KARL MARX: FROM POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY TO REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS

The study begins with a review of Marx's writings in which Marx acknowledges a debt to Hegel. Hegel's influence on Marx was a profound and enduring one, though it is more evident in Marx's early writings than in his later ones. A look at the works of both Hegel and Marx scholars and at Soviet interpreters of Marxism indicates that the nature of that influence has generally been misconstrued. The socialist humanist interpretation, which focuses on Marx's early writings and according to which Marx's central lifelong concern was with human rather than class liberation, is rejected.; On the basis of an analysis of Marx's early journalistic writings from 1841 to 1843, it is argued in this study that the efforts of the young Marx were directed toward applying some of the fundamental theses of the Hegelian philosophy of law to contemporary political issues, and that Marx thus proceeded from Hegel's political philosophy to the working out of his own (Marx's) philosophical politics. During the period from 1843 to 1845 Marx's conception of the role of critical philosophy in social revolution underwent a series of transformations as Marx developed his materialist world outlook. Critical philosophy is understood throughout this period as self-clarification, but the self-clarification is initially conceived as a task common to all philosophy and later as a task which history has made an imperative for the proletariat and the Communist Party. With the last development critical philosophy has in fact been transformed into the theory and practice of communism.; The study closes with an assessment of the communist politics and strategy for revolution as these had been worked out by Marx prior to the outbreak in 1848 of the February Revolution in France. There are two aspects of this assessment. Politically, the communists ally themselves with the bourgeoisie wherever the latter acts in a revolutionary way, since the interests of the proletariat require that the last remnants of historically defunct modes of production be cleared away for the final "battle of democracy". Strategically, the politicization and revolutionizing of the trades' unions are essential to the success of this politics.