Marx—From Hegel and Feuerbach to Adam Smith: A New Synthesis

ABSTRACT

In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (completed in August 1844), Marx takes two crucial steps in the formation of his worldview. The first relates to his rejection of all “old” materialism, including Feuerbach’s, and the adoption of his own version, which he called “communist,” “practical.” This view was later presented definitively in the first thesis on Feuerbach (spring of 1845) and elaborated in The German Ideology (1845–1846). The second step relates to Marx’s synthesising of the philosophical standpoint that he had developed up to this point (around the spring of 1844) with political economy. Up to this point, he had spoken of alienation in largely philosophical terms; now it is rooted in the process of production. On both counts Adam Smith was an important influence. This claim provides the focus of this paper. To make this point successfully, the author has found it necessary to trace briefly the development of Marx’s philosophical standpoint up to the writing of the Manuscripts, and to distinguish between the two methodologically distinct aspects of Adam Smith’s thought: the one that Marx accepted and the other that he rejected.

KEYWORDS:

• Marx
• Hegel
• Feuerbach
• Adam Smith

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Eric Rahim taught Economics at Strathclyde University, Glasgow (UK) for many years. Currently, he is honorary lecturer at the University. His research interests include Karl Marx, history of economic thought and the work of Piero Sraffa. Some of his publications: (1) “Marx and Schumpeter: A Comparison of Their Theories of Development,” Review of Political Economy 21, no. 1 (2009); (2) “The Concept of Abstract Labour in Adam Smith’s System of Thought,” Review of Political Economy 23, no. 1 (2011); (3) “Two Souls of Thomas Piketty,” Theory and Struggle (journal of the Marx Memorial Library, London) 116 (2015); (4) “Marx: Greatness without Illusions,” Theory and Struggle 118 (2017); and (5) (with K. Aftab) “Barriers to the Growth of Informal Sector Firms,” The Journal of Development Studies 25 no. 4 (1989).

Notes

1. See his letter to his father dated November 10, 1837 (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 1, 10–21).

2. In one of his articles Marx wrote:

Whereas the earlier philosophers of constitutional law proceeded in their account of the formation of the state from the instincts, either of ambition or gregariousness, or even from reason, though not social reason, but reason of the individual, the more ideal and profound view of recent philosophy proceeds from the idea of the whole. It looks on the state as the great organism, in which legal, moral and political freedom must be realised, and in which the individual citizen in obeying the laws of the state obeys the natural laws of his own reason. (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 1, 202)

3. Hegel’s book Philosophie des Rechts is often translated as “philosophy of right,” and in the Marx and Engels Collected Works it is translated as “philosophy of law.”

4. It needs to be pointed out that Hegel is not proposing a policy. In his thought philosophy can only interpret the world, not change it. The solution to the problem is already there. As noted, the significant elements of the constitutional arrangements he presents (in idealised form) have already been realised in the post-Reformation developed European state.

5. Hegel writes:

This estate is more particularly fitted for political position and significance in that its resources are independent alike of the state’s resources, the uncertainty of business, the quest for profit, and any sort of fluctuation in possession. It is likewise independent of favour, whether from the executive or the masses. It is even fortified against its own arbitrary will, because . . . it is burdened with primogeniture. (Hegel 2008, 292–293; emphasis in the original)

6. In the words of the editor of the Philosophy of Right:

Corporation [Korporation] is a term which originates with workmen’s corporations in ancient Rome. Hegel is of course not thinking of what we know as trade unions, since Korporationen are societies of which both employers and employed are members. Indeed, he is thinking not only of economic organisations but also religious bodies, learned societies, and sometimes of town councils. (Hegel 2008, 354)

7. For Hegel’s view of classical political economy, see Hegel (2008, 187).

8. Marx writes in the article “On the Jewish Question”:

[The alienated man] acknowledges himself only in a roundabout route, only through an intermediary. Religion is precisely the recognition of man in a roundabout way, through an intermediary. The state is the intermediary between man and his freedom. Just as Christ is the intermediary to whom man transfers the burden of his divinity, all his burden of divinity, all his religious constraint [bonds], so the state is the intermediary to whom man transfers all his non–divinity and all his unconstraint [freedom]. (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 3, 152, emphasis in original)

This article (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 3, 146–174) was written in the autumn of 1843, immediately after the Hegel Critique, and published in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher (Franco-German yearbook) in 1844.

9. “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law [Right]: Introduction.” This article was written in January 1844, and with “On the Jewish Question” was published in the Deutsch–Franzoesische Jahrbuecher in Paris that Marx co–edited.

10. It is worth noting that the meaning of the word “natural” in this theoretical proposition is entirely different from that in Smith’s social philosophy where he talks of man’s “natural propensity” to better his condition.

11. It is interesting that Smith makes the claim regarding the working of the invisible hand in book IV, chapter II “Of Restraint upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of Such Goods as Can be Produced at Home” and not in book I, chapter VII where he discusses the theoretical proposition regarding the natural balance of the economy.

12. Engel’s reference to Adam Smith as “the economic Luther” is made in his “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” published in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 3, 422).

13. Marx wrote his Theses on Feuerbach in the spring of 1845, some seven months after the completion of the Manuscripts.

14. Smith’s idea of wealth as the product of labour may also be contrasted with the notion of the physiocrats who considered “net product” in agriculture to be the result of the physical productivity of land.

15. It is interesting that although at this point Marx has broken away from all “previous materialism,” including Feuerbach’s, he still at this time (when he is writing the Manuscripts) regards Feuerbach’s philosophy as being capable of providing a basis of communism. See Marx’s letter to Feuerbach of August 11, 1844 (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 3, 354).

16. Giving credit to Hegel for having recognised this, Marx wrote: “Hegel’s standpoint is that of political economy. He grasps labour as the essence of man . . . [but] the only labour which Hegel knows and recognises is abstractly mental labour” (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 3, 333; emphasis in the original).

17. Marx uses the word “wages” instead of the wage-system, but from the context it is clear that he means the latter.

18. For Adam smith’s discussion of historical development, see chapter one of book five, also chapters two and three of book three of The Wealth of Nations.

19. This aspect of Marx’s critique of classical political economy is developed in his Poverty of Philosophy published in 1847. Criticising political economy, he writes:

According to “economists,” relations [of bourgeois production] therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. These laws are transient as those of all pre-capitalist forms of social organisation. (Marx and Engels 1975–1976, vol. 6, 174)