The question of whether an early and a late Marx can be distinguished has often seemed of limited importance today. In current discussions, most attention is directed toward his later economic writings, while his earlier works receive less notice. The earlier phase, often linked with philosophical concerns, once attracted those interested in the relation between thought and social life. Today, however, its associations with humanism, teleology, and Eurocentrism can make it less appealing to readers who are theoretically or empirically minded. Debates over the continuity of Marx’s intellectual purpose across different stages of his work once carried political and doctrinal weight. As the era of Western Marxism has faded, so too have the controversies that depended on it.
Still, it may now be possible to revisit this question in a new light. The old ideological frameworks that once shaped interpretations may give way to a more precise reconstruction of Marx’s intellectual development. In this reconstruction, one can recognize a previously unnoticed unity across Marx’s two main periods, along with a hidden rupture between them. This first part of a two-part work concentrates on the unity of what may be called the Early Marx. It examines the socio-juridical and economic assumptions that underlay his first formulation of historical materialism. These assumptions supported a view of the state, class relations, and social struggle that differed sharply from his later theorization. The challenge is to explain, not merely describe, the pattern of Marx’s intellectual development from 1842 to 1852.
The Continuity of Marx’s Early Framework
This analysis treats Marx’s writings of that decade as one coherent conceptual structure. His thought evolved through interactions with a sequence of influential figures—Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and Ricardo—. Yet, the emphasis here lies on the consistency of a single underlying problem. Understanding this requires moving beyond a simple chronological account. The formal structure of Marx’s conceptual inversions shaped his critique of how society imagines itself as self-determining through the state. It also framed his first challenge to the so-called laws of political economy, which he viewed as disguises for the chaos of competition. These critiques were incorporated into his synthesis of a historical movement that pointed toward communism.
The trajectory of Marx’s thought during this decade underscores the significance of the crisis of 1848-1852. This period marked the collapse of his first unified account of the state, civil society, and their revolutionary transformation. Although 1848 is widely regarded as a pivotal event in European history, its significance for understanding Marx’s intellectual turning point has not been fully acknowledged. It can be argued that new perspectives on both the early and later Marx arise not from an epistemic rupture but from the experience of a significant political defeat. This defeat cleared the ground for Marx’s later conceptualization of structural transformation.
The Central Theme of the Early Writings
Across all of Marx’s works from 1842 to 1852, his primary concern was modern civil or bourgeois society. He viewed it as a transitional stage between the old regime and human emancipation. His later writings, by contrast, articulated the idea of the capitalist mode of production, which develops according to its own long-term logic. Before that stage, Marx regarded bourgeois society as a transitional phase following the old regime, not as a stable and enduring social form.
The distinction between bourgeois society and the capitalist mode of production is vital for understanding the evolution of Marx’s ideas. It also helps clarify the nature of modern societies that emerged from the fall of the European old regime. A further difficulty in grasping this difference arises from translation. In German, Marx used the term “bürgerliche Gesellschaft,” which has been translated into English as both “civil society” and “bourgeois society.” Translators of Marx’s collected works explained that they varied the translation depending on context. They used “civil society” when the term referred to economic relations in general, and “bourgeois society” when it referred specifically to capitalist relations.
The Problem of Translation and Meaning
This translation choice has created confusion. It hides the connection between the social and legal dimensions of a society based on private property. In English, the contrast between the state and “civil society” evokes the legal distinction between public and private, while “bourgeois society” does not. The issue is that Marx’s concept of bürgerliche Gesellschaft was both socio-economic and juridical. The translation, therefore, obscures the unity of these aspects and creates the mistaken impression that civil society and bourgeois society were separate from the capitalist mode of production.
This confusion is not merely technical. It reflects a broader assumption that the ideas about Capital and accumulation presented in the Communist Manifesto were essentially identical to those in Marx’s later economic works. The differences are often dismissed as minor variations in terminology. Yet, this assumption obscures the fundamental shift in Marx’s understanding of the social and historical framework of capitalism.
Marx’s Critique of the State and Civil Society
Marx’s continuing use of bürgerliche Gesellschaft up through Capital indicates how deeply he remained engaged with the problems introduced by Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Hegel had proposed a dualism between state and civil society, and Marx’s critique began by reversing what he saw as Hegel’s mistaken order of determination. By doing so, Marx sought to reveal the historical meaning and likely future of contemporary constitutional and class struggles.
He soon recognized that understanding the fate of bourgeois society required a systematic critique of political economy. The distinction between the early and later Marx thus arises less from a contrast between idealism and materialism than from differing conceptions of what such a critique involved. During the earlier period, Marx viewed critique not as the creation of a new system but as the careful unfolding of what was already implicit within political economy itself. He aimed to show how its internal contradictions pointed toward social transformation.
The Economic Assumptions of the Early Marx
In this effort, Marx drew on the prevailing view of his time, which held that European society was undergoing a process of commercialization. This process was often understood as operating under a quasi-Malthusian principle, where growth would eventually lead to a state of equilibrium. Marx rejected the idea of an end to accumulation but accepted that continuous accumulation would deepen inequality between Capital and labor. He believed it would lead to widespread poverty and recurring civil conflict.
At that time, continental European society was both a juridical order based on private property and a developing commercial economy. Yet it had not taken the specific path of capitalist industrialization seen in England. Like Hegel before him, Marx understood English development through Adam Smith’s model of commercialization. However, Ricardo’s more pessimistic assumptions—particularly the idea that real wages could not rise—modified this outlook. Consequently, Marx, again following Hegel’s pattern, tended to merge the French experience of civil society emerging from monarchy with the English process of capitalist development.
The Unity and Limits of the Early Period
Seen in this light, the writings from 1842 to 1852 represent an attempt to grasp the social order of bourgeois society as the final stage of dissolution before emancipation. Marx viewed its conflicts as pointing toward a future beyond both the state and civil society. The defeat of 1848 led him to reexamine the structure of capitalist development as a distinct historical system. This shift did not erase the insights of his earlier period but transformed them into a new framework for analyzing the logic of production, accumulation, and class relations.
The recognition of this transformation helps clarify the unity of Marx’s intellectual project and its internal turning points. His early concern with the dualism of state and society evolved into a rigorous analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Understanding this evolution not only revises the standard conventional view of Marx’s development but also offers new perspectives on interpreting the relationship between political and economic forms in modern history.