The German Ideology Essay Questions

What is the materialist conception of history and how does it differ from the thought of Marx and Engels’s contemporaries?

The historical-materialist approach that Marx and Engels lay out in The German Ideology is first and foremost a theory of the proper methodology for critically analyzing history and society. Its basic premise is that human consciousness, ideas, and ideology are shaped by the concrete material conditions in which humans live their lives. Thus, instead of determining human history, ideas such as equality, democracy, freedom of contract, etc., are part of that history, and develop out of concrete changes in modes of production and forms of society. Previous philosophers, according to Marx and Engels, have scarcely ever even taken note of the basic fact that in order to think people must first and foremost produce and reproduce the conditions necessary for them to live. Instead, they begin from lofty abstractions with no connection to the lives of real people, and then attempt to twist reality to fit these preconceived ideas.

Why do Marx and Engels believe it’s necessary to abolish the division of labor entirely?

According to Marx and Engels, what has prevented all previous revolutions from establishing a truly free society is that they merely altered the division of labor without abolishing it. For them, the division of labor is necessarily a source of oppression because it, essentially, conditions people’s membership in society on their performing a particular role in society. Once an activity becomes, so to speak, a “job,” the person performing that activity is no longer in control, but instead controlled by, that activity: the labor they perform determines their life.

What are the key features of capitalism that Marx and Engels believe make it different from all prior modes of production?

One of the more nuanced aspects of Marx and Engels's argument is that even as they seek to position modern capitalism within an overall historical trajectory, and to trace the development of its key features and institutions, they also believe that capitalism is historically unique. The onset of fully-developed capitalism, in their theory, does in some sense mark a fundamental break with prior human history. The two most important, historically specific features of capitalism they mention have to do with the transition from direct to abstract domination (alienation), and its internally contradictory nature. By abstract domination, or alienation, they mean that a unique feature of capitalism is that, as a social system, it possesses a historical dynamic with attendant social pressures and obligations that confront human beings as a force completely outside of their control, despite being the product of their own activity. This is connected to what makes the system internally contradictory, meaning that it carries within itself the possibility of, and pressure towards, change.