1. PSIR401
German Ideology

2. Terms: Absolute Spirit, Fictitious Capital, Ideology, Critique, Substance, Self-consciousness, System, Religion, Dogmatism, Consciousness.

3. Idealism versus materialism: Ontological claims:
Criticism of Hegel and idealists
Ontological claims:
species-being versus real humans
Humans trying to find their true nature versus humans trying to change their social conditions
Basic concepts:
Mode of production: those elements that go into producing material life
Productive forces: natural resources, tools and technology
Bourgeoisie and proletariat
Means of production: The tools (instruments) and the raw material (subject) you use to create something

4. Mode of production:
productive forces: human labour power and means of production (e.g. tools, equipment, buildings, technologies, knowledge, materials, and improved land).
social relations of production: property, power relations governing society's productive assets (often codified in law), relations between people and the objects of their work, and the relations between social classes.

5. Historical materialism:
From ideas (i.e. those ideas which end in Reason and the State) to material basis to historical development (development of various modes of production)
Substance: objective reality viewed as the unity of all forms of its self-development — including both nature and society and consciousness.
self-consciousness: Self-consciousness is the awareness of being separate from the objective world and of being related to and a part of that world. Viewing humankind as a product of Nature, humanity is in this sense the self-consciousness of Nature.

6. Materialist method Empirical method
“The nature of individuals [...] depends on the material conditions determining their production”
“life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life”

7. History: fundamental conditions
1) First historical act:
Production of means
2) Satisfaction of needs lead to new needs
3) man make other men (family)

8. Private property and communism
Abolishing property
“”We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs”.

9. Civil society and the conception of the epoch
State, civil society, family (market relations)
“not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history”
Substance: the sum of productive forces, capital funds, social forms of intercourse
Overthrow the State (to assert individuality)

10. Feuerbach:
Liberation (emancipation) via ideas versus material conditions
(read p.14 paragraph 4)

11. Ruling class ruling ideas
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same its ruling intellectual force”
“The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class…”
Giving the ruling ideas the form of universality, representing them as the universally valid ones
Read p. 18, parag. 4 and 5

12. Questions for discussion: 1
Questions for discussion: 1. What explanation does Marx give for the character of German ideology, “the connection of German philosophy with German reality”? 2. Can you think of present-day examples of people who criticise their own “teacher”, but do so within the conceptual and practical framework they learnt from their teacher? 3. Can you give a plausible and convincing defence of the view of the “Old Hegelians”? 4. What is the argument between the “Old Hegelians” and the “Young Hegelians” and why is Marx so contemptuous of the Young Hegelians?

13. Terms: Being, Empiricism, Abstract, Individual, Nature, Labour, Mode of Production, Relations of Production, Division of Labour, Forces of Production, Tribal Society, Slave Society, Private Property, Proletariat, Feudal Society, Politics, Idealism, Positive, Science.

14. Questions for discussion: 1
Questions for discussion: 1. Can Marx legitimately just cite “the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live” as his premises? How else could one begin a science?
2. “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence” Is this just a nice piece of rhetoric justifying labour as the criteria for distinguishing humans from animals, or is it something more than that?
3. Give an example from the present-day of “Each new productive force ... causes a further development of the division of labour.”
4. “The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many different forms of ownership”. Can you give examples from recent times of different forms of ownership arising on the basis of changes in the division of labour?
5. Can you give examples of what Marx calls “the language of real life”?
6. Can you examples to show that “in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down”?
7. What roles does Marx assign to philosophy in the final paragraph of this section?