This is the last in a series of letters a 25-year-old Marx wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge in 1843. Marx and Ruge would include the entire eight-letter series in the first and only edition of their joint venture, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher of February 1844. Marx is replying to Ruge’s previous letter from August 1843, confirming their venture. This RS translation was produced by combining MECW, Press Progress, and DeepL translations with our own choices.
I am very pleased to find you so resolute, and to see your thoughts turning away from the past and towards a new enterprise. To Paris, then! That ancient bastion of philosophy — absit omen! [May this be no ill omen!] — and the modern capital of the modern world. [1] Whatever is necessary falls into place. Therefore, although I do not underestimate the obstacles, I have no doubt that they can be overcome.
But whether the enterprise comes into being or not, in any case I shall be in Paris by the end of this month, as the very air here turns one into a serf and I can see no opening for free activity in Germany. [2]
In Germany everything is suppressed by force. A veritable anarchy of the mind — a reign of stupidity itself — has come to prevail there. And Zurich obeys orders from Berlin. It is therefore becoming increasingly clear that a new rallying point must be sought for truly thinking and independent minds. I am convinced that our plan would satisfy a real need, and real needs must be satisfied in reality. Hence I expect as soon as we begin in earnest I shall have no more doubts.
In fact, the internal obstacles seem to be almost greater than external difficulties. For even though the question “Where from?” presents no problems, the question “Where to?” is a rich source of confusion. Not only has a state of general anarchy broken out among the reformers, but also everyone will have admit to themselves that they have no precise idea about what the future ought to be. However, this very defect turns to the advantage of the new movement, for it means that we do not anticipate the world with our dogmas, but instead attempt to discover the new world through the critique of the old. Up until now philosophers have acted as though they had the solutions to all the riddles lying on their desks, as if the stupid outside world was just waiting around for them to deliver them these ready-made answers, as if absolute knowledge was a roasted pigeon flying directly into a gaping mouth. Now philosophy has become secularized, and the most striking proof of this can be found in the way that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the struggle — not only externally but also internally. Once we put aside pretensions to construct the future by coming up with invariant solutions valid for all times and places, the real task confronting us in the present becomes all the more clear: the ruthless criticism of all that exists. Ruthless both in the sense that the criticism will not be afraid of the results it arrives at, and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.
I am therefore not in favor of us raising any dogmatic banner. Quite on the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatists make their propositions clear to themselves. Communism, for example, is one such dogmatic abstraction — if by communism we refer not to some imagined potential communism, but to really existing communism as it actually exists in the teachings of Cabet, Dezamy, Weitling, etc. Their communism is only a particular manifestation of the humanist principle, and so remains tethered to the premise of private property — its antithesis. Because their communism is not identical with the abolition of private property, other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, have risen up in opposition to it — and not accidentally but necessarily, because that humanism is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism. But Fourier and Proudhon’s whole principle of socialism is meanwhile also concerned with only one side — namely the reality of the true existence of man. We have to pay just as much attention to the other aspect, to the theoretical existence of man, and therefore to make religion, science, etc., the object of our criticism. [3]
We want to influence our contemporaries, particularly our German contemporaries. The question is how best to achieve this. It’s a fact that both religion and politics are matters of the very first importance in contemporary Germany. [4] Therefore they must be criticized as they are, and not counterposed by any ready-made system such as Cabet’s Voyage to Icaria. [5]
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness, from peculiar forms in existing reality, and from their implicit ideals and goals draw out true reality. Now, as far as real life is concerned, it is precisely the political state — even one that does not yet consciously live up to socialist demands — that represents the demands of reason in all of their modern forms. But it does not merely demand reason. It consistently assumes that reason has already been realized. And precisely because of this assumption, it just as consistently becomes embroiled, at every point, in a conflict between its ideal vocation and its actually existing premises.
This conflict within the political state therefore everywhere enables us to infer the social truth. Just as religion is the index of the theoretical struggles of mankind, so the political state registers mankind’s practical struggles. Thus the political state, within its limits as sub specie rei publicae [subspecies of republic], expresses the social struggles, needs, and truths particular to itself. Therefore it’s not beneath philosophy, living up to its principles [hauteur des principes], to make the most specific political questions the object of its inquiry. For example, the difference between a system of representatives and a system of estates [6] is simply the political expression of the difference between the rule of man and the rule of private property. Therefore the philosopher not only can, but must, enter into these political questions (which vulgar socialists consider beneath their dignity). By establishing the theoretical superiority of the system of representatives over the system of estates, the critic in a practical way draws the interest of large parties. And then by emphasizing that the representative system is only the political form of a concept of a general character, the critic draws out its true significance, compelling his party to go beyond its original confines, so that its victory is at the same time its defeat. [7]
Nothing prevents us, therefore, from linking our criticism to a criticism of politics, from taking sides in politics, i.e., from entering into real struggles and identifying ourselves in them. This does not mean that we will confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: “Here is the truth, kneel down before it!” We will develop new principles for the world out of the world’s existing principles. We shall not say: “Abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with true battle slogans.” Instead, we shall simply show the world why it is struggling, and that this consciousness is something it must acquire, whether it wishes to or not.
The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in rousing it from its dream of itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions. As is the case with Feuerbach’s critique of religion, our project can only consist of translating religious and political questions into their self-conscious human form.
Our programme must therefore be: the reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analyzing mystified and encrypted consciousness, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of something which it needs only to become conscious of for it to possess in reality. It will likewise become evident that our task is not to draw a great dividing line between the thought of the past and thought of the future, but to realize the thought of the past. Lastly, it will become evident that mankind is not beginning new work, but rather consciously bringing about the completion of its own work in the past.
We can summarize the credo of our journal in one word: self-clarification. That is, critical philosophy, of the struggles and desires of our day. This is work for the world and for us. It can only succeed as the product of united efforts. It is a matter of a confession, nothing more. To obtain forgiveness for its sins, mankind needs only to declare them for what they are.
[1] In the previous letter of this exchange, Ruge proclaimed himself an atheist and a vigorous supporter of the “new philosophers,” and informed Marx of his final decision to have the journal published in Paris. Earlier there had been no unanimity on this point. Besides Paris other places had been suggested, in particular Switzerland and Strasbourg. — P. P.
[2] Marx’s departure from Kreuznach for Paris was delayed. He arrived there with Jenny at the end of October 1843. — P. P.
[3] Marx would shortly get into friendship-ending fights with both Weitling in 1846 (“Tell us, Weitling, you people who have made such a rumpus in Germany with your communist preachings and have won over so many workers, causing them to lose their jobs and their crust of bread, with what fundamental principles do you justify your revolutionary and social activity and on what basis do you intend affirming it in the future? […] Ignorance has never yet helped anybody.”) [web] and Proudhon in 1847 (“Mr. Proudhon flatters himself on having given a criticism of both political economy and of communism: he is beneath them both. Beneath the economists, since as a philosopher who has at his elbow a magic formula, he thought he could dispense with going into purely economic details; beneath the socialists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon.”) [web]. Incidentally, he would also break with Ruge in 1852, due to Ruge’s despondent attitude in response to the defeat of the revolution of 1848 (“The Ruge/Fickler contingent at once assumed the outraged indignation of beautiful souls who have been swindled.”). [web] — R. D.
[4] Marx and Engels would become disenchanted with the way the critique of religion and politics was going. In The German Ideology (1845), they express their conclusions that much of what passed as a serious battle in the realm of religion and legality was really sparring with shadows, since those spheres were in reality a reflection of economic material conditions, and therefore efforts should be directed towards changing economic conditions and not their reflections. Still later, however, in The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852), Marx would reflect on the failures of the revolution of 1848 and the rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (“First as tragedy, then as farce”), and further develop their understanding of the relationship between structure and superstructure, explaining that the latter wasn’t a “simple” reflection or consequence of the former, and thus was not to be underestimated, etc. This tension, between camps pejoratively referred to by their opponents as “vulgar materialism” and “idealism,” continues to be a constant in the history of Marxism to this day. — R. D.
[5] A then-recently released book by Etienne Cabet describing a communist utopia. See also the “Icarian Movement.” [web] — R. D.
[6] A system of estates politically enfranchises legally and politically the division of society into estates such as, for example, the French ancien régime’s clergy, nobility, and commons. But this has also been called a “corporatist” division in modern times, when discussing the class division of society, unions, etc. — R. D.
[7] Consider a later formulation: the proletariat, championing its own sectarian interests, in reality champions the interests of humanity as a whole, and thus ultimately makes its own fiercely defended class interests obsolete. — R. D.