the ethnological notebooks of karl marx - Marxists Internet Archive

Notes to Introduction, p. 85-86.Lichtheim’s notion that Hegel conceived society as a living entitymust look for its root elsewhere. Hegel used both Organismus andOrganisation in regard to social institutions in the Philosophie des Rechts,and adopted the notion of society in the sense of a highly organizedsystem throughout his works, but not in the biological sense; herethe doctrine of Hegel is to be regarded as organicist in general, butnot as applied in particular to human society in the way, say, ofLilienfeld or Schäffle; moreover, Hegel’s usage, Organismus desStaats, Phil. d. Rechts, §§267, 269, has no trace of biologism. OnHegel’s doctrine of Organismus, cf. T. L. Haering, Hegel..., v. 2(1938) 1963, pp. 416 et seq., 496 et seq. Baillie by his literalness missedthe main point, and the ironic overtone of Hegel, but he brought outone important lateral matter: the individualities separated from society,independent of and logically prior to the latter, are the presuppositionsof Hobbes’ doctrine, and the butt of Hegel’s paradoxalformulation. The social doctrine of unbridled individualism inHobbes is actually descriptive of the relations of civil society, as Hegelrecognized it to be. Darwin then spiritualized the animal kingdom, orthe kingdom of nature generally, in order that it be made to figure ascivil society.158 John Morley, Life of Gladstone, v. 3, 1903, p. 52. Morley was incontact with Marx in the 1870s.159 Chronik, op. cit., p. 391.160 Marx Engels Archiv, v. 1, op. cit., pp. 316-317; cf. introd. by Rjazanov,pp. 309-314. Letter against the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski andN. K. Mikhailovsky. Vestnik Narodnoy Voli, May 1884. See: MEW19, pp. 107-112 and 558-559, where its publication is dated 1886.For the date 1884 see: P. W. Blackstock and B. F. Hoselitz, TheRussian Menace to Europe. A Collection of Articles, Speeches and NewsDispatches [by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels], 1952, p. 274.161 Ibid., pp. 341-342.162 Ibid., p. 320.163 Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 562.164 Marx Engels Archiv, v. 1, op. cit., p. 320 n. Marx, in the draft mentioned,alludes to the medieval village commune surviving in hisnative Trier down to his own day. This is made more precise in aletter to Engels, March 25, 1868 (MEW 32, pp. 5 if.) “ Right in myown neighborhood, on the Hunsrück, the old Germanic systemsurvived up till the last few years. I now remember my father talkingabout it__ ” See also Marx and Engels, Foreword to 2nd Russiantr. (G. Plekhanov) of Communist Manifesto (MEW 19, esp. p. 296).Marx had set down an opposed theory of the modern village communesin the Introduction to the Grundrisse (op. cit., p. 26); The higherform of society is the key to the lower, the anatomy of man is the keyto the anatomy of the ape. [This direction of the reconstruction is theopposite of the movement in Engels, Morgan and Cuvier.] Tribute393