THE THREE SOURCES AND THREE COMPONENT PARTS OF THE 'YOUNG MARX' MYTH
Abstract
The article presents the analysis of the concepts that were formed within the framework of the discussion about a "young Marx" in the 20th century, the totality of which, following the modern Marxist scholar M. Musto, is designated as the "young Marx" myth. The following main trends that serve as "sources" of this myth are distinguished: humanistic reduction (the direction whose representatives consider the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844" as the central text in the work of K. Marx); analytical teleology (the methodological approach, which is found mainly in the studies of Soviet Marxists, according to which the "truth" of Marx's "early" texts is recognized as "Capital", and the creative evolution of Marx is presented as a gradual unconscious growth of materialist and communist elements) and “an epistemological break" (the concept of L. Althusser, according to which there is a radical "break" between the "early" and the "mature" texts of Marx). It is noted that the above concepts are reducible and based on an arbitrary reading of Marx's texts. All of them proceed from the pre-given notion of the "mature" Marx, construct on its basis the image of "a young Marx", based on a certain unifying principle, and admit the existence of a "real", authentic Marx, the essence of which is most fully expressed in certain texts. The author emphasizes that Althusser's concept of 'epistemological break' most fully embodies the 'young Marx' myth while simultaneously containing the necessary conditions for its overcoming within a new approach to understanding the transformations of Marx's thought. Such an approach entails recognizing the multiplicity, openness, and incompleteness of Marx's critical projects; the need to trace the underlying lines between projects of different periods and the endeavor to construct a network of genetic connections among them; attempts to conceptualize not only the non-linear but also the unbreakable transformation of Marx's thought and the rejection of dichotomies such as unconscious/conscious, 'young'/'mature' etc., which becomes possible through an acritical, horizontal, and non-hierarchical reading of his texts.
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