path: root/content/marx/economic-and-philosophic-manuscripts/guide.htm.md

---
title: "Study Guide for Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844"
date: 2022-11-18
draft: true
---

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<img src="../../../photo/lifeandwork/sketches/study44.jpg" border="1" align="left" hspace="10" vspace="2" alt="Engels shows manuscript to Marx">
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# Study Guide for
# Marx’s
# *Economic &amp; Philosophical*
# *Manuscripts of 1844*</td>
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<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 1.</span> [Preface](#TODO;preface.htm#Preface)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Hegel](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/h/e.htm#hegel), [Weitling](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/w/e.htm#weitling-wilhelm), [Feuerbach](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/f/e.htm#feuerbach-ludwig). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Law](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#law), [Ethics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/t.htm#ethics), [Politics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#politics), [Utopia](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/t.htm#utopia), [Abstract](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/b.htm#abstract), [Critique](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/r.htm#critique), [Dialectics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#dialectics), [Positive](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#positive), [Mediation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm#mediation), [Self-Consciousness](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#self-consciousness). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. Marx accuses certain “critical theologians” of either setting out from certain authoritative presuppositions, or doubting these presuppositions, *abstracting* from them. What does Marx mean by this?

2. What do you think Marx means by “criticism”?

</span>

### First Manuscript
<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 2.</span> [Wages of Labour](#TODO;wages.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Adam Smith](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/s/m.htm#smith-adam). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Wages](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/w/a.htm#wages), [Proletariat](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#proletariat), [Commodity](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#commodity), [Market](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#market), [Division of Labour](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#division-labour), [Political Economy](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#political-economy), [Business Cycle](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/b/u.htm#business-cycle). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What is a proletarian?

2. Where does this idea of wages as the cost of living of a worker come from?

3. What is meant by “abstract labour”?

4. How would you sum up Marx's attitude to the political economists?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 3.</span> [Profit of Capital](#TODO;capital.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [David Ricardo](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/r/i.htm#ricardo-david). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Capital](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#capital), [Private Property](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#private-property), [Concentration of Capital](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#concentration-capital), [Over-production and Under-consumption](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/v.htm#overproduction). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What does it mean: “Capital is thus the governing power over labour and its products” and “the governing power of capital over the capitalist himself”?

2. What do you make of Marx's criticism of business secrecy, adulteration of products, profiting from poverty, monopoly pricing and people whose interests are opposed to that of the public?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 4.</span> [Rent of Land](#TODO;rent.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Physiocrats](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/q/u.htm#quesnay-francois). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Rent](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#rent), [Wealth](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/w/e.htm#wealth), [Feudal Society](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/e.htm#feudal-society), . </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What are the two ways that Marx sees the downfall of landed property?

2. How does Marx connect the fate of feudalism to the fate of landed property?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 5.</span> [Estranged Labour](#TODO;labour.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Proudhon](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/p/r.htm#proudhon), </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Chance and Necessity](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/h.htm#chance), [Exchange](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/x.htm#exchange), [Objectification](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#objectification), [Alienation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm#alienation), [Labour](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#labour), [Nature](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/a.htm#nature), [Means and Ends](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm#means), [Wage Labour](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/w/a.htm#wage-labour), [Spiritual](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/p.htm#spiritual), [Genus (Species)](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/e.htm#genus), [Essence](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/s.htm#essence), [Consciousness](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#consciousness), [Economics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/c.htm#economics), [Being](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/b/e.htm#being), [God](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/o.htm#god), [Reality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#reality), [Cause and Effect](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#causality), [Property](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#property), [Practice and Theory](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#practice). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. “Political economy proceeds from the fact of private property. It does not explain it.” Can you justofy this statement?

2. Can you think of an example of explaining things “on some imaginary primordial condition”? and what has this to do with the Fall of Man? Isn't the rupture of tribal society into classes an example of this?

3. *Is* there a necessary relation between division of labour and exchange?

4. Why is it that a worker becomes poorer, the more welath he produces?

5. Isn't the objectification of human powers a *good thing*, something essential to developing an identity and for people to gain the recognition of other people? Why and how does *objectification* become *alienation*?

6. What does Marx mean by “Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labour by ignoring the *direct* relationship between the worker (labour) and production”?

7. Why is a worker alienated, not just from the product of her labour, but from herself? And is this true of *all* workers?

8. How does Marx prove the alienation of man from Nature?

9. In the context of this chapter, what do you make of the struggle for a shorter working week? And what about wage increaases?

10. What does it mean: “Consciousness, which man has from his species ...”?

11. What point is Marx making about private property when he says: “just as the gods were originally not the cause but the effect of the confusion in men's minds”?

12. Why does emancipation of the working class mean “universal human emancipation”?

13. What concretely does Marx mean by the *practical* attiutude of the workers, and the *theoretical* attitude of the non-worker? What then are “theory” and “practice”?

</span>

### Second Manuscript
<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 6.</span> [Antithesis of Capital and Labour. Landed Property and Capital](#TODO;second.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [External and Externalisation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/x.htm#externalisation), [Labour-power](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#labour-power), [Consumer](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#consumer), [Bourgeoisie](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/b/o.htm#bourgeoisie). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. In what way does Marx describe a progressive role for capital in this chapter?

2. What does Marx mean by saying: “The capitalist is completely sacrificed. He falls into the working class, whilst the worker (but only exceptionally) becomes a capitalist”?

</span>

### Third Manuscript
<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 7.</span> [Private Property and Labour](#TODO;third.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Subjective](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/u.htm#subjective), [Substance](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/u.htm#substance), [Labour Theory of Value](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#labour-theory-value), [Particular](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/a.htm#particular), [Science](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/c.htm#science). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. How would you sum up what Marx is saying about Adam Smith's Labour Theory of Value?

2. Can you justify the Physiocrats' argument that agricultural labour is the *only* productive labour? and how do the political economists refute the Physiocrats?

3. “These later economists also advance in a positive sense constantly and consciously further than their predecessors in their estrangement from man. They do so, however, only because their science develops more consistently and truthfully”. If you agree with what Marx is saying about the political economists, what would you make of *modern* economic science?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 8.</span> [Private Property and Communism](#TODO;comm.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Fourier](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/f/o.htm#fourier), [Saint-Simon](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/s/a.htm#st-simon). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Contradiction](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#contradiction), [Communism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#communism), [Objectivity](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#objectivity), [Matter](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#matter), [Universal](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/u/n.htm#universal), [Negation of the Negation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/e.htm#negation-of-negation), [Production and Consumption](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#production), [Community](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#community), [Humanism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/h/u.htm#humanism), [Naturalism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/a.htm#naturalism), [State](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/t.htm#state), [Democracy](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/e.htm#democracy), [Freedom](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/r.htm#freedom), [Genetic Exposition](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/e.htm#genetic), [Atheism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/t.htm#atheism), [Individualism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/n.htm#individualism), [Society](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/o.htm#society), [Determinate](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/e.htm#determinate), [Empiricism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/m.htm#empiricism), [Anthropologism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/n.htm#anthropologism), [Poverty](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#poverty), [Genus](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/e.htm#genus), [God](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/g/o.htm#god). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What does Marx mean by the antithesis between property and lack of property being established by private property itself?

2. What criticisms does he make of the abolition of capital "as such", and of "levelling down" of private property?

3. What are the *three forms* of communism Marx enumerates?

4. Marx takes the relation of man to woman as the *most natural* human relation, and makes a comparison of the liberation of women from marriage with the crude abolition of private property. How would you explain this?

5. “Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism” – what does this mean?

6. What is meant by communism seeking proof for itself in the past? and what's the problem with this?

7. “The entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private property – more precisely, in that of the economy” – how can this be reconciled with the very *humanist* statements and attacks on political economy made earlier?

8. Is Marx an atheist?

9. “When I am active scientifically, etc. – an activity which I can seldom perform in direct community with others – then my activity is social, because I perform it as a man” How can this statement be justified?

10. “The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians” What does this mean?

11. “Subjectivity and objectivity, spirituality and materiality, activity and suffering, lose their antithetical character” – Can you prove this in each specific case?

12. What sort of psychology would it be that really built on the idea of industry as “perceptibly existing human psychology”?

13. “Man is the immediate object of natural science” Can you justify this, or is Marx exaggerating?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 9.</span> [Human Needs &amp; Division of Labour Under Private Property](#TODO;needs.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Mode of Production](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/o.htm#mode-production), [Poverty](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#poverty), [Customer](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/u.htm#customer), [Quantity and Quality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/q/u.htm#quantity), [Production and Consumption](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#production), [Ethics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/t.htm#ethics), [Virtue](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/v/i.htm#virtue), [Religion](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#religion), [Appearance](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/p.htm#appearance), [Productive Labour](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#productive-labour), [Mechanisation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm#mechanisation), [Equality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/q.htm#equality), [Means and Ends](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm#means), [Civil Society](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/i.htm#civil-society), [Language](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#language), [Distribution and Exchange](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#distribution). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. How does the reversal take place: from people manipulating each other by ceating new needs, to the enrichment of human nature through the “wealth of human needs”?

2. “The need for money is therefore the true need” – is this true?

3. The paragraph about selling my friends to the Morrocans: marx counterposes ethics to economics to religion, etc. What is the alternative? Is there a common yarstick?

4. “The extent to which the solution of theoretical riddles is the task of practice and effected through practice, the extent to which true practice is the condition of a real and positive theory” – can you give examples demonstrating this?

5. What does Marx mean by communism as the negation of negation through the intermediary of private property?

6. What is estrangement?

7. What is the relation between division of labour and exchange, between division of labour and human capacities, between division of labour and human needs? and private property?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 10.</span> [The Power Of Money](#TODO;power.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Ontology](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/n.htm#ontology), [Being](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/b/e.htm#being), [Object and Subject](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#object), [Possession](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#possession), [Money](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/o.htm#money). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What does Marx mean by the contrast between human feelings in the *ontological* sense and the *anthropological* sense?

2. ... and how does this lead to “private property ... the existence of essential objects for man”

3. “Money is for me the other person”, “the visible divinity”?

4. “money is the general distorting of individualities”?

5. “Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc.” – but surely such a society would be reduced to barter? and step backward! What is Marx's vision here?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
<span style="color: #000080; background: #cccccc;"> Section 11.</span> [Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole](#TODO;hegel.htm)

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">People:</span> <span class="date"> [Ludwig Feuerbach](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/f/e.htm#feuerbach-ludwig). [Bruno Bauer](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/b/a.htm#bauer-bruno), [Max Stirner](https://marxists.org/glossary/people/s/t.htm#stirner-max), [Young Hegelians](https://marxists.org/glossary/orgs/y/o.htm#young-hegelians), </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #aa0000;">Terms:</span> <span class="date"> [Phenomenology](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/h.htm#phenomenology), [Logic](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/o.htm#logic), [Dialectics](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/i.htm#dialectics), [Form and Content](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/o.htm#form), [Mass](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/a.htm#mass), [Dogmatism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/d/o.htm#dogmatism), [Scepticism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/c.htm#sceptics), [Speculative Logic](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/p.htm#speculative), [Consciousness](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/o.htm#consciousness), [Self-Consciousness](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#self-consciousness), [Reason](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#reason), [Mind](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/i.htm#mind), [Absolute Idea](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/b.htm#absolute-idea), [Reality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#reality), [Anthropologism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/n.htm#anthropologism), [In-itself](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/n.htm#in-itself), [For itself](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/o.htm#for-itself), [For Us](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/f/o.htm#for-us), [Semblance](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/e.htm#semblance), [Opposition](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/p.htm#opposition), [Objectification](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#objectification), [Sublation (Supersession)](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/u.htm#sublation), [Negation](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/e.htm#negation), [Absolute](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/b.htm#absolute), [Objectivity](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/o/b.htm#objectivity), [Phenomenon (Manifestation)](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/h.htm#phenomenon), [Thing](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/h.htm#thing), [Naturalism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/a.htm#naturalism), [Positivism](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/o.htm#positivism), [Law](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/a.htm#law), [Morality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/o.htm#morality), [Measure](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/m/e.htm#measure), [Actuality](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/c.htm#actuality), [Notion (Concept)](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/n/o.htm#notion), [Subject](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/s/u.htm#subject), [Intuition](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/n.htm#intuition), [Transition](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/r.htm#transition), [Reflection](https://marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm#reflection). </span>

<span class="term" style="color: #006600;">Questions for discussion:</span>

<span class="date"> 1. What contribution did Hegel make to criticism?

2. For what does Marx give credit to Feuerbach in his criticism of Hegel?

3. What does Marx mean by: “The philosopher takes himself as the criterion of the estranged world”

4. In the early Hegel Marx sees: “The appropriation of man's essential powers, which have become objects ... only an appropriation occurring in consciousness” while “the equally uncritical idealism of Hegel's later works - that philosophic dissolution and restoration of the existing empirical world”. Can you explain what is meant by these two criticisms?

5. What does Marx refer to with “the vindication of the objective world for man - for example, the realisation that ... that religion, wealth, etc., are but the estranged world of human objectification”?

6. Explain: “Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political economy”

7. Marx says that for Hegel the subject is not *real man*. Is it possible to make the same criticism of modern social and natural science?

8. “Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both” What do you make of this statement? Doesn't this fly in the face of Marxism?

9. In what way does Marx reject the proposition of “reason is at home in unreason”?

10. “Only through the supersession of this mediation - which is itself, however, a necessary premise - does positively self-deriving humanism, positive humanism, come into being” Exaplin.

11. If the bearer is not *God, Asbsolute Spirit* who or what is? and what is this about subject and predicate?

12. What is meant by saying “Nature is Nothing”?

13. On the basis of everything you have read here, how would explain the extent to which Marx subsequently dedicated himself to the study of political economy?

</span>

<!-- class: index -->
Commentaries on the 1844 Manuscripts

<!-- class: index -->
<span class="date"> [Freedom and Fetishism](#TODO;../../../../../reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/berman1.htm), Marshall Berman, 1963

[Marx's Theory of Alienation](#TODO;../../../../meszaros/works/alien/index.htm), Istvan Meszaros, 1970

[Marx's Ethic of Freedom](#TODO;../../../../../reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/brenkert.htm), George Brenkert, 1983

[The Standpoint of Socialised Humanity](#TODO;../../../../../reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/millenni/smith3.htm), Cyril Smith, 1998

[Preface from Progress Publishers](#TODO;../../cw/volume03/preface.htm)

</span>

<!-- class: transcriber -->
Andy Blunden, 2002