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Special pages :
Preface
Note from Marx-Engels Collected Works[edit source]
The manuscript of Chapter 1 of the first volume of The German Ideology has come down to us in the form of several separate passages written at different times and in different circumstances. This is due to changes which Marx and Engels made in the general plan of the book as the work proceeded.
Originally Marx and Engels began writing a purely critical work dealing simultaneously with Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. Then they decided to discuss Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner in separate chapters (“II. Saint Bruno” and “III. Saint Max”), and the first chapter was conceived as a general introduction stating their own views in opposition to Feuerbach’s. Therefore they crossed out nearly all passages referring to Bauer and Stirner in the original manuscript and transferred them to chapters II or III. Thus, the chronologically first part, which formed the original nucleus of the chapter on Feuerbach (29 pages numbered by Marx), took shape.
Then they wrote Chapter II and began to work on Chapter III. In the course of their critical analysis of Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Marx and Engels made various theoretical digressions in which they developed their materialist conception of history. Two of these digressions were subsequently transferred by them from the chapter on Stirner to that on Feuerbach. The first — consisting of 6 pages — was written in connection with the criticism of Stirner’s idealist view that history was dominated by spirit (this digression was originally in the section “D. Hierarchy”; see this volume, p. 175). The second theoretical digression — consisting of 37 pages — was written in connection with the criticism of Stirner’s views of bourgeois society, competition and the interrelation between private property, state and law (this latter passage from the chapter on Stirner was replaced by another; see this volume, p. 355, etc.). These two digressions formed the chronologically second and third parts of the chapter on Feuerbach.
The pages of these three parts were numbered by Marx (1 to 72) and thus form the rough copy of the whole chapter. Pages 3-7 and 36-39 of the manuscript have not been found.
Marx and Engels then started revising the rough copy and writing out a clean copy, the beginning of which exists in two versions. We have thus four more or less independent parts of the manuscript (three parts of rough copy and one of clean copy).
In the present edition the chapter on Feuerbach is accordingly divided into four parts. Part I consists of the combined fragments of the clean copy. Part II comprises the original nucleus of the whole chapter. Parts III and IV are the two theoretical digressions transferred from the chapter on Stirner. Each part is a consistent, logically coherent whole. The parts complement one another and together they are a comprehensive exposition of the materialist conception of history.
The content of the four parts can be summarised in the following way: 1. Introduction, general remarks concerning the idealism of German post-Hegelian philosophy. Premises, essence and general outline of the materialist conception of history. II. Materialist conception of historical development and conclusions from the materialist conception of history. Criticism of the idealist conception of history in general, criticism of the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach in particular. III. Origin of the idealist conception of history. IV. Development of the productive forces, of the division of labour and of the forms of property. The class structure of society. The political superstructure. Forms of social consciousness.
Comparison of the different parts of the manuscript makes it possible to bring out the logical structure of the chapter, form an idea of the authors’ intentions and reconstruct the general plan of the chapter. First Marx and Engels give a general description of German ideology, then they counterpose the materialist conception of history to the idealist conception, and, finally, criticise the latter. The central part of the chapter has the following structure: the authors’ premises; their materialist conception of history; the conclusions following from their theory.
The materialist conception of history is presented as follows: development of production — intercourse (social relations) — political superstructure — forms of social consciousness. On the whole, the plan of the chapter, reconstructed in accordance with the intentions of Marx and Engels, can be formulated thus:
1) General description of German ideology (Part I, introductory remarks and Section 1; Part II, Section 1).
2) Premises of the materialist conception of history (Part I, Section 2).
3) Production (Part II, Sections 3-5; Part I, Section 3; Part IV, Sections 1-5), intercourse (Part IV, Sections 6-10), political superstructure (Part IV, Section 11), forms of social consciousness (Part III, Section 1; Part IV, Section 12).
4) Conclusions from and summary of the materialist conception of history (Part II, Sections 6-7; Part 1, Section 4).
5) Critique of the idealist conception of history in general, and of the Young Hegelians and Feuerbach in particular (Part II, Sections 8-9 and 2; Part III, Section 1).
In the manuscript the chapter as a whole has the heading: “1. Feuerbach.” While sorting out Marx’s papers alter his death in 1883, Engels found among them the manuscript of The German Ideology and re-read it. At the end of the first chapter he made the note: “I. Feuerbach. Opposition of the materialist and idealist outlooks.”
The parts of this chapter are subdivided into sections. These subdivisions have been made by the editors, who also supplied most of the headings. All headings supplied by the editors and all editorial insertions are enclosed in square brackets.
The pages of the manuscript are indicated in this volume. The sheets of the clean copy, partly numbered by Engels (sheets 3 and 5), are indicated thus: [sh. 1|, |sh. 2], etc. The pages of the first version of the beginning of the clean copy, which were not numbered by the authors, are indicated thus: [p. 1|, p. 2|, etc, The pages of the three rough drafts, which were numbered by Marx, are indicated thus: |1|, 2|, etc.
The arrangement of the different parts of the manuscript within Chapter 1 and its subdivision into sections are the same as in the Russian version first published in the journal Voprosy Filosofii (Questions of Philosophy), Nos. 10 and 11, Moscow, 1965. In English this version was first published by Progress Publishers in Vol. I of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works (in three volumes), Moscow, 1969.
Preface[edit source]
Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relationships according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The phantoms of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations. Let us liberate them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away. Let us revolt against the rule of thoughts. Let us teach men, says one, to exchange these imaginations for thoughts which correspond to the essence of man; says the second, to take up a critical attitude to them; says the third, to knock them out of their heads; and -- existing reality will collapse.
These innocent and childlike fancies are the kernel of the modern Young-Hegelian philosophy, which not only is received by the German public with horror and awe, but is announced by our philosophic heroes with the solemn consciousness of its cataclysmic dangerousness and criminal ruthlessness. The first volume of the present publication has the aim of uncloaking these sheep, who take themselves and are taken for wolves; of showing how their bleating merely imitates in a philosophic form the conceptions of the German middle class; how the boasting of these philosophic commentators only mirrors the wretchedness of the real conditions in Germany. It is its aim to debunk and discredit the philosophic struggle with the shadows of reality, which appeals to the dreamy and muddled German nation.
Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany.