Abstract

There have been repeated attempts to examine Marx's and Engels' harsh condemnation of Moses Hess in The Communist Manifesto. Unlike Koigen or Hammacher, who characterize Marx and Engels as “True Socialists” at the beginning of their development, Franz Mehring finds the judgment of The Communist Manifesto too strong. Of course, he does not mean this in the theoretical sense: he means only that the “True Socialists” — especially Hess — should not be judged solely on the basis of The Communist Manifesto. “Similarly, it may be claimed that the essence of German socialism has been determined by The Communist Manifesto's critique of German socialism at that time instead of the reverse: that their critique developed out of the personal experience of the Manifesto's authors with the German socialism of their time.”