“Philosophy Has Become Worldly”: Marx on Ruthless Critique

Abstract

Marx's early article “for a ruthless critique of everything existing” was written as a letter to arnold ruge, a young hegelian, in September 1843 and then printed in the Deutsch-Französischen Jahrbücher in 1844. It is one of several letters that Marx wrote to Ruge during that period on the need to upend philosophical authority. Translated into English, the essay is often taken to be an exuberant and ironic prefiguration of the writings that came to be known as the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. The essay's title is taken from Marx's letter, in which he remarks that we must undertake “die rücksichtlose Kritik alles Bestehenden”—the ruthless critique not of “everything existing,” exactly, but of everything established, even institutionalized as the establishment over time.