1
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The
production of life, both of one's own in labour
and of fresh
life in procreation, now appears as a double relationship: on the one
hand
as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social we
understand
the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under what
conditions,
in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain
mode
of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain
mode
of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is
itself a "productive force". Further, that the multitude of productive
forces accessible to men determines the nature of society, hence, that
the "history of humanity" must always be studied and treated in
relation to the history of industry and exchange. But it is also clear
how in Germany it is impossible to write this sort of history, because
the Germans lack not only the necessary power of comprehension and the
material but also the "evidence of their senses", for across the Rhine
you cannot have any experience of these things since history has
stopped happening. Thus it is quite obvious from the start that there
exists a materialistic connection of men with one another, which is
determined by their needs and their mode of production, and which is as
old as men themselves. This connection is ever taking on new forms, and
thus presents
a "history" independently of the existence of any political or
religious nonsense
which in addition may hold men together. |
| 2 |
Only now, after
having considered four moments, four
aspects of
the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also
possesses
"consciousness", but, even so, not inherent, not "pure" consciousness.
From
the start the "spirit" is afflicted with the curse of being "burdened"
with
matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers
of
air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as
consciousness, language
is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that
reason
alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like
consciousness,
only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other
men.
Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does
not
enter into "relations" with anything, it does not enter into any
relation
at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a
relation.
Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product,
and
remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of
course,
merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and
consciousness
of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the
individual
who is growing self-conscious. At the same time it is consciousness of
nature,
which first appears to men as a completely alien, all-powerful and
unassailable
force, with which men's relations are purely animal and by which they
are
overawed like beasts; it is thus a purely animal consciousness of
nature
(natural religion) just because nature is as yet hardly modified
historically.
(We see here immediately: this natural religion or this particular
relation
of men to nature is determined by the form of society and vice versa.
Here,
as everywhere, the identity of nature and man appears in such a way
that
the restricted relation of men to nature determines their restricted
relation
to one another, and their restricted relation to one another determines
men's
restricted relation to nature.) On the other hand, man's consciousness
of
the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the
beginning
of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This
beginning
is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere
herd-consciousness,
and at this point man is only distinguished from sheep by the fact that
with
him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a
conscious
one. This sheep-like or tribal consciousness receives its further
development
and extension through increased productivity, the increase of needs,
and,
what is fundamental to both of these, the increase of population. With
these
there develops the division of labour, which was originally nothing but
the
division of labour in the sexual act, then that division of labour
which
develops spontaneously or "naturally" by virtue of natural
predisposition
(e.g. physical strength), needs, accidents, etc. etc. Division of
labour
only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and
mental
labour appears. (The first form of ideologists, priests, is
concurrent.)
From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that
it
is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it
really
represents something without representing something real; from now on
consciousness
is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to
the
formation of "pure" theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. But even
if this theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. comes into
contradiction
with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing
social
relations have come into contradiction with existing forces of
production;
this, moreover, can also occur in a particular national sphere of
relations
through the appearance of the contradiction, not within the national
orbit,
but between this national consciousness and the practice of other
nations,
i.e. between the national and the general consciousness of a nation (as
we
see it now in Germany). |
| 3 |
Moreover, it is quite immaterial what
consciousness
starts to do
on its own: out of all such muck we get only the one inference that
these
three moments, the forces of production, the state of society, and
consciousness,
can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the
division
of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact that intellectual and
material
activity — enjoyment and labour, production and consumption — devolve
on
different individuals, and that the only possibility of their not
coming
into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of
labour.
It is self-evident, moreover, that "spectres", "bonds", "the higher
being",
"concept", "scruple", are merely the idealistic, spiritual expression,
the
conception apparently of the isolated individual, the image of very
empirical
fetters and limitations, within which the mode of production of life
and
the form of intercourse coupled with it move. |
| 4 |
Private Property and Communism
With the division of labour, in which all these
contradictions
are implicit, and which in its turn is based on the natural division of
labour
in the family and the separation of society into individual families
opposed
to one another, is given simultaneously the distribution, and indeed
the
unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and
its
products, hence property: the nucleus, the first form, of which lies in
the
family, where wife and children are the slaves of the husband. This
latent
slavery in the family, though still very crude, is the first property,
but
even at this early stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of
modern
economists who call it the power of disposing of the labour-power of
others.
Division of labour and private property are, moreover, identical
expressions:
in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is
affirmed
in the other with reference to the product of the activity. |
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Further, the division of labour implies
the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or
the individual family and
the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one
another.
And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the
imagination, as the "general interest", but first of all in reality, as
the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is
divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first
example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as
long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common
interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but
naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to
him,
which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as
the
distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular,
exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which
he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a
critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his
means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one
exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any
branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus
makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to
hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming
hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social
activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an
objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our
expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief
factors in historical development up till now. [2] |
| 6 |
Footnotes
2. [This paragraph appears as a
marginal note in the manuscript — Ed.] And out of this very
contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the
community the latter takes an independent form as the State,
divorced from the real interests of individual and community, and at
the same time as an illusory communal life, always based, however, on
the real ties existing in every family and tribal conglomeration — such
as flesh and blood, language, division of labour on a larger scale, and
other interests - and especially, as we shall enlarge upon later, on
the classes, already determined by the division of labour, which in
every such mass of men separate out, and of which one dominates all the
others. It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the
struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for
the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the
real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one
another (of this the German theoreticians have not the faintest
inkling, although they have received a sufficient introduction to the
subject in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher and Die
heilige Familie). Further, it follows that every class which is
struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with
the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form
of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer
for
itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as
the
general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do. Just
because
individuals seek only their particular interest, which for them does
not
coincide with their communal interest (in fact the general is the
illusory form of communal life), the latter will be imposed on them as
an interest "alien" to them, and "independent" of them as in its turn a
particular, peculiar "general" interest; or they themselves must remain
within this discord, as
in democracy. On the other hind, too, the practical struggle of these
particular
interests, which constantly really run counter to the communal and
illusory
communal interests, makes practical intervention and control necessary
through
the illusory "general" interest in the form of the State. |
| 7 |
Ruling Class and 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
time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of
material
production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of
mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those
who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
ideas
are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships,
the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the
relationships
which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its
dominance.
The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things
consciousness,
and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and
determine
the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do
this
in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as
producers
of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of
their
age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance,
in
an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie
are
contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the
doctrine
of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is
expressed
as an "eternal law". |
8
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The division of labour, which we
already saw above as
one of the
chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the
ruling
class as the division of mental and material labour, so that inside
this
class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active,
conceptive
ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about
itself
their chief source of livelihood), while the others' attitude to these
ideas
and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in
reality
the active members of this class and have less time to make up
illusions
and ideas about themselves. Within this class this cleavage can even
develop
into a certain opposition and hostility between the two parts, which,
however,
in the case of a practical collision, in which the class itself is
endangered,
automatically comes to nothing, in which case there also vanishes the
semblance
that the ruling ideas were not the ideas of the ruling class and had a
power
distinct from the power of this class. The existence of revolutionary
ideas
in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary
class;
about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said
above. |
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If now in considering the course of
history we detach
the ideas
of the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them
an
independent existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or
those
ideas were dominant at a given time, without bothering ourselves about
the
conditions of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus
ignore
the individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas,
we
can say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was
dominant,
the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant, during the dominance
of
the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc. The ruling class
itself
on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which
is
common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century,
will
necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract
ideas
hold sway, i.e. ideas which increasingly take on the form of
universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one
ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its
aim, to represent its interest
as the common interest of all the members of society, that is,
expressed in
ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and
represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class
making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is
opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the
whole of society; it appears as
the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class. [2] It can do this because, to
start with, its interest really is more connected with the common
interest of all other non-ruling classes, because under the pressure of
hitherto existing conditions its interest has not yet been able to
develop as the particular interest of a particular class. Its victory,
therefore, benefits also many individuals of the other classes which
are not winning a dominant position, but only insofar as it now puts
these individuals in a position to raise themselves
into the ruling class. When the French bourgeoisie overthrew the power
of
the aristocracy, it thereby made it possible for many proletarians to
raise
themselves above the proletariat, but only insofar as they become
bourgeois.
Every new class, therefore, achieves its hegemony only on a broader
basis
than that of the class ruling previously, whereas the opposition of the
non-ruling
class against the new ruling class later develops all the more sharply
and
profoundly. Both these things determine the fact that the struggle to
be
waged against this new ruling class, in its turn, aims at a more
decided
and radical negation of the previous conditions of society than could
all
previous classes which sought to rule. |
10
|
Footnote
2. [Marginal note by Marx:]
Universality corresponds to (1) the class versus the estate, (2) the
competition, world-wide intercourse, etc., (3) the great numerical
strength of the ruling class, (4)
the illusion of the common interests (in the beginning this illusion is
true),
(5) the delusion of the ideologists and the division of lab |
11
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This whole semblance,
that the rule of a certain class
is only
the rule of certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon
as
class rule in general ceases to be the form in which society is
organised,
that is to say, as soon as it is no longer necessary to represent a
particular
interest as general or the "general interest" as ruling. |
12
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Once the ruling ideas have been
separated from the
ruling individuals
and, above all, from the relationships which result from a given stage
of
the mode of production, and in this way the conclusion has been reached
that
history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract
from
these various ideas "the idea", the notion, etc. as the dominant force
in
history, and thus to understand all these separate ideas and concepts
as
"forms of self-determination" on the part of the concept developing in
history.
It follows then naturally, too, that all the relationships of men can
be
derived from the concept of man, man as conceived, the essence of man,
Man.
This has been done by the speculative philosophers. Hegel himself
confesses
at the end of the Geschichtsphilosophie that he "has
considered the
progress of the concept only" and has represented in history the "true
theodicy".
(p.446.) Now one can go back again to the producers of the "concept",
to
the theorists, ideologists and philosophers, and one comes then to the
conclusion
that the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at all times been
dominant
in history: a conclusion, as we see, already expressed by Hegel. The
whole
trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history (hierarchy
Stirner
calls it) is thus confirmed to the following three efforts. |
13
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No. 1. One must separate the ideas of
those ruling for
empirical
reasons, under empirical conditions and as empirical individuals, from
these
actual rulers, and thus recognise the rule of ideas or illusions in
history. < |
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No. 2. One must bring an order into this
rule of
ideas, prove a
mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas, which is managed
by
understanding them as "acts of self-determination on the part of the
concept"
(this is possible because by virtue of their empirical basis these
ideas
are really connected with one another and because, conceived as mere
ideas,
they become self-distinctions, distinctions made by thought). |
15
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No. 3. To remove the mystical appearance
of this
"self-determining
concept" it is changed into a person — "Self-Consciousness" — or, to
appear
thoroughly materialistic, into a series of persons, who represent the
"concept"
in history, into the "thinkers", the "philosophers", the ideologists,
who
again are understood as the manufacturers of history, as the "council
of
guardians", as the rulers. Thus the whole body of materialistic
elements has
been removed from history and now full rein can be given to the
speculative steed. |
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Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper
is very well
able to distinguish
between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our
historians
have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at
its
word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is
true. |