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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

The Concept of the

Individual in the Thought
of Karl Marx

Zhi Li
 Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Series Editors
Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
Terrell Carver, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The Marx renaissance is underway on a global scale. Wherever the critique
of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for
new, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx,
Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, with
Babak Amini, Francesca Antonini, Paula Rauhala & Kohei Saito as Assis-
tant Editors) publishes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions,
reprints of old texts, as well as translations of books already published
in other languages. Our volumes come from a wide range of political
perspectives, subject matters, academic disciplines and geographical areas,
producing an eclectic and informative collection that appeals to a diverse
and international audience. Our main areas of focus include: the oeuvre
of Marx and Engels, Marxist authors and traditions of the 19th and 20th
centuries, labour and social movements, Marxist analyses of contemporary
issues, and reception of Marxism in the world.
 Zhi Li

The Concept
of the Individual
in the Thought
of Karl Marx
Zhi Li
School of Philosophy
Wuhan University
Wuhan, China

Translated by
Jiaxin Liu Ben Cross
School of Philosophy School of Philosophy
Wuhan University Wuhan University
Wuhan, China Wuhan, China

ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
ISBN 978-3-031-22590-1 ISBN 978-3-031-22591-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22591-8

Based on a translation from the Chinese language edition:马克思的个人概念 by Zhi Li

© People’s Publishing House, 2014. Published by People’s Publishing House. All Rights
Reserved.
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 Preface

During my research visit to the University of Bristol in the autumn of

2019, Professor Terrell Carver kindly recommended that I develop an
English edition of my book, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought
of Karl Marx. Since the Chinese edition of the book was initially written
for contemporary Chinese people and certain aspects of the background
of its writing may be unfamiliar to readers in the English-speaking world,
I have written this English preface at Professor Carver’s suggestion.
As direct participants or die Anwesenden in current history, people
generally do not possess clear views of the events that are taking place.
It is only when these events become history, and when there is a longer
interval between participants and events, that the causes, contexts and
subsequent effects of these events can truly be understood. Today, when
I reflect on the context in which I started my study of Marx’s philosoph-
ical anthropology and the writing of this book, I am acutely aware of the
power of historical intervals.
During a course I was enrolled in as a postgraduate student, I read
Marx’s doctoral dissertation and his notes over and over again. I suddenly
had great doubts about the traditional image of Marx. Marx is a house-
hold name in the education that most Chinese people, including me, have
received. This does not mean that many people have seriously read Marx’s
writings, let alone the writings of the Young Marx, which were quite unfa-
miliar even to Chinese academia at that time. However, the Economic and
philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 was an exception in this case.

xv
xvi PREFACE

For a long time, Marx has been described as a theorist who advocated
collectivist values and placed the state and society above the individual.
This description is due to the fact that he was the founder of the theory of
communism, and the most crucial aspect of this theory is that it is about
the “society” rather than the “individual.” Of course, Marx’s traditional
image among Chinese people can be attributed not only to dogmatic
interpretations and Soviet socialist practices and their influence on China
but also to the Chinese tradition that Marxism encountered, especially
the value that “the family, the state and the world are one.”
I used to be convinced of this image of Marx before I started working
on his philosophical anthropology. There is a cognitive bias towards an
anti-individualist reading of Marx among professional researchers, not
to mention the ordinary Chinese public. This deeply held view posed
a great challenge to my subsequent research. From the time I started
writing my first paper on Marx’s concept of the individual, there was a
lot of scepticism. Some scholars even directly criticised my work as being
anti-Marxist and unworthy of publication. Fortunately, I still encountered
a small but supportive group of colleagues and older faculty, including
(among others) my two supervisors, Professor Shi Mei Xiao, Professor
Xinyan Wang and Professor Ruxian Ye of Sun Yat-sen University.
In a sense, these older faculty understood the particular significance of
the study of Marx’s concept of the individual for Chinese scholarship and
contemporary Chinese practice better than I did. It was only later that
I gradually realised the extent to which the Reform and Opening-Up
had reshaped China. In a sense, these supportive predecessors under-
stood better than I did about the particular significance of the study of
Marx’s concept of the individual for Chinese scholarship and contempo-
rary Chinese practice. It was only later that I gradually realised to what
extent the Reform and Opening-Up had reshaped China. The socialist
market economy has steadily replaced the planned economy. The family
of three has replaced the extended family as the basic unit of Chinese
society. The sense of individuality has flourished, and the pursuit of indi-
vidual interests, individual rights and individualist lifestyles has become
increasingly common. Conceivably, once practice fosters people with a
sense of individuality, theoretical and cultural changes in a nation will
follow.
 PREFACE xvii

Clearly, it is not fully adequate for contemporary China to locate

communism and socialism simply at the macro level of the state and
society. A good society will certainly lead to a good life for each indi-
vidual, as Marx had depicted in his vision of the future. Unfortunately,
this vision has often been reduced to a picture of society without individ-
uals, and thus deviates from the teaching of historical materialism—that
history is made and driven by a multitude of real individuals.
As a participant in China’s Reform and Opening-Up and researcher of
Marxism, my interest in Marx’s concept of the individual is motivated by
my academic interest in his ideas and the life experiences and feelings of
the Chinese people of my generation. Marx’s discourse on the individual
has a rather special meaning for Chinese Marxist academics who are at the
intersection of theory and practice. It is only by acknowledging the role of
the individual in Marx’s philosophy that it will be possible to incorporate
the interests, rights and well-being of the individual into the blueprint for
the future construction of socialism, and therefore enable communism to
be truly envisaged as a genuine “association of free men.” For me, this
research is not only about theory but also about practice and everyday
life.
In this regard, as the introduction to the Chinese edition has already
stressed, this book was initially written for Chinese people and intended
to address the realities encountered by contemporary Chinese society.
My two years of studying abroad in Europe and Britain have assured me
that, through dialogue and communication, people from different cultural
and political backgrounds can reach mutual understanding. Now that the
book is about to be published in English, I hope that it will contribute
to Western readers’ understanding of Chinese society, not in its ancient
form, but in its modern one.
However, although this book borrows the name of Marx and hopes
to use the individual as a key for interpreting Chinese reality, it is, after
all, an academic work and its theoretical explanations do not allow me to
distort or falsify Marx’s original intentions. Likewise, I hope that readers
will read Marx and approach him sympathetically. After all, any criticism
is based first and foremost on understanding.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who supported
and assisted with the English edition of this book: its recommender,
Professor Terrell Carver; the two translators of the English edition,
Ms. Jiaxin Liu and Professor Ben Cross; Ms. Yanling Feng of People’s
Publishing House; the two editors of Palgrave Macmillan, Michelle Chen
xviii PREFACE

and Rebecca Roberts; three anonymous reviewers and two of my post-

graduate students, Shuyao Song and Xiaorong Yang. In particular, I
want to thank Professor Carver for his continued assistance with the
English edition and the two translators for their considerable efforts and
professionalism.

Wuhan, China Zhi Li

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction to the English Edition 7

Part I Dialectics, History and Marx’s Concept of the

Individual
2 Dialectics as a Methodological Principle 27
2.1 Hegel’s Dialectics 27
2.2 Vico’s Approach in the Philosophy of History 29
2.3 Comte’s Method of the Sociology of Science 30
2.4 Marx’s Dialectical Method 31
3 History as the Object of Totality 37
3.1 Views of History That Marx Rejected 37
3.2 Marx’s View of History 39
3.3 Marx’s Study Is More Than a Historical Science 44

Part II The History and Logic of Marx’s Concept of the

Individual
4 The Concept of the Individual in the Context
of the Young Hegelian School 51
4.1 The Common Ground of the Young Hegelians 52
4.2 The Atomistic Individual 57

xix
xx CONTENTS

4.3 The “Individual” as a Burgher and the “Man”

as a Citizen 72
5 The Concept of the Individual in Marx’s Theory
of Estrangement 93
5.1 Feuerbach’s Philosophy of Humanism 93
5.2 The Species-Nature of Man and Estranged Labour 96
5.3 The Concept of the Individual as Defined
by the Standard of the Species 112
5.4 Max Stirner’s Criticism 130
6 The Concept of the Individual From the Perspective
of History 139
6.1 Sensuousness, Activity and Sensuous Activity 139
6.2 Historical Determinations of the Individual 150
6.3 Individuals in the All-Pervasive Materialisation 169
7 The Concept of the Individual and Marx’s Philosophy 189
7.1 The Individual: An Important Theme of Marx’s
Philosophy 189
7.2 The Individual: The Dividing Line Between Marx’s
Philosophy and Other Western Philosophies 195

Part III The Normative Significance of Marx’s Concept

of the Individual
8 Theoretical Criticism and the Concept of the Individual 203
8.1 The “Bystander” Perspective: The Defects
of Traditional Theory 203
8.2 The “Participant” Perspective: The Historical
Practice of the Ordinary Individual 209
9 A Critical-Based Theory of Individual Emancipation 217
9.1 Marx’s Critique of the Idea of the Individual 217
9.2 The Emancipation and Freedom of the Individual 222
10 Moral Criticism and the Good 229
10.1 The Limits of Moral Criticism 229
10.2 The Individual and the Moral Good 233
 CONTENTS xxi

Part IV Situating the Marx’s Concept of the Individual

in the Present
11 Chinese Socialist Practice and the Revival of Marx’s
Concept of the Individual 239
11.1 Marxist Anthropology in the Context of Soviet
and Eastern European Socialism 239
11.2 Chinese Socialist Practice and the Rise of Marxist
Anthropological Research 246
12 Studies on Marx’s Concept of the Individual
and China’s Modernisation 253
12.1 Theory and Practice 253
12.2 Reformation of Ownership Rights and Individual
Freedom 259
12.3 The Better Life and Individual Needs 263
12.4 Cultural Change and Individual Consciousness 267

Translators’ Afterword 271

Bibliography 273
Index 283
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Marx is a household name in the world today, and perhaps no other

philosopher can match the significance to his impact on both theory and
practice. However, there is no consensus on the correct interpretation of
his work. For example, here are three different interpretations which, in
my opinion, underestimate the significance of Marx’s work.
The first interpretation is that Marx is one of the top three sociolo-
gists in modern times, and his thought provides a model for sociology.
The famous Western Marxist Karl Korsch criticised this view in his book
Marxism and Philosophy:

Bourgeois professors of philosophy reassured each other that Marxism had

no philosophical content of its own – and thought they were saying some-
thing important against it. Orthodox Marxists also reassured each other
that their Marxism by its very nature had nothing to do with philosophy -
and thought they were saying something important in favour of it.1

If bourgeois philosophy professors make such a judgement from an anti-

Marxist standpoint, orthodox Marxists do so because they treat Marx’s

1 Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy, trans. Fred Halliday (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 2008), 33.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
Z. Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought
of Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22591-8_1
2 Z. LI

work as no more than an account of political practice and ignore its

philosophical aspects. As Korsch states:

For another, the fluid methodology of Marx’s materialist dialectic freezes

into a number of theoretical formulations about the causal interconnection
of historical phenomena in different areas of society - in other words it
became something that could best be described as a general systematic
sociology.2

The second view is that there is only room for “things” in Marx’s
thinking, and thus Marx is an economic determinist. As the promi-
nent Frankfurt School member Erich Fromm pointed out, this is the
most widespread misunderstanding of Marx’s work. Those who hold this
misinterpretation think:

Marx neglected the importance of the individual; that he had neither

respect nor understanding for the spiritual needs of man, and that his
“ideal” was the well-fed and well-clad, but “soulless” person.3

This misunderstanding also manifests itself in later Marxists’ overemphasis

on abstract principles like “the material determines the consciousness,”
“productive forces determine the relations of production” and “the
economic base determines the superstructure.”
The third view holds that Marx’s thought is a paradigm for the study
of social structure and social relations, and Marx is a champion of the
principle of “Holism.” This view, like the first, is held by anti-Marxists as
well as quite a few Marxists. But the bases of the two camps are entirely
different: the anti-Marxists were motivated by hostility to Marxism,4
while the Marxists who held this view overemphasised political issues and
the laws of social development at the expense of issues pertaining to the
issue of the “individual” and other questions have taken a back seat to
the actual political issues and the laws of social development, which were

2 Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy, 62.

3 Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, trans. T. B. Bottomore (London: Continuum,
2004), 1.
4 Some Western scholars consider Marx’s philosophy as a type of collectivism because,
in their view, Marx’s philosophy is the same as Hegel’s philosophy as the philosophy
of holism. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2 (London: George
Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1947), 77–84.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

overemphasised by later Marxism. As the Polish philosopher Adam Schaff

once pointed out:

The fact that many Polish Marxists not only failed to reckon with these
problems but treated them as enemy territory created a deficiency in our
philosophical arsenal.5

Probably, there could be three main casual factors behind these mistaken
views:

1. The profound ignorance of some researchers.

2. The strategy of an anti-Marxism ideology.
3. The inherent flaws in the later study of Marxist philosophy.

The last one in particular deserves our attention. As we mentioned earlier,

previous studies had overemphasised economic and material factors in
Marxist philosophy. This inevitably leads to two related results. First,
Marx’s philosophy becomes a social theory that can be used to address
present needs, and the laws of social history become the most impor-
tant tool for understanding human existence. Second, many important
aspects of Marx’s philosophy become sidelined. These aspects include:
the freedom of the individual; the formation and criticism of materialised
social relations and the relationship between communism and human
emancipation.
In this book, I have no intention of reconstructing Marx’s philosophy
of man6 in a general sense. Instead, I try to reconstruct the concept of the
individual in Marx’s philosophy, thus providing a key to understanding
his philosophy of the individual and his philosophy as a whole. A note-
worthy phenomenon is that, in a large number of previous Chinese works
on Marx’s philosophy (including the translation of some classic texts),

5 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963), 16.
6 This book was written based on an examination of the history of philosophy, and the
word “man” is used in many classical texts. Therefore, this book retains the use of this
word. We are conscious of the fact that the use of this word is problematic due to its
gendered connotations. However, there are two reasons why using the word “man” is
most convenient in the book: (1) it allows for smoother discussion of quoted texts which
use the term “man”; (2) the word “man” may not easily replaceable with other terms
like “individual,” or “person” because these terms may often have different, somewhat
technical meanings in Marx’s work.—Trans.
4 Z. LI

the researchers often use the word “man” to explain Marx’s humanistic
thoughts, but rarely use the word “individual.” The reason for this seems
to be very complicated. In my opinion, there are two possible expla-
nations. First, we seldom use the word “individual” in the daily use of
Chinese language, so it makes more sense to replace it with the common
term “man”; Second, according to the traditional understanding, we have
no reason to associate Marx’s philosophy with the individual, because
Marx was a proponent of socialism and communism, advocating a view
of society as a collective rather than a group of individuals. In addi-
tion, people’s interest instead of individual interest should be concern of
socialist revolution in the influence of Lenin and Mao Zedong’s thought,
vice versa, it could promote selfishness and disintegrate the revolutionary
forces. The first reason is rooted in linguistic and cultural issues, while
the second reason stems from a common but mistaken assumption. This
assumption holds that socialism and collectivism have nothing to do with
the individual freedom, equality or happiness. Once this assumption is
accepted, it is easy to see why Marxists may wish to demonise the concept
of the individual: any use or emphasis of the term would be regarded
as a degeneration into liberalism, individualism or other antagonistic
ideologies.
In general, this confusion is harmful because the concept of the indi-
vidual touches the contents of the inner soul of Marx’s philosophy. If it
remains concealed from us, then the value of Marx’s philosophy itself will
be diminished.
Even if we admit the importance of the concept of the individual to
Marxist philosophy, there is still another inescapable problem: if Marx
really did value individual freedom, equality and happiness, why have so
few later Marxist theorists given any more than scant attention to such
issues? Later Marxist theories still seem to focus exclusively on questions
pertaining to society, class or capital, to such an extent that anti-Marxists7
often use Marxism’s supposed indifference to individual freedom and
equality to attack Marxism.
One possible explanation is that Marx’s view of the individual is
fundamentally different from—and perhaps even directly opposed to—the
atomistic view that has been most influential in Western philosophy. This

7 For example, Karl Popper is one of the most representative anti-Marxists. See Karl
Popper, Open Society and its Enemies and his The Poverty of Historicism (Boston: The
Beacon Press, 1957).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

atomistic view, developed primarily by the schools of utilitarianism and

liberalism, holds that individuals should be seen as separate beings, and
each being is born free and equal. For example, Locke, one of the main
proponents of this view, believed that the individual’s transition from
the state of nature to civil society through contract did not mean that
the individual had to give up her equality, freedom and property rights.
Instead, the primary task of civil society or the state is to guarantee the
equality, freedom and property rights of individuals. By contrast, Marx
rejected the state of nature as an appropriate device for political theo-
rising and explicitly claimed that the emergence of independent, equal
and free individuals should be viewed as a result of Western industriali-
sation or capitalist development. It is therefore a recent event than the
beginning of history.
Additionally, since from the emergence of individuals is tied to the
development of capitalism, their existence also contains a deep and
profound contradiction between their status as man and their status as
“thing.” This contradiction is not a necessary feature of human nature
but a product of capitalism; hence, it needs to be resolved. More impor-
tantly, Marx has always understood individuals and their social relations
and social interactions within the framework of material production. His
ultimate goal is to enable the creation of “social individuals,” and he advo-
cated for unity between individuals and social community. People who
don’t know much about Marx’s philosophy, one might understandably
come to accept the following mistaken claims: first, Marx never paid atten-
tion to the existence of individuals, but only to society and class; second,
Marx was never concerned about individual freedom and happiness, but
only about class struggle and social revolution, and so forth.
Marx’s rebellion against the atomistic view, in the initial understanding
and judgement of later generations, all point to one thing: he empha-
sised the social side while weakening the “individual” in the traditional
sense. As a result, Marx’s successors—the classical Marxists—focused on
developing the social dimensions of his theory. They analysed socialist
cooperative systems and large-scale industries in economic terms and anal-
ysed class struggle, anti-imperialist revolution and other similar topics in
political terms. Marx’s opponents, the liberal anti-Marxists, look upon
him as the “enemy” of liberty and democracy, and even as the ideological
wellspring of modern authoritarianism or modern centralism. However,
with the publication and examination of more of Marx’s manuscripts,
especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, these
6 Z. LI

assessments began to change, and sometimes dramatically so. As a result,

Marxist scholars began to pay more attention to topics such as the status
of individuals; the freedom and equality enjoyed by individuals; human
emancipation in Marx’s philosophy. Some studies label Marx’s philosophy
as “Humanistic Marxism.” Although this book focuses on Marx’s concept
of the individual, it is not committed to a fully humanistic position, nor
does it aim to prove that Marx’s philosophy is a kind of humanism. This
is because the humanistic position is highly disposed to interpret the exis-
tence of man in terms of human nature or “essence.” Viewing man in this
way not only returns us to the swamp of traditional essentialism; it also
neglects historical dimensions, and this is obviously inconsistent with the
basic principles8 of Marx’s philosophy.
As mentioned earlier, the task of this book is to reconstruct Marx’s
concept of the individual. In a broad sense, any interpretation of the
thoughts of previous authors is a process of reconstructing them, just
as Marx once did to those of Hegel. In the first place, the reconstruc-
tion of thought is not done randomly, but rather involves preconceived
and implicit tendencies or backgrounds. There is even a sense in which
these tendencies or backgrounds determine the outcome of the process of
reconstruction. In this book, although I will try to respect Marx’s original
intended meaning, one can only interpret Marx from within one’s own
context. In my case, this context is that of contemporary China. In fact,
it is precisely because of this context that I regard Marx’s concept of the
individual as such an important topic. Thus, the book is predominantly
written for Chinese people, especially contemporary Chinese people who
are still torn between tradition and modernity, and between the East and
West.
At the same time, however, the reconstruction of thought is a two-
way process, involving dialogue and integration between contemporary
context and past context. Therefore, we still have to take seriously the
temporal situation where Marx was located. Through a comprehensive
and systematic discussion, this book attempts to show the reader the
whole theoretical picture of Marx’s concept of the individual, including
his research methods, motifs, chief ideas and writing purposes. For those
of us who live in different times and bear different nationalities, some of
Marx’s ideas about the individual may not be applicable to explaining the

8 The first part of the text will give a detailed explanation of this principle.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

living conditions of Chinese people, but the critical spirit and dialectical
methods he has adhered to throughout his lifetime can transcend time
and space and provide guidance for today’s research.
This book consists of four parts. In the first part, I will summarise the
methods and objects of Marx’s philosophy, thus providing the theoretical
background for the subsequent discussion of Marx’s concept of the indi-
vidual; In the second part, I will trace the development of the concept
of the individual in Marx’s own thought. I will explain the inner logic
of this process development and provide a full account of the concept’s
descriptive meaning. In the third part, I will focus on the concept’s
normative implications, especially with regard to possible futures for the
existence of individuals. In the final part, I will discuss the current situa-
tion of Marx’s concept of individual and examine both its theoretical and
practical aspects.

1.1 Introduction to the English Edition

In order to properly consider Marx’s concept of the individual, one funda-
mental question needs to be answered: how should we understand the
“individual” as a philosophical concept? Or rather, what is the connection
between the concept of the individual and traditional Western philosophy?
According to one etymological view, the word persona originally
appeared in Roman law to indicate that both parties to the contract
were independent natural persons (there is also another view that the
word persona derives from phersu, an ancient Greek word for “mask”).
In contrast, another concept, individual, had emerged much earlier.
However, its use in ancient Greek philosophy did not generally refer
to the notion of the “individual” that is the subject of this book (i.e.
the individual person).9 Instead, it was mostly used to refer to particu-
lars, in contrast to the “universal” (e.g. Aristotle’s notion of “the one”).
The concept of the “individual” (i.e. a person) was the product of later
developments of language. This demonstrates that in the early stages of
Western philosophy and culture, there was little or no consideration of
the concept of the individual, and the concept was not yet a philosophical
concept at that time.

9 Throughout this book, the term “the individual” will be used to refer to the individual
person unless otherwise indicated.
8 Z. LI

Linguistic and historical reasons aside, the primitive philosophical ideas

of ancient Greece provide a compelling explanation for this “absence” of
the concept of the individual. Since Thales, ancient Greek philosophy was
devoted to discovering the mysterious reasons behind the fluid world of
phenomena, and most of the philosophers took the “unchangeable” as
the origin (the “noumenon”) of everything. Parmenides called it “being”
and, for the first time, clearly asserted that the knowledge of the phenom-
enal world can only lead to “opinions,” and that only the knowledge of
being can lead to truth. According to Parmenides’s view, the individual,
as a being that exists in space and time in the phenomenal world, is as
transient as any phenomenon. Also, individual feelings and desires vary
from person to person. Therefore, the understanding of the individual
cannot lead to universal knowledge.
In fact, the “absence” of the individual qua being and the vast phenom-
enal world in ancient Greek philosophy implicitly embodied the most
important character and tradition of Western philosophy—the tradition
of theoretical thinking (i.e. metaphysics). This tradition was the ortho-
doxy of Western philosophy since it was established by Aristotle. It would
influence almost all future generations of Western philosophers and their
theories, including medieval scholasticism, modern rationalism and the
philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and others. In this tradition, the
inquiry into the noumenon has always been the direction of philoso-
phers’ thinking. Sometimes this noumenon was the cosmic noumenon,
and sometimes it was the historical noumenon. Since Descartes, Western
philosophers’ investigation into the noumenon shifted to the inquiry into
the rational capacity of the cognition subject. This shift allows the indi-
vidual to transcend the phenomenal world and become the subject of
inquiry into the noumenon and knowledge of the truth. At the same
time, it also makes the individual an “abstract individual” and an “undif-
ferentiated individual,” because the individual is stripped of its sensuous
characteristics while being understood as a subject, and thus is regarded
merely as the consciousness and thought of a subject, i.e. an abstract and
rational concept of “man.” In short, the metaphysical tradition dictated
that philosophy simply studies man qua subject, but not the individual
that exists in space and time. Therefore, the radical philosophical transfor-
mation of the concept of the individual, from non-existence to existence,
from being ignorant to being known, was to be driven by another
force—the ethical-practical tradition initiated by Socrates.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Socrates once took the Delphic maxim γ ν îθ ι σ εαυτ óν 10 as the core
proposition of his philosophical thinking, and explored a series of ethical
issues related to real human life, such as “good,” “justice” and “courage,”
thus temporarily bringing the philosophical focus away from the distant
universe to man himself. This tradition was interrupted for a while after
the death of Socrates but was soon revived in the Hellenistic period.
Stoicism and Epicureanism, the two most influential schools of philosophy
of the age, both took the directness and naturalness of the individual, the
senses and desires, and the ethical existence of the individual as the central
issues of discussion, and the individual consciousness of man finally began
to come to the fore in philosophy. In the millennium that followed the
Hellenistic period, Christian theology replaced the influence of philos-
ophy on Western culture. The concept of the individual had an entirely
different interpretation. Despite all the adverse effects brought about by
religious rule during the millennium, and the fact that religious theology
often emphasised the significance of God to the individual, it did, after
all, fully affirm man as an equal and free individual being in the form of
faith, and sought to establish the concrete existence of man in his rela-
tionship with God. In view of above-mentioned, it was not an accident
that the Renaissance, with its full expression of individual consciousness,
and the Enlightenment, with its advocacy of freedom and equality, took
place after the Middle Ages, but as a manifestation of the secularisation
of the Christian faith.
While the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were rapidly spreading
in European countries and exercising considerable influence on literature,
art, politics and even the lives of ordinary citizens, modern philos-
ophy also advocated for the strong humanistic spirit shown in these
two movements. Modern political philosophy and philosophy of history,
establishing the basic models and institutions of modern society, took
a pioneering position on the stage of human history. In general, both
modern political philosophy and philosophy of history were concerned
with the interpretation of the real world and the way of existence of
the individual in concrete real life. Both thus continued the ethical-
practical tradition. However, their perspectives and approaches to the
individual were very different. Modern political philosophy’s account
of the individual almost always assumed the existence of the “state of

10 “know thyself”—Trans.
10 Z. LI

nature” and took it to be entirely distinct from “civil society.” In doing

so, modern political philosophy intended to show how individuals, as
individual beings, acquire sociality and form a society.
Similarly, the philosophy of history was initially based on the distinc-
tion between the world of man and the world of nature. However, the
question for the philosophy of history is: how should we understand
the world and history of man? Or more specifically: can objective laws
describe the world of man? Both political philosophy and the philosophy
of history pose challenges to traditional philosophical concepts. These two
disciplines show the world that “noumenon” and “self-consciousness” are
not the only objects of philosophy. Human political life and history can
also become the focus of philosophy and produce truth. By defending
the reality of human life, modern political philosophy and philosophy of
history has pushed the study of the concept of the individual to a much
deeper level.
We can thus conclude that the Western metaphysical tradition attaches
little importance to the concept of the individual, and that the emergence
and development of the individual as a philosophical concept is largely
attributed to the Western ethical-practical tradition.
When the relationship between the individual and philosophy is clar-
ified, three questions remain to be answered. First, is Marx’s thought
a kind of philosophy? Second, is it true that Marx’s thought excludes
consideration of man? Third, is it true that Marx’s thought did not
include an account of the individual? After Marx’s death, these three ques-
tions have shaped the general understanding of Marx’s thought, and led
to three fairly common views: first, Marx’s thought established a model
of sociology, and that Marx was one of the three great sociologists of
modern times; second, Marx only discussed “things,” and that he was
an economic determinist; third, Marx’s thought provided a model for
the study of social structure and social relations, and that Marx was a
proponent of collectivism.
In short, Marx’s philosophy was often accused in later times of lacking
an individual perspective. Against this popular view, the book presents a
systematic objection and constructs a group of notions of the individual
in the context of Marx’s intellectual history.
Generally speaking, Marx’s interpretation of the concept of the indi-
vidual is a subordinate part of his anthropological studies, and as such,
Marx’s discussion on estrangement and freedom, human nature, self-
realisation and other topics are naturally included. This book agrees to
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

some extent with this judgement and treats these topics as objects of
study—as discussed in detail in Part II of the book. Nevertheless, this
book is not limited to these topics, but rather includes specific themes
that seem not directly relevant to anthropology, thereby delineating a
unique group of conceptions of the individual in Marx’s works.
When it comes to understanding Marx’s account of the species-nature
of man, some people believe that the statement that “the essence of man is
the ensemble of social relations” most accurately explains human nature.
For example, Lucio Colletti, a representative figure of “neo-positivist
Marxism,” argued that “human essence is a social historic subject given
the consistency between Marx’s concept of man as a ‘natural species-
being’ and the concept of ‘social relations of production’.”11 In his
Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci also claimed that the idea that human
essence is the “ensemble of social relations” is the must satisfying answer,
because it includes the idea of becoming—man “becomes” as he changes
continuously with the changing of social relations.12
By contrast, others tend to take the description of “free, conscious
activity” as Marx’s ultimate account of human nature. For example, Erich
Fromm, a prominent figure of the Frankfurt School, pointed out in
his book Marx’s Concept of Man that Marx, like Hegel, thought about
man in terms of the inconsistency between existence and essence. Marx
also stressed the productive activity of man by arguing that individu-
ality species-nature is realised through productive activities. According to
Fromm, what Marx called “species-nature” is creative productive activity,
or in his own words, “free, conscious activity.”13 Similarly, Herbert
Marcuse also suggested combining Freudianism and Marxism, proposing
that human nature is instinctive impulse, with eros as the core.14
Thomas C. Patterson, on the other hand, proposed an alternative view
based on a combination of the above two views.

Marx, who distinguished “human nature in general” from “human nature

as historically modified in each epoch,” started with several observations:

11 Chongwen Xu, The Western Marxism (Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House,
1982), 529.
12 See Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg, vol. 3
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 186.
13 See Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (London: Continuum, 2004), 23–29.
14 See Jiang ed. The Frankfurt School, 47.
12 Z. LI

(1) human individuals are simultaneously natural and social beings; (2)
they are distinguished from animals by virtue of their creative intelligence,
productive activity and sociality; …15

These three views have covered basically all the standpoints of existing
research. But according to this book, they are problematic. The approach
by Fromm and others to absolutise Marx’s points in the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 is inherently questionable, since Marx’s
understanding of human nature is not set in stone. Likewise, Colletti and
Gramsci tend to take the theory of social relations as the standard view,
which in turn denies Marx’s course of thought before 1845. The question
is: did Marx’s idea of defining human nature in terms of social relations
suddenly appear in the Theses on Feuerbach? It is not an embarrassing fact
to acknowledge that Marx did offer different notions of the individual at
different stages of his thought from the perspective of intellectual history.
On the contrary, we can identify some critical clues from these changes
of thought to understand what old ideas Marx discarded, what principles
of thought he changed and under what conditions he introduced new
ones. With all of these in mind, the book does not intend to use a single
chapter to explore Marx’s understanding of human nature, but rather
uses different chapters to present his various definitions of human nature.
Indeed, in the sense of the mature Marx, this book agrees more with
Thomas C. Patterson’s view.
For Marx, human nature is closely related to freedom and self-
realisation. After Marx’s death, the discussion of his ideas about freedom
went through different historical periods. In the period when classical
Marxism prevailed, freedom and necessity were believed to be interde-
pendent. In epistemology, freedom was taken to be mastery of necessity
(mainly the laws of nature). In history, freedom was taken to be man’s
transcendence of his own natural necessity, marking the beginning of a
new era in human history—the oppression of the individual by nature
and society is fully replaced by the individual’s mastery of these forces.16

15 Thomas C. Patterson, Marx’s Ghost: Conversations with Archaeologists (Oxford: Berg,

2003), 13–14.
16 This view is mainly based on a famous quote by Engels in the Anti-Dühring, “With
the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away
with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social
production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

In this book, I argue against an epistemic definition of the relationship

between freedom and necessity—the concept of the “atomic individual”
that I present in Part II focuses specifically on this subject. As noted in
Part I, given the intrinsic connection between Marx’s philosophy and
the theory of history, this book tends to construe freedom and necessity
from a historical perspective. That is, Marx’s description of the corpo-
reality of individuals, his emphasis on the fact that labour cannot be
separated from natural objects, etc., all demonstrate the historical dialectic
of freedom-necessity.
With the rise of Marxism in the Western world and the declas-
sification of a growing amount of Marxist literature (especially the
young Marx’s texts), the relationship between freedom and estrangement
received increasing attention. Under this background, the discussion of
Marx’s concept of freedom became closely related to studies of “the
young Marx” and “Marxology.” As a result, these studies have reversed
traditional research paths and explored the relationship between Marx’s
concept of freedom in a wide array of topics, including German Idealism,
liberalism, human needs, estrangement, emancipation and communism.
Since the 1960s and 1970s, the integration of “young Marx” studies
and Marxist political philosophy has opened up a new field of research,
focused on understanding the young Marx’s concept of freedom from a
normative perspective.17

existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked
off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of
existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ
man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of
man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now
become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto
standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then
be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation,
hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the
result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed
history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with
full consciousness, make his own history – only from that time will the social causes set
in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results
intended by him. It is the humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom
of freedom.” See Friedrich Engels, “Anti-Dühring”, in Marx–Engels, Collected Works, vol.
25 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1987), 270.
17 See Eugene Kamenka, The Ethical Foundations of Marxism (London: Routledge,
1972); Daniel Brudney, Marx’s Attempt to Leave Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1998); David Leopold, The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern
14 Z. LI

This book draws on these recent research paths, and focuses on

several topics such as freedom, emancipation and moral criticism from
a normative perspective in Part III, entitled “A Critical-Based Theory of
Individual Emancipation.” However, unlike most contemporary studies
of Marx’s political philosophy and ethics, this book rejects any presup-
position of “moral good” or normative principles, and the discussion of
Marx’s notion of freedom, theory of emancipation and moral critique
based on the presupposition. Rather, as noted at the beginning of Part
III of the book—discussions around human dignity, obligations, rights,
a better life, etc., will provide diverse “hints” for today’s study of Marx’s
concept of the individual.
Marx’s concept of “self-realisation” is thought to be strongly influ-
enced by Hegel’s Idealism, and even more strongly influenced by Aris-
totle’s idea of “potentiality and actuality.” According to this interpretation
of intellectual history, Marx’s concept of self-realisation largely corre-
sponded to the development of man as a unique species rather than
an individual man or human powers. The explication of the theory
of estrangement in this book largely mirrors this traditional view. Jan
Kandiyali, by contrast, sees things very differently:

Schiller and Marx have a more individualistic conception of self-realization,

according to which self-realization is achieved, not through our specialized
contribution to the social whole, but through becoming, in a certain sense,
whole in ourselves.18 Far from sacrificing the individual to the collective,
however, Marx’s critique of specialization implies the opposite: that we
cannot sacrifice individuals for the achievement of collective ends.19

Understanding the idea of self-realisation from the perspective of indi-

viduals provides a reference for this book to interpret the theory of
estrangement. If Jan Kandiyali is correct—that self-realisation is initially
about “becoming whole in ourselves”—then, likewise, externalisation,

Politics, and Human Flourishing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Paul
Blackledge, Marxism and Ethics: Freedom, Desire, and Revolution (Albany: SUNY Press,
2012).
18 Jan Kandiyali, “Schiller and Marx on Specialization and Self-Realization”, in
Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political Philosophy, ed. Jan Kandiyali (New York: Routledge,
2018), 240.
19 Kandiyali, “Specialization and Self-Realization”, 250.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

objectification, estrangement and even reification are all related to self-

realisation, and should first be understood in the sense of the individual.
Based on this standpoint, the book reveals those seemingly “absent”
notions of the individual from Marx’s theory of estrangement and his
critique of reification. In this sense, the book does not stop at Jan
Kandiyali’s view, but goes much further.
As mentioned earlier, discussions of human nature, freedom and self-
realisation necessarily involve related topics such as estrangement and
human emancipation. In fact, “estrangement” and “reification” are still
frequently discussed in Marxist studies. Lukács was the first to notice the
concept of reification in Marx’s philosophy. In the History and Class, he
explored in detail the various phenomena of reification in capitalist society
and further analysed the consequences of reification.20 This book also
takes Marx’s critique of reification as an essential part of understanding
his concept of the individual. However, Part II of the book continues the
previous discussion by sketching the concept of the individual in a state
of reification from three angles: “materialised social relations,” “materi-
alised individual existence” and “the proletarian individuals who become
‘things’.”
After Lukács, a tradition of Marxist humanism developed with the
publication of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. This
tradition was initially represented by the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt
School placed the concept of estrangement at the core of Marx’s oeuvre.
In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse pointed out that the estrangement
of capitalist society was highlighted by the integration of all aspects of
individual existence into capitalist production. This integration led to the
one-dimensional existence of man21 . Fromm explained Marx’s concept
of estrangement through an analysis of productive activity. In his view,
Marx’s concept of estrangement referred primarily to the estrangement
that occurred during productive activities, where labour was no longer a
free, conscious and creative activity of man, and man increasingly lost his
individuality.22

20 See Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness—Studies in Marxist Dialectics,

trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1972), 83–110.
21 See Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 3–20.
22 See Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, 39–42.
16 Z. LI

Following the early Frankfurt School, E. Kamenka, I. Mészáros and B.

Ollman, and others revived the study of estrangement in the late 1960s
and early 1970s. This trend has continued up until today. The French
magazine Actuel Marx ran a feature on estrangement in issue 1 of 2006,
and the American magazine Rethinking Marxism also devoted special
issues to estrangement in Issue 3 and Issue 4 of 2006. Mészáros reprinted
Marx’s Theory of Alienation (5th edition) in 2006, and in a speech enti-
tled “Aliention and Contemporary Capitalism” he claimed that under
the double threat of war and ecological degradation, the market was
becoming increasingly estranged and out of control.23 Stéphane Haber,
in the book L’Aliénation: vie sociale et expérience de la dépossession, stated
that estrangement was a non-essentialist concept that connoted a life at
odds with itself and an awareness of this loss in the pain and limitations
of life itself.24
As mentioned earlier, the association of the theory of estrangement
with Marx’s concept of the individual is one of the main concerns of this
book. Among various versions of the theory of estrangement, Fromm’s
analysis of freedom and estrangement from the perspective of individ-
uality provides evidence for this book’s account of externalisation and
estrangement from the perspective of the individual. Contemporary schol-
ars’ exploration of the experience of estrangement (e.g. Stéphane Haber)
contributes to an explanation of estrangement in terms of individual
existence and personal feelings, changing the one-dimensional approach
previously adopted in defining the phenomenon of estrangement. Marx’s
insight into the finite nature of individuals, the body as an inseparable
part of individual existence and the meaning of passion for self-realisation
cannot essentially be divorced from estrangement as a negative aspect.
Additionally, the book uses the concept of the individual as a thread
to construct the consistency of Marx’s theory of estrangement with the
theory of reification, particularly defending the theoretical advantages of
the latter since it reveals more clearly than the theory of estrangement the
fragmented state of the individual in a capitalist society.

23 Quoted in Center for Contemporary Marxism in Foreign Countries of Fudan Univer-

sity ed., Foreign Marxism Research Report 2007 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House,
2007), 17.
24 Quoted in Center for Contemporary Marxism in Foreign Countries of Fudan Univer-
sity ed., Foreign Marxism Research Report 2008 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House,
2008), 109.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

Moreover, as negative expressions, the essence of reification and

estrangement lies in emancipation. Some hold that emancipation is not
about individual man in the first place, but about class as a whole
in capitalist society. For example, Althusser focused on the freedom
and emancipation of the proletariat as a whole, and repeatedly high-
lighted the importance of scientific Marxist theory to guide the workers’
movement.25 Similarly, eco-Marxism emphasised a holistic sense of eman-
cipation. According to this view, Marx’s theory of class emancipation did
not cover the entire content of emancipation. For them, emancipation not
only refers to the overthrow of bourgeois rule, but also to the reconstruc-
tion of a harmonious relationship between humans and nature by solving
natural and ecological crises.26 Another view elaborated Marx’s theory
of freedom and emancipation primarily from the perspective of the indi-
vidual, focusing on the emancipation and comprehensive development
of individual personality. For example, Fromm’s thorough analysis of the
concept of estrangement led him to argue that Marx’s real concern was
that man needs to be emancipated from the kind of labour that destroyed
his individuality, turned him into a “thing” and made him a slave to
“things.” On this view, then, Marx’s true concern was for human eman-
cipation, and for the freedom and all-round development of individual
personality.27
This book does not share with Althusser’s idea of interpreting eman-
cipation only in a holistic way, nor with Fromm’s idea of understanding
emancipation merely from an individual perspective. Undoubtedly, Marx’s
concern with class conflict has always been seen as a prominent feature of
his theory. The theory of class, seems like the theory of the state, takes
the community as its object of study: How does class, as a particular
community, form and develop within a politico-economic framework?
How does class contribute to the progress of history and the emanci-
pation of humanity through major confrontations? In this respect, Marx’s
distinctive theory of class seems to reaffirm the accusation that “there is
no place for the ‘individual’ in Marx’s philosophy.” However, the book
will suggest that as early as the period of The German Ideology, Marx had

25 See Althusser, For Marx, 21–27.

26 See Yuchen Wang, Critique of Philosophy and Cultural Values (Wuhan: Hubei
People’s Publishing House, 2004), 285–290.
27 See Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, 40–42.
18 Z. LI

already mentioned to the “class individuals,” i.e. to understand the social

relations between individuals in terms of class. Therefore, interpreting
emancipation from a class perspective and interpreting emancipation from
an individual perspective are not mutually conflicting, but are internally
consistent. Emancipation necessarily involves both the emancipation of
the individual and the emancipation of the community of class. Of course,
this book does not address the issue of emancipation in the context of the
ecological crisis, which is a subject worthy of serious consideration.
One of the focal points of contemporary discussion is the best way
to understand the individual and the relationship between the individual
and the community in Marx’s theory. Etienne Balibar suggested using the
idea of the transindividual to understand Marx, and argued that he simul-
taneously rejects two types of views. The first of these is the individualist
point of view that emphasises the primacy of the individual, and, in partic-
ular, “the fiction of an individuality which could be defined in itself , in
isolation, whether in terms of biology, psychology, economic behaviour
or whatever.”28 The second view is the organicist or holistic point of
view that emphasises the primacy of society, often by treating society
as an indivisible unity of which individuals are no more than functional
members.29
Etienne Balibar’s view seems to challenge the ideas in this book.
However, this is not the case. This book also rejects an individu-
alist understanding of Marx’s concept of the individual—as is evident
in the negative formulation of the concept of the atomic individual.
Although the book does not adopt the term transindividual, it draws a
similar conclusion—that Marx’s concept of the individual is a concept of
social individual, neither an absolute individual nor an “individual that
submerges in the collective.”
Sean Sayers noted that Marx’s critique of liberalism had what commu-
nitarianism and Hegelian social thought lacked. Communitarianism,
Sayers argues, fails to understand the way in which the atomic individual
coexists with social relations in a free society. Hegel was aware of the
mutual negation and interdependence between the atomic individual and
society, and believed that a free society created the conditions for the reali-
sation of individuality and freedom. Marx, meanwhile, held that the social

28 Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx (London: Verso, 2007), 30.

29 Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, 30.
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

relations of the market and atomised individuality are different forms of

estrangement that limit individuality and freedom. The full development
of true community, individuality and “free individuals” is possible only
when we are able to regain control of economic and social relations.30
This book generally agrees with Sayers’ critiques of communitarianism
and Hegel, and agrees with his approach of giving equal weight to the
community and the individual. However, the book’s account of social
relations is not limited to the social relations of the market and does not
attempt to give the market a major theoretical status. Because the market
is not a feature exclusive to capitalism and because Marx rejected the
market (the field of exchange) as a critical element in the analysis of capi-
talism. Accordingly, regardless of the market’s function in capitalism, this
book’s treatment of the concept of the individual devotes more attention
to the field of production that lies behind the market.
The integration of young Marx studies and Marxist political theory
continues today. Some contemporary researchers have begun to approach
the subject of the individual and the community from the perspective
of political philosophy and ethics. Their discussion has gradually moved
from the relationship between Marxism and German Idealism (especially
Hegel’s idealism) to topics such as rights, justice, the good, individual
happiness31 and the intellectual relationship between Marx and Engels.32

30 See Sean Sayers, “Individual and Society in Marx and Hegel: Beyond the Commu-
nitarian Critique of Liberalism,” Science & Society 71, no. 1 (January 2007): 84–102.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40404364.
31 See Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel and Thomas Scanlon eds., Marx, Justice and
History: A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1980); R. G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality and Social Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press,1990); Michael J. Thompson ed. Constructing Marxist Ethics: Critique,
Normativity, Praxis (Leiden: Brill, 2015).
32 See Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1983).
20 Z. LI

It has thus led to many further debates on whether Marx was a util-
itarian,33 a communitarian34 or an Aristotelian.35 Theoretical outputs
under this subject are substantial, although the starting point for some
of these discussions is questionable, because starting from a particular
normative principle or principles is typically “ideological” in Marx’s case.
Given this, Part III of the book eschews a research path that prioritises
normative principles but retains some of the dimensions often involved
in normative discussions, such as human dignity, obligations, rights and
better life, in an attempt to highlight the normative content of Marx’s
concept of the individual.
Besides, some scholars associated the study of the relationship between
the individual and society with the idea of communism. For example,
in an interview with French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy published in
the American journal Rethinking Marxism in 2007, Nancy understood
communism as “the constitution of the individuals,” emphasising the
“ontology of being-in-common.” According to this view, the concept
of communism neither opposes nor imposes itself on the individual, but
merely reveals and demands a commonality.36 In Uniqueness and Commu-
nism in the German Ideology (2010), Luca Basso claimed that Marx’s
perspective focused on individual self-realisation, and that his perspec-
tive can only be understood through the concept of uniqueness. He held
that individual uniqueness helped incorporate the individual aspects of
human emancipation into Marx’s concept of communism, while keeping
a distance from the liberal understanding of individuality.37 Inspired by

33 See Derek P. H. Allen, “The Utilitarianism of Marx and Engels,” American Philo-
sophical Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1973): 189–199. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009494:
George G. Brenkert, “Marx and Utilitarianism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5, no. 3
(1975): 421–434. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40230581.
34 See R. G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality and Social Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990); Philip J. Kain, Marx and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
35 See George McCarthy, Marx and the Ancients: Classical Ethics, Social Justice and
Nineteenth—Century Political Economy (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1990).
36 See Jean-Luc Nancy, “Nothing but the World: An Interview with Vacarme,”
Rethinking Marxism 19, no. 4 (September 2007): 521–535. https://doi.org/10.1080/
08935690701571300. Note that this interview originally took place in French, and
translated into English for publication in this journal.
37 Quoted in Center for Contemporary Marxism in Foreign Countries of Fudan Univer-
sity ed., Foreign Marxism Research Report 2010 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House,
2010), 14.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

all these ideas, this book also discusses the question of the relationship
between individual emancipation and communism. This book, however,
places extra emphasis on the particularity of the proletarian individuals
and the distinctive role of these individuals in historical emancipation.
In a broader sense, the critiques of developed capitalism by Lukács,
Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jürgen Habermas, Richard
Rorty, Slavoj Žižek, Jean Baudrillard, Terry Eagleton and the like can all
be valuable resources for conceiving and understanding Marx’s concept
of the individual. A significant part of these latter-day critiques extends
from the general economic sphere to the political sphere, the cultural
sphere and even the sphere of everyday life, exposing the predicament of
modern individuals to the maximum extent. As noted in Part III of this
book, Marx’s analyses of historical facts contain both negative and critical
dimensions, thus rendering his concept of the individual presented in a
negative light, such as the atomic individual, the individual split between
citizen and burgher, the class individuals, etc. In this sense, the contem-
porary critical theory provides no less theoretical resources than a direct
Marxist anthropological study.
In the history of Marxism, the proper understanding of socialism has
always been a major topic for theoretical reflection. Unlike orthodox
scientific socialism, which tried to understand socialism mainly as a kind
of economic system, Western Marxism mostly understood socialism from
a moral and ethical perspective. In other words, it defended socialism
mainly from the perspective of “ought.” Egalitarian socialism and eco-
socialism emerged from this background.
G. A. Cohen, the founder of analytical Marxism, was committed to
egalitarian socialism. He once explicitly criticised market socialism in one
of his books.

Market socialism does not fully satisfy socialist standards of distributive

justice, but it scores far better by those standards than market capitalism
does, and is therefore an eminently worthwhile project, from a socialist
point of view. Market socialism nevertheless remains deficient from that
point of view, because, by socialist standards, there is injustice in a system
that confers high rewards on people who happen to be unusually talented
22 Z. LI

and who form highly productive cooperatives. Market socialism is also a

deficient socialism because the market exchange that lies at its heart tends
against the value of community.38

In another book, Cohen systematically expounded the essential value of

socialism, i.e. equality, by critiquing the liberal view of justice.

This book attempts a rescue of the egalitarian thesis that in a society in

which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly
equal: distributive justice does not tolerate the deep inequality, driven
by the provision of economic incentives to well-placed people, that John
Rawls and his followers think a just society displays.39

If Cohen used liberalism as a paradigm for socialism in his discussion of

distributive justice, then the relationship between Marx’s philosophy and
liberalism—and especially in this book, the relationship between Marx’s
understanding of the individual and individual freedom in particular—
is, in fact, a very special and even more important theme. Although the
book does not specifically address how Marx understood the relationship
between freedom and equality, at least on the subject of the concept of
the individual, the book’s standpoint is very clear: freedom is more funda-
mental to the individual and his emancipation than equality. This book
does not agree with Cohen’s stance, but his defence of socialism is still
relevant for the purposes of this book.
Contrary to Cohen, Jeffrey Reiman made a very interesting attempt to
articulate “Marxian Liberalism.”

Marxian Liberalism is a theory of justice that results from combining the

liberal belief that people have a natural right to liberty understood as a
right to be free of unwanted coercion, with some Marxian beliefs, most
importantly, that private property in means of production is coercive.40

38 G. A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009),

74–75.
39 G. A. Cohen ed. Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2008), 2.
40 Jeffrey Reiman, “Marxian Liberalism,” in Reassessing Marx’s Social and Political
Philosophy, ed. Jan Kandiyali (New York: Routledge, 2018), 163.
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

This book rejects understanding freedom in terms of rights and seeing

Marx as a liberal; nevertheless, the book endorses considering Marx’s
concept of the individual in the context of the absence of freedom in
a capitalist society. The absence of freedom is, of course, not only mani-
fested in the repression that results from the privatisation of the means
of production, but also in the reification of the whole state of individual
existence.
The introduction of the ecological perspective reflects the latest
thinking about socialism in the twenty-first century, of which John
Bellamy Foster is the best-known figure. He points out that “the tran-
sition to socialism is possible only through a revolutionising practice
that revolutionises human being themselves. The only way to accom-
plish this is by altering our human metabolism with nature, along with
our human-social relations, transcending both the alienation of nature
and of humanity.”41 Mészáros also mentioned the link between socialism
and ecological values in his book The Challenge and Burden of Histor-
ical Time, published in 2009. He argued that socialism in the twenty-first
century must prove that a new social order is feasible in the ecological
and anthropological sense, and that it must be a socialism that integrates
ecological values with socialist values.42
Although the book’s account of socialism does not directly introduce
an ecological Marxist angle, other chapters in the book highlight the
natural dimension of Marx’s concept of the individual. Readers will find in
this book that: in the theory of estrangement, the object of labour consti-
tutes an indispensable element for free labour; in historical materialism,
the relationship between individuals and nature is a basic component of
the theory of productive forces. In communist theory, natural necessity
is not the object of individual emancipation to overcome; rather, genuine
emancipation is the ultimate reconciliation achieved between freedom and
natural necessity after conflicts. Although the natural dimension is not
identical to the ecological dimension, at the very least, this book attempts
to integrate Marx’s emphasis on nature into his concept of the individual.
In this respect, the book agrees with Mészáros—a combination of the
natural and anthropological dimensions is inevitable in Marx’s thoughts,
and this is no exception to his concept of the individual.

41 John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 273.
42 Quoted in Foreign Marxism Research Report 2010, 10–11.
 PART I

Dialectics, History and Marx’s Concept

of the Individual

Ever since the Renaissance, modern Western philosophy has turned its
attention to an issue unexplored by all previous philosophies, namely,
secular life and the role of individuals therein. Vico’s “historical science,”
Schopenhauer’s “free will,” Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” Kierkegaard’s
“truth is subjectivity” and Heidegger’s “being-there” are all proclaiming
the decline of the older philosophy and occurrence of a new one.
Marx’s thinking on individual’s historical situation also reflects the secular
atmosphere of this new philosophy. Nevertheless, it is not sufficient to
merely point out the internal consistency between Marx’s philosophy1
and other philosophical schools. It is more challenging—but also more
valuable—for us to examine how Marx’s concept of the individual sets
his philosophy apart. The uniqueness of Marx’s philosophy initially mani-
fests itself in the two essential parts of Marx’s philosophy—history and
dialectics.

1 Marx’s philosophy here mainly refers to the theory of historical materialism outlined in
The German Ideology, and only in this sense can “history” and “dialectics” be taken as the
basic prescriptions of Marx’s philosophy. Thus, the content of this section overlaps with
Chapter 4 of Part II. However, some details, such as Hegel’s thoughts on externalisation,
also constitute the basis of the concept of the individual in other periods in Marx’s
thought—for example, in Marx’s theory of estrangement.
 CHAPTER 2

Dialectics as a Methodological Principle

Ever since Lukács argued that “orthodoxy refers exclusively to method.”1

many scholars have tended to regard Marx’s philosophy as essentially
a method, and have identified this method as dialectics. Regardless of
whether the view is correct, it at least shows the importance of dialectics
in Marx’s philosophy. As we all know, Marx’s dialectics was deeply influ-
enced by Hegel’s dialectics. However, it is important to remember that
Marx was influenced by a variety of philosophies and methods other than
Hegel’s dialectics.

2.1 Hegel’s Dialectics

One typical approach is to summarise the ontological aspects of Hegelian
dialectics as “affirmation - negation - the negation of negation.” In this
book, I recommend replacing it with a different approach, which can
be called “dialectical holism” (or organic theory).2 The dynamic holism

1 György Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone

(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971), 1.
2 See Merold Westphal, Preface to History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology (Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1998). In this book, apart from emphasising that Hegel’s
dialectics is a Dialectical Holism, Westphal also sees Hegel’s thought as a “total media-
tion.” Using the Phenomenology of Spirit as a clue, he pointed out that Hegel’s subversion

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Switzerland AG 2023
Z. Li, The Concept of the Individual in the Thought
of Karl Marx, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22591-8_2
Another random document with
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 Karl visited Rome again in 781, and it is this visit that from one
point of view most concerns us, for it most concerned the course of
Alcuin’s life.
Karl had been to Rome again in the year 787, to visit Pope Adrian
and settle terms with the Duchy of Beneventum. He had purposed to
devastate the duchy, its bishoprics, and its monasteries; but in
council with his bishops and chief men he determined to accept
hostages, including the two sons of the hostile Duke, who did not
himself dare to see the angry face of Karl. Karl completed his visit by
adoring the tombs of the blessed Apostles, and paying there his
vows; another sign that the great object of visits to Rome was to visit
the tombs of the twin princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. He
then returned to France and rejoined his wife Fastrada, his sons and
daughters, and his court, at Worms.
The all-important visit to Rome came at the end of the year 800.
Pope Leo III, elected in 795, had been seized in the spring of 799 by
his opponents, among whom two nephews of the late Pope, Adrian,
played a leading part, and an attempt had been made to put out his
eyes and cut out his tongue. He recovered[172] and escaped, and
was called—or fled—to Karl at Paderborn. Leo had on his
consecration sent to Karl, as the Patrician, the standard of Rome,
the keys of Rome, and even the keys of the tomb of St. Peter, in
recognition of his supremacy, the Eastern Emperor Constantine VI
being disregarded. Karl was therefore doubly bound to take
cognisance of the Pope’s case. There were very grave charges
against Leo. Alcuin names[173] adultery and perjury; but he writes
very strongly against subjecting Leo to trial on these charges. He
has read, he says, that by a canon of the blessed Silvester there
must be not less than seventy-two adverse witnesses of blameless
life if a pontiff was to be brought to trial. He has read in other canons
that the Apostolic See judges, is not judged. What pastor, he asks, in
the Church of Christ can be immune, if he who is the head of all the
churches is overthrown by malefactors?
We may compare with this the reasons which another member of
the trilogy of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics and scholars, St. Aldhelm,
gave at Rome against condemning the Pope of his time, Sergius, for
alleged immoral practices. The reasons were three. First, it was a
wretchedly base thing to suspect their own pontiff of crimes. Next,
what influence could the Roman pontiff have with the Britons and
other nations across the seas, if he was attacked by his own
citizens? Lastly, it did not seem likely, it could not be true, that one
who remembered that he was set over the whole world would
entangle himself in such a sin as this. Unhappily, for long periods in
the history of the Papacy, it not only was likely, it was undoubtedly
and overtly true.
Leo was received by Karl with great honour, and was sent back to
Rome to resume his high office. Karl followed him[174] towards the
end of the next year, 800, and was received by him at the twelfth
milestone from Rome “with the greatest humility and the greatest
honour”. This was on November 23. The next day Leo with great
pomp received Karl on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter, made an
oration to him, and led him into the church. Seven days later, on
December 1, Karl convoked an assembly, and expounded to them
his reasons for coming to Rome, the first and most difficult being the
need of a judicial inquiry into the charges against the Pope. It turned
out that no witness appeared to substantiate the charges; but that
seems to have been regarded as insufficient, and a formal abjuration
was made by Leo. The Pope, Eginhart[175] says, in the presence of
all the people, in the basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle,
carrying in his hands the Gospel, ascended the ambo, and invoking
the name of the Holy Trinity, purged himself by oath from the crimes
laid against him[176].
On the most sacred day of the Nativity of the Lord, Karl attended
Mass at St. Peter’s. As he rose from prayer before the Confessio[177]
of the Apostle, Leo placed on his head a crown, the whole Roman
people acclaiming—“To Charles Augustus, crowned by God the
great and pacific Emperor of the Romans, life and victory!” After
which the Pope adored him, that is, prostrated himself before the
emperor and kissed his feet, as had been the custom with the former
emperors. The title of Patrician was abandoned, and Charlemagne
became Imperator and Augustus.
 This is not the occasion for discussing the debated question
whether the Pope acted on an impulse of gratitude, or was guided by
a desire to interpose the most powerful personage in the West
between Rome and the Emperor of the East; or the equally debated
question whether Karl was an active and understanding receiver of
the new burden of honour and responsibility; or the question what
sort of right the Pope had to take such a step. To my mind the most
pointed question is whether the Pope skilfully forestalled Charles by
suddenly crowning him, in order to prevent his making himself
emperor and crowning himself. But we cannot pass by without a
word of comment the remarkable fact that the Pope performed the
barbaric, Byzantine, humiliating, ceremony of prostration before the
emperor and kissing his feet in adoration, as earlier Popes had had
to do to earlier emperors. It is this same barbaric custom of what is
technically called adoration, that the Popes, who used to perform it
to their imperial superiors, have now for some centuries expected
others to perform to them—the kissing of the Pope’s toe as it is
called by some, of the Pope’s foot by others. The state of the foot of
the great bronze figure of St. Peter in his church at Rome certainly
renders the former the more accurate phrase.
It is clear that Karl had for many months been carefully
considering the question of assuming the imperial crown in asserted
succession to the Emperors of the West, who had come to an end
three centuries and a half before.
This is the letter which Alcuin wrote to Karl at this Ep. 114.
most critical point in the history of Europe, a letter
which has been described as the most important of all which Alcuin
is known to have written. His remark that Karl’s position was higher
and his power for good greater than that of the Emperor of the East
and that of the Pope, has been understood to mean that Karl would
do well to restore in his own person the Empire of the West, so as to
be supreme in title as well as in fact. The date is May 799.
“To the peace-making Lord David the king, Flaccus Albinus
greeting.
 “We give thanks to thy goodness, most clement, most sweet
David, that thou hast deigned to have in mind our littleness, and to
note down for us that which thy faithful servant hath told us by word
of mouth. And not for this only do we give continual thanks to thy
piety, but for all the boons which thou hast conferred upon me from
the day on which my littleness became known to thee. Thou didst
begin with the very best for me, thou hast gone on to better still.
Wherefore with continual prayers I pray the mercy of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that having granted thee all that is best in earthly felicity, He
may deign to grant to thee eternally the far realms of everlasting
beatitude.
“If I were present with thee I would urge very many things on thy
venerable dignity, if opportunity were afforded for thee to hear and
for me to speak. For the pen of love is often wont to stir the deep
things of my heart, to treat of the prosperity of thy excellency, the
stability of the kingdom to thee by God given, and the profit of the
holy Church of Christ. The Church is perturbed by the multiform
wickedness of evil men, and stained by the nefarious attempts of the
vilest, not of ignoble persons only, but of some also among the
greatest and highest. This is matter for deep fear.
“Up to this time, there have been three loftiest persons in the
world. One, the apostolical sublimity, which is wont to rule by vicarial
office the see of the blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles. What has
been done against him who has been the ruler of that see, thy
venerated goodness has taken care to make known to me. Another,
the imperial dignity and secular power of the second Rome. How
impiously the governor of that empire has been deposed, not by
those of another race, but by his own people and fellow citizens, is
becoming known everywhere. [This was Constantine VI, Emperor of
the East, who had been affianced to Karl’s daughter Rotrudis some
eighteen years before, but had been forced by his mother Irene to
break the contract. In 797, two years before Alcuin’s letter, Irene had
deposed him and put out his eyes; she was now reigning alone.] The
third is the royal dignity, in which the dispensation of our Lord Jesus
Christ has placed thee, more excelling in power than the other
dignities named, more clear in wisdom, more sublime in dignity of
reign. Lo, on thee alone the whole safety of the churches of Christ
has fallen and rests. Thou art the punisher of crimes, thou the guide
of the erring, thou the consoler of them that mourn, thou the exalter
of good men.
“Is it not the case that in the see of Rome, where the greatest piety
of religion once shone clear, the very worst examples of impiety have
burst forth into view? They themselves, blinded in their own hearts,
have blinded their own Head. There is not seen there fear of God, or
wisdom, or love: what good thing can be there if nothing of these
three is found there? If there had been fear of God they would not
have dared, if there had been wisdom they would never have
wished, if there had been love they would by no means have done,
what they have done. These are the perilous times, foretold of old by
the very Truth, because the love of many grows cold.
“The care of the head must never be neglected; it is a less evil that
the feet suffer than the head.
“Let peace be made with those wicked Saxons, if that can be
done. Let threats be to some extent relaxed, so that men may not be
hardened and driven away, but may be kept in hope until by
wholesome counsel they be brought back to peace. Hold on to what
has been won from them, lest if they are allowed to gain a little, the
larger part be lost. Keep safe your own sheep-fold, that the ravening
wolf devour not it. Let such labour be spent on outside affairs that no
loss be suffered in your own affairs. Some time ago I spoke to your
piety about the exaction of tithes: that it is decidedly better to abstain
from the exaction, even for a considerable time, until the faith has
got its roots fixed in the hearts, if indeed that Saxon land be held
worthy of the choice of God. Those who have gone away were the
best Christians, as is well known; and those who remained have
continued in the dregs of wickedness. For by reason of the sins of
the people, Babylon has become the habitation of devils, as it is said
in the prophets.
“None of these things can have been overlooked by thy wisdom;
for we know how well learned thou art in the sacred scriptures and in
secular histories. From all of these full knowledge has been given to
thee by God, that by thee the holy Church of God among a Christian
people may be ruled, exalted, and preserved. What reward may be
given by God to thy best devotion, who is able to say? For eye hath
not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
Alcuin ends his letter with a pair of hexameters and some
elegiacs, both because Karl was interested in his versification, and—
we may suppose—because high-flown compliments, from which Karl
was not averse, come better in so-called poetry than in prose.

“From lofty heaven may Christ in mercy mild

Thee rule, exalt, defend, adorn, and love.

The holy stars of the sky, the grasses of the green earth,
All things together cry, May David prosper alway.
The earth and the sky and the sea, the men and the birds and the
beasts,
Cry with concordant voice, Father be it well with thee.”

As we are dealing with the relations of the Papacy with the Franks,
it may be well to say here something that ought to be said about the
demands of the Popes for money and territories. The two demands
which may on the whole be called the most monstrous of all the long
series, were made, the one probably, the other certainly, in Alcuin’s
time: one by Hadrian, to influence Karl, the other by one of his
predecessors to influence Karl’s father, Pepin.
A ridiculous document was produced by the Popes, probably
about the middle of this eighth century, with which we are dealing. It
was called the Imperial Edict of Donation. Its alleged author was
Constantine the Great. It professed to give to Silvester, the Bishop of
Rome in Constantine’s time, and to his successors, the Imperial
Palace (that is, the Lateran) and the City of Rome; all the provinces,
districts, and cities of the whole of Italy; and, in the Latin copy of the
forgery, all islands. The islands are absent from the Greek copy of
the forgery. It was on the strength of this forged donation of islands
that a later Hadrian, the one English Pope, Hadrian IV, professed to
be the owner of Ireland, and gave it to our king Henry II just four
centuries after the time with which we are dealing. Muratori was of
opinion that this audacious forgery was concocted between 755 and
766, that is, when Alcuin was from twenty to thirty years of age, and
while Offa was king of Mercia. In 774, when Karl had conquered the
Lombards, he went to Rome, as we have seen; ratified the donation
of his father Pepin, of which we must next speak, and laid the deed
of donation on the altar or on the tomb of St. Peter in the ancient
basilica of St. Peter. The original deed of Karl’s donation has, so far
as is known, long since perished; its terms are at best only vaguely
known. It is said to have comprehended the whole of Italy, the
exarchate of Ravenna, from Istria to the frontiers of Naples, and the
island of Corsica. Karl, then, ratified the forged Donation of
Constantine, at that time a quite recent forgery. The whole story,
however, is very vague, and historians differ considerably in the
deductions which they draw from the inadequate records. They differ
almost more widely as to the date at which the document was first
brought forward, the dates ranging from 760 to 1105. Of the fact of
the forgery there is no question; it cannot be denied, and so far as I
know no one of the Romans now is bold enough to deny that it is a
forgery. There is one point in the forgery which has an important
bearing on a very important question, namely, the true basis of the
reputation of the city of Rome as the chief ecclesiastical centre of the
Church of the West. Constantine is made to declare, in this forged
donation, that it was by the merits of St. Peter and St. Paul that he
emerged from the font at baptism cleansed of his sins. More than
that, he is made to declare that he makes this enormous donation to
the blessed chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and through them
to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome. Either, then, at the time of the
forgery it was completely recognized as a fact that the Popes
claimed their sovereignty on the twin authority, in the twin name, by
the twin princeship, of Peter and Paul; or it was completely
recognized at the time of the forgery that in the earliest times, and
notably in the time of Constantine the Great, whose baptism took
place in the year 337, Rome did base its claims to pre-eminence on
its possession of the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul, and on the twin
supremacy of those two princes of the Apostles, and, therefore, that
it might stand the test of the touchstone of history, it was essential to
use the twin names of Peter and Paul; if it had been Peter alone, it
would have been detected as a forgery. See Appendix D.
When we come to the document which was produced for the
purpose of influencing Pepin, Karl’s father, we pass out of the
atmosphere of vagueness, and find ourselves face to face with a
scandalous, an impious, fact. Pope Stephen II[178], who held the
Papacy from 752 to 757, was reduced to extremities by the arms of
the Lombard kings of North Italy. He went in person to Pepin, king of
the Franks, to entreat him to come over and succour the city of
Rome and the domain of St. Peter. To show how difficult it is to be
sure about facts of history when the chroniclers have a partisan bias,
it may be mentioned that the Italian chronicler states that Pepin went
to meet Stephen, and on meeting him dismounted from his horse,
prostrated himself on the ground before the Pope, and then walked
to the royal residence by the side of the Pope’s palfrey. The Frankish
chroniclers say that the Pope and his clergy, with ashes on their
heads and sackcloth on their bodies, prostrated themselves as
suppliants at the feet of Pepin, and would not rise till he had
promised his aid against the Lombards.
The king lodged Stephen in the monastery of St. Denys for the
winter, and well on into the next summer. There Stephen was
attacked by an illness so dangerous that his recovery was regarded
as a miracle, due to the intercessions of St. Dionys, St. Peter, and
St. Paul; where again we notice the twinship of St. Peter and St.
Paul as regards the protection of the Pope, with the local saint
added. After the return of the Pope to Rome, he was besieged by the
Lombard king, who vowed not to leave him a scrap of territory the
size of the palm of his hand. The Pope sent to Pepin a letter of
entreaty and threat. The king, he said, hazarded eternal
condemnation. He had vowed to secure to St. Peter the vast
donation to which reference has been made, and St. Peter had
promised to him eternal life. If the king was not faithful to his word,
the Saint kept firmly the donation, as it were the sign manual of the
king, and this he would produce against him at the day of judgement.
[179] The envoys came late in the year, and the king could not
conduct an army into Italy in the winter. In February, 755, or a little
earlier, Stephen wrote another letter, with a literally awe-full account
of the horrors of the siege, which had then lasted fifty-five days. He
conjured Pepin to come and help, “by God and his holy Mother, by
the powers of the heavens, by the apostles Peter and Paul, and by
the last day.” The collocation and the order of these adjurations is
significant. Still Pepin did not come. The Pope then resorted to the
blasphemous proceeding which it has seemed necessary to
describe. We may suppose that the Pope’s metaphorical statement
—that St. Peter had Pepin’s sign manual to a document which would
be produced against him at the day of judgement—had suggested to
the harassed mind of the Pope the idea that an immediate letter from
St. Peter himself would be more effective than the threat to produce
signatures at the day of judgement; and that if the letter was
addressed to the Franks at large, and not as the former letter to
Pepin and his sons, the whole nation would be terrified into prompt
action. However that may have been, a letter[180] was written with
the heading: “Peter, called to be an Apostle by Jesus Christ the Son
of the living God ... and [after a long paragraph] Stephen the prelate
of the catholic and apostolic Roman Church, ... to the most excellent
kings Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, with all the bishops, abbats,
priests, and all monks; all judges, dukes, counts, military officers,
and the whole people of the Franks.” The letter begins with the
words “Ego Petrus Apostolus”, I, Peter the Apostle. In it St. Peter
adjures those whom he addresses to rescue Rome from the
Lombards, making a special appeal that his own body, which
suffered torture for the Lord Jesus Christ, may be preserved from
desecration. “With me,” he proceeds, “the Mother of God likewise
adjures you, and admonishes and commands you, she as well as
the thrones and dominions and all the host of heaven, to save the
beloved city of Rome from the detested Lombards. If ye hasten, I,
Peter the Apostle, promise you my protection in this life and the next;
I will prepare for you the most glorious mansions in heaven; I will
bestow upon you the everlasting joys of paradise. Make common
cause with my people of Rome, and I will grant whatsoever ye may
pray for. I conjure you not to yield up this city to be lacerated and
tormented by the Lombards, lest your own souls be lacerated and
tormented in hell with the devil and his pestilential angels. Of all
nations under heaven, the Franks are highest in the esteem of St.
Peter; to me you owe all your victories. Obey, and obey speedily,
and, by my suffrage, our Lord Jesus Christ will give you in this life
length of days, security, victory; in the life to come, will multiply His
blessings upon you, among His saints and angels.” That little
summary is only about a twelfth part of the length of the letter itself.
The letter brought Pepin with a great host; he overcame the
Lombard king; and he bestowed on the Pope as a donation, by right
—it would appear—of conquest, not only what are called the States
of the Church, but also—and that in the teeth of the ambassador of
Constantine Copronymus, the Emperor of Constantinople, who
demanded its restoration to the Eastern Empire—the whole
exarchate of Ravenna. Thus it was that the Pope became a temporal
sovereign over vast portions of Italy. St. Peter’s letter was probably
the most important letter never written.
 CHAPTER XII
Alcuin retires to the Abbey and School of Tours.—Sends to York for more
advanced books.—Begs for old wine from Orleans.—Karl calls Tours a smoky
place.—Fees charged to the students.—History and remains of the Abbey Church
of St. Martin.—The tombs of St. Martin and six other Saints.—The Public Library of
Tours.—A famous Book of the Gospels.—St. Martin’s secularised.—Martinensian
bishops.

As time went on, Alcuin felt that he must withdraw from the varied
and heavy work which he was accustomed to do at the court,
whether at Aachen or elsewhere, and must retire to work quietly at
one of his abbeys. He obtained the king’s leave[181]. In 796 he wrote
to inform Karl that he had, in accordance with the king’s wish,
opened the school at Tours; that he must send to York for books; and
that he hoped the king would order the palace youths to continue to
attend the palace school which he had now left.
“I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your desire Ep. 78. a.d. 796.
and good pleasure, am busy with ministering,
under the roof of the holy Martin, to some the honey[182] of the holy
Scriptures; others I seek to inebriate with the old wine of ancient
disciplines; others I shall begin to nourish with the apples of
grammatical subtlety; some I purpose to illumine with the order of the
stars, as the painter nobly adorns the roof of the house of God. I
become very many things to very many men, that I may educate
very many to the profit of the holy Church of God and the honour of
your imperial realm, that no grace of Almighty God in me be
unemployed, and no part of thy bounty be without fruit.
“But I, your poor servant, need some of the more abstruse books
of scholastic learning which I had in my own land by the devoted
labour of my master[183], and to some extent of myself. I say this to
your excellency that you may be pleased to allow me to send some
of our young men to pick out what I need, and bring to France the
flowers of Britain; that not in York only there may be a garden
enclosed[184], but in Tours also the scions of paradise may bear fruit;
that the south wind may come and blow through the gardens by the
river Loire, and the spices thereof may flow out. I take as a parable
of the acquisition of wisdom the exhortation of Isaiah[185], ‘Ho, every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money;
come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without
money[186] and without price.’ Your most noble mind knows well that
there is nothing loftier that can be acquired for a happy life, nothing
more joyous as an exercise, nothing stronger against vices, nothing
more laudable in all dignity. As the philosophers have told us, there
is nothing more necessary for the ruling of a people, no better guide
of the life to the very best principles, than the glory of wisdom, the
praise of discipline, the efficacy of learning. To the earnest study and
daily exercise of wisdom, exhort, O king, the youths of your
excellency’s palace, that they may so advance while in the bloom of
youth that they may be held worthy to bring to honour their grey
hairs, and by wisdom may attain to perpetual happiness. To sow the
seeds of wisdom in these parts, I, so far as my poor intellect enables
me, shall not be found slack. In the morning of life, in the vigour of
study, I sowed in Britain; now, my blood running cold, as in the
evening of life, I cease not to sow in France. To me, shattered in
body, an expression of the holy Jerome, in his letter to Nepotianus, is
a solace: ‘Almost all the powers of the body are changed in old men.
Wisdom alone continues to increase; all the rest decrease.’ And a
little further on he says, ‘The old age of those that have trained their
youth in honourable arts, and have meditated in the law of God day
and night, grows more learned with age, more expert with use, more
wise with the process of time; it gathers the very sweetest fruits of
former studies.’”
The brethren of St. Martin of Tours had not a high character for
propriety of conduct. There are many evidences of this. It is
interesting to know that the earliest letter of Alcuin to which we can
reasonably assign a date is a letter appealing for a lapsed brother of
this same abbey of St. Martin of Tours, over which Alcuin was now
called to preside as an old man. The abbat to whom Alcuin
addressed this letter was Wulfhard, of whom the life of Hadrian I, as
printed by Muratori (iii. 1, 184, Rer. Ital. Script.), states that he was
sent along with Albinus, that is, Alcuin, to Hadrian, by Karl in 773.
[187] The letter was probably written in 774.

“To the pious father Uulfhard the abbat Albinus Ep. 1. a.d. 774.
the humble levite wishes health.
“I found this poor lamb wandering through the rough places of
neglect. Moved by pity, I brought him by sedulous admonition to the
home of our discipline, binding up his wounds, pouring in wine and
oil. To your piety, gentlest of fathers, I send him back, beseeching
you to receive him for the love of Him who, amid the joy of the
angels, has brought back on His own shoulders into the home of His
delights all of us, who were wandering among the precipices of sins.
Do not in austerity repel from thee one whom Christ has for pity
gathered back to Himself, nay, has met penitent, has run to and
embraced, has brought back to the house of feasting. And if any
envious man advise you to reject him, let such an one fear lest he
himself be rejected by Him who has said, ‘With what measure ye
mete, it shall be measured to you again.’... And though he have
sinned ten times, have not we sinned an hundred times; and though
he owe an hundred pence, do we not owe ten thousand talents?...”
Alcuin had a high regard for the wines of the Loire, and he
particularly liked them old. The best wine of that time would appear
to have been grown about the city of Orleans, and to have been kept
under the charge of the Bishop of Orleans as the chief owner of the
terraced lands on which the vines grew.[188] Here is a frolicsome
letter about a present of wine from Orleans. It is full of quotations
from the Song of Songs applied to local conditions, for the most part
rather obscure. When he comes to his concluding words, there is no
obscurity in his request that if wine is coming, good old wine may be
sent.
“To Theodulf, bishop of Orleans. Ep. 153. a.d. 796-
800.
“To the great pontiff and father of vineyards,
Teodulf[189], Albinus sends greeting.
 “We read in the Chronicles[190] that in the time of David, the king
most loved of God, Zabdi was over the wine-cellars of the vineyards.
Now, by the mercy of God, a second David [Karl] rules over a better
people, and under him a nobler Zabdi [Theodulf] is over the wine-
cellars of the vineyards. The king has brought him into the house of
wine and set over him the banner of love, that students may stay him
with flowers and fill him full of the apples of them that languish with
love,[191] that is, love of that which maketh glad the heart of man.
“Now even though there be a lack of that which strengthens,
namely bread, there is perhaps no lack of that which maketh glad,
namely wine, in the cellars of Orleans; for our hope is set on a
thriving vineyard and not on a fig-tree dried up. Wherefore Jonathan,
the counsellor of David, a man of letters,[192] sends unto Zabdi,
saying: Let us get up early: let us see how well the vineyard of
Sorech thrives: to them that chant the treaders’ cry therein the
streams of the cellarer are dispersed abroad. But now that the
storehouse is opened with the key of love, let this verse be sung by
the ruler of the vineyard in the towers of Orleans:[193] Eat with me,
my friends; drink, and drink abundantly: come ye and take wine and
milk without price. My throat is as the best wine meet for the drinking
of my beloved, to be tasted by his lips. I am my beloved’s and my
beloved is mine.
“It must not be replied—I have put off my coat, how shall I put it
on? I have washed my feet, how shall I defile them?[194] I cannot
rise and give to thee.[195] If by chance the three loaves are not at
hand, which were lacking in the store-houses of Gibeon,[196] by the
blessing of Christ the seven water-pots are full of the best wine,
which has been kept till now. Who does not know that some of this
wine, according to the command of the Virgin’s Son,[197] is to be
borne to the ruler of the feast of the city of Tours? But remember this:
You must not put new wine into old skins. No one, having drunk old
wine, straightway desireth new; for he saith—The old is better.
“Blessed is he that speaks to an attentive ear.”
 Tours was not in Alcuin’s time the bright place which it is now.
When Karl endeavoured to persuade Alcuin to accompany him to
Rome in 779, Alcuin begged that he might be excused. The journey
was long, and he wished to remain at Tours. It is evident that Karl in
his reply spoke of the splendours of Rome and contrasted them with
“the smoky dwellings” of Tours.
This is what Alcuin had said to the king:—
“Now about that long and laborious undertaking Ep. 118. a.d. 799.
of going to Rome. I cannot in any way think that
this poor little body of my frailty—weak and shattered with daily pains
—could accomplish the journey. I should have earnestly desired to
do it, if I had had the strength. I therefore entreat the most clement
benevolence of your paternity that you leave me to aid your journey
by the faithful and earnest prayers of myself and of those who with
me serve God at St. Martin’s.”
Karl’s answer we have not got. Alcuin’s rejoinder to it contains this
passage:—
“With regard to that with which it is your will to Ep. 119. a.d. 799.
upbraid me, that I prefer the houses of Tours,
sordid with smoke, to the gilded citadels of the Romans, I know that
your prudence has read that elogium of Solomon’s, ‘it is better to
dwell in a corner of the house-top, than with a brawling woman in a
wide house’.[198]
“And, if I may be pardoned for saying it, the sword hurts the eyes
more than smoke does. For Tours, content in its smoky houses, by
the gift of God through the providence of your goodness dwells in
peace. But Rome, which is given up to fraternal strife, ceases not to
hold the implanted venom of dissension, and now compels the
power of your venerated dignity to hasten from the sweet dwellings
of Germany to restrain this pernicious plague.”
From the foundation of the School of Tours, the students paid fees.
The great endowments of the abbey, much enlarged by Karl in 774
when he granted to Abbat Wulfhard a large amount of property in the
neighbourhood of Pavia, do not appear to have been applied to the
maintenance of the School. A change was made about forty years
after Alcuin, and then the education of the school was given free. We
learn that after Alcuin’s death the school continued to flourish under
Abbats Wulfhard II, Fridugisus, and Adalard, the masters of the
school receiving stipends from the fees of the students. This
“mercantile” arrangement was hateful to Abbat Adalard, and the
change came in his time, and by his order; but it was not financed
from the regular income of the abbey. The master at the time was
Amalric, who afterwards became Archbishop of Tours, dying in 855.
He gave to the abbey from his own private property certain funds for
the payment of the teachers, and in August, 841, it was decreed that
the schooling should be free. Amalric had many students under his
tuition who rose to important positions, of whom Paul the Archbishop
of Rouen, and Joseph the Chancellor of Aquitaine, are specially
mentioned. He was a good example of the “school master bishops”
with whom the Church of England was well stocked a generation
ago.

Plate I
The Abbey Church of St. Martin of Tours, before the pillage. To face p. 210.
 Plate II
St. Martin’s, Tours; the Horloge. To face p. 211.
The church of St. Martin, so magnificent in the times of the
historian Archbishop Gregory of Tours (573-94), became more and
more magnificent after several destructions by fire. It had reached its
greatest splendour when it was pillaged by the Huguenots. Tours
claims to have originated the name of those destructive people, who
in the beginning used to steal out for secret meetings at night
beyond the walls of the city, flitting about like the local bogey le roi
Hugon.[199] And Tours possesses to this day in the name of one of
its streets a reminiscence of the early hunting down of the
Huguenots as a highly enjoyable form of the chasse aux renards.
When their time came, they wreaked a savage revenge, and
practically destroyed the noble Abbey Church. A reproduction of its
appearance in the perfection of symmetry has been prepared from
plans and drawings, and is shown in Plate I. The only remains left by
the Revolution and by the necessity for new streets are the south-
west tower, called of St. Martin,[200] or of the Horloge, and a tower of
the north transept, called of Charlemagne.[201] They are of 12th-
century foundation, but the latter has a capital of earlier date still
clinging to it. Louis XI had surrounded the shrine of St. Martin with a
rich and very massive gallery of solid silver, but his needy successor
Francis was beforehand with the Huguenots and coined it into crown
pieces.
The tombs of St. Martin and the Saints who lay near him were
destroyed by the Huguenots, and their relics were burned. Portions
were saved, and in the new basilica of St. Martin, close to the site of
the old basilica, there is a noble crypt with a reproduction of the
massive tomb of St. Martin.[202] On the wall is an inscription to the
following effect:

Nomina corporum sanctorum quæ hic sepulta erant circa

tumulum Beati Martini.
SS. Briccius, Spanus, Perpetuus, Gregorius Tur.,
Eustochius, Eufronius, quorum venerabiles reliquiæ in capsis
existentes ab hæreticis impiissime in dicta ecclesia fuerunt
combustæ anno 1562.

Eustochius Briccius
Perpetuus MARTINUS Spanus martyr
Gregorius Eufronius
 Sic erant corpora horum in ecclesia B. Martini Tur. ordinata.

The Rue des Halles runs right through the site of the old basilica.
The new basilica lies at right angles to the old one, its axis lying
north and south, an arrangement which places the modern
confessio, with its reproduction of the old tomb, practically on the site
of the old confessio.
The connexion of St. Martin with Tours came about in this way. He
was born about 316, a native of Lower Hungary; had a taste for the
monastic life; was compelled by edict to become a soldier; served for
three years up to the age of eighteen; went to visit Hilary at Poitiers;
after some years came again to Hilary, and founded the monastery
of Lugugé, near Poitiers, said to have been the first monastic
institution in Gaul. His reputation stood so high that in 371 he was
elected by the populace to the bishopric of Tours, much against his
will. He built the monastery of Marmoutier, Maius Monasterium,
about two miles to the north-east of the walls of Tours, where a large
number of students received an education in such learning as then
was known. His time was mostly spent in conversion of the pagans
in his diocese. At the age of eighty, in 396, he was called to Condate
to settle an ecclesiastical dispute, was seized with fever, and died. It
was just at that time that his great admirer, Ninian, was finishing his
stone church at Whithern, in Galloway, and to Martin he dedicated it.
From that time, and owing to the connexion between Britain and
Gaul, dedications to St. Martin were frequent, as is instanced by the
old British church of St. Martin at Canterbury.
 Plate III
St. Martin’s, Tours; the Tour Charlemagne, with the dome of the new St. Martin’s
on the left. To face p. 212.