Showing posts with label German ideology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label German ideology. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Summary: Ideology according to Marx – definition and explanation

Ideology according to Marx – definition and explanation
Karl Marx's philosophy should be understood against the background of the philosophy of the Enlightenment that believed that the world can be objectively understood through the medium of the naturally observing mind that is the gateway for liberating the human spirit.

Marx wrote "The German Ideology" two years before he published his famous "Communist Manifesto" and already here he presents a well formulated, and revolutionary, understanding of ideology. Unlike the young Hegelians, led by Feuerbach, Marx claimed that ideas and ideology are no independent, as Idealism would have, but rather a product which is dependent on material matters, namely social and economic structures. According to Marx, ideas, perceptions and consciousness are always the result of specific historic material circumstances.

What differentiates humans from animals according to Marx is that man is the only species that manufactures in order to survive; this is his basic function while every other aspect of human life is derived from this one central feature. According to Marx every society in history organized its production according to its available means of production that determine relations of production (i.e. feudalism, capitalism, communism…) and its own concept of property.

This is what Marx calls the economic base. On top of the economic base Marx poses the "superstructure", all cultural structures that are the result of the economic base. An important part of the superstructure is, according to Marx, ideology. Ideology according to Marx is a veil pulled over the economic base in order to prevent people from seeing its inherit injustice (that is, until communism comes). Ideology convinces people that the current state of production is justified, warranted, "natural" or anything else which gets them to comply to it. Ideology has been famously referred to my Marx as "False Consciousness". Revolutions come about when the fallacy of this consciousness is recognized.
When Hegel and his followers saw a shift in human consciousness Marx saw a shift in human economical structures that results in changes to the ideology.

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Marx's The German Ideology: Alienation and Ideology – summary and analysis

Marx's The German Ideology: Alienation and Ideology – summary and analysis

In The German Ideology Marx argued that the division of labor turns a man's own action to a foreign power (he sells his manual and intellectual capacities to someone else) which enslaves him. Marx argues that certain social-economical conditions, such as those brought about by capitalism; project this alienation to society itself. When the products of production are cut off from workers, they sense that these products have a power over them which are not in their control. In other words, alienation brings about fetishism of products and production which are conceived as being both of independent and separate existence and as of having power over the alienated worker. Alienation can be aborted, Marx holds, when the proletariat take over the means of production.

One of the key concepts in Marxist thought and in Marx's The German Ideology is ideology. Marx says that ideology is a "camera obscura" which turns the image on reality on its head. In other words, Marx holds that ideology reflects an inverted image of social reality, which is distorted and false (see False Consciousness). Marx, plainly speaking, says that the truth of reality and reality as it is conceived through ideology are opposed.
Marx ties the function of ideology to material reality and the course of human material development (dialectics of historical class conflict over relations ofproduction and property which is driven by development in the means of production). In other words, according to Marx, ideology is the product of material reality and the distorted image of this reality portrayed by ideology is due to social economical conditions.  

According to Marx in The German Ideology all thoughts and ideas are socially constructed and depend on society's material conditions - existence determines consciousness. But what distinguishes ideology from other cultural forms is its function of distorting and inverting the image of reality as it is conceived in society. Ideology presents itself as objective and universal, but when Marx refuted Hegel conception of the idealist historical dialectics in favor of a material one, he set the ground for rejecting any idea such as ideology as detached for actual social and economical reality. Things like nationality and even family values are all signed off by Marx as ideology which is designed to conserve the existing social order and relations of production by presenting the existing state as warranted, natural and justified.

For Marx ideology is always the result of material class conflict and he therefore argues in The German Ideology that the ideas of the ruling class have always been the dominant ideas. For Marx ideology works at the service of the existing social order and in beneficiaries. According to Marx, whoever controls the means of material production also controls the means of ideological production which sustains the existing relations of production. Ideology, in other words, is the interests of the ruling class. Every revolution according to Marx has to introduce a new ideology to support the new social order which is, once again, presented as universal.

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see also: Best Books by and on Karl Marx- a reading list
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Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: dialectics and capitalism

Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: dialectics and capitalism

Karl Marx conceives history as a dialectical progression. This is not a new idea even in Marx's times and it was preceded especially by Hegel who saw history as a course where a thesis meets it antithesis to create a synthesis. But Marx's "The German Ideology" is to a large extent a rebellion against Hegel and his followers. Where Hegel thought that the historical dialectics takes place in human consciousness and in the realm of ideas, Marx thought that shifts in the manner in which people perceive their existence is the result of material, not mental, changes.

According to Marx in The German Ideology, material historical dialectics takes on the form of constant class conflict. Marx argues that human history is the history of the development of means of production and the relations of production subsequently formed. History progresses according to Marx through class conflict, contradictions and clashes which have a dialectical shape. This dialectics dictates human progression to the present time of capitalism.

According to Marx in The German Ideology capitalism is different from any epoch that preceded it in that that it is the final conflicted phase of the historical dialectics. In capitalism, for the first time in history, salaried employs are the central form of relation of production and the worker is no longer the property of the ruling class. Capitalism according to Marx is also new in being global, a fact that will aid it in constantly developing new means of production which will intensify the contradictions that are at the base of capitalism. These contradictions between the new means of production and the old relations of production will eventually bring about a revolution which will abolish classes and private property.

It should be noted that although Marx's philosophy in The German Ideology is highly "social", what in fact he is talking about is individual liberation which according to Marx is only possible is a classless society.

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Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: relation of production, means of production

Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: relation of production, means of production

In his "The German Ideology" Carl Marx discusses two of the most central concepts of his theory of history and society: the means of production and the relations of production.

According to Marx in The German Ideology each historical stage holds a class conflict. Changing property patterns over the means of production creates different classes who are in a constant state of conflict with each other. This struggle is most of the time covert and is manifested sometimes in class clashes, social wars and revolutions which bring about a reformation of the social order. According to Marx, the revolution is always the result of the contradiction between the means of production and the relations of production. Means of production according to Marx are labor as well as the technical, technological and economical means at a society's disposal. The relations of production according to Marx include property and the division of produce and profits within society.

In The German Ideology Marx argues that at some historical point in the life of every society it reaches a point in which means of production cease to correspond well with the relations of production (for example due to the invention of a new technology). The ruling class, which has property over the means of production and thus enjoys a favorable position within the relations of production, sticks to the old relations of production. But these old relations of production become an obstacle in the path of development of new means of production. The subordinate class demands new relations of production which correspond with the new means of production. Tension erupts in the form of a revolution which brings about a change in the relations of production and a change in social hierarchies and division of power (in The German Ideology Marx uses the example of the French Revolution to illustrate his idea)

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Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: praxis, property and the division of labor

Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology: praxis, property and the division of labor
Marx's Perception of History in The German Ideology stresses the material aspect of human existence. Marx argues that humans must be able to live in order to make history. For Marx, the basis of all human activities, be it politics, art or religion, is material survival. The way mankind has been meeting it survival needs for the past thousands years is according to Marx production. According to Marx, the first ever historical act, which initiated history, was an act of production that what designed to meet survival needs.

Man does not only produce food, but also the means to produce it. This is what for Marx distinguishes man from animal – the ability to engage in production. This is the basis for Marx's concept of "praxis". Praxis according to Marx is conscious, thoughtful and meaning ascribing act of production. Marx denies the traditional distinction between manual and mental labor as a capitalist lie, and he argues that the two are inevitably entangled with each other in the praxis.

Marx also concluded that man's productive activity necessitates "negotiation" between individuals, which are the social-order surrounding production. The first ever division of labor is according to Marx that which exists between a man and a woman, first in the act of making children and consequently is the process of rearing them. This is the division of labor of human reproduction. This makes to family the first social unit and thus, for Marx, the first economical production unit which is based on a division of labor, inequality and private property (of the man over to woman and children).

In "The German Ideology" Marx describes how increasing production has led to the formation of larger social units (the clan, tribe, polis, city, kingdom and state), while in the process more advanced concepts of ownership and division of labor were developed. According to Marx, property is the ownership over the means of production and their produce. Division of labor according to Marx is describes that different positions assumed by individuals in the process of production.

In The German Ideology Marx describes history as an increasing process of division of labor with different relations of production appearing at different stages of history. The division of labor according to Marx is bound with the means of production. Primitive societies that have little and simple means of production have accordingly a very simple and minimal division of labor. But in the course of history society is continually being divided into more and more specific practices.

According to Marx, the division of labor is belligerent one which relays on the formation of property over the means of production. Thus society is divided into different classes according to whoever has ownership (property) over the means of production. The class who has property subordinates the ones who don't which depend on them for their existence.

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The German Ideology / Marx – summary, review and analysis


 

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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