KARL MARX

PARIS
63
that it was based on subjective conceptions that were at variance with
empirical reality. 18
Inspired by Feuerbachian philosophy and historical analysis, this manuscript
was the first of many works by Marx (up to and including Capital)
that were entitled 'Critique' - a term that had a great vogue among the
Young Hegelians. The approach it represented - reflecting on and
working over the ideas of others - was very congenial to Marx, who
preferred to develop his own ideas by critically analysing those of other
thinkers. Marx's method in his manuscript - which was obviously only a
rough first draft - was to copy out a paragraph of Hegel's The Philosophy
of Right and then add a critical paragraph of his own. He dealt only with
the final part of The Philosophy of Right which was devoted to the state.
According to Hegel's political philosophy - which was part of his general
effort to reconcile philosophy with reality - human consciousness manifested
itself objectively in man's juridical, moral, social and political institutions.
These institutions permitted Spirit to attain full liberty, and the
attainment of this liberty was made possible by the social morality present
in the successive groups of the family, civil society and the state. The
family educated a man for moral autonomy, whereas civil society organised
the economic, professional and cultural life. Only the highest level of
social organisation - the state, which Hegel called 'the reality of concrete
liberty' - was capable of synthesising particular rights and universal reason
into the final stage of the evolution of objective spirit. Thus Hegel
rejected the view that man was free by nature and that the state curtailed
this natural freedom; and because he believed that no philosopher could
move outside his own times and thus rejected theorising about abstract
ideals, he considered that the state he described was to some extent
already present in Prussia. 19
In his commentary Marx successively reviewed the monarchical, executive
and legislative powers into which (according to Hegel) the state
divided itself, and showed that the supposed harmony achieved in each
case was in fact false.
With regard to monarchy, Marx's main criticism was that it viewed the
people merely as an appendage to the political constitution; whereas in
democracy (which was Marx's term at this time for his preferred form of
government) the constitution was the self-expression of the people. To
explain his view of the relationship of democracy to previous forms of
constitution, he invoked a parallel with religion:
Just as religion does not make man but man makes religion, so the
constitution does not make the people but the people make the constitution.
In a certain respect democracy has the same relation to all the