The Illusions of German Ideology

Germany has in the last few years gone through an unparalleled revolution.

The decomposition of the Hegelian philosophy began with Strauss. It has developed into a universal ferment into which all the “powers of the past” are swept.

In the general chaos, mighty empires have arisen only to meet with immediate doom.

It was a revolution that made the French Revolution seem like child’s play, a world struggle beside which the struggles of the Diadochi [successors of Alexander the Great] appear insignificant.

Principles ousted one another, heroes of the mind overthrew each other with unheard-of rapidity, and in the three years 1842-45 more of the past was swept away in Germany than at other times in three centuries.

All this took place in the realm of pure thought.

The putrescence of the absolute spirit is interesting.

The industrialists of philosophy, who till then had lived on the exploitation of the absolute spirit, now seized upon the new combinations. Each with all possible zeal set about retailing his apportioned share.

This naturally gave rise to competition which was carried on in moderately staid bourgeois fashion.

Later when the German market was glutted, the business was spoiled in the usual German manner by:

• fictitious production
• deterioration in quality
• adulteration of raw materials
• falsification of labels
• fictitious purchases
• bill-jobbing
• a credit system devoid of any real basis.

We preface therefore the specific criticism of individual representatives of this movement with a few general observations, elucidating the ideological premises common to all of them.

These remarks will suffice to indicate the standpoint of our criticism insofar as it is required for the understanding and the motivation of the subsequent individual criticisms. We oppose these remarks to Feuerbach because he is the only one who has at least made some progress and whose works can be examined de bonne foi.

1. Ideology in General, and Especially German Philosophy

A. We know only a single science, the science of history.

One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men.

These two sides are, however, inseparable.

The history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist.

The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history.

German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never quitted the realm of philosophy.

The whole body of German philosophical inquiries sprung from the definite philosophical system of Hegel.

This dependence on Hegel is why these modern critics have not even attempted a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian system.

Their polemics against Hegel and against one another are confined to this – each extracts one side of the Hegelian system and turns this against the whole system as well as against the sides extracted by the others.

To begin with they extracted pure unfalsified Hegelian categories such as “substance” and “self-consciousness,” later they desecrated these categories with more secular names such as species “the Unique,” “Man,” etc.

Religion was continually regarded and treated as the archenemy, as the ultimate cause of all relations repugnant to these philosophers.

The critics started from real religion and actual theology. What religious consciousness and a religious conception really meant was determined variously as they went along.

Their advance consisted in subsuming the allegedly dominant metaphysical, political, juridical, moral and other conceptions under the class of religious or theological conceptions; and similarly in pronouncing political, juridical, moral consciousness as religious or theological, and the political, juridical, moral man – “man” in the last resort – as religious.

The dominance of religion was taken for granted.

Gradually every dominant relationship was pronounced a religious relationship and transformed into a cult, a cult of law, a cult of the State, etc. On all sides it was only a question of dogmas and belief in dogmas.

The world was sanctified to an ever-increasing extent till at last our venerable Saint Max was able to canonise it en bloc and thus dispose of it once for all.

The Old Hegelians had comprehended everything as soon as it was reduced to an Hegelian logical category.

The Young Hegelians criticised everything:

• by attributing to it religious conceptions or
• by pronouncing it a theological matter.

The Young Hegelians agree with the Old Hegelians in their belief in the rule of:

• religion
• concepts
• a universal principle in the existing world.

But one party attacks this dominion as usurpation, while the other extols it as legitimate.

The Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, and all the products of consciousness as having an independent existence.

• Both they and the Old Hegelians declared the products of consciousness as the true bonds of human society
• And so, the Young Hegelians only have to fight against these illusions of consciousness.

According to their fantasy, the following are products of consciousness:

• the relationships of men
• all their doings
• their bonds
• their limitations

The Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations.

This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation.

The Young-Hegelian ideologists have made “world-shattering" statements. In reality, they are the staunchest conservatives.

The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases.”

They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only 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.

The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.

It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings.