Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

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68 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

arguing for its abolition, nor did he make clear the various roles of classes

in the social evolution. The imprecision of his positive ideas is not at all

surprising since Marx's manuscript represented no more than a prelimi-

nary survey of Hegel's text; and it was written at a very transient stage in

the intellectual evolution of both Marx and his colleagues. Moreover, the

surviving manuscript is incomplete and there are references to projected

elaborations either never undertaken or now lost.^31

A letter from Marx to Ruge, written in September 1843 and later

published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, gives a good impression

of Marx's intellectual and political position immediately before leaving

Germany, and of how much importance he attached to what he called

the 'reform of consciousness'. The situation might not be very clear, he

wrote, but 'that is just the advantage of the new line: that we do not

dogmatically anticipate events but seek to discover the new world by

criticism of the old'.^52 What was clear was that all dogmatism was

unacceptable, and that included the various communist systems:

Communism in particular is a dogmatic abstraction, though by this I

do not mean any imaginable and possible communism but the really

existing communism taught by Cabet, Dezamy, etc. This communism

is itself only a peculiar presentation of the humanist principle infected

by its opposite: private individualism. The abolition of private property

is therefore by no means identical to communism; and it is no accident

that communism has seen other socialist doctrines like those of Fourier,

Proudhon, etc., necessarily arise in opposition to it, since it is itself

only a particular, one-sided realisation of the socialist principle. More-

over, the whole socialist principle is only one facet of the true reality

of the human essence.^55

In Germany, the fulfiment of this human nature depended above all on
a critique of religion and politics, for there it was these that were the
focal points of interest; ready-made systems were no use; criticism had to
take as its starting-point contemporary attitudes. In terms that recall
Hegel's account of the progress of Reason in history, Marx asserted:
'Reason has always existed, but not always in rational form.'^54 In any
form of practical or theoretical consciousness rational goals were already
inherent and awaited the critic who would reveal them.
Thus Marx saw no objection to starting from actual political struggles
and explaining why they took place. The point was to demystify
religious and political problems by instilling an awareness of their exclus-
ively human dimensions. He ended his letter:

So our slogan must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas,

but through the analysis of mystical consciousness that is not clear to