 manuscripts, true communism ‘equals humanism’, for it provides ‘the complete return of man to himself as a social i.e., human being’. Karl Marx, 1844 manuscripts (1843), MECW, iii, p. 296; MEGA, i/2, p. 389. Marx credits Feuerbach with this discovery: ibid., MECW, iii, p. 232; MEGA, i/2, p. 317.

32 Moggach, ‘German republicans’, p. 234; Leopold, Young Marx, pp. 223–45.

33 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, p. 326 (modified translation); MEGA, i/2, p. 438. In a similar passage, Marx points to workers who de-instrumentalize community: ‘what appears as a means becomes an end … Association, society and conversation, which again has association as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life’ (ibid., MECW, iii, p. 313; MEGA, i/2, p. 289).

34 Karl Marx, ‘The divorce bill’ (1842), MECW, i, pp. 307–10; MEGA, i/1, pp. 287–90. Marx draws on Hegel’s account of marriage as not a subjective contract but an objective expression of ‘ethical love’. Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, Elements of the philosophy of right (Cambridge, 1991), p. 201; Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel, Werke (20 vols., Frankfurt, 1970), vii, p. 310.

35 Karl Marx, ‘Philosophical manifesto of the historical school of law’ (1842), MECW, i, p. 207; MEGA, i/1, p. 195.

36 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, p. 296 (modified translation); MEGA, i/2, p. 262.

37 Feuerbach, Ludwig, ‘Principles of the philosophy of the future’, in The fiery brook: selected writings (London, 2012), p. 244Google Scholar; Feuerbach, Ludwig, Gesammelte Werke (Berlin, 1981–), ix, pp. 338–9Google Scholar. In an 1844 letter to Feuerbach, Marx writes that this text constitutes the philosophical foundation of socialism: see MECW, iii, p. 354; MEGA, iii/1, p. 63.

38 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, pp. 244, 294–5; MEGA, i/2, pp. 233, 261. Friedrich Engels, The condition of the working class in England (1845), MECW, iv, pp. 441–2; MEGA, i/4, pp. 371–2.

39 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 172; MEGA, i/2, p. 167.

40 Marx and Engels, Communist manifesto, MECW, vi, pp. 501–2; MEW, iv, pp. 478–9. Friedrich Engels, ‘Outlines of a critique of political economy’ (1844), MECW, iii, pp. 423–4; MEGA, i/3, p. 475.

41 The German ideology speaks of the ‘slavery latent in the family’: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German ideology (1845), MECW, v, p. 33; MEGA, i/5, p. 129. Decades later, Engels celebrated monogamy as a great advance that would be fully realized under communism: Friedrich Engels, Origin of the family (1884), MECW, xxvi, pp. 173–83; MEGA, i/29, pp. 179–88.

42 Hunt, Political ideas, pp. 30–40, argues that Marx in this period was not a communist but a radical republican. Breckman, Dethroning the self, pp. 258–97, shows that the Young Hegelians took seriously questions of constitutionalism and political economy. Barbour, Charles, ‘The Kreuznach myth: Marx, Feuerbach and the “critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law”’, History of Political Thought, 44 (2023), pp. 390–414Google Scholar, argues against a story of rupture between 1842 and 1843, claiming that Marx’s 1842 articles are contemporaneous with his ‘Critique of Hegel’, which is traditionally dated to 1843.

43 On this subject, Marx is influenced by Friedrich Carl von Savigny’s critique of legal reform. See Stedman Jones, Greatness and illusion, pp. 62–8; Kelley, Donald, ‘The metaphysics of law: an essay on the very young Marx’, American Historical Review, 83 (1978), pp. 350–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Karl Marx, ‘Wood theft’, MECW, i, p. 232; MEGA, i/1, p. 207.

45 Ibid., MECW, i, p. 233; MEGA, i/1, pp. 207–8.

46 Macpherson, C. B., The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar.

47 Marx, ‘Wood theft’, MECW, i, p. 236; MEGA, i/1, p. 211.

48 Concerning Marx’s use of antisemitic tropes, see Leopold, Young Marx, pp. 163–80, and Stedman Jones, Greatness and illusion, pp. 164–7.

49 Marx, ‘Wood theft’, MECW, i, pp. 236, 256; MEGA, i/1, pp. 211, 230.

50 Ibid., MECW, i, p. 245; MEGA, i/1, p. 219.

51 Ibid., MECW, i, p. 237; MEGA, i/1, p. 212.

52 Ibid., MECW, i, p. 262; MEGA, i/1, pp. 235–6. Andrew Chitty, ‘The basis of the state in the Marx of 1842’, in Douglas Moggach, ed., The new Hegelians: politics and philosophy in the Hegelian school (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 220–41, at pp. 234–6.

53 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, p. 266 (modified translation); MEGA, i/2, p. 360.

54 On Engels’s early response to German romanticism and nationalism, see Carver, Terrell, The life and thought of Friedrich Engels: thirtieth anniversary edition (Cham, 2021), pp. 70–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Carlyle writes that ‘Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to man’. Thomas Carlyle, ‘Chartism’, in Critical and miscellaneous essays (6 vols., London, 1869), v, p. 378. The motif recurs throughout ‘Chartism’ and Past and present. Engels later quipped that Henry Maine’s thesis concerning the transition from status to contract, ‘in so far as it is correct, was contained long ago in the Communist Manifesto’. Engels, Origin of the family, MECW, xxvi, p. 186; MEGA, i/29, p. 191.

56 Friedrich Engels, ‘Review of Carlyle’ (1844), MECW, iii, p. 444; MEGA, i/3, p. 511.

57 Carlyle, ‘Chartism’, p. 379. Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Engels and the invention of the catastrophist conception of the industrial revolution’, in Moggach, ed., New Hegelians, pp. 200–19.

58 Friedrich Engels, ‘Condition of England’ (1844), MECW, iii, p. 476 (modified translation); MEGA, i/3, p. 545. Recall Marx’s remark that liberal reform abolishes ‘spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction’ of private property: Marx, ‘Wood theft’, MECW, i, p. 262; MEGA, i/1, p. 235.

59 Engels, ‘Condition of England’, MECW, iii, p. 476; MEGA, i/3, pp. 545–6; Engels, Condition of the working class, MECW, iv, pp. 441–2; MEGA, i/4, pp. 371–2.

60 Marx and Engels, German ideology, MECW, v, p. 78; MEGA, i/5, pp. 95–6. This treatment of freedom raises difficulties for republican interpretations of Marx. Freedom is associated here with the linking of political authority and economic conditions – a form of conscious, collective dependence rather than individual independence.

61 Engels first deploys this analogy in ‘Critique of political economy’, MECW, iii, pp. 422–3; MEGA, i/3, p. 474.

62 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, pp. 290–1; MEGA, i/2, pp. 257–8. Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 272; MEGA, i/2, p. 236.

63 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 182; MEGA, i/2, p. 177.

64 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, p. 287; MEGA, i/2, p. 360.

65 The abolition of feudalism threw ‘off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society’. Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 166; MEGA, i/2, pp. 160–1.

66 Marx, 1844 manuscripts, MECW, iii, p. 284; MEGA, i/2, p. 249.

67 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 283; MEGA, i/2, p. 248.

68 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 267; MEGA, i/2, p. 231.

69 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 287; MEGA, i/2, p. 360. Marx repeats this juxtaposition in Capital, MECW, xxxv, p. 157; MEGA, ii/6, p. 165.

70 Marx and Engels, German ideology, MECW, v, pp. 51, 88; MEGA, i/5, pp. 95–6, 113–14.

71 Karl Marx, ‘Letters to Ruge’, MECW, iii, pp. 139, 137; MEGA, i/2, pp. 478, 475–6.

72 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 30; MEGA, i/2, p. 31.

73 Avineri, Social and political thought, pp. 8–40.

74 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 84; MEGA, i/2, p. 94.

75 Hunt, Political ideas, pp. 132–75.

76 Like many in their circle, Marx and Engels saw democracy not simply as a form of government, but as a more sweeping commitment to social equality. Nippel, Wilfried, Ancient and modern democracy (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 279–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 153; MEGA, i/2, p. 148.

78 Annelien de Dijn, French political thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville (Cambridge, 2009). The importance of Constant for the young Marx is evident from the lengthy excerpts from Constant’s On religion that Marx copied into his 1842 notebooks. MEGA iv/1, pp. 342–67.

79 Benjamin Constant, ‘Liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns’, in Political writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge, 1988), p. 316. Rousseau is the most significant critic of commercial, negative liberty and is consequently rebuked by Constant, ‘The spirit of conquest and usurpation and their relation to European civilization’, in Political writings, pp. 106–9. Marx and Rousseau offer parallel critiques of the commercial constitutionalism defended by Hegel, Constant, and Montesquieu. For contrasting studies of this debate, see Althusser, Louis, Politics and history: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx (London, 1972)Google Scholar, and Yack, Bernard, The longing for total revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1986)Google Scholar.

80 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 166; MEGA, i/2, pp. 160–1.

81 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 165; MEGA, i/2, p. 160.

82 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, pp. 30–1; MEGA, i/2, pp. 31–2.

83 Marx and Engels contrast conservative ‘middle-class liberalism’ with radical ‘working-class democracy’: see ‘Address to Feargus O’Connor’ (1846), MECW, vi, p. 59. Engels speaks of the ‘total difference between liberalism and democracy’: see ‘The state of Germany’ (1846), MECW, vi, p. 29. Moses Hess, ‘Briefe aus Paris’ (1844), Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (Amsterdam, 1963), pp. 115–25, similarly described France as divided by two great parties: liberals and democrats. Arnold Ruge, ‘A self-critique of liberalism’, in Lawrence Stepelevich, ed., The young Hegelians: an anthology (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 237–60, at p. 259, likewise demanded the ‘dissolution of liberalism into democratism’.

84 Hegel, Philosophy of right, p. 319; Hegel, Werke, vii, p. 410. Breckman, Dethroning the self, pp. 286–9, shows that Marx developed the anti-personalism of his Young Hegelian contemporaries.

85 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 28; MEGA, i/2, p. 29.

86 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 29; MEGA, i/2, pp. 30–1.

87 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 30; MEGA, i/2, p. 32.

88 Hunt, Political ideas, p. 125.

89 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 57; MEGA, i/2, p. 61.

90 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 116; MEGA, i/2, p. 126.

91 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 154; MEGA, i/2, pp. 148–9.

92 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 162; MEGA, i/2, p. 157.

93 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 155; MEGA, i/2, p. 150; and Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 42; MEGA, i/2, p. 150.

94 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, p. 163; MEGA, i/2, p. 158.

95 Karl Marx, ‘Critical marginal notes on the article by a Prussian’ (1844), MECW, iii, p. 198; MEGA, i/2, p. 456.

96 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 32; MEGA, i/2, p. 33.

97 Marx and Engels, German ideology, MECW, v, p. 78; MEGA, i/5, pp. 95–6.

98 Marx, ‘On the Jewish question’, MECW, iii, pp. 154–5; MEGA, i/2, pp. 148–9.

99 Guizot, François, The history of civilization in Europe (New York, NY, 1997), p. 97Google Scholar.

100 Haller praised feudalism for its rejection of public law, as opposed to an anthropomorphized, public sovereignty of a Hobbesian–Rousseauian state. Meinecke, Friedrich, Cosmopolitanism and the national state (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 160–96Google Scholar. Despite rebuking Haller’s apology for feudalism, Hegel shares his description of the private character of medieval society: see Hegel, Philosophy of right, pp. 278–81; Hegel, Werke, vii, pp. 401–6. Comte emphasized the private authority of the feudal military aristocracy and Catholic priesthood: see Comte, Auguste, ‘Considerations on spiritual power’, in Early political writings, ed. Jones, H. S. (Cambridge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General idea of the revolution in the nineteenth century (New York, NY, 1969), pp. 40–74, claimed that capitalism preserves and conceals feudal private domination. ‘Capitalistic feudalism’ is the newest instantiation of private hierarchy.

101 Hegel, Philosophy of right, pp. 315, 338; Hegel, Werke, vii, pp. 443, 467.

102 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich, The philosophy of history (New York, NY, 1956), p. 344Google Scholar (modified translation); Hegel, Werke, xii, p. 416.

103 Ibid., p. 428; Hegel, Werke, xii, p. 509.

104 Hegel, Philosophy of right, pp. 339–44; Hegel, Werke, vii, pp. 468–74.

105 Karl Marx, ‘Commissions of the estates’, MECW, i, p. 297; MEGA, i/1, p. 276.

106 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, pp. 72–3; MEGA, i/2, pp. 78–9.

107 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 95; MEGA, i/2, p. 105.

108 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 81; MEGA, i/2, p. 90.

109 Hegel, Philosophy of history, pp. 446–57; Hegel, Werke, xii, pp. 527–40. Ritter, Joachim, Hegel and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 49ffGoogle Scholar; Bourke, Richard, ‘Hegel and the French Revolution’, History of European Ideas, 49 (2023), pp. 757–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 762–5.

110 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 80; MEGA, i/2, p. 89. Marx’s analysis anticipates Alexis de Tocqueville’s account of the depoliticization of the French aristocracy in The ancien régime and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2011).

111 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 80; MEGA, i/2, p. 90.

112 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The holy family (1845), MECW, iv, p. 122; MEGA, i/4, p. 124.

113 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 32; MEGA, i/2, p. 34. Marx follows Hegel’s treatment of the ancient polis and oriental despotism, departing from him in the assessment of the modern state. See Hegel, Philosophy of right, p. 285; Hegel, Werke, vii, p. 410.

114 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 32; MEGA, i/2, p. 33.

115 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 81; MEGA, i/2, p. 90.

116 Consider this description of species-being in Marx, 1844 manuscripts: ‘The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life activity. Man makes his life activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. … Conscious life activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species-being’ (MECW, iii, p. 276; MEGA, i/2, p. 240). Feudalism constitutes a condition of sociality without freedom. I am grateful to a reviewer for this formulation. Reconciling collective and individual manifestations of conscious self-determination remains the deepest difficulty in Marx’s philosophical project.

117 Marx, ‘Critique of Hegel’, MECW, iii, p. 81; MEGA, i/2, p. 90.

118 Ibid., MECW, iii, p. 82; MEGA, i/2, p. 91.

119 Marx, ‘Letters to Ruge’, MECW, iii, p. 144; MEGA, i/2, p. 488. Korsch, Karl, Marxism and philosophy (London, 2012), pp. 78–97Google Scholar.