Abstract

In Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right written in 1843, Marx considers the revolutionary potential of the European working class. He claims that past “revolutions” only represented partial progress, because they were scattered around Europe and controlled by the interests of dominant social groups rather than combining and thus contributing to the emancipation of humanity as such. The French political revolution, the British industrial revolution and the German intellectual revolution needed to merge and co-develop for the proletariat to emancipate humanity from its capitalist shackles and bourgeois life world. Of course, this strategic and geopolitical reading of the European space would evolve in Marx’ later works. Just weeks after Marx and Engels combatively wrote about the communist “spectre” that was “haunting Europe” in the Manifesto, the vast uprisings of 1848 would soon experience a heavy counter-revolutionary backlash with significant impact on Marx’ life and thought.