Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason

394 Pages·2001·16.88 MB·English

by  Allan Megill

Karl Marx

Karl Marx
The Burden of Reason (Why Marx
Rejected Politics and the Market)
Allan Megill
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham· Boulder· New York· Oxford
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Megill, Allan.
Karl Marx: the burden of reason (why Marx rejected politics and the market) / Allan
Megill.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-0-7425-1166-8
I. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883-Philosophy. 2. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883-Political and
social views. 3. Historical materialism. 4. Dialectical materialism. I. Title.
HX39.5 .M414 2002
335.4'01-dc21 2001048266
Printed in the United States of America
e~0T M The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSIINISO Z.39.48-1992.
For Rita and Maria

Philosophy comes into the world amid the loud cries of its enemies, who be
tray their inner infection by wild shouts for help against the fiery ardor of
ideas.
- Karl Marx, "The Leading Article in No. 179 of the Kolnische Zeitung,"
Rheinische Zeitung No. 191, July 10, 1842 (MEGA2 1.1: 1831MECW 1: 196).
Ancient metaphysics had ... a higher conception of thinking than is current to
day. For it based itself on the fact that the knowledge of things obtained
through thinking is alone what is really true in them .... Thus this metaphysics
believed that thinking (and its determinations) is not anything alien to the ob
ject, but rather is its essential nature ....
-G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic trans. A. V. Miller,
foreword by J. N. Findlay (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969;
.orig. published 1812-16), introduction, 45.
Given for one instant an intellect that could comprehend all the forces by
which nature is moved and the respective situations of the beings that compose
it, and if, besides, it was sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis, it
would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of
the universe and those of the lightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it,
and the future, like the past, would be present before its eyes.
-Pierre Laplace, Theorie analytique des probabilites,
3. ed., rev. et augm. (Paris, 1820), ii-iii.
The mortal danger for every being lies in losing itself. Hence lack of freedom
is the real mortal danger for mankind.
- Karl Marx, "Proceedings of the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly.
First Article. Debates on Freedom of the Press and Publication
of the Proceedings of the Assembly of the Estates,"
Rheinische Zeitung No. 135, May 15, 1842
(MEGA2 1.1: 1521MECW 1:164).
Vll

Contents
Abbreviations xi
Preface Xlll
Acknow ledgments XXlll
1 Marx's Rationalism: How the Dialectic Came from
the History of Philosophy 1
2 Why Marx Rejected Politics 57
3 Why Marx Rejected Private Property and the Market 123
4 The Character and Limits of Marx's Unified Rational
History of Humankind 181
Conclusion: For and Against Marxism 235
Appendix: A Topically Organized List of Marx's Journalistic
Writings of 1842-43 271
Notes 277
Bibliography 347
Index 353
About the Author 367
IX