Foreword 

Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than 
Spiritualism or speculative idealism, which substitutes “self- 
consciousness” or the “spirit” for the real individual man and with 
the evangelist teaches: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh 
profiteth nothing.” Needless to say, this incorporeal spirit is 
spiritual only in its imagination. What we are combating in Bauer's 
criticism is precisely speculation reproducing itself as a caricature. 
We see in it the most complete expression of the Christian- 
Germanic principle, which makes its last effort by transforming 
“criticism” itself into a transcendent power. 

Our exposition deals first and foremost with Bruno Bauer's 
Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung—the first eight numbers are here 
before us—because in it Bauer’s criticism, and with it the 
nonsense of German speculation in general, has reached its peak. 
The more completely Critical Criticism (the criticism of the 
Literatur-Zeitung) distorts reality into an obvious comedy through 
philosophy, the more instructive it is— For examples see Faucher 
and Szeliga.— The Literatur-Zeitung offers material by which even 
the broad public can be enlightened on the illusions of speculative 
philosophy. That is the aim of our book. 

Our exposition is naturally determined by its subject. Critical 
Criticism is in all respects below the level already attained by 
German theoretical development. The nature of our subject 
therefore justifies our refraining here from further discussion of 
that development itself. 

Critical Criticism makes it necessary rather to assert, in contrast 
to it, the already achieved results as such. 

We therefore give this polemic as a preliminary to the independ- 
ent works in which we—each of us for himself, of course — shall 
present our positive view and thereby our positive attitude to the 
more recent philosophical and social doctrines. 

Paris, September 1844 
Engels, Marx 

Chapter I 

“CRITICAL CRITICISM 
IN THE FORM OF A MASTER-BOOKBINDER”, 
OR CRITICAL CRITICISM AS HERR REICHARDT 

Critical Criticism, however superior to the mass it deems itself, 
nevertheless has boundless pity for the mass. And Criticism so loved 
the mass that it sent its only begotten son, that all who believe in him 
may not be lost, but may have Critical life. Criticism was made mass 
and dwells amongst us and we behold its glory, the glory of the only 
begotten son of the father. In other words, Criticism becomes 
socialistic and speaks of “works on pauperism”.’ It does not regard it 
as a crime to be equal to God but alienates itself and takes the form of 
a master-bookbinder and humiliates itself to the extent of non- 
sense — indeed even to Critical nonsense in foreign languages. It, 
whose heavenly virginal purity shrinks from contact with the sinful 
leprous mass, overcomes itself to the extent of taking notice of 
“Bodz”* and “all original writers on pauperism” and “has for years 
been following this evil of the present time step by step”; it scorns 
writing for experts, it writes for the general public, banning all 
outlandish expressions, all “Latin intricacies, all professional jar- 
gon”. [t bans all that from the works of others, for it would be too 
much to expect Criticism itself to submit to “this administrative 
regulation”. And yet it does do so partly, renouncing with admirable 
ease, if not the words themselves, at least their content. And who will 
reproach it for using “the huge heap of unintelligible foreign words” 
when it repeatedly proves that it does not understand those words 
itself? Here are a few samples’: 

“That is why the institutions of mendicancy inspire them with horror.” 

“A doctrine of responsibility in which every motion of human thought becomes an 
image of Lot’s wife.” 

“On the keystone of this really profound edifice of art.” 

“This is the main content of Stein’s political testament, which the great statesman 
handed in even before retiring from the active service of the government and from all 
its transactions.” 

“This people had not yet any dimensions at that time for such extensive freedom.” 

“By palavering with fair assurance at the end of his publicistic work that only 
confidence was still lacking.” 

“To the manly state-elevating understanding, rising above routine and pusillani- 
mous fear, reared on history and nurtured with a live perception of foreign public state 
system.” 

“The education of general national welfare.” 

“Freedom lay dead in the breast of the Prussian national mission under the control of 
the authorities.” 

“Popular-organic publicism.” 

“The people to whom even Herr Briggemann delivers the baptismal certificate of its 
adulthood.” 

“A rather glaring contradiction to the other certitudes which are expressed in the 
work on the professional capacities of the people.” 

“Wretched self-interest quickly dispels all the chimeras of the national will.” 

“Passion for great gains, etc., was the spirit that pervaded the whole of the 
Restoration period and which, with a fair quantity of indifference, adhered to the new 
age.” 

“The obscure idea of political significance to be found in the Prussian 
countrymanship nationality rests on the memory of a great history.” 

“The antipathy disappeared and turned into a completely exalted condition.” 

“In this wonderful transition each one in his own way still put forward in prospect his 
own special wish.” 

“A catechism with unctuous Solomon-like language the words of which rise gently 
like a dove—chirp! chirp!—to the regions of pathos and thunder-like aspects.” 

“All the dilettantism of thirty-five years of neglect.” 

“The too sharp thundering at the citizens by one of their former town authorities 
could have been suffered with the calmness of mind characteristic of our 
representatives if Benda’s view of the Town Charter of 1808 had not laboured under a 
Mussulman conceptual affliction with regard to the essence and the application of the 
Town Charter.” 

In Herr Reichardt, the audacity of style always corresponds to the 
audacity of the thought. He makes transitions like the following: 

“Herr Bruggemann ... 1843 ... state theory ... every upright man ... the great 
medesty of our Socialists ... natural marvels ... demands to be made on Germany ... 
supernatural marvels ... Abraham ... Philadelphia ... manna ... baker ... but since we are 
speaking of marvels, Napoleon brought,” etc. 

After these samples it is no wonder that Critica] Criticism gives us a 
further “explanation” of a sentence which it itself describes as 
expressed in “popular language”, for it “arms its eyes with organic 
power to penetrate chaos”. And here it must be said that then even 

“popular language” cannot remain unintelligible to Critical Criti- 
cism. It is aware that the way of the writer must necessarily be a 
crooked one if the individual who sets out on it is not strong enough 
to make it straight; and therefore it naturally ascribes “mathematical 
operations” to the author. 

It is self-evident—and history, which proves everything which is 
self-evident, also proves this—that Criticism does not become mass 
in order to remain mass, but in order to redeem the mass from its 
mass-like mass nature, that is, to raise the popular language of the 
mass to the critical language of Critical Criticism. It is the lowest 
grade of degradation for Criticism to learn the popular language of 
the mass and transfigure that vulgar jargon into the high-flown 
intricacy of the dialectics of Critical Criticism. 

Chapter II 

“CRITICAL CRITICISM” AS A “MILL-OWNER”, 
OR CRITICAL CRITICISM AS HERR JULES FAUCHER* 

After rendering most substantial services to self-consciousness by 
humiliating itself to the extent of nonsense in foreign languages, 
and thereby at the same time freeing the world from pauperism, 
Criticism still further humiliates itself to the extent of nonsense in 
practice and history. It masters “English questions of the day” and 
gives us a genuinely critical outline of the history of English industry. 

Criticism, which is self-sufficient, and complete and perfect in 
itself, naturally cannot recognise history as it really took place, for 
that would mean recognising the base Mass in all its mass-like mass 
nature, whereas the problem is precisely to redeem the Mass from 
its mass nature. History is therefore freed from its mass nature, 
and Criticism, which has a free attitude to its object, calls to 
history: “You ought to have happened in such and such a way!” All the 
laws of Criticism have retrospective force: prior to the decrees of 
Criticism, history behaved quite differently from how it did after 
them. Hence mass-type history, so-called real history, deviates 
considerably from Critical history, as it takes place in Heft VII of 
the Literatur-Zeitung from page 4 onwards. 

In mass-type history there were no factory towns before there 
were factories; but in Critical history, in which, as already in Hegel, 
the son begets his father, Manchester, Bolton and Preston were 
flourishing factory towns before factories were even thought of. In 
real history the cotton industry was founded mainly on Hargreaves’ 
jenny and Arkwright’s throstle, Crompton’s mule being only an 
improvement of the spinning jenny according to the new principle 
discovered by Arkwright. But Critical history knows how to make 
distinctions: it scorns the one-sidedness of the jenny and the 

throstle, and gives the crown to the mule as the speculative 
identity of the extremes. In reality, the invention of the throstle 
and the mule immediately made possible the application of water- 
power to those machines, but Critical Criticism sorts out the 
principles lumped together by crude history and makes this 
application come only later, as something quite special. In reality 
the invention of the steam-engine preceded all the above-mentioned. 
inventions; according to Criticism it is the crown of them all and 
the last. 

In reality the business ties between Liverpool and Manchester in 
their present scope were the result of the export of English goods; 
according to Criticism they are the cause of the export and both 
are the result of the proximity of the two towns. In reality nearly 
all goods from Manchester go to the Continent via Hull, according 
to Criticism via Liverpool. 

In reality all grades of wages exist in English factories, from Is 6d 
to 40s and more; but according to Criticism only one rate is 
paid — 11s. In reality the machine replaces manual labour, according 
to Criticism it replaces thought. In reality the association of workers 
for wage rises is allowed in England, but according to Criticism it is 
prohibited, for when the Mass wants to allow itself anything it 
must first ask Criticism. In reality factory labour is extremely tiring 
and gives rise to specific diseases— there are even special medical 
works on them; according to Criticism “excessive exertion cannot 
be a hindrance to work, for the power is provided by the machine”. 
In reality the machine is a machine; according to Criticism it has a 
will, for as it does not rest, neither can the worker, and he is 
subordinated to an alien will. 

But that is still nothing at all. Criticism cannot be content with 
the mass-type parties in England; it creates new ones, including a 
“factory party”, for which history may be thankful to it. On the 
other hand, it lumps together the factory-owners and the factory 
workers in one massive heap—why bother about such trifles! — 
and decrees that the factory workers refused to contribute 
to the Anti-Corn-Law League not out of ill-will or because of 
Chartism, as the stupid factory-owners maintain, but merely 
because they were poor. It further decrees that with the repeal of 
the English Corn Laws agricultural labourers will have to put up 
with a lowering of wages, in regard to which, however, we must 
most submissively remark that that destitute class cannot be 
deprived of another penny without being reduced to absolute 
starvation. It decrees that the working day in English factories is 
sixteen hours, although a silly un-Critical English law has fixed a 

maximum of twelve hours. It decrees that England is to become a 
huge workshop for the world, although the un-Critical mass of 
Americans, Germans and Belgians are ruining one market after 
another for the English by their competition. Lastly, it decrees that 
neither the propertied nor the non-propertied classes in England 
are aware of the centralisation of property and its consequences for 
the working classes, although the stupid Chartists think they are 
well aware of them; the Socialists maintain that they expounded 
those consequences in detail long ago, and even Tories and Whigs 
like Carlyle, Alison and Gaskell have proved their knowledge of 
them in their works. 

Criticism decrees that Lord Ashley's Ten Hour Bill is a half- 
hearted juste-milieu measure and Lord Ashley himself “a true 
illustration of constitutional action”,? while the factory-owners, the 
Chartists, the landowners— in short, all that makes up the mass 
nature of England—have so far considered this measure as an 
expression, the mildest possible one admittedly, of a downright 
radical principle, since it would Jay the axe at the root of foreign 
trade and thereby at the root of the factory system—nay, not 
merely lay the axe to it, but cut deeply into it. Critical Criticism 
knows better. It knows that the ten hour question was discussed 
before a “commission” of the Lower House, although the un- 
Critical newspapers try to make us believe that this “commission” 
was the House itself, “a Committee of the Whole House”’; but Criticism 
must needs do away with that eccentricity of the English Constitu- 
tion. 

Critical Criticism, which itself begets its opposite, the stupidity of the 
Mass, also produces the stupidity of Sir James Graham: by a 
Critical understanding of the English language it puts things in his 
mouth which the un-Critical Home Secretary never said, just to 
allow Critical wisdom to shine brighter in comparison with his 
stupidity. Graham, according to Criticism, says that the machines 
in the factories wear out in about twelve years whether they work 
ten hours a day or twelve, and that therefore a Ten Hour Bill 
would make it impossible for the capitalists to reproduce in twelve 
years through the work of their machines the capital laid out on 
them. Criticism proves that it has thus put a false conclusion in the 
mouth of Sir James Graham, for a machine that works one-sixth 
of the time less every day will naturally remain usable longer. 

However correct this observation of Critical Criticism against its 
own false conclusion, it must, on the other hand, be conceded that 

Sir James Graham said that under a Ten Hour Bill the machine 
would have to work quicker in the proportion that its working 
time was reduced (Criticism itself quotes this in [Heft] VIII, page 
32) and that in that case the time when it would be worn out 
would be the same—twelve years. This must all the more be ac- 
knowledged as the acknowledgement contributes to the glory and 
exaltation of “Criticism”; for only Criticism both made the false 
conclusion and then refuted it. Criticism is just as magnanimous 
towards Lord John Russell, to whom it imputes the wish to change 
the political form of the state and the electoral system. From this 
we must conclude either that Criticism’s urge to produce 
stupidities is uncommonly powerful or that Lord John Russell 
must have become a Critical Critic within the past week. 

But Criticism only becomes truly magnificent in its fabrication of 
stupidities when it discovers that the English workers— who in 
April and May held meeting after meeting, drew up petition after 
petition, and all for the Ten Hour Bill, and displayed more 
agitation throughout the factory districts than at any time during 
the past two years—that those workers take only a “partial 
interest” in this question, although it is evident that “legislation 
limiting the working day has also occupied their attention”. 
Criticism is truly magnificent when it finally makes the great, the 
glorious, the unheard-of discovery that 

“the apparently more immediate help from the repeal of the Corn Laws absorbs 
most of the wishes of the workers and will do so until no longer doubtful 
realisation of those wishes practically proves the futility of the repeal” — 

proves it to workers who drag Anti-Corn-Law agitators down from 
the platform at every public meeting, who have seen to it that the 
Anti-Corn-Law League no longer dares to hold a public meeting 
in any English industrial town, who consider the League to be 
their only enemy and who, during the debate of the Ten Hour 
Bill— as nearly always before in similar matters— had the support 
of the Tories. Criticism is superb, too, when it discovers that “the 
workers still let themselves be lured by the sweeping promises of 
the Chartist movement”, which is nothing but the political expres- 
sion of public opinion among the workers. Criticism is superb, too, 
when it realises, in the depths of its Absolute Spirit, that 

“the two party groupings, the political one and that of the landowners and 
mill-owners, no longer wish to merge or coincide”. 

It was so far not known that the party grouping of the 
landowners and the mill-owners, because of the numerical small- 

ness of either class of owners and the equal political rights of each 
(with the exception of the few peers), was so comprehensive that it 
was completely identical with the political party groupings, and not 
their most consistent expression, their peak. Criticism is splendid 
when it suggests that the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers do not know 
that, ceteris paribus, a drop in the price of bread must be followed . 
by a drop in wages, so that all would remain as it was; whereas 
these people expect that, granted there is a drop in wages and a 
consequent lowering of production costs, the result will be an 
expansion of the market. This, they expect, would lead to a 
reduction of competition among the workers, and consequently 
wages would still be kept a little higher in comparison with the 
price of bread than they are now. 

Freely creating its opposite — nonsense — and moving in artistic 
rapture, Criticism, which only two years ago exclaimed “Criticism 
speaks German, theology speaks Latin!”,> has now learnt English 
and calls the estate-owners “Landeigner” (landowners), the factory- 
owners “Muhleigner’ (mill-owners)—in English a mill means any 
factory with machinery driven by steam or water-power—and the 
workers “Hande” (hands). Instead of “Einmischung” it says Interfe- 
renz (interference); and in its infinite mercy for the English 
language, the sinful mass nature of which is abundantly evident, it 
condescends to improve it by doing away with the pedantry with 
which the English place the title “Sir” before the Christian name of 
knights and baronets. Where the Mass says “Sir James Graham” 
it says “Sir Graham”. 

That Criticism reforms English history and the English language 
out of principle and not out of levity will presently be proved by the 
thoroughness with which it treats the history of Herr Nauwerck. 

Chapter III 

“THE THOROUGHNESS OF CRITICAL CRITICISM”, 
OR CRITICAL CRITICISM AS HERR J. (JUNGNITZ?) 

Criticism cannot ignore Herr Nauwerck’s infinitely important 
dispute with the Berlin Faculty of Philosophy. It has indeed had a 
similar experience and it must take Herr Nauwerck’s fate as a 
background in order to put its own dismissal from Bonn' in 
Sharper relief. Criticism, being accustomed to considering the 
Bonn affair as the event of the century, and having already 
written the “philosophy of the deposition of criticism”, could be 
expected to give a similar detailed philosophical construction of 
the Berlin “collision”. Criticism proves a priori that everything had 
to happen in such a way and no other. It proves: 

1) Why the Faculty of Philosophy was bound to come into 
“collision” not with a logician or metaphysician, but with a 
philosopher of the state;