Karl
Marx's famous "The German Ideology" opens with a full-front offensive
on the Hegelian tradition on 19th century idealist German
philosophers. The Hegelian philosophers focused on consciousness and abstract
ideas, holding that they have independent existence which shapes social reality
(hence the term "idealist philosophy"). According to this view, a change
in social reality can be brought about through a change in the manner this
reality is perceived.
In "The
German Ideology" Marx offers an opposite analysis, manifested in his
materialist approach that sees different ideas and perceptions as the result of
material social, economical and historical conditions. In other words, for Marx
in "The German Ideology" it is reality which creates the mind, and
not the other way around.
According
to Marks, various positions and beliefs held by people, be it religious, moral
and so on, are created and conditioned by their material circumstances. This is
true, as Marx points elsewhere, to both historical circumstances and class,
social and economical circumstances (and here we can see why "class
consciousness" is such an important term in Marx's philosophy).
The
argument that consciousness in socially constructed was raised before Marx, but
it was Marx in The German Ideology who made it the foundation of his social philosophy.
Marx draws heavily (and criticizes just as heavily) on the work of Feuerbach
who claimed that religious faith is rooted in man's actual and material
conditions, in man's perception of himself and in that god is but a projection
of his earthly creators (Emile Durkheim argued something similar in his notion of the
"totemic principle"). However, this is not material enough for Marx
who thinks that Feuerbach failed to bring into account specific social,
economical and historical conditions which shape religious belief.
For
Marx it is not enough to claim that people create their own images, ideologies
and so forth, as suggested by Feuerbach and others. For Marx in "The
German Ideology" people's ideas and ideologies are conditioned by the
historical formation of powers of production and relations of production (these
ideas by Marx are elaborated later in "The German Ideology"). This is
the ground for Marx's famous distinction between economical base (which
includes the forces of production, relations of production and division of labor) and the "superstructure" which includes culture, ideology, religion
etc. for Marx, the superstructure is determined by the material base, and not
as the Idealist philosophers would have it.
Additional summeries of The German Ideology by Marx:
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