ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how in Marx the three stages correspond to three strategic responses by socialism as a system to the problem of knowledge. The first 'philosophic' stage covers Marx's attitudes between 1840 and 1848, highlighted by his writings in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844-1845. The second 'economic' stage, comes after the production of The Communist Manifesto, and is largely contained in the Foundations for a Critique of Political Economy. The final 'political' stage corresponds to Marx's growing movement away from an economic determinism to a political determinism, or better, to an increasing awareness that the political variable of State power cannot simply be spoken of in 'long-run' terms, but as the essential pivot in the immediate practical struggle of people for socialism. Socialism had such a towering figure in Marx that the impulse to justify any given course of action by doctrinal references becomes overpowering.
