Kommentar zu Hegel und Marx, Chapter 4
The Kreuznach Manuscript
In the summer of 1843, between the closure of the Rheinische Zeitung and his move to Paris, Marx sits in Kreuznach working through Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and writes a commentary on the paragraphs concerning the state. What these paragraphs accomplish within the work as a whole is developed in [[hegel-recht]] (optional); here it suffices to note what Marx criticizes in them. The manuscript remains unfinished and is not printed during his lifetime. It is nevertheless the most important text for the question at issue here: it is the only work in which Marx goes through Hegel paragraph by paragraph, rather than dispatching him in a preface.
Anyone who wants to know how Marx reads Hegel will find it here — in both directions. The text shows where Marx hits the mark, because he takes aim at real weaknesses. At the same time, it shows what escapes his reading, and it does so more clearly than the later, more abbreviated distancings, because over a hundred pages here make visible how the procedure works.
For the use this book has in mind, the manuscript matters for a third reason as well. Marx’s theory of the state begins here. What later recurs as an analysis of the state in its economic function has its origin in an objection to Hegel’s concept of the state — an objection that in 1843 is still formulated in philosophical terms.