4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST CRITICISM IN MARXIST METHOD The first and best known statement regarding the formation of Marx's thought came from Marx himself. In his famous Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859., Marx clearly put forward the sequence of his studies. Marx studied philosophy and history, as well as law., as a student. In the year 1842-43, as an editor of the Rheinische ^eitung, he occupied himself for the first time with the concrete economic questions of the day. It was then that he declared himself against the ^amateurism" of a ^philosophically weakly tinged echo of French socialism and communism" and turned to a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right. This projected work was never completed, though part of the work was accomplished by the writing of the Critique of Hegel^s Doctrine of the State. Marx began the investigation of political economy in Paris in 1844. The first fruit of this labour is represented by the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In his Preface of 1859, Marx refers to his criticism of the Hegelian philosophy of right immediately before he introduces the famous thesis that has emerged through his investigation.2 The implications of his study do not work in only one direction. In his review of Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Engels states that Marx's discovery at once, and in its first consequences, runs directly counter to all idealism, even the most concealed.8 This much is clear to an observer regarding the interconnection indifferent aspects of Marx's undertaking. Internally, the connection of the ^early" and ^later" works is confirmed by the very task that Marx set before himself in his criticism of Hegel. In his Introduction to the projected Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Marx highlights a significant dimension of his work. He explicitly states the purpose of his work as that of war on the German status quo of 1843. He has already come to the conclusion that the positive possibility of German emancipation lies in the formation of a class with radical chains, the proletariat, which can redeem itself only through the total redemption of humanity.4 Yet, why must he critically examine Hegel? He examines Hegel because he clearly sees that German philosophy is the ideal prolongation of German history: The criticism of the German philosophy of the state and oflaw.which received its most consistent, thorough and complete formulation from Hegel, is both these things: it is at once a critical analysis of the modern state and of the reality connected with it and a decisive negation of all previous forms of political and juridical consciousness in Germany, whose most refined and universal expression, elevated to the level of a science, is precisely the speculative philosophy of law.6 One is right in demanding the negation of philosophy. But, (Ms negation cannot be achieved, as Marx points out, by turning one's back