The 'Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844' (also known as the 'Paris Manuscripts' or '1844
Notebooks', originally they were untitled, for brevity here the 'EPM')
are well known as representing the first concerted attempt by Marx
to clarify and synthesize his thinking. It, or they, combine/s philosophy
and political economy through what shall here be argued is the simultaneous
elaboration of a radical new method of immanent dialectical and materialist
critique.
Marx wrote the EPM between April and August 1844 while he was staying
in Paris. On his way back to Germany at the end of August Engels visited
Paris and stayed for ten days. Apparently this was the first proper
meeting of Marx and Engels. Engels probably refers to the writing
of the EPM in his first known letter to Marx written on his return
at the beginning of October 1844, wherein he says Marx should 'see
to it that the material...collected is launched into the world as
soon as possible'. At this time Marx was editing and contributing
to the German newspaper 'Vorwarts!' which was published in Paris from
January to December 1844. In the autumn of 1844 the French government
at the request of the Prussian authorities sued one of its editors,
Karl Bernays, who was sentenced to imprisonment and fined for his
criticism of the reactionary system in Prussia. In January 1845 the
Guizot Ministry then expelled Marx and a few other members of the
staff of the paper, also at the request of the Prussian government.
This effectively silenced the publication. Nevertheless during this
period, on February 1, 1845 Marx signed a contract with Carl Leske,
a publisher of Darmstadt, for publication of a work entitled 'A Critique
of Politics and of Political Economy', which was apparently to be
based on the EPM. However, the contract with the publisher was canceled
in September 1846. It is usually stated that the reason for this cancellation
was the publisher's concerns at giving voice to a dangerous revolutionary.
After Marx's death in 1883 his papers, including the EPM, were kept
by Engels. After Engels died in 1898 Laura Lafargue in Draveil held
them. On Laura's death in 1911 they were included in the SPD party
archives in Berlin, where Engels' papers were also stored. In the
1930s these papers and other files were brought abroad. In 1938 they
were sold to a Dutch insurance company, and they placed the materials
at the disposal of the International Institute of Social Research
(IISH). Currently the MS is archived here. In short, as a result of
the decision to cancel publication in 1846 the text was only first
published in 1932, and it was not until 1959 that an English translation
became available.
The intention is to return to this famous text once again in the belief
that in earlier interpretations certain elements have been left out
of the account. But before going any further some (albeit schematic
for the moment) description is necessary of the unusual physical design
of the EPM.
The MS, which is in the form of three interrelated notebooks, is divided
into side-by-side columns of writing, which sometimes alter radically
in the number of columns. The binding, which is hand sewn by Marx,
lies along the top of the document (as opposed to the traditional
Western left hand edge) with the columns arranged in parallel succession
at right angles below it. Reading demands 'flipping over' the pages,
and the task of following the pagination sequence is not 'normal'
and requires the user to periodically turn over the entire notebook.
Different columns may have different text headings. Pages are numbered
with roman numerals. To fully appreciate the paper MS, at least of
the first/core notebook, you can follow a DIY recipe in Margaret Fay's
article in 'Science & Society' (see bibliography). If you are
reading this in the online version hyperlinks from this essay ought
to help to reveal the uniqueness of the layout, and I suggest provide
compelling evidence for the substance of the argument.1
Since its availability, the EPM has stood as the most enigmatic of
Marx's works, indeed, it is probably the most talked about and cited
philosophical text in existence. Partly this must be due to the mystery
of its unusual structure, partly to the sometimes passionate and poetic
writing style of its famous author, partly to its 'air' of the 'eureka'
of discovery and synthesis, and partly due to the difficulty that
it still presents to the interpreter, as it always seems to remain,
in the end, unfathomable. However, it is also true to say that, probably
because of its oft cited status, it can also arouse a kind of 'oh
no, not that again' response from certain world weary academics when
students become attracted to it, so, like Margaret Fay, I apologize
in advance for yet another interpretation!
The EPM has of course also been theoretically controversial because
its late publication provoked the intensification of the debate concerning
a 'split' in Marx's work, i.e., the division between an early 'humanist'
and a late 'formalist' Marx. As a result of this the EPM has been
broadly interpreted by both sides, for and against, as a humanist
(and thus essentialist) text. They have also been damned as such,
primarily because of the use Marx made of the concepts of alienation
and alienated labor, essence and human nature or 'species being'.
Among other things, this essay will attempt to show that some of the
main tenets of such interpretations are only really feasible when
the design structure of the original document is not given the consideration
it deserves, and when this is not seen to reflect back upon the subject
matter of the written text. The physical features of the document
shall be referred to here, which in the online version are reproduced
(as well as can be expected) with the help of web pages and hyperlinked
maps.
To interpret Marx correctly it is necessary, especially with the EPM,
to understand his method. But to describe Marx's method, we are obliged
to discuss it as if it exists separately from the theme that he was
elaborating, or in other words as if he were wielding an external
principle against a recalcitrant theoretical object. This impression
would be wrong because, as will be argued, the subject matter presented
in the EPM in fact simultaneously 'calls up' the method that Marx
here is setting to work. By this it is not being suggested that Marx
discovers his method in a kind of 'spontaneous outburst' while writing.
Indeed, much of this contention rests on the fact that the EPM was
planned beforehand. What is being suggested is that the composition
itself is actually intended to reveal not only a 'content' to the
reader but also, at the same time, something of its artistic process,
its form and facture. In fact its method, as a part of its objective.
With the EPM, it is suggested, Marx has already altered his mode of
production of theory. So on this basis this essay will argue that
Marxs critique called forth a new mode of production of the textual
object, which in turn, necessitated a new textual design aesthetic.
If this thesis is difficult to grasp here, as it is bound to be when
simply announced in this way, it should, I hope, become clearer as
we progress and provide evidence for it.
As far as I am currently aware Margaret Fay
was, and still is, one of the very few interpreters of the EPM to
take into serious account these physical features of the notebooks,2
so she deserves some introduction as she is a relatively unknown figure.3
Fay began her research at Oxford, England, where, during the late
nineteen-sixties she became interested in Marx through a reading of
Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man, later at Syracuse University,
New York, while studying for an MA in Sociology she found Marx's 1844
notebooks to be the source of their inspiration. She continued her
study of Marx at Syracuse, then took this further at Berkeley. There
followed a visit to the IISH in Amsterdam, to see Marxs original MS.
Finally, in order to gain the German language skills to be able to
read Marx in the original, she attended as a student of Philosophy
at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. Sadly, at some point,
following on from her own doubts about her interpretations of the
EPM, she apparently became depressed about the critical reception
of her research and took her own life. She received a doctorate from
Berkeley for her dissertation posthumously. Subsequently a brief but
concise account of her research was published in the US journal Science
& Society. This tends to focus, however, upon the use of Adam
Smith in the EPM, which is important, but may work to the detriment
of her analysis and interpretation of the artistic design.4
Fay, in her unpublished doctoral dissertation, says that her reason
for rejecting the taken-for-granted assumptions on which other scholars
have based their assessment of the written content of the EPM, is
simply because they are not supported by the document itself. The
fallacy of these conjectures becomes clear, she says, if we take into
account not only the written text, but also the physical design of
the document. For example, one physical design feature that she reports
was the fact that the columnar dividing lines were obviously drawn
before the text was written into them. This proved that Marx planned
the document beforehand. Devoting a section of her thesis to uncovering
Marx's methodology, and the relations between this and the design
structure, Fay demonstrates two main processes at work in the document.
The first is how Marx interprets and analyses the 'thought material'
that he works upon, the second is how he acts on the basis of what
the results of this analysis 'tells him to do' in practice; that is,
how it supplies his 'mode of proceeding', his method.
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