> My memory is that it occurs in an early letter to Ruge, but my eyes
> are
> no good for browsing through texts to find it. I first encountered
> it in
> a filler in Monthly Review, which had a wonderful mistranslation of
> it,
> expressing part in contemporary slang: "It is not our thing to write
> recipes for the cookshops of the future." If my memory is accurate,
> that
> is only the first half of the senence, the second half being "bu" and
> the remark abut ruthless criticism of all that exists.
That text doesn't assume that "communism" can only be given content in the future or that there's no transhistorical objective "good" on which to base rational judgement of this content.
In fact, it claims criticism of "existing reality" can develop such content on such a basis.
It assumes that "the socialist principle" as "reason" - "the true reality" - is "immanent" in "existing reality" and can be "developed" through criticism of that reality.
"The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm>
It points to then existing ideas of communism as among the objects to be subjected to "ruthless critique" in this way.
These ideas are "only a special expression of the humanistic principle, an expression which is still infected by its antithesis - the private system." They are "only a special, one-sided realisation of the socialist principle."
The "humanistic principle" is "the true human being" and
"the whole socialist principle in its turn is only one aspect that concerns the reality of the true human being. But we have to pay just as much attention to the other aspect, to the theoretical existence of man, and therefore to make religion, science, etc., the object of our criticism."
"The reality of the true human being" is "reason" that
"has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal."
The "true human being" is the being of "reason", the "species-being" able, in both its "practical" and "theoretical existence", to know the "universal" and actualize it in a "good" life - a fully "free" life - in "the true realm of freedom".
The "true human being" is the "divine being" - "the unity of the universal and individual".
As in Hegel ("reason governs the world") and the Greek thought from which the idea derives, "reason" as "the true reality" is "immanent" in "existing reality" so
"The critic can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true reality as its obligation and its final goal."
This letter points to "the political state" as a key starting point for such critique ("On the Jewish Question" carries out such a critique).
"As far as real life is concerned, it is precisely the political state – in all its modern forms – which, even where it is not yet consciously imbued with socialist demands, contains the demands of reason. And the political state does not stop there. Everywhere it assumes that reason has been realised. But precisely because of that it everywhere becomes involved in the contradiction between its ideal function and its real prerequisites."
So "reason" is immanent in "the political state" and, through critique, can be developed from it. Such criticism is "raising the representative system from its political form to the universal form and ... bringing out the true significance underlying this system."
An earlier letter to Ruge repeats the argument made in The Eighteenth Brumaire that "despotism" expresses the "dehumanized" "individuality" characteristic of the social context where it's found. Movement beyond it has, therefore, as a prerequisite, the "integral development" of individuals to the degree required for such movement.
This is the movement of a real "subject" with a "goal", the actualization of "reason". <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm>
"The monarchical principle in general is the despised, the despicable, the dehumanised man; and Montesquieu was quite wrong to allege that it is honour [Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois]. He gets out of the difficulty by distinguishing between monarchy, despotism and tyranny. But those are names for one and the same concept, and at most they denote differences in customs though the principle remains the same. Where the monarchical principle has a majority behind it, human beings constitute the minority; where the monarchical principle arouses no doubts, there human beings do not exist at all."
This is why "despotism" can't be a instrument of such movement and must, Marx claims, end in "brutality".
"That is the unsuccessful attempt [by Frederick William IV] to abolish the philistine state on its own basis; the result has been to make it evident to the whole world that for despotism brutality is a necessity and humanity an impossibility. A brutal relationship can only he maintained by means of brutality."
Ted