Objective idealism

Objective idealism posits that reality is fundamentally constituted by mind, spirit, or idea, but locates this mental principle outside individual consciousness i.e. in an absolute mind, world spirit, or transcendent realm of forms. While avoiding some vulgar errors of subjective idealism, it remains an inverted worldview that mystifies material relations and serves reactionary functions.

Classical systems

Plato's theory of Forms establishes the paradigm: material reality is merely imperfect reflection of eternal, immaterial Ideas existing in transcendent realm. Particular just acts "participate in" the Form of Justice itself. This dualism denigrates material existence while hypostatizing mental abstractions into independent entities i.e. putting the world on its head.

Hegel represents objective idealism's most sophisticated development. The Absolute Idea unfolds through dialectical self-development, with nature and history as stages in Geist's self-realization. Material reality becomes mere externalization of Concept. Hegel's correctness was recognizing dialectical development; his error was making dialectics a property of Idea rather than matter.

Progressive and reactionary aspects

Marx recognized Hegel's dialectics as containing "rational kernel" within "mystical shell." Hegel grasped that reality develops through contradiction, that quantity transforms into quality, that negation is productive. But his idealism inverted causality: rather than consciousness reflecting material development, he made matter the self-externalization of Spirit.

This inversion serves definite class interests. By making history the unfolding of Idea, objective idealism naturalizes existing social orders as necessary moments in Spirit's development. The Prussian state becomes rationality incarnate. Exploitation appears as stages in Geist's self-knowledge rather than as historically specific relations that can be abolished.

Marxist reversal

Feuerbach began the materialist critique by revealing how humans project their own essence onto imaginary gods. Marx completed this by grounding consciousness in material social practice. The "Geist" that Hegel claimed drives history is actually the mystified reflection of real human labor and social relations. By standing Hegel "right side up," Marx demonstrated that dialectics describes material reality's actual development, contradictions in productive forces and relations, not in disembodied Spirit.

Contemporary significance

Objective idealism persists in theories positing autonomous "structures," "systems," or "information" as prior to material relations. While these may offer partial insights, they repeat idealist inversion when treating mental abstractions as self-subsistent entities rather than reflections of material processes. Against all idealisms, Marxism-Leninism maintains: matter is primary, consciousness secondary; reality exists objectively; and knowledge, though mediated by practice and social position, can grasp objective truth.