JEFFERSON MARTINS VIEL

Starting from a political assumption regarding the possibilities of transforming society towards what is traditionally called the emancipation of its members, I recover in this thesis a well-known itinerary that, taking the concept of the proletariat as its guiding thread, in so far as it seeks to identify the subject responsible for the transformation in question, begins with the early theoretical works of Engels and Marx in 1842 and follows up to the formulation of their new approach of history, initially presented in the manuscripts that form the German Ideology in 1845-1846. In doing so, I aim to argue that this itinerary must be interpreted in terms of an “existential choice” for revolution made by these philosophers, as well as the political conjunctures interspersed with it, rather than in terms of disputes confined to mere theory. I thus follow an expository path marked by the course adjustments that Marx and Engels made during this period. Firstly, Marx’s break with Rhenish liberalism and his consequent development of the concept of the proletariat as the material basis of German emancipation, in response to the failure of the philosophical-political strategy of educating German society through the activity of a free press organized as a system. Secondly, Marx’s break with Ruge and the abandonment of the conception of the proletariat as a passive mass to be led by intellectuals, in favor of another conception in which the proletariat, conscious of itself, can lead its own struggles for liberation, in response to the struggles of the organized proletariat in the so-called “advanced” countries of Europe. Thirdly, Engels’ conception of the proletariat, formulated both from his empirical investigations of the working classes in England and from the conceptual heritage of Hessian thought that he brought with him from Germany, which led him, in response to the so-called “Chartist” uprisings on British territory, to propose an alliance between the theoretical democratic/socialist principle and the practical movement of workers for the emancipation of England, in terms not far from those presented by Marx at the same period. Finally, the abandonment by both Marx and Engels of their “previous philosophical consciousness” towards the creation of a new ontology, in response to Stirner's intervention in The Ego and Its Own. I conclude that, although the adjustments in the philosophical-political itinerary of Marx and Engels are determined by practical concerns, it is only through the creation of this new ontology that they are able to respond to the political problems to which they are dedicated.