The 1844 Economic and Philosophical manuscripts remained unpublished during Marx’s lifetime and did not surface until 1927, some forty-four years after his death. These manuscripts illustrate the young Marx’s transition from philosophy to political economy (what is now called economics). Marx’s emerging interest in the economy is apparent here—an interest that distinguishes him from other followers of Hegel—but his writing in these texts is much more philosophical, abstract, and speculative than his later writing. For example, the concept of species-being, of what it means to be human, is essentially a philosophical question. These manuscripts give us a glimpse into Marx’s intellectual frame of reference and into the philosophical convictions that underlie his later, less explicitly philosophical work.

In the first manuscript, Marx adopts Hegel’s concept of alienation, the idea that human beings can become out of sync with the world they live in, but he interprets this concept differently, arguing that alienation arises from the way human beings regard their own labor. In these early manuscripts, Marx reveals himself as the great philosopher of work, which he sees as a process of transforming physical matter (raw materials) into objects of sustenance. This process is fundamental to a person’s identity and sense of place in the word, according to Marx. In capitalism, which is founded on the principle of private property, work as a source of identity and location is seriously undermined. Those without property (namely, workers in factories, etc.) must hand over their productive capacities, their essence as human beings, to another person, to the factory owners, the wealthy capitalists. This is not only inherently frustrating and unsatisfying but also turns workers against the capitalists and the system of private property that is the source of their frustration.

This manuscript is particularly dense and difficult because in it Marx is so deeply engaged in Hegelian philosophy, which is itself an extremely difficult and abstract subject. Here we see Marx moving away from the idealism of his main philosophical predecessor, Hegel, toward the materialism that forms the bedrock of his own view of human nature and history. In these passages, Marx follows closely Hegel’s dialectical method, beginning with the most basic concepts and abstracting toward more comprehensive ones. Marx differs from Hegel in rejecting ideas, or pure thought, as the mode through which human beings relate to the world. In Hegel’s system, the mind’s initial attempt to grasp at the nature of objects leads it away from the input of the senses toward more abstract concepts, to culture and religion and eventually to an objective understanding of self. Consciousness and self-consciousness represent abstractions from material reality. In contrast, Marx argues that experience is built first and foremost around material needs and wants and that the organization of society grows out of this primary experience. In the manuscripts, this perspective leads him to focus on labor and the loss of control of one’s labor as the defining moment of the modern age. In later works, this will be supplemented by an elaborated notion of exploitation.