[lbo-talk] Question on a Work by Marx

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Fri Apr 22 09:30:50 PDT 2005


Paul : I think you are thinking of The German Ideology.

Stirner was one of the most promenent of the Young Hegalians. Coming towards the end of that movement, Stirner takes the movement to its logical extreme in "The Ego and His Own". It is an anarcho-existentialist position: all movements, including socialism, religion etc are oppressive and you should free yourself through indulgence and egoism. Some people feel Stirner influenced early Sartre. Others see a link to Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze.

^^^^^

CB: Yea, last time I studied _The German Ideology_ I thought "postmods/poststructuralists are Neo- Young Hegelians." Some of Marx and Engels' critiques there can be used today. Marxism has some remarkable freshness given its age.

In one of the intros or prefaces to _The German Ideology_ , Engels says that it was not published and served as socalled self-clarification for Marx and Engels. Engels famous comment is that they "left it to the criticism of the knawing mice" in an attic in Paris or something. The comment might be in the preface to something else like _Ludwig Feuerbach_., but he definitely says it. The G Ideology, something like 700 or 800 pages long ,was not published during their lifetime. As one poster said, the International book version is abridged. I think you can get the whole thing (for sleeping pills) in Marx and Engels Collected Works.

I think the "Holy Family" is more than just Saint Max , because it's a family, so it's several young hegelians.



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