Karl Marx: A Biography

102 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

not yet grasped the positive essence of private property nor the human

nature of needs, it is still imprisoned and contaminated by private

property. It has understood its concept, but not yet its essence.^154

The 'democratic' communism that Marx mentioned here must have been

the Utopian, non-violent sort advocated by Etienne Cabet which was

increasingly popular in Paris about this time, particularly in the League

of the Just; the 'despotic' type probably alluded to the transitory dictator-

ship of the proletariat advocated by the followers of Babeuf. The second

type of communism, involving the abolition of the state, was represented

by Dezamy (who coined the famous phrase about an accountant and a

register being all that was necessary to ensure the perfect functioning of

the future communist society).

Thirdly, Marx described in a few tightly written and pregnant pages

his own idea of communism - the culmination of previous inadequate

conceptions:

Communism is the positive abolition of private property and thus of

human self-alienation and therefore the real reappropriation of the

human essence by and for man. This is communism as the complete

and conscious return of man - conserving all the riches of previous

development for man himself as a social, i.e. human, being. Commu-

nism as completed naturalism is humanism, and as completed humanism

is naturalism. It is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between

man and nature and between man and man. It is the true resolution of

the struggle between existence and essence, between objectification and

self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual

and species. It is the solution to the riddle of history and knows itself

to be this solution.^155

Having thus outlined his own conception of communism, Marx went on
to enlarge on three of its particular aspects: its historical bases, its social
character, and its regard for the individual.
Dealing with the first aspect - the historical bases of communism -
Marx drew a further distinction between his own communism and the
'underdeveloped' variety. The latter types (he cited as examples the Utop-
ian communism of Cabet and Villegardelle) tried to justify themselves by
appealing to certain historical forms of community that were opposed to
private property. For Marx, this choice of isolated aspects or epochs
implied that the rest of history did not provide the case for communism.
In his own version, on the other hand, 'both as regards the real engender-
ing of this communism - the birth of its empirical existence, and also as
regards its consciousness and thought, the whole movement of history is
the consciously comprehended process of its becoming'.^156 Thus the whole