2 - Marxism and the Hegelian dialectic

Summary

The pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectical method

In the course of lengthy debates often lasting all night, I infected him to his great injury with Hegelianism.

Karl Marx on Proudhon

In their original form, the Marxist conception of history and the socialist theory which rests upon it were worked out between 1844 and 1847, years when Western and Central Europe were in a state of great revolutionary ferment. They could be described as the most radical product of this epoch.

In Germany, this period was the epoch of mounting bourgeois liberalism. Here, as in other countries, the ideological representation of the class opposing the establishment far exceeded the practical requirements of that class. The bourgeoisie – by which I mean the broad stratum of non-feudal classes standing outside the wage relation – fought against the still semi-feudal state absolutism; its philosophical representation began with absolute rule in order to end with state rule.

The philosophical current which, in this respect, found its most radical representative in Max Stirner is known as the radical left wing of Hegelian philosophy. As Friedrich Engels remarked – like Marx, he came under its influence for a certain time; they both associated with the ‘Free’ at Hippel's wine bar in Berlin – the proponents of this tendency rejected the Hegelian system, only to fall all the more under the spell of its dialectic until first the practical struggle against positive religion (then an important aspect of the political struggle) and second the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach drove them into an unreserved acceptance of materialism.