Understanding Karl Marx's Critique of Hegel's “Philosophy of Right”

Abstract

Rereading the young Karl Marx's “Critique of Hegel's ‘Philosophy of Right'” in light of a broader range of scholarship enables a more accurate understanding of the historical and intellectual significance of this work. Shlomo Avineri's pioneering treatment is deficient in important respects. A return to Marx's and Hegel's texts may help determine more exactly what Marx was trying to figure out through Hegel, and why he saw the need to move beyond Hegel to accomplish it. In Marx's mature writings, as Postone has shown, Marx's concept of “capital” purports to identify the real basis of Hegelian Geist. Recognizing this enables an analysis that provides a fuller view of both young and mature Marx as they relate to Hegel and to one another than is typical in the literature, which often either divides Marx into young-humanist and old-economist, or else inter-collapses old and young Marx too readily.