Marx's 'theses' on Feuerbach comprise between two and three pages of notes to himself that he wrote in Brussels in April 1845, just before his 27th birthday and just after he was expelled from France.
In these notes Marx criticises writings by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, thereby taking a less favourable line towards Feuerbach than he had hitherto. More importantly, however, he moves from these criticisms to setting out ideas that would structure his writings and activities for the rest of his life.
To understand these notes is therefore to gain a sharp insight into Marx's whole way of thinking.
The emphasis throughout the study sessions will be on open, participatory discussion of the ideas Marx put forward. To support this process, short explanations will be given where necessary about the historical background and to clarify philosophical terms and concepts that Marx uses.
The first session will start with an open discussion about the last and most widely quoted of the 'theses', usually translated as 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it.' This will be followed by an introductory talk about the document as a whole, and guidance enabling people to check out the notes to be considered in the next session.
Some links
• Engels's 1845 Theses on Feuerbach
• Engels's pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
• Plekhanov on Feuerbach and German idealism
• Biographical sketch of Feuerbach (including connections to George Eliot and to the SPD)
• Ludwig Feuerbach, "the true conqueror of the old philosophy" (review of a collection of Feuerbach's writings)
Click here for notes for first session and here for supplementary notes
Click here for notes for 2nd session and here for supplementary notes
Click here for notes for 3rd session and here for supplementary notes
Click here for notes for 4th session and here for supplementary notes
Click here for notes for 5th session and here for supplementary notes
Click here for notes for 6th session
Introductory notes
...
Introduction for first session
Intro.
Academic philosophy a big deal in Germany from Leibniz (1646-1716) through to much of 19th century.
In period following 1789 revolution in France, Rhineland province of Germany came under strong French and enlightenment influence.
1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo by coalition of British and Prussian forces.
Settlement following Waterloo granted Prussia hegemony over Rhineland.
In aftermath of this, Altenstein became Prussian government minister responsible both for religious affairs and universities.
Altenstein organised Pietism (fusion of Lutheran and Calvinist Protestantism) as Prussian state religion.
(Equivalent to Anglicanism here only more draconian)
Altenstein also made Hegelian philosophy dominant form of philosophy taught in universities in Prussian and provinces under Prussian control.
Hegel died 1831.
With change of Prussian monarch (to Frederick William IV, ruled 1840-1861, a diehard reactionary) this Hegelian dominance weakened.
1. Feuerbach
Ludwig Feuerbach born 1804 (Bavaria?)
Father a prominent philosopher (still today) and several of his brothers.
First studied at Heidelberg University.
'Matriculated' at Heidelberg (1823), aiming to become Lutheran pastor.
But on advice of Heidelberg tutor (Karl Daub) moved (1824) to Berlin to study under Hegel.
July 1828 completed doctoral dissertation at Erlangen University, in Latin, titled: 'On the Infinitude, Unity and Universality of Reason'.
ie Hegelian title.
Turned against Hegel's ideas, and other idealist philosophy, equating it with theology.
Claimed that his (ie Feuerbach's) philosophy was no philosophy
Wrote number of published works on philosophy from materialist standpoint.
First edition of Das Wesen Des Christentums published 1841
Second edition?
2. Marx
Born 1818 in Rhineland (Trier).
Parents largely secularised Jews.
Father (Heinrich Marx) a successful lawyer.
Believed in God but also heavily influenced by ideas of French enlightenment philosophes.
When Karl Marx five or six [DATE] whole family converted to Christianity as benefitted Heinrich's legal practice.
Marx first [DATES?] at Bonn University (in Rhineland) - drinking etc
Transferred to Berlin [DATE]
Enthused with Hegelian philosophy.
Participated with Bruno Bauer, and others in Doctors Club.
Doctoral thesis on Democrtitus and Epicurus [CHECK] - ie materialist ancient Greek philosophers {DATES OF EACH]
Preparing thesis for publication wrote reference to Prometheus into introduction [QUOTE AND EXPLAIN]
ie consciously turned his back on career as academic philosophy lecturer.
Instead took job as correspondent for and then editor of Rheinische Zeitung (liberal) newspaper.
As journalist became aware of Prussian wood theft laws issue [EXPLAIN]
(Heinrich Marx also involved in this on side of peasants)
Also re winegrowers?
Also developed collaboratio with Frederick Engels
Both knew about canut struggles of French silkweavers 1831-34
Marx learned from Engels about Chartism, Owenism etc in England
1842 Lorenz von Stein's book about French socialism [EXPLAIN]
1843 Wilhelm Weitling arrested in Switzerland [EXPLAIN]
1844 (June) Silesian cotton weavers' uprising [EXPLAIN including re Marx's Vorwarts exchange with Arnold Ruge]
Insert re chiasmus.
Insert re Engels quote re Feuerbach and w/c communists etc
March 1843: Rheinische Zeitung suppressed. Marx moved to Paris (October 1843)
In Paris Marx interacted with wide range of French socialists and also exiled German artisans
And with Engels - jointly wrote and published The Holy Family.
Also drafted 'Paris manuscripts' including section on Hegel.
Prussian government got French government to expel Marx February 1845
Marx wrote Theses on Feuerbach in Brussels spring 1845
This while awaiting Engels's arrival (late April 1845) so they could work on documents later (1932) published in Russia as 'The German Ideology'.
...
Intro notes for second session
1. Intro
Brief explanation of relation between philosopher Hegel and issues addressed by Marx in theses on Feuerbach.
2. Key difference between Feuerbach and Marx:
- Feuerbach rejected Hegel's worldview outright - as theology masquerading as philosophy.
- In contrast, Marx swept up a central aspect of Hegel's thought into a broader and deeper worldview altogether.
Without this element, no 'Marxism'.
Hegel like Marx a rigorous, holistic, dynamic thinker but not oriented towards action in way Marx was.
Hegel was single most prominent among group of idealist German philosophy academics at that time, others being Johann Fichte and Friedrich Schelling.
3. Hegel's life
Hegel born Stuttgart in Swabia (German province) 1770.
His ancestors Protestant refugees from Catholic Austria.
In 1788 went to Tubingen University, and specifically to the theological seminary there - ie intended career was as Lutheran pastor.
Wrote a lot about religion early on.
But gravitated towards career as philosophy academic.
Worked as this at Jena University, then Heidelberg, then, from 1818, Berlin University - ie in Prussian capital - till died in cholera epidemic 1831.
For much of his time there was under pressure from powers-that-be for his ideas not being close enough to religious orthodoxy.
4. Hegel's writings
Hegel's writings often very difficult.
Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary, the most helpful guide available to my knowledge.
In terms of what Marx took from Hegel, best way in may be first volume of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophic Sciences in Outline (first published 1816).
Lecture notes supported by Zusatze (explain = additions).
Will now use this to explain how he saw things.
5. Logic
The three encyclopedia volumes are Logic, Nature, Mind.
Will focus here on Logic.
In this, infers from regularity, predictability and law-governed nature of universe, world etc that must be guiding intelligence that has created it from nothing and continues to operate within it.
In religious terms, God.
This doctrine sometimes called 'panentheism' (= world within God)
ie mind precedes matter
ie objective idealism.
By 'logic' Hegel means developing process by which humans increasingly make sense of world.
Sees this as process by which pre-existing intelligent force (God) comes to consciousness of itself through human development.
6. Relation to Marx's ideas
In relation to Marx's ideas, key part of Logic volume, apart from Hegel's overall introduction, is section called 'The Doctrine of Essence'.
In this section, Hegel argues that so-called 'laws of thought' ie old-style conventional logic, derived from Aristotle, are necessary but not sufficient.
Laws of thought enable us only to 'understand' (verstande).
But we can't make sense of the world unless we also challenge and think our way beyond these laws, identifying where they are self-contradictory, fail to account for complex processes of change etc.
This challenging he calls 'dialectic'
In his view, traditional logic plus dialectic allows us to reason (vernunft).
Talking here about a process of development that is prompted and made possible by world spirit, God etc, but which goes on entirely within people's minds, either individually and/or via collective thought processes, eg culture, education, philosophy etc.
7. Marx's dialectical view of history
When in Note 1 on Feuerbach Marx talks about 'the active side [being] set forth abstractly by idealism' it's Hegel's description of this process that he's referring to.
However, Marx took this idea and applied it to development of human society.
ie came up with idea of dialectical development from non-class ('primitive communist') societies, emergence of class societies, and then repeated processes of class struggle through:
- so-called 'Asiatic' mode of production,
- slavery in ancient Greco-Roman world,
- feudalism in medieval Europe, then
- commercial capitalism
- to industrial capitalism of his own day.
From this, then, Marx envisaged possibility that subject class within capitalism - 'proletariat - can build new form of non-class society, ie socialism.
In short, took elements from within Hegel's idealism and reshaped it as form of historical materialism.
In 1873 Marx famously described this approach as follows:
My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject, under the name of 'the Idea', is the creator of the real world and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man [sic], and translated into forms of thought...
The mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell....
In its rational form it [ie the dialectic] is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen [sic], because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary.'
8. Conclusion
Embryo of this thinking present in Theses on Feuerbach.
...
Intro notes for third session
1. Intro.
Introducing notes 2 and 3.
Will start with Note 3, especially the words: 'that the educator himself must be educated'.
Will then suggest way this connects to Note 2.
Engels's 1888 rewording said:
The materialist doctrine that men [sic] are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that men themselves change circumstances and that the educator himself must be educated. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example).
Why did Engels refer thus to Owen?
2. Collective self-ed.
Britain first industrialising society
Industrialisation accompanied by w/c self-organised collective class struggle ed.
- 1790s: LCS reading groups
- 1816-17: Spencean philanthropist 'free-and-easy' discussion clubs
1820s: struggles over control of Mechanics Institutes, especially economics teaching within them
1830s: struggle for unstamped press
Late 1830s: RUK movement
Early 1840s: this carried forward into Chartist movement, eg through Northern Star reading groups.
3. Relation of Owen to these developments
Concerned here with Owen himself, as distinct from Owenite movement R&F.
1816: Owen famously said:
Facts prove . . .
1st. That character is universally formed for, and not by, the individual.
2nd. That any habits and sentiments may be given to mankind.
6th. That any community may be arranged . . . in such a manner, as not only to withdraw vice, poverty, and, in a great degree, misery, from the world, but also to place every individual under circumstances in which he shall enjoy more permanent happiness than can be given to any individual under the principles that have hitherto regulated society.
Promoted this view for rest of his life (died 1858)
Did so in Britain, continental Europe and US.
Both in and around w/c movements and to wealthy patrons.
Other big name 'critical utopian' socialists (eg Saint Simon, Fourier and Cabet) played similar role in first half of 1800s.
4.18th century bourgeois materialist movements
Tradition of bourgeois materialist thinking about ed. going back to early 1700s, especially in France.
eg Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751) - author of Man a Machine (1747)
eg revolutionary physician Pierre Cabanis (1757-1808)
Cabanis famously maintained that 'the brain secretes thought in the same way that the stomach secretes bile'.
Overall standpoint of such thinkers was that an enlightened person or class in position of power can reorganise society on rational basis and thereby eliminate all problems.
Essentially about educating workers to fit into intended bourgeois democratic social order.
5. Marx's alternative
Notes 2 and 3 set out Marx's alternative to this model.
His model centred on conception of w/c agency.
Combines two key elements:
- 'practice'
- 'the comprehension of practice' (Note 8)
Note 3 ends by saying 'The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
Need to take this in conjunction with note 2.
6. Note 2
First sentence of Note 2 refers to argument amongst academic philosophers, eg Immanuel Kant, about whether humans can know the world as it really is or only as it appears to them.
Second sentence then says: 'Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-worldliness of his thinking in practice.'
Means: if humans plan an action based on their experience of natural world and successfully implement that plan, this proves they can know the world as it really.
However, this sentence also implies that we come to know the world through acting in and on it (and ourselves as part of it) - ie by work.
As Marx later argued (Capital Vol. 1, pub. 1867, chapter 7:
Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature'
7. Historical dimension to this:
Across human history, vast bulk of productive activity done by members of [Gramsci's term] 'instrumental classes' eg serfs, slaves, bonded labourers, artisans, industrial workers etc.
Follows then that there had been amongst people at the bottom of society a reservoir of informal knowledge handed down by word of mouth about material world - eg soil, timber, stone, minerals etc
M&E wrote in draft for what became The German Ideology (1846)
. . . tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With these there develops the division of labour . . . Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. ***
From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and proceed to the formation of "pure' theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.
NB *** Footnote in Marx's handwriting: 'The first form of ideologists, priests, is coincident.'
So as class society emerges from non-class society, a layer of ideologists appropriate to themselves the insights workers acquire through experience of production,
They monopolise the theoretical elaboration of those insights.
This monopoly then becomes an instrument for ruling people at bottom of society, both through religion, and sometimes through planning of production itself.
8. Conclusion
So when Marx talks about the necessity for 'practical-critical activity' and about 'practice and the comprehension of practice' (Note 8) he's stressing that key purpose of working-class collective self-education is for workers to take back control of their own thinking.
Saw this as necessary condition of w/c organising itself as r/c, as per Manifesto.
...
Intro notes on fourth session
Intro.
Religion = vast topic
Referred in 2nd talk to w/c ed. practices in Britain 1790s to 1840s
Will speak here about r/c reaction to these and ones later in 1800s
2. 1790s-1820s
First approach - 1790s to 1820s approx - simple repression
As industrial capitalist class began to press for share of power with landed and commercial interests, sought w/c support for this.
Decsribed by Marx in Manifesto para. 48
Took form of Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
(Set up by Henry Brougham 1826)
W/c response: 'Really Useful Knowledge' movement (1830s) - stalemate?
3. Clerisy
R/c then switched to a religious strategy as follows.
Poets initially enthused by French 1789 rev. but then backed off, repudiated etc
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (influenced by German philosophy esp. Kant) developed clerisy concept - explain.
Role for Anglican clergy as educators
This basis for r/c approach for large part of 1800s and into 1900s.
4. Maurice group
10th April 1848 Chartist petition demo
Many lawyers etc enrolled as special constables (included Louis Napoleon)
On night of 10/4, group of specil constables assembled at F. D. Maurice's house in Bloomsbury
Included Maurice, John Ludlow and Charles Kingsley
With Thomas Hughes, Edward Neale etc formed first UK Xtian (Christian) Socialist group
Strategy to defeat Chartism by Xtian fellowship with workers.
Aim: 'to socialise the Xtians and Christianise the workers'.
Secured support of some w/c Owenite Chartists eg Lloyd Jones.
First tactic within this strategy: producer co-ops.
This stemmed from Ludlow.
Socialist Xtians in France included Felicite De La Mennais (Catholic priest) but also Philippe Buchez
Ludlow borrowed co-op idea from Buchez
Maurice etc involved themselves with engineers union here, including in 1852 lockout.
Sought to divert it into worker co-ops
1854 Xtian Socialist group split between those focused on coops (eg Hughes) and those round Maurice with adult ed. strategy
5. Workingmen's College
Maurice a Broad Church Anglican former Unitarian sacked from professorship at Kings College for disbelief in hell.
Founded London Workingmen's College (WMC) 1854
Learning and Working book published 1855.
Lectures (aimed at non-w/c audience very interesting, Hegelian-style arguments re adult ed (ie still today)
BUT
assumption always that duty of Coleridge-style upper-class clerisy to determine what college etc does
(Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle taught there)
Trying to produce by mock Oxford College a compliant layer amongst w/c by adult ed in Xtian values.
(NB opposed Anglo-catholic--style J. H. Newman approach of the day)
6. 1867
1867 resurgent craft TU power
Led to franchise extension to better-off (male) urban workers
Robert Lowe (chancellor) famously said re necessity of 'forcing our new masters to learn their letters'
Switch round in plt produced 1870 Act
Borrowed elected school boards idea from William Lovett 'moral force Chartist' programme
7. W/c discussion clubs
Also in 1850s and 1860s, earlier left trads preserved within w/c clubs
eg prominent Chartist James Bronterre O'Brien (1804-1864) [translated Philippe Buonarotti book about Babeuf 'conspiracy of equals
O'Brien ran Eclectic Club in Soho.
Stan Shipley Club Life and Socialism in Mid Victorian London (1971) shows how IWMA member Adam Weiler brought Marx's ideas into these clubs
1862: Working Men's Club and Institute Movement set up by Rev. Henry Solly to counter such clubs.
8. 1880s
However, in 1883, H. M. Hyndman formed Democratic Federation and then SDF - i.e. first UK Marxist group - from such clubs
Movement on r/c side developed as counter to this, via Oxford professor T. H. Green, Canon Samuel Barnett, his wife Henrietta Barnett, & Arnold Toynbee
Barnett initiated settlement initiative in East End parish.
Oxford students etc live amongst w/c poor in East End.
Henry George Progress and Poverty speaking tour [1882]
Toynbee tour (18/1/83) counter to this from Xtian Socialist side
Describe Frank Kitz and Oxford Street meeting, Toynbee's death
Barnett settlement now relaunched as Toynbee Hall.
Conscious effort to extend Workingmen's College idea
9. University Extension
Next r/c strategy: university extension as corrective rising w/c activity in 1880s.
Failed to hold w/c people
Tutorial class idea (briefly explain) sold to Oxford Extension Delegacy early 1900s by w/c Xtian Toynbee Hall product Albert Mansbridge
Became WEA in early 1900s
Supported by Bishops in Lux Mundi group following conference at Mirfield retreat in Yorkshire.
Became WEA.
10. Conclusion
So throughout 1800s various strands of Xtian Socialist Anglicans fought ideological struggle against w/c collective self-education.
As w/c movement and Marxist strand within it grew from 1880s onwards, so did Xtian Socialist strategy.
All this foreshadowed by M in Feuerbach notes.
...
Intro notes for fifth session
Intro.
Marx criticises Feuerbach on two major grounds: in Note 1 he criticises what he sees as Feuerbach's inadequate understanding of productive work - ie of the dialectical interaction between subjectivity (= consciousness) on the one hand and the bringing about of objective changes in the 'world' on the other.
This process, in Marx's view, also leads to changes in the workers involved.
But, according to Marx, Feuerbach sees work only as a money-grubbing activity, and not as the collective production of human needs, culture, consciousness etc.
Secondly, in Note 6, Marx criticises Feuerbach for not investigating sufficiently the social, economic and political history of how people come to develop religion.
That is, Feuerbach fails to address what Marx would call 'the dialectic', ie the historical development by humans of their socio-economic structures within which they live, and of the class struggles that go along with this.
2. The consequences
The consequences, in Marx's view, are as follows:
(1) Instead of understanding religious activity, ideas etc as something which humans have produced and do produce, Feuerbach sees such activity, ideas, beliefs etc as the result of a religious 'sentiment' (gemut) that is hard-wired into people
- as, in effect, then, the result of biological or genetic factors as opposed to cultural ones.
His approach is like that of people who say 'in the end socialism is impossible because you can't get rid of greed'.
In other words, Feuerbach fails to see religion as something that arises as an effect of class struggle.
(2) This, in Marx's view, leads Feuerbach into the same kind of wrong direction as bourgeois economic theorists who based their systems on isolated individuals as portrayed by Daniel Defoe in “Robinson Crusoe”.
In short, instead of thinking in terms of a dialectical interaction between culture and nature, Feuerbach, according to Marx, thinks in terms of a purely natural process that makes every individual religious.
In each case the individuals concerned inhabit something that bourgeois economists called 'civil society'.
3. The problem?
Developments on the left both in Marx's lifetime and later suggest that this way of thinking was a real problem for working-class self-organisation.
First, the capitalist social relations of production itself both push workers together, eg in large factories, and set them against each other, in a competition to sell their labour power.
Union organisation, solidarity etc necessarily seeks to fight against this.
But to do so sustainably it needs to be backed up by a theoretical framework based on ideas like, 'social production controlled by social foresight', on an understanding of why you must not cross a picket line, and on the idea of 'an injury to one is an injury to all'.
But at the time not many members of the intelligentsia other than Marx and Engels thought in this way.
Further, the development of socialist ideas in the 1800s often went against this.
We should bear in mind, for example, that in 1854, when George Eliot's English translation of Feuerbach's “The Essence of Christianity” was published, the only writing by Marx available in English was Helen Macfarlane's 1850 translation of the Communist Manifesto as printed in a left paper, “The Red Republican”.
It was entirely possible in those days for non-Marxist socialist ideas to cut across basic working-class solidarity. This was especially the case in France.
4. Positivism
A prime example of this is the tradition deriving from the utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, and carried on after his death in 1825 by Auguste Comte (died 1857).
Comte's system developed out of Saint-Simon's ideas. It was based on three stages of human mental development - first a theological stage (in which people people explained the world in terms of the will of anthropomorphic gods), secondly, a philosophical stage, in which people understood the world in terms of metaphysical abstractions, and thirdly, a scientific stage where the world was explained in terms of of science.
Comte believed that scientific thought emerged first in the form of maths and then developed through, successively, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and, finally, sociology.
Comte invented the term sociology. He saw this discipline as the highest form of science, and as based directly on a biological understanding of human nature.
He called this way of thinking 'positivism' and he built a substantial movement around it.
At his death in 1857 Comte had followers amongst the intelligentsia across France, England, the US, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere. (Brazil's national flag still carries a positivist slogan: 'Ordem e progresso').
(George Eliot, for example, was herself a positivist. Keir Hardie read her translation of Feuerbach.)
In the absence of a Marxist alternative, ideas like those of Comte were very influential amongst self-educated workers and also influential sections of the intelligentsia.
This situation continued at least to the early 1900s.
5. Social Darwinism
Those involved were also strongly influenced by Darwinism, especially by “The Descent of Man”, published in 1871.
One such intellectual influence in Britain, including in sections of the Labour movement, was Herbert Spencer's concept of Social Darwinism.
Again, well into the 1900s, a book by Ernst Haeckel, “The Riddle of the Universe” was on the reading list of w/c socialists in the UK and US.
Haeckel was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Jena University. (Died 1909.)
He popularised Darwin's ideas but he did so in a format that we now would certainly call racist.
6. Italy and Britain
Again, in Italy a big positivist influence on the Socialist Party were the ideas of the criminologists Cesare Lombroso (died 1909) and Enrico Ferri.
Ferri was a Socialist Party member of parliament who in the 1920s became a fascist.
Both Lombroso and he put forward a biological concept of the criminal type and of supposedly backward peoples, for example peasants in the south of Italy.
In Britain in 1905 the future Labour prime minister James Ramsay Macdonald began publication of a series of books called “The Socialist Library”.
The first of these was a translation of Ferri's 1896 book “Socialism and Positive Science (Darwin - Spencer - Marx)”.
The second was MacDonald's own “Socialism and Society”, in which he, like Ferri, saw the development of socialism in quasi-biological evolutionary terms.
7. Conclusion
So Marx's notes to himself in 1845 in which he argued against this biologising direction were very percipient.
...
Intro notes for sixth session
1. What, if anything, does the reference to 'the educator' in Note 4 imply for how activists now should try to organise socialist adult education?
2. Is the argument about religion (eg in Note 4, para 2) valid? If not, why not? And does it apply to all religious beliefs?
3. Judging from these notes, what did Marx believe about the relations between nature and culture (as eg in Note 6) and was he right?
4. Judging from these notes, what relation did Marx think there should be between interpreting the world and attempting to change it, and was he right?
5. Does this document, written in 1845, relate to situations and problems that have developed since, including ones we face now? If so, how? If not, why not?
6. What role, if any, can or should philosophy play in working-class self- organisation today?
7. Do Marx's criticisms of Feuerbach seem fair? If so, why? If not, why not?
Background
Background to Marx's 'theses' on Feuerbach: selected extracts from writings by Marx up to/including Spring 1845
From Colin Waugh
1. Karl Marx, PhD thesis: The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature 1841. Foreword (Collected Works [CW] Volume 1 p30)
. . . The confession of Prometheus: 'In simple words, I hate the pack of gods' (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound) is its own confession, its own aphorism against all heavenly and earthly gods who do not acknowledge human self-consciousness as the highest divinity. It will have none other beside.
But to those poor March hares who rejoice over the apparently worsened civil position of philosophy, it responds again, as Prometheus replied to the servant of the gods, Hermes:
Be sure of this, I would not change my state
Of evil fortune for your servitude.
Better to be the servant of this rock
Than to be faithful boy to Father Zeus.
Prometheus is the most eminent saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar.
2. Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge, 30 November 1842. (Collected Works [CW] Vol. 1, pp 394-395)
I stated that I regard it as inappropriate, indeed even immoral, to smuggle communist and socialist doctrines, hence a new world outlook, into incidental theatrical criticisms, etc., and that I demand a quite different and more thorough discussion of communism, if it should be discussed at all. I requested further that religion should be criticised in the framework of criticism of political conditions rather than that political conditions should be criticised in the framework of religion, since this is more in accord with the nature of a newspaper and the educational level of the reading public; for religion in itself is without content, it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will collapse of itself.
3. Karl Marx, Letter from Deutsch-Franzosiche Jahrbucher, March/May/September 1843 (CW, Vol. 3, p144)
Hence, nothing prevents us from making criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles, the starting point of our criticism, and from identifying our criticism with them. In that case we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.
The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions. Our whole object can only be - as is also the case in Feuerbach's criticism of religion - to give religious and philosophical questions the form corresponding to man who has become conscious of himself.
Hence, our motto must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analysing the mystical consciousness that is unintelligible to itself, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality. It will become evident that it is not a question of drawing a great mental dividing line between past and future, but of realising the thoughts of the past. Lastly, it will become evident that mankind is not beginning a new work, but is consciously carrying into effect its old work.
4. Karl Marx, late 1843-January 1844, Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction pp249-264 in Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society
For Germany the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism. . . . (p249)
The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man . . . But man is not an abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of men, the state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world because they are an inverted world . . . (p250)
Thus it is the task of history, once the otherworldly truth has disappeared, to establish the truth of this world. The immediate task of philosophy which is in the service of history is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy forms now that it has been unmasked in its holy form. Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics. (p 251)
. . . The proletariat is only beginning to appear in Germany as a result of the rising industrial movement . . . p263
As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has deeply struck the unsophisticated soil of the people, the Germans will emancipate themselves to become men. pp263-4
. . . . . . Philosophy cannot be actualized without the transcendence [Aufhebung] of the proletariat, the proletariat cannot be transcended without the actualization of philosophy p264.
5. Karl Marx, Critical Marginal Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform by a Prussian" [ie Arnold Ruge], Paris, 31st July 1844 (CW Vol. 3, pp189-206)
. . . it is untrue, actually untrue, that the German bourgeoisie totally fails to understand the general significance of the Silesian uprising . . . All the liberal German newspapers . . . teem with articles about the organisation of labour, the reform of society, criticism of monopolies and competition, etc. All this is the result of the movements among the workers. . .
. . . not one of the French and English workers' uprisings had such a theoretical and conscious character as the uprising of the Silesian weavers . . .
First of all, recall the song of the weavers, that bold call to struggle, in which there is not even a mention of hearth and home, factory or district, but in which the proletarit at once, in a striking, sharp, unrestrained and powerful manner, proclaims its opposition to the society of private property. The Silesian uprising begins precisely with what the French and English workers' uprisings end, with consciousness of the nature of the proletariat. The action itself bears the stamp of this superior character. Not only machines, these rivals of the workers, are destroyed, but also ledgers, the titles to property. And while all other movements were aimed primarily only against the owner of the industrial enterprise, the visible enemy, this movement is at the same time directed against the banker, the hidden enemy . . .
As for the educational level or capacity for education of the German workers in general, I call to mind Weitling's brilliant writings, which as regards theory are often superior even to those of Proudhon . . .
. . . whereas a social revolution with a political soul is a paraphrase or nonsense, a political revolution with a social soul has a rational meaning. Revolution in general - the overthrow of the existing power and dissolution of the old relationships - is a political act. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. It needs this political act insofar as it needs destruction and dissolution. But where its organising activity begins, where its proper object, its soul, comes to the fore - there socialism throws off the political cloak.
6. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (CW Vol. 3, p232)
(. . . positive criticism as a whole - and therefore also German positive criticism of political economy - owes its true foundation to the discoveries of Feuerbach . . .
It is only with Feuerbach that positive, humanistic and naturalistic criticism begins. The less noise they make, the more certain, profound, extensive, and enduring is the effect of Feuerbach's writings, the only writings since Hegel's Phanomenologie and Logik to contain a real theoretical revolution.
7. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (CW, Vol. 3, pp328-329)
Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy. The extent of his achievement, and the unpretencious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude [of the others].
Feuerbach's great achievement is:
(1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e. another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned;
(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the the social relationship of "man to man" the basic principle of the theory;
(3) His opposing to the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself.
Feuerbach explains the Hegelian dialectic (and thereby justifies starting out from the positive facts which we know by the senses) as follows:
Hegel sets out from the estrangement of substance (in logic, from the infinite, the abstractly universal) - from the absolute and fixed abstraction; which means, put in a popular way, that he sets out from religion and theology.
Secondly, he annuls the infinite, and posits the actual, sensuous, real, finite, particular (philosophy, annulment of religion and theology).
Thirdly, he again annuls the positive and restores the abstraction, the infinite - restoration of religion and theology.
Feuerbach thus conceives the negation of the negation only as a contradiction of philosophy with itself - as the philosophy which affirms theology (the transcendent, etc.) after having denied it, and which it therefore affirms in opposition to itself.
8. Karl Marx from The Holy Family written (jointly with Engels) August-November 1844 (CW, Vol. 4, p7)
Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than spiritualism or speculative idealism, which substitutes "self-consciousness" or the "spirit" for the real individual man . . . Needless to say, this incorporeal spirit is spiritual only in its imagination. What we are combating in [Bruno] Bauer's criticism is precisely speculation reproducing itself as a caricature. We see in it the most complete expression of the Christian-Germanic principle, which makes its last effort by transforming "criticism" itself into a transcendent power.
9. Karl Marx from The Holy Family written August-November 1844 (CW, Vol. 4, pp36-37)
Indeed private property drives itself in its economic movement towards its own dissolution, but only through a development which does not depend on it, which is unconscious and which takes place against the will of private property by the very nature of things, only inasmuch as it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty which is conscious of its spiritual and physical poverty, dehumanisation which is conscious of its dehumanisation, and therefore self-abolishing. The proletariat executes the sentence that private property pronounces on itself by producing the proletariat, just as it executes the sentence that wage-labour pronounces on itself by producing wealth for others and poverty for itself. When the proletariat is victorious, it by no means becomes the absolute side of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then the proletariat disappears as well as the opposite which determines it, private property.
When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all, as Critical Criticism pretends to believe, because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary. Since in the fully-formed proletariat the abstraction of all humanity, even of the semblance of humanity, is practically complete; since the conditions of life of the proletariat sum up all the conditions of life of society today in their most inhuman form; since man has lost himself in the proletariat, yet at the same time has not only gained theoretical consciousness of that loss, but through urgent, no longer removable, no longer disguisable, absolutely imperative need - the practical expression of necessity - is driven directly to revolt against this inhumanity, it follows that the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today which are summed up in its own situation. Not in vain does it go through the stern but steeling school of labour. It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is visibly and irrevocably foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organisation of bourgeois society today. There is no need to explain here that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historic task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity.
10. Frederick Engels, article in The New Moral World No. 37, 8th March 1845 (CW Vol. 4, pp235-236)
. . . Dr Feuerbach, the most eminent philosophical genius in Germany at the present time, has declared himself a Communist. A friend of ours lately visited him in his retired country seat, in a remore corner of Bavaria, and to him he declared his full conviction that Communism was only a necessary consequence of the principles he had proclaimed, and that Communism was, in fact, only the practice of what he had proclaimed long before theoretically. Feuerbach said, he had never been delighted so much with any other book, as with the first part of Weitling's Guarantees. I never dedicated, he said, a book to anybody, but I feel much inclined to dedicate to Weitling my next work. Thus the union between the German philosophers, of whom Feuerbach is the most eminent representative, an union which, a year ago, had been predicted by Dr. Marx, is all but accomplished. With the philosophers to think, and the working men to fight for us, will any earthly power be strong enough to resist our progress?
Comments?We welcome replies, corrections and debate pieces. Contact us