Selected Essays

Selected Essays, by Karl Marx

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Essays, by Karl Marx This
eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Selected Essays
Author: Karl Marx
Translator: H. J. Stenning
Release Date: May 22, 2007 [EBook #21565]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED
ESSAYS ***

Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's
Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | |

been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected
in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document.
| | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *

SELECTED ESSAYS
BY KARL MARX
TRANSLATED BY H.J. STENNING
Essay Index Reprint Series
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS, INC. FREEPORT, NEW YORK

First Published 1926 Reprinted 1968
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 68-16955

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE
The present volume consists of a translation of some of Karl Marx's
principal writings during the six years 1844-1850.
In 1843 Marx was twenty-five years old. He had just married,
apparently on the strength of the modest salary he was to receive for
editing, jointly with Arnold Ruge, a periodical called the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (Franco-German Annuals), the
purpose of which was to promote the union of German philosophy with
French social science. Only one double-number of this journal

appeared in 1844. It contained Marx's criticism of the Hegelian
Philosophy of Right and his exposition of the social significance of the
Jewish question, in the form of a review of two works by Bruno Bauer.
Translations of both articles are given in this volume.
They possess a special interest for the Marxian student, as they exhibit
the grafting of a materialist philosophy upon the idealist philosophy of
Hegel, and show the employment of the Hegelian dialectic in the
investigation of political and historical questions.
It was not long before Marx and Ruge became intellectually estranged,
and the third essay, "The King of Prussia and Social Reform," which
appeared in the Paris socialist journal Vorwärts, contains a severe
polemic against Ruge. In the same organ Marx published an elaborate
defence of Engels in particular and communists in general from the
strictures of Karl Heinzen, a radical republican politician. In both
essays Marx ranges over a wide field, and develops his own views upon
economic, political and historical questions.
The essay on Proudhon emphasizes the special merits of that writer as a
pioneer of economic criticism, and forms a counterweight to Marx's
devastating criticism of Proudhon in the "Poverty of Philosophy." This
piece and the sketch of French materialism are extracted from Die
Heilige Familie (The Holy Family), a comprehensive work of satirical
criticism, in which Marx and Engels (whose share in writing the book
was a very small one), settled accounts with their philosophic
conscience.
The critique of the views of M. Guizot upon the English and French
middle-class revolutions appeared in the Neue Rhenische Revue (New
Rhenish Review), a periodical which Marx and Engels edited from
London in 1850.
H.J.S.

CONTENTS

PAGE
A CRITICISM OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT 11
ON THE JEWISH QUESTION 40
ON THE KING OF PRUSSIA AND SOCIAL REFORM 98
MORALISING CRITICISM AND CRITICAL MORALITY: A
POLEMIC AGAINST KARL HEINZEN 134
PROUDHON 171
FRENCH MATERIALISM 180
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 196

SELECTED ESSAYS

A CRITICISM OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT
As far as Germany is concerned the criticism of religion is practically
completed, and the criticism of religion is the basis of all criticism.
The profane existence of error is threatened when its heavenly oratio
pro aris et focis[1] has been refuted.
He who has only found a reflexion of himself in the fantastic reality of
heaven where he looked for a superman, will no longer be willing to
find only the semblance of himself, only the sub-human, where he
seeks and ought to find his own reality.
The foundation of the criticism of religion is: Man makes religion,
religion does not make man. Religion indeed is man's
self-consciousness and self-estimation while he has not found his feet
in the universe. But Man is no abstract being, squatting outside the

world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This State, this
society produces religion, which is an inverted world-consciousness,
because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of
this world, its encyclopædic compendium, its logic in popular