The German ideology - History as a continuous process

Table of contents

1. Preface
2. Feuerbach: Opposition of the materialist and idealist outlooks
   1. Idealism and materialism
      1. The illusions of German ideology
      2. Ideology in general, ideology in particular
      3. First premises of the materialist method
      4. Production and intercourse. Division of labour and forms of property – tribal, ancient, feudal
      5. The essence of the materialist conception of history. Social being and social consciousness
      6. History: fundamental conditions
      7. Private property and communism
      8. History as a continuous process
      9. Development of the productive forces as a material premise of communism
   2. The illusion of the epoch
      1. Civil society — and the conception of history
      2. Feuerbach: philosophic, and real, liberation
      3. Ruling class and ruling ideas
   3. The real basis of ideology
      1. Division of labor: town and country
      2. The rise of manufacturing
      3. The relation of state and law to property
   4. Proletarians and communism
      1. Individuals, class, and community
      2. Forms of intercourse
      3. Conquest
      4. Contradictions of big industry: revolution

In history up to the present it is certainly an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the so-called universal spirit, etc.), a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market. But it is just as empirically established that, by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history. From the above it is clear that the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in speculative-idealistic, i.e. fantastic, terms as “self-generation of the species” (“society as the subject”), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of generating itself. It is clear here that individuals certainly make one another, physically and mentally, but do not make themselves.

← Previous (Private property and communism)

History as a continuous process

(Development of the productive forces as a material premise of communism) Next →