Consciousness In The German Ideology

The dualism of Nazi Germany makes it difficult to ascertain the level of Nazification present at the state-level prior to 1935. John Herz writes that the ‘underlying purposes and tendency of the originators and leaders of the Nazi regime was to create a completely party-dominated and party-permeated state and society’. However, Herz goes on to argue that this desire to completely restructure government institutions and personnel was soon recognised as being detrimental to the plan to rapidly gear Germany for war. Therefore, the Nazi leadership chose ‘to use, modify, and adapt existing institutions to its specific purposes and policies, while profiting from their efficiency and technical skill.’ This was especially true for the upper civil service, the highly experienced ministerial bureaucracy, whose members the Nazi Party could mostly not replace without damaging the effectiveness of German administration. As a result, a ‘dualism’ between the German state and the Nazi Party was perpetuated in which many state institutions continued to function largely un-Nazified—especially in the years prior to 1935.

It is a commonplace that Marx's theory is a continuation of the German classical philosophy-Hegel's in the first place. He, however, wanted to turn the 'upside down' idealist dialectics the right way up, as he said, and put it on a materialist basis. In doing so he followed not so much Feuerbach's example as the materialism of the English and French Enlightenment with which he had already been well acquainted, as is clear from his work Die heilige Familie. Feuerbach instead inspired Marx to preserve the humanistic pathos, which was present in the Prometheus cult in his doctoral dissertation, also on materialistic grounds, instead of the 'sunshine idealism' he praised in the recommendation. Only an 'anthropologic' materialism could naturally serve such purposes-the mature Marx, too, always categorically distanced himself from the metaphysical and natural scientific materialisms. He also distanced himself from Feuerbach's unhistorically anthropological materialism. His materialism can only be termed anthropological if anthropology is understood as a historical anthropology (as Marx himself said in his work Das Elend der

and brought to the forefront the question of freedom and necessity. Whereby luxury had been

Marx’s conception of society has its grounds in a theory of action: as he put it, human beings make their own history. But Marx goes on to argue that they do this is circumstances which are not of their own choosing, and he develops an analysis of how action is organized by these circumstances as material conditions of production which structure and determine the social relationship that are primarily generated by the particular material forces of production utilized, which include not only raw materials but also the technology which is used to extract and work them into products (Jenks 15).

To begin, Marx claims that labor power is a special commodity that describes the physical and mental abilities found within human beings (Marx, page 270). Humans have this unique ability to transform natural materials into commodities through their own power. This is why individuals must be “free” in multiple senses in order to sell their labor as a commodity.

In their materialist reading of history, Marx and Engels proclaim that with the necessity for survival driving history/ and man to the development of social interaction and thus the establishment of the economy, staged progressions will come forth as a result. To Marx the economy will ultimately be responsible for all aspects of society. It will be from the development, and circumstance stemming forth from such development of the economy, that the stages of history will progress. And as such to Marx and Engels Capitalism will be a stopping point upon this staged progression route of history. In this way it is concluded that Capitalism is a mode of production stemming from the economy [means and relations of production], which in itself is a result of the history of materialism [the innate struggle for survival and the social relations built upon this struggle].

The philosophy of Karl Marx begins with the belief that humans are inherently cooperative with common characteristics and shared ends. To human beings, life is considered an object and therefore, humans make their “life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness” (Tucker 76). In other words, humans are able to think, imagine, and “produce even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom” (p. 76). It exemplifies that idea that humans not only have the capability to create things for survival but express themselves in what they produce, within the standards of the human race or universally. When capitalist wage-labor enters the picture, it forces these shared ends and the freedom of expression in human production to cease, causing a rise of competitiveness among

Long before our time, two prominent German philosophers emerged at the forefront of ideology and thinking. These two men were Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche who pioneered the idea of truths, religion, reality, etc. Karl Marx’s essay, “The German Ideology,” otherwise known as Marxism, focused upon the materialistic processes that brought life into our world and the abuse of the burgeouse on the proletariat. This theory later went on to found the core beliefs of communism and played a fundamental role in the world. His theory raised questions of equality, justice, and division of labor which became

Marx’s (1987) “materialist conception of history” (p. 146) provides an outline through which he presents the intimate connection between society and the provision of material need through the ages. His theory begins with the pre-modern individual, whose existence consists only of productive actions vital to only his own survival, such as gathering food and building shelter. Marx considers this

The Hegelian dialectic has been utilized by numerous people throughout history, this is acknowledged by Karl Marx. Marx believes that in a time of conflict between royals and townspeople, which revolved around unequal distribution of resources, the Hegelian dialectic was utilized to synthesize a new idea called capitalism. The development of capitalism resolved the conflict between the royals and townspeople. Consequently, a new contradiction arose as result for the materialistic society, which is the conflict of the capitalist versus the working class. It is predicted that, as per Hegel, the presence of these contradicting ideas will eventually result in the creation of a new one.

Marx rejected Hegel’s dialectics based on a movement of human thought and ideas, and argued that dialectics involved contradictions based on an economic system, otherwise known as dialectical materialism. Therefore, the dynamic for change eventually created by a process of dialectics lies in the conflict between two opposing factors (Lee and Newby 2000, pp. 114 - 119).

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels collaborated to produce The German Ideology, which was one of the classic texts generated by the two. Even though The German Ideology stands our as one of the major texts produced by the two, it was never published during Marx’s lifetime. This was a clear expression of the theory of history by Marx and its associated materialist metaphysics. One of the main reasons this text is a classic text by these philosophers is the fact that it introduces students to the basic tenets of the philosopher’s approach. Notably, Karl Marx produced The German Ideology in 1846 as a critique of George Friedrich Hegel and his followers in Germany. The philosophers sought to differentiate their concept of socialism from existing ones and exhibit how socialism emerges ordinarily from the social conflicts embedded in capitalism.

Marx’s entire theory stated in The German Ideology borrows from his own teacher, Hegel, who he himself argued that consciousness is a continual process called the “dialectic between oppositions” (thesis and antithesis). This is familiar to us due to the “Hegelian Philosophy”. For Marx however the process is instead economic and is amid those with money and

Though Marx views the communist revolution as an unavoidable outcome of capitalism, his theory stipulates that the proletariat must first develop class consciousness, or an understanding of its place within the economic superstructure. If this universal character of the proletariat does not take shape, then the revolution cannot be accomplished (1846: 192). This necessary condition does not pose a problem within Marx’s theoretical framework, as the formation of class consciousness is inevitable in Marx’s model of society. His writings focus on the idea that economic production determines the social and political structure (1846, 1859). For Marx, social class represents a person’s relation to the means of production, a relation that he believes is independent of

In investigating further the basis of Marx's philosophy, one must note the shared belief of Hegel's and Marx's Dialectics. Dialectics is a philosophy at the heart of Marxism; it holds that all things exist not as what they are, but that every thing is in a transitory stage. An acorn is not simply an acorn; it is a future oak tree. A caterpillar exists as a future butterfly. By this philosophy, which can be understood and accepted rather simply (without an offhand disregard for the uniqueness and importance of each individual present stage of an object); it is Marx's later social implication of this philosophy which would meet resistance (Marx, Capital 103). As it were, Marx's Dialectics, at their heart, were simply a method whereby he claimed to understand more the essence of something, rather than its appearance. An appearance alone- the acorn, the caterpillar- fundamentally ignored the essence of something; the future oak tree, the future butterfly. Appearances were not necessarily deceiving or untrue, they simply did not- and could not- represent the whole of something's existence. A caterpillar is indeed a caterpillar, but since one knows that a