Marx and Marxisms

Spring 2026

From idealism to communism

Discussion / Presentation

- The context of Hegelianism – and the Young and Old Hegelians

- Marx’s critique of the idealism of Young Hegelians and the articulation of a “real” theory of change and
liberation

# The German Ideology

“This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into a material power above us,
growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations...is one of the chief factors of historical development up till
now.”

“The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different
individuals as it is caused by the division of labor, appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not
voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of
the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus are no longer able to control, which on the contrary
passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the will and the action of man, nay even being
the prime governor of these.” (p. 53-54)

 Estrangement (“Entfremdung”)
o First as the general condition of human productive and social relations so far in history given the
“natural” development out of division of labor
o And as particular condition under capitalism – “In order to become an ‘unendurable’ power, i.e. a
power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of
humanity ‘propertyless’ and moreover in contradiction to an existing world of wealth and
culture...” (p. 54)
o Required as “universal” development of productive forces – puts “world-historical, empirically
universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this, 1) communism could only exist as a
local phenomenon...”
o “Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples ‘all at once’
and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces
and the world intercourse bound up with them.” (57)

 Theorization of the historical conditions of communism – pre and post-revolution

(58-60)
o Previous revolutions as distribution of activity of labor / exploitation – communist revolution as
the final abolition [a unique class which expresses the dissolution of class]
o A “communist” consciousness (p. 60)

[ p. 61 “all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into “self-
consciousness” or transformation into apparitions, spectres, whimsies, etc., but only by the practical overthrow of
the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving
force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other kinds of theory.”]

[p. 62 – the “material elements” of a complete revolution – the “formation of a revolutionary mass, which revolts not
only against separate conditions of the existing society, but against the existing ‘production of life’ itself, the ‘total
activity’ on which it was based...”]

“Illusory” and “real” community (p. 86-87)

¶ Intro – why Marx and Marxism? The contexts of resurgent fascism as the violent reactionary arm of
neoliberalism / the breakdown of conditions of everyday life / the present future of the total collapse of the
ecological conditions of life – haunted by the specter of persistent capitalism
- Le Guin quote – “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see
alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to
other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember
freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality...We live in capitalism, its power seems
inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.” [to go back when history was still young and
clarity of contemporary conditions, conceptions of alternative future / retrieve resources of hope – to read
and learn how to be “realists of a larger reality”] / [engagement with a long tradition of struggle and hope]
¶ Marx – far from monolithic, many faces – Marx the historian, political economist, as philosopher, as
“theologian”, Marx the journalist who wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln.
o Part of the exigence of the structure of this reading group is thus precisely to break apart claims to
a monolithic Marx – to historicize and trace the man’s works through critical appropriations and
re-applications throughout subsequent theoretical developments
o Dwelling with the tensions of his thought

I. Marx & Engels – life and context [historical positioning of the various texts of this early period]

II. Background – German Idealism – Hegelians Young and Old [The German Ideology]

- Hegel and German Idealism of absolute spirit – in the wake of Kant, historicizing the transcendental
idealism (structures of consciousness)
o Humans possess the intellectual cognition of spirit, whilst living in the concrete world of sense [a
sense of self, consciousness as intellect of the spirit]
o Dialectic (as process of all truth and understanding) – 1. Moment of understanding / fixity / stable
definition (stability between intellect and sense) 2. Moment of instability / negatively rational /
previous determination is shown to be one-sided and thus leads to an opposite 3. Moment of
speculative / positive rationality where the unity of previous two contradictions is grasped – the
conceptual movement towards more encompassing and universal, the absolute
- Self-consciousness [its social dynamics] of human spirit – and the process of coming to be towards the
absolute [aufhebung of dynamic between sense / intellect] the fulfillment of absolute reason
o Art -> Religion -> Philosophy
o Freedom universalized in the modern Germanic state, regime of rational law as the fulfilled
condition of freedom
o The individual coming to realize themselves as part of the rational moral community / personal
freedom as realization of universal freedom – this is the way self becomes coherently and
rationally realized in the world as actual
o The absolute as the ultimate system – the realization of the whole of spirit, the ideal encompassing
all of the real [unity of thought and being]

- Bruno Bauer – denial of the historicity of Jesus and articulation of self-consciousness as humanity critically
overcoming its alienation
- Ludwig Feuerbach – most influential on young Marx / religion and conception of God as externalized
projection of human qualities / alienation of humanity’s “species-essence” (Gattungwesen)
- Max Stirner – egoism, individualistic anarchism
 # Key Hegelian influences - Hegel to Feuerbach on alienation and humanism

- “Entfremdung” – used in Hegel’s conception of the Spirit’s self-consciousness arising dialectically between
sense and intellect
- Alienation of religion in Feuerbach’s sense
o Feuerbach, though turning away from idealism towards a claimed materialism, reproduces the
binary structure of sense / intellect

 The uniqueness of ‘historical’ + ‘materialism’ coming together [the critique of Feuerbach – of Man]

III. Background (Political) – Capitalist political economy / “Utopian” socialisms and anarchism [Saint-
Simon, Proudhon, Bakunin etc] [Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844]
A. Political economists of capital
- Lockean labor theory of value / Smith’s theory of laws of market / Ricardo
[Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts developing critique of “political economy” / basic assumptions of
bourgeois economic dogma from Smith to Ricardo onwards]
- Market price / Natural price

B. Historical materialist account of alienation

[Several times Marx refers to Feuerbach’s conception of alienation with “it’s the same as in religion” to explain the
historical materialist conception of alienation ]

- Out of this negative critique of alienation under capitalism there is developed a positive account of the
freedom of human species-being / of non-estranged practical human activity

C. Utopian socialism

[German Ideology – as an account of the history of political economy and trajectory of revolutionary
struggle ]

[1844 Manuscripts – critique of basic premises of capitalist political economics / articulation of the
contradictions of the condition of the proletariat]
o Worker and commodity – objectification of labor

o Nature & Humanity – how does the “human” material existence arise [what distinguishes this
“productive” life process and how does it stand in relation to nature]