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Marx's Précis of Hegel's Doctrine on Being in the Minor Logic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Joseph O'Malley  and
Fred E. Schroder
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What follows is an edition of a Marx manuscript fragment: four pages in a notebook of Marx from 1860–63. The fragment is Marx's précis of Hegel's doctrine on “Being” in the “Minor Logic”, the First Part of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Marx's text is a combination of condensed quotation and paraphrase of the material in Hegel's paragraphs 83–111 of the Encyclopedia. There are no critical comments by Marx on the doctrine he summarizes. It seems that his aim was simply to trace out in a concise way the main line of Hegel's categorial development under the rubric on “Being”. The précis condenses into slightly less than four 18×111/2 cm. page sides material that fills some eighteen pages in the present standard edition of the Encyclopedia, and even more in the edition which Marx himself used: the Werke edition prepared after Hegel's death by Leopold von Henning. That Marx used this edition is evident from the fact that his précis includes material from the Zusätze which were a feature of the edition.

Type
Documents
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 1977 , pp. 423 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1977

References

page 423 note 1 The fragment is listed as manuscript A 45 in Vol. I of the Inventar des Marx-Engels-Nachlasses of the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis. The whole notebook is listed as manuscript B 96 in the same volume of the Inventar. In the IISG photocopy of the notebook the pages of the fragment are assigned the numbers 131–34; in the notebook itself, however, the pages of the fragment are numbered (in a hand other than Marx's) 134–37. The latter pagination is reproduced in the present edition, and also referred to in the following notes. The notebook itself is in the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism (F. 1, op. 1, d. 5578), which provided new photocopies of the fragment that greatly facilitated the present edition of the text.

page 423 note 2 Marx bypassed Hegel's “remarks” to his paragraphs, with one notable exception: the remark to § 102, on “number”, from which Marx extracted a good deal of material (p. 135, lines 25–43).

page 423 note 3 Hegel, G. W. F., Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grund-risse (1830), ed. by Nicolin, Friedhelm and Otto Pöggeler (Hamburg, 1969), pp. 104–22.Google Scholar

page 423 note 4 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe durch einen Verein von Freunden des Verewigten (Berlin, 1st ed. 1832ff.; 2nd ed. 1840fi.), Vol. 6: Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, Pt 1: Die Logik, ed. by Leopold von Henning.

page 424 note 1 The material in Marx's text from the Zusätze is the following: p. 134, lines 7–11 (Zusatz to § 85) and line 36 (Zusatz to § 96); p. 135, lines 17–25 (Zusatz to § 101); p. 137, lines 16–21 – the material following: II) Wesen – (Zusatz to § 111). In this last instance, after having announced, so to speak, the doctrine on “Essence”, Marx returned to paraphrase the Zusatz to Hegel's final paragraph on “Being”, which expands on the transition from “Being” to “Essence”.

page 424 note 2 Line 15: Marx has “Beziehung ” for Hegel's “Bestimmung ” (§ 106). Line 23: Marx has “Theils aber verändert Aenderung d. Qualität auch d. Quanti-tät ”. where Hegel has “theils aber ist die Veränderung des Quantums auch eine Veränderung der Qualität ” (§ 108). Line 25: Marx has “Qualitätsbestimmung ” for Hegel's “Qualitätsbestimmtheit ” (§ 109).

page 424 note 3 This date also appears on the notebook's cover-page in an inscription written by someone other than Marx and presumably at a later time, which reads: “Charles Marx April 2nd 1860. London ”.

page 424 note 4 The excerpts fall roughly into three groups according to the dates of the newspapers from which they are taken: 1) October 1860 – January 1861 (pp. 67–118); 2) June 1861 (pp. 119–25); 3) September and early November 1861 (pp. 126–31). The last excerpt is dated 5 November 1861. The first group was evidently compiled beginning at the end of 1860 or perhaps in January 1861: press material dating from January 1861 appears already on p. 69.

page 425 note 1 The works excerpted: Charles Sienkiewicz's Précis du rapport sur les mouve-ments séditieux qu'ont éclaté en Pologne (1854); Claude C. de Rulhièrés Oeuvres posthumes (1792) and Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne et du démem-brément de cette République, 2nd ed. (1819); and Leonard Chodzko's Les massacres de Galicie et Krakovie confisquée par l'Autriche en 1846 (1861).

page 425 note 2 The latest-dated letter (from Watteau, 28 July 1861) is on p. 156; the earliest-dated (from Lassalle, 19 January 1861) is on p. 160 and the top half of p. 161. A second letter from Watteau (8 June 1861) is on p. 159 and the bottom half of p. 161; p. 158 contains the letter from Bernard (13 May 1861).

page 425 note 3 I thank Jürgen Rojahn, of the IISG, for this and other information included above, and for indicating the following sources in support of the 1863 date of the material on Poland in B 96: Marx, Karl, Manuskripte über die polnische Frage (1863–1864), ed. with an introd. by Conze, Werner and Hertz-Eichenrode, Dieter (The Hague, 1961), pp. 43–46Google Scholar; id. – Karol Marx, Beiträge zur Geschichte der polnischen Frage (Manuskripte aus den Jahren 1863–1864) – Przyczynki do historii kwestii polskiej (Rekopisy z lat 1863–1864) (Warsaw, 1971); also Marx's letter to Engels of 29 May 1863, in Marx-Engels, Werke, Vol. 30, p. 350.

page 426 note 1 I am supposing that while he was working on Herr Vogt Marx had little occasion or reason to review Hegel's Logic. As to the period immediately following his completion of Herr Vogt in mid- to end-November 1860, Marx had first to contend with his wife's illness (she contracted smallpox in November 1860; cf., e.g., Marx to Engels, 23 November 1860, MEW, Vol. 30, p. 113); then he made an extended trip to Holland and Germany, from 28 February to 29 April 1861, a period which can presumably be eliminated as one in which the fragment might have been composed. If the fragment predates November 1861, then Marx left the pages in the notebook which immediately follow it (138–55) unused for a considerable length of time, i.e. until May 1863. If it post-dates November 1861, the same pages could have been left unused for up to seventeen months. In sum, unless the fragment closely pre-dates the material on Poland from May 1863, one might hypothesize that Marx reserved those pages, initially at least, for a possible continuation of his précis of the Logic.

page 426 note 2 For the period in question, see, e.g., Karl, Marx. Chronik seines Lebens in Einzeldaten (Frankfurt/M., 1971), pp. 199–225,Google Scholar and Rubel, Maximilien and Manale, Margaret, Myth, Marx Without. A Chronological Study of His Life and Work (Oxford, 1975), pp. 163–85.Google Scholar

page 426 note 3 There Marx notes ironically that the pain of a recent tooth extraction “heightened ” his power of abstract thought, in the sanse that “wie Hegel [sagt], das reine Denken oder reine Sein oder Nichts identisch ”. MEW, Vol. 30, p. 117.

page 426 note 4 In addition to the period of 28 February – 29 April 1861, noted above: most of July 1861, when inflammation of the eyes hindered Marx's reading and writing; end of August to mid-September 1861, when he visited Engels in Manchester; 9 July – 4 August 1862, the time of Lassalle'srupting visit to London; the first week of September 1862, when Marx again traveled to Holland and Germany; and a week (ca 5–December 1862, when he visited Engels in Manchester and Wilhelm Eichhoff in Liverpool.

page 426 note 5 Cf. Marx to Engels, 10 June 1861, MEW, Vol. 30, p. 170.

page 427 note 1 Marx to Engels, 16 January 1858, MEW, Vol. 29, p. 260. In this instance it was presumably the larger Wissenschaft der Logik.

page 427 note 2 Recently, for example, Carver, Terrell, “Marx – and Hegel's Logic”, in: Political Studies, XXIV (1976), pp. 57–68, esp. pp. 62–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 427 note 3 E.g., Grundrisse (Berlin, 1953), p. 240: “Das Kapital […] als die allgemeine Form des Reichtums – das Geld – repräsentierend, ist der schranken– und masslose Trieb über seine Schranke hinauszugehn. Jede Grenze ist und muss Schranke für es sein. Es hörte sonst auf Kapital – das Geld als sich selbst pro-duzierend – zu sein. Sobald es eine bestimmte Grenze nicht mehr als Schranke fühlte, sondern als Grenze sich in ihr wohl fühlte, wäre es selbst von Tauschwert zu Gebrauchswert, von der allgemeinen Form des Reichtums zu einem bestimm-ten substantiellen Bestehn desselben herabgesunken. Das Kapital als solches schafft einen bestimmten Mehrwert, weil es keinen unendlichen at once setzen kann; aber es ist die beständige Bewegung mehr davon zu schaffen. Die quantitative Grenze des Mehrwerts erscheint ihm nur als Naturschranke, als Not-wendigkeit, die es beständig zu überwältigen und über die es beständig hinauszugehn sucht. ” In his full English version of the Grundrisse, Martin Nicolaus provides for this passage an appropriate reference to Hegel's Science of Logic. Marx, Grundrisse (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 334.

page 427 note 4 Marx, , Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (Berlin, 1859).Google Scholar

page 427 note 5 I thank Stanley Moore for drawing my attention to the existence of the fragment and for endorsing the idea of publishing this edition of it; Hans Peter Harstick and Jürgen Rojahn for providing photocopies and other assistance; Maximilien Rubel for advice on deciphering the manuscript; Howard Kainz, Michael Vater and Terrell Carver for comments on the text; and Marquette's Committee on Research for support of the editing work. Fred E. Schrader checked my earlier versions of the text and made many suggestions which are incorporated in the present version. Accordingly, this edition is as much his work as my own.

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