The Holy Family in 1845

"Proletariat and wealth are antitheses. As such they form a whole. They are bothformations of the world of private property. What concerns us here is to define theparticular position they take within the opposition. It is not enough to say that they aretwo sides of a whole. Private property, as private property, as wealth, is forced tomaintain its own existence and thereby the existence of its opposite, the proletariat. It isthe positive side of the opposition, private property satisfied in itself

The proletariat, on the other hand, is forced, as proletariat, to abolish itself, andwith this, its antithesis, the condition which makes it a proletariat--private property. It isthe negative side of the contradiction, its principle of unrest, private property dissolvedand in process of dissolution.

The propertied class and the proletarian class express the same human alienation. But the former feels comfortable and confirmed in it, recognizes this self-alienation as itsown power and thus has the semblance of a human existence.

The latter feels itself crushed by this alienation, sees in it its own impotence and thereality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel's, "in the midst ofdegradation the revolt against degradation,' a revolt to which it is forced by thecontradiction between its humanity and its situation, which is an open, clear, and absolutenegation of its humanity.

Within this antithesis, therefore, the property owner is the conservative and theproletarian the destructive party.

In its economic movement private property drives on to its own dissolution, butonly through a development which is independent of it, unconscious, achieved against itswill, and brought about by the very nature of things--that is by producing the proletariat asproletariat, poverty conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanizationconscious of its dehumanization and thus transcending itself. The proletariat carries outthe sentence which private property, by creating the proletariat, passes upon itself just as itcarries out the sentence which wage-labour passes upon itself by creating wealth forothers and poverty for itself If the proletariat triumphs, this does not mean that it becomesthe absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then both the proletariat and the opposite which conditions it, private property,disappear."

The German Ideology

the turn towards materialism, the critique of the state,. . of civil society

... achieved a synthetic world outlook, later called historical materialism. . . also from allvarieties of socialism and communism current at the time

... most fundamental idea in The German ideology ... man produces himself through labor. Hehas neither a fixed unchanging nature, purely biologically determined (as a present-day trend ofobviously conservative implications would have it); but neither does he develop himself inaccordance with some spiritual essence, as so many idealists have pretended. . ..a dialectically conceived relation between his nature as determined by the conditions of his life, and thepractical transformation of those conditions.

History is made by particular kinds of men, with specific needs and problems, and specificconditions of life determining the possibility of a solution to those problems.

... one common misinterpretation. . ..dominant idealist trends and make these the basis of afatalistic view which negates human purposefulness and activity. This kind of view issometimes referred to as "mechanistic materialism,"

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The circumstances which are held to shape and form consciousness are not independent ofhuman activity. They are precisely the social relations which have been historically created byhuman action. Hence the importance of human practice in Marx's work..

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other materialists Marx was always careful to mark himself off from them, as we see in theTheses on Feuerbach in this volume.

... revolutionary practice."

Marx criticizes the view that sees in social life nothing but the production of people by theircircumstances.... Marx's complaint is that this leaves unexplained the transition from the firstsituation to the second. These tendencies ... are inconsistent in that they do not criticallyexamine the basis of their own activity. Inconsistently, they say that people are nothing butpassive products of circumstances, while their own activity is ... insight into the nature of theideal society and purposive action of some kind to bring about change .... must themselveshave been produced by given circumstances and education.

Marx wants to say that all men are both products of circumstances an potential changers ofcircumstances.

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Critique:. First someone "superior to society" sets up certain circumstances and education,and then the mass of the people is produced as new men by those circumstances. Marx,however, insisted on a more dialectical relation between circumstances and activity, whichmust be graved as "revolutions practice.

..Marxian attempt to resolve the apparent anti-thesis between mechanical determination andself-

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conscious activity must condition us, however much we revolutionize those conditions later. We cannot create our being by some undetermined pure act. This is true both of the individualand the species. The individual cannot determine the historical period or the class he is borninto--which fundamentally limits his Possibilities.

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FEUERBACH

The Illusions of German Ideology

The decomposition of the Hegelian philosophy...

All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought.

... the putrescence of the absolute spirit.

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... whole Young-Hegelian movement...

Far from examining its general philosophic premises, the whole body of its inquiries hasactually sprung from the soil of a definite philosophical system, that of Hegel.

The Young Hegelians are in agreement with the Old Hegelians in their belief in the rule ofreligion, of concepts, of a universal principle in the existing world. Only, the one party attacksthis dominion as usurpation, while the other extols it as legitimate.

... real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of . .

... the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism totheir own material surroundings.

(Page 42)

... real premises from which abstraction can only be made in imagination.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living humanindividuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical Organization of theseindividuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.... The writing of history mustalways set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history throughthe action of men.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything elseyou like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they beginto produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physicalOrganization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing theiractual material life.

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The way in which mean produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on thenature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. Thismode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physicalexistence of the individuals.... The nature of individuals thus depends on the materialconditions determining their production.

This production only makes its appearance with the increase of poulation. In its turnthis presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals with one another. The form of thisintercourse is again determined by production.

The relations of different nations among themselves depend upon the extent to whicheach has developed its productive forces, the division of labour and internal intercourse. Thisstatement is generally recognized. But not only the relation of one nation to others, but alsothe whole internal structure of the nation itself depends on the state of development reached byits production and its internal and external intercourse.... Each new productive force, insofar asit is not merely a quantitative extension of productive forces already known (for instance thebringing into cultivation of fresh land), causes a further development of the division of labour.

The division of labour inside a nation leads at first to the separation of industrial andcommercial from agricultural labour, and hence to the separation of town and country and tothe conflict of their interests. Its further development leads to the separation of commercialfrom

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industrial labour.

The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many differentforms of ownership, i.e. the existing state in the division of labour determines also the relationsof individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument, and product of labour.

The first form of ownership is tribal ownership. (Page 43)

... people lives by hunting and fishing, and by rearing of beasts or, in the highest stage,agriculture.... The division of labour is at this stage still very elementary and is confined to afurther extension of the natural division of labour existing in the family. The social structure is,therefore, limited to an extension of the family;...

The second form is the ancient communal and State ownership which proceeds especially from the union of several tribes into a city by agreement or by conquest... Thedivision of labour is already more developed. We already find the antagonism of town andcountry; later the antagonism between those states which represent town interests and thosewhich represent country interests, and inside the towns themselves the antagonism betweenindustry and maritime commerce. The class relation between citizens and slaves is nowcompletely developed.

With the development of private property, we find here for the first time the sameconditions which we shall find again, only on a more extensive scale, with modem privateproperty. On the one hand the concentration of private property ... on the other hand, coupledwith this, the transformation of the plebeian small peasantry into a proletariat, which, however,owing to its intermediate position between propertied citizens and slaves, never achieved anindependent development.

The third form of ownership is feudal or estate property .... the Middle Ages startedout from the country. . ..directly producing class standing over against it is not, as in the caseof the ancient community, the slaves, but the enserfed small peasantry.

This feudal system of landownership had its counterpart in the towns in the shape ofcorporative property, the feudal Organization of trades.

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Thus the chief form of property during the feudal epoch consisted on the one hand oflanded property with serf labour chained to it, and on the other of the labour of the individualwith small capital commanding the labour of journeymen.

The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definiteway enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in eachseparate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the

connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and theState are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but ofindividuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but asthey are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work underdefinite material limits, presuppositions and conditions of independent of their will.

Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as thedirect efflux of their material behavior.... Consciousness can never be anything elsethan conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth,here we ascend fi7om earth to heaven ... we do not set out from what men say,imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in orderto arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis oftheir real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes andechoes of this life-process.... Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideologyand their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance ofindependence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing theirmaterial production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined byconsciousness, but consciousness by life.

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As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of deadfacts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imaginedsubjects, as with the idealists.

History: Fundamental Conditions

... that men must be in a position to five in order to "make history." But life involves beforeeverything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The firsthistorical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production ofmaterial life itself And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order tosustain human life. (Page 48)

Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact inall its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance.

The second point is that the satisfaction of the first need leads to new needs; and thisproduction of new needs is the first historical act.

The third circumstance which is that men, who daily remake their own life, begin tomake other men, to propagate their kind: the relation between man and woman, parents andchildren,

The family. The family, which to be becomes later, when increased needs create a new socialrelations and the increased population new needs, a subordinate one, and must then be treatedand analyzed according to the existing empirical data. .

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Not stages but.. three "moments" have existed simultaneously since the dawn of history stillassert themselves in history today.

The production of life, both of one's own in labour and of fresh life in procreation, nowappears as a double relationship: on the- one hand as a natural, on the other as a socialrelationship. . ..It follows from this that a certain mode of production, or industrial stage, isalways combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode ofcooperation is itself a "productive force." Further, that the multitude of productive forcesaccessible to men determines the nature of society, hence, that the "history of humanity" mustalways be studied and treated-in relation the hi of industry and exchange ... Thus it is quiteobvious from the start that there exists a materialistic connection of men with one another,which is determined by their needs and their mode of production, and which is as old as menthemselves. This connection is ever taking on new forms, an

existence of any political, religious nonsense which in addition may hold men together.

... after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historicalrelationships, do we find that man also possesses "consciousness,". . . From the start the "spirit"is afflicted with the curse of being "burdened" with matter, which here makes its appearance inthe form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old asconsciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for thatreason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language like counciosness, only arisesfrom the need, the necessity of intercourse with other men. . ..the animal does not enter into"relations" with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as arelation.

Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so aslong as men exist at all .... man's consciousness of the necessity of associating with theindividuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all....With these there develops the division of labour, which was originally nothing but the division oflabour in the sexual act, then that division of labour which develops spontaneously or "naturally"by virtue of natural predisposition, needs, accidents, etc. Division of labour only becomes trulysuch from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. (The first form ofideologists, priests, is concurrent.)(Page 5 1)consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness ofexisting practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; fromnow on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to theformation of "pure" theory, theology, philosophy, etc.

... we get only the one inference that these three moments, the forces of production, thestate: of society, and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another,because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and materialactivity-enjoyment and labour, production and consumption--devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the nation in its turn ofthe division of labour.

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