A political history of the editions of Marx and Engels's "German ideology" manuscripts

223 Pages·2014·5.96 MB·English

by  Blank, Daniel, Carver, Terrell, Engels, Friedrich, Feuerbach, Ludwig, Marx, Karl

A Political History of the Editions of
Marx and Engels’s “German ideology
Manuscripts”
Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
The collapse of “communism” as a geopolitical force has liberated Marx, Engels, and all the
variants of Marxism from ideologically motivated and intellectually stultifying presump-
tions. Running contrary to nineteenth- and twentieth-century practices of conflation and
simplification, this innovative series revitalizes major figures and intellectual traditions,
and its authors and editors present recent scholarly discoveries in imaginative ways, chal-
lenging twenty-first-century readers with unfamiliar perspectives.
Terrell Carver and Marcello Musto, Series Editors
A Political History of the Editions of Marx and Engels’s “German ideology Manuscripts”
Terrell Carver and Daniel Blank
Marx and Engels’s “German ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the
“Feuerbach chapter”
Terrell Carver and Daniel Blank
A Political History of the Editions of
Marx and Engels’s “German ideology
Manuscripts”
Terrell Carver and Daniel Blank
A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE EDITIONS OF MARX AND ENGELS’S
“GERMAN IDEOLOGY MANUSCRIPTS”
Copyright © Terrell Carver and Daniel Blank, 2014.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
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ISBN: 978–1–137–47115–4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carver, Terrell.
A political history of the editions of Marx and Engels’s
“German ideology” manuscripts / by Terrell Carver, Daniel Blank.
pages cm.—(Marx, Engels, and Marxisms)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–47115–4 (hardback)
1. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. Deutsche Ideologie.
2. Engels, Friedrich, 1820–1895. 3. Feuerbach, Ludwig, 1804–1872.
4. Dialectical materialism. 5. Communism. 6. Socialism.
I. Blank, Daniel, 1976– II. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. Deutsche Ideologie.
English. III. Title. IV. Title: German ideology.
HX29.5.A5133C37 2014
335.4(cid:2)11—dc23 2014026296
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction vii
One Manuscripts and Politics 1
Two The 1920s: Early Political Disputes over
The German Ideology 7
Three The Stalin Era and the Construction of a
Feuerbach Chapter in Volume I/5 of MEGA1 25
Four Two Popular Study Editions at the Beginning of the
“Cold War” 43
Five The Turbulent 1960s: The Publication of Long-Lost
Pages of the 1845–46 Manuscripts 61
Six The Historical Origins of the 1845–46 Manuscripts 79
Seven The End of East European Communism and Its Impact on
the Preparation of Volume I/5 of MEGA2 99
Eight The Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2003 Edition of
The German Ideology 119
Nine Summary, Conclusions, and Ideas on How to Publish the
So-Called “German ideology” Manuscripts in Future 137
Appendix A Select Bibliography of Editions of The German Ideology 151
Appendix B The Genealogy of Editions of The German Ideology 155
Appendix C A Brief Outline of the Content of a Future
“Contextual Edition” of The German Ideology 157
Notes on Research Methods and Source Materials 159
Methodological Excursus 165
Abbreviations and Bibliography 183
205
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Introduction
This volume is based on a successful Bristol PhD dissertation presented by Daniel
Blank in 2008, “ ‘The German ideology’ by Marx and Engels: The Political History
of the Manuscript and Its Published Editions,” supervised by Terrell Carver. These
chapters explain how untitled manuscript materials, cast aside by the authors after
1847, unexpectedly emerged in the 1920s as a one-volume work of the first rank in
the Marx-Engels-Marxist canon.
All major editions and translations of The German Ideology up to the present are
then shown to have a political history relating to some of the most important events
of the twentieth century, including the Russian Revolution, the rise of Stalinism,
fascist rule in Germany, World War II, the subsequent Cold War involving the
Soviet Union and rival regimes in “East” and “West,” the fall of communist states
in Eastern Europe, and the influence of successor capitalist regimes. These histories
unfold, sometimes quite dramatically, in relation to a critical analysis of editorial
practice, resulting in a genealogy of editions up to the present day.
The volume concludes with a statement of what would be required, contra cur-
rent practice even within the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) project, in order
to present a fully contextual rendition of the various polemics on which Marx and
Engels (and others) were engaged in 1845–46.
Note that in the text Russian names are translated to usual English forms, whereas
the bibliography follows German transliterations that are appropriate to the work
cited, for example, Ryazanov and Trotsky in the text, and Rjazanov and Trotzki in
the bibliography. In addition, there are three scholarly appendices presenting the
results of detailed research on various questions concerning the “German ideol-
ogy” manuscripts and the genealogical relationships among major editions, notes on
method and methodology, and an index. The volume represents a fully coauthored
and integrated work throughout.
The companion volume by the present authors, Marx and Engels’s “German
ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chapter,” also pub-
lished by Palgrave Macmillan, undertakes a textual exercise unique in English. It
presents a “variant-rich” transcription of the most famous and widely read of the
surviving manuscript pages, along with an analytical investigation of the content
from a historically refreshed perspective.
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Chapter One
Manuscripts and Politics
The German Ideology (so-called), edited from manuscripts of 1845 to 1846, has often
been regarded as one of the most outstanding “books” ever written by Karl Heinrich
Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) (see Libretti, 1998: 61). It has been
said to represent “the first recognisable ‘Marxist’ work” by the two authors (Arthur,
1982a: 4). It has also been labeled “the first mature work of Marxism” (Churbanov,
1976a: XIII). Its content has been praised as the “first document of dialectical-
materialist philosophy of society and its history” and even as the “birth certificate
of the world view of Marx and Engels” (Kopf, 2001: 1). According to the popu-
lar Marx-Engels Collected Works, English-language edition, “It was in The German
Ideology that the materialist conception of history, historical materialism, was first
formulated as an integral theory” (Churbanov, 1976a: XIII). In particular, the first
chapter “I. Feuerbach” of The German Ideology was considered “to mark a ‘break’ in
Marx’s intellectual and doctrinal development” (O’Malley, 1994: xiv). It is in this
“first chapter” that one supposedly finds “a general introduction expounding the
materialist conception of history” (Churbanov, 1976a: XVII).
However, at the same time, one can find statements conveying a completely
different picture of what The German Ideology is all about. Here commentators
have argued that a “book” entitled The German Ideology “had never really existed”
(Kellerhoff, 2004). They have also maintained that the time that Marx and Engels
spent producing the 1845–46 manuscripts “was most of all a time of summarising
and securing knowledge hitherto obtained” (Landshut, 2004a: 56). Furthermore,
neither the title “The German Ideology” nor the crucial terms “materialist concep-
tion of history” or “historical materialism” can be found anywhere in the original
manuscripts that form what has come to be known as The German Ideology (IMES,
2004: 7*).
What has been said about The German Ideology in general has also been said about
its much-discussed “first chapter.” Some authors have claimed that “the Feuerbach-
part of The German Ideology does not exist at all” and that “its title Feuerbach is mis-
leading, since remarks on Feuerbach . . . are only marginal” (Koltan, 1995: 5; 2002:
121). The so-called Feuerbach manuscripts have been described as “a masterpiece of