so, obviously, is private law, which only sanctions relations between
individuals under given normal economic circumstances. The form in
which this appears may, however, vary considerably. One can, as happened
in England in accordance with the whole national development, retain,
for the most part, the forms of the old feudal law, and give them a
middle-class content, even read a middle-class meaning into the feudal
names, but one may also, as in the western part of the European
continent, use as a foundation the first general law of a society
producing commodities, the Roman, with its unsurpassably keen
elaboration, of all the legal relations of possessions of commodities
(sellers and buyers, creditors and debtors, contracts, obligations,
etc.), by which we can bring it down as common-law to the use and
benefit of a still small bourgeois and half feudal society; or, with the
help of pseudo-enlightened and moralizing jurists, a code (which is bad
from a legal point of view) can be worked out suitable to the conditions
of the particular society (as the Prussian land law). And, still again,
after a great bourgeois revolution, a classical code for bourgeois
society, such as the French "Code Civil," may be worked out. If,
therefore, the bourgeois laws only declare the economic circumstances
of society, these may be good or bad according to conditions.
In the State appears the first ideological force over men. Society
shapes for itself an organ for the protection of its general interests
against attack from the outside or inside. This organ is the force of
the State. Hardly did it come into being before this organ dominated
society, and as a matter of fact, in proportion as it becomes the organ
of a particular class, it brings into existence the supremacy of that
class. The fight of the subject against the dominant class becomes of
necessity political, a fight in the next place against the political
control of this latter class. This consciousness of the connection of
the political fight with its underlying economic causes becomes more and
more obscure and may be altogether lost. Where this is not altogether
the case with the combatants it becomes nearly altogether so with the
historians. Of the ancient sources of history with regard to the contest
within the Roman Republic, Appian alone gives us plain and clear
information respecting its final cause, which was property in land. But
the State, once become an independent power over society, forthwith
displayed a further ideology. Among the practical politicians and the
theorists in jurisprudence, and among the jurists in particular, this
fact is first completely lost sight of. Since in each single instance
the economic facts must take the form of juristic motives so as to be
sanctioned in the form of law, and since, therefore, a backward view
must be taken over the whole existing system of law, it follows
therefrom that the juristic form appears to be the whole and the
economic content nothing at all. Public and private law are considered
as independent realms which have their own independent historic
evolution, which are considered capable of a systematic representation,
and stand in need of it through persistent elimination of all inner
contradictions.
Still higher ideological conceptions, i. e., still further removed from
the economic foundations, take the form of philosophy and religion.
Here, the connection of the ideas with the material conditions of
existence become more and more complicated and obscured by reason of the
increasing number of links between them, but it exists. As the whole
Rennaissance from the middle of the fifteenth century was an actual
product of the city, and therefore of the bourgeois domination, so was
also the philosophy, since that time newly awakened. Its content was
actually only the philosophical expression of the thoughts corresponding
with the development of the small and middle bourgeois into the great
bourgeois. Among the English and French of the preceding century, who
were for the most part as good political economists as they were
philosophers, this is quite evident, and we have proofs on its very
face, as regards the Hegelian school.
Let us now give a slight glance at religion since it appears to stand
furthest away from and to be most foreign to material life. Religion
arose at a very remote period of human development, in the savage state,
from certain erroneous and barbaric conceptions of men with regard to
themselves and the outside world of nature around them. Every
ideological notion develops, however, when once it has arisen; it grows
by additions to the given idea, and develops it further, otherwise
there would be no ideology, that is, no occupation with thoughts as with
independent thought-existence, developing independently and subject only
to its own laws. That the material conditions of life of the men within
whose heads this thought force is at work finally determine the course
of this thought-process necessarily remains still unknown to these men,
otherwise there would be an entire end of the ideology. These original
religious notions, therefore, which are for the most part common to each
kindred group of peoples, develop after the separation of the group in a
special manner peculiar to each tribe, according to its particular
conditions of existence, and this process is for a class of groups of
people, and particularly for the Aryans (Indo-Europeans) shown
individually by comparative mythology. The gods developed by each tribe
were national gods, whose power extended no further than to protect the
national territory; beyond the frontier other gods held undisputed sway.
They could only be conceived of as existing as long as the nation
existed. They fell with its decline. This doctrine of the old
nationalities brought about the Roman Empire, whose economic conditions
we do not need to examine just now. The old national gods fell, as those
of the Romans did also, which were only attached to the narrow limits of
the city of Rome. The desire to make the empire a world-empire, by means
of a world-wide religion, is clearly shown in the attempts to provide
recognition and altars in Rome for all the respectable foreign gods,
next to the indigenous ones. But a new world-religion was not to be made
in this fashion by imperial decrees. The new world-religion,
Christianity, had already arisen in secret by a mixture of combined
oriental religions, Jewish theology and popularized Greek philosophy and
particularly Stoic philosophy. We must first be at the pains to discover
how it originally made its appearance, since its official form as it has
come to us is merely that of a State religion, and this end was achieved
through the Council of Nice. Enough, the fact that after two hundred and
fifty years it was a state religion shows that it was a religion
answering to the circumstances of the times. In the Middle Ages it
showed itself clearly. In proportion as feudalism developed it grew into
a religion corresponding with it, with a hierarchy corresponding to the
feudal. And when the rule of the bourgeois came in, it developed into
Protestant heresy in antagonism to feudal Catholicism, at first in the
South of France, among the Albigenses at the time of the highest growth
of the free cities. The Middle Ages had annexed all the surviving forms
of ideology, philosophy, politics and jurisprudence, to theology as
subordinate parts of theology. It constrained, therefore, all social and
political movement to assume a theological form; finally, to the minds
of the masses stuffed with religion it was necessary to show their
interests in religious guise, in order to raise a tremendous storm. And
as the rule of the bourgeois from the beginning brought into being an
appendage of propertyless plebeians, with day laborers and servants of
all sorts, without any recognized position in their cities, the
forerunners of the later proletarians, so the heresy was very early
subdivided into a moderate one, on the part of the citizens, and a
plebeian revolutionary one, which was an abomination to the bourgeois
heretics.
The failure to exterminate the protestant heresy corresponded with the
invincibility of the rising power of the bourgeois of that time; as this
power grew, the fight with the feudal nobles, at first pre-eminently
local, began to assume national proportions. The first great conflict
occurred in Germany, the so-called Reformation. The power of the
bourgeois was neither sufficiently strong nor sufficiently developed for
an open rebellious stand, by uniting under the standard of revolt the
city plebeians, the smaller nobility, and the peasants of the country
districts. The nobility was struck first, the peasants took up a
position which was the high-water mark of the entire revolution, the
cities left them in the lurch, and so the revolution was left to the
leaders of the country gentry who gathered the whole victory to
themselves. Thenceforth for three hundred years Germany disappeared from
the ranks of independent, energetic progressive countries. But after the
German Luther, arose the French Calvin. With natural French acuteness he
showed the bourgeois character of the revolution in the Church,
republicanised and democratised. While the Lutheran Reformation fell in
Germany and Germany declined, the Calvinistic served as a standard to
the republicans in Geneva, in Holland, in Scotland, freed Holland from
German and Spanish domination, and gave an ideological dress to the
second act of the bourgeois revolution which proceeded in England. Here
Calvinism proved itself to be the natural religious garb of the
interests of the existing rule of the bourgeois and was not realised any
further than that the revolution of 1689 was completed by a compromise
between a portion of the nobility and the middle-class. The English
Established Church was restored, but not in its earlier form with the
king for Pope, but was strongly infused with Calvinism. The
old-established Church had kept up the merry Catholic Sunday and fought
against the tedious Calvinistic one, the new bourgeois Church introduced
the latter and added thereby to the charms of England.
In France the Calvinistic minority was subdued in 1685, either made
Catholic or hunted out of the country. But what was the good? Directly
after that the free thinker Pierre Bayle was at work, and in 1694
Voltaire was born. The tyrannical rule of Louis XIV. only made it easier
for the French bourgeoisie to be able to make its revolution in the
political form finally suitable to the progressive atheistic
bourgeoisie. Instead of Protestants, free-thinkers took their seats in
the National Assembly. Thereby Christianity entered upon the last lap of
the race. It had become incapable of serving a progressive class any
further as the ideological clothing of its efforts, it became more and
more the exclusive possession of the dominant classes, and these used it
merely as a simple means of government to keep the lower classes in
subjection. So then each one of the different classes employed its own
suitable religion, the landholding squires catholic jesuitism or
protestant orthodoxy, the liberal and radical bourgeois rationalism, and
it makes no difference therefore whether people themselves believe in
their respective religions or not.
Thus we see religion once arisen contains material of tradition, hence
in all ideological matters religion is a great conservative force. But
the changes which take place in this material spring from
class-conditions, that is from the economic circumstances of the men who
take these changes in hand. And that is enough on this part of the
subject.
It is only possible at this time to give a general sketch of the Marxian
philosophy of history, and particularly as regards illustrations of it.
The proof is to be discovered in history itself, and in this regard I
may say plainly that it has been sufficiently furnished in other
writings. This philosophy, however, makes an end of philosophy in the
realm of history, just as the dialectic philosophy of nature renders
every philosophy of nature useless or impossible. Practically there is
no further need to devise interrelations but to discover them in facts
rather. Instead of a philosophy forced from nature and history there
remains then only the realm of pure thought--as far as any is left--the
teaching of the laws of the thinking process itself, logic and the
dialectic.
With the Revolution of 1848 "educated" Germany delivered the challenge
to theory and proceeded to action. Hand-labor dependent upon small
production and manufacture was done away with by the great
industry--Germany again appeared in the world-market. The new
particularistic Germany, at all events did away with the most crying
anomalies, which the rule of the petty states, the remnants of feudalism
and the bureaucratic economy, had placed in the way of their
development, but just in proportion as speculation abandoned the studies
of philosophers to attain its temple in the Bourse, that great theoretic
thought which had been the glory of Germany in the period of its deepest
political humiliation, the zeal for pure scientific progress,
irrespective of practical, profitable results, and of the disapproval of
the police, became lost in educated Germany. It is true that the German
official natural science maintained its position, particularly in the
field of individual discovery, at the head of its time, but now the
American journal "Science" justly remarks that the decisive advances in
the matter of the broadest inclusive statement of the relations between
single facts, and the harmonising of them with law, are making the
greater headway in England, instead of, as earlier, in Germany. And with
regard to the sciences of history, philosophy included, with the
classical philosophy, the old theoretical spirit, with its carelessness
of personal results, first completely disappeared. Thoughtless
eclecticism, eager backward glances at a career, and income down to the
meanest sycophancy occupy their places. The official representatives of
this sort of science have become the open ideologists of the bourgeoisie
and the existing state, but at a time when they both stand in open
antagonism to the working classes.
Only among the working classes does the German devotion to abstract
thought steadily continue to exist. Here it cannot be got rid of. Here
we find no backward glances at a career, at profit making, at kindly
protection from the upper classes, but on the contrary the more
independent and unrestricted the path of science, just so much the more
does it find itself in accord with the interests and endeavors of the
working class. The new tendency, which in the history of the development
of labor made known the key to the understanding of the universal
history of society addressed itself in the first place to the working
class and found in them the ready acceptance which it neither sought nor
expected from official science. The German working-class movement is the
heir of the German classical philosophy.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] It is incumbent upon me to make a personal explanation at this
place. People have lately referred to my share in this theory, and so I
can hardly refrain from saying a few words here in settlement of that
particular matter. I cannot deny that I had before and during my forty
years' collaboration with Marx a certain independent share not only in
laying out the foundations, but more particularly in working out the
theory. But the greatest part of the leading essential thinking,
particularly in the realm of economics, and especially its final sharp
statement, belongs to Marx alone. What I contributed Marx could quite
readily have carried out without me with the exception of a pair of
special applications. What Marx supplied, I could not have readily
brought. Marx stood higher, saw further, took a wider, clearer, quicker
survey than all of us. Marx was a genius, we others, at the best,
talented. Without him the theory would not be what it is today, by a
long way. It therefore rightly bears his name.
APPENDIX.
MARX ON FEUERBACH.
(_Jotted down in Brussels in the spring of 1845._)
I.
The chief lack of all materialistic philosophy up to the present,
including that of Feuerbach, is that the thing, the reality, sensation
is only conceived of under the form of the object which is presented to
the eye, but not as human sense-activity, "praxis," not subjectively. It
therefore came about that the active side in opposition to materialism
was developed from idealism, but only abstractly; this was natural,
since idealism does not recognize real tangible facts as such. Feuerbach
is willing, it is true, to distinguish objects of sensation from objects
existing in thought, but he conceives of human activity itself not as
objective activity. He, therefore, in the "Wesen des Christenthums,"
regards only theoretical activity as generally human, while the "praxis"
is conceived and fixed only in its disgusting form.
II.
The question if objective truth is possible to human thought is not a
theoretical but a practical question. In practice man must prove the
truth, that is the reality and force in his actual thoughts. The dispute
as to the reality or non-reality of thought which separates itself, "the
praxis," is a purely scholastic question.
III.
The materialistic doctrine that men are the products of conditions and
education, different men therefore the products of other conditions and
changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men and
that the educator has himself to be educated. It necessarily happens
therefore that society is divided into two parts, of which one is
elevated above society (Robert Owen for example).
The occurrence simultaneously of a change in conditions and human
activity can only be comprehended and rationally understood as a
revolutionary fact.
IV.
Feuerbach proceeds from a religious self-alienation, the duplication of
the world into a religious, imaginary, and a real world. His work
consists in the discovery of the material foundations of the religious
world. He overlooked the fact that after carrying this to completion the
important matter still remains unaccomplished. The fact that the
material foundation annuls itself and establishes for itself a realm in
the clouds can only be explained from the heterogeneity and
self-contradiction of the material foundation. This itself must first
become understood in its contradictions and so become thoroughly
revolutionized by the elimination of the contradiction. After the
earthly family has been discovered as the secret of the Holy Family, one
must have theoretically criticised and theoretically revolutionised it
beforehand.
V.
Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thought, invokes impressions
produced by the senses, but does not comprehend sensation as practical
sensory activities.
VI.
Feuerbach dissolves religion in humanity. But humanity is not an
abstraction dwelling in each individual. In its reality it is the
ensemble of the conditions of society.
Feuerbach, who does not enquire into this fact, is therefore compelled:
1. To abstract religious sentiment from the course of history, to place
it by itself, and to pre-suppose an abstract, isolated, human
individual.
2. Humanity is therefore only comprehended by him as a species, as a
hidden sort of merely natural identity of qualities in which many
individuals are embraced.
VII.
Therefore Feuerbach does not see that religious feeling is itself a
product of society, and that the abstract individual which he analyses
belongs in reality to a certain form of society.
VIII.
The life of society is essentially practical. All the mysteries which
seduce speculative thought into mysticism find their solution in human
practice and in concepts of this practice.
IX.
The highest point to which materialism attains, that is the materialism
which comprehends sensation, not as a practical fact, is the point of
view of the single individual in bourgeois society.
X.
The standpoint of the old materialism is "bourgeois" society; the
standpoint of the new, human society, or associated humanity.
XI.
Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, but the point
is to change it.