Abstract

Karl Marx's voluminous writings contain an implicit concept of social and historical progress based on the principles of contradiction, paradox and practice. This concept was an integral part of Marx's intellectual and political development and reflected the contradictory-paradoxical-activist bent of his personal life. Marx never wrote explicitly about progress, but the genesis of an implicit concept of progress appears in his adolescent activities and poetry of the mid-1830s and develops through the formative years of his theoretical development in the 1840s. His conversion to Hegelian philosophy at the University of Berlin established the basis for a concept of progress based on Hegel's dialectical worldview and the role of conflict in history. Marx's doctoral dissertation in Greek philosophy located the practical materialism of Epicurean philosophy as the basis for human freedom and progress. As a journalist in 1842--3, Marx developed his views on progress in the context of political, economic and social conditions in Germany. He criticized government censorship and defended the "free press" as a vehicle for social progress. Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy of law in 1843, his initial studies in political economy and contacts with workers in Paris in 1844, and his polemical attacks on German idealism in 1845, strengthened the contradictory practical aspects of his concept of progress. Simultaneously, Marx's increasing knowledge of history led him to view all progress in history as paradoxical. From 1846 to 1848, his efforts to organize European workers as a leader in various political organizations strengthened the role of practice in his conception of progress. Marx's complete yet implicit concept of progress appeared in The Poverty of Philosophy . His work as a journalist and political revolutionary in the Revolutions of 1848--9 reflected this concept of progress. The defeat that followed changed Marx's life politically and personally but not his concept of progress. After 1850, he applied his concept of progress to his journalism, his work in political economy, and to the formation of working class organizations and political parties. From the early 1850s to his death in 1883, Marx rejected all abstract, evolutionary and teleological views of progress