KARL MARX

BRUSSELS
135
interest, and by no means opposes the latter as an independent force
with an independent history - so that this contradiction is in practice
always being destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question of
the Hegelian 'negative unity' of two sides of a contradiction, but of
the materially-determined destruction, of the preceding materiallydetermined
mode of life of individuals, with the disappearance of which
this contradiction together with its unity also disappears. 44
Equally, Stirner's view of might as right was not sufficient:
If one regards power as the basis of right, as Hobbes and others do,
then right, law, etc., are merely the symptoms - the expression -
of other relations upon which State power rests. The material life of
individuals, which by no means depends merely on their 'will', their
mode of production and form of intercourse, which mutually determine
each other - these are the real basis of the State and remain so at all
the stages at which division of labour and private property are still
necessary, quite independendy of the will of individuals. These actual
relations are in no way created by the State power; on the contrary
they are the power creating it. The individuals who rule in these
conditions, besides having to constitute their power in the form of the
State, have to give their will, which is determined by these definite
conditions, a universal expression as the will of the State, as law - an
expression whose content is always determined by the relations of this
class, as the civil and criminal law demonstrates in the clearest possible
way. 45
Towards the end of the book there were also some remarks on the
organisation of labour which Stirner attacked as being authoritarian in
proposals for a communist society, as true abolition of the division of
labour implied that everyone would have to do everything. Marx and
Engels replied that it was not their view 'that each should do the work
of Raphael, but that anyone in whom there is a potential Raphael should
be able to develop without hindrance'. 44
With a communist organisation of society [they continued] there disappears
the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness,
which arises entirely from division of labour, and also the subordination
of the artist to some definite art, thanks to which he is exclusively a
painter, sculptor, etc., the very name of his activity adequately expressing
the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on
division of labour. In a communist society there are no painters but, at
most, people who engage in painting among other activities. 47
But such passages are brief intervals of interest in an otherwise extremely
turgid polemic.
The second volume of The German Ideology had a much more topical