The Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

Ruthless in Three Senses

At age 25, Marx defined his thought as “the ruthless criticism of everything existing.”¹ Although his criticism would mature in subsequent writings, the 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge in which this phrase appears is a statement of purpose for his life’s work, as every future development only derived from the application of the ruthless method it describes. In other words, if Marx only wrote this brief letter, he still would have outlined the characteristic form of critique that distinguishes him both from previous philosophers and later Marxists in whose hands the ruthless criticism of everything existing ossified into self-satisfied formulas and state ideologies.

There is indeed no more vital resource with which to cut through dogmatic forms of Marxism than Marx’s method of ruthless criticism. This is because it does not establish anything once and for all. Instead, it criticizes everything, including every criticism, including itself. So long as it remains the ruthless criticism of everything existing, it can never become a dogma, because by definition, it is relentless critique, whereas dogmatism is the end of critique.

In describing this new approach to which his and Ruge’s short-lived journal (the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher) was to give expression, Marx writes that he is “not in favor of setting up any dogmatic flag. On the contrary, we must try to help the dogmatics to clarify to themselves the meaning of their own positions.” Ruthless criticism’s only task is demolishing the thought-terminating clichés and comforting illusions that inhibit a critical understanding of the existing world, “enabling the world to clarify its consciousness, in waking it from its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions.”

Marx concludes, “Our motto must therefore be: Reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but through analyzing the mystical consciousness, the consciousness which is unclear to itself, whether it appears in religious or political form.” In other words, ruthless criticism does not seek to replace a false consciousness with an absolute consciousness. It does not confront the world “as doctrinaires with a new principle: ‘Here is the truth, bow down before it!’’ It is that which forces dogmatic consciousness to explain itself, or rather, to confront the fact that it can’t.

Marx’s early letter announces his enduring polemic against utopianism and his insistence on a critical understanding of society in its actual development, rather than dogmatic visions of ideal social orders. “If the designing of the future and the proclamation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realize all the more clearly what we have to accomplish in the present— I am speaking of a ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses: The criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be.”

Criticism only becomes ruthless, for Marx, when it meets two criteria. It must neither be afraid of its object (“the powers that be” with which its fundamental criticisms necessarily conflict), nor of itself (“its own conclusions,” and the discomfort they create). The ruthless criticism of everything existing is indeed dangerous to everyone involved. It does not moderate itself to protect the feelings of individuals or to preserve the peace of the group, nor does it shy away from the extreme tension it introduces wherever it appears. It thrives on the uneasiness it creates by calling everything into question, forcing everyone, including the critic who wields it, to suffer its consequences.

Not many have the stomach for ruthless criticism. Few wish to be criticized, and even less wish to criticize—not just some things, but everything, including themselves and the social, professional, and political networks in which they pursue their interests. But precisely because it applies to everything, there is nothing personal about ruthless criticism, something that has no interest in criticizing anything in isolation. When it attends to one thing, it only does so to address general patterns that are exemplified by that something particular. It does not demonize individuals; it pressures individual forms of ideological consciousness to answer for their general confusion.

Viewed in this light, only those eager to remain in comfortable illusions recoil from the ruthless method by which ideology is shattered and mystical consciousness clarified. But for those who prefer disturbing realities to soothing falsehoods, its irritating stings must be welcomed as a gift, the stimulus that wakes us from our dreams about ourselves.

Marx considers criticism to be ruthless when it neither fears its conclusions nor any conflict with the powers that be, yet I contend there is a third sense in which criticism proves it is completely ruthless: that is, when it demonstrates a capacity to criticize itself. Just as Marx would soon conclude that “to be radical is to grasp things by the root,” and that “for man the root is man himself,” the ruthless criticism of everything existing can only lay claim to its name when it incorporates itself into its criticism.² Whereas most criticism is self-assured as it criticizes other things, ruthless criticism truly criticizes everything when it does not shield itself from criticism, indeed when it forces criticism to sharpen itself against itself.

Marxism is thought to be a criticism of capitalist society, but it never rests content with any criticisms of capitalism any more than it does with capitalism itself. It is this constant scrutiny of anti-capitalism that leads me to interpret Marxism as the criticism of the criticisms of capitalism. Marxist criticism becomes radical—truly encompasses everything—not by criticizing capitalism from a righteous “anti-capitalist perspective,” but when it critiques all criticisms of capitalism, and forces the critics of the society to clarify their criticism. This is precisely what Marx does when, first outlining his ruthless method, he names communists, not capitalists, as “the dogmatics” who must be made to explain themselves.

Demonstrating his tendency to criticize anti-capitalism as much as capitalism itself, he calls the actually-existing utopian communism of the period “a dogmatic abstraction,” something his own criticism would relentlessly seek to demystify. The ruthless critical pressure he brought to bear on ostensible anti-capitalist allies also applied to any vagueness of his own thought, evidenced by his shift away from abstract talk about “the world” and “mankind” in general that mark his early writings. Indeed, Marx continually sharpened his thought, always clarifying vague and unhistorical concepts such as those that lingered in his early letter to Ruge. He did so, however, by never refusing to turn its critical method against himself.

What separates ruthless criticism from leftist anti-capitalism is this capacity for metacritical reflection, the self-conscious admission that there is never a point at which criticism can become full of itself and cease being ruthlessly self-critical. Leftist anti-capitalism is capitalist society’s criticism of itself, produced in such a way to shield that society from criticism. It is capitalism scolding itself to become a better capitalism, but its moral self-satisfaction is itself never called into question by its toothless criticism. It is content to condemn capitalism as bad, but this does not satisfy the ruthless criticism that rejects all complacent criticisms.

Antileftist Marxism therefore criticizes leftist anti-capitalism as much as the capitalism criticized by the left. But for it to become completely ruthless, it must go one step further and open itself to criticism. In other words, it must criticize the criticisms of the left.

1. Karl Marx, “For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (Marx to Arnold Ruge),” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 12-15.

2. Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 60.