The Sources of Marxian Theory

Abstract

It is commonly argued that much of Marx’s greatness lay in his powers of synthesis, in the way he was able to combine some of the best elements of previous social analysis into a powerful and compelling theory of the historical and social process. Lenin, for example, once remarked that the distinctiveness of Marx’s work lay in the hitherto unprecedented combination of German philosophy, French socialism and English political economy.1 This observation contains more than an element of truth, but like all shorthand expressions it oversimplifies. The point is that Marx did not simply confront three separate traditions which he then proceeded to weave together in his own work: English political economy, as I have pointed out, had already been appropriated and reworked by German idealist philosophy and had found an important place in Hegel’s writings (a fact which certainly did not escape the youthful Marx, who was quick to point out that despite his idealism Hegel’s standpoint was firmly rooted in modern political economy).2 Moses Hess, in turn, had already drawn the attention of the Young Hegelians to socialism as the practical realisation of the Feurbachian humanism which they had so eagerly embraced in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Hegelian system.3