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Karl Marx, Friedrich EngelsThe German Ideology
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Volume 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Volume 2 Summary: “Critique of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets”
In Volume 2 Marx and Engels analyze the theories of Hermann Semmig, Rudolph Matthäi, Karl Grün, and Georg Kuhlmann. Socialist ideas from England and France influenced German philosophers. However, German socialists make the same error that other German philosophers do. They believe that socialism is a process of “pure thought” (480), ignoring that socialism is a political movement that emerged from the very real, material conditions of a particular class in a particular country and historical context. This true socialism is believed to be a purer, truer version of socialism. Marx and Engels explain that this strand of German socialism is rooted in the social conditions of Germany in this period and the dominance of idealist philosophy.
Marx and Engels introduce the German philosophy of “true socialism” with a quote from Hermann Semmig (1820-1897):
It seems that the French do not understand their own men of genius. At this point German science comes to their aid and in the shape of socialism presents the most reasonable social order, if one can speak of a superlative degree of reasonableness (510).
Semmig concludes that while socialism is French in origin, it is actually German. While the French developed socialism on the basis of politics, the Germans arrived at socialism through metaphysics.
The authors then turn to an article by Rudolph Matthäi (1895-1918) titled “Cornerstones of Socialism.” The article establishes the struggle for happiness as the ultimate goal. Matthäi describes a walk and locates the unity of life and happiness in nature. Marx and Engels point out that nature is not timeless or eternal. One can find competition, parasites, feudal systems, monarchies, and other representations of political systems. Matthäi describes how man comes from nature and wonders why man isn’t happy and in unity like nature. However, he then argues that man differs from other species because man has consciousness and therefore knows himself. However, the true socialist locates aspects of nature that he would like to see in human society. These categories of nature and society are in fact universality (society) and individuality (single individuals). The reconciliation of these two concepts is the goal. The transformation of society can only happen through the transformation of the self.
Next, Marx and Engels turn to Karl Grün (1817-1887), who they describe as a combination of true socialism and the literary pretensions of Young Germany, a group of German writers who advocated an ideology rooted in socialism and rationalism. Grün’s work is influenced by Feuerbach and the belief that man, or human essence, is the outcome of world history. Like other true socialists, Grün argues that German socialism is the most advanced. Marx and Engels dismiss Grün for not engaging with primary sources. For example, Grün critiques Saint Simon by relying purely on secondary sources rather than reading a single Saint Simonian book. Finally, Georg Kuhlmann (1812-1876) is dismissed as a “spiritualistic charlatan, a pious fraud, a mystical old fox” (560). Kuhlmann argues that he, as a prophet and thinker, has the right to a better life an artisan worker. Marx and Engels attack Kuhlmann for using mystical ideas as a cover for seeking power.
Volume 2 Analysis
For the true socialist, humanism reflects the higher unity of communism and socialism. History is divided into three stages and corresponding levels of consciousness: “Antiquity—naïveté, the Middle Ages—Romanticism, the Modern Age—Humanism” (493). Once again, the use of history is employed to prove that a philosophy is inevitable. The German preference for philosophy over history is articulated. A true socialist writes:
the Germans judge everything sub specie aeterni (in terms of the essence of man), foreigners view everything practically, in terms of actually existing men and circumstances. The thoughts and actions of the foreigner are concerned with temporariness, the thoughts and actions of the German with eternity (488).
Communism, emerging as it does from existing material conditions, is therefore dismissed as a political system. Socialism establishes an anarchic system that is part of the human race and the universe. Marx and Engels dismiss this critique, arguing that the literature of the actual Communist Party in France cannot simply be comprehended philosophically. Rather, it’s part and parcel of political and economic systems. In true socialism private property, for example, becomes reduced down to property as an ideology. Real private property, in the sense that is owned by someone, is reduced to a semblance of property as an abstraction. The German confidence in this “airy realm of dreams” (496) and the belief that they have discovered the essence of man is both arrogant and wrong.
Marx and Engels draw a clear distinction between socialism and communism. Communists believe that different forms of labor do not justify inequality. The socialist maxim “to each according to his abilities” should instead be “to each according to his needs” (566).
German communists, a number of writers have appeared who have absorbed a few French and English communist ideas and amalgamated them with their own German philosophical premises. These ‘socialists’ or ‘true socialists’, as they call themselves, regard foreign communist literature not as the expression and the product of a real movement but as purely theoretical writings which have been evolved—in the same way as they imagine the German philosophical systems to have been evolved—by a process of ‘pure thought’ (481).
True socialism is critical of communism, suggesting that the only communism that exists is “crude French communism” (486). In communism, the true socialist argues, man does not know his essence; therefore, his life occupies the most brutish state of existence. Marx and Engels quickly list a series of influential English thinkers and social movements, including “Thomas More, the Levellers, Owen, Thompson, Watts, Holyoake, Harney, Morgan, Southwell, Goodwyn Barmby, Greaves, Edmonds, Hobson, Spence” (487), disproving the argument that there is only French communism. Marx and Engels dismiss the claims for universality and cosmopolitanism proposed by German socialists as being narrowly nationalistic and rooted in German conditions.
Grün argues that production and consumption are unified. To consume, production needs to happen. Consuming relies on raw materials. Marx and Engels argue that his attempt to prove that he produces when he consumes doesn’t make sense. Instead, they argue that methods of production are aligned with different historical periods. Eating bread is independent of the processes of making bread, as in some periods it was made by hand-mills, and in later periods by steam-mills. Marx and Engels dismiss his theories as simply restating the theories of supply and demand, through which economists argue that there is never overproduction.
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