The German Ideology

While Marx and Engels were influenced by Hegel, they broke with Hegelian thought in important ways. Hegel argues that the world is conditioned by concepts and ideas, and that history is driven by the progress of the human spirit toward rationality and freedom.

Between 1842 and 1845, German philosophy underwent radical transformations. Young Hegelians supported Hegel’s idea of historical progress but argued that under the current forms of the state, freedom was impossible. Marx and Engels mockingly describe the “philosophic charlatanry” (33) of this generation of philosophers who are concerned with “the realm of pure thought” (33). They contend that German thought is too dependent on Hegel. Rather than advance a comprehensive critique of Hegelian thought, philosophers contest specific aspects of Hegelian thought to advance new ideas. This overreliance on Hegel produces an insular and uninteresting state of ideas.

The split between Old Hegelians and Young Hegelians centers on the legitimacy of the rule of ideas and concepts as they exist in the current state. Young Hegelians argue true freedom is not possible under the current rule. Instead, they seek to change consciousness. This is a conservative outlook. These ideas do not challenge the material conditions of the world. In contrast, Marx and Engels develop a materialist theory of history: Society is based in specific material conditions, and history is driven by conflict between classes.

Feuerbach’s materialism ignores history. Because he does not address history, he is not a materialist. If history is separated from ordinary life, the relation of man from nature is separated as well. This creates the antithesis of nature and history. This is important because philosophers like Feuerbach rely on concepts like essence, which are rooted in the idea of a nature that hasn’t been conquered by man. Marx and Engels argue that the concept of “nature” that exists outside of time, and therefore history, does not exist.

The materialist theory of history is rooted in conflict between classes. Tribal society corresponds to an undeveloped stage of production, a rudimentary division of labor, and a family based social structure. Ancient stages occur when tribes come together by agreement or conquest. Private property begins to develop, as does communal property. The division of labor is more developed, and the class relations between slaves and citizens are developed. Feudal development gives landowners power over an enserfed peasantry. Feudalism is developed in the country. In towns, in contrast, property is chiefly in the labor of the worker. This leads to guilds, organizations of craftsmen and workers. Both systems have very little division of labor and are rooted in the restricted conditions of production. Industrialism in 17th-century England created a context of universal competition, which “forced all individuals to strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc., and, where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie” (81). Competition isolated individuals from their communities.

There is a popular conception that war, murder, pillage, robbery, and other forms of violence are the driving force of history. However, taking soon ceases to be sufficient, and once there is nothing left to steal, things must be produced. With this stage, the social systems revert back to the material conditions of the locality, an inversion where “the servant was master, and that the conquerors very soon took over language, culture and manners from the conquered” (94). Violence alone does not determine historical progress.

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. 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). Here, we see a clear distinction with Hegelian philosophy, as a materialist philosophy contends that ideas emerge from the real lives of individuals themselves. In this analysis Marx and Engels break from empiricists, for whom history is a “collection of dead facts,” and the idealists, who believe history is the “imagined activity of imagined subjects” where ideas ascend to earth from the heavens (42).

The ideas and philosophies of the ruling classes are studied in isolation from the ruling classes. Through this separation, they are abstracted into a concept as a dominant force in history. Man can therefore be abstracted to Man as an essence, as speculative philosophy does. This speculative approach to history ignores the real lives of people in favor of what people profess to be. Marx and Engels write:

Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historiography has not yet won this trivial insight. It takes every epoch at its word and believes that everything it says and imagines about itself is true (70).

By suggesting that the abstract wisdom of philosophers fails to reach the concrete knowledge of shopkeepers, they further develop their challenge to idealism.

Feuerbach describes himself as a communist but changes the word communist to common man, revealing that he “thinks that it is thus possible to change the word ‘communist,’ which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category” (64). Marx and Engels highlight this to demonstrate idealism’s incompatibility with real social and political change.