The German Ideology

The German Ideology is a manuscript compilation, written in the years 1845-1847 mainly by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in parts and at times also of Moses Hess and Joseph Weydemeyer, but was then released only to a small extent. Together with the 1845 Marx wrote, also unpublished during his lifetime Theses on Feuerbach, The German Ideology is considered as the key work of historical materialism.

Editions

From the lyrics, under the title The German ideology became known later, was published during the lifetime of authors just an article of Marx.

The approximately two-thirds of the total volume by far the longest text of the work, the critique of Max Stirner was 1903/1904 published in part in nine episodes of the series Documents of socialism under the title The holy Max ' by Eduard Bernstein. Amber grabbed so in the led by the so-called Stirner Renaissance debate about anarchist forms of socialism.

The section with the criticism of Ludwig Feuerbach was published in 1926 by David Ryazanov as a preprint for his planned Marx- Engels Collected Edition ( MEGA1 ).

The entire German ideology first appeared in 1932 in Volume I / 5 of the MEGA1 in Berlin, after arrest with Vladimir Ryazanov Adoratskij as editor. In the same year Siegfried Landshut and Jacob P. Mayer expressed during an edition of Marx's early writings out an abbreviated version, in which especially the Stirner - section - two-thirds of the whole text - was missing. As part of the plant output MEW The German Ideology was published in 1958. A revised version thereof appeared in 1965 in Moscow and 1966 in the GDR.

For the second Marx- Engels Collected Edition ( MEGA2 ) a sample tape was made ​​in 1972, in which the Feuerbach Chapter commented according to the latest state of research and is edited. On the basis of Wataru Hiromatsu another version in a new arrangement of the texts issued in Tokyo in 1974.

A recent treatment of the German ideology in the context of MEGA2 led among other things to a recording of two other texts, a published anonymously, but Marx ascribed article in the journal Society mirrors, as well as an article by Joseph Weydemeyer from the Westphalian steamboat to this collaboration of Marx had written in Brussels. The appearance of the new edited volume I / 5 of the MEGA2 was announced several times since the sample band in 1972 but not implemented due to the extremely difficult source situation and the need to incorporate recent scientific research to date. Hans Pelger cited as another reason that the "appropriate editors are not commissioned in the wake of Inge Taubert [ could ]. "

Main statements

The work contains criticisms of the Young Hegelian philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, as well as contemporary German socialists.

In The German Ideology, the authors establish a link between the living conditions of people and their thoughts. In particular, the idea of people of a certain age, region and social position on moral, ethical ideas, ideals of beauty, etc. are always a reflection of the specific living conditions of the period, region and social class ( and layer, etc. ). Simplified one can say: That consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness. The living conditions of people of a certain era and a region are very different, which is reflected in a hierarchical order of the different classes. The thoughts of the members of all classes serve to hedge this rule that class which benefited the most from the particular social structure. The ruling ideas are always the thoughts of the rulers.

The interests of the ruling class are represented as the ostensibly common of all members of society. Marx and Engels describe thoughts that serve the interests of the ruling class and are shown to be valid only when ideology. Ideology can uncovered by criticism, but only through revolutionary practice ( " revolutionary practice ", as Marx wrote in the third thesis of Feuerbach ) are eliminated by the material conditions are changed.

The German ideology marks the boundary between the so-called early and the mature Marx, that is, its solution from the humanistic materialism of Feuerbach. It contains, as Engels wrote that the first formulation of Marx's " big theory ", the historical materialism.

Theoretical classification

In the preface of the Critique of Political Economy of 1859 Marx deals with the development background of work:

" Friedrich Engels, with whom I ( in the German - French Yearbooks ) maintained a constant exchange of ideas since the publication of his brilliant essay on the critique of economic categories, was by another road ( compare his Condition of the Working Class in England) to the same with me result reached, and when he also settled in Brussels in the spring of 1845, we decided to jointly develop the our conception as opposed the ideological one of German philosophy, in fact settle with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript [ ... ], two large octavo volumes, was long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia when we received the news that changed circumstances did not allow the pressure. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly, as we had achieved our main purpose - self-clarification ".

Engels expressed in 1888 in a preface to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy on the manuscript as follows:

"Before I send these lines in the press, I have the old manuscript of 1845/46 sought out and looked upon again. The section on Feuerbach is not completed. The final part consists of an exposition of the materialist conception of history, which only proves how incomplete our knowledge at the time of economic history were. The criticism of Feuerbach's doctrine itself lacks it; for the present purpose, so it was useless. However, I 've found in an old issue of Marx in the form appended eleven Theses on Feuerbach. There are notes for later elaboration, written down quickly, absolutely not intended to be pressure, but invaluable as the first document in which the brilliant germ of the new philosophy is laid down. "

Excerpt

" The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, ie the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that their order, are subject to the same time in the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships decision taken as a thought; So the relationships which make the one class the ruling, so the ideas of its dominance. "

Expenditures and partial editions

• The " Saint Max " ( Saint Max ), Ed Eduard Bernstein. In: Documents of Socialism, III. Tape, 1903, pp. 19-32, 65-78, 115-130, 169-177, 306-316, 355-364; and Volume IV, 1904, pp. 210-217, 259-270, 312-321, 363-373 and 416-419
• Marx and Engels on Feuerbach. The first part of the ' German Ideology '. In: Marx- Engels Archive. Journal of the Marx - Engels Institute in Moscow. Volume 1, 1926, pp. 205-306
• The German ideology. Edited by D. and W. Rjazanow Adoratskij, Marx- Engels Collected Edition (MEGA ), Volume I / 5, Berlin 1932
• Marx-Engels Werke ( MEW ), Volume 3, Berlin / GDR: Dietz, 1958, DEA archive online
• Feuerbach ( new edition of the Cape. I). In: German Journal of Philosophy, 14 (1966 ), pp. 1192-1254
• The German ideology. I. tape. Chapter I. Feuerbach. Contrast between materialistic and idealistic view. Sample tape to the Marx- Engels Collected Edition ( MEGA2 ) ( enth Edition Principles and coupons ). Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1972, pp. 31-119 and pp. 399-507
• The German ideology. I. tape. Chapter I. Feuerbach. Edited by Wataru Hiromatsu, Tokyo: Kawadeshobo - Shinsha 1974 ( German and Japanese)
• The German ideology. Articles, artwork, designs, clean copy fragments, and notes to I. Feuerbach and II, Saint Bruno, eds: International Marx- Engels Foundation, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2004, 2 volumes (text, phone) ISBN 3-05-003837 - 3