The German Ideology

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels contrast their materialist method with the idealist philosophy that was popular in German thought. Materialism argues that the sensuous, material world has a reality independent of the mind or the spirit. The world that is perceptible to the senses—the world of touch, taste, sight, and sensation—is where ideas emerge. Materialism contrasts idealism, which argues that matter is dependent on the mind or the spirit.

The use of these terms differs from their everyday usage. For example, idealism is associated with virtue and high-minded ideas, whereas materialism has connotations of greed and commercialism. In philosophy materialism focuses on matter and the physical world, while idealism is concerned with ideas.

Hegel’s idealism emphasizes the human subject but is interested in thought or contemplation. Idealism argues that the world is created through the mental categories we use to understand it or impose upon it. Change occurs through the transformation of the spirit or the mind, which then realizes itself in society or the material world. Marx and Engels spend a significant portion of the book responding to Stirner because he pushes the idealist argument to its furthest point. Stirner writes, “Concepts should play the decisive role everywhere, concepts should regulate life, concepts should rule. That is the religious world to which Hegel gave systematic expression” (204). For Stirner, development occurs through self-realization. Gradual discoveries in the individual’s life contribute to the emergence of the ego and a higher consciousness. Social, political, economic, and historical conditions do not factor into Stirner’s analysis.

Marx and Engels suggest that one’s material circumstances cannot be easily transcended by discovering the ego. They write that “the true spirit of [Stirner’s] book” is his “enormous gullibility” because he accepts the illusions people have of themselves as being reality (140). They use their critique of Stirner to introduce an important argument in their philosophy: No level of consciousness, incisive criticism, or brilliant thought can change material conditions without being grounded in reality. Ideas cannot make a person the master of the world around them. They further dismiss Stirner for simply adopting Hegel’s theory of the stages of life.

Marx and Engels do not deny the reality or importance of the mental or spiritual realm. However, they argue that ideas can arise only as products and reflections of material conditions. Knowledge is derived from the senses and firsthand observation. For example, the authors describe that there is a clear connection between production and social and political structures. The material limits of society determine what forms of social organization are possible. Ideas, concepts, and consciousness also emerge from these material conditions.

Here, we see a clear departure from Hegelian philosophy. Materialist philosophy contends that ideas emerge from the real lives of individuals themselves. The authors write, “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men—the language of real life” (41). Humans shape and change the physical world, and in doing so, they can also change themselves. Change is part of the material nature of the world.

In this analysis Marx and Engels break from empiricists, for whom history is a “collection of dead facts,” and from idealists, who believe history is the “imagined activity of imagined subjects” where ideas ascend to earth from the heavens (42). Marx and Engels nuance existing materialist philosophy by arguing that the human subject plays an important role in the physical reality of the world. They draw from both idealist and empiricist traditions to argue that humans do create or transform the physical reality they find themselves in—but rather than a process that happens in thought, it is material activity that enacts these changes.