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Rethinking Marxism
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The emergence of a theory: the importance of Marx's notebooks

exemplified by those from 1844
Jürgen Rojahna
a
Amsterdam-based International Institute of Social History (IISH),

To cite this Article Rojahn, Jürgen(2002) 'The emergence of a theory: the importance of Marx's notebooks exemplified by
those from 1844', Rethinking Marxism, 14: 4, 29 — 46
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 MEGA Symposium 29

part of the Marx-Engels papers, agreed to support the MEGA2, work began on it in
the late 1960s. In 1975, the first volumes were published in (East) Berlin.
Undoubtedly, the MEGA2 was an ambitious scholarly project. However, until the
collapse of the Eastern European Communist regimes, political constraints and biases
affected the editorial work in many ways. After all, the project was administered by
party institutes, the Moscow and (East) Berlin Institutes of Marxism-Leninism. Never-
theless, even specialists who did not share the editors’ political beliefs recognized
that the overall quality of the volumes published was quite high. Thus, in the wake
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of the changes in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, scholars throughout the world
pressed for the continuation of the MEGA2. In 1990, on the initiative of the IISH, an
international network, the politically independent Internationale Marx-Engels Stiftung
(IMES), was set up, which at present includes the IISH, the Berlin-Brandenburg
Academy of Sciences, the Trier Karl Marx House, and two Russian institutions. Under
the auspices of the IMES, the entire project has been reorganized: a new editorial
committee has been appointed, the editorial guidelines have been revised, and new
MEGA2 teams responsible for particular volumes have been formed. They include
scholars from Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, and
the United States. In fact, the MEGA2 has become the most important international
project of its kind. Major funding has come from Western European sources, includ-
ing the European Union. Recently, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humani-
ties has agreed to support the U.S. team. Since 1998, the MEGA2 has been published
by the respected Berlin Akademie Verlag.
The MEGA2 is published in four sections: I. Works, articles and drafts (except
Capital and its preparatory works); II. Capital and its preparatoty works; III. Corre-
spondence; IV. Excerpts, notes and marginalia. When completed it will include all
of Marx’s notebooks as well as all drafts for, and editions of, Marx’s Capital. Also,
it includes, besides Marx’s and Engels’s own letters, all letters from third parties. So
far, a total of 50 of the projected 122 volumes has been published.

The Emergence of a Theory: The Importance of Marx’s

Notebooks Exemplified by Those from 1844

Jürgen Rojahn

When Marx died in 1883, he left, besides a lot of incompleted manuscripts and drafts,
a large number of notebooks. Some of them are ordinary notebooks (Notizbücher)
in which Marx jotted down various things, such as addresses, titles of books, ideas
 30 Rojahn

which occurred to him, and mathematical calculations. The majority are exzerpte
notebooks (Exzerpthefte)—that is, notebooks in which he wrote down extracts from
books. Most of these notebooks—about 200—have been preserved.1 They will all
be published in the fourth section of MEGA².
In this paper, I will try to show that the comprehensive publication of Marx’s
notebooks is not a mere “relics cult,” as some critics have assumed.2 Marx’s exzerpte
and other notes not only help us to better understand his work, but must be regarded
as an integral part of it. In the third, and main, section of this paper, this will be dem-
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onstrated in respect of Marx’s notes from 1844—that is, the period in which his his-
torical-materialist theory emerged.

Some General Remarks on the Significance of Marx’s Exzerpte

As early as November 1837, Marx told his father that he had adopted the habit of
making extracts from the books he read and incidentally scribbling down his reflec-
tions (MEGA² III/1, 15; MECW 1, 17). He kept this habit throughout his life. At the
time, making exzerpte was a common way to collect relevant information. For Marx,
it was also a way to come to grips with what he read. Thus, he also made exzerpte
from books from his own collection.3
Marx not only carefully preserved his notes but also used to reread them from time
to time in order to better remember them (Lafargue 1890–1, 12). Sometimes, when he
felt that his perspective had changed or when he needed additional information, he would
again consult the book in question. Otherwise he just used his notes for his later writ-
ings, where he often quoted not from the book but from his exzerpte.
1. The major part is, since the 1930s, in the possession of the Amsterdam-based International Institute of
Social History (IISH); a minor part came into the possession of the former CPSU Central Party Archives,
which are now held by the Moscow-based Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii
(RGASPI).
2. The first scholar who recognized the importance of Marx’s notebooks was David Riazanov. How-
ever, in the MEGA1, started by him in the 1920s, they were merely listed. Only some were published
in full. As work on the MEGA1 advanced, the editors realized that it was useless to publish just a list of
the notebooks. Paul Weller (1994) suggested the inclusion of all of Marx’s notes in a special, fourth
section. But at that time the MEGA1 was already doomed. When, after Stalin’s death, scholars from
Moscow and Berlin, GDR, began to discuss plans for a new MEGA, they took up Weller’s proposal.
However, the party authorities did not like the idea (Dlubek 1994). After they eventually agreed, the
first volume of the fourth section of the MEGA² was published in 1976. Meanwhile, the number of
scholars interested in Marx’s notes grew. Some notebooks, in fact, have been published separately
(Krader 1972; Harstick 1977; Müller 1981; Winkelmann 1982; Marks/Marx 1971; Müller 1992).
3. During his lifetime, Marx built up a collection of more than one thousand books. After his death,
Engels added the major part of that collection to his own. After Engels’s death in 1895, this collection
was incorporated into the German Social-Democratic Party’s Library in Berlin which, in turn, after
Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, was confiscated by the Nazi authorities. Sharing that library’s fate,
Engels’s collection was dispersed throughout Europe during the subsequent years. However, thanks to
the protracted search carried out mainly by German and Russian scholars, the greater part of the more
than two thousand books could be traced: to date, 1,450 works (2,100 volumes) have been identified.
A preparatory publication for MEGA² IV/32 (Harstick, Sperl, and Strauß 1999) contains an annotated
list of these works. Most of them show traces of Marx’s intensive reading.
 MEGA Symposium 31

At present, the importance of exzerpte and other notes made by an author is widely
recognized. For instance, exzerpte have been included in the complete writings of
Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Mill, and others. Indeed, this sort of material is an
extremely valuable source of information for studies, of the history of ideas, biographical
studies, or thorough analyses of the development of the work of the author in question.
The particular significance of Marx’s notes results not just from the fact that such
a large quantity of them has survived, but primarily from the peculiar nature of his
work. As a scholar, Marx, from 1843–4 on, devoted all his life to one great project:
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the critique of political economy. This critique, as an analysis of the development of

the real world, was to be comprehensive and universal; it was to be up to date and it
was also to be supported by all relevant empirical knowledge. Given the rapid eco-
nomic and social changes from the 1840s on, the dynamic development of all sci-
ences and the fact that Marx’s views changed as well, the work on that ambitious
project proved to be a never ending story.
Originally, in 1843, Marx planned to write a critique of politics “in the form of a
critique of the Hegelian philosophy of law” (MEGA² I/2, 314; MECW 3, 231). After
having produced his Manuscripts of 1844, he decided to publish “the critique of law,
ethics, politics, etc., in a series of distinct, independent pamphlets,” the first dealing
with political economy (324; 231). At that time he had dissociated himself from the
Young Hegelians and this project was a part of the discussion with his former friends,
particularly Bruno Bauer. However, he then decided to attack Bauer in a separate
pamphlet, The Holy Family (1845). Some months later, he and Engels, in “The Ger-
man Ideology”,4 “settled accounts” with their “former philosophical conscience”
(MEGA² II/2, 101–2; MECW 29, 264). Simultaneously, Marx pursued the aforemen-
tioned plan, modifying it again. On 1 February 1845, he signed a contract with the
German publisher, Leske, obliging himself to write a “Critique of Politics and Po-
litical Economy” to be published in two volumes (MEGA² III/1, 851–2). However,
when he set to work, he realized that more studies were required (456). In fact, he
did not start to write his critique of political economy until 1857. Having produced
a voluminous draft, the “Grundrisse,” he intended, according to his letter of 22 Feb-
ruary 1858 to Ferdinand Lassalle, to divide the final version of the work into six books:
“1. On Capital . . . 2. On Landed Property. 3. On Wage Labour. 4. On the State. 5.
[On] International Trade. 6. [On the] World Market.” Again, he decided to publish
the whole work “in successive instalments” (MEGA² III/9, 72–3; MECW 40, 270).
After having completed part 1 (1859), he once more changed his plans. Now he pro-
jected a work on “Capital” only, which would be divided into four books. However,
he completed only book 1 (1867). As for the following two books, he soon reached
the conclusion that “a complete revision of the manuscript” would be necessary
(MECW 44, 152) and again plunged into new studies.
Marx actually realized only a small part of his great project. Thus, it is not by
chance that twentieth-century debates on Marx received such strong impetus from
4. As regards Marx’s works, in this paper only the titles of books published by himself are italicized;
titles given to his uncompleted manuscripts or drafts by later editors are put in quotation marks.
 32 Rojahn

the posthumous publication of some of his unpublished manuscripts, such as those

for the second and third books of Capital (as edited by Engels in 1884 and 1895,
respectively), the Manuscripts of 1844 and “The German Ideology” (as edited, si-
multaneously, in the MEGA1 and by Landshut and Mayer in 1932), and the Manu-
scripts of 1857–8 (as edited in Moscow in 1939–41, and reprinted in the German
Democratic Republic in 1953). To some extent, the debates resulted from the am-
biguous status of those manuscripts. On the one hand, they reveal motives and ideas
that Marx had not elaborated in subsequent works. On the other hand, Marx himself
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did not consider them to be an adequate expression of what he wanted to say. This
was not only a matter of form: in the case of Marx, transforming a draft into a work
that could be published repeatedly meant much more than merely polishing it up.
Thus, it was not a mere excuse when, in August 1846, he told Leske that he had to
revise, yet again, “the all but completed manuscript of the first volume” of the prom-
ised book, “both as regards matter and style.” He added: “It goes without saying that
a writer who works continuously cannot . . . publish word for word what he wrote
6 months earlier” (MEGA² III/2, 24; MECW 38, 51).
Nowadays no serious scholar interested in Marx would confine himself to study-
ing only the writings published by Marx himself. Rather, we are inclined to see Marx’s
work as a process of lifelong, uncompleted studies, and it is all his writings, includ-
ing his notes, that document that process.
Marx’s exzerpte notebooks show the wide range of his studies, which included a
broad variety of fields, such as law, philosophy, history, political economy, technol-
ogy, agriculture, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics, and ethnology. They
contain a lot of information about his sources—that is, what books he read, how he
came to select just these books, and what he was particularly interested in. Also, they
show how his reading affected the development of his ideas. Sometimes Marx cop-
ied relevant passages literally. Very often he summarized long passages in his own
words, mixing up his native language, German, with English, French, or Russian
expressions, depending on which language he was reading. Usually his way of sum-
marizing a passage leaves no doubt about what he thought. Sometimes he was more
explicit, interrupting the exzerpte by his own comments. Moreover, his notebooks
contain theses, plans, and first drafts, which show how he intended to use the mate-
rial in question and in what direction he planned to go. For this reason, his notebooks
also are informative about plans that never materialized.5

The Rise of the 1844 Manuscripts

The close interconnection between the notes Marx made in the course of his read-
ing and his other writings can best be exemplified by the manuscripts and notes from

5. This is particularly true for Marx’s notebooks from the last years of his life. It is only from these
notebooks and some letters that we know in what way his ideas developed during that period.
 MEGA Symposium 33

1844 published respectively in MEGA² I/2 and IV/2. His Manuscripts of 1844 liter-
ally grew out of his exzerpte from that period.6
Among scholars interested in Marx, the publication of his 1844 Manuscripts in
1932 caused considerable sensation (Marcuse 1932; De Man 1932). However, the
discussion, cut short by Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, did not really start until after
the Second World War. The crucial issue was how much new light those manuscripts
threw on Marx or, put another way, how much importance should be attached to them,
compared to Marx’s later works. While orthodox communists, until the 1960s, tended
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to play down the importance of the Manuscripts of 1844, for many Western scholars
they were “in a way the most central work of Marx” (Landshut and Mayer 1932), “a
first outline of his system,” giving a “well-founded idea of Marx’s Marxism” (Thier
1950, 4–5).
Generally, and especially by those who strongly emphasized the eminent impor-
tance of the Manuscripts of 1844, only little attention was paid to the textual evi-
dence and editorial problems. It was seldom noticed that the manuscripts in question
in the two 1932 editions had been reproduced in different ways. The editors of MEGA1
I/3, under the title “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” (Ökonomisch-
philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844), published three manuscripts, which
they numbered I, II, and III. Another manuscript numbered IV was edited in an ap-
pendix, which also included some of Marx’s exzerpte from that time. The Landshut-
Mayer collection of Marx’s early writings contained, on the other hand, under the
title “Political Economy and Philosophy” (Nationalökonomie und Philosophie), “a
manuscript” that, in fact, comprised the manuscripts numbered, in the MEGA1, II,
III, and IV. However, they were published in another order, III–II–IV. Most schol-
ars considered the MEGA1 edition to be superior and, except for the first French edi-
tion (Marx 1937), subsequent ones were based on that version.7 However, the fact
that the MEGA1 editors had rearranged the various parts of Marx’s manuscripts—
which, as a result, appeared to be divided in “chapters” written one after another—
was ignored. No one took the trouble to go back to the originals.8 It was usually as-
sumed that Marx wrote this work after having “read and excerpted fifteen works on
economics, including Adam Smith, Ricardo and Say” (McLellan 1970, 163).
If by “work” we understand a coherent text in which the author, in a more or less
premeditated, systematic way, unfolds his ideas, it is questionable whether the Manu-
scripts of 1844, as they have survived, can be regarded as a work at all. “Manuscript

6. Unfortunately, MEGA² I/2 and IV/2, published in 1981–2, have tended to blur that interconnection
rather than to clarify it (see Rojahn 1985).
7. Most of these editions did not include “Manuscript IV.” As far as the First Manuscript was con-
cerned, some included only its concluding part on “estranged labour” (Thier 1950; Fromm 1961).
8. Landshut and Mayer, who had access to the originals, stored at that time in the Berlin-based SPD
Party Archives, gave a description that was partly incorrect. The MEGA1 editors, for their part, failed
to mention that their edition was based on photocopies that Riazanov had received in 1923. The de-
scription they gave was incomplete. Since the 1930s, the original manuscripts have been in the posession
of the IISH. From the late 1970s on, due to their extremely poor condition, access has been strictly
limited. For a detailed description of the original manuscripts, see Rojahn (1983) and MEGA² I/2.
 34 Rojahn

IV” is, in fact, a summary of the last chapter of Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes
(edited by J. Schulze, 2d ed., Berlin, 1841). The Third Manuscript consists of sev-
eral additions to a text written before, probably the Second Manuscript. If there was
any (draft of a) work, it would have been the Second Manuscript. However, of this
manuscript only the last four pages, numbered by Marx xl–xliii, have survived and
we do not know what the preceding pages contained. The First Manuscript is not a
homogeneous text; its relationship to the other manuscripts is far from clear.
A close analysis of the texts, including the notebooks, leads to the conclusion that
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the Manuscripts of 1844 are not a systematic exposition of a world-view, but rather,
show Marx’s thought in motion—that is, the emergence and development of new
ideas, a process driven by his reading and by the discussions he participated in. The
notebooks represent the basis from which his reflections lifted off; moreover, they
themselves contain a part of those reflections.9
To prevent any misunderstanding, I do not want to say that the various subjects
Marx discussed in his Manuscripts of 1844 were unconnected in his mind. Nor do I
want to suggest that those manuscripts are unimportant for the understanding of his
later writings. What I do want to say is that to students interested in the development
of Marx’s ideas, his manuscripts and notes from 1844 give a fascinating insight into
one of the most exciting phases of that process. In that period, Marx’s ideas devel-
oped very quickly: he entered the field of political economy, embraced communism,
and laid the foundations of his historical materialistic theory.
As Marx stated himself in the “Preface” to his Contribution to the Critique of Politi-
cal Economy. Part One of 1859, he began to study political economy after he arrived
in Paris in the fall of 1843 (MEGA² II/2, 100; MECW 29, 262). He probably started
with Jean-Baptiste Say’s Traité d’économie politique (3d ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1817), the
author being regarded in France as “the proto-parens” and “the patriarch of the econo-
mists” at that time (Proudhon 1840, 69, 104). After that, Marx read works of three
German economists: Carl Wolfgang Christoph Schüz (Grundsätze der National-
Oeconomie, Tübingen, 1843), Friedrich List (Das nationale System der politischen
Oekonomie, vol. 1, Stuttgart, Tübingen, 1841), and Heinrich Friedrich Osiander (Die
Enttäuschung des Publikums über die Interessen des Handels, der Industrie und der
Landwirthschaft, Tübingen, 1842; and Ueber den Handelsverkehr der Völker, 2 vols.,
Stuttgart, 1840). It appears that these studies were connected to his “Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction.” In this essay, where he
contrasted the backward Germans to the advanced nations, he said that while “one
of the major problems of modern times”—namely, “the relation of industry, of the
world of wealth generally, to the political world”—was beginning to engage the at-
tention of the Germans “in the form of protective duties, of the prohibitive system, of

9. With regard to content, the two groups, “manuscripts” and “notebooks,” do not differ substantially.
On the one hand, a large part of the First Manuscript consists of exzerpte; on the other hand, some
notebooks include Marxian comments of considerable length. Nor can a clear distinction be made
between the two groups according to their outward appearance (format, division of the pages in col-
umns, style of the page numbering).
 MEGA Symposium 35

national economy,” the problem in France and England was “political economy”—
that is, “the rule of society over wealth” (MEGA² I/2, 174; MECW 3, 179).
Apparently, Marx planned to continue his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law.
But apart from the fact that the journal in which he had begun this critique, Deutsch-
Französische Jahrbücher, ceased publication, he reached the conclusion that the
matter was too complex for an article. Probably, he also felt that he himself still did
not know enough about “the world of man, the state, society.” According to Arnold
Ruge, Marx focused now on the history of the French Revolution—that is, the emer-
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gence of the modern state. For some time he seems to have intended to write a “His-
tory of the Convention” (Nerrlich 1886, 345). However, feeling again that he did not
know enough about the “prerequisite” of political life—that is, civil society—and
inspired by Moses Hess’s article “Über das Geldwesen” (Cornu and Mönke 1961,
329–48), he soon, probably in May or June 1844, resumed his studies of political
economy, turning now to Adam Smith.
From Marx’s exzerpte from Say’s Traité it can be seen that he had entered a
new field. He copied a great number of passages word for word. Later, when he
read the French translation of Smith’s Wealth of Nations (trad. nouv. par G. Garnier,
5 vols., Paris, 1802),10 he was already moving more freely. He now summarized
entire paragraphs in his own words. Although the notebook in which Marx started
his exzerpte from Smith’s work contains only a few, brief comments of his own, it
is extremely interesting. It reveals how Marx came to discover what was to be-
come fundamental for his further work: the economic foundations of class forma-
tion.11 Marx made his exzerpte in that notebook in what seems to have been two
sequences. In a first sequence (MEGA² IV/2, 332–46), he proceeded very quickly,
focusing on what Smith said about the division of labor, value, prices, and money.
When he arrived at page 227 of the second volume of the French edition (book 2,
chap. 2), he suddenly stopped. He went back to page 129 of the first volume (book 1,
chap. 8) and, in a second sequence (MEGA² IV/2, 346–64), made extensive exzerpte
from the chapters on the various kinds of income—that is, wages of labor, profits
of stock, and rent of land. According to Smith, they formed the revenue of “three
orders of people,” which were “the three great, original and constituent orders
of every civilized society” or, in French translation, “[les] trois grandes classes”
(cf. MEGA² IV/2, 356).

10. At that time, before his first stay in England in the summer of 1845, Marx read British authors in
French translation.
11. It is noteworthy that Marx, summarizing a passage from Osiander’s Ueber den Handelsverkehr
der Völker, where Osiander said that the division of labor resulted in the formation of different
“classes [Klassen] of society,” for his part used the term “estates” (Stände) (MEGA² IV/2, 547). On
the other hand, Marx had previously criticized List for not mentioning the “division of enjoyment
[Genußtheilung], the difference of the different classes” (529). At that time, he still used both terms,
“estate” and “class,” synonymously. In his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Law,” he wrote: “The principle of the civil estate or of civil society is enjoyment and the capacity to
enjoy” (MEGA² I/2, 90; MECW 3, 80–1).
 36 Rojahn

When Marx arrived at page 401 of the second volume—that is, the end of book 2
—he stopped again. Apparently he interrupted his reading at this point,12 took a sheet
of paper, folded it and divided the pages in three columns, which he then entitled
“Wages of Labour,” “Profit of Capital,” and “Rent of Land.” Then he filled these
columns, partly expounding his views in his own words, partly copying relevant
exzerpte from his notebooks. When he realized that one sheet would not be suffi-
cient, he took a second sheet, and then a third, and so on. The nine sheets together,
forming the First Manuscript, were sewn together—literally!—only afterward.13
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On pages i–vii, Marx first filled the column “Wages of Labour.” On page vii he
continued the text on this subject in the second and third columns. When dealing
with “Profit of Capital” and “Rent of Land,” he skipped page vii and continued his
discussion of Smith’s views on pages viii–xi. Starting on pages viii and xi, respec-
tively, he entered exzerpte from books by Wilhelm Schulz (Die Bewegung der Pro-
duction, Zurich, Winterthur, 1843), Constantin Pecqueur (Théorie nouvelle
d’économie sociale et politique, Paris, 1842), Charles Loudon (Solution du problème
de la population et de la subsistance, Paris, 1842) and Eugène Buret (De la misère
des classes laborieuses en Angleterre et en France, 2 vols., Paris, 1840) in the col-
umns “Wages of Labour” and “Profit of Capital.” Buret’s book proved to be so im-
portant that he decided to continue his exzerpte from it in a special notebook.14 Con-
cluding his exposition of “Profit of Capital,” Marx again copied some passages from
Smith out of his notebook. Apparently, he then resumed his study of Smith’s work.
After that, starting on page xi of his manuscript, he continued his exposition of “Rent
of Land.” On page xvi he quoted three passages directly from Smith’s work and, on
the following pages, he implicitly referred to book 3, where Smith treats the histori-
cal development of landed property, tenancy, and towns.15
At this stage, Marx was not interested in history. Schulz, for instance, considered
the deplorable social conditions of the age to be the result of the historical develop-
ment of “production,” a development he described in his Bewegung der Production.
Marx excerpted from that book only a few passages on modern industry. From the
outset, it is true, the decisive question for him was: “What in the evolution of man-
kind is the meaning of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labour?”

12. Leaving the last page of this notebook blank, he later continued his exzerpte from Smith’s work in
another notebook.
13. From the curious order of the written and numbered pages of this manuscript and from the way
Marx filled them, it can be seen that he, at least initially, had no far-reaching plan. After nine empty
pages, the numbered pages succeed in the following order: xvii, i, xvi, xv, xiv . . . iv, iii, ii, xviii, xix,
xx . . . xxvii (for further details, see Rojahn 1983, 35–6, 48). Only some years later, probably in 1850,
did Marx note “Heft I” on the—until then, blank—first page and compile a list of books on the third
(MEGA² IV/7, 28).
14. It appears that Marx possessed only the first volume of the 1840 edition of Buret’s work. Anyway,
during his stay in Paris he made exzerpte from, and referred to, that volume only. When continuing his
exzerpte in Brussels in 1845, he used the Cours complet d’économie politique (Brussels, 1843), a col-
lection that comprised Buret’s entire work.
15. To a large extent, Marx here continued his comments on primogeniture found in “Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law” (cf. MEGA² I/2, 106 ff.).
 MEGA Symposium 37

(MEGA² I/2, 208; MECW 3, 241). But at that point he had the future rather than the
past in mind. In the First Manuscript, he focused on the fact that “the hostile antago-
nism of interests, the struggle, the war is recognised throughout political economy
as the basis of social organisation” (195; 260), and what that meant for “the worker.”
Even having just begun his study of political economy, he noticed several trends that
could be derived from what “the economist” said himself: a progressive concentra-
tion of capital; “the abolition of the distinction between capitalist and landowner, so
that there remain only two classes of the population—the working class and the class
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of capitalists” (229; 266); and finally, the progressive deterioration of the conditions
of the working class, leading “necessarily . . . to revolution” (234; 270). However,
he did not then elaborate upon these, still tentative, insights. Instead, taking up an
idea borrowed from Moses Hess that he had already adopted in his “On the Jewish
Question,” he tried “to grasp how private property . . . etc., how this whole estrange-
ment is intrinsically connected with the money system” (235; 271).16
When making exzerpte from Say’s Traité, Marx, in his notebook, had observed
that political economy was based on private property, regarded as an indisputable
fact, though in reality it was “a fact without necessity” (MEGA² IV/2, 316, 319).
Proceeding from this “actual economic fact”, he now expounded, on pages xxii–xxvii,
his thoughts on “estranged labour,” explaining that the latter estranged the worker
not just from the product of his labor but also from the act of production, from his
species-being—as both nature and his spiritual species-property—and from the other
man, and that it also “creates the relation to it of the capitalist”—that is, the master of
labor. “Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labour”
(MEGA² I/2, 244; MECW 3, 279). By this, he hoped to have demonstrated that pri-
vate property only appeared to be “something external to man,” being in fact a re-
sult of his labor. “This new formulation of the question already contains its solution”
(246; 281).
Marx, in this last part of the First Manuscript, mentions only one author by name:
Proudhon, whose positive proposals he regarded as inadequate. However, apart from
the fact that so far he had said nothing about the “money system,” the last paragraphs
of his manuscript show that he himself had not yet a clear idea of what “truly human
property” would be. Nor does he seem to have already had a clear idea of how man
came “to alienate . . . his labour” (245–6; 281).17 So he resumed his studies.
Marx now read Fryderyk Skarbek’s Théorie des richesses sociales (2 vols., Paris,
1929), Michel Chevalier’s Cours d’économie politique (Année 1841–2, Paris, 1842;
Année 1842–3, Paris, 1844), Charles Ganilh’s Des systèmes d’économie politique
(2 vols., Paris, 1809), John Ramsay MacCulloch’s Discourse on . . . political economy
(trad. de l’anglois par G. Prevost, Geneva, Paris, 1825), including “Réflexions du
traducteur sur le système de Ricardo,” the fourth and fifth parts of Antoine Louis Claude

16. The translation given here deviates from that given in MECW, which in my view is not quite
adequate.
17. With regard to Smith, Marx had stated in his exzerpte notebook: “By transferring the problem back
to primeval times, he has not gotten rid of it” (MEGA² IV/2, 336).
 38 Rojahn

Destutt de Tracy’s Elémens d’idéologie (Paris, 1826), David Ricardo’s On the prin-
ciples of political economy, and taxation (trad. de l’anglais par F.S. Constancio, avec
des notes explicatives et critiques par J.-B. Say, 2d ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1835), and James
Mill’s Elements of political economy (trad. de l’anglais par T.-J. Parisot, Paris, 1823).
All these books were in his possession by that time. Nevertheless, he made exzerpte
from nearly all of them.18 However, he may have made all or some of these exzerpte
only after having written the Second, or even the Third, manuscripts.19
On the four pages of the Second Manuscript which have survived, Marx repeated
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much of what he had said in the First Manuscript. He dealt with the worker as “the
subjective manifestation of the fact that capital is man wholly lost to himself,” and
with capital as “the objective manifestation of the fact that labour is man lost to him-
self,” and then with the movement “which will transform the landowner into an or-
dinary, prosaic capitalist,” stressing that the traditional difference between capital
and land was only “a fixed historical moment in the . . . development of the con-
tradiction between capital and labour” (MEGA2 I/2, 248, 250; MECW 3, 283, 285).
The concluding part of the Second Manuscript is to some extent related to Marx’s
summary of Engels’s “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” (Deutsch-
französische Jahrbücher, 1–2, Paris 1844, 86–114) which follows his exzerpte from
MacCulloch’s Discourse in the same notebook. Marx, in this concluding part, out-
lined his own view on the development of political economy: “The character of pri-
vate property is expressed by labour, capital, and the relations between these two.
The movement through which these constituents have to pass is: First. Unmediated
or mediated unity of the two . . . [Second.] The two in opposition . . . Clash of mutual
contradictions” (255 f.; 289).
At this point Marx stopped. At the end of July he wrote an article, “Critical Mar-
ginal Notes . . .” which was directed against Ruge, for the Paris Vorwärts!. After that,
in the beginning of August, he went back to his manuscript again—that is, the Sec-
ond Manuscript—and rereading its last pages, made a number of additions, which
indicate what that manuscript did not contain.
Even the Second Manuscript shows that Marx, as a result of his continued studies
and particularly his reading of MacCulloch’s Discourse and his rereading of Engels’s
“Outlines,” began to pay attention to the development of political-economic theory
itself. In the beginning of the Third Manuscript, in his first addition (pages i–iii), he

18. Apparently, Marx made no exzerpte from Chevalier’s Cours while those from Ganilh’s work date
from 1845.
19. Marx used his exzerpte from MacCulloch (cf. MEGA² IV/2, 476–7) in his “Critical Marginal Notes”
(cf. MEGA I/2, 451) and he quoted from his exzerpte from Skarbek (328–9) and Destutt de Tracy (489)
in the Third Manuscript (311). As for the exzerpte from Ricardo’s and Mill’s books, there is no clear
evidence of when exactly they were made. According to the Moscow editors of MEGA² IV/2, Marx
made these exzerpte before writing the Second Manuscript; according to the Berlin editors of MEGA²
I/2, he made them after writing the Third Manuscript. My previous criticism of the arguments of the
latter (Rojahn 1983, 30) remains, I think, valid. On the other hand, considering the content and style of
Marx’s comments, the Berlin editors seem to be right, at least as regards the exzerpte from Mill’s Ele-
ments. It is however beyond doubt that Marx read Mill’s book before writing the Third Manuscript (cf.
MEGA² I/2, 283, 286, 311 f.).
 MEGA Symposium 39

elaborated upon this. “Engels was . . . right to call Adam Smith the Luther of Politi-
cal Economy.” Modern political-economic theory, recognizing labor as its principle,
had “to be regarded on the one hand . . . as a product of modern industry—and on
the other hand, as a force which has quickened . . . the . . . development of modern
industry and made it a power in the realm of consciousness.”20 Demonstrating that
man himself was the essence of what appeared as “something . . . independent of
him,” that is, wealth, that theory did not solve the contradictions in which it got in-
volved, but became more and more cynical “from Smith through Say to Ricardo, Mill,
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etc.” (MEGA² I/2, 257–8; MECW 3, 290–1). In his second addition (page iii), Marx
stressed that the antithesis of lack of property and property, so long as it is not grasped
as “the antithesis of labour and capital,” is not comprehended “in its internal rela-
tion” (260; 293–4). In his third addition (starting on page iii), he switched to another
subject: “The transcendence of self-estrangement follows the same course as self-
estrangement” (261; 294).
The immediate reason for this switch may have been the discovery itself of the
alleged analogy.21 However, there may also have been other reasons. An article by Ruge,
published in the Paris Vorwärts! (19 June 1844), and Ruge’s ensuing discussion with
Heinrich Börnstein on the question of by what the existing order was to be replaced
(22 June and 6 July), may have prompted Marx to expound his communist views—all
the more so, since Ruge pretended that his former partner’s views did not much differ
from his own. Moreover, as a result of contemporary debates, and particularly an ar-
ticle by Edgar Bauer on Proudhon, published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung
(no. 5, April 1844), which he received at the beginning of August, Marx may have felt
the need to delineate his evolving concept of “communism, as fully developed natu-
ralism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism, equals naturalism”
(MEGA² I/2, 263; MECW 3, 296), from the existing socialist or communist doctrines.
In any case, these doctrines were intensely present in his thinking at that time. On 29
August Ruge reported to Max Duncker: “Marx intended to criticise Hegel’s natural
law from a communist point of view, after that he wanted to write a history of the
Convent, finally he wanted to write a critique of all socialists. He always wants to write
about what he read most recently” (quoted from Cornu 1962, 19).22
As for what Marx read at that time, Chevalier’s Cours was already mentioned.
According to the Saint-Simonist Chevalier, political economy had to be guided by
the moral ideas of the epoch. Since 1789, the crucial issue had been freedom. The
20. In his “Critical Marginal Notes,” Marx called English political economy “the scientific reflection
of English economic conditions” (MEGA² I/2, 450–1; MECW 3, 192).
21. Marx, proceeding from Proudhon (who, considering private property in its objective aspect, de-
manded the annulment of capital “as such”) to Fourier (who, like the Physiocrats, considered agricul-
tural labor “to be at least the exemplary type”), Saint-Simon (who declared “that industrial labour as
such is the essence”), and communism (as “the positive expression of annulled private property”), de-
scribes the movement of the transcendence of self-estrangement in “logical” rather than chronological
terms.
22. It is worth noticing that as late as 1858, in his letter of 22 February to Lassalle, Marx mentioned
his plan to write a “critique and history of political economy and socialism” (MEGA² III/9, 73; MECW
40, 270).
 40 Rojahn

current task was “to complete, under the auspices of peace, the emancipation of the
second half of the tiers état, the rural and urban working classes” (1842, 35 f.).
Emphasizing the material prerequisites of freedom, Chevalier put his hope in indus-
try—that is, “material labor in all its forms” (3). In antiquity as well as the following
centuries, the large majority of people lived in awful misery. That could not be al-
tered by another distribution of the scarce production; rather, it was necessary “to
increase production, to develop the productive forces of society” (48). At the present
time, man, as a result of the enormous growth of those forces, the advance of the
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sciences, and new means of communication, was indeed able to become “the master
of the universe” (12).
Chevalier’s Cours may have drawn Marx’s attention to the achievements of modern
industry. On the other hand, Marx did not share that author’s program. On the one
hand, Chevalier considered competence to be indispensable. On the other hand, he
criticized “unlimited competence” and pleaded for restraining it by “organization”—
that is, associations and institutions where people could find “solidarity, protection,
safety” (1844, 471 f.)
Especially, Edouard de Pompéry’s Exposition de la science sociale constituée par
C. Fourier (2d ed., Paris, 1840) appealed to Marx. De Pompéry’s stress on “passion”
as the driving force of life fitted in with the anthropology of Feuerbach, for Marx
then “the true conqueror of the old philosophy” (MEGA² I/2, 276; MECW 3, 328).
Besides a similar critique of present society in which the proletarian, “rendered ani-
mal-like by misery, is not a human being any more,” Marx in de Pompéry’s book
found a number of ideas that concurred with his own and may have stimulated their
development: that man, primarily, lives through his five senses; that man feels the
need to love and to be loved; that man lives in society and only lives through work;
that man, by nature, is an active being; that the only way to elevate the human race
was by freeing man from the necessities of material life; that the required affluence
could only be created in a world in which everyone could exercise their various fac-
ulties in a “normal,” unconstrained and joyful manner, in harmony with one another.
According to de Pompéry, this would be realized by free “association”—that is, in a
community in which the particular interests of each individual member would be an
integral part of the common interest, without getting lost in it. Man then would be
truly human: with a developed intellect, an ennobled heart, and refined senses. Also,
Marx appreciated “Weitling’s brilliant writings, which as regards theory are often
superior even to those of Proudhon” (459; 201), and particularly Weitling’s Garantien
der Harmonie und Freiheit (Vivis, 1842).
Marx, in the third addition, dealt with the movement of the “transcendence of self-
estrangement” only briefly. Paragraphs (1) and (2) (pages iii–iv) are exclusively de-
voted to the critique of “crude communism.” Concerning this, he followed Proudhon
(1840) and Lorenz Stein (1842), who coined that term (371). Subsequently, in para-
graphs (3), (4), and (5) (pages iv–xi), he at length expounded his ideas of communism
as “the real appropriation of the human essence” (MEGA² I/2, 263; MECW 3, 296).
 MEGA Symposium 41

Somewhat casually, Marx, in paragraph (3), also says why he pursued his study
of political economy. “It is easy to see that the entire revolutionary movement nec-
essarily finds both its empirical and theoretical basis in the movement of private prop-
erty—more precisely, in that of the economy.” He continues: “This material . . . pri-
vate property is the material, perceptible expression of estranged human life. Its
movement . . . is the perceptible revelation of the movement of all production until
now . . . Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular
modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of
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private property . . . is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement . . .

Religious estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness . . . but
economic estrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both
aspects” (MEGA I/2, 263–4; MECW 3, 297). Later, at the end of paragraph (5), he
observed that “for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is noth-
ing but the creation of man through human labour” (274; 305), whereupon, in para-
graph (6)—that is, still within the framework of his third addition dealing with the
“transcendence of self-estrangement”—he again switched to another subject: “This
is perhaps the place at which . . . we might offer some considerations in regard to
Hegelian dialectic” (275; 326).
Again, this switch may have come from the run-on quality of his ideas. However,
in this case, too, other reasons seem to have been decisive. During the previous spring,
in letters to friends, Marx had already critically assessed numbers 1–4 of Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung, edited by Bruno Bauer. It appears that he then also aired plans for
a new attack on Bauer, whom he had criticized before in his “On the Jewish Ques-
tion.” While Moses Hess, in his letter of 3 July, regarded a new attack as pointless
(MEGA² III/3, 434–5), Heinrich Jung, in his letter of 31 July, pressed Marx to pub-
lish a critique of Bauer’s journal (436–7). Simultaneously, Jung sent copies of num-
bers 5–7 of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Apparently, Marx now made up his
mind. What follows the already quoted introduction to paragraph (6) (pages xi–xiii)
leaves no doubt that his critique of Hegelian dialectic was at the same time the core
of his critique of “modern German criticism” and particularly Bauer; Marx accused
the latter of a “complete lack of awareness” about that “really vital question” (MEGA
I/2, 275; MECW 3, 326–7).23 On 11August, in his letter to Feuerbach, he repeated,
partly in the same words, what he had said in paragraph (6). Concluding, he informed
Feuerbach about his plan “to publish a small booklet attacking this aberration of criti-
cism” (MEGA² III/1, 65; MECW 3, 356).
Jung’s letter may also have induced Marx to write paragraph (7) (pages xiv–xvii)
where he dealt with how, under private property, “the multiplication of needs and of

23. An indication that Marx wrote paragraph (6) only after having received the above mentioned cop-
ies of numbers 5–7 of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, is the fact that, in this paragraph, he implicitly
refers to articles by Bruno Bauer and Melchior Hirzel, published respectively in numbers 5 and 6 (cf.
MEGA² I/2, 275–6, 902–5).
 42 Rojahn

the means [of their satisfaction] breeds the absence of needs and of means” (280;
308), and with the role of money.24
After that, Marx stopped numbering the paragraphs and alternately dealt with
Hegelian philosphy (pages xiii/xvii–xviii, xxii–xxxiv), political economy (pages xviii–
xix, xx–xxi, xxxiv–xxxviii), and communism (page xix). As far as the Hegelian phi-
losophy is concerned, he now focused on Hegel’s Phänomenologie, “the birth-place
of the Hegelian philosophy” (284; 331). The summary of its contents at the end of para-
graph (6) and the references to its “separate sections” on pages xiii/xvii–xviii indicate
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that he reread that work. On page xviii he characterized the Phänomenologie in its en-
tirety as “a hidden, mystifying and still uncertain criticism”—containing, “inasmuch
as it depicts man’s estrangement . . . all the elements of criticism . . . but still in an es-
tranged form” (285; 332). Resuming his critique on page xxii, he wanted to demon-
strate “Hegel’s . . . limitations, as they are displayed in the final chapter” (292; 333).
Before doing this, he probably made his summary of that very chapter.
While Marx, in the concluding part of the First Manuscript, as it were, transformed
political economy in philosophy, on page xxii of the Third Manusscript he does the
opposite: “The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and its final
outcome, the dialectic . . . is . . . that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a
process . . . that he . . . comprehends objective man—true, because real man—as the
outcome of man’s own labour . . . Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political
economy” (292–3; 332–3). Formulated in philosophical terms, the Hegelian dialec-
tic was “the estranged insight into the real objectification of man, into the real ap-
propriation of his objective essence through the annihilation of the estranged char-
acter of the objective world”—that is, “the emergence of species-consciousness and
species-life.” From this point of view, it was comparable to atheism, which, “being
the supersession of God, is the advent of theoretical humanism,” and to communism,
which, “as the supersession of private property, is . . . the advent of practical human-
ism” (301; 341–2). As for the “estranged form,” Marx regarded the fact that, for Hegel,
“the object of consciousness is nothing else but self-consciousness”—whose own
alienation “posits thinghood”—as the “main point” (293–4; 333–4). As a result of
this, Hegel came to conceive thinghood as “a something which has no objectivity
outside the knowing” (298; 338). However, if self-consciousness is “at home in its
other-being as such,” it actually “confirms it in this alienated shape . . . Here is the
root of Hegel’s false positivism” as shown “vis-à-vis religion, the state, etc.” (299;
339). Indicating his own position, Marx observed: “Self-consciousness is rather a
quality of human nature, of the human eye, etc.; it is not human nature that is a qual-
ity of self-consciousness” (293; 334).
In this exposition, Marx also quoted from part 1 of Hegel’s Encyclopädie der
philosophischen Wissenschaften (3d ed., Heidelberg, 1830).

24. According to Jung, Bauer told him recently that it was necessary to criticize “not just society, the
privileged property owners, etc., but also . . . the proletarians.” Jung added: “as if it was not just from
the critique of the latter, that is, from the understanding of their subhuman and unworthy condition,
that the critique of the wealthy, property, society itself derived” (MEGA² III/1, 437).
 MEGA Symposium 43

Returning to political economy on page xxxiv, Marx, after additional remarks on

the victory of industrial capital over landed property, turned to the political econo-
mists’ concept of society, focusing on the division of labor, “the estranged . . . form
of human activity as an activity of the species” (309; 317). Quoting relevant passages
from his exzerpte notebooks or, in the case of Mill, directly from the book, he com-
pared Smith’s, Say’s, Skarbek’s, and Mill’s views on that subject. He now also paid
attention to an aspect that he had so far neglected: “of course the division of labour
had to be conceived as a major driving force in the production of wealth as soon as
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labour was recognised as the essence of private property” (309; 317). He concluded
that precisely in the fact that the division of labor was so closely connected to pri-
vate property “lies the twofold proof, on the one hand that human life required pri-
vate property for its realisation, and on the other hand that it now requires the super-
session of private property” (313; 321).
Following this, Marx wrote, on pages xxxix–xl, the “Preface.”25 Later on, he added,
on pages ix–xliii, further reflections on the relation of man’s passions to their sensu-
ous object and on the power of money, “the procurer between man’s need and the
object” (435; 323).26 Like those of the First Manuscript, the sixteen sheets of the Third
Manuscript and the sheet containing the summary of the last chapter of Hegel’s
Phänomenologie were sewn together only afterward.
As Émile Bottigelli aptly put it, the 1844 Manuscripts show “the boiling over of a
thought seeking to express itself” (1962, xxxviii). Except for the first parts of the First
Manuscript, where he ordered his material, and the last parts of the Third Manuscript,
where he used relevant books and exzerpte, Marx, in his manuscripts, so far as they
have survived, expounded his ideas rather spontaneously, just as they came into his
mind. Having said what, for the time being, he had to say, he resumed his reading,27
which, in turn, influenced his views and lead to a change of perspective, which again
manifested itself in a change of concepts. For instance, in the concluding part of the
First Manuscript, Marx used the concept of species (Gattung, Gattungs-). In his com-
ments on Prevost’s “Réflexions,” he used the term “social” (gesellschaftlich) (MEGA²

25. The “Preface” shows that Marx was still undecided as to the purpose of the “pamphlet” that he
planned to publish. On the one hand, this pamphlet, dealing with political economy, was to be the first
of a series developing “the critique of law, ethics, politics, etc.”; this would be followed by a work,
where Marx would try to show “the interrelationship of the separate parts” and also attempt “a critique
of the speculative elaboration of that material”. On the other hand, already this first pamphlet was to
comprise a concluding chapter containing “a critical discussion of Hegelian dialectic and philosophy
as a whole.” At this point, Marx again fell into fierce polemics with Bruno Bauer, which seems to in-
dicate that this pamphlet was to be the “small booklet” that he had mentioned in his letter to Feuerbach
some days before. However, he afterward deleted most of this polemic, announcing that he would dem-
onstrate “the negative dissolution of philosophy, i.e., the process of its decay . . . on another occasion”
(MEGA² I/2, 314, 317; MECW 3, 231–4).
26. In this final part, Marx quoted from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. The same passage was quoted
by his friend Georg Weber in the latter’s article “Das Geld,” published in the Paris Vorwärts! (28 August
1844).
27. Characteristically, Marx at that time did not follow the typical scholarly procedure—that is, the
consultation of books that contain information helpful for the solving of a specific problem. Rather, he
just continued the study of political economy in order to extend his still scarce knowledge of that field.
 44 Rojahn

IV/2, 482: “if the interests . . . of society and the individual are identical, or if the
individual’s interest . . . is social”; also, cf. 483).28 After that, he used this term more
and more frequently, calling, for example, the division of labor “the economic ex-
pression of the social character of labour within the estrangement” (MEGA² I/2, 309;
MECW 3, 317). At first, he may have done so without being aware of it. However,
soon afterward, in his letter to Feuerbach, he observed: “The unity of man with man,
which is based on real life differences between men, the concept of the human spe-
cies brought down from the heaven of abstraction to the real earth, what is this but
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the concept of society?” (MEGA² III/1, 63; MECW 3, 354.)29

As indicated above, Marx expounded his views not just in his manuscripts, but
also in his notebooks, at times interrupting the exzerpte by his own comments which,
in the course of his studies, considerably grew in length. While the exzerpte from
Say’s, Skarbek’s, Schüz’s, List’s, and Smith’s works contain only some brief criti-
cal remarks,30 those from MacCulloch’s, Ricardo’s, and Mill’s books include detailed
discussions of the author’s views. With regard to Mill’s Elements, Marx’s comments,
in his notebook, take up several pages.
Like Marx’s various manuscripts, the comments he made in his notebooks show
the progress of his thinking. For instance, he mainly criticized “the Ricardians”—
that is, Ricardo himself, Mill, and MacCulloch, for their ruthless “cynicism.” Ac-
cording to him, they were only interested in “the abstract movement of the material,
non-human property,” whithout caring about “real life,” “the individual real human
beings” (MEGA² IV/2, 480). When making exzerpte from Prévost’s “Réflexions,”
he observed that to “the Ricardians,” preoccupied with “the general law,” it did not
matter whether, by the working of this law, “thousands were ruined” (482). When
making exzerpte from Ricardo’s book, he critically assessed political economy’s
“laws” themselves: they were mere abstractions and, to give them any distinct mean-
ing, the economist “must consider reality to be accidental and the abstraction to be
something real” (405). When making exzerpte from Mill’s book, he developed this
view in more detail and concluded: “The true law of political economy is chance,
from whose movement we, the scientific men, isolate certain factors arbitrarily in
the form of laws” (447; MECW 3, 211).
Marx made the latter comments, when he had arrived at page 137, in section 8 of
chapter 3 of Mill’s book—that is, the third of the ten sections dealing with money. The

28. Marx previously used the term “social,” in this sense, only once: in his “On the Jewish Question” (MEGA²
I/2, 163; MECW 3, 168). In his “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law,” he employed
only one time the expression “social essence” (sociales Wesen) (45; 42). When making exzerpte from List’s
work, he observed that List presented the division of labor as agreement, ignoring the diametrically opposed
interests that are its result. “He contents himself with the word ‘social labour’” (MEGA² IV/2, 529).
29. As is well known, at a later time Marx dropped the term “estrangement” as well. This did not mean
that he came to interpret the phenomena of the “real world” in a different way. Even in the first parts of
the First Manuscript he described what he afterward called “estrangement,” without using the term. How-
ever, he came to realize that the concepts of species, estrangement, and so on belonged to a specific, German
philosophical discourse which was different from the discourse in which he now intended to participate.
30. The exzerpte from Say’s Traité, for instance, contain only one short comment made afterward, on
the right half of the page which Marx had left empty (see the facsimile in MEGA² IV/2, 317).
 MEGA Symposium 45

last parts of the Third Manuscript show that the role of money more and more occu-
pied his mind. Continuing his comments in his notebook, he switched to that subject.
With reference to section 7, “A particular commodity, as a medium, convenient for the
business of exchange,” he stated: “Mill very well expresses the essence of the matter
. . . by characterising money as the medium of exchange.” Subsequently, he gave an
exposition of his views on money, stressing that the essence of money “is not, in the
first place, that property is alienated in it, but that the mediating activity or movement,
the human, social act by which man’s products mutually complement one another, is
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estranged from man” (447; 212). In fact, Marx only in these comments, as well as in
the comments he made when he arrived at page 253 of Mill’s book, answered the ques-
tions he had asked in the concluding part of the First Manuscript: “how private prop-
erty . . . etc., how [the] whole estrangement is intrinsically connected with the money
system”; how man came “to alienate . . . his labour”; and what “truly human property,”
or truly human production, would be. As to truly human production, he declared: “Each
of us would have . . . affirmed himself and the other person . . . Our products would be
so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature” (465; 227–8).
The comments by which Marx interrupted his exzerpte from Mill’s Elements sur-
pass in clarity most of the expositions given in the First, Second, and Third Manu-
scripts. However, apart from this, their style does not differ significantly from those
expositions, and particularly the additions made in the Third Manuscript. It is im-
portant to note that Marx himself did not make any difference between those addi-
tions and his comments in his notebooks. For instance, when making his comments
on Mill, he at a certain point remarked: “How this value is more precisely determined
must be described elsewhere, as also how it becomes price” (455; 218). At this stage
of his work, it did not matter to him where he developed his ideas. In fact, the com-
ments by which he interrupted his exzerpte from Mill can be regarded as a sequel to
the Manuscripts of 1844, or even “the Fourth Manuscript.”
To summarize: Marx’s Manuscripts of 1844 must not be seen as a distinct entity,
isolated from his notebooks of that period. Their various parts do not form a prop-
erly thought out “work” based on preceding studies, but rather, reflect different stages
of the development of his ideas, which, proceeding at a rapid pace at that time, was
fueled by continued reading. Marx made his exzerpte but, at the same time, also wrote
down his thoughts. He did that alternately in his notebooks and his manuscripts. Only
the ensemble of these notes, seen as a sequence of exzerpte, comments, summaries,
reflections, and further exzerpte, gives an adequate idea of how his views developed.

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