Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

An introduction by Marx to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Written between mid-October and mid-December 1843, published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February 1844.

In March 1843, Marx retreated from society to his study and began to conduct historical research in order to dispel the “doubts assailing” him that arose during the period of the Rheinische Zeitung as a result of the contradictions between reality and Hegel's philosophy of reason. From mid-March to the end of September 1843, Marx wrote Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which deeply criticized Hegel’s idealist view on the relationship between the State and civil society, and came to the conclusion that civil society determines the state. Forced to leave Kreuznach in October, Marx made his way to Paris, the center of the revolutionary movement at the time, and quickly established contact with the masses of workers and workers' organizations in Germany and France. Later, he began to investigate the workers’ movement, study the advanced political thoughts at that time, and embarked on the road of combining revolutionary theory with workers’ movement. Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is the first work in which Marx combined theory with practice after he joined the workers’ movement.

Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right continues Marx’s thoughts on the religious question in On the Jewish Question, and led them deeper, and this work pointed out that religion is an “inverted consciousness of the world” produced by the “inverted world”, thus the criticism of religion is prerequisite of all criticism. For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and it is necessary to turn “the criticism of Heaven into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics” which means waging a “war on the German state of affairs”. In Marx’s view, “the German philosophy of state and right attains its most consistent, richest, and last formulation through Hegel”, therefore, the criticism of this philosophy “is both a critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it, and the resolute negation of the whole manner of the German consciousness in politics and right as practiced hereto.” These expositions pointed the direction for further critique. Marx also continued his earlier thoughts on human emancipation and further raised the question of the path to human emancipation and the forces it relies on. In his view, advanced theory can play a revolutionary role, but “the weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses”. “Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical”, highlighting that revolutionary theory must be unified with revolutionary practice. At the same time, Marx pointed out the historical mission of the proletariat for the first time, pointed out that the proletariat was the only class capable of eliminating all kinds of slavery and achieving human emancipation, and discussed the relationship between the proletariat and philosophy. In his view, “as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished”, thus he demonstrated for the first time the historical role of the proletariat as the destroyer of the old system and the creator of the new system.

Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is an important work in the process of the development of Marx’s thoughts, and although it was influenced by humanism, the consistent liquidation of Hegelian philosophy and the proposal of a series of new ideas mark that his transition from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism was finally consummated, and Marx embarked on the journey of creating his own revolutionary theoretical system.