german ideology by karl marx

1. PSIR401
German Ideology

2. • Terms: Absolute Spirit, Fictitious Capital,
Ideology, Critique, Substance, Self-
consciousness, System, Religion, Dogmatism,
Consciousness.

3. • Idealism versus materialism:
– Criticism of Hegel and idealists
• Ontological claims:
– species-being versus real humans
• Humans trying to find their true nature versus humans trying to
change their social conditions
• Basic concepts:
– Mode of production: those elements that go into producing
material life
– Productive forces: natural resources, tools and technology
– Bourgeoisie and proletariat
– Means of production: The tools (instruments) and the raw
material (subject) you use to create something

4. • Mode of production:
– productive forces: human labour power and
means of production (e.g. tools, equipment,
buildings, technologies, knowledge, materials, and
improved land).
– social relations of production: property, power
relations governing society's productive assets
(often codified in law), relations between people
and the objects of their work, and the relations
between social classes.

5. • Historical materialism:
– From ideas (i.e. those ideas which end in Reason and the State)
to material basis to historical development (development of
various modes of production)
- Substance: objective reality viewed as the unity of all forms of
its self-development — including both nature and society and
consciousness.
- self-consciousness: Self-consciousness is the awareness of
being separate from the objective world and of being related to
and a part of that world. Viewing humankind as a product of
Nature, humanity is in this sense the self-consciousness of
Nature.

6. Materialist method
• Empirical method
– “The nature of individuals [...] depends on the
material conditions determining their production”
– “life is not determined by consciousness but
consciousness by life”

7. History: fundamental conditions
• 1) First historical act:
– Production of means
– 2) Satisfaction of needs lead to new needs
– 3) man make other men (family)

8. Private property and communism
• Abolishing property
• “”We call communism the real movement
which abolishes the present state of affairs”.

9. Civil society and the conception of the epoch
• State, civil society, family (market relations)
• “not criticism but revolution is the driving force of
history”
• Substance: the sum of productive forces, capital
funds, social forms of intercourse
• Overthrow the State (to assert individuality)

10. Feuerbach:
• Liberation (emancipation) via ideas versus
material conditions
– (read p.14 paragraph 4)

11. Ruling class ruling ideas
• “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of
society, is at the same its ruling intellectual force”
• “The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period
presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class…”
• Giving the ruling ideas the form of universality,
representing them as the universally valid ones
• Read p. 18, parag. 4 and 5

12. • Questions for discussion:
1. What explanation does Marx give for the character
of German ideology, “the connection of German
philosophy with German reality”?
2. Can you think of present-day examples of people
who criticise their own “teacher”, but do so within the
conceptual and practical framework they learnt from
their teacher?
3. Can you give a plausible and convincing defence of
the view of the “Old Hegelians”?
4. What is the argument between the “Old Hegelians”
and the “Young Hegelians” and why is Marx so
contemptuous of the Young Hegelians?

13. • Terms: Being, Empiricism, Abstract, Individual,
Nature, Labour, Mode of Production, Relations
of Production, Division of Labour, Forces of
Production, Tribal Society, Slave Society,
Private Property, Proletariat, Feudal Society,
Politics, Idealism, Positive, Science.

14. • Questions for discussion:
1. Can Marx legitimately just cite “the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions
under which they live” as his premises? How else could one begin a science?
2. “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They
themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means
of subsistence” Is this just a nice piece of rhetoric justifying labour as the criteria for distinguishing
humans from animals, or is it something more than that?
3. Give an example from the present-day of “Each new productive force ... causes a further
development of the division of labour.”
4. “The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many different forms of
ownership”. Can you give examples from recent times of different forms of ownership arising on the
basis of changes in the division of labour?
5. Can you give examples of what Marx calls “the language of real life”?
6. Can you examples to show that “in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down”?
7. What roles does Marx assign to philosophy in the final paragraph of this section?