Karl Marx: A Biography

8 o KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

Marx then turned from a summary of past criticism, and what it had

achieved, to current developments:

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chains not so

that man may bear chains without any imagination or comfort, but

so that he may throw away the chains and pluck living flowers. The

criticism of religion disillusions man so that he may think, act and

fashion his own reality as a disillusioned man come to his senses; so

that he may revolve around himself as his real sun. Religion is only the

illusory sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve

around himself.^68

Criticism had, consequently, to turn to a deeper alienation, that of politics:

It is therefore the task of history, now the truth is no longer in the

beyond, to establish the truth of the here and now. The first task of

philosophy - which is in the service of history - once the holy form

of human self-alienation has been discovered, is to discover self-alien-

ation in its non-religious forms. The criticism of heaven is thus trans-

formed into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the

criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of

politics.^6 '

Following this introduction, the body of Marx's article consisted of two

parts: an analysis of the gap between the reactionary nature of German

politics and the progressive state of German philosophy; and the possi-

bilities of revolution arising from this contrast. Marx began by pointing

out that even the necessary negation of Germany's present was anachron-

istic and would still leave Germany fifty years behind France.

Indeed, German history can congratulate itself on following a path that

no people in the historical firmament have taken before and none will

take after it. For we have shared with modern peoples in restorations

without sharing their revolutions. We have had restorations, firstly

because other peoples dared to make a revolution, and then because

they suffered a counter-revolution; because our masters were at the one

moment afraid and at another not afraid. Without shepherds at our

head, we always found ourselves in the company of freedom only once

• on the day of its burial.^70

But there was, Marx argued, one aspect in which Germany was actually
in advance of other nations and which afforded her the opportunity for
a radical revolution: her philosophy. This view, shared by all the contribu-
tors to the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, made them appear to the
French as some sort of missionaries; it had been current in the Young
I Iegelian movement since Heine (in his History of Religion and Philosophy
in Germany, written in 1835 ) had drawn a parallel between German