the german ideology, part I (1845-1846), karl marx (in Tucker)

(147): an industrial analogy--fitting

(149): KEY PASSAGE: the young hegelians, Marx is arguing, content themselves with a battle waged on the terrain of ideas. implicit in this argument, of course, is Marx's materialism--"this demand to change consciousness amounts [only] to a demand to interpret reality in another way... The Young Hegelians, in spite of their allegedly 'world-shattering' statements, are the staunchest conservatives... They forget, however, that to these phrases they are opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world."

(150): first appearence of "mode of production"--"The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production."

(151-154): tracing their understanding of the evolution of human history (very rough and unapologetically stagist)

(154): KEY: "Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e., as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will."

(154): "In direct 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 say, imagine, conceived, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process, we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable, and bound to material premises."

(155): "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life."

(155): philosophy, they're stressing, must always situate itself in "real history." this is critical.

(156-157): an underelaborated mention of "four moments," probably not worth systematizing: the production of material life itslef, the production of new needs, the birth of the family, and the production of an indepdenent "history" (?)

(157): it is important to note this assertion that any given mode of production always involves a certain amount of co-operation (in other words, the production of life is always a "social" act)

(158): "Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product."

(159): here they introduce the division of material and mental labour, which inaugurates the 'real' division of labour, it is implied here. this gives rise, they are arguing, to the men whose business it is to help consciousness "flatter itself." (with the footnote, this represents a rudimentary formulation of the role of the ideologists in any given era)

(159): cataloging "three moments": the forces of production, the state of society (rel. of production?), and consciousness

(160): the division of labour implies, here, private property and the consequent conflict of interests (this is quite markedly in contrast to Durkheim and Smith's claims and it is here, he introduces, the famous outline of what communist society will enable, in contrast.

(160-161): birth of the State, which appeals to an "illusory communal life" (hegemony?)--struggles at the site of the State, then, are "the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another."

(161): HEGEMONY--"every class which is struggling for mastery...must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest as the general interest."

(161): moreover, there is some hint here of the thesis of the "relative autonomy of the State" -- that the State will act in the 'illusory' general interest, which perhaps implies that it can take a broader perspective than the immediate interests of the ruling class (though this is slightly distorting what is being argued here)

(161): for emancipation, two "practical premises" are necessary: (1) the maturation of these contradictions--the great mass must be 'propertyless'; (2) the development of the productive forces--otherwise "want" will merely be made general. there's a hint, here, also that the agitation can only be 'world-historical,' but this pales in comparison with post-Marx reflections on the subject, so we leave it (it is sufficient to state that Marxism is clearly a universal project)

(164): ABSOLUTELY KEY: "It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice; and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into 'self-consciousness' or transformation into 'apparitions,'... but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which give rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory."

(164-165): the central dialectic, here: "a sum of productive forcs..., which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men as much as men make circumstances."

(165): and yes, committed here to the "formation of a revolutionary mass"--but there is a question, here, about the place of theory in this struggle. until this mass is formed, they are arguing, "it is absolutely immaterial whether the idea of this revolution has been expressed a hundred times already, as the history of communism proves."

(165): memebers of any given epoch share in the ideology of that epoch (the second of the features of ideology pinpointed by Castells (via Althusser))

(166): oh no you didn't! they make Hegelian philosophy contingent.

(166-167): as we see in Theses on Feuerbach, they are reacting also to the elitism of the theoretical enterprise (and particularly against Saint Bruno)

(167-168): this critique extends to Feuerbach, who is content to show, theoretically, fact of man's sovereignty, but has not moved to a commitment to "overthrow the existing state of things... Feuerbach... is going as far as a theorist possibly can without ceasing to be a theorist and a philosopher."

(169): a re-assertion of these initial premises--"The 'liberation' of man is not advanced a single step by [theoretical interventions]... Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine... 'Liberation' is a historical and not a mental act."

(169-171): Feuerbach as a-historical (example of the cherry tree, or earlier, the fish in now-polluted freshwater), and an idealist in the last instance (i.e., the path to liberation is through theory, for him).

(173-174): HEGEMONY, the famous formulation--"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas..." And we are "generally-speaking" subject to them. Much hinges on the exposition of this qualifier...

(174): a (strategic) division of 'manual' and mental labour, within the ruling class--we see some assume the position of its "active ideologists" (and we know enough of those), and others its "active members"

(174): HEGEMONY, once more: "Each new class... has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones."

(175): a simpler formulation of the critique of Hegel (and the whole idealist tradition)

(177-178): actually fairly important pages, insofar as they present the reasons for the non-revolutionary character (in the full, final sense) of pre-proletarian classes in town and country (though we can also extrapolate, negatively, from what Marx and Engels believe to be the proletariat's potential)--but, basically, they're more diffuse and, partly as a result, more interested in their own work and own lives.

(181): the phenomenon of vagabondage (Henry VIII of England hanged 72,000!)--in general though, this whole account of the transition (pg 176-186) is of course far inferior to the account Marx gives in Vol. 1

(183): Ha-Joon Chang, enter stage right

(185-186): the formation of the world proletariat: "a class... which in all nations has the same interest and with which nationality is already dead; a class which is really rid of all the old world and at the same time stands pitted against it."

(187): what we have here is a theory of the State that is more than the caricatured "executive committee of the bourgeoisie" (mechanisms are delineated--"taxation", the "national debt", "commercial credit", the "stock exchange"), but less than the model that gives the State apparatus "relative autonomy" (even though it does have to endeavor to represent the 'average' interest)

(189-190): big industry produces the contradiction between "the instrument of production" and "private property"

(190-191): the "productive forces appear as a world for themselves"

(191): an interesting aside--those "who have been robbed thus of all life-content... have been put into a position to enter into relation with one another as individuals" (on the one hand, this is the orthodox narrative of w-class' formation as subject--but it also can be interpreted to imply, a la Fanon, that the oppressed find their humanity not just in victory, but also in struggle).

(191-192): why the proletariat's expropriation will be unlike any other in history--"in all expropriations up to now, a mass of individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of production; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual, and property to all. Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore, only when controlled by all." With this upheaval, "labour" will become "self-activity" (an end to 'estrangement').

(192): history, then, is not "Man", as abstract subject, estranging himself

(193): ridding itself of "the muck of ages"

(194): dialectics--"one-sidedness" of a particular ideology/era becomes apparent only "when the contradiction enters on the scene and thus exists for the later individuals..."

(196): "Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the forms of intercourse."

(197): communism denotes the first time that--really rather than supposedly--the community will be identical with the state.

(198): again, the uniqueness of the working-class consists in their non-separation as individuals, their combination through the division of labour

(199-200): curious passage on the division between "the personal and the class individual," need to re-read--but basically they are grounding their assertion of the proletariat's uniqueness... "The proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individual, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto... namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State."