The German Ideology, Volume 1

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• • Preface
  • I. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks
  • The Leipzig Council
  • II. Saint Bruno
  • III. Saint Max
  • Close of the Leipzig Council

🔍 See also : The German Ideology, Volume 2.

Note from Marx-Engels Collected Works :

The German Ideology — Die deutsche Ideologie. Kritik der neuesten deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repräsentanten Feuerbach, B. Bauer und Stirner, und des deutschen Sozialismus in seinen verschiedenen Propheten — is the joint work of Marx and Engels which they wrote in Brussels in 1845 and 1846.

Marx and Engels decided to write a philosophical work in which they intended to counterpose their materialist conception of history to the idealist views of the Young Hegelians and to Feuerbach’s inconsistent materialism in the spring of 1845, when Engels came to Brussels (early in April) and Marx outlined to him his materialist conception, which had nearly taken shape by then. Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach” were written in connection with this project. In the autumn of 1845 the project took the form of a definite plan to write a two-volume work directed against the Young Hegelians and the “true socialists.” In November 1845 Marx and Engels began writing the book. In the course of their work the plan and composition of the book were changed several times. Moses Hess was enlisted to write two chapters. But the chapter against the Young Hegelian Arnold Ruge, which Hess wrote for Volume I, was excluded from the final version of The German Ideology, and the other chapter, dealing with the “true socialist” Kuhlmann, which Hess wrote for Volume II, was edited by Marx and Engels.

Work on The German Ideology was in the main terminated in April 1846; it seems, however, that the authors continued working on Chapter I of the first volume until the middle of July, but it was never completed. The draft of the preface for Volume I was written by Marx not later than the middle of August. Work on Volume II was completed by early June 1846. Engels’ work, The True Socialists, which was intended as the concluding chapter of Volume II, was written between January and April 1847.

In 1846 and 1847 Marx and Engels made repeated attempts to find a publisher in Germany for their work, but they were unsuccessful. This was due partly to difficulties made by the police and partly to the reluctance of the publishers to print the work, since their sympathies were on the side of the trends which Marx and Engels criticised. The only Chapter of The German Ideology known to be published during their lifetime was Chapter IV of Volume II, which appeared in the journal Das Westphälische Dampfboot in August and September 1847.

The text of a few pages in Chapter II of Volume I (pp. 112-14 of this volume) is similar to that of an anonymous item dated “Brussels, November 20” (see this volume, pp. 15-18), which appeared in the Gesellschaftsspiegel, Heft VII, January 1846 (in the section “Nachrichten und Notizen”).

Neither the title of the whole work nor the headings of the first and the second volumes have survived in the manuscript. They are, however, mentioned by Marx in his article “Declaration against Karl Grün” (see MECW, Vol. 6) and have been taken from there.

The manuscript of chapters II and III of Volume II is missing, and it is possible that the “Circular against Kriege” by Marx and Engels and Engels’ article “German Socialism in Verse and Prose” (see MECW, Vol. 6) formed part of this volume.

The manuscript is in a rather poor condition, the paper has turned yellow and is damaged in places. “The gnawing criticism of the mice”, as Marx wrote later in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, has left its mark on a number of pages, other pages are missing. The Preface to The German Ideology and some of the alterations and additions are in Marx’s hand; the bulk of the manuscript, however, is in Engels’ hand, except for Chapter V of Volume II and some passages in Chapter III of Volume I. which are in Joseph Weydemeyer’s hand. As a rule, the pages are divided into two parts: the main text is on the left side while additions and changes are on the right. A number of passages were crossed out by the authors, and a few more passages were crossed out by Eduard Bernstein (this has been pointed out by S. Bahne in his article “Die Deutsche Ideologie von Marx und Engels. Einige Textergänzungen”, published in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1).

Words and passages which have become unreadable have been reconstructed on the basis of the unimpaired parts whenever possible; they are enclosed in square brackets. Wherever it was necessary to insert a few words to clarify the meaning, they are likewise printed in square brackets. Gaps in the manuscript are indicated in footnotes. Marginal notes as well as the most important of the crossed-out passages are given in footnotes which are indicated by asterisks, whereas the editors’ footnotes are indicated by index letters. Passages crossed out by Bernstein, wherever it was possible to decipher them, have been restored.

After Engels’ death the manuscript of The German Ideology came into the hands of the leaders of the German Social-Democratic Party, who in the course of 37 years published less than half of it. Part of Chapter III, “Saint Max”, was published by Bernstein in 1903-04 (see Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, “III. Sankt Max”, in Dokumente des Sozialismus, Stuttgart, Bd. III, Hefte 1-4 and 7-8, Januar-April and Juli-August 1903; Bd. IV, Hefte 5-9, Mai-September 1904). Another part of this chapter — “My Self-Enjoyment” — was brought out in 191 3 (see Karl Marx, “Mein Selbstgenuss”, in Arbeiter-Feuilleton, München, Nr. 8 and 9, März 1913). Gustav Meyer published the introductory pages of “The Leipzig Council” and Chapter If, “Saint Bruno”, in 1921 (see Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx, “Das Leipziger Konzil”, in Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 47. Band, 3. Heft, Tübingen, 1921). Chapter I, “Feuerbach”, the most important chapter of The German Ideology, was first published by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Russian in 1924 (Marx-Engels Archives, Book 1) and in German in 1926 (Marx-Engels Archiv, I. Band). The whole work as it has come down to us (except for the six pages which were found later and printed in the International Review of Social History, Vol. VII, 1962, Part 1) was first published in Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung, 5. Band, in 1932 by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the CPSU

The first English version of Chapter 1, translated from the Russian, was published in the American journal The Marxist No. 3, July 1926. A small part of this chapter, translated from the German, was published in the British journal The Labour Monthly, Vol. 15, No. 3, March 1933. An English translation of Chapter 1, “Feuerbach”, and Volume II, “Der wahre Sozialismus”, was published by Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., London, 1938, under the title The German Ideology, Parts I & III. The first English translation of the whole work, except for one passage from Chapter I of the first volume (p. 29 of the manuscript), was issued by Progress Publishers, Moscow, in 1964.