Marx’s early critique centered on illusory political emancipation, not class exploitation.
Evidence
The importance of homo politicus in modern political thought explains as well Marx’s obsession in his early writings with the unrealized figure of sovereign political man and with his critique of the compromised status of political man in constitutional democracy. It helps us understand why, as Marx struggles with the Hegelians and the fictions of the bourgeois state, his concern initially is not with class inequality or exploitation but with what he takes to be the illusory freedom and thin notion of citizenship and belonging tendered by bourgeois constitutionalism. Similarly his critique of the French Revolution pertains to its failure to realize the quest for “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” animating it. In his assessment of “political emancipation” — the formal enfranchisement of heretofore excluded portions of humanity—he finds the politically emancipated individual to be isolated and impotent, subject to powers beyond its control that have lost their political names. For Marx, modern man is both a ghostly sovereign and is ghosted by his own alienated political powers, which come to dominate him in the powers of the state and economy. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 189
Categorization
- XREF: Reframes Marx’s early writings on the Jewish Question and On the Jewish Question, connecting to critiques of bourgeois constitutionalism. — connects to: Marx’s novelty lay in siding with the proletariat, not in analyzing exploitation
- SEED: An essay contrasting Brown’s ghosted-sovereign Marx with contemporary left critiques that abandon homo politicus entirely.