Summary
Since Marx and Engels are elaborating not just a new method of interpreting history, but also a new definition of the concepts of history and historical development, these concepts require further specification. They begin by pointing out that in order to be able to “make history,” people must be in a position to live, a necessity that first of all requires securing their most basic needs. In the early periods of human history, this “first historical act” also defines virtually the entirety of human life. And though as time goes on, the range of human activity expands beyond the simple procurement of the bare necessities for survival, the need and capacity to do so continues to be of foundational importance. Up to this point, according to Marx and Engels, even those historians that have noted the pertinence of this basic reality to what they call history, they’ve never attempted to use analysis of material conditions to ground their analysis.
Crucially, the act of satisfying one’s basic needs, and the means of production that allow for that satisfaction acquired in the process of doing so, also produces new needs. If the need to have the ability to procure one’s means of subsistence is the foundation of history, this second basic fact of human life, the production of new needs is, for Marx and Engels, the first properly “historical act” (156). People don’t merely reproduce themselves and their society, but both also simultaneously change and develop by means of this same process.
The third fundamental circumstance of all historical development is that people don’t just produce their own life, but also “begin to make other men,” the most rudimentary form of which is simple procreation (156). At its root a simple biological process, this necessarily entails the originary form of human social relations, the family. These three core aspects of social activity are not meant to be taken as a chronological or logical sequence, with one leading to the other, but as three different “moments” in human life-activity that have all existed in their most basic forms since the beginning of history.
Considering these three fundamental elements together makes clear that the “production of life” has a double-sided nature: it is both natural, involving the relationship between human beings and nature, for example in activities such as agriculture, and social, which Marx and Engels define as, on the most basic level, “the co-operation of several individuals” (157). Furthermore, these two elements of production are intrinsically related--any given mode or stage of production necessarily corresponds to a particular mode of cooperation, i.e., a particular stage of social organization. In the same way that the technical development of productive instruments can be specified, so too can the relative development of modes of cooperation. Both of these factors, not simply the available productive instruments, things like the power loom, the plow, etc., are in and of themselves “productive forces” and determine the productive capacity available in any given period or within any given society. The necessary existence of a “mode of cooperation” is the fourth foundational “moment” of human activity, and therefore human history.
Consciousness, or the fact that people also have consciousness, only emerges as a possible object of analysis after one has considered these four aspects basic aspects of human activity, which taken together are the necessary conditions for consciousness existing at all. And on this basis, Marx and Engels argue, it is clear that consciousness itself is a social product, that it arises simultaneously with language and is in some sense inseparable from it, and that both are produced by the necessity of interacting with other people. Human consciousness, therefore, which to begin with has very little that distinguishes it from the pure instinct of animals, develops and increases in complexity along with, and in response to the demands of, the increasing complexity of human productive activity and social relations and cooperation.
The very possibility of the illusion Marx and Engels are criticizing in The German Ideology, that of “pure” consciousness, philosophy, religion, ethics, law, etc., is itself a product of the development of the division of labor. Once “material” and “mental” labor are separated out and assigned to separate groups of people, the experience of those whose function in society is to perform “mental” labor allows for them to imagine that intellectual activity, and therefore the intellect or consciousness itself, has an existence independent from material reality. This division also provides for the possibility of contradictions appearing between various forms of thought or ideology and existing society. In fact, Marx and Engels claim that the division of labor must give rise to contradictions, or conflicts, to appear between different classes or aspects of society, because the various social activities or functions--consumption, enjoyment, labor, and production--are not just divided up and distributed, but also necessarily unequally distributed.
Thus, Marx and Engels claim, the division of labor also entails the existence of private property in some form, because possession of private property is the means by which certain individuals command the labor of others. In all economic systems which have existed thus far, the division of labor has been divided “naturally,” which Marx and Engels mean as opposed to “voluntarily.” Individuals do not freely choose their role in society, and so they come to experience their own activity, their labor and its products, as an “alien power” over which they have no control.
This also, crucially, has the consequence of creating a fundamental contradiction between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community or society as a whole. Out of the development of this contradiction as the division of labor develops comes the state, which is the institution that embodies the so-called “general interest” of the community serves as mediator between this interest and that of particular individuals, classes, etc. The state, however, only appears to act in the interest of all of society, while in fact its primary purpose is to protect the particular interests of whichever class is dominant, and is a means by which this class represents its particular interests as universal. What Marx and Engels call communism, they say, is the abolition of this entire system, such that people’s activity would be organized voluntarily, thus giving them control over their own productive forces and those of society, rather than being controlled by them.
Analysis
This section represents Marx and Engels attempt to elaborate the basic schema, on a theoretical level, that undergirds their theory of history, starting from its most basic elements. Some of their statements in the early portion of this section, for example, that people must be in a position to survive in order to make history at all, may seem obvious on the surface. But the power of their thinking lies not in revealing new “information,” things we don’t already know, but in elucidating the interrelations between the most basic and obvious facts of life with much more complex phenomena.
Besides its emphasis on material conditions and economic activity, what distinguishes Marx and Engel’s theory from other contemporary or previously existing forms of thought is that it describes these fundamental elements of human society as simultaneous rather than sequential. Human beings don’t, on their account, first simply find themselves in need of sustenance, then discover this need requires instruments of production, and only then realize the necessity of cooperating with others. All of these are, in their terminology, in actuality “moments” of one process, occurring alongside one another from the beginning. In making this argument, Marx and Engels clearly have in mind the descriptions of the so-called “state of nature” in the writings of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, as well as Jean-Jacques Rosseau, whose concept of the “general will” they also critique later on in this section.
Marx and Engels thus see the production of life as a process that is simultaneously “natural” and “social.” This means that, while the need for people to make what they need in order to live is universal and exists in every society throughout history, the form that production takes, the kind of labor it involves and how that labor is allocated, is socially, that is, historically, determined. One can see this in the fact that even what counts as “needs” undergoes constant change throughout history, which is what the authors mean when they say that in the act of production people also produce “new needs.” Electricity, or even owning a cell phone or having access to the internet, are considered basic needs in many contemporary societies, which obviously has not been the case for most of human history.
These new needs are just one of the many things that are determined by the development of the relative “productive forces accessible to men” at any given point in time, which Marx and Engels also stress includes the “mode of cooperation” that corresponds to a specific mode of production (157). It’s crucial to grasp that, rather than a simply one-way causality, Marx and Engels see all of these factors as existing in dynamic relation to one another. For example, the “need” for a phone in modern society is a product of the fast-paced, complex nature of the social organization of production--without the possibility of instant communication over long distances, many of the features of our current society and economy would be impossible. Technological developments thus allow for new forms of social coordination, but the need for new, more complex ways of socially organizing production also determines those developments. People didn’t invent the telephone and then subsequently find a use for it; they invented it precisely because it was necessary in order to more efficiently organize social and economic activity.
This is an example of what Marx and Engels refer to as the “means of communication,” which form a part of the “means” or “forces” of production as a whole. By means of this example, one can clearly see how the division of labor is both determined by and, in turn, determines the nature of production. Before cheap, fast transportation between different towns and regions becomes possible, each town must produce at least the majority of its basic necessities, which also applies to nations as a whole, thus there cannot be a specific group of, for example, “garment workers,” for example, who produce all of the clothing for their own society and, eventually, countries around the world. Likewise, until the productive forces of a society are developed enough such that large numbers of people are entirely free from the necessity of physical labor, the division of mental and physical labor, which Marx and Engels claim marks the true emergence of the division of labor as a whole, is simply impossible.
It is this development, they argue, that serves as the condition of possibility for the illusion that consciousness exists independently from reality. Though under-emphasized in this text, this is a crucial moment for Marx and Engels’s argument, and a key feature of Marxist thought as a whole. Because they contend that ideas develop out of our experience of the world, they need to be able to provide a material basis for the theories they’re criticizing as well. That is, they need to show how those theories could appear to be true, based on the material conditions under which they’re produced. The ability to do so makes their argument all the more powerful, as they’re able to show not just why the counterargument is wrong, but also how it could appear plausible to its proponents in the first place.
The final key takeaways from this section are Marx and Engels introduction of the concept of “alienation,” or alienated labor and its relationship to both the division of labor and the abolition of the division of labor, which is a key feature of what they call communism. Under capitalism, they say, as well as in previously existing societies, the division of labor occurs “naturally” as opposed to “voluntarily.” The latter term doesn’t mean, except very early on in history, in accordance with an individual's “natural” abilities, but something along the lines of “spontaneously,” or by means of a that people don’t consciously control. This external imposition is what causes one to encounter their own labor as an “alien power.” Your position in the division of labor, what you could loosely call your “job” determines what you do, and so your activity in effect controls you, not you it. This produces a conflict between the interests of the “individual” and the interests of the “society” that places this demand upon them.
However, modern capitalism, even as it intensifies this form of domination, also in several ways creates the requisite conditions for the form of society Marx and Engels call “communism.” First, under capitalism the productive forces available are developed to such an extent that it is no longer truly necessary for the vast majority of people to spend most of their time working in order to produce the things they need to live. Second, it creates real, material relations between people across the entire world, bringing them into interdependence and creating certain universal conditions. Finally, the crucial increasingly universal condition, and thus universal interest, is that of the global proletariat, or propertyless workers. All differences aside, workers around the world share a common interest in abolishing the system, characterized by the division of labor, that dominates them. And equally crucially, Marx and Engels claim that the emergence of this class, the working class, marks the emergence of a class whose class interests are truly universal. Their interests are in fact identical to those humanity as a whole because the abolition of the system that dominates them is, simultaneously, the abolition of “domination as such” (161).
