Writing the republic: politics and polemics in the German Ideology

With the significant amount of new attention being paid to the political and theoretical debates of the Vormärz, the decade prior to the March riots that signaled the beginning of the 1848 revolution in Germany, it is important to keep in mind that, in addition to their roles as political activists and public intellectuals, the left Hegelians were also writers "” that is, they were attempting not only to describe social reality, but also to address and convince a reading public. When rereading and reassessing their work, then, it is crucial not to lose sight of the formal and rhetorical articulations of their various claims, and particularly the polemical form of so much left Hegelian discourse.