The Virtue of Poverty: Marx's Transformation of Hegel's Concept of the Poor

In 1842 Marx wrote a series of articles for the Rhineland Newspaper in which he reported on the debates in the Rhineland Provincial Assembly on the laws governing the gathering offallen wood . These articles (henceforth referred to as the "Wood Theft Debates") have received remarkably little scholarly attention . l This may be due to the fact that they do not contain any of Marx's more "popular" concepts which lend themselves so readily to random philosophizing concepts such as species being, alienation or estrangement . What the "Wood Theft Debates" do contain is an explicit discussion of the nature and character of the poor vis a vis civil society, a discussion which in many respects is the starting point for Marx's later concept of the proletariat . This paper has two aims : the first is to show how Marx's discussion of the poor represents a particular transformation of Hegel's view of the poor ; the second is to suggest how Marx's early views of the poor may prove problematic for his later thinking about the proletariat . The most cursory examination of the "Wood Theft Debates" reveals that Marx's description of the poor as "die Standeslosen ", those of no estate, is a direct borrowing of Hegel's own characterization of the unincorporated poor . (11232) 2 However, even as Marx takes over Hegel's teminology, he transforms the meaning of this description by making it synonymous with his own definition of the poor as "the elemental class of human society" . (234) 3 In order to appreciate the significance of Marx's transformation of the Hegelian characterization of the poor it is necessary to elucidate the meaning which this concept holds in Hegel's political philosophy . Hegel's uses the term "Stand" to refer both to the legally recognized social group or class to which an individual belongs and to the explicitly political function which these social groupings possess in relation to the state . It is not accidental that Hegel uses the term Stand in this dual manner . He claims that his usage is justified by the German language itself (the same word has both