[Preface]

[XXXIX] In the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher I announced a critique of jurisprudence and political science in the form of a critique of the Hegelian philosophy of right. In working it up for publication it became clear that to mix criticism directed only against speculation with criticism of the various subjects themselves was quite unsuitable, hampered the development of the argument and made it harder to follow. Besides, the wealth and variety of the subjects to be treated would have allowed them to be compressed into one work only in a quite aphoristic manner, and such an aphoristic presentation would in turn have given the appearance of arbitrary systematising. I shall therefore publish the critique of law, of morality, of politics, etc., in a series of separate, independent pamphlets, and finally try in a special work to present once more the connection of the whole, the relation of the separate parts, and lastly a critique of the speculative treatment of that material. For this reason the connection of political economy with the state, law, morality, civil life, etc., is touched on in the present work only so far as political economy itself touches on these subjects ex professo.

To the reader familiar with political economy I need not first give assurance that my results have been reached by a wholly empirical analysis, based on a conscientious critical study of political economy.

[Crossed through in the manuscript: The ignorant reviewer, on the other hand, who tries to hide his complete ignorance and poverty of thought by hurling at the positive critic’s head the phrase “utopian phrase”, or phrases such as “the quite pure, quite resolute, quite critical criticism”, the “not merely legal but social, quite social society”, the “compact mass-like mass”, the “spokesmen who speak for the mass-like mass”, has yet to furnish the first proof that, apart from his theological family affairs, he has anything to say in worldly matters.]

It goes without saying that besides the French and English socialists I have also used German socialist works. The substantial and original German works in this science, however, come down (apart from Weitling’s writings) to the essays by Hess in the Einundzwanzig Bogen and Engels’s “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, where I too indicated the first elements of the present work in a quite general way.

[Crossed through in the manuscript: Besides these writers who have dealt critically with political economy, positive criticism in general, and so also German positive criticism of political economy, owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach, against whose “Philosophy of the Future” and “Theses for the Reform of Philosophy” in the Anekdota (however much they are tacitly used) the petty envy of some and the real anger of others seem to have instigated a regular conspiracy of silence.]

Positive humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins only with Feuerbach. The quieter the effect of Feuerbach’s writings, the surer, deeper, more extensive and more lasting it is; they are the only writings since Hegel’s Phenomenology and Logic that contain a real theoretical revolution.

I considered the concluding chapter of the present work, the settling of accounts with the Hegelian dialectic and philosophy in general, to be absolutely necessary, in contrast to the critical theologians of our time, [since] [XL] no such work has been done, a necessary superficiality, since even the critical theologian remains a theologian, and so must either start from certain presuppositions of philosophy as from an authority, or, if in the process of criticism and through other people’s discoveries doubts about these philosophical presuppositions have arisen in him, abandon them in a cowardly and unjustified way, abstract from them, and show his bondage to them and his annoyance at this bondage only in a negative, unconscious and sophistical manner.

[Crossed through in the manuscript: shows it only negatively and unconsciously, partly by constantly repeating assurances of the purity of his own criticism, partly by trying to divert the observer’s eye, and his own, from the necessary confrontation of criticism with its birthplace (the Hegelian dialectic and German philosophy in general), from this necessary raising of modern criticism above its own limitations and naive growth, and instead to create the impression that criticism has only to deal with a limited form of criticism outside itself (that of the eighteenth century, say) and with the narrow-mindedness of the mass. Finally, when discoveries are made about the nature of his own philosophical presuppositions (like Feuerbach’s), the critical theologian partly gives himself the appearance of having achieved them himself, and gives himself this appearance by hurling the results of those discoveries, without being able to develop them, in the form of catchwords at writers still caught up in philosophy; partly he even manages to acquire a sense of his superiority to those discoveries, not by trying, or being able, to put into their proper relation elements of the Hegelian dialectic that he finds missing in that criticism of it, and that have not yet been offered to him critically for his enjoyment, but by asserting them in a covert, malicious and sceptical way against that criticism of the Hegelian dialectic (for example the category of mediating proof against the category of positive truth beginning from itself, that is, [three words illegible]) in its peculiar form, in a mystifying manner. For the theological critic finds it quite natural that everything should be done from the side of philosophy so that he can chatter about purity, resoluteness, about quite critical criticism; and he thinks himself the true vanquisher of philosophy when he, say, feels that some element of Hegel is lacking in Feuerbach; for the theological critic, however much he practises the spiritualist idolatry of “self-consciousness” and of “spirit”, does not get beyond feeling to consciousness.]

Looked at closely, theological criticism, however much it was a real moment of progress at the beginning of the movement, is in the last instance nothing but the culmination and consequence of the old philosophical and especially Hegelian transcendence, distorted into a theological caricature. This interesting justice of history, which now also assigns theology, always the rotten spot of philosophy, to present in itself the negative dissolution of philosophy, that is, its process of decay: this historical nemesis I shall demonstrate in detail on another occasion.

[Crossed through in the manuscript: How far, on the other hand, Feuerbach’s discoveries about the nature of philosophy still made a critical confrontation with philosophical dialectic necessary, at least to prove them, will be seen from my exposition itself.] [XL]