Marx began his career in science and politics as a revolutionary democrat. This position, which is generally accepted in Marxist historiography1, contains two points: first, it emphasizes the unity of views and activities that distinguishes Marx from the first steps of his active conscious life, and second, it highlights the stage of his transition from initial ideas and beliefs to scientific communism, the foundations of which were laid by him (together with F. P. Blavatsky). Engels) in the mid-to late 1840s. Thus, the early stage of Marx's spiritual and political evolution has an independent significance. Transitivity does not negate its integrity, and this integrity, in turn, is revealed by comparing the views and, more broadly, the way of thinking of Marx with his distant and immediate predecessors.

Was F. right? Möhring, with biographical material relating to the studies and activities of the young Marx-student, philosopher-publicist, editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (1836-1843), in the section entitled "A Disciple of Hegel"?2 Of course, for Mehring (unlike most bourgeois authors), Marx's "apprenticeship" is not equivalent to a simple assimilation of Hegelian ideas .3 Now, however, when we have considerably expanded our understanding of Marx's rapid spiritual development, the sources of this development, and the role that his direct participation in the political struggle played in it, it is even less possible to limit this process to the scope of mastering, moreover, only one philosophical inheritance . 4
1 See V. I. Leninovich Karl Marx (A brief biographical sketch of Marxism). PSS. Vol. 26; " Karl Marx. Biography". Ed. 2-E. M. 1973; " International labor movement. Voprosy istorii i teorii [Questions of History and Theory], Vol. I. "The emergence of the Proletariat and its formation as a revolutionary class", Moscow, 1976.

2 See F. Mehring. Karl Marx. Istoriya ego zhizni [The history of his life], Moscow, 1957.

3 For a critique of bourgeois concepts on this issue, see N. I. Lapin. The struggle around the ideological heritage of young Marx. M. 1962; E. M. Sitnikov. The problem of "alienation" in bourgeois philosophy and falsifiers of Marxism, Moscow, 1962; V. V. Keshelava. The Myth of the Two Marxians, Moscow, 1963; T. I. Oizerman. About a reactionary bourgeois legend. Voprosy filosofii, 1963, No. 6; E. P. Kandel, V. A. Karpushin. Once again about the historical fate of the ideas of the young Marx. Voprosy Filosofii, 1964, No. 1, et al. The latest information on this topic is provided by the works of the mid-70s, indicated in the following footnote.

4 Along with philosophy, the young Marx also studied literature, law, and history, taking a close look at the experience and lessons of the bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, especially the French revolution of the late eighteenth century. For more information, see: A.V. Lukashev. The beginning of Karl Marx's social and political activity (1842-1843). "Scientific notes on modern and contemporary history". Issue of P. M. 1956; O. Kornyu. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Life and activities. Ed. 2-E. M. 1976; L. S. Mamut. The origin of the Marxist doctrine of the state. "Problems of the history of philosophical and sociological thought of the XIX century", Moscow, 1960; K. T. Kuznetsov. The emergence of scientific Communism, Moscow, 1968; "Marx-Istorik", Moscow, 1968 (articles: V. G. Mosolov. K. Marx's study of world history in 1843-1844, as one of the sources of theoretical and practical knowledge of the history of the world.-

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Nevertheless, there remains a problem that can be formulated as follows: why exactly in the course of Hegelian philosophy, during the period of its internal crisis and the separation of opposing tendencies, a higher type of revolutionary democracy was formed than that produced by the Enlightenment and classical bourgeois revolutions? The purpose of this article is to raise this question by introducing the reader to the content and subject of Marx's early work.

Hegel was both the successor and the antipode of the Enlightenment. Without touching on the theoretical and cognitive aspects in this case and focusing on the philosophical and historical aspects, we note the following. For the Enlightenment, which preceded the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century, the concepts of "natural man" and "natural law"were the decisive criteria for truth and transformative action. The enlightenment's credo: everything that does not conform to nature and the natural rights of man must be eliminated; everything that does conform to them must be cleared. Of course, this necessity was not so easily motivated, the argumentation was subtle and varied, and the XVIII century made a significant contribution to understanding the driving motives and "mechanisms" of progressive development. But this division was preserved in the foundation of theoretical knowledge. The French bourgeois revolution of the late eighteenth century, followed by the era of backsliding and coups, the Napoleonic wars and the rule of the "Holy Alliance", and new social cataclysms, dealt a crushing blow to the axioms and illusions of the Enlightenment. The utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century rejected both the triumphant bourgeois reality and the idea that sanctified it. From completely different positions, the enlightenment mind was fiercely attacked from the right (including representatives of the "historical school of law"). Between these two poles - a wide range of views. Even irrationalism was heterogeneous, especially different shades of romanticism, as well as appeals to the "national spirit"of various origins and directions.

In this contradictory and confusing spiritual atmosphere, Hegel's philosophy was formed and developed. A keen listener to the voice of the times, he pays tribute to both the anti-feudal results of the revolutionary era and the liberating pathos of the Enlightenment. 5 At the same time, he seeks in the sphere of the spirit a way to prevent "convulsions", to free historical necessity from "fatal accidents", and to obtain and consolidate "the benefits of affirmative freedom".6 He finds this method not in narrowing the sphere of necessity, but in expanding it as much as possible, not in separating the natural and the unnatural, but in combining them. For Hegel, the rehabilitation of reason is its identification with absolute spirit. If the whole of reality turns out to be only a "middle link" in the process of self-consciousness of the spirit moving from itself to itself, then in this link there is now room for all historical transformations and conquests, for all the vicissitudes and zigzags of the real process. With this approach, history becomes a real field of dialectics.

This point is the source of both Hegel's strength and weakness. Weaknesses, by-

Leviova, S. Z. and Sinelnikova, I. M., the author of the article "The Theory of Materialistic Understanding of History", Moscow, Russia. Handwritten legacy of Marx in the field of history; V. M. Dalin, N. I. Nepomnyashchaya. Historical books in the Marx Library); T. I. Oizerman. Formation of the philosophy of Marxism. Ed. 2-E. M. 1974; V. A. Vazyulin. Stanovlenie metoda nauchnogo issledovaniya K. Marxa (logicheskiy aspekt) [Formation of the method of scientific research of K. Marx (logical aspect)]. Young Marx, Ed. 2-E. M. 1976, et al.

5 See G. V. F. Hegel. Philosophy of history. Soch. Vol. VIII. M.-L. 1935, pp. 413-414; his. Lectures on the history of philosophy. Book 3. Soch. Vol. XI. Moscow-l. 1935, pp. 385-387 and others.

6 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VIII, p. 328.

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since the formation and development of humanity are considered by him as a derivative, as set in advance. But in his philosophical system, the spirit, the creator of all things, in turn, depends on its "middle link", and this dependence is not only fixed by Hegel, it appears to him as the main secret of philosophy, a problem that needs to be solved. The dependence of the spirit is synonymous with the Hegelian category of alienation. This category is twofold, breaking down into the alienation of the spirit from itself (outside of incarnations, without" externalization "the spirit is not able to realize, express, find itself) and the alienation of man, the individual within that "civil" or bourgeois society, the formation and development of which is in the eyes of Hegel the fundamental content of world history 7 . (There is also a feedback loop: civil society is seen as a starting point for characterizing the stages and phases of the world process that precede it.)

Hegel is critical of a society that dehumanizes people, and comes close to understanding the social roots of this phenomenon. 8 But since civil society itself, as well as human life activity in general, remains in his philosophy only a "moment" for thought that makes its way to itself, conscious of itself, the way out of alienation, overcoming it can only be thought (embodied and completed in the "concept"). However, Hegel does not put an end to this. A contemporary of the utopians, he rejects, on the one hand, any attempt to build the world "as it should be"9 , and, on the other, does not agree to transfer the overcoming of the troubles and misadventures of "alienation" to a vague future. Hegel's ideal is a gradual improvement of reality, which would also be the realization of the program of the absolute spirit, coinciding in time with the final act of its self-consciousness. Thus, the panlogism of the Hegelian system turns out to be intricately intertwined with politics, with the malice of the day. The" place " of connection is the interaction of civil society and the state (it is from these two components that the young Marx starts and criticizes them).

Civil society is woven from a variety of private interests - class, property and other interests. Separated, mutually trampling on each other, they at the same time unconsciously enter into the necessary connection - a chain of comprehensively intertwined "dependencies of all from all". This process of correlating private interest with "social needs, social means, and ways of satisfaction" 10 proceeds painfully (Hegel emphasizes that civil society retains the "necessary connection" only through the decomposition of the estates, the expulsion of most of its own members, who multiply the "rabble" 11). He was skeptical of the hope that all these difficulties would resolve themselves: private interest, immersed "in a selfish goal," could not mitigate the convulsions and shorten the duration of the interval "during which conflicts would be settled by unconscious necessity." 12 We need, therefore, something that stands above civil society, ensures its autonomy and regulatory activity, and ensures the integrity and stability of the state.-

7 See G. V. F. Hegel. Filosofiya prava [Philosophy of Law], Soch. Vol. VII, Moscow, 1934, pp. 86, 90, 354. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, vol. I. Nauka logiki (Science of Logic), Moscow, 1975, pp. 103-104. Soch. Vol. VIII, p. 70.

8 See A. P. Ogurtsov. The problem of labor in Hegel's philosophy. "Scientific works" of the Moscow Technological Institute of Light Industry sb 15, 1960 pp. 132-134.

9. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VII, p. 16.

10 Ibid., pp. 219-220, and also see pp. 211, 223, 261,

11 See ibid., p. 255.

12 Ibid., p. 250.

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development of this society. In history (that is, in the" middle link " of the self-movement of the spirit) this role is assumed by the "state of reason" 13 .

According to Hegel, the understanding embodied in concrete states performs historically necessary works14, but since it remains one-sided by its very nature, there is always that fatal element of chance in world history that can overcome necessity itself, destroying the results achieved by civil society: property, marriage, "relations and works", etc. 15 . Negative potencies of reason are the source of extreme subjectivism in politics. These observations of Hegel, for all their abstractness, are not without deep meaning. Their polemical edge is directed against the illusion of inevitable progress inherent in the Enlightenment. At the same time, Hegel shares with the enlighteners the rejection of the medieval and any arbitrariness, any attempts to give the status of universal to any one (private, estate) interest16. While denying the " state of reason "the right to consider itself true and ideal, Hegel is no less alien to the idea of the" social contract", especially in its consistent democratic, Roussoist version.

Polemic with Zh-Zh. Rousseau is not accidentally present in the central point of Hegel's philosophy - in the definition of a"rational state". The state, according to Hegel, can be true only when it "knows itself" and to the extent that it "fulfills" this knowledge, that is, it implements in real reality, in the historical process, something that in itself does not need either the history or the social empiricism of the existing civil society. Therefore, Hegel credits Rousseau for putting forward as a principle of the state not just thought (a certain idea of what the state should become), but "thinking itself", moreover, endowed with the attribute of "will", which is eager to be implemented. He sees the flaw of the Roussoist concept in the fact that it identifies" will " with the aspirations and actions of people, and their masses, who have realized the coincidence of their individual wills and are trying to translate them into "common" by means of a contract .17 Hegel sees here a fundamental error. The mental concept of the state, losing its independence, its priority in relation to society and people, also loses the most valuable thing in the eyes of Hegel - the ability to balance and harmonize irreducible interests and relations.

The greatest lesson in this respect is the epic of the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Its beginning is dictated by necessity. Pre-revolutionary France is a "tangled aggregate of privileges," a realm of injustice that becomes shameless when " a conscious attitude toward it begins to awaken." "The new spirit became effective: oppression prompted exploration." Moreover, Hegel states, the change inevitably became violent, since " the transformation was not carried out by the government." Together with the revolution, which for the first time embodied the concept of law in its constitution, came the long-awaited triumph of thinking beings .18 What is the outcome? Roussoism, in practice, has just as inevitably given rise to terror. The state that

13 In Hegel's hierarchy of epistemological categories, reason occupies a lower position than reason. Reason-a synonym for absolute spirit-is capable of embracing the entire variety of phenomena of reality; the understanding can only single out one of its sides (for more information on the characteristic properties of the understanding, see G. V., F. Hegel. Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, vol. I, pp. 202-205, 313, etc.).

14 See ibid., p. 90.

15 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VII, p. 281.

16 See ibid., p. 241, 247, 298, 301, 302; vol. XI, p. 389, etc.

17 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VII, pp. 263-265.

18 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VIII, pp. 413-414.

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his followers tried to establish, based on the principle of freedom, an arena of arbitrariness. For "many wills of individuals" want to participate in decision-making. "But the many turn out to be everyone, and it seems an empty trick and an outrageous inconsistency to allow only a few to participate in decision-making." 19 However, since "governance always exists", the interests of the many must again be represented by the few, and the circle closes: the few again become oppressors .20
Hegel is not happy with this result. He is far from celebrating the collapse of the Rousseau revolutionaries. Since the "fanaticism of freedom placed in the hands of the people" frightens him, he seeks a way out in overcoming "the basic one-sidedness, which consists in the fact that the universal will must also be empirically (that is, in fact. - G. A. ) universal"21 . But can this basic one-sidedness be overcome? For Hegel, this question is equivalent to a problem that affects the basic premises of his universalist system - the problem of getting out of the "middle link", out of the double alienation (both spirit and man). It seems to Hegel that "history has stopped", having stumbled on the most grandiose of attempts to provide people with both unlimited (in principle) opportunities to participate in government, and genuine guarantees against the loss of elementary means and conditions of existence. Hegel connects the solution of all existing conflicts with the arbitration of the state, which stands above and includes civil society, but at the same time he rejects the possibility for any of the existing and existing "rational" states to resolve political and social, legal and moral conflicts.

The logic of this contradiction seemed to bind Hegel to the most radical conclusions. However, it was precisely these that he tried to prevent, to surpass with the help of logic (the" action " of the demiurge-concept). The way out of the" middle management " is radical, but only mentally. The spirit, which is aware of itself with a gigantic effort in the process of returning to itself, is able to somehow "transcend" the ideal reasonableness of the state. The need for revolution is "removed" by the mysticism of completing the philosophical system. Everything changes, remaining basically unchanged: society is divided into estates (classes); power is divided according to the competence of individual bodies. The state "progresses in its formation", remaining forever what it is, that is, the state 22 . Its scope extends to the absolute universality, coinciding with the concept of the genus-humanity. Another of Hegel's analogies is not accidental: the state functions like an "organism" 23 . This is how Hegel's critique of Enlightenment ideology closes its circle, returning to natural philosophy, but with an emphasis on reconciliation, the voluntary subordination of the individual - man - to the universal - "rational state." "This progressive movement,"Hegel sums up," is a kind of change that is invisible and does not take the form of change. " 24
Here Hegel returns to what is inseparable from the course of his thought, even in its most "dark" and mystical places - the malice of the day. His idealism is active and seeks to put its activity into concrete form. But in what way? Hegel has no choice but to rely on the existing: on that of the "rational" states which is worthy of the mission assigned to it. And he turns his eyes

19. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VII, p. 415.

20 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VIII, pp. 416-417.

21 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. XI, p. 417; vol. VIII, p. 418.

22 See G. V. F. Hegel. Soch. Vol. VII, pp. 268, 284, 308, 321.

23 See ibid., pp. 269, 270, 301.

24 Ibid., p. 321.

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to the place closest to it (and not only geographically) The Prussian state. At the same time, it was not about the absolutism inherited from the Middle Ages, but about the monarchy being "quietly" reformed into a constitutional one. Such a transformation would then be a step forward in itself .25 But to consider the socio-historical problems of Hegel's philosophy only through the prism of this short-term perspective would be to simplify and impoverish the situation of searching thought. And this situation was extremely acute. The more strongly Hegel's thought "landed", the more clearly it was revealed that it had reached a dead end. Left to its own devices, the specifically Hegelian isolation of the state inevitably had to produce and has produced reactionary branches and shoots.

No attempt to transform Hegelian universalism, which is full of internal conflicts, into a consistent system of views that remains either squeezed into self-consciousness or pragmatically adapted to public activity within the existing framework could provide a real, real release. It is no accident that the healing influence of L. Feuerbach had the least impact on the social "front" of the then philosophical thought, where he himself stumbled on the attitude to politics, to the state. To an immeasurably greater extent, the "left" epigones and critics of Hegel from among the Young Hegelians were unable to enter the field of consciously created history. The very preservation of the Hegelian problem in the process of critiquing and overcoming the Hegelian system was the most difficult of problems. Its resolution is connected with the name of Marx. The first result of his activity in this direction was his revolutionary democracy.

*

Young Marx is a consistent proponent of the view that combines human activity with the global scale of his spiritual and material activity. In his letters, manuscripts, and articles, he refers to "the human world, which creates its own differences and whose inequality is nothing but a multi-colored refraction of equality." 26 This view is imbued with the ideas of their predecessors: the members of the" gens " are individually different, dissimilar, and at the same time equal, because they have a common quality - each of them is a person. Based on this principle, the young Marx establishes a direct (and not subject to any restrictions) connection between the Hegelian postulate of a "reasonable state" and the need to introduce democracy into real life.

Unlike orthodox Hegelianism, especially those who "straightened" Hegel's views towards conservatism and reaction, Marx mercilessly attacks discrimination in its various manifestations and in all countries, not excluding Prussia. The prevalence and ubiquity of legal and political inequality and lack of freedom in general in his eyes is a confirmation of the fact that any state does not meet or at least is unable to fully meet its concept. 27 This discrepancy theoretically resulted from the difference between" reason "and"reason." But where Hegel stopped, looking for the last way out and salvation in divine providence, there Marx felt the vital nerve of philosophical criticism of real inconsistency. This is what is at the center of his journalism. For Marx, the" reasonableness " of the state is not only an ideal that belongs to the future and is already opposed to the entire modern world, but also a criterion with which the state is based.

25 See T. I. Oizerman. The social meaning of Hegel's philosophy. Voprosy Filosofii, 1970, No. 8, pp. 8-12.

26 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, p. 125.

27 See ibid., p. 163.

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with the help of which it is possible to pass from the statement to the study of "empirical" relations. To what extent this criterion is sufficient, Marx believes, the study itself will show - and it, this intrusion of thought into reality, will then become a source of criticism of the Hegelian postulate.

Marx's approach is methodological from the very beginning. There is a clear demand to highlight the subject, think about its specifics and laws, so as not to confuse the subject with illusions about it. On this point, Marx fundamentally disagrees with other Young Hegelians, with the prevailing idea among them of the miraculous ability of " self-consciousness "to contain ready-made answers to all the incidents of life, to any riddles that lie in wait for every person and every nation in the arena of history. 28
A fragment from "The Problem of Centralization", which was first published in Russian in the recently published 40th volume of the Works of Karl Marx and Fr. Engels 29 . The fragment reflects the differences between Marx and one of the closest Young Hegelians, M. Hess. The latter, in one of his articles of 1842, considers the question: should state power proceed from a single, central point, or is it preferable to decentralize functions with their transfer to provinces, etc.? From a "higher" (Hess's words), there is no theoretical point of view here. If a person is really what he should be in his essence (for example, if "the people are entirely made up of righteous people"), then individual freedom will not differ from universal freedom, and therefore central power, dissolved in free individuals, will be superfluous. For philosophy, this approach, Hess believed, is the only correct one. Another thing is a practical," true, only empirical and relative " solution to the problem. Marx emphatically does not agree with just such a dissection, a dilution in opposite directions of theory and empiricism, in which the philosopher has the right to "eliminate" - of course, purely illusory - such facts of reality as laws, "positive institutions" and the state itself. "Philosophy must seriously protest when it is confused with imagination. The fiction of a people composed entirely of" righteous people "is as alien to philosophy as the fiction of"praying hyenas" is alien to nature .30
Marx proceeds from the fact that theory, which in its vocation is nothing but true criticism, " analyzes not answers, but questions." In this respect, the movement of thought is akin to the movement of history. This is why " every question gets an answer as soon as it becomes a valid question." And further: "World history itself has no other method than the solution and elimination of old questions by means of new ones. Therefore, it is easy to find the mysterious words of each historical period. They express the questions put forward by time, and if the answers play a large role in the intentions and understanding of the individual-so that an experienced eye is needed to distinguish between what should be attributed to the individual and what should be attributed to time - then the questions, on the contrary, are the voices of time, which sound openly and openly. fearlessly, dominating all individual individuals. Each such question is the motto of the time, its highly practical cry, expressing its own state of mind. " 31
28 The Hegelian self-conscious spirit was transformed by the Young Hegelian ideologists into an abstract human self-consciousness, detached from reality.

29 As the authors point out, the fragment represents the beginning of a critical article conceived by Marx. The article, apparently, was not finished (see K. Marx and F. Schultz). Engels, Soch. Vol. 40, p. 675, note. 69),

30 Ibid., pp. 238-239.

31 Ibid., pp. 237-238.

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These words of the young Marx are extremely important for understanding the ideological and social position of a man who at that time entered into the struggle against the ruling system as a philosopher and considered this struggle as the highest of theoretical points of view. For us, this point of view is a guiding thread that leads from one of Marx's journalistic works of the period of its formation to another and allows us to consider them as stages of the author's evolution.

His first speech, prepared between January 15 and February 10, 1842, but published only in 1843 outside of Germany, was "Notes on the latest Prussian Censorship Instruction". Marx did not repeat the experience of the Young Hegelians, who denounced the Prussian state simply for being "Christian." (Later, on July 9, 1842, he explained to A. Ruge that the battlefield in this case was determined by reactionaries: "The opposition has recently become too accustomed to acting in opposition within the church." 32) First in his Notes, and later in other articles, Marx pushed the limits of polemics. Everywhere, he noted, where the population adheres to not one but several beliefs, the Christian state as such is a logical absurdity. Its Protestant version will be considered heretical by Catholics. If the Catholic option prevails, so will the Protestants 33 . Theologians who believe in the dogmas of religion as the only link between the individual and the state come into conflict with the persecuted religions. "Ask the Catholic residents of poor green Erin34. Marx writes, " Ask the Huguenots of pre-French Revolution times: they did not appeal to religion, for their religion was not a State religion; they appealed to "human rights." 35
Prussia, according to Marx, does not meet the concept of a Christian state also because of its obvious inconsistency with the requirements proclaimed by the gospel commandments. The result is an insurmountable discord between word and deed from the point of view of religious consciousness. People are not satisfied with the promise to compensate for their earthly suffering with heavenly bliss, they demand material compensation for the damage caused to their property interests, grumble at the slightest increase in taxes, etc. "Does not every minute of your practical life expose your theory to lies? Do you think it's wrong to go to court when your rights are violated?.. Don't most of the lawsuits you bring and most of the civil laws deal with property? But you were told that your treasures are not of this world. " 36
32 K. Marx and F. Engels, op. cit. vol. 27, p. 364. Marx's first differences with Feuerbach are probably connected with this subject. In a letter to Ruge on March 20, 1842, Marx states that the conflict was brewing when he was writing an article on religious art. "In the work itself, I have inevitably had to talk about the general essence of religion; in doing so, I come into some conflict with Feuerbach - a conflict that concerns not the principle, but its understanding. In any case, religion does not benefit from this" (ibid., pp. 359-360). What exactly caused the discord is unknown, since the researchers do not have this article. But it is necessary to pay attention to the part of the letter where Prussia is called a transcendent state (see ibid., p. 358). Both Feuerbach and later Marx agree that transcendence is the form in which all types of perverted consciousness appear in reality. Feuerbach, however, goes no further than this conclusion. Marx, on the other hand - and this is probably the reason for the conflict that has arisen-saw in reality itself an object worthy of study. Therefore, the transcendent state is alien, hostile to people (officials are earth gods, etc.). P.) - he connected not only with religion.

33 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, pp. 12, 13.

34 Erin is an ancient name for Ireland. - Ed.

35 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, p. 110.

36 Ibid., p. 109.

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Thus, Marx changes the basic premises of the dispute between the Young Hegelians and theologians by reformulating the problem itself: The Prussian state is not a religious object, but a secular one. Hence the next step - direct confrontation with this state on the basis of politics, the demands of not exorbitant, but earthly equality of rights.

In the historical conditions in which the Notes were written, Marx saw freedom of the press as the first and most necessary prerequisite for civil equality, and the main obstacle to its achievement was the Prussian government censorship. The reason for the speech was the censorship instruction of 1841. The drafters tried to give it a liberal appearance (as if its purpose was to "free the press from inappropriate restrictions"). Liberals, in turn, rejoiced over the granted "freedom"37 . Marx exposes this illusion. At the same time, it does not limit itself to identifying deceptive moves and legal casuistry that permeates the Prussian censorship instruction, but focuses on the nature and essence of deception.

What an excellent source of irony, for example, was given by such a paragraph of the instruction: "Censorship should not interfere with serious and modest research of the truth." Marx gives free rein to his sarcasm. But his article isn't just a brilliant pamphlet. Regarding the definitions of "serious and modest", he notes that both of them "refer not to the content of the study, but rather to something that lies outside of this content. From the very beginning, they distract the researcher from the truth and force him to pay attention to some unknown third. But wouldn't a study that constantly directs its attention to this third element, which the law has given the right to be picky - wouldn't such a study lose sight of the truth? Is it not the first duty of the researcher of truth to strive directly for it, without looking to the right or to the left?" Appealing to reason, Marx insisted that the attitude to the published work should be determined by objective norms, and not by someone's desire or permission: the truth is not in the subject, but in the originality of the object of reality, which in this case, it is printing. Prussian press legislation, even in its quasi-liberal form, is incompatible with the equality of citizens before the law. "This is not a law of unity, but of separation, and all laws of separation are reactionary. This is not a law, but a privilege. " 38
It is not difficult to see here, too, a roll call with both Hegel and Feuerbach. The emphasis on unity, however, is not only not entirely Hegelian, but also differs from Feuerbach's both in the concreteness and sociality of the rejection of the prevailing reality taken as a whole, and in the internal tendency of criticism and analysis - the emphasis on the need to transform civil society in a direction that can make it adequate to the "race". "It is an astounding error," Marx points out, "to try to leave the order of things unchanged and give it a different essence by simply changing faces." 39
What could not be said in the censored press, Marx says in communication with like-minded people. In a letter to Ruge (March 5, 1842), he calls for linking radical journalism with the mass of anti-censorship thoughts that are maturing in people's minds. Briefly reports

37 In a letter to Ruge, Marx noted (March 20, 1842): "All our Rhenish writings on publicity and publicity suffer from one fundamental flaw. Honest simpletons continue to argue tirelessly that these are not political institutions, but purely legal ones, that they are a right, not a lack of rights. As if that's the case! As if the whole evil of these institutions does not lie precisely in the fact that they are a right! I would very much like to prove the opposite." Engels, Soch. Vol. 27, p. 358).

38 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, pp. 5-6, 15.

39 Ibid., p. 26.

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he also spoke about the content of his forthcoming critique of Hegel's natural law: "The main thing in it is the struggle against the constitutional monarchy, this bastard who contradicts himself from beginning to end and destroys himself." 40 If in his Notes and in his letters to Ruge Marx attacks the Prussian state with all the passion of a democrat and turns to the problem of social transformation, then in the Debates of the Sixth Rhenish Landtag (April - October 1842) it becomes the leading issue .41 Accordingly, the field of research expands, concretizes and complicates its method - with the growth of revolutionary-democratic and materialist elements in it.

Marx begins his first article on the debate 42 with an analysis of the speeches of princely and noble representatives who sought to usurp the freedom of the press in favor of their estates. Their claims, dictated by self-serving calculations, were clothed in a theological and philosophical form. Their language was as important as the material background of their arguments. When Marx remarked that in his time "the German language ceased to be the language of thought," he was referring not only to specifically philosophical literature, but also to the entire field of interests that claimed universality and were indeed no longer able to defend the monopoly of property and power except by constructing-for their own " very mundane, but at the same time and very fantastic desires" - a theory that addresses the nature of man. However, this was only an apparent theory. The language of thought served as a means of falsifying the mind. The inside-out principles of the Enlightenment were used for politics. Since man is imperfect, and individual individuals are dissimilar, irreducible to a single whole, privileges and restrictions are inevitable - the preservation of censorship, the lack of control of the landtag, and class inequality. "He (orator representing princes and nobles-GA) rejects the whole genus in order to preserve one good variety of it. " 43
For Marx, the question (no longer of the state alone, but of civil society as a whole) is not limited to the unmasking of false syllogisms. On the one hand, he reveals the social source of arguments about the "ordinary unreason of the human race", stating that they go back "to the private reason of land ownership" 44 . On the other hand, it does not eliminate the concept of gender at all, since the opposite side distorts and abstracts it. A significant step forward is the convergence of this concept with the concept of society, but not of a given "civil" (bourgeois) society, but of society as it still has to become, transforming itself into what Marx later defines as "social humanity." 45 It is equally important that this convergence of concepts does not occur speculatively, but in the course of concrete research, the objects of which in Marx - along with the previous ones (religion, power, legal freedoms) - are increasingly property relations and social conflicts. This expansion of the scope of criticism focused on the Prussian reality of that time makes it possible to include in the subject of this criticism the world-historical process, including the experience of previous revolutions.

Marx returns again to the earthly roots of religion and, consequently, of the "Christian state", only to emphasize the importance of the "Christian state".-

40 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 27, p. 356.

41" In connection with the debate on the press, "Marx informed Ruge on April 27, 1842," I return again to the question of censorship and freedom of the press, considering it from other points of view " (ibid., p. 361).

42 Its title is "Debates on Freedom of the Press and on the publication of the Minutes of the Estate Assembly".

43 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, pp. 39, 52, 59.

44 Ibid., pp. 51, 46.

45 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 42, p. 263.

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They should also note the fragility of theological coverings and supports. Speculation on divine revelation in the name of self-interest, he recalls, does not always end with impunity: "English history has shown quite clearly how the idea of divine revelation from above generates the opposite idea of divine revelation from below: Charles I ascended the scaffold thanks to divine revelation from below."46 When Marx criticizes attempts to justify the necessity of restricting freedoms by the authority of the past, by referring to the past, he exposes the roots of this conservative historicism. Turning to one of the speakers of the feudal camp who spoke in the Landtag, he ironically asks:: "Perhaps the speaker understands parliamentary freedom as the freedom of the old French parliaments... the stagnation of the caste spirit"; maybe he likes those times when "inin our Germany, the general imperial conviction was legitimized, shared by each sovereign prince individually, that serfdom is a natural property of certain human beings"; or perhaps he fully agrees with the dominance of local particularism, due in the Middle Ages to the fact that the estates " concentrated in their person all the rights of the country and turned them into privileges against the country " 47, etc.

From historical examples, Marx goes to the point: where the narrow-pedigree tries to replace the universal, the truly universal loses its power and the quality inherent only in it-to organically absorb human differences. To eliminate the universal, which is revealed as the unity of differences, as the genus, to make "a certain species the standard, the norm, the sphere of all other species" - this is what the privileged strive for. "One kind of freedom is so intolerable," Marx states, " that it allows other kinds of freedom to exist only if they renounce themselves and recognize themselves as its vassals." "No man fights against freedom , but at most a man fights against the freedom of others." 48 From this general point of view, Marx examines the positions of the parties in the debate on freedom of the press. His attention was attracted by a proposal made by opponents of the princes and nobles to grant the press the same freedom as the crafts. 49 It was assumed that each occupation, since it is different from others, also requires a special type of freedom (for example, freedom of the press - for those who are professionally connected with spiritual production). Marx does not reject the necessity for the existence of special freedoms, but for him they are only a special case. They are useful only when, through them and with their help, universal human freedom makes its way - freedom that everyone can enjoy on an equal basis. "Whenever any one form of freedom is rejected, freedom in general is thereby rejected - it is condemned to a ghostly existence, and it will depend on pure chance in which particular area unfreedom will reign supreme. Unfreedom becomes the rule, and freedom becomes the exception to the rule, a matter of chance and arbitrariness. Nothing, therefore, is more erroneous than to suppose that the question of a particular form of the existence of freedom is a particular question. This is a general question within a particular sphere. " 50
This is the only criterion acceptable to a consistent Democrat. If one does not have it, Marx notes, then any "loyal friend of freedom" will come to a dead end when directly confronted with the concreteness of the question: to be or not to be freedom? This is exactly what happened in the Rhenish Landtag. The level of debate in it, according to Marx, was extremely high.

46 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, p. 56.

47 Ibid., pp. 50, 37, 43, 45.

48 Ibid., pp. 75, 55.

49 See ibid., pp. 73-77,

50 Ibid., p. 83.

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low. The average normal type of polemicists "for" or "against" freedom of the press is equally characterized by a specific class limitation. "Some want privilege only for the government, others want it distributed among many individuals; some want complete censorship, others want half of it, some want three - eighths of the freedom of the press, others do not want any." There is, however, an exception. Marx quotes the speeches of peasant orators, which attract him by the radical nature of their formulations. He concludes that the lower classes, even in the actual absence of freedom, do not want to be like those who are impersonal and "grant the right to think and express the truth only to court jesters" 51 .

A lively chipping away from reality allows Marx to come close to the method of turning a perverted reality into a reasonable one. The emphasis is on the method. At the same time, there is a new aspect of including the lessons of the past in the study of modernity. Resistance to the barbaric suppression of the press under Henry VIII, Mary the Catholic, Elizabeth, and James in England, and the movement against censorship and the imprisonment of anti-absolutist adherents in France-all this Marx now sees as a spiritual revolution, without which the material revolution would have been impossible - the overthrow of governments. By building a chain of interdependencies ("the revolution of the people is integral"; the spiritual revolution prepares the material revolution, which in turn is designed to" spiritualize "power, making it capable of"materializing the spiritual revolution" 52 ), Marx does not yet break with the Hegelian concept of a rational state. But the concretization that this concept acquires from him - based on history and highlighting revolutionary leaps in history as key moments of progressive movement (although still perfectly understood) - significantly distinguishes Marx's formulation of the question from the general tendency of Hegel, who hoped for progress that "does not take the form of change."

For Marx, change is the whole point of the matter. This change has both a spiritual and a material side. The first word belongs to the spirit, but the spirit itself is no longer only a harbinger, or even a guide to the material revolution, but also an accomplice of the latter. Of course, in 1842 Marx still does not think in the same way as in 1843-1844, and even more so at the time of the creation of the Communist Manifesto. For him, there is still the difficulty that Hegel has actually capitulated to: if all reality, all history, all change is concentrated in the "middle link," what is the primary source of human development: the disembodied spirit or something else, universal and at the same time concrete? There is no solution yet. But there is a contradiction that drives the thought forward. About the Belgian Revolution of 1830, Marx, in particular, writes: "We know that the Belgian revolution first manifested itself as a spiritual revolution, as a revolution of the press... But is it reprehensible? Does the revolution have to come out in a material form from the very beginning? Isn't she already hitting and not talking from the very beginning? " 53 . Marx seems to have the same idea of the coming revolution in Prussia - first "talking" and then, of necessity, "beating". The energy of this future revolution will be directly proportional to the current conservative and reactionary opposition to it. "The more dams you put in the way of truth," Marx said to the princely - noble party, " the more solid the truth you will get! So, more dams! " 54 .

Conservative ideology becomes the subject of a special analysis in Marx's article " Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School

51 Ibid., pp. 81, 79, 82, 36.

52 See ibid., pp. 40, 38, 42.

53 Ibid., p. 42.

54 Ibid., p. 61.

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rights" (April-August 1842). The views of the founder of this school, G. Hugo, are, according to Marx's witty assessment, in the same relation to the philosophy of the XVIII century. (Kant), to the ideology of the Enlightenment in general, in which "the decomposition of the French state at the depraved court of the regent (Philippe d'orleans. - Ed.) leads to the disintegration of the French state in the time of the National Assembly." In both cases, decomposition takes place, Marx goes on to note. But what in the revolution was the emancipation of the new spirit from the old forms, in the time of the regency appeared as the decay of the world of that time, which is enjoying its decay. The German conservatives have the same tendencies, the same habits: a vulgar skepticism that denies the existence of reason and reduces all human actions to manifestations of the" animal nature " of man, in order to perpetuate the rule of "animal law"in such a pseudo-philosophical way!55 .

It is necessary to decide, Marx addressed his readers," whether Hugh's successors have a vocation to be the legislators of our time "(an allusion to F. C. Savigny, appointed in 1842 by the Prussian Minister for the Revision of Laws - G. A.) 56 in conditions when the people, having before them the philosophy of Kant, have at their disposal the "German theory of the French revolution". Marx himself had already made a choice, speaking out against the old order, for "the sense of self-power inherent in the new life, which destroys the destroyed, rejects the rejected" 57 .

*

Not only certain selected passages, but the entire context of Marx's early journalism (contrary to what some bourgeois authors claim) is imbued with a revolutionary spirit. This is not just youthful rebelliousness or a typical Young Hegelian game of freeing "self-consciousness" from reality. A striking feature of the young Marx is the combination of uncompromising attitude with responsibility, striving for the future with social and political realism. Hence his early and sharp disagreement with the tactics and entire style of behavior of Hegel's" left " epigones, who, together with the views of the teacher, rejected his problematics, and thereby the inner need to transform the concept into action. Marx, on the other hand, is making his way step by step to action, and this is what not only encourages the expansion of the field of research noted above by delving into "empiricism", but also the increasingly clear transition from idealism to materialism .58
The most significant milestone on this path is Marx's ongoing analysis of the debates of the sixth Rhenish Landtag. It's like a peripheral topic: the Forest Theft Act. But behind the debate on this issue is a mass phenomenon (out of 207 thousand criminal cases considered in Prussia in 1836, about 150 thousand were "misdemeanors" against the legislation on forests, cattle and pastures 59), and behind the paragraphs of forest law - the situation of the poor. Marx goes into all the details and does not neglect any particulars that are deliberately hidden or distorted in official documents. He directs all the power of his philosophical - legal and philosophical-historical analysis to a seemingly insignificant incident: mixing the "theft" of trees with the "theft" of dead wood. In the first case, he explains, we mean either a growing tree or a felled one.,

55 Ibid., pp. 87-88, 92.

56 Ibid., pp. 91, 650 (note 41).

57 Ibid., p. 88.

58 See V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 26, p. 82.

59 See F. Mehring. Istoriya germanskoi sotsial ' -demokratii [History of German Social-Democracy], vol. 1. Do revolyutsii 1848, St. Petersburg, 1906, p. 150,

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that is, the processed forest, in the second-branches that naturally separated from the trunk. And "if the law calls forest theft an act that can hardly even be called a violation of forest regulations, then the law is lying. 60 However, it is not the falsity of the law itself that concerns Marx here. In it, he discovers a real relation: the genesis of the monopoly of property.

Nature, according to Marx, is a refutation of injustice, since not all its objects in their natural state have the quality of measure characteristic of previously fixed private property. Dead wood and wild herbs, berries, etc. form an appendage of forest ownership, which is practically impossible to take into account and include in advance in the registered property. Because of this ambiguity, the possession of objects that "are neither absolutely private nor absolutely common property" has been regulated by custom from time immemorial .61 Marx contrasts custom, or the law on which the resistance of the masses was based, with the "rational" right of owners who claim a monopoly and rely on the state. If the uncertainty of property relations served as a source of livelihood for the poor, the same uncertainty fed the custom of the nobility - the habit of robbing and oppressing the poor. Which custom will prevail? The answer is given by history. Marx refers to facts and precedents: the falsification of "barbaric truths", which are the richest source about the customs of the poor, the reception of Roman law, the secularization of monastic property, and so on. 62 The conclusion is that dualistic property is giving way to private property: the ordinary rights of the poor have become something accidental; by abstracting from this contingency, reason has eliminated the obligations of unstable property to the poorest class; wherever it comes to controversial material issues, the lower classes have lost legislative support. But one legal formalization of inequality did not suit the nobility. Therefore, along with the laws that consolidated her claims, she tried to retain her customary law, to preserve forever the state of robbery. "When the privileged appeal from a statutory right to their ordinary rights, they demand, instead of the human content of the right, an animal form of law, which has now lost its reality and has become a mere animal mask." 63
In the language of the enlightener, Marx expresses here an objective contradiction. "Animal law" disappears where public law - equality before the law-is established. ("In the case of forest owners, equality between large and small forest owners, carried to the smallest niceties, becomes the law." 64) But this same legal equality serves as the ground on which the "animal form of law" is not only preserved, but also becomes openly cynical. Marx here comes very close to the problem of actual inequality as a historical problem, namely, the problem of preserving and renewing feudal remnants by introducing them into the system of bourgeois property and power. The forest owner manages to turn public law into his private property, that is, "steal the state itself." "All organs of the state become the ears, eyes, hands, and feet through which the forest owner's interest eavesdrops, looks out, evaluates, guards, grabs, and runs." 65
60 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, p. 122.

61 Ibid., pp. 128, 130.

62 See ibid., pp. 127-129.

63 Ibid., p. 126.

64 Ibid., p. 136.

65 Ibid., pp. 151, 142.

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And one more important circumstance: Marx finds the inhuman mechanism that turns "every dirty claim into the pure gold of law" not only in the Middle Ages or in monarchical-estate Prussia. Private property interests, which know "neither the fatherland, nor the province, nor the general spirit, nor even local patriotism," are ubiquitous. "The forest remains a forest in Siberia, as in France, the forest owner remains a forest owner in Kamchatka, as in the Rhineland province. If, therefore, the forest and the forest owner, as such, make laws, then these laws will differ from each other only in the place where they are issued and in the language in which they are written." The general idea of the irrationality of all existing states, after passing through a concrete study, becomes the basis for protecting the oppressed, oppressed anywhere in the world. "In the interests of the poor, politically and socially deprived masses", Marx insists on the abolition of" ordinary disenfranchisement": privileges"must be abolished, and the use of them must even entail some kind of punishment." Without stopping there, he suggests that the arbitrariness of private property should also be legally limited, recognizing the interest associated with it only to the extent "that it can be secured by reasonable laws and reasonable preventive measures" .66
The same tendency can be traced in other speeches of Marx. Thus, in the article "Draft Law on Divorce" (written on December 18, 1842), he attacks the government's attempt to galvanize Old Prussian law in this area through fraudulent reforms. The conviction of the necessity of measures that affect society as a whole, Marx notes, can only take place "when the law is a conscious expression of the people's will, and therefore when it arises together with it and is created by it."67
In the cycle of polemical notes" [On estate commissions in Prussia]. The question of the Prussian estate commissions in the appendices to NN 335 and 336 of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, written in December 1842, Marx again starts from an episode-an attempt to perpetuate estate representation in the so-called central commissions designed by the government. 68 The Allgemeine Zeitung supported this proposal, proceeding from the conservative attitude-one cannot to destroy the "difference of elements" inherent in all living things: the people outside the estates are nothing more than a"raw inorganic mass". No one thinks about "eliminating differences," Marx replies. But the difference of classes, like all differences in living organisms, does not precede life, but, on the contrary, "constantly flows out of it and just as constantly disappears and becomes paralyzed in it." That is why it is false to consider the people once and for all as given in their former or present form. What for his opponents is an eternal state, an unchangeable "divine world order", for Marx is a moment of historical development. Today the people are a "raw mass", tomorrow they are an active component of public, i.e. state, life. "If it would be unwise to attempt to set the people in motion as a raw, inorganic mass, then it is equally unwise to expect that an organic movement can be brought about by mechanically breaking the people up into solid, abstract components and demanding from these inorganic, forcibly fixed parts an independent movement, which can only be convulsive-

66 Ibid., pp. 125, 160, 126, 154.

67 See ibid., pp. 161-163.

68 This is an attempt by the Prussian government to replace the introduction of the Constitution with the establishment of a statewide estate-representative body with advisory functions (see K. Marx and F. Schultz). Engels, Soch. Vol. 40, pp. 679, 682, note. 86, 103).

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new " 69 . From this point of view, Marx criticizes the very principle underlying the project of the central commissions: to reproduce and consolidate in them the balance of power that was formed earlier in the provincial assemblies, that is, to give the old class inequality a national character. Priority, according to Marx, should belong to that which, as it develops, is capable of leading to a higher unity that does not yet exist. In this case, too, Marx does not discard the existing differences. But in his eyes, everything is preferable in social, political, and cultural life (from the court and military training to rural communities and school education), which is not a remnant of purely class-based institutions and decaying archaic forms.

The only alternative is "self-representation of the people." Of course, this formula should not be upgraded. Marx has not yet completely freed himself from the Hegelian dissolution of civil society into a "rational state", which alone can be the embodiment of universality. By self-representation of the people, he means something that attracts attention with its critical, negative rather than positive side. This is the denial of special, self-contained interests. In addition, the self-representation of the people, according to Marx, cannot be equated with the state ,which "concentrates only in the government and, in compensation, provides a limited popular spirit with only a certain sphere of activity as an outlet for its special interests"70 . Neither, so what is it?

There is no answer to this question yet. It is more apparent in the general course of thought than in individual formulations. The concreteness of Marx's study of reality already precludes the possibility of confining oneself to the "rational state" as an ideal or even a criterion. Marx is looking for a form of the state in which, by materializing a "spiritual revolution," it would discover that it is "the dominant principle... not a subject deprived of liberty, but a free person. 71

Between the "Debates on Freedom of the Press" and the works of the end of 1842, there are two articles that shed additional light on the formation of revolutionary democracy as a system of Marx's philosophical and political views. The first of these articles is a polemical response to editorial No. 179 of the Kolnische Zeitung. The conservative newspaper did not like the intrusion of philosophy into politics. She explicitly suggested that the Prussian government " shut the mouths of uninvited chatterboxes." Characteristic, however, was the desire to give the police raid a pseudoscientific form, calling for a former liberal as the author of the editorial. The liberal of the recent past, Marx observes, is opposed to the liberals of the present. This, in his view, is a positive fact, for "without parties there is no development, without disengagement there is no progress." 72
Marx takes advantage of the opportunity to oppose his own credo to the reactionary one. He puts forward and justifies three interrelated points. First, philosophy not only has the right to deal with the "issues of the day", it is its vocation. In politics, it does what experienced knowledge does in its field. Secondly, the subject of philosophy is the entire historical world. "Should philosophy, in order not to fall into conflict with the main provisions of dogma, have special principles for each individual country, respectively

69 See ibid., pp. 278, 279.

70 See ibid., pp. 275, 280, 290, 285.

71 Ibid., p. 291.

72 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 1, pp. 95, 113.

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the proverb: "What is a city, is it a temper?", - Marx asks ironically and answers: "It (i.e. philosophy) is interested in what is true for all, not what is true only for some; its metaphysical truths do not know the boundaries of political geography; and where the 'borders' begin is too well known to its political truths to allow for a confusion of the illusory the horizon of private world views and national views with the true horizon of the human spirit." The third point connects the second with the first: the world as a scale and subject is deeply modern. It is created by a new story: "The same spirit that builds railways with the hands of workers builds philosophical systems in the brains of philosophers. Philosophy is not outside the world, just as the brain is not outside the person, although it does not lie in the stomach. But, of course, philosophy is first connected with the world through the brain, and only then does it put its feet on the ground; while many other spheres of human activity have long been standing with both feet on the ground and plucking the fruits of the earth with their hands, not even suspecting that the "head" belongs to this world, or that this world is the world heads". This world is closer to the Napoleonic Code, that is, the result of the era of revolutions enshrined in law, than the Old Testament turned into a dogma by theologians .73
Thus the principle of activity, supported by the entire history of thinking reason, is formulated by Marx as the basis of world-historical action. Standing on such a position, he could not, of course, ignore the idea of communism, even in its utopian, naive form at that time. On October 16, 1842, Marx published in the Rheinische Zeitung a short article entitled "Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung". The latter accused the Rheinische Zeitung (according to Marx's ironic retelling )of being "a Prussian communist, though not a real communist, but still a person who dreamily flirts with communism and platonically makes eyes at it." 74 However, the Allgemeine Zeitung did not limit itself to this attack (or denunciation). In a strange way, but only at first glance, the conservative body is trying to seize the initiative by disposing of ideas that are alien to it. So there is a recommendation addressed to the Prussian monarchy - to "assimilate" the confession of faith of socialism and communism. Marx accurately describes the social background of this appeal. "All writers of the feudal way of thinking" perceive communism in their own way, that is, they measure the future of humanity on a medieval scale. "Who's talking about artisan corporations? Reactionaries. The artisan class must form a state within a state. Don't you find it strange that such thoughts, expressed in modern language, mean this: "the state must become a craft class"?75 .

However, according to Marx, history promises a different purpose for true communism. "That a class which at present owns nothing demands a share in the wealth of the middle classes is a fact which, even without the Strasbourg speeches, 76 and in spite of the Augsburg silence, is conspicuous in the streets of Manchester, Paris and Lyons."77 These cities are named, of course, not accidentally: Manchester was associated with the highest rise of the Chartist movement - the general strike that swept the industrial areas of England in August 1842; in Paris (May 1839, September 1840) and Lyon (November 1831, April 1834).

73 Ibid., pp. 101, 105, 112.

74 Ibid., p. 114.

75 Ibid., pp. 115, 117.

76 Marx is referring to the report on Fourierist speeches at the scientific Congress in Strasbourg, published in the Rheinische Zeitung in October 1842 (see ibid., p. 651, note 55).

77 Ibid., p. 115.

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the workers repeatedly took up arms. The Rheinische Zeitung brought the facts of modernity into a broader historical context. Even earlier, in one of its articles, the newspaper compared the position of the "middle class" (that is, essentially the bourgeoisie) to that of the nobility in 1789, while noting that the current third estate is "better protected from sudden attack." The Allgemeine Zeitung was clearly not satisfied with this thesis. Marx, on the contrary, takes it under his protection, polemically sharpening and clarifying its justification. It rejects reactionary clericalism and exposes the enemy's fear of the working-class movement, that" intractable " modern phenomenon. Marx does not abandon the hope expressed in an early article in the Rheinische Zeitung that the new social conflict, "the existence of which is indisputable, will be resolved 'peacefully'. But he does not single out a peaceful outcome in itself as the most desirable; the most important thing for him is the impossibility of avoiding reality, replacing it with artificial recipes, any kind of projecting. "We do not have the art of dealing with problems that two peoples are working to solve in one phrase." 78
For Marx, communism is a problem that is directly related to the central point - the achievability of a "reasonable state". He does not recognize communist ideas "in their present form" as a theoretical reality, and therefore as a possibility of their practical implementation. For Marx, the attitude to communism as it is is a problem of study and criticism, with an emphasis on the latter. But he does not hesitate for a moment to recognize the serious significance of the Utopian works, naming P. Leroux, V. Considerant, P. J. Proudhon, and probably referring to V. Weitling. Even more important, in the light of Marx's ideological evolution, is the conclusion he made for himself in the same article: "We are firmly convinced that it is not practical experiments that are really dangerous, but the theoretical justification of communist ideas; after all, practical experiments, if they are mass-scale, can be answered with guns as soon as they become dangerous. but those who take possession of our thoughts, subdue our convictions, and to which reason binds our conscience are fetters from which one cannot escape without breaking one's heart; they are demons which one can only conquer by obeying them. " 81
Here is a line of demarcation separating the young Marx from his friends and associates of yesterday from the Young Hegelians. Not a haughty self-consciousness that looks down on reality from the height of abstraction, but a voluntary submission to beliefs that do not separate or oppose themselves to reality, to the real movement from the present to the future - this is Marx's life ideal. In its light, the fundamental meaning of Marx's divergence and break with the circle of "Freemen" becomes clear.

The first mention of the Berlin group of Young Hegelians, bearing such a pretentious name, is contained in a letter from Marx Ruge dated July 9, 1842. Shortly before that, Svobodniye published its goals and objectives in the press. Their declaration, Marx opines, was "at least not diplomatic. It is one thing to declare yourself a supporter of emancipation - this is honest; it is another thing to trumpet your propaganda in advance, this smacks of bragging and irritates

78 Ibid., p. 116.

79 See ibid., p. 117.

80 In September 1842, the Rheinische Zeitung reprinted an article from W. Weitling's magazine Die junge Generation (see ibid., pp. 114, 651, note 53).

81 Ibid., p. 118. Marx returns once more to the problems of this article in a brief editorial statement published in the Rheinische Zeitung on October 23, 1842 (see K. Marx and F. Schulz, ed.). Engels, Soch. Vol. 40, pp. 244-245.

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the philistine"82 . The tone set in the press by Svobodnye gave rise to serious questions. Consistent democracy and intransigence with regard to the existing system, based on a thorough study of the concrete situation, allow Marx to be reasonably circumspect in the field of tactics. In a letter sent around August 25, 1842, to D. Oppenheim, one of the responsible publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung, Marx comments precisely in this connection on the conflict between the "Free" and the Liberals. The former, "sitting down in the comfortable chair of abstraction," that is, actually doing nothing, blamed the latter for the practical steps taken to establish constitutionalism .83 Marx informs Oppenheim that in the appendix to his work "against the Hegelian doctrine of constitutional monarchy,"84 he is prepared to express his personal disagreement with the way in which the Freemen present the problem of the State system. Their "completely general theoretical arguments", devoid of development "in relation to concrete conditions and on the basis of the existing state of affairs", contain (and are also saturated with radical demagoguery) the double danger of complete isolation of the Rheinische Zeitung in the opposition camp and at the same time increasing censorship repression up to the closure of the newspaper. "I consider it necessary," Marx criticized the short-sightedness of the editorial staff, which allowed such statements , " that the staff should not so much direct the Rheinische Zeitung as, on the contrary, it should direct them. Articles like this one provide an excellent opportunity to outline a specific plan of action for employees. " 85
Marx, who became the de facto editor-in-chief of the newspaper in October 1842, aroused obvious dissatisfaction on the part of the "Freemen"with his principled line. On November 30, 1842, he informed Ruge that he was being bombarded with ultimatum letters containing accusations of conservatism. "Why didn't I miss so - and-so" ( most extreme way ", etc. Marx wrote-immediately responded and frankly expressed his opinion about the shortcomings of their works, which see freedom in an unbridled, Sansculottic - and moreover convenient-form rather than in a free, that is, independent and profound content. I called on them to have less vague reasoning, loud phrases, complacency and self-admiration, and more certainty, more attention to concrete reality, more knowledge of the case. " 87 The Berlin Young Hegelians, who hoped that the Rheinische Zeitung would not be able to withstand the onslaught, miscalculated. The editorial staff strongly rejected their claims. The gap was not long in coming.

82 K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 27, p. 364.

83 See ibid., p. 367. Marx was referring to the series of articles "Juste-Milieu" ("The Golden Mean") written by E. Bauer and published in the Rheinische Zeitung, where the criticism of liberalism was based on arguments about the unwillingness to take into account any order that does not follow from self-consciousness. The fact that" Juste-Milieu "was written under the influence of the works of the main ideologist of the" Free " B. Bauer has already been noted in the literature (see L. F. Wolfson. The struggle of the Rheinische Zeitung against Prussian Reaction (from the history of the ideological struggle in pre-revolutionary Germany). "To the Centenary of the Revolution of 1848", Moscow, 1948, pp. 208-209).

84 See K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch. Vol. 27, p. 368.

85 Ibid., pp. 367, 368.

86 In other words, Marx comments on this last demand, the newspaper "must calmly give up the field of battle to the police and censorship, instead of holding its ground in a struggle that is invisible to the public, but nevertheless persistent and imbued with a sense of duty" (ibid., p. 370); see also p. 368.

87 Ibid., p. 369.

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Marx's own dialectical position can be seen in his "Editorial note to the articles' Blunders of the Liberal Opposition in Hanover ' and 'From the Rhine', written around November 8, 1842. The reason for the appearance of these articles was the coup in Hanover, where, by an arbitrary decision of the monarch, the moderate constitution of 1833 was repealed and the former reactionary constitution (1819)was put into effect .88 The violent action provoked the indignation of liberals. Perfectly aware of the limitations of this opposition, as well as the narrowness of the abrogated constitution, Marx is at the same time far from neglecting this incident, which is insignificant from the standpoint of the abstract maximalism of the "Free". Progress, Marx believes, lies not only and even not so much in what liberals alone can achieve in this case, but in exposing the roots of the real conflict and in the fact of resistance to arbitrariness. "The Constitution of 1833 is by no means an expression of freedom when compared with the idea of freedom, but it is certainly an expression of freedom when compared with the Constitution of 1819. In general, at first it was not about any specific content of this constitution - it was about ensuring that in the name oflegal content to oppose illegal usurpation " 89 . Liberalism deserves to be supported, but to do so, it must become authentic, that is, operational. Action, on the other hand, cannot be a simple restoration of the past. One should "strive for an entirely new form of government corresponding to a deeper, more developed and freer national consciousness." 90
*

All of Marx's speeches of 1842 (articles, notes, editorials, and other materials) are battles with reaction, with conservatism and liberalism, and with alleged revolutionism. A huge step forward has been made in one year. Marx invades life, putting to the test those ideas and concepts that were the result of a whole epoch of spiritual development - before Hegel, and especially in the depths of Hegel's universalism and idealistic dialectics. The test of life brought out the contradictions of thought, turning previous answers into questions that could be answered in a fundamentally new way - by combining research with action, in the process of this connection. Politics became the domain of theory: not only the sphere of application of ideas, but also the source of their enrichment and change. At the same time, the framework of politics itself was expanded, its "focus" became the actual relations of people, the position of the masses of the people. The place of the Hegelian ideal and the Hegelian mysticism of "invisible" progress - a progressive movement that does not take the form of change - is occupied by revolution as a problem, as a subject of theory, as the central point of a worldview that encompasses the past, present and future of the "race"- humanity. This revolutionary democracy had to overcome itself in the future in order to gain its integrity and completeness of concreteness. Marx's quest led to materialism and scientific communism.

88 Similar processes took place in other German States. In his notes "Municipal Reform and Kolnische Zeitung "(November 7-12, 1842), Marx exposed the government's intention to extend the Prussian class principle to the Rhineland Province, which since the French bourgeois Revolution of the late eighteenth century had retained the features of a democratic system in local government. At the same time, Marx's arguments clearly showed a tendency towards a materialistic interpretation of a number of social phenomena, in particular legislation and legal norms (see K. Marx and F. Kropotkin). Engels, Soch. Vol. 40, pp. 248-255).

89 Same page, pp. 246-247.

90 Ibid., p. 247.

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