 |
Glyn Hughes'
Squashed Philosophers The
Condensed Edition of "When we conceive things thus, as they really are and happen, every profound philosophical problem is solved." |
|
Glyn Hughes'
Squashed Philosophers The
Condensed Edition of "When we conceive things thus, as they really are and happen, every profound philosophical problem is solved." |
INTRODUCTION
to The German Ideology
To the reader armed only with
the popular conception of Marx and Engels The German Ideology
comes as something of a surprise. This, their first comprehensive
statement of the social-political philosophy now known as Marxism
contains the expected references to 'Bourgeois' 'Proletariat'
'Revolution' and 'Communism', yet the bulk of its argument is a
philosophy of history.
Marx, the son of a lawyer,
studied philosophy as an undergraduate in Bonn and Berlin in an
atmosphere deeply influenced by George Friedrich Hegel, the early
19th century German philosopher. Hegel held that understanding
reality is a matter of understanding the concepts we use about
it, and that these ideas are forever being re-interpreted through
the process of 'dialectic', where an idea (thesis) is put
forward, criticised through opposing ideas (antithesis) so that a
new position (synthesis) can emerge to form the next thesis.
Hegel thought this a sound system of logic where the definition
of all things could be seen through a dialectic process, along
the lines of 'thing' (thesis)-'animal' (antithesis)-'cat'
(synthesis). More useful is his view that dialectic is how
history works. Hegel's writings are extraordinarily difficult to
understand, so it need not be surprising that his followers
drifted into two opposing camps, each confident that they had the
true measure of their hero.
The 'Old Hegelians' took the
view that history is really the history of ideas, built through
the dialectic, and that the reason their fine German society was
the best was because it was built on the best ideas. The 'Young
Hegelians', including Marx's bierkeller chums Max Stirner and
Bruno Bauer, were convinced that Hegel was at heart a
materialist- concerned with the solid world, not just with ideas.
They thought that society needed changing for the better, so they
must set about first changing men's minds.
In 1844 Marx began
collaborating with the affluent industrialist Friedrich Engels,
fresh from working as a mill manager in Manchester where he had
been much affected by the poverty of the workers. The result was
first The Holy Family and then in 1846 The German
Ideology.
While The German Ideology
presents a notion of history, that it is solely a matter of
studying the results of material need in a sort of material
dialectic, probably has much merit, it is clear (at least with
hindsight) that the version of Communism presented is just silly.
Yet, for good and for ill, there has probably never been a text
which has had so mighty an influence on the progress of humanity.
As Marx himself concludes "The philosophers have only
interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change
it."
THE
VERY SQUASHED VERSION
Let us revolt against the rule
of thought, unlike the Young Hegelians who claim to be
materialists, but cling to the idea that minds needed changing
first. To understand the German way, we must begin , not with
ideas, but with facts. Human society developed through tribal
society to the growth of cities (with their government, slavery
and private property) and to feudal estates relying on oppressed
serfs. This history requires, first, human survival through
eating, drinking, clothing and shelter, necessarily leading to
the making of things, reproduction and social cooperation. Only
after these four 'moments' need human thought be considered. In
families a form of slavery exists, where each member has certain
fixed tasks. This 'Division of Labour' continues today. If its
divisions are so wide that the majority of the world are left
propertyless, then the people will all at once begin a communist
society, in which the state will regulate production so that each
individual is free to do what they want, when they want. It is
essential to see this history as a world history where
inventions, machines and money are what determine the future, not
grand ideas. It is the sum of productive forces, not princes and
battles, which is the real 'essence of man'. This is not
so-called communism of Feuerbach, which deems human desire
satisfied when its material condition matches its mental essence.
In all times the ruling class are always the people with the
ruling ideas, a position they maintain by pretending their ideas
to be from beyond themselves and for the common good. The rise of
manufacturing and 'big industry' has destroyed craft skill and
begun a trade in money. In doing so it has created a new class of
propertyless workers who have no control over their own
existence. As such, they do not form a class-interest, but, the
world over, have the same interests. Communism is an economic
movement, overturning all previous relations between people, by
accepting that the present conditions are created by production
and intercourse.
THIS
SQUASHED VERSION
This condensed version of The
German Ideology is based on the text issued by the Moscow
Institute of Marxism-Leninism in 1965, the original text only
having been re-discovered and published in 1932. In the original
it is a huge work, consisting mostly of an aggressive series of
attacks on Stirner and others of Marx and Engels philosophical
rivals. These attacks appear to have been successful- Stirner is
now all but forgotten. We have therefore followed the editing
plan of CJ Arthur's 1969 version in ignoring all but the essays
against Feuerbach, and reducing them from some 24000 to about
5500 words. This was not a difficult task, as Marx and Engels
writings are as verbose and repetitive as they are obscure. We
have preserved the essence, but unfortunately missed out the one
worthwhile joke in the entire book: that philosophy is to science
what masturbation is to sex.
The so-called Theses on
Feuerbach form no coherent work, but are in fact marginal
notes made by Marx. They are included simply because of their
famous last line.
GLOSSARY
Capitalism: Although
now commonly associated with 'free trade' and the 'market
economy', capitalism is more strictly that system of commercial
organisation whereby Capital Interests can be bought and sold as
if they were goods.
Dialectic: The practice of testing truth by logical
discussion. Originating with Socrates and defined by Hegel as the
presentation of a position (thesis), the study of arguments
against it (antithesis) leading to the development of an
amalgamated position (synthesis) which can form the next thesis.
Dialectic Materialism: Marx's
philosophy that only matter exists, so that the existence of the
mind, social institutions, etc must be explained in material
terms. That change occurs when opposing forces (thesis and
antithesis) lead to the production of higher forces (antithesis)
according to dialectical laws.
Historical Materialism: The
application of Dialectic Materialism to history and sociology.
The view that the social, political and cultural superstructure
is determined solely by the material facts of economics, not by
human reasoning.
Ideology: The dominant
ideas of an age. To Marx, just the interests of the ruling class
writ large.
Praxis: The exercise of
practical skill, as opposed to mere contemplation. Though not
included in this text, a word dear to Marx and Engels.
Hegemony: The political
dominances of one power over others in a group in which all are
supposedly equal.
Proletariat: Those
classes in society that possess no property, and therefore depend
on the sale of their labour or expertise.
Bourgeoisie: Those who
own the means of production, and the petty bourgeoisie, or
working small-property owners.
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas
(1804-1872) German philosopher, student of Hegel, who argued
in The Essence of Christianity that religion is the
elevation of human qualities into an object of worship.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich (1770-1831) German philosopher, noted for the
abstruseness of his writings and seeing history as the history of
ideas. "What experience and history teach is this - that
people and governments have never learned anything from
history"
Bürgerliche Gesellschaft:
'Civil society'- organised and divided with laws and
institutions, in contrast to earlier societies where individuals
or monarchs held power.
Materialism: The
doctrine that only physical matter is real and that all things
can be explained by reference to it.
Stirner, Max (1806-1856) Pseudonym
of Johannes Kasper Schmidt. German anarchist who argued that the
state, class, and humanity were meaningless abstractions, and
that only individuals mattered. In his extreme form of egoism the
aim of human life is the fulfillment of one's own will.
The
German Ideology
by Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1846
Squashed version edited by Glyn Hughes © 2000
PREFACE
Hitherto, men have made false
conceptions about themselves, what they are and ought to be. They
have arranged their relationships according to ideas of God, of
Normal Man, etc. Let us liberate them from these chimeras, let us
revolt against the rule of thought. These innocent childlike
fancies are the kernel of the Young-Hegelian philosophy which the
present publication aims to uncloak, to show how their bleating
merely imitates the conceptions of the German middle class.
One man thought that he could
resist drowning by resisting the idea of gravity. [a reference to
Feuerbach]
FEUERBACH
A. IDEALISM AND MATERIALISM
The Illusions of German
Ideology
Germany has in the last few
years gone through a revolution in which heroes of the mind have
overthrown one another, supposedly in the realm of pure thought.
The industrialists of philosophy have set about marketing their
wares. When the market was glutted, the business was spoiled, as
usual, by shoddy goods, false labels and fictitious credit. If we
wish to rate this whole tragicomic Young-Hegelian movement, we
must look beyond the frontiers of Germany.
All this has sprung from the
soil of Hegel's philosophical system, from where each side
extracts pure categories like "substance" and
"self-consciousness" and then desecrates them with
names like "species" or "man".
The Old Hegelians comprehended
by religion; the Young Hegelians criticise by it. The
dominance of religion was taken for granted, and every dominant
relationship transformed into a cult, a cult of law, a cult of
the State, etc.
The Old Hegelians declared
thoughts and ideas the true bonds of society; the Young Hegelians
attribute to them an independent existence as the real chains of
men, the only thing against which they have to fight. They
declare that they are fighting against "phrases",
forgetting that they oppose them only with other phrases, in no
way combating the real world.
It has not occurred to any one
of them to enquire into the connection between German philosophy
and German reality, the relation of criticism to their own
material surroundings.
First Premises of
Materialist Method
We do not begin with dogmas,
but with empirical statements about real individuals.
The first premise of all human
history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals,
distinguished from animals by consciousness, religion or anything
else you like. They themselves distinguish themselves from
animals when they produce their own means of subsistence and
thereby define their mode of life. The whole internal structure
of the nation, and its relation to others, depends on the stage
of development reached by its production and internal and
external intercourse, manifest in its division of labour and
forms of ownership.
The first form of ownership is
in tribal societies, where people live by hunting, fishing,
rearing beasts or, where there is abundant uncultivated land, by
agriculture. The division of labour is confined to an extension
of the natural division existing in the family.
The second form is ancient
communal and State ownership, proceeding from the union of tribes
into a city, accompanied by slavery and private property, though
as an abnormal form of ownership subordinate to communal
ownership.
The third form of ownership is
feudal or estate property, starting out from, not the town, but
the country. It is based again on a community, but standing over,
not slaves, but the enserfed small peasantry. This feudal land
ownership had its counterpart in the towns in the shape of
corporate property and the protectionism of trade guilds. The
chief form of property consisted of land with serf labour chained
to it, or the individual with small capital commanding the labour
of journeymen.
The fact is that social
structure and the State are continually evolving out of the
life-process of definite individuals as they really are, as they
operate and produce materially. The same applies to mental
productions like politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics
etc. of a people. It is real active men who are the producers of
their conceptions.
In contrast to German
philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend
from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what
men imagine, but from real active men. Life is not determined by
consciousness, but consciousness by life. When empty talk about
consciousness ceases, and real knowledge takes its place
philosophy as an independent branch of knowledge loses its medium
of existence. We shall illustrate some of these abstractions by
historical examples.
History:
Fundamental Conditions
Since we are dealing with
Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must state a premise,
namely, that men must be able to live in order to "make
history", and living involves eating, drinking, habitation
and clothing. Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a
minimum, to a stick as with Saint Bruno [Bruno Bauer], it
presupposes the production of the stick. Any interpretation of
history must observe this fundamental fact, something the Germans
have never done.
The second point is that
satisfying the first need leads to new needs; and this production
of needs is the first historical act.
The third circumstance is that
men make other men, they propagate their kind and produce the
family.
These three aspects, or
"moments", of social activity have existed since the
dawn of history and still assert themselves today.
The fourth "moment"
is society, by which we understand the co-operation of several
individuals. This connection is ever taking on new forms,
independent of the existence of any political or religious
nonsense which may also hold men together.
Only after considering these
four moments do we find that man also possesses
"consciousness", and language as practical
consciousness. Of course, early consciousness is merely
consciousness of the immediate, or of nature as an alien, awesome
and unassailable force, the basis of natural religion.
On the other hand,
consciousness of the necessity of associating with other
individuals is the beginning of consciousness of society, and
with it develops the division of labour, originating in nothing
but the division of labour in the sexual act. That develops into
"natural" divisions according to physical strength,
needs, accidents etc. But division of labour only becomes truly
such when a division of material from mental appears. (Priesthood
is the first form).
Division of labour means that
intellectual and material, enjoyment and labour, production and
consumption devolve on different individuals, and the only
possibility of their not coming into contradiction is the
negation of that division of labour.
Private Property
and Communism
The crude latent slavery of
the family is the first property, corresponding perfectly to what
economists call the power of disposing of the labour power of
others. Division of labour and private property are identical
expressions, one referring to activity, the other to the products
of activity. They imply a contradiction between the interests of
one individual or family and the communal interest.
Out of this contradiction the
community takes independent form as the State, divorced from the
real interests of individuals. It follows that all struggles
within the State of democracy, aristocracy, monarchy,
enfranchisement etc are illusory forms. The real struggle is
between different classes to gain dominion in order to represent
its interest as an illusion of the general interest.
As long as the division of
labour exists, each man has an exclusive sphere of activity
forced on him, from which he cannot escape, be it as hunter,
herdsman or essayist. In communist society nobody has one
exclusive sphere of activity; society regulates production and
thus makes it possible for me to hunt in the morning, rear cattle
in the evening, debate in the evening, just as I have a mind,
without ever becoming hunter, herdsman or critic.
This fixation of social
activity arises through the co-operation of individuals,
determined by the division of labour, appears to them as an alien
force the origin and goal of which they are ignorant. How
otherwise could property have a history at all, to so have
proceeded from parcellation to centralisation? Or how is it that
trade, nothing more than the exchange of products, has come to
rule the world through supply and demand? With the overthrow of
the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of
which more later) and the abolition of private property this
world market power will be dissolved; and the liberation of each
single individual accomplished.
For this power to become an
"intolerable" power, i.e. a power against which men
make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great
mass of humanity "propertyless", and produced, at the
same time, the contradiction of worlds of wealth and culture,
both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in
productive power, a high degree of its development. Empirically,
communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples
"all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the
universal development of productive forces and the world
intercourse bound up with communism. The proletariat can thus
only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity,
can only have a "world-historical" existence.
Communism is not for us a
state of affairs which is to be established, it is the abolition
of the present state of things.
B. THE ILLUSIONS
OF THE EPOCH
Civil Society and the
Conception of History
The true source and theatre of
all history is civil society, not the high-sounding dramas of
princes and states. Civil society [bürgerliche Gesellschaft]
embraces the whole material intercourse of individuals within a
definite stage of the development of productive forces, and
emerged in the eighteenth century as property relationships
extricated themselves from ancient and medieval society.
History is nothing but the
succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits
the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed
down to it by all preceding generations. This view can be
distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlier
history, eg; the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to
further the eruption of the French Revolution. Thereby history is
made to become "a person ranking with other persons"
with its own "destiny", "goal" or
"idea".
Thus, if a machine is devised
in England which deprives Indian workers of bread and overturns
the form of that empire, this invention becomes a
world-historical fact. Or consider how the lack of sugar and
coffee occasioned by the Napoleonic Continental System caused the
Germans to rise in the glorious Wars of Liberation of 1813. This
shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make
circumstances.
This sum of productive forces,
capital funds and social intercourse is the real "essence of
man".
In the whole conception of
history up to the present, this real basis has been neglected, or
else considered a minor matter irrelevant to the course of
history, seeing history as the struggles of princes and States
and religion.
Feuerbach:
Philosophic, and Real, Liberation.
It is clear from these
arguments how grossly Feuerbach is deceiving himself when he
declares himself a communist. As an example of his
misunderstanding, we recall the passage in the Philosophie der
Zukunft where he develops the view that the existence of a
thing or a man is at the same time its essence, that the life or
activity of an animal or human individual are those in which it
feels its "essence" to be satisfied. The millions of
proletarians and communists, however, think differently and will
prove this in time when they bring their "existence"
into harmony with their "essence" by means of
revolution.
"Liberation" is an
historical and not a mental act, brought about by historical
conditions, by the development of industry, commerce and
agriculture. [gap in the original manuscript]
In reality, for the practical
materialist, that is, the communist, it is a question of
revolutionising the existing world, of practically attacking and
changing existing things. Feuerbach, on the other hand, confines
his revolution to mere contemplation. He does not see that even
objects of simple "sensuous certainty" are only given
him through social and commercial intercourse. Even the
cherry-tree was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago
transplanted by commerce into our zone.
When we conceive things thus,
as they really are and happen, every profound philosophical
problem is solved. "Substance" and
"self-consciousness" crumble when we understand that
the celebrated "unity of man with nature" has always
existed in accordance with the development of industry. Feuerbach
speaks of the secrets of natural science which are disclosed only
to the eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural
science be without industry and commerce? As far as Feuerbach is
a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he
considers history he is not a materialist.
Ruling Class and
Ruling Ideas
The ideas of the ruling class
are in every epoch the ruling ideas. The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal, has control at the
same time over the means of mental production; over thinkers, as
producers of ideas, it regulates the production and distribution
of ideas.
If we consider the ideas of
the ruling class, detached from the ruling class itself, we can
say that during the time that aristocracy was dominant, the
concepts of honour and loyalty were dominant. The ruling class
itself imagines this to be the case. When the French bourgeoisie
overthrew the aristocracy, it thereby made it possible for many
proletarians to raise themselves above the proletariat, but only
insofar as they became bourgeois.
The whole semblance that the
rule of a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas, comes
to a natural end as soon as class rule in general ceases to be
the basis of society, that is to say as soon as it is no longer
necessary to present particular class interests as being the
"general interest", a trick achieved by;
(1) Separating actual
empirical rulers from their ideas, and recognising rule by ideas,
or illusions.
(2) Bringing an order into
this rule of ideas and understanding them as "acts of
self-determination on the part of the concept".
(3) Removing the mystical
appearance of "ideas" by changed it into a person -
"Self-Consciousness" - or a series of persons, into
"thinkers" or "philosophers" who are the
manufacturers of history. Thus all materialism is removed from
history and full rein can be given to the speculative steed.
While in ordinary life every
shopkeeper is well able to distinguish between what somebody
professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not
yet won even this trivial insight.
C. THE REAL BASIS
OF IDEOLOGY
Division of labour: Town
and Country
[part of manuscript missing]
Here, therefore, arises the difference between the natural
instruments of production such as land, and those created by
civilisation particularly in the control of labour and capital.
The first case supposes that
individuals are united by such bonds as family, tribe, land etc;
the second that they are held together only by exchange. In the
first case, average human common sense is adequate, in the second
case there must be division between physical and mental labour.
The greatest division of
material and mental labour is the separation of town and country.
The existence of the town implies an administration, police,
taxes, etc; and thus politics in general. Labour is here again
the chief thing, power over individuals, and as long as
that exists, private property must exist. The town can also be
understood as the separation of capital and landed property.
In the Middle Ages the serfs,
persecuted by their lords in the country, came separately into
the towns, where they found an organised community, against which
they were powerless and in which they had to subject themselves
to the station assigned to them by the demand for their labour.
If their labour was such that had to be learned, the
guild-masters organised them according to their own interests; if
otherwise, they became day-labourers, remaining an unorganised
rabble, devoid of power.
While the rabble did at least
carry out revolts, ineffective because of their powerlessness,
the journeymen never got further than small acts of
insubordination. The great risings of the Middle Ages all
radiated from the country, but remained ineffective because of
the isolation and consequent crudity of the peasants.
Limited commerce between towns
meant that every workman had to be versed many tasks, able to
make everything with his own tools, and thus had a special
interest and proficiency in his work, unlike the modern worker,
whose work is a matter of indifference to him.
Capital in these towns was
naturally derived, consisting of a house, tools and the natural
hereditary customers. Unlike modern capital which can be assessed
in money and invested in this or that.
The next extension of the
division of labour was the formation of a class of merchants and
with them the appearance of a reciprocal action between
production and commerce. Towns enter into relations with one
another, new tools are brought from one town to another and
local restrictions begin to break down.
It depends purely on the
extension of commerce whether productive forces achieved in a
locality, especially inventions, are available for later
development. In primitive history every invention had to be made
anew locally; consider how many inventions were lost with the
ousting by Alexander of the Phoenician nation from commerce. Only
when commerce has become world commerce based on large-scale
industries, with all nations drawn into the competitive struggle,
is the permanence of the acquired productive forces assured.
The Rise of
Manufacturing
The consequence of division of
labour between towns was the rise of manufacturers which had
outgrown the guild system. Labour which presupposed a machine,
even of the crudest sort, showed itself the most capable of
development. Weaving was here the first; there emerged a new
class of weavers in the towns, whose fabric was destined for the
whole home and foreign market.
At the same time, manufacture
became a refuge of peasants from the guilds which excluded them
or paid them badly. Simultaneously there was a period of
vagabondage caused by the abolition of feudal armies and the
improvement of agriculture. These vagabonds were so numerous that
Henry VIII of England had 72,000 of them hanged.
With the advent of
manufacturing, nations entered a competitive struggle for trade,
fought out in wars. Trade now had a political significance. With
the advent of manufacturing the relationship between worker and
employer became the monetary relationship between worker and
capitalist. Trade and manufacture created a big bourgeoisie,
accumulating moveable capital, to whom the petty bourgeoisie of
the guilds had to bow.
Customs duties originated with
the tributes feudal lords exacted for the protection of merchants
travelling through their territories, later imposed likewise by
towns. The rapid expansion of trade, with the rise of the
non-guild bourgeoisie and money gave these new significance. The
State was daily less able to do without money which it tried to
control through customs, exchange restrictions and export duty.
The second period lasted from
the mid-seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth,
beginning with the Navigation Laws and colonial monopolies.
Competition between nations was excluded by tariffs and treaties
and, in the last resort, by war, especially naval wars. England,
the mightiest maritime nation gained predominance in trade and
manufacture.
The commercial and maritime
towns became to some extent civilised and acquired the outlook of
the big bourgeoisie, but the factory towns retained a petty-
bourgeois outlook. As Pinto says: "Le commerce fait la
marotte du siècle".
The period is also
characterised by the beginning of a trade in money; by paper
money and speculation in stocks and shares, the development of a
financial system, the transforming of capital into centralised
industrial capital. It destroyed as far as possible ideology,
religion, morality, etc. or made them into a palpable lie. It
produced world history for the first time, insofar as it made all
civilised nations dependent for the satisfaction of their wants
on the whole world. It made science subservient to capital. In
place of natural grown towns it created industrial cities. It
destroyed craft skill. And finally, while the bourgeoisie of each
nation still retained separate national interests, big industry
created a class which in all nations has the same interests and
with whom nationality is already dead; a class rid of the old
world and yet pitted against it. Big industry makes for the
worker the relationship to the capitalist, and labour itself,
unbearable.
But this does not retard the
class movement of the proletariat, the proletarians created by
big industry assume leadership of this movement and carry the
whole mass along with them.
The Relation of
State and Law to Property
Property, in the ancient and
medieval world, is tribal property, determined with the Romans
chiefly by war, with the Germans by raising cattle. Since several
tribes live in one town, the tribal property appears as State
property, and the right of the individuals to it as mere
"possession". Real property began with movable
property.
Modern private property
corresponds to the modern State, its existence wholly dependent
on the commercial credit of property owners, bourgeoisie etc. The
modern French, English and American writers all express the
opinion that the sate exists only for the sake of private
property, and this fact has reached the consciousness of the
ordinary man.
Civil law develops
simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of
the natural community. In civil law the existing property
relationships are declared to be the result of the general will.
This illusion leads to the position that man may have a legal
title to a thing without really having the thing.
D. PROLETARIANS
AND COMMUNISM
Individuals, Class and
Community
In the Middle Ages the
citizens of each town were compelled to unite against the landed
nobility to save their skins.
The bourgeoisie develops
gradually, splitting according to the various divisions of labour
and finally absorbing all the propertied classes, (while it
develops the majority of the earlier propertyless and part of the
propertied class into a new class, the proletariat). Separate
individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a
common battle against another class. On the other hand, the class
achieves independent existence over against the individuals whose
position and personal development is assigned solely by the
class. This is the same phenomenon as the subjection of the
separate individuals to the division of labour and can only be
removed by the abolition of private property and of labour
itself.
The subsuming of individuals
under definite classes cannot be abolished until a class has
arisen with no particular class interest to assert against the
ruling class. The transformation, through the division of labour,
of personal powers (relationships) into material powers, cannot
be dispelled by dismissing the idea of it from one's mind, but
only by individuals taking over these powers and abolishing the
division of labour. This is possible only in real community with
others.
For the proletarians the
condition of their existence has become something over which
they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over which no
social organisation can give them control. The
contradiction between the proletarian's individuality and his
labour becomes evident to himself, for he is sacrificed from
youth upwards and, within his class, has no chance of achieving
any other class. Thus they find themselves opposed to the
collective expression of individuals in the state. In order,
therefore, to assert themselves as individuals they must
overthrow the State.
Up till now average
individuals participate in society only as members of a class.
With the community of revolutionary proletarians who take their
conditions of existence and those of all members of society under
their control, it is the reverse; it is as individuals that the
individuals participate in it.
Forms of
Intercourse
Communism differs from all
previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier
relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time
consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of
hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and
subjugates them to the power of united individuals. Its
organisation is, therefore, essentially economic.
Communism is creating the true
basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist
independently of individuals. Communism treats the present
conditions as inorganic, created by production and intercourse.
The relation of the productive
forces and of individual occupations or activities to the form of
intercourse is, of course, entirely material, on which depends
all other forms- mental political, religious, etc. The conditions
under which individuals have intercourse with each other are
defined by the reality of their conditioned nature. These
conditions appear first as self-activity, later as fetters up on
it, to form the whole evolution of history which is the evolution
of productive forces.
Since this evolution takes
place naturally, ie. is not part of a general plan, it proceeds
slowly from various localities, tribes, nations, branches of
labour, etc. each of which develops independently.
On the other hand, in
countries like North America which begin in advanced historical
epoch, development proceeds very rapidly. Such countries have no
other natural premises than the individuals who settled there
because the forms of intercourse of the old countries did not
correspond to their wants. This is the case with all colonies
(Carthage, Iceland etc.), and similar with conquests where a form
of intercourse evolved on one soil is transplanted to another, if
only to assure the conqueror's lasting power (as with England
receiving feudal organisation after the Norman conquest).
Thus, revolutions, and all
collisions of history, have their origin, according to our view,
in contradictions between productive forces and the forms of
intercourse.
Conquest
This whole interpretation of
history appears to be contradicted by the fact of conquest. Up
till now violence, war, pillage and robbery, etc. have been
accepted as the driving forces, so that history has been only a
question of taking. Yet, when there is nothing more to
take, you have to set about producing. From this necessity it
follows that the form of community adopted by the settling
conquerors must correspond to the stage of development they find
among the conquered.
The feudal system was not
brought complete from Germany, but had its origins in the
organisation of the conquering army and only evolved into the
feudal system proper through the actions of the productive forces
in the conquered country. This is demonstrated by the abortive
attempts to realise other forms derived from ancient Rome
(Charlemagne etc.)
Contradictions of
Big Industry: Revolution
Our investigations show that
private property was a necessity for certain industrial stages.
In extractive industry private property coincides with labour; in
small industry and agriculture with the instruments of
production. Thus only with big industry does the abolition of
private property become possible.
In big industry and
competition the whole mass of conditions are fused into the two
simplest forms: private property and labour. With money every
form of intercourse, and intercourse itself, is considered
fortuitous for individuals in that they accumulate labour or
private property. If both or one of these ceases, then
intercourse comes to a standstill. The division of labour implies
from the outset the division of the conditions of labour and the
distinction between capital and labour. Labour itself can only
exist on the premise of this fragmentation.
Two facts are here revealed.
First, productive forces appear quite independent of individuals.
Second, that these forces are only real inasmuch as they are part
of the intercourse and association of individuals. Thus we have
on the one hand productive forces which appear as if no more than
private property, and on the other hand the majority of
individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away, and
who, robbed of all real life-content, have become abstract
individuals.
The only connection which
still links them with productive forces and with their own
existence- labour- has lost all semblance of self-activity and
only sustains life by stunting it.
From the conception of history
we have thus sketched we obtain these conclusions:
(1)There comes a stage in the
history of productive forces when machinery and money take over
and exclude the majority from society to form a class bearing all
the burdens of society without its advantages, a class aware of
the necessity of fundamental revolution. As other classes
contemplate the situation of the proletarians, they too can gain
this communist consciousness
(2)The conditions under which
definite productive forces can be applied are the conditions of
the rule of a definite class of society, whose power, deriving
from its property, finds expression as the State; therefore,
every revolutionary struggle is directed against a class, which
till then has been in power.
(3) In all revolutions up till
now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was
only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a
new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist
revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity,
does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with
the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the
class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not
recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the
dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present
society
(4) Both for the production on
a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success
of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is,
necessarily, an alteration which can only take place in a
practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary,
therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown
in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can
only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of
ages and become fitted to found society anew.
Theses
on Feuerbach
by Karl
Marx, c1845-6, first published 1888
Squashed version edited by
Glyn Hughes © 2002
I The chief defect of
all previous materialism (including Feuerbach) is that reality is
conceived only as the object of contemplation, not as sensuous
human activity.
II The question whether
objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a
theoretical but a practical question.
III The materialist
doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing
forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is
essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must,
therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is
superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of
circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be
conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary
practice.
IV Feuerbach starts out
from the duplication of the world into a religious world and a
secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world
into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches
itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm
in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and
self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must,
therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and
revolutionised in practice. Thus, for instance, after the earthly
family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the
former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.
V Feuerbach seeks
sensuous contemplation; but fails to realise that it is a
practical activity.
VII Feuerbach, does not
see that "religious sentiment" is itself a social
product.
VIII All social life is
essentially practical.
IX Mere contemplative
materialism can reach no higher than single individuals and of
civil society.
X The standpoint of the
old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is
social humanity.
XI The philosophers
have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it.
Karl
Marx
1818-83
The tomb of Karl Marx in
Highgate Cemetery (East), London
(Friedrich Engel's last resting place is unknown)