German Ideology

Context & Publication

• Written by Karl Marx in September 1843, in the form of a letter to Arnold Ruge.

• Published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals) in 1844.

• Marx and Ruge were editors of this journal.

• Only one issue of the journal was ever published.

• This text outlines the program and philosophical stance for their new journal.

I. The Situation in Germany and the Need for a New Venture

• Marx is leaving Germany for Paris.

• Reason for leaving Germany:

  • The atmosphere is "servile."

  • "No room at all in Germany for free activity."

  • "Everything is being forcibly repressed."

  • "A true anarchy of the spirit has burst out."

  • "Stupidity itself reigns supreme."

  • Cites Zurich obeying commands from Berlin as an example of intellectual repression.

• The New Venture:

  • A "new gathering point" is needed for "really thinking and independent minds."

  • He is confident the plan is a "real need" and will succeed if undertaken seriously.

II. The Method: "Ruthless Criticism" and Rejecting Dogma

• Uncertainty of the Future: Confusion exists about the future ("whither"). This is seen as an advantage.

• Rejection of Old Philosophy: Philosophers used to have all the answers ("roast partridges of absolute science"). Now, philosophy is "worldly" and involved in the "stress of battle."

• The Core Program: A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing.

  • "Ruthless" in two senses:

    1. "Not afraid of its own conclusions."

    2. "Not afraid of conflict with the powers that be."

• Against Dogmatism:

  • "Not in favor of setting up any dogmatic flag."

  • The goal is to help "dogmatics to clarify to themselves the meaning of their own positions."

• Critique of Existing Communism and Socialism:

  • Communism (as preached by Cabet, Dezamy, Weitling) is a "dogmatic abstraction."

  • It is a "special manifestation of the humanistic principle" that is still "infected by its opposite—private being."

  • Therefore, the abolition of private property is "by no means identical with this communism."

  • Other socialist teachings (Fourier, Proudhon) arose in opposition to this one-sided communism.

  • The socialist principle itself is only "one side" of the true human essence.

III. The Starting Points: Religion and Politics

• To influence German contemporaries, the criticism must start from the predominant interests in Germany:

  • Religion

  • Politics

• Do not start with a ready-made system (e.g., the utopian Voyage en Icarie).

• The Role of the Critic:

  • "Reason has always existed, only not always in reasonable form."

  • The critic must start from "any form of theoretical and practical consciousness."

  • The critic must "develop from the unique forms of existing reality the true reality as its norm and final goal."

IV. The Political State as a Catalogue of Struggle

• The political state, even in its modern forms, contains the "demands of reason."

• It presupposes that "reason has been realized."

• This creates a contradiction: a conflict "between its ideal mission and its real preconditions."

• This internal conflict is the source for discovering social truth.

• Analogy:

  • Religion = "catalogue of the theoretical struggles of mankind."

  • Political State = "catalogue of its practical struggles."

• The state expresses "all social struggles, needs, truths" in a political form.

• Therefore, it is valid to criticize specific political questions (e.g., corporative vs. representative systems).

  • This specific difference expresses the political difference "between the rule of man and the rule of private property."

V. The Goal: Reform of Consciousness and the Journal's Mission

• Linking Criticism to Practice: Criticism must be tied to the "criticism of politics" and a "definite party position." It must be identified with "real struggles."

• The Approach to the World:

  • Not as doctrinaires saying: "Here is the truth, bow down before it!"

  • Instead: "We develop new principles to the world out of its own principles."

  • Not saying: "Stop fighting... We want to shout the true slogan of the struggle at you."

  • Instead: "We only show the world what it is fighting for."

• Reform of Consciousness:

  • The task is to enable the world to "clarify its consciousness."

  • To "wake it from its dream about itself."

  • To "explain to it the meaning of its own actions."

  • This is done by "putting religious and political questions into self-conscious human form" (citing Feuerbach's method).

• The Motto: "Reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but through analyzing the mystical consciousness... whether it appears in religious or political form."

• Key Insights from this Reform:

  • The world has long been dreaming of something it can acquire if it becomes conscious of it.

  • It is not about drawing a line between past and future, but about "carrying out the thoughts of the past."

  • Mankind "begins no new work, but consciously accomplishes its old work."

• The Journal's Mission (Expressed in one word):

  • The work of our time to achieve self-clarification ("critical philosophy") about "the meaning of its own struggle and its own desires."

• Final Metaphor: It is a matter of "confession." For mankind to have its sins forgiven, it "has only to declare them to be what they really are."

Key Figures and Concepts Mentioned

• Figures: Arnold Ruge, Etienne Cabet, Theodore Dezamy, Wilhelm Weitling, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Ludwig Feuerbach.

• Concepts: Criticism (Kritik), Dogmatism, Communism (as a dogmatic abstraction), Socialism, Political State, Representative vs. Corporative Systems, Private Property, Consciousness, Reform of Consciousness.

CONTINUED

I. The Development of Feudal Property and Society

• Origins of Feudalism:

  • Emerged from the decline of the Roman Empire, where productive forces were destroyed (agriculture declined, industry decayed, trade died out).

  • Developed from the conditions of the conquest and the "Germanic military constitution."

• Structure of Feudal Property:

  • Based on a community, like tribal and ancient ownership.

  • The direct producing class was the enserfed small peasantry, not slaves.

  • A fully developed feudal system created an antagonism between the town and country.

• Power of the Nobility:

  • The "hierarchical structure of landownership" and "armed bodies of retainers" gave the nobility power over the serfs.

  • Feudal organization, like the ancient community, was an "association against a subjected producing class."

  • The form of this association was different due to the different conditions of production.

• Feudal Organization in the Towns:

  • Took the shape of corporative property (the guild system).

  • Property here consisted chiefly in the labour of each individual person.

  • Causes for the formation of guilds:

    • Necessity for association against the robber nobility.

    • Need for communal covered markets.

    • Competition from escaped serfs moving into towns.

    • The general feudal structure of the country.

• Social Hierarchy in Towns:

  • The accumulation of small capital and stable numbers created the relation of journeyman and apprentice.

  • This created a hierarchy in the towns similar to the one in the country.

• Summary of Chief Feudal Property Forms:

  • Landed property with serf labour.

  • Individual labour with small capital commanding the labour of journeymen.

  • The organization of both was determined by restricted conditions of production: small-scale primitive agriculture and craft-type industry.

• Division of Labour in Feudalism:

  • There was little division of labour.

  • The main division was the antithesis of town and country and the division into estates.

  • In the country: princes, nobility, clergy, peasants.

  • In the towns: masters, journeymen, apprentices, casual labourers.

  • In agriculture, the strip-system hindered development.

  • In individual trades, there was no division of labour at all.

  • Separation between industry and commerce existed in older towns and developed later in newer ones.

• The Feudal State:

  • The grouping into feudal kingdoms was a necessity for both the nobility and the towns.

  • The organization of the ruling nobility "had, therefore, everywhere a monarch at its head."

II. The Materialist Method: Society, State, and Consciousness

• The Empirical Basis of Social Structure:

  • "Definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations."

  • The connection between the social/political structure and production must be shown empirically in each instance, "without any mystification and speculation."

  • The social structure and the State continually evolve out of the life process of definite individuals—not as they appear in imagination, but "as they really are," as they "produce materially" under "definite material limits... independent of their will."

• The Origin of Ideas and Consciousness (The Base/Superstructure Relationship):

  • The production of ideas, conceptions, and consciousness is "at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men."

  • Thinking and mental intercourse are initially the "direct efflux of their material behaviour."

  • This applies to all mental production: politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics.

  • Men are the producers of their conceptions, conditioned by the development of their productive forces and corresponding forms of intercourse.

  • Key Thesis: "Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process."

• The Camera Obscura Metaphor for Ideology:

  • If in ideology, men and their circumstances appear "upside-down as in a camera obscura," this inversion arises from their historical life-process, just as the inversion on the retina arises from the physical life-process.

III. Contrast with German Idealism and the New Science

• Ascending from Earth to Heaven:

  • In direct contrast to German philosophy which "descends from heaven to earth," Marx's method "ascends from earth to heaven."

  • We do not start from what men say, imagine, or conceive.

  • We start from "real, active men," and on the basis of their real life-process, we demonstrate the development of the "ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process."

  • The "phantoms formed in the human brain" are sublimates of their material life-process.

• The End of Independent Ideology:

  • Morality, religion, metaphysics, and other ideologies "thus no longer retain the semblance of independence."

  • They have no history, no development of their own.

  • Key Thesis: "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

  • The correct starting point is "the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness."

• The Method as Real, Positive Science:

  • This method starts from real premises and does not abandon them.

  • "Where speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins."

  • "Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place."

• The Fate of Philosophy:

  • When reality is depicted, "philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium of existence."

  • At best, it can be replaced by a "summing-up of the most general results" and "abstractions" from the observation of historical development.

  • These abstractions, apart from real history, have no value in themselves.

  • They only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, not as a "recipe or schema" for trimming history.

  • The real difficulties begin with the "observation and arrangement" of the actual historical material.