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The [Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844]1 is one of Marx's best-known works all around the world. Yet, although the manuscripts are so often discussed and are so important for overall interpretations of their author's thought, little attention has been paid to the philological problems that they present. This fact, together with the theoretical and political disputes that began with publication of the first edition in 1932, has helped to fuel a misinterpretation of what many commentators regard as the most significant text of Marx's youth.
After a brief description of the intellectual climate at the time of Marx's stay in the French capital and of the economic studies that he began there, this essay examines the close connection between the [Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844] and the parallel notebooks of excerpts that Marx compiled from the writings of political economists, as well as the greater philosophical and political maturity that he achieved in this major period of his development. Finally, a table reconstructs the chronological order of the manuscripts and notebooks of excerpts that Marx composed in Paris between the autumn of 1843 and January 1845.
Paris: Capital of the New World
Paris is a "monstrous miracle, an astounding assemblage of movements, machines and ideas, the city of a thousand different romances, the world's thinking-box" (Balzac, 1972, 33) . This is how Balzac described in one of his tales the effect of the metropolis on those who did not know it thoroughly.
During the years before the 1848 revolution, the city was inhabited by artisans and workers in constant political agitation. From its colonies of exiles, revolutionaries, writers and artists and the general social ferment, it had acquired an intensity found in few other epochs. Men and women with the most varied intellectual gifts were publishing books, journals and newspapers, writing poetry, speaking at meetings, and discussing endlessly in cafés, in the street and on public benches. Their close proximity meant that they exercised a continual influence on one another (cf. Berlin, 1963, 81f).
Bakunin, having decided to cross the Rhine, suddenly found himself "amid those new elements which have not yet been born in Germany," in a climate where "political ideas circulate among all strata of society" (Bakunin, 1982, 482). Von Stein...