1 This study of “The Genesis of the Marxian Idea” is taken from the writer's History of Political Ideas to be published by the Macmillan Company of New York. It is a section from the chapter on “Gnostic Socialism: Marx” in Volume III.Google Scholar

2 Marx-Engels, Gesamtausgabe (Erste Abteilung), Volumes I-V, (1927 1932);Google Scholar and Marx, Karl, Der Historische Materialismus. Die Frühschriften, edited by Landshut, S. and Mayer, J. P., 2 volumes (Leipzig, 1932).Google Scholar

3 One of the best, though brief, analyses of the early thought of Marx is the “Einlei-tung” by Landshut, and Mayer, to their edition of the Frühschriften. Of great value are, furthermore, the sections on Karl Marx in Karl Loewith, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche (Zurich-New York, 1941).Google ScholarOf special interest for the philosophical anthropology of Marx is the section “Feuerbach et l'illusion religieuse” in Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Drame de L'Humanism Athée (Third Edition, Paris, 1945).Google Scholar The English reader will find a report of the content of Marx's writings up to 1847 in Adams, H. P., Karl Marx in his Earlier Writings (London, 1940). Unfortunately the author, while reporting the contents, has refrained from analyzing the problems of Marx.Google Scholar

4 Marx, Karl, über die Differenzen der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphi-losophie, Gesamtausgabe, volume I/1.Google Scholar

5 Op. cit., p. 10.Google Scholar

6 This is a note to the “Appendix” of the dissertation, entitled Kritik der plutarchi-schen Polemik gegen Epikurs Theologie. The Appendix itself is lost. The note is in op. cit., pp. 80 f.Google Scholar

7 Op. cit., p. 81.Google Scholar

8 Op. cit., pp. 64 and 131.Google Scholar

9 The choice of the subject for the dissertation was determined by this insight. Marx was interested in post-Aristotelian philosophy because of the parallel with his own post-Hegelian situation. The point is expressly mentioned, p. 131.

10 Marx characterizes the religious culture of the Middle Ages as “the age of realized unreason” (p. 9). In this argument lies the fallacy of Marx's thought. When philosophical speculation has become completely “concretized,” that is, when it has reached the impasse of a radically gnostic interpretation of the universe like Hegel's the only thing a spiritual realist can do is to drop gnosis and return to the original sources of order in the soul, that is, to the experiences of faith. The “necessity” under which Marx considered himself to be, does not stem from the philosophical situation but from the fact that he was in demonic revolt against God.

11 Op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

12 Edition of Landshut, and Mayer, , volume I, p. 7.Google Scholar

13 Under this name go two pages of a notebook of Marx, , containing eleven theses “ad Feuerbach.” They are published in Gesamtausgabe, volume V, pp. 533–535.Google Scholar

14 On the views of Feuerbach see de Lubac, Henri, Le Drame de l'Humanisme Athée, pp. 23 ff., and the bibliography given in the footnotes.Google Scholar

15 For an entirely different interpretation of the Theses on Feuerbach the reader should refer to Hook, Sidney, From Hegel to Marx (London, 1936), pp. 272–307.Google Scholar

16 Marx, Karl, Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung (1843) Gesam-tausgabe, volume I/1, pp. 607 ff.Google Scholar

17 Op. cit., p. 607.Google Scholar

18 Op. cit., p. 607 f. The simile of the “imaginary flowers on the chain,” etc., is probably the last transformation of the Rosicrucian symbolism of Hegel.Google Scholar

19 Op. cit., p. 508.Google Scholar

20 Op. cit., pp. 617 ff.Google Scholar

21 Marx, Karl, Bruno Bauer: Die Judenfrage (1843), Op. cit., volume 1/1, pp. 584 ff.Google Scholar

22 Einleitung. pp. 613 f.Google Scholar

23 Op. cit., p. 616.Google Scholar

24 Op. cit., p. 617.Google Scholar

25 Op. cit., pp. 619 f.Google Scholar

26 Op. cit., pp. 619–621.Google Scholar

27 Op. cit., p. 615.Google Scholar

28 Zur Judenfrage, op. cit., p. 599.Google Scholar

29 Kritik da Hegelschen Rechlsphilosophie, ad ξ 279, op. cit., p. 436.Google Scholar

30 Deutsche Ideologie (1844/45), Gesamtausgabe, volume V, p. 10.Google Scholar

31 Op. cit., pp. 10–17.Google Scholar

32 Op. cit., p. 22.Google Scholar

33 Op. cit., p. 22 f.Google Scholar

34 Oekonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (1844), Gesamtausgabe, volume III, pp. 82–93.Google Scholar

35 Deutsche Ideologie, op. cit., p. 66.Google Scholar

36 Deutsche Ideologie, op. cit., p. 22.Google Scholar

37 Deutsche Ideologie, op. cit., pp. 57 f. and 63 f.Google Scholar The reader should also compare Kapital, volume I (4th edition, 1890), pp. 39–46Google Scholar. The thought is substantially the same as in Deutsche Ideologie. There occur, however, such famous formulations as the Fetisch-cbarakter der Waarenwelt (p. 39), the very revealing comparison of the post-revolutionary Industrial society with the situation of the many-sided Robinson (p. 45), and the reflections on Christianity as the ideological environment in which the idea of the limited individual can thrive (p. 45 f.).Google Scholar

38 Oekonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte (1844), op. cit., volume III, pp. 124 f.Google Scholar

39 Op. cit., p. 125, line 18 ff.Google Scholar

40 Op. cit., p. 125 f,Google Scholar

41 Op. cit., pp. 111–113.Google Scholar

42 op. cit., pp. 114 and 116.Google Scholar

43 Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, Gesamtausgabe, volume VI, pp. 523 ff.Google Scholar

44 The term is not yet used in the Manifesto, though the subject-matter is discussed.

46 Ansprache der Zentralbehörde an den Bund, reprinted in Marx, Karl, Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenprozess zu Köln (Berlin, 1914), p. 130.Google Scholar

46 Op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

47 Op. cit., p. 135.Google Scholar

48 Op. cit., p. 137.Google Scholar