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Notes
<"1">1 The “Theses on Feuerbach” were written by Karl Marx in Brussels, probably in April 1845. They are to be found in Marx’s notebook of 1844-47 under the heading “1) ad Feuerbach”. They were published by Engels in the Appendix to the 1888 edition of his work Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. In the foreword to this edition Engels called this important theoretical document “Theses on Feuerbach”, hence the title. To render the brief notes, which Marx had not intended for publication, more comprehensible to the reader, Engels made a number of editorial changes when preparing the “Theses” for the press. Both versions of the “Theses” — i.e., Marx’s original text and that edited by Engels — have been included in this volume. The original text was first published in German and Russian in 1924 by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., Moscow (Marx-Engels Archives, Book 1); in English it was published in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Parts I & III, Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., London, 1938. The first English translation of the edited version was published in the Appendix to Frederick Engels, Feuerbach. The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy, Chicago, 1903.
<"2">2 Marx refers to the following chapters in Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christenthums: “Die Bedeutung der Creation im Judenthum” and “Der wesentliche Standpunkt der Religion”.
<"3">3 These notes were evidently intended by Engels for Chapter 1 of the first volume of The German Ideology. They were first published in the language of the original by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. in 1932 (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Band 5); in English they were published for the first time in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.
<"4">4 According to the doctrine of the Saint-Simonists, every individual is endowed with love, intellect and physical activity. Hence he should receive moral, mental and physical education (cf. Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition. Première année, 9th lecture).
<"5">5 This item, which was published anonymously, is the reply of the authors of The Holy Family to the anti-critique contained in Bruno Bauer’s article “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs” published in Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, 1845, Bd. 3. it i., roughly identical with a passage in Chapter II, Volume I of The German Ideology (see this volume, pp. 112-14). In English the item was first published in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.
<"6">6 The review was published anonymously under the heading “Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Gegen Br. Bauer und Consorten. Von F. Engels und K. Marx, Frankfurt, 1845”.
<"7">7 The German Ideology — Die deutsche Ideologie. Kritik der neuesten deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repräsentanten Feuerbach, B. Bauer und Stirner, und des deutschen Sozialismus in seinen verschiedenen Propheten — is the joint work of Marx and Engels which they wrote in Brussels in 1845 and 1846.
Marx and Engels decided to write a philosophical work in which they intended to counterpose their materialist conception of history to the idealist views of the Young Hegelians and to Feuerbach’s inconsistent materialism in the spring of 1845, when Engels came to Brussels (early in April) and Marx outlined to him his materialist conception, which had nearly taken shape by then. Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach” were written in connection with this project. In the autumn of 1845 the project took the form of a definite plan to write a two-volume work directed against the Young Hegelians and the “true socialists.” In November 1845 Marx and Engels began writing the book. In the course of their work the plan and composition of the book were changed several times. Moses Hess was enlisted to write two chapters. But the chapter against the Young Hegelian Arnold Ruge, which Hess wrote for Volume I, was excluded from the final version of The German Ideology, and the other chapter, dealing with the “true socialist” Kuhlmann, which Hess wrote for Volume II, was edited by Marx and Engels.
Work on The German Ideology was in the main terminated in April 1846; it seems, however, that the authors continued working on Chapter I of the first volume until the middle of July, but it was never completed. The draft of the preface for Volume I was written by Marx not later than the middle of August. Work on Volume II was completed by early June 1846. Engels’ work, The True Socialists, which was intended as the concluding chapter of Volume II, was written between January and April 1847.
In 1846 and 1847 Marx and Engels made repeated attempts to find a publisher in Germany for their work, but they were unsuccessful. This was due partly to difficulties made by the police and partly to the reluctance of the publishers to print the work, since their sympathies were on the side of the trends which Marx and Engels criticised. The only Chapter of The German Ideology known to be published during their lifetime was Chapter IV of Volume II, which appeared in the journal Das Westphälische Dampfboot in August and September 1847.
The text of a few pages in Chapter II of Volume I (pp. 112-14 of this volume) is similar to that of an anonymous item dated “Brussels, November 20” (see this volume, pp. 15-18), which appeared in the Gesellschaftsspiegel, Heft VII, January 1846 (in the section “Nachrichten und Notizen”).
Neither the title of the whole work nor the headings of the first and the second volumes have survived in the manuscript. They are, however, mentioned by Marx in his article “Declaration against Karl Grün” (see present edition, Vol. 6) and have been taken from there.
The manuscript of chapters II and III of Volume II is missing, and it is possible that the “Circular against Kriege” by Marx and Engels and Engels’ article “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” (see present edition, Vol. 6) formed part of this volume.
The manuscript is in a rather poor condition, the paper has turned yellow and is damaged in places. “The gnawing criticism of the mice”, as Marx wrote later in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, has left its mark on a number of pages, other pages are missing. The Preface to The German Ideology and some of the alterations and additions are in Marx’s hand; the bulk of the manuscript, however, is in Engels’ hand, except for Chapter V of Volume II and some passages in Chapter III of Volume I. which are in Joseph Weydemeyer’s hand. As a rule, the pages are divided into two parts: the main text is on the left side while additions and changes are on the right. A number of passages were crossed out by the authors, and a few more passages were crossed out by Eduard Bernstein (this has been pointed out by S. Bahne in his article “Die Deutsche Ideologie von Marx und Engels. Einige Textergänzungen”, published in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1).
Words and passages which have become unreadable have been reconstructed on the basis of the unimpaired parts whenever possible; they are enclosed in square brackets. Wherever it was necessary to insert a few words to clarify the meaning, they are likewise printed in square brackets. Gaps in the manuscript are indicated in footnotes. Marginal notes as well as the most important of the crossed-out passages are given in footnotes which are indicated by asterisks, whereas the editors’ footnotes are indicated by index letters. Passages crossed out by Bernstein, wherever it was possible to decipher them, have been restored.
After Engels’ death the manuscript of The German Ideology came into the hands of the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party, who in the course of 37 years published less than half of it. Part of Chapter III, “Saint Max”, was published by Bernstein in 1903-04 (see Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, “III. Sankt Max”, in Dokumente des Sozialismus, Stuttgart, Bd. III, Hefte 1-4 and 7-8, Januar-April and Juli-August 1903; Bd. IV, Hefte 5-9, Mai-September 1904). Another part of this chapter — “My Self-Enjoyment” — was brought out in 191 3 (see Karl Marx, “Mein Selbstgenuss”, in Arbeiter-Feuilleton, München, Nr. 8 and 9, März 1913). Gustav Meyer published the introductory pages of “The Leipzig Council” and Chapter If, “Saint Bruno”, in 1921 (see Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx, “Das Leipziger Konzil”, in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 47. Band, 3. Heft, Tübingen, 1921). Chapter I, “Feuerbach”, the most important chapter of The German Ideology, was first published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. in Russian in 1924 (Marx-Engels Archives, Book 1) and in German in 1926 (Marx-Engels Archiv, I. Band). The whole work as it has come down to us (except for the six pages which were found later and printed in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1) was first published in Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, 5. Band, in 1932 by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.
The first English version of Chapter 1, translated from the Russian, was published in the American journal The Marxist No. 3, July 1926. A small part of this chapter, translated from the German, was published in the British journal The Labour Monthly, Vol. 15, No. 3, March 1933. An English translation of Chapter 1, “Feuerbach”, and Volume II, “Der wahre Sozialismus”, was published by Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., London, 1938, under the title The German Ideology, Parts I & III. The first English translation of the whole work, except for one passage from Chapter I of the first volume (p. 29 of the manuscript), was issued by Progress Publishers, Moscow, in 1964.
<"8">8 The manuscript of Chapter 1 of the first volume of The German Ideology has come down to us in the form of several separate passages written at different times and in different circumstances. This is due to changes which Marx and Engels made in the general plan of the book as the work proceeded.
Originally Marx and Engels began writing a purely critical work dealing simultaneously with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. Then they decided to discuss Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner in separate chapters (“II. Saint Bruno” and “III. Saint Max”), and the first chapter was conceived as a general introduction stating their own views in opposition to Feuerbach’s. Therefore they crossed out nearly all passages referring to Bauer and Stirner in the original manuscript and transferred them to chapters II or III. Thus, the chronologically first part, which formed the original nucleus of the chapter on Feuerbach (29 pages numbered by Marx), took shape.
Then they wrote Chapter II and began to work on Chapter III. In the course of their critical analysis of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Marx and Engels made various theoretical digressions in which they developed their materialist conception of history. Two of these digressions were subsequently transferred by them from the chapter on Stirner to that on Feuerbach. The first — consisting of 6 pages — was written in connection with the criticism of Stirner’s idealist view that history was dominated by spirit (this digression was originally in the section “D. Hierarchy”; see this volume, p. 175). The second theoretical digression — consisting of 37 pages — was written in connection with the criticism of Stirner’s views of bourgeois society, competition and the interrelation between private property, state and law (this latter passage from the chapter on Stirner was replaced by another; see this volume, p. 355, etc.). These two digressions formed the chronologically second and third parts of the chapter on Feuerbach.
The pages of these three parts were numbered by Marx (1 to 72) and thus form the rough copy of the whole chapter. Pages 3-7 and 36-39 of the manuscript have not been found.
Marx and Engels then started revising the rough copy and writing out a clean copy, the beginning of which exists in two versions. We have thus four more or less independent parts of the manuscript (three parts of rough copy and one of clean copy).
In the present edition the chapter on Feuerbach is accordingly divided into four parts. Part I consists of the combined fragments of the clean copy. Part II comprises the original nucleus of the whole chapter. Parts III and IV are the two theoretical digressions transferred from the chapter on Stirner. Each part is a consistent, logically coherent whole. The parts complement one another and together they are a comprehensive exposition of the materialist conception of history.
The content of the four parts can be summarised in the following way: 1. Introduction, general remarks concerning the idealism of German post-Hegelian philosophy. Premises, essence and general outline of the materialist conception of history. II. Materialist conception of historical development and conclusions from the materialist conception of history. Criticism of the idealist conception of history in general, criticism of the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach in particular. III. Origin of the idealist conception of history. IV. Development of the productive forces, of the division of labour and of the forms of property. The class structure of society. The political superstructure. Forms of social consciousness.
Comparison of the different parts of the manuscript makes it possible to bring out the logical structure of the chapter, form an idea of the authors’ intentions and reconstruct the general plan of the chapter. First Marx and Engels give a general description of German ideology, then they counterpose the materialist conception of history to the idealist conception, and, finally, criticise the latter. The central part of the chapter has the following structure: the authors’ premises; their materialist conception of history; the conclusions following from their theory.
The materialist conception of history is presented as follows: development of production — intercourse (social relations) — political superstructure — forms of social consciousness. On the whole, the plan of the chapter, reconstructed in accordance with the intentions of Marx and Engels, can be formulated thus:
1) General description of German ideology (Part I, introductory remarks and Section 1; Part II, Section 1).
2) Premises of the materialist conception of history (Part I, Section 2).
3) Production (Part II, Sections 3-5; Part I, Section 3; Part IV, Sections 1-5), intercourse (Part IV, Sections 6-10), political superstructure (Part IV, Section 11), forms of social consciousness (Part III, Section 1; Part IV, Section 12).
4) Conclusions from and summary of the materialist conception of history (Part II, Sections 6-7; Part 1, Section 4).
5) Critique of the idealist conception of history in general, and of the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach in particular (Part II, Sections 8-9 and 2; Part III, Section 1).In the manuscript the chapter as a whole has the heading: “1. Feuerbach.” While sorting out Marx’s papers alter his death in 1883, Engels found among them the manuscript of The German Ideology and re-read it. At the end of the first chapter he made the note: “I. Feuerbach. Opposition of the materialist and idealist outlooks.”
The parts of this chapter are subdivided into sections. These subdivisions have been made by the editors, who also supplied most of the headings. All headings supplied by the editors and all editorial insertions are enclosed in square brackets.
The pages of the manuscript are indicated in this volume. The sheets of the clean copy, partly numbered by Engels (sheets 3 and 5), are indicated thus: [sh. 1|, |sh. 2], etc. The pages of the first version of the beginning of the clean copy, which were not numbered by the authors, are indicated thus: [p. 1|, p. 2|, etc, The pages of the three rough drafts, which were numbered by Marx, are indicated thus: |1|, 2|, etc.
The arrangement of the different parts of the manuscript within Chapter 1 and its subdivision into sections are the same as in the Russian version first published in the journal Voprosy Filosofii (Questions of Philosophy), Nos. 10 and 11, Moscow, 1965. In English this version was first published by Progress Publishers in Vol. I of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (in three volumes), Moscow, 1969.
<"9">9 A reference to David Friedrich Strauss’ main work, Das Leben Jesu (Bd. 1-2, Tübingen, 1835-1836); with it began the philosophical criticism of religion and the disintegration of the Hegelian school into Old and Young Hegelians.
<"10">10 Diadochi — the generals of Alexander the Great who, after his death, fought one another in a fierce struggle for power. In the course of this struggle (end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century B.C.) Alexander’s Empire, an unstable military and administrative union, disintegrated into several independent states.
<"11">11 In The German Ideology the term “ Verkehr” (“intercourse”) is used in a very broad sense. It comprises both the material and spiritual intercourse of individuals, social groups and whole countries. Marx and Engels show that material intercourse, and above all the intercourse of men in the process of production, is the basis of all other forms of intercourse. The terms Verkehrsform (form of intercourse), Verkehrsweise (mode of intercourse), Verkehrsverhältnisse (relations of intercourse) and Produktions- und Verkehrsverhältnisse (relations of production and intercourse) are used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology to express the concept “relations of production”, which at that time was taking shape in their minds.
<"12">12 The term “Stamm” used by Marx and Engels has been translated as “tribe” in this volume. It had a wider range of meaning at the time of the writing of The German Ideology than it has at present. It was used to denote a community of people descended from a common ancestor, and comprised the modern concepts of “gens” and “tribe”. The first to define and differentiate these concepts was the American ethnologist and historian Lewis Henry Morgan in his main work Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilisation (1877). Morgan showed for the first time the significance of the gens as the primary cell of the primitive communal system and thereby laid the scientific foundations for the history of primitive society as a whole. In his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) Engels showed the far-reaching significance of Morgan’s discoveries and his concepts “gens” and “tribe” for the study of primitive society.
<"13">13 The agrarian law proposed by Licinius and Sextius, Roman tribunes of the people, was passed in 367 B.C. as a result of the struggle waged by the plebeians against the patricians. It prohibited Roman citizens from holding more than 500 yugera (about 309 acres) of common land (ager publicus).
By civil wars in Rome is usually meant the struggle between various groups of the Roman ruling class which started at the end of the 2nd century B.C. and continued until 30 B.C. These wars, together with the growing class contradictions and slave revolts, accelerated the decline of the Roman Republic and led to the establishment, in 30 B.C., of the Roman Empire.
<"14">14 Here and below Marx and Engels refer mainly to Feuerbach’s work Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft and quote different expressions and terms from it.
<"15">15 See the section “Geographische Grundlage der Weltgeschichte” in Hegel’s Vorksungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte.
<"16">16 See, for instance, Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Edinburgh, 1767, and Adam Anderson, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time, London, 1764.
<"17">17 The reference is to the following works published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher early in 1844: two articles by Marx, “On the Jewish Question” and “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction”, and two by Engels, “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” and “The Condition of England. Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, London, 1843” (see present edition, Vol. 3). These works marked the final transition of Marx and Engels to materialism and communism.
<"18">18 Cf. Romans 9:16: “So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”
<"19">19 The conclusion that the proletarian revolution could only be carried through in all the advanced capitalist countries simultaneously, and hence that the victory of the revolution in a single country was impossible, was expressed even more definitely in the “Principles of Communism” written by Engels in 1847 (see present edition, Vol. 6). In their later works, however, Marx and Engels expressed this idea in a less definite way and emphasised that the proletarian revolution should be regarded as a comparatively long and complicated process which can develop first in individual capitalist countries. In the new historical conditions V. I. Lenin came to the conclusion, which he based on the specific circumstances of operation of the law of the uneven economic and political development of capitalism in the epoch of imperialism, that the socialist revolution could be victorious at first even in a single country. This thesis was set forth for the first time in his article “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe” (1915) (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 21).
<"20">20 In the German original the term “Haupt- und Staatsaktionen” (“principal and spectacular actions”) is used, which has several meanings. In the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, it denoted plays performed by German touring companies. The plays, which were rather formless, presented tragic historical events in a bombastic and at the same time coarse and farcical way.
Secondly, this term can denote major political events. It was used in this sense by a trend in German historical science known as “objective historiography”. Leopold Ranke was one of its chief representatives. He regarded “Haupt- und Staatsaktionen” as the main subject-matter to be set forth. Objective historiography, which was primarily interested in the political and diplomatic history of nations, proclaimed the pre-eminence of foreign politics over domestic politics and disregarded the social relations of men and their active role in history.
<"21">21 The Continental System, or the Continental Blockade, proclaimed by Napoleon I in 1806, after Prussia’s defeat, prohibited trade between the countries of the European Continent and Great Britain. This made the import into Europe of a number of products, including sugar and coffee, very difficult. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia in 1812 put an end to the Continental System.
<"22">22 Marseillaise, Carmagnole, Ça ira — revolutionary songs of the period of the French Revolution. The refrain of the last song was: “Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira. Les aristocrates à la lanterne! “ (“Ah, it will certainly happen. Hang the aristocrats on the lamp-post!”)
<"23">23 See Note 20.
<"24">24 An allusion to a type of light literature which was widely read at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century; many of its characters were knights, robbers and ghosts, e.g., Abällino, der grosse Bandit by Heinrich Daniel Zschokke published in 1793, and Rinaldo Rinaldini, der Räuberhauptmann by Christian August Vulpius (1797).
<"25">25 Rhine-song (“Der deutsche Rhein”) — a poem by Nicolaus Becker which was widely used by nationalists in their own interest. It was written in 1840 and set to music by several composers.
<"26">26 A reference to Feuerbach’s article “Ueber das Wesen des Christenthums in Beziehung auf den Einzigen und sein Eigenthum” published in Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, 1845, Bd. 2. The article ends as follows: “Hence F[euerbach] is not a materialist, nor an idealist, nor a philosopher of identity. What is he then? He is the same in his thought as he is actually, the same in spirit as in the flesh, the same in his essence as in his sense-impression — he is a man or, rather, since F. simply places the essence of man in the community, he is a communal man, a communist.”
<"27">27 This section formed originally part of Chapter III and followed directly after the passage to which Marx and Engels refer here (see this volume, pp. 173-76).
<"28">28 Industrie extractive (extractive industry) — a term which the French economist Charles Dunoyer used in his book De La liberté du travail to denote hunting, fishing and mining. Cf. Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter I, §2 (see present edition, Vol. 6).
<"29">29 The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in 1838 by the Manchester manufacturers Cobden and Bright. The English Corn Laws, first adopted in the 15th century, imposed high tariffs on imported cereals in order to maintain high prices for them in the home market. In the first third of the 19th century, in 1815, 1822 and later, several laws were passed changing the conditions for corn imports, and in 1828 a sliding scale was introduced which raised import tariffs on corn when prices in the home market declined and, on the other hand, lowered tariffs when prices rose in Britain.
The League widely exploited the popular discontent over the raising of corn prices. In its efforts to obtain the repeal of the Corn Laws and the establishment of complete freedom of trade, it aimed at weakening the economic and political positions of the landed aristocracy and lowering the cost of living thus making possible a lowering of the workers’ wages.
The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended with the repeal of these laws in 1846.
<"30">30 An ironical allusion to Stirner’s “union” (“Verein”) — a voluntary association of egoists (see this volume, pp. 389-417).
<"31">31 During the following years, Marx and Engels changed their evaluation of the medieval peasant uprisings both as a result of their studies of the peasants’ struggle against feudalism and also of the revolutionary actions of the peasants in 1848 and 1849. Engels, in particular, in his work The Peasant War in Germany (written in 1850) showed the revolutionary nature of the peasant risings and the part they played in undermining the very basis of the feudal system.
<"32">32 This fact is given by Harrison in his Description of England in The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles.... First collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed, William Harrison, and others, London, 1587. Marx mentions it also in Capital. See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, Chapter XXVIII, Footnote 2 to p. 687.
<"33">33 Navigation Laws — a series of acts passed in England to protect English shipping against foreign competition. The best known was that of 1651, directed mainly against the Dutch, who controlled most of the carrying trade. It prohibited the importation of any goods not carried by English ships or the ships of the country where the goods were produced, and laid down that British coasting trade and commerce with the colonies were to be carried on only by English ships. The Navigation Laws were modified in the early 19th century and repealed in 1849 except for a reservation regarding coasting trade, which was revoked in 1854.
<"34">34 England was conquered by the Normans in 1066. The foundations of the Kingdom of Sicily, proclaimed in 1130 and embracing Sicily and South Italy with Naples as its centre, were laid down in the latter half of the 19th century by Robell Guiscard, leader of the Norman conquerors.
<"35">35 The term “bürgerliche Gesellschaft’ (“civil society”) is used in two distinct ways by Marx and Engels: 1) to denote the economic system of society irrespective of the historical stage of development, the sum total of material relations which determine the political institutions and ideological forms, and 2) to denote the material relations of bourgeois society (or that society as a whole), of capitalism. The term has therefore been translated according to its concrete content and the given context either as “civil society” (in the first case) or as “bourgeois society” (in the second).
<"36">36 The Italian town of Amalfi became a prosperous trade centre in the 10th and 11th centuries. Its maritime law (Tabuta Amalphitana) was valid throughout Italy and widely used in other Mediterranean countries in the Middle Ages.
<"37">37 The Leipzig Council — this is an allusion to the fact that the works of Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, the two “church fathers” criticised in this section, were published in Leipzig.
<"38">38 The Battle of the Huns (Hunnenschlacht), one of the best-known pictures by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, painted in 1834-37, is based on the battle fought by the Huns and the Romans at Châlons in 451. Kaulbach depicts the ghosts of fallen warriors fighting in the air above the battleground.
<"39">39 A reference to the potato blight of 1845 which affected Ireland, many regions of England and some parts of the Continent. It led to a failure of the potato crop and devastating famine in Ireland.
<"40">40 Santa Casa (The Sacred House) — the name of the headquarters of the Inquisition in Madrid.
<"41">41 “Positive philosophy” — a mystical religious trend (Christian Hermann Weisse, Immanuel Hermann Fichte Junior, Anton Günther, Franz Xaver von Baader, and Friedrich Schelling in his late period), which criticised Hegel’s philosophy from the right. The “positive philosophers” tried to make philosophy subservient to religion, denied the possibility of rational cognition and proclaimed divine revelation the only source of “positive” knowledge. They called “negative” every philosophy which recognised rational cognition as its source.
<"42">42 Oregon was claimed by both the U.S.A. and Britain. The struggle for the possession of Oregon ended in June 1846 with the division of the territory between the U.S.A. and Britain.
For the Corn Laws see Note 29.
<"43">43 The expression “to fight like Kilkenny cats” originated at the end of the 18th century. During the Irish uprising of 1798 the town of Kilkenny was occupied by Hessian mercenaries serving in the British army, who used to amuse themselves by watching fights between cats with their tails tied together. One day, a soldier, seeing an officer approaching, cut off the cats’ tails with his sword and the cats ran away. The officer was told that the cats had eaten each other and only their tails remained.
<"44">44 An allusion to the conflict between the Young Hegelian Karl Nauwerck and the professors of the Faculty of Philosophy at Berlin University (see Chapter III of The Holy Family, the present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 17-18).
<"45">45 The structure of this chapter parodies Stirner’s manner of presenting his material. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum Stirner often interrupts his exposition with “episodical insertions” which are not directly connected with the subject-matter. Poking fun at this manner, Marx and Engels begin the chapter with a reference to Stirner’s article “Recensenten Stirners” (published in Wigand’ Vierteljahrsschrift, Vol. 3), which they ironically call “Apologetical Commentary”. It is Stirner’s reply to the criticism of his book by Szeliga, Feuerbach and Hess. Then follows a lengthy “episodical insertion”, which takes up nearly the whole of this long chapter. It contains a critical analysis of Stirner’s book, and only at the end of the chapter, in Section 2, do Marx and Engels return to the above-mentioned article. The structure of the “episode” corresponds to that of the book they criticised, and, just like the latter, it comprises two parts ironically entitled “The Old Testament: Man”, and “The New Testament: ‘Ego"’. The corresponding parts in Stirner’s book are entitled “Der Mensch” (“Man”) and “Ich” (“Ego”). In the subheadings Marx and Engels also use the names of chapters and sections of Stirner’s book, in many cases giving them an ironical twist
<"46">46 Max Stimer’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Leipzig, Wigand, 1845, was published in October-November 1844. Engels was one of the first readers of this book, for Wigand sent him the advance proofs. This is mentioned in the letter Engels wrote to Marx on November 19, 1844.
<"47">47 Part One of Stirner’s book, “Der Mensch” (“Man”), has the following structure: I. Ein Menschenleben (A Man’s Life); II. Menschen der alten und neuen Zeit (People of Ancient and Modern Times): 1. Die Alten (The Ancients); 2. Die Neuen (The Moderns) — § 1. Der Geist (The Spirit), § 2. Die Besessenen (The Possessed), § 3. Die Hierarchie (Hierarchy); 3. Die Frcien (The Free Ones) — § 1. Der politische Liberalismus (Political Liberalism), §2. Der sociale Liberalismus (Social Liberalism), § 3. Der humane Liberalismus (Humane Liberalism).
<"48">48 The campaigns of Sesostris — according to the Greek historians Herodotus and Diodorus, campaigns by a legendary Egyptian pharaoh to conquer countries in Asia and Europe.
napoleon’s expedition to Egypt — a reference to the landing of the French army, commanded by General Bonaparte, in Egypt in the summer of 1798 and to the subsequent campaigns of this army to subdue Egypt and Syria. Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt ended in failure in 1801.
<"49">49 The seven wise men — a term usually applied to seven eminent Greek philosophers and statesmen who lived in the 6th century B.C.: Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon and Thales.
Neo-academists — philosophers belonging to the Athenian school of neo-Platonism.
<"50">50 Brahm (or Brahma, Brahman) — the basic category of ancient Hindu idealist philosophy denoting the essence of the universe, impersonal, immaterial, uncreated, illimitable, timeless.
Om — ritualistic word invoking Brahma.
<"51">51 From 987, when Hugh Capet claimed the throne of France, until the French Revolution, the kings of France were in fact members of the Capet dynasty, for both the Valois, who ruled from 1328, and the Bourbons, who followed them in 1589, were branches of the Capet family. Louis XVI, a member of the Bourbon dynasty, was executed in January 1793 by order of the National Convention.
<"52">52 Until the revolution of 1848 smoking was prohibited in the streets of Berlin and in the Tiergarten (a park in the city) under penalty of a fine or corporal punishment.
<"53">53 The attempt which Enfantin made in 1832 to establish a labour commune in Ménilmonant, then a suburb of Paris, led to legal proceedings against the Saint-Simonists, who were accused of immorality and the spread of dangerous ideas. On August 28, 1832, Enfantin was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment but was released before serving the full term. Afterwards, Enfantin and several of his followers went to Egypt, where he worked as an engineer.
<"54">54 Wasserpolacken (literally water Poles) — nickname given to the Silesian Poles in Germany.
<"55">55 A reference to the bombardment of Chinese maritime towns and ports on the Yangtse and other rivers by the British naval and land forces during the First Opium War, Britain’s war of conquest against China waged from 1839 to 1842. With this war began the transformation of China into a semi-colony.
<"56">56 “Deux amis de la liberté” (“Two friends of freedom”) — pseudonym used by Fr. Marie Kerverseau and G. Clavelin, authors of the Histoire de la Révolution de 1789, a work in twenty volumes published in Paris at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.
<"57">57 “Habits bleus” (“blue coats”) — a name given to the soldiers of the French Republic at the end of the 18th century because of the colour of their uniform. In a wider sense it was applied to the Republicans as distinct from the royalists, who were called Blancs (“Whites”).
<"58">58 See Note 18.
<"59">59 Kupfergraben — the name of a canal in Berlin. Hegel lived on the Kupfergraben embankment.
<"60">60 Hanseatic League (Hanse) — a league of German and other North-European merchant cities, situated on the Baltic and the North Sea and the rivers flowing into them. At one time it also included several Dutch cities. The heyday of the Hanseatic League was the second half of the 14th century. It began to decline and to disintegrate towards the end of the 15th century but continued to exist formally until 1669.
<"61">61 An allusion to the Continental System. See Note 21.
<"62">62 Tugendbund (League of Virtue) — secret political society which was founded in Prussia in 1808. Its principal aims were to foster patriotic feelings among the population and to organise the struggle for the liberation of Germany from the Napoleonic occupation and for the establishment of a constitutional system in the country. At Napoleon’s request the Tugendbund was formally dissolved in 1809 by the King of Prussia but it actually continued to exist until the end of the Napoleonic wars.
<"63">63 Cercle social — an organisation established by democratic intellectuals in Paris in the first years of the French Revolution. Its chief spokesman, Claude Fauchet, demanded an equalitarian division of the land, restrictions on large fortunes and employment for all able-bodied citizens. The criticism to which Fauchet and his supporters subjected the formal equality proclaimed in the documents of the French Revolution prepared the ground for bolder action in defence of the destitute by Jacques Roux, Théphile Leclerc and other members of the radical-plebeian “Enragés”.
<"64">64 The end of this sentence from the words “the bourgeois ... express ... the rule of the proprietors ...” and the following five paragraphs up to and including the words “customs duties which hampered commerce at every rum, and they” are part of the manuscript discovered in the early 1960s and first published (in German) in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1. The text is written on two pages, the beginning of the first one is damaged.
<"65">65 The motion of the Bishop of Autun (Talleyrand) — one of the representatives of the clergy who supported the decision of the deputies of the Third Estate to transform the States-General (a consultative organ based on social estates) into a National Assembly(later, the Constituent Assembly) — was designed to extend the powers of the Assembly. It proposed that the deliberations of the Assembly should no longer be restricted to matters mentioned in the Cahiers de doléances — lists of grievances and instructions given by the constituents of each estate to their deputies in connection with the convocation of the States-General (États généraux) — and that the deputies should have the right to decide each question according to their own judgment.
Bailliages — bailiwicks in pre-revolutionary France, also electoral districts during the elections to the States-General; divisions des ordres — each bailliage was divided into three social estates: the nobility, the clergy and the Third Estate. The figure 431 is apparently a slip of the pen, for there were 531 divisions des ordres.
<"66">66 Jeu de paume — a tennis-court in Versailles. On June 20, 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate, who on June 17 proclaimed themselves a National Assembly, met in this building (because their official meeting-place had been closed by order of the King) and took a solemn oath not to separate until they had given France a constitution.
Lit de justice — sessions of the French parliaments (the supreme judicial bodies in pre-revolutionary France) in the presence of the King. Orders by the King issued at these sessions had the force of law. The reference here is to the meeting of the States-General on June 23, 1789. At this meeting the King declared the decisions adopted by the Third Estate on June 17 null and void and demanded the immediate dispersal of the Assembly, but the deputies of the Third Estate refused to obey and continued their deliberations.
<"67">67 Jacquerie — French peasant revolt which took place in May and June 1358 and was supported by the poor in a number of cities.
A peasant rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler flared up in England in the summer of 1381. It had the support of ‘ the lower strata of the London population, who opened the gates of the capital to the insurgents. Some demands of the latter, for example, the abolition of the Statute of Labourers, were also in the interest of the plebeian townsmen.
Evil May Day — name given to the uprising of the poorer citizens of London on May 1, 1517. It was directed against the increasing power of foreign merchants and usurers.
A peasant uprising under the leadership of Robert Kett (a local squire and owner of a tannery) took place between June and August 1549 in East Anglia. Among the insurgents were many unemployed weavers, ruined artisans and other destitute people. With the help of the town poor the insurgents seized Norwich.
<"68">68 This refers to events connected with the Chartist movement in England. When Parliament rejected their first Petition in July 1839, the Chartists attempted to call a general strike (a “sacred month”). At the beginning of November 1839 a rising of miners took place in South Wales, which was crushed by police and government troops. In July 1840, the National Charter Association was founded which united a considerable number of the country’s local Chartist organisations. In August 1842, after the second Petition had been rejected by Parliament, spontaneous action of the workers took place in many industrial regions of the country. In Lancashire and in a considerable part of Cheshire and Yorkshire the strikes were very widespread, and in a number of places they grew into spontaneous uprisings.
<"69">69 Free-thinkers (Freijeister — by spelling the word according to the Berlin dialect pronunciation the authors have given the name an ironical note) — an allusion to “The Free”, a group of Berlin Young Hegelians which came into being in the first half of 1842. Among its principal members were Bruno Bauer, Edgar Bauer, Eduard Meyen, Ludwig Buhl and Max Stirner. The existing system was criticised by “The Free” in an abstract way, their statements were devoid of real revolutionary content, their ultra-radical form often compromised the democratic movement. Many of “The Free” renounced radicalism in the following years.
For the criticism of “The Free” in Marx’s early writings see present edition, Vol. 1, pp. 287, 390, 393-95.
<"70">70 Congregatio de propaganda fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith) — an organisation founded by the Pope in 1622 in order to propagate Catholicism in all countries and to fight heretics.
<"71">71 This refers to the movement for a democratic electoral reform whose members — republican democrats and petty-bourgeois socialists — gathered round La Réforme, an opposition newspaper published in Paris from 1843. The supporters of La Réforme were also known as the socialistic democratic party.
<"72">72 Capitularies — legislative or administrative ordinances of the Frankish kings. Many of these enactments legalised serfdom and were designed to ensure stricter fulfilment by the peasants of the numerous obligations imposed on them (Charlemagne’s well-known capitulary referred to in the text is presumably the Capitulare de villis — Capitulary on Royal Estates — issued about A.D. 800). Some of these acts threatened peasants who were disobedient, took part in revolts and so on with severe punishment (for example, Charlemagne’s Capitulary on Saxony of 782 directed against the fight of the free Saxon peasants against the Frankish conquerors).
<"73">73 An allusion to disturbances which took place in Catalonia at the beginning of July 1845 and were caused by the attempt of the government to introduce a law under which one man out of five was to serve in the army. The disturbances were brutally suppressed.
<"74">74 Barataria — the island of which Sancho Panza was made governor in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
<"75">75 Dioscuri — Castor and Pollux (or in Greek Polydeuces), heroes of classical mythology, the twin sons of Zeus, by whom they were turned into the constellation Gemini (the Twins); as such they were considered to be the patrons of seamen.
<"76">76 Rumford broth — thin soup for the poor prepared from bones and cheap substitutes; the recipe for it was made up at the end of the 18th century by Count Rumford (alias Benjamin Thompson).
<"77">77 Banquerouse cochonne(swinish bankruptcy) — the 32nd of the 36 types of bankruptcy described by Fourier in his work Des trois unités externes published in the journal La Phalange, 1845, Vol. 1. Excerpts from this work are given by Engels in his article “A Fragment of Fourier’s on Trade” (for the passage about “swinish bankruptcy” see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 638).
<"78">78 Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum — “Ich” (“Ego”) — is subdivided as follows: I. Die Eigenheit (Peculiarity); II. Der Eigner (The Owner): 1. Meine Macht (My Power), 2. Mein Verkehr (My Intercourse), 3. Mein Selbstgenuss (My Self-Enjoyment); III. Der Einzige (The Unique).
<"79">79 Orphanage-Francke — the nickname stems from the fact that August Hermann Francke founded an orphanage and several other philanthropic institutions for children in Halle at the end of the 17th century.
<"80">80 The maxim “Know Thyself” was written over the entrance of Apollo’s temple at Delphi.
<"81">81 According to Bentham’s utilitarian ethics, actions were to be considered good if they produced a greater amount of pleasure than suffering. The compilation of long tedious lists cataloguing pleasure and suffering, and their subsequent balancing in order to determine the morality of an action, is here called by Marx and Engels “Bentham’s book-keeping”.
<"82">82 In the middle of the 19th century Moabit was a north-western suburb of Berlin; Köpenick — a south-eastern suburb of Berlin, and the Hamburger Tor (Hamburg Gate) — a gate at the northern boundary of Berlin.
<"83">83 Nante the loafer (Eckensteher Nante) — a character in Karl von Holtei’s play Ein Trauerspiel in Berlin. On the basis of this prototype Fritz Beckmann, a well-known German comedian, produced a popular farce Der Eckensteher Nante im Verhör. The name Nante became a byword for a garrulous, philosophising wag, who seizes every opportunity to crack stale jokes in the Berlin dialect.
<"84">84 Emperor Sigismund handed over Jan Huss to the Council of Constance (1414-15) despite the safe conduct he had granted him.
Francis I, who was defeated at Pavia (1525) and taken prisoner by Charles V, was released only after renouncing his claims to Milan and Burgundy (Madrid Treaty of 1526). But after his release he repudiated the treaty.
<"85">85 Blocksberg — popular name of several German mountains and in particular of the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains. According to German folklore, the witches meet to celebrate their Sabbath on the Blocksberg.
<"86">86 According to legend, the early Christian Saint Ursula and “her eleven thousand virgins” were martyred in Cologne. The alleged number of virgins is probably due to the name of Ursula’s companion, Undecimilla, which in Latin means “eleven thousand”.
<"87">87 Caius — a name adopted by many textbooks and other works on formal logic to denote a human being, especially in syllogisms.
<"88">88 Apparently a reference to Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel’s book Biographie eines Pudels.
<"89">89 Spanso bocko — one of the most cruel forms of corporal punishment, which was used by the colonialists in Surinam (in the north-eastern part of South America).
<"90">90 The uprising of Negro slaves which took place in Haiti in 1791 marked the beginning of a revolutionary movement against the colonial regime. Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the insurgents, played an outstanding part in the war of liberation which the Negroes waged against the French, English and Spanish colonialists. In the course of the struggle, which ended with the proclamation of Haiti’s independence in January 1804, slavery was abolished and subsequently the estates of the planters were divided among the former slaves.
<"91">91 The Historical School of Law — a trend in German historiography and jurisprudence in the late 18th century. The representatives of this school, Gustav Hugo, Friedrich Karl Savigny and others, sought to justify the privileges of the nobility and feudal institutions by referring to the inviolability of historical traditions.
Romanticists — adherents of reactionary romanticism in the social sciences who tried to vindicate the Middle Ages and the feudal system and to oppose them to the ideas of bourgeois Enlightenment, democracy and liberalism. Among the prominent ideologists of romanticism were Louis Gabriel Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Karl Ludwig Haller and Adam Müller.
For a criticism of these two trends see Marx’s works: “The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law” and “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction” (present edition, Vols. 1 and 3).
<"92">92 The “Ten Tables” — the original version of the “Twelve Tables” (lex duoderim tabularum), the oldest legislative document of the Roman slave-owners’ state. These laws were enacted as a result of the struggle which the plebeians waged against the patricians during the republican period in the middle of the 5th century B.C.; they became the point of departure for the further development of Roman civil law.
<"93">93 For the Corn Laws see Note 29.
<"94">94 This refers to the Law of 1844 which made it very difficult to obtain a divorce. The Bill was drafted in 1842 on the instructions of Frederick William IV by Savigny, one of the founders of the Historical School of Law (see Note 91), who was Prussian Minister for the Revision of Laws from 1842 to 1848.
<"95">95 Leges barbarorum (laws of the barbarians) — codes of law which originated between the 5th and the 9th centuries and were, in the main, a written record of the customary or prescriptive law of the various Germanic tribes.
Consuetudines feudorum (feudal customs) — a compilation of medieval feudal laws which was made in Bologna in the last third of the 12th century.
Jus talionis (right of retaliation) — the right of retaliation by inflicting a punishment of the same kind (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”).
The old German Gewere — the legitimate rule of a free man over a piece of land where he exercised sovereign authority and was responsible for the protection of every person and thing.
Compensatio — the balancing of claim and counter-claim against each other.
Satisfactio — reparation, or atonement, for an offence; it can also mean satisfying a creditor not by repaying the debt incurred but by some other service.
<"96">96 The Holy Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood) — league of Spanish towns set up at the end of the 15th century with the approbation of the king, who sought to make use of the bourgeoisie in the struggle between absolutism and the powerful feudal lords. From the middle of the 16th century the armed detachments of the Hermandad performed police duties. The term “Holy Hermandad” was later used ironically for the police.
<"97">97 Spandau — at that time a Prussian fortress west of Berlin with a jail for political prisoners.
<"98">98 Landwehrgraben — a canal in Berlin which extended up to Charlottenburg, then a Berlin suburb. It is possible that Marx and Engels are alluding to Egbert Bauer’s publishing house in Charlottenburg, where Szeliga’s works were published.
<"99">99 The following section is a critical analysis of the second section, “Mein Verkehr” (“My Intercourse”), Chapter Two, Part Two of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. From the introductory remarks of Marx and Engels to this part of their work (see this volume, p. 240) it follows that they intended to use the heading “My Intercourse” and to mark it with the letter “B”, for the preceding section is called “A. Meine Macht” (“A. My Power”), and the following one “C. Mein Selbstgenuss” (“C. My Self-Enjoyment”). The section “B. My Intercourse” probably consisted of three subsections: “1. Society”, “If. Rebellion” and “III. Union.” The first three subdivisions and the beginning of the fourth subdivision of the section “1. Society” are missing. When Paul Weller was preparing The German Ideology for publication as Band 5, Erste Abteilung of Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), he suggested that the subsection “I. Society” may have consisted of five parts. The heading of the first is unknown, but it might have been “1. Die verstirnerte Gesellschaft” (“1. Stirnerised Society”), or “1. Die Gesellschaft im allgemeinen"’ (“1. Society in General”), or “1. Die menschliche Gesellschaft” (“1. Human Society”). That of the second was probably “2. Die Gesellschaft als Gefängnisgesellschaft” (“2. Society as Prison Society”); of the third, “3. Die Gesellschaft als Familie” (“3. Society as a Family”); of the fourth, “4. Die Gesellschaft als Staat” (“Society as State”), of which only the last portion has been found. The fifth part has been preserved in its entirety and is called “5. Die Gesellschaft als bürgerliche Gesellschaft” (“5. Society as Bourgeois Society”).
<"100">100 The September Laws — reactionary laws promulgated by the French Government in September 1835. They restricted the rights of juries and introduced severe measures against the press. The clauses directed against the latter provided for higher amounts to be deposited as security by periodical publications, and made the people responsible for publications directed against private property and the existing political regime liable to imprisonment and heavy fines.
<"101">101 The reference is apparently to the Commissions of the Estates in the Landtags (provincial diets), which were instituted in Prussia in June 1842. Elected by the Landtags from their deputies according to the estates principle, they formed a single advisory body known as the “United Commissions”. With the help of this body, which was a mockery of representative institution, Frederick William IV hoped to enforce new taxes and obtain a loan.
<"102">102 When the Corn Laws (see Note 29) were repealed in 1846, a small, temporary tariff on the import of corn was retained until 1849.
Magna Charta Libertatum — the charter which the insurgent barons, who were supported by knights and townsmen, forced King John of England to sign at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Magna Charta limited the powers of the king, mainly in the interests of the feudal lords, and also contained some concessions to the knights and the towns.
<"103">103 Under the leadership of Themistocles the Greeks defeated the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.
After the Greek War of Independence (1821-29) against Turkish rule, Britain, Russia and France compelled the new Greek state to adopt a monarchical form of government, and placed the 17-year-old prince Otto of Bavaria on the Greek throne.
<"104">104 Marx and Engels are alluding to Voltaire’s description of Habakkuk. There is a direct reference to it in their article “Konflikte zwischen Polizei und Volk. — Über die Ereignisse auf der Krim” published on July 9, 1855. The expression “capable de tout” (capable of anything) is used here ironically, i.e., “capable of nothing”.
<"105">105 An allusion to the fact that in the summer of 1845 Stirner attempted to earn his living by selling milk since he could not exist on the proceeds from his literary work. But the undertaking proved a complete failure, and the curdled milk had to be poured down the drain.
<"106">106 The Pandects are part of a compendium of Roman civil law (Corpus juris civilis) made by order of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. They contained extracts from the works of prominent Roman jurists.
<"107">107 A reference to the British and Dutch East India Companies which were founded at the beginning of the 17th century. They had the monopoly, of trade with the East Indies and played a decisive part in the establishment of the British and Dutch colonial empires.
<"108">108 The Preussische Seehandlungsgesellschaft (Prussian Maritime Trading Company) was founded as a commercial and banking company in 1772 and granted a number of important privileges by the state. It advanced big loans to the government and in fact became its banker and broker.
<"109">109 Levons-nous! (Let us rise up!) — part of the motto of the Révolutions de Paris, a revolutionary-democratic weekly which was published in Paris from July 1789 to February 1794 (until September 1790 its editor was Elisée Lousatalot). The entire motto was: “Les grands ne nous paraissent grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: levons-nous!” (“The great only seem great to us because we are on our knees: Let us rise up!”).
<"110">110 Der hinkende Botte, also called Der hinkende Bote (The Lame Messenger) — a name given to a sort of popular almanac which contained rather stale news relating to events of the preceding year.
<"111">111 Straubinger — a name for Gerinan travelling journeymen. In their works and letters Marx and Engels frequently applied it ironically to artisans who remained under the influence of backward guild notions and believed that society could abandon large-scale capitalist industry and return to the petty handicraft stage of production.
<"112">112 Mozart’s Requiem was completed, on the basis of his manuscript notes, by Franz Xaver Süssmayer.
<"113">113 Organisers of labour — an allusion to the utopian socialists (in particular Fourier and his followers) who put forward a plan for the peaceful transformation of society by means of associations, that is, by “organisation of labour”, which they opposed to the anarchy of production under capitalism.
Some of these ideas were used by the French petty-bourgeois socialist Louis Blanc in his book Organisation du travail (Paris, 1839) in which he proposed that the bourgeois state should transform contemporary society into a socialist society.
<"114">114 See Note 18.
<"115">115 Willenhall, a town in Staffordshire, England, with a considerable iron industry.
<"116">116 An allusion to the fact that Max Stirner dedicated his book to his wife Marie Dähnhardt. The phrase “the title spectre of his book” was derived from Stirner’s phrase “the title spectre of her book”. In his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum he used it in relation to Bettina von Arnim’s work, Dies Buch gehört dem König.
<"117">117 This refers to one of the main principles of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (Déclaration des droits de 1'homme et du citoyen), a preamble to the Constitution adopted by the French Convention in 1793 during the revolutionary dictatorship of the Jacobins. The last article, the 35th, of the Declaration reads: “When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is the imprescriptible right and the irremissible duty of the people as a whole and of each of its sections.”
<"118">118 According to the Bible (Genesis 41:18-20), the Egyptian pharaoh dreamed that seven fat cows were eaten by seven lean cows but the latter remained just as lean as before. According to the interpretation given to the pharaoh by Joseph, the dream meant that Egypt would have rich harvests for seven years to be followed by seven years of drought and famine.
<"119">119 The Customs Union (Zollverein) of German states (initially they numbered 18), which established a common customs frontier, was set up in 1834 and headed by Prussia. By the 1840s the Union embraced most of the German states, with the exception of Austria, the Hanseatic cities (Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck) and a few small states. Brought into being by the necessity to create an all-German market, the Customs Union became a factor conducive to the political unification of Germany.
<"120">120 The Cyrenaic school — a school of ancient Greek philosophy founded at the beginning of the 4th century B.C. by Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates. The Cyrenaics were agnostics, adopted a critical attitude to religion and regarded pleasure (hedone) as the aim of life.
<"121">121 See Note 59.
<"122">122 See Note 45.
<"123">123 A reference to the writers of Young Germany (Junges Deutschland) — a literary group that emerged in Germany in the 1830s and was influenced by Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne. The Young Germany writers (Karl Gutzkow, Ludolf Wienbarg, Theodor Mundt and others) came out in defence of freedom of conscience and the press. Their writings reflected opposition sentiments of the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals. The views of the Young Germans were politically vague and inconsistent; soon the majority of them turned into mere liberals.
<"124">124 The Levellers were a democratic-republican trend in the English bourgeois revolution of the mid-17th century. The reference in the text is probably to the most radical section of the Levellers known as True Levellers, or Diggers. The Diggers represented the poorest strata that suffered both from feudal and capitalist exploitation in the town and the countryside. In contrast to the mass of the Levellers, who wanted to retain private property, the Diggers advocated common property and other ideas of equalitarian communism.
<"125">125 National reformers — members of the National Reform Association founded in the U.S.A. in 1845. The Association, which consisted mainly of artisans and workers, and declared that every worker should have the right to a piece of land free of charge, started a campaign for a land reform against the slave-owning planters and land speculators. It also put forward a number of other democratic demands such as abolition of the standing army, abolition of slavery and introduction of the ten-hour working day.
<"126">126 Humaniora (humanities) — the subjects the study of which was considered essential for the knowledge of ancient classical culture; the humanists of the Renaissance and their followers regarded these subjects as the basis of humanistic education.
<"127">127 Neue Anekdota — collection of articles by Moses Hess, Karl Grün, Otto Lüning and other representatives of “true socialism” published in Darmstadt at the end of May 1845.
<"128">128 This chapter was published by Marx separately as a review in the monthly publication Das Westphälische Dampfboot in August and September 1847. Before that, in April 1847, Marx had published a “Declaration against Karl Grün”. He stated in it that he intended to publish a review of Grün’s book Die soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien (see present edition, Vol. 6) in the Westphälische Dampfboot. But the first instalment of this article was published only in August 1847. The editors explained in a note that the article could not be published earlier because “for over two months the manuscript was sent from one German town to another without reaching us”.
The work was published in the Westphälische Dampfboot as Marx’s article (the name of the author was mentioned in the editorial note). Consequently one can assume that in contrast to Vol. 1, which was written jointly by Marx and Engels, some chapters of Vol. II of The German Ideology are probably the individual work of one or other of them. But since the manuscript of this chapter of Vol. If is in Engels’ handwriting, it is likely that Engels helped to write it. The copy sent to the Westphälische Dampfboot was probably made from this manuscript. The manuscript and the published text are practically identical. Comparatively few changes were made in the text itself and it is possible that some of these were by the editors of the journal. In this volume, variants affecting the meaning are given in footnotes. Where the manuscript is damaged the missing passages have been taken from the printed text. Such passages have not been specially marked (either by square brackets or footnotes) in this chapter.
<"129">129 For Young Germany see Note 123.
<"130">130 Cabinet Montpensier — a reading room in the Palais-Royal, formerly a palace of the Princes of Orleans in Paris.
<"131">131 Probably an allusion to the organisers of the first political parties of American workers and artisans founded at the end of the 1820s — the Republican Political Association of the Working Men of the City of Philadelphia, the New York Working Men’s Party (their leaders were Frances Wright, Robert Dale Owen, Thomas Skidmore) and other labour associations in various American towns. These organisations had a democratic programme, advocated land reform and other social measures and supported the demand for a ten-hour working day. Although they were short-lived (they existed only until 1834), had a local characters and were composed of factions holding rather heterogeneous views, these first workers’ parties gave an impetus to the incipient labour movement in the United States and helped to disseminate utopian socialist ideas, for many of their members were supporters of this trend.
<"132">132 The States-General — the supreme executive and legislative organ of the Netherlands or the Republic of the United Provinces, as the country was called from 1579 to 1795. ‘this assembly consisted of representatives of the seven provinces. The trading bourgeoisie played a dominant part in it.
<"133">133 Lettres d'un Habitant de Cenève à ses Contemporains was written by Saint-Simon in 1802 and published anonymously in Paris in 1803.
<"134">134 The Newton Council — a plan to set up such a council was put forward by Saint-Simon in his book Lettres d'un Habitant de Cenève à ses Contemporains. Its purpose was to create conditions that would enable scientists and artists to develop their talents freely. Funds were to be raised by public subscription. Each subscriber was to nominate three mathematicians, three physicists, three chemists, three physiologists, three writers, three painters and three musicians. The sum collected by subscription was to be divided among the three mathematicians, physicists, etc., who had received the greatest number of votes and had thus become members of the Newton Council.
<"135">135 The reference is to the following sentences: “The aim of all social institutions must be to improve the moral, intellectual and physical condition of the most numerous and poorest class. “All inherited privileges, without exception, are abolished. “To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works”.
<"136">136 The first schism of the Saint-Simonian school occurred in November 183 1, caused by Enfantin’s and Bazard’s increasingly discordant views on religion, marriage and the family.
<"137">137 Ménilmontant — then a suburb of Paris where Enfantin, who after Bazard’s death became the acknowledged leader of the Saint-Simonian school, the “father superior” of the Saint-Simonists, tried to establish a labour commune in 1832.
Enfantin’s work Économie politique et Politique was printed in book form in Paris in 183 1, after having been published earlier as a series of articles in the newspaper Le Globe.
<"138">138 Le Livre nouveau (The New Book) — a manuscript containing an exposition of the Saint-Simonian doctrine. It was drawn up by the leaders of the Saint-Simonian school, which was headed by Enfantin, in the course of a series of meetings held in July 1832. Among the leaders present were Barrot, Fournel, Chevalier, Duverier and Lambert. The authors intended the book to become the “new Bible” of the Saint-Simonian doctrine. Extracts from the Livre nouveau and other information about it can be found in Reybaud’s book Études sur les réformateurs ou socialistes modernes.
<"139">139 Fourier’s series — a method of classification which Fourier used to analyse various natural and social phenomena. With the help of this method he tried, in particular, to work out a new social science based on the doctrine of attraction and repulsion of passions. which he regarded as the principal factor of social development (passions, in their turn, were classified by Fourier into groups or series). In this method Fourier combines unscientific and fantastic elements with rational observations.
<"140">140 See Note 113.
<"141">141 Patristic philosophy — the teachings of the Fathers of the Church (3rd to 5th century).
<"142">142 The spontaneous popular risings which took place in many parts of France, and also in Paris, in 1775 were caused by crop failure and famine. The feudal aristocracy which was against Turgot’s reforms used these uprisings to oust him from the post of Controller-General of Finance. In the spring of 1776, Turgot was dismissed and the reforms he had introduced (free trade in grain, abolition of some feudal privileges and of the guilds) were rescinded.
<"143">143 Unlike the other extant chapters of Volume II, which are in Engels’ handwriting, the manuscript of Chapter V is in Joseph Weydemeyer’s hand and “M. Hess” is written at the end. In December 1845, the journal Gesellschaftsspiegel No. 6 carried an article by Hess under the heading “Umtriebe der Kommunistischen Propheten” which discussed the same subject in a similar way as this chapter. It is probable that Chapter V was written by Hess, copied by Weydemeyer and edited by Marx and Engels.
Die Neue Welt oder das Reich des Geistes auf Erden, the book examined in this chapter, was published anonymously in 1845. It consists of lectures by Georg Kuhlmann delivered in the Swiss communities of the League of the Just. These communities were founded by Wilhelm Weitling. The League of the Just was a secret organisation of German workers and artisans, which had branches in Germany, France, Switzerland and England. The ideas of “true socialism” were at that time widespread among the members of the League, many of whom were artisans living abroad. A criticism of Kuhlmann’s activities and his book can be found in the article “Zur Geschichte des Urchristentums” written by Engels in 1894.
<"144">144 Engels’ work The True Socialists (Die wahren Sozialisten) is a direct continuation of the second volume of The German Ideology.
By the beginning of 1847 the development of “true socialism” had led to the formation of various groups (e.g., the Westphalian, Saxon and Berlin groups) within the general framework of this trend. Engels, therefore, decided to add a critical examination of the different “true socialist” groups to Volume II of The German Ideology. (See his letter to Marx of January 15, 1847.) The result was the manuscript called here The True Socialists. He continued to work on it at least until the middle of April, for an issue of the journal Die Grenzboten published on April 10, 1847, is mentioned in the text. The manuscript has no heading and, to judge by the ending, the work remained unfinished. It was for the first time published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. in German in 1932. In English it was published for the first time in Karl Marx. and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.
<"145">145 Here and below the names of constellations are used ironically to designate some of the “true socialists” who contributed to various German periodicals such as Dies Buch gehört dem Volke, Das Westphälische Dampfboot and Gesellschaftsspiegel. The “Lion” denotes Hermann Kriege; the “Crab” Julius Helmich; Rudolf Rempel is, probably, one of the “Twins”, the other is Julius Meyer; the “Ram” stands for Joseph Weydemeyer; the “Bull” for Otto Lüning.
Engels’ remark that the “Lion” has become a “tribune of the people” is an allusion to the fact that Hermann Kriege, who had emigrated to America, became editor of the New York weekly Der Volks-Tribun.
<"146">146 These associations were formed in a number of Prussian cities in 1844-45 on the initiative of the German liberal bourgeoisie, which, alarmed by the uprising of the Silesian weavers in the summer of 1844, founded them to divert the German workers from the struggle for their class interests.
<"147">147 Eridanus — a constellation in the southern hemisphere, depicted as a river.
The Weser-Dampfboot, which was banned at the end of 1844, appeared from January 1845 under the title Das Westphälische Dampfboot; it was edited by Otto Lüning, who had been an editor of the Weser-Dampfboot.
<"148">148 Marx and Engels’ work “Circular against Kriege”, which had appeared in the newspaper Der Volks-Tribun in June 1846, was also published in the July issue of the journal Das Westphälische Dampfboot. But Otto Lüning, the editor of the latter, arbitrarily changed the text by inserting his own additions written in the spirit of “true socialism”.
<"149">149 Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, was depicted on the cover of the journal Gesellschaftsspiegel.
<"150">150 Engels is referring to a passage in his essay “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” published in the Deuische-Brüsseler-Zeitung in the autumn of I847. The essay is closely connected with the second volume of The German Ideology and may originally have formed part of the missing text of this volume (see Note 7).
<"151">151 This may be a reference to the petty-bourgeois newspaper Dorfzeitung published in Elberfeld from 1838 to 1847.
<"152">152 Books comprising more than twenty printed sheets were exempt from preliminary censorship, according to the press laws existing in a number of German states. The Rheinische Jahrbücher, which were published by Hermann Püttmann, had over twenty sheets.
<"153">153 In partibus infidelium — literally in parts inhabited by unbelievers. The words are added to the title of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in non-Christian countries. In the figurative sense, they mean “not really existing”.
Engels is ironically alluding to poems glorifying the future of the as yet non-existent German fleet, namely, Georg Herwegh’s “Die deutsche Flotte” (1841) and Ferdinand Freiligrath’s “Flotten-Träume” (1843) and “Zwei Flaggen” (1844).
<"154">154 See Note 22.
<"155">155 In his Album Püttmann published seven poems by Heinrich Heine including “Pomare”, “Zur Doctrin” and “Die schlesischen Weber”, as well as several poems by Georg Weerth, among them the “Handwerksburschenlieder”, “Der Kanonengiessei.” and “Gebet eines Irländers”.
<"156">156 A reference to the fact that on August 12, 1845, Saxon troops opened fire on a mass demonstration in Leipzig. A military parade, which was arranged to mark the arrival of Crown Prince Johann, served as a pretext for a protest demonstration against the persecution by the Saxon government of the “German-Catholics” movement and one of its leaders, the clergyman Johannes Ronge. The movement, which arose in 1844 and gained ground in a number of German states, was supported by considerable sections of the middle and petty bourgeoisie. The “German Catholics” did not recognise the supremacy of the Pope, rejected many dogmas and rites of the Roman Catholic Church, and sought to adapt Catholicism to the needs of the rising German bourgeoisie.
The events of August 12, 1845, were described by Engels in his report “The Late Butchery at Leipzig. — The German Working Men’s Movement” published in the Chartist newspaper The Northern Star (see present edition, Vol. 4).