Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Right

A Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Right

Introduction


by Karl Marx

_Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher_
February, 1844


For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed,
and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.

The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly
oratio pro aris et focis ["speech for the altars and hearths"] has been
refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the
fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer
feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man
["Unmensch"], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion
does not make man.

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who
has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself
again. But, _man_ is no abstract being squatting outside the world.
Man is _the world of man_ -- state, society. This state and this
society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the
world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general
theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular
form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction,
its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and
justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that
world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real
suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of
the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the _illusory_ happiness of the people is
the demand for their _real_ happiness. To call on them to give up their
illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a
condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is,
therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order
that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or
consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the
living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he
will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded
his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around
himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which
revolves around man as long as he does not revol

ve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has
vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate
task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask
self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human
self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven
turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the
criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of
politics.

The following exposition [a full-scale critical study of Hegel's
_Philosophy of Right_ was supposed to follow this introduction] -- a
contribution to this undertaking -- concerns itself not directly with
the original but with a copy, with the German _philosophy_ of the state
and of law. The only reason for this is that it is concerned with
Germany.

If we were to begin with the German status quo itself, the result --
even if we were to do it in the only appropriate way, i.e., negatively
-- would still be an anachronism. Even the negation of our present
political situation is a dusty fact in the historical junk room of
modern nations. If I negate the situation in Germany in 1843, then
according to the French calendar I have barely reached 1789, much less
the vital centre of our present age.

Indeed, German history prides itself on having travelled a road which no
other nation in the whole of history has ever travelled before, or ever
will again. We have shared the restorations of modern nations without
ever having shared their revolutions. We have been restored, firstly,
because other nations dared to make revolutions, and, secondly, because
other nations suffered counter-revolutions; open the one hand, because
our masters were afraid, and, on the other, because they were not
afraid. With our shepherds to the fore, we only once kept company with
freedom, on the day of its internment.

One school of thought that legitimizes the infamy of today with the
infamy of yesterday, a school that stigmatizes every cry of the serf
against the knout as mere rebelliousness once the knout has aged a
little and acquired a hereditary significance and a history, a school to
which history shows nothing but its a posteriori, as did the God of
Israel to his servant Moses, the historical school of law -- this school
would have invented German history were it not itself an invention of
that history. A Shylock, but a cringing Shylock, that swears by its
bond, its historical bond, its Christian-Germanic bond, for every pound
of flesh cut from the heart of the people.

Good-natured enthusiasts, Germanomaniacs by extraction and free-thinkers
by reflexion, on the contrary, seek our history of freedom beyond our
history in the ancient Teutonic forests. But, what difference is there
between the history of our freedom and the history of the boar's freedom
if it can be found only in the forests? Besides, it is c

ommon knowledge
that the forest echoes back what you shout into it. So peace to the
ancient Teutonic forests!

War on the German state of affairs! By all means! They are below the
level of history, they are beneath any criticism, but they are still an
object of criticism like the criminal who is below the level of humanity
but still an object for the executioner. In the struggle against that
state of affairs, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of
passion. It is not a lancet, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy,
which it wants not to refute but to exterminate. For the spirit of that
state of affairs is refuted. In itself, it is no object worthy of
thought, it is an existence which is as despicable as it is despised.
Criticism does not need to make things clear to itself as regards this
object, for it has already settled accounts with it. It no longer
assumes the quality of an end-in-itself, but only of a means. Its
essential pathos is _indignation_, its essential work is _denunciation_.

It is a case of describing the dull reciprocal pressure of all social
spheres one on another, a general inactive ill-humor, a limitedness
which recognizes itself as much as it mistakes itself, within the frame
of government system which, living on the preservation of all
wretchedness, is itself nothing but wretchedness in office.

What a sight! This infinitely proceeding division of society into the
most manifold races opposed to one another by petty antipathies, uneasy
consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and which, precisely because of
their reciprocal ambiguous and distrustful attitude, are all, without
exception although with various formalities, treated by their rulers as
conceded existences. And they must recognize and acknowledge as a
concession of heaven the very fact that they are mastered, ruled,
possessed! And, on the other side, are the rulers themselves, whose
greatness is in inverse proportion to their number!

Criticism dealing with this content is criticism in a hand-to-hand
fight, and in such a fight the point is not whether the opponent is a
noble, equal, interesting opponent, the point is to _strike_ him. The
point is not to let the Germans have a minute for self-deception and
resignation. The actual pressure must be made more pressing by adding
to it consciousness of pressure, the shame must be made more shameful by
publicizing it. Every sphere of German society must be shown as the
partie honteuse of German society: these petrified relations must be
forced to dance by singing their own tune to them! The people must be
taught to be _terrified_ at itself in order to give it _courage_. This
will be fulfilling an imperative need of the German nation, and the
needs of the nations are in themselves the ultimate reason for their
satisfaction.

This struggle against the limited content of the German status quo
cannot be without interest even for the modern nations, f

or the German
status quo is the open completion of the ancien regime and the ancien
regime is the concealed deficiency of the modern state. The struggle
against the German political present is the struggle against the past of
the modern nations, and they are still burdened with reminders of that
past. It is instructive for them to see the ancien regime, which has
been through its tragedy with them, playing its comedy as a German
revenant. Tragic indeed was the pre-existing power of the world, and
freedom, on the other hand, was a personal notion; in short, as long as
it believed and had to believe in its own justification. As long as the
ancien regime, as an existing world order, struggled against a world
that was only coming into being, there was on its side a historical
error, not a personal one. That is why its downfall was tragic.

On the other hand, the present German regime, an anachronism, a flagrant
contradiction of generally recognized axioms, the nothingness of the
ancien regime exhibited to the world, only imagines that it believes in
itself and demands that the world should imagine the same thing. If it
believed in its own essence, would it try to hide that essence under the
semblance of an alien essence and seek refuge in hypocrisy and sophism?
The modern ancien regime is rather only the comedian of a world order
whose _true heroes_ are dead. History is thorough and goes through many
phases when carrying an old form to the grave. The last phases of a
world-historical form is its comedy. The gods of Greece, already
tragically wounded to death in Aeschylus's tragedy _Prometheus Bound_,
had to re-die a comic death in Lucian's _Dialogues_. Why this course of
history? So that humanity should part with its past cheerfully. This
cheerful historical destiny is what we vindicate for the political
authorities of Germany.

Meanwhile, once _modern_ politico-social reality itself is subjected to
criticism, once criticism rises to truly human problems, it finds itself
outside the German status quo, or else it would reach out for its object
_below_ its object. An example. The relation of industry, of the world
of wealth generally, to the political world is one of the major problems
of modern times. In what form is this problem beginning to engage the
attention of the Germans? In the form of protective duties, of the
prohibitive system, or national economy. Germanomania has passed out of
man into matter,, and thus one morning our cotton barons and iron heroes
saw themselves turned into patriots. People are, therefore, beginning
in Germany to acknowledge the sovereignty of monopoly on the inside
through lending it _sovereignty on the outside_. People are, therefore,
now about to begin, in Germany, what people in France and England are
about to end. The old corrupt condition against which these countries
are revolting in theory, and which they only bear as one bears chains,
is greeted in

Germany as the dawn of a beautiful future which still
hardly dares to pass from _crafty_ theory to the most ruthless practice.
Whereas the problem in France and England is: Political economy, or the
rule of society over wealth; in Germany, it is: National economy, or the
mastery of private property over nationality. In France and England,
then, it is a case of abolishing monopoly that has proceeded to its last
consequences; in Germany, it is a case of proceeding to the last
consequences of monopoly. There is an adequate example of the _German_
form of modern problems, an example of how our history, like a clumsy
recruit, still has to do extra drill on things that are old and
hackneyed in history.

If, therefore, the _whole_ German development did not exceed the German
_political_ development, a German could at the most have the share in
the problems-of-the-present that a Russian has. But, when the separate
individual is not bound by the limitations of the nation, the nation as
a whole is still less liberated by the liberation of one individual.
The fact that Greece had a Scythian among its philosophers did not help
the Scythians to make a single step towards Greek culture. [An allusion
to Anacharsis.]

Luckily, we Germans are not Scythians.

As the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagination, in
_mythology_, so we Germans have gone through our post-history in
thought, in _philosophy_. We are philosophical contemporaries of the
present without being its historical contemporaries. German philosophy
is the _ideal prolongation_ of German history. If therefore, instead of
of the oeuvres incompletes of our real history, we criticize the oeuvres
posthumes of our ideal history, philosophy, our criticism is in the
midst of the questions of which the present says: that is the question.
What, in progressive nations, is a practical break with modern state
conditions, is, in Germany, where even those conditions do not yet
exist, at first a critical break with the philosophical reflexion of
those conditions.

German philosophy of right and state is the only _German history_ which
is al pari ["on a level"] with the _official_ modern present. The
German nation must therefore join this, its dream-history, to its
present conditions and subject to criticism not only these existing
conditions, but at the same time their abstract continuation. Its
future cannot be limited either to the immediate negation of its real
conditions of state and right, or to the immediate implementation of its
ideal state and right conditions, for it has the immediate negation of
its real conditions in its ideal conditions, and it has almost outlived
the immediate implementation of its ideal conditions in the
contemplation of neighboring nations.

Hence, it is with good reason that the _practical_ political part in
Germany demands the _negation of philosophy_.

It is wrong, not in its demand but in stopp

ing at the demand, which it
neither seriously implements nor can implement. It believes that it
implements that negation by turning its back to philosophy and its head
away from it and muttering a few trite and angry phrases about it.
Owing to the limitation of its outlook, it does not include philosophy
in the circle of _German_ reality or it even fancies it is _beneath_
German practice and the theories that serve it. You demand that real
life embryos be made the starting-point, but you forget that the real
life embryo of the German nation has grown so far only inside its
_cranium_. In a word -- You cannot abolish philosophy without making it
a reality.

The same mistake, but with the factors reversed, was made by the
_theoretical_ party originating from philosophy.

In the present struggle it saw only the critical struggle of philosophy
against the German world; it did not give a thought to the fact that
philosophy up to the present itself belongs to this world and is its
completion, although an ideal one. Critical towards its counterpart, it
was uncritical towards itself when, proceeding from the premises of
philosophy, it either stopped at the results given by philosophy or
passed off demands and results from somewhere else as immediate demands
and results of philosophy -- although these, provided they are
justified, can be obtained only by the negation of philosophy up to the
present, of philosophy as such. We reserve ourselves the right to a
more detailed description of this section: It thought it could make
philosophy a reality without abolishing it.

The criticism of the German philosophy of state and right, which
attained its most consistent, richest, and last formulation through
Hegel, is both a critical analysis of the modern state and of the
reality connected with it, and the resolute negation of the whole manner
of the German consciousness in politics and right as practiced hereto,
the most distinguished, most universal expression of which, raised to
the level of science, is the speculative philosophy of right itself. If
the speculative philosophy of right, that abstract extravagant thinking
on the modern state, the reality of which remains a thing of the beyond,
if only beyond the Rhine, was possible only in Germany, inversely the
German thought-image of the modern state which makes abstraction of
_real man_ was possible only because and insofar as the modern state
itself makes abstraction of _real man_, or satisfies the whole of man
only in imagination. In politics, the Germans _thought_ what other
nations _did_. Germany was their theoretical conscience. The
abstraction and presumption of its thought was always in step with the
one-sidedness and lowliness of its reality. If, therefore, the status
quo of German statehood expresses the completion of the ancien regime,
the completion of the thorn in the flesh of the modern state, the status
quo of German state science expres

ses the incompletion of the modern
state, the defectiveness of its flesh itself.

Already as the resolute opponent of the previous form of German
political consciousness the criticism of speculative philosophy of right
strays, not into itself, but into problems which there is only one means
of solving -- practice.

It is asked: can Germany attain a practice a la hauteur des principles
-- i.e., a revolution which will raises it not only to the _official
level_ of modern nations, but to the _height of humanity_ which will be
the near future of those nations?

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the
weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory
also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.
Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad
hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical.
To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the
root is man himself. The evident proof of the radicalism of German
theory, and hence of its practical energy, is that is proceeds from a
resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends
with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man -- hence, with
the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a
debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence, relations which cannot
be better described than by the cry of a Frenchman when it was planned
to introduce a tax on dogs: Poor dogs! They want to treat you as human
beings!

Even historically, theoretical emancipation has specific practical
significance for Germany. For Germany's revolutionary past is
theoretical, it is the Reformation. As the revolution then began in the
brain of the monk, so now it begins in the brain of the philosopher.

Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by
bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he
restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because
he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity
because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from
chains because he enchained the heart.

But, if Protestantism was not the true solution of the problem, it was
at least the true setting of it. It was no longer a case of the
layman's struggle against the priest _outside_ himself but of his
struggle against his own priest _inside_ himself, his priestly nature.
And if the Protestant transformation of the German layman into priests
emancipated the lay popes, the princes, with the whole of their priestly
clique, the privileged and philistines, the philosophical transformation
of priestly Germans into men will emancipate the people. But,
secularization will not stop at the confiscation of church estates set
in motion mainly by hypocritical Prussia any more than emancipation
stops at princes. The Peasa

nt War, the most radical fact of German
history, came to grief because of theology. Today, when theology itself
has come to grief, the most unfree fact of German history, our status
quo, will be shattered against philosophy. On the eve of the
Reformation, official Germany was the most unconditional slave of Rome.
On the eve of its revolution, it is the unconditional slave of less than
Rome, of Prussia and Austria, of country junkers and philistines.

Meanwhile, a major difficult seems to stand in the way of a _radical_
German revolution.

For revolutions require a passive element, a material basis. Theory is
fulfilled in a people only insofar as it is the fulfilment of the needs
of that people. But will the monstrous discrepancy between the demands
of German thought and the answers of German reality find a corresponding
discrepancy between civil society and the state, and between civil
society and itself? Will the theoretical needs be immediate practical
needs? It is not enough for thought to strive for realization, reality
must itself strive towards thought.

But Germany did not rise to the intermediary stage of political
emancipation at the same time as the modern nations. It has not yet
reached in practice the stages which it has surpassed in theory. How
can it do a somersault, not only over its own limitations, but at the
same time over the limitations of the modern nations, over limitations
which it must in reality feel and strive for as for emancipation from
its real limitations? Only a revolution of radical needs can be a
radical revolution and it seems that precisely the preconditions and
ground for such needs are lacking.

If Germany has accompanied the development of the modern nations only
with the abstract activity of thought without taking an effective share
in the real struggle of that development, it has, on the other hand,
shared the sufferings of that development, without sharing in its
enjoyment, or its partial satisfaction. To the abstract activity on the
one hand corresponds the abstract suffering on the other. That is why
Germany will one day find itself on the level of European decadence
before ever having been on the level of European emancipation. It will
be comparable to a fetish worshipper pining away with the diseases of
Christianity.

If we now consider the German governments, we find that because of the
circumstances of the time, because of Germany's condition, because of
the standpoint of German education, and, finally, under the impulse of
its own fortunate instinct, they are driven to combine the civilized
shortcomings of the modern state world, the advantages of which we do
not enjoy, with the barbaric deficiencies of the ancien regime, which we
enjoy in full; hence, Germany must share more and more, if not in the
reasonableness, at least in the unreasonableness of those state
formations which are beyond the bounds of its status quo. Is there in
the

world, for example, a country which shares so naively in all the
illusions of constitutional statehood without sharing in its realities
as so-called constitutional Germany? And was it not perforce the notion
of a German government to combine the tortures of censorship with the
tortures of the French September laws [1835 anti-press laws] which
provide for freedom of the press? As you could find the gods of all
nations in the Roman Pantheon, so you will find in the Germans' Holy
Roman Empire all the sins of all state forms. That this eclecticism
will reach a so far unprecedented height is guaranteed in particular by
the political-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king [Frederick William
IV] who intended to play all the roles of monarchy, whether feudal or
democratic, if not in the person of the people, at least in his own
person, and if not for the people, at least for himself. Germany, as
the deficiency of the political present constituted a world of its own,
will not be able to throw down the specific German limitations without
throwing down the general limitation of the political present.

It is not the radical revolution, not the general human emancipation
which is a utopian dream for Germany, but rather the partial, the merely
political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the
house standing. On what is a partial, a merely political revolution
based? On part of civil society emancipating itself and attaining
general domination; on a definite class, proceeding from its particular
situation; undertaking the general emancipation of society. This class
emancipates the whole of society, but only provided the whole of society
is in the same situation as this class -- e.g., possesses money and
education or can acquire them at will.

No class of civil society can play this role without arousing a moment
of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a moment in which it
fraternizes and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it
and is perceived and acknowledged as its general representative, a
moment in which its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of
society itself, a moment in which it is truly the social head and the
social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a
particular class vindicate for itself general domination. For the
storming of this emancipatory position, and hence for the political
exploitation of all sections of society in the interests of its own
section, revolutionary energy and spiritual self-feeling alone are not
sufficient. For the revolution of a nation, and the emancipation of a
particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be
acknowledged as the estate of the whole society, all the defects of
society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular
estate must be the estate of the general stumbling-block, the
incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere

must
be recognized as the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that
liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one
estate to be par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate
must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression. The negative
general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy
determined the positive general significance of the nearest neighboring
and opposed class of the bourgeoisie.

But no particular class in Germany has the constituency, the
penetration, the courage, or the ruthlessness that could mark it out as
the negative representative of society. No more has any estate the
breadth of soul that identifies itself, even for a moment, with the soul
of the nation, the geniality that inspires material might to political
violence, or that revolutionary daring which flings at the adversary the
defiant words: I am nothing but I must be everything. The main stem of
German morals and honesty, of the classes as well as of individuals, is
rather that modest egoism which asserts it limitedness and allows it to
be asserted against itself. The relation of the various sections of
German society is therefore not dramatic but epic. Each of them begins
to be aware of itself and begins to camp beside the others with all its
particular claims not as soon as it is oppressed, but as soon as the
circumstances of the time relations, without the section's own
participation, creates a social substratum on which it can in turn exert
pressure. Even the moral self-feeling of the German middle class rests
only on the consciousness that it is the common representative of the
philistine mediocrity of all the other classes. It is therefore not
only the German kinds who accede to the throne mal a propos, it is every
section of civil society which goes through a defeat before it
celebrates victory and develops its own limitations before it overcomes
the limitations facing it, asserts its narrow-hearted essence before it
has been able to assert its magnanimous essence; thus the very
opportunity of a great role has passed away before it is to hand, and
every class, once it begins the struggle against the class opposed to
it, is involved in the struggle against the class below it. Hence, the
higher nobility is struggling against the monarchy, the bureaucrat
against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the
proletariat is already beginning to find itself struggling against the
bourgeoisie. The middle class hardly dares to grasp the thought of
emancipation from its own standpoint when the development of the social
conditions and the progress of political theory already declare that
standpoint antiquated or at least problematic.

In France, it is enough for somebody to be something for him to want to
be everything; in Germany, nobody can be anything if he is not prepared
to renounce everything. In France, partial emancipation is the bas

is of
universal emancipation; in Germany, universal emancipation is the
conditio sine qua non of any partial emancipation. In France, it is the
reality of gradual liberation that must give birth to complete freedom,
in Germany, the impossibility of gradual liberation. In France, every
class of the nation is a _political idealist_ and becomes aware of
itself at first not as a particular class but as a representative of
social requirements generally. The role of emancipator therefore passes
in dramatic motion to the various classes of the French nation one after
the other until it finally comes to the class which implements social
freedom no longer with the provision of certain conditions lying outside
man and yet created by human society, but rather organizes all
conditions of human existence on the premises of social freedom. On the
contrary, in Germany, where practical life is as spiritless as spiritual
life is unpractical, no class in civil society has any need or capacity
for general emancipation until it is forced by its immediate condition,
by material necessity, by its very chains.

Where, then, is the _positive_ possibility of a German emancipation?

Answer: In the formulation of a class with _radical chains_, a class of
civil society which is not a class of civil society, an estate which is
the dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has a universal character
by its universal suffering and claims no particular right because no
particular wrong, but wrong generally, is perpetuated against it; which
can invoke no historical, but only human, title; which does not stand in
any one-sided antithesis to the consequences but in all-round antithesis
to the premises of German statehood; a sphere, finally, which cannot
emancipate itself without emancipating itself from all other spheres of
society and thereby emancipating all other spheres of society, which, in
a word, is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only
through the complete re-winning of man. This dissolution of society as
a particular estate is the proletariat.

The proletariat is beginning to appear in Germany as a result of the
rising industrial movement. For, it is not the naturally arising poor
but the artificially impoverished, not the human masses mechanically
oppressed by the gravity of society, but the masses resulting from the
drastic dissolution of society, mainly of the middle estate, that form
the proletariat, although, as is easily understood, the naturally
arising poor and the Christian-Germanic serfs gradually join its ranks.

By heralding the dissolution of the hereto existing world order, the
proletariat merely proclaims the secret of its own existence, for it is
the factual dissolution of that world order. By demanding the negation
of private property, the proletariat merely raises to the rank of a
principle of society what society has raised to the rank of _its_
principle, what is already incorpora

ted in _it_ as the negative result
of society without its own participation. The proletarian then finds
himself possessing the same right in regard to the world which is coming
into being as the German king in regard to the world which has come into
being when he calls the people _his_people, as he calls the horse _his_
horse. By declaring the people his private property, the king merely
proclaims that the private owner is king.

As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the
proletariat finds its _spiritual_ weapon in philosophy. And once the
lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the
people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.

Let us sum up the result:

The only liberation of Germany which is _practically_ possible is
liberation from the point of view of _that_ theory which declares man to
be the supreme being for man. German can emancipate itself from the
Middle Ages only if it emancipates itself at the same time from the
_partial_ victories over the Middle Ages. In Germany, no form of
bondage can be broken without breaking _all_ forms of bondage. Germany,
which is renowned for its thoroughness, cannot make a revolution unless
it is a thorough one. The emancipation of the German is the
emancipation of man. The head of this emancipation is philosophy, its
heart the proletariat. Philosophy cannot realize itself without the
transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, and the proletariat cannot
transcend itself without the realization [Verwirklichung] of philosophy.

When all the inner conditions are met, the day of the German
resurrection will be heralded by the crowing of the cock of Gaul.


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transcribed by zodiac@https://www.sodocs.net/doc/ac16248547.html,
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