PARIS 103
the Rheinische Zeitung, his approach - as was normal in polemical articles
- had been very eclectic with lines of argument drawn from Spinoza,
Kant and Hegel. Now he felt the need for a more systematic framework
of criticism and decided to try to come to terms with Hegel's political
philosophy, particularly as expressed in The Philosophy of Right. All Hegel's
disciples had sooner or later to do this when it became clear that the
Prussian Government showed no possibility of becoming Hegel's 'rational
state'. Marx had had the idea for at least a year. In March 1842 he had
written to Ruge: 'Another article that I also intend for the Deutsche
Jahrbiicher is a critique of the part of Hegel's natural right where he talks
of the constitution. The essential part of it is the critique of constitutional
monarchy, a bastard, contradictory and unjustifiable institution.'^12 He went
on to say that the article was finished and only required rewriting. Six
months later he was still talking about publishing it in the Rheinische
'Zeitung. The critique of Hegel's politics that Marx elaborated in the three
months he spent at Kreuznach is much richer than the purely logical-
political approach of the previous year.
Two factors shaped Marx's view of Hegel's politics. The first was his
recent experience as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. Many years later, in
the preface to his Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote:
The first work which I undertook for the solution of the doubts which
assailed me was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of law ...
My investigation led to the conclusion, firstly, that legal relations as
well as forms of state are to be understood neither in themselves nor
from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather
have their roots in the material conditions of life (the sum total of
which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen
of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of 'civil society');
but secondly that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political
economy.'s
Although this account is too simplified, his experience with the Rheinische
'/.citung and the rejection of liberal politics by Heine and the socialists
(including Hess) enabled his critique of Hegel to take socio-economic
factors into account to a much greater extent.
The second factor was the impression made on Marx by his reading
of Feuerbach's Preliminary Theses for the Reform of Philosophy. Marx had
already read Feuerbach when composing his doctoral thesis, but Feuer-
bach's magnum opus. The Essence of Christianity, which claimed that religious
beliefs were merely projections of alienated human desires and capacities,
had not made as great an impression on him as it had on Ruge.^14 But the
Theses had an immediate and important influence on Marx: they had been
