Karl Marx - Collected Works of Karl Marx (Illustrated)

The Collected Works of

KARL MARX

(1818-1883)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

The Collected Works of

KARL MARX

By Delphi Classics, 2016

Collected Works of Karl Marx

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2016.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 062 9

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Brckenstrasse 10, Trier, formerly part of the Kingdom of Prussias Province of the Lower Rhine Marxs birthplace. The house was purchased by the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1928 and now houses a museum devoted to the socialist.

Trier in the late nineteenth century

Trier, a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle, today

Marx as a young man, 1862

Translated by Henry James Stenning

This early manuscript was written in 1843, but remained unpublished during Marxs lifetime, except for the introduction that appeared in print in 1844. The text centres on fellow philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels 1820 book Elements of the Philosophy of Right , commenting paragraph by paragraph. One of Marxs major criticisms of Hegel is the fact that many of his dialectical arguments begin in abstraction. This work contains the formulations of Marxs particular alienation theory, which was informed by Ludwig Andreas Feuerbachs work. The narrative of the work develops around analysis of the relations between civil society and political society, including Marxs most famous commentaries on the function of religion in the introduction.

Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by Jakob Schlesinger, 1831

The first editions title page of Hegels landmark book

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 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 mans 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 encyclopdic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic Point dhonneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its general basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human being, inasmuch as the human being possesses no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious misery is in one mouth the expression of real misery, and in another is a protestation against real misery. Religion is the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of the people, is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to abandon the illusions about their condition is a demand to abandon a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion therefore contains potentially the criticism of the Vale of Tears whose aureole is religion.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers which adorned the chain, not that man should wear his fetters denuded of fanciful embellishment, but that he should throw off the chain, and break the living flower.

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he thinks, acts, shapes his reality like the disillusioned man come to his senses, so that he revolves around himself, and thus around his real sun. Religion is but the illusory sun which revolves around man, so long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is therefore the task of history, once the thither side of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of the hither side.

The immediate task of philosophy, when enlisted in the service of history, is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape, now that it has been unmasked in its holy shape. Thus the criticism of heaven transforms itself into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of right, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.