Reason Has Always Existed But Not

This line comes from a letter Marx wrote to Arnold Ruge in September 1843, as they were planning a new radical journal (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher). Marx argued that the task was not to construct a utopian system but to subject existing political and religious forms to critical scrutiny — allowing reason, which had always existed in human affairs, to become self-aware. The letter is an early expression of his method: immanent critique rather than abstract ideal-building.