The ‘Young Marx’ Myth in Interpretations of the Economic–Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Focusing on the dissemination and reception history of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, this article will critically examine the famous controversy surrounding the relationship between Marx’s ‘early’ and ‘mature’ writings. A review of all the major books published worldwide (especially in Germany, France, the Soviet Union and English-speaking countries) on Marx’s early writings is followed by a plea for a new and rigorous reading of Marx’s Paris manuscripts, which have been wrongly considered by almost all interpreters as a finished work. Careful textual analysis of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 alongside the so-called Paris notebooks makes it possible to refute conceptions of the former as a fully fledged text either prefiguring Marx’s thought as a whole (as Landshut or the French existentialists argued) or advancing a well-defined theory opposed to that of Marx’s ‘scientific’ maturity (as Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy or Althusser claimed).