These notes are, as the result of a collective reading and discussion, a rewritten version from our study group on “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” by Friedrich Engels. The purpose of these study groups is not to dogmatically read all the classics of Marxism-Leninism resulting in a formal restatement of phrases which will today be familiar to many, but to critically study them in their historical context and in accordance with our current needs, what is referred to as “self-understanding” (Selbstverständung) in the pamphlet. The need for a theoretical reassessment of Marxism in general, and Marxism-Leninism in particular, is necessary for us to support the international development towards a theory and organizational form for the communist vanguard. We therefore use the terminology and historical examples of Marxism-Leninism as a foundation which, because of our critical studies may or may not be discarded according to its merits. To communists, nothing can remain sacred, no question can remain unanswered, nothing can remain unquestioned. Revolutionary theory is not a ready-made formula, but a tool which only through its own conscious development can become a weapon in the hands of the proletariat.
- The ideas contained in the present edition of the pamphlet were originally written down by Marx and Engels in a manuscript later titled as The German Ideology, which remained unpublished until 1932. This is because the manuscript was not intended to educate others, but for the self-education or self-understanding (Selbstverständung) of the authors. The purpose of Ludwig Feuerbach was then to reform the content of the original manuscript into a pamphlet intended for the education of others. The pamphlet is therefore an example of the dialectic between learning and teaching, the foundation of communist pedagogy, which we intend to develop with these study notes.
- The splits in German philosophy, and specifically that between the Old and the Young Hegelians, exemplifies the dialectical method itself as it was developed by Hegel, resulting not from the external but from its internal contradictions, specifically in its method.
But first we must begin with a summary of the historical contributions of Hegelianism to philosophy, of which one of the most important is the recognition of the world not as a metaphysical thing but as a continuous process of change. Because of this, not only must everything come to an end, but this end must already be present in its beginning. Contradictions therefore develop and resolve themselves internally, not externally. They are not resolved one-sidedly through the absolute destruction of one of its aspects, nor by the absolute synthesis of both. Both aspects of the contradiction have disappeared, yet parts of both remain present at the same time – they have been changed into something qualitatively different.In German, this is understood as “Aufheben”, while in English it can be translated as “transcendence”. In the human mind, everything that is “reasonable” must become “unreasonable”. There is therefore in everything both continuity and rupture, nothing disappears and yet nothing stays the same. This is what Engels refers to as the revolutionary side of Hegelianism.
It was Hegel who contradicted his own method, by placing a non-existent limit on this continuous process of change and by reducing movement only to its quantitative aspect. The Prussian state was proclaimed to be the embodiment of an “Absolute Idea” which would be the “End of History”.1 This is what Engels refers to as the reactionary side of Hegelians, that which the Young Hegelians attempted to reject, and which also implied a rejection of their own teacher.
But the split did not occur as the result of philosophical discussion alone but became necessary through the existence of the Prussian state and its supporters, Hegel and the Old Hegelians. If these discussions had remained separate from the material conditions existing in 19th century Germany, then it would have been unlikely to result in as much urgency. Engels notes that while the reactionary side of Hegelianism remained relative due to the historical limitations which it implied, its revolutionary side was absolute, since it resulted from its own method. - Dialectical materialism should not be understood as the synthesis of dialectical and materialist philosophy, but as a philosophy which transcends the historical limits contained in both. It is conventionally defined as the application of the dialectical method to the material world but should more correctly be understood as a process in which matter becomes conscious of itself, including the demystification of the relationships between humans as well as that between humanity and nature. The dialectical method in itself can only be used correctly for our purposes if we are conscious of it, not as an ideal which should be applied dogmatically. To change our tool for a specific purpose, we must first understand it. Humanity, however, being only a part of matter, remains limited in its understanding, and therefore still tends towards metaphysics and idealism with which the gaps in its knowledge are filled. The concept of “matter” itself is an example of an ideal concept with which we describe the essence of existence, though it cannot be observed as any physical property.
- Bourgeois philosophers and scientists tend to use dialectics and materialism in knowledge production because capitalism and bourgeois ideology requires the most up-to-date scientific research for its continued existence. The contradiction in the capitalist mode of production therefore applies to knowledge production, with bourgeois academia producing the weapons which can be used against them. An example of this are the “academic Marxists” who, while using “Marxism” for their research, are at the same time reactionary. The bourgeois academic usually has the choice between remaining within this contradiction or rupturing it. The first requires a willful ignorance of dialectical materialism, which must result from the consistent use of both dialectics and materialism. These limits of capitalism and bourgeois ideology must, therefore, result in a negation of science itself. Otherwise, the bourgeois academic can consciously use dialectical materialism and – if consistent – become a revolutionary, as a result of which they would most likely lose their employment and become proletarianized.
- Existence seems to humans to be a collection of coincidences and chance without any underlying causality. This is because humanity can never become conscious of all the laws governing existence, though having the potential to continually increase this knowledge.
- Dialectical materialism reproduces spontaneously within the consciousness of the proletariat through their daily experience within the capitalist mode of production. But this intuitive understanding is too limited to become conscious of dialectical materialism itself and is therefore unable to use it. And while communists must learn from these experiences, this consciousness must necessarily be brought to the masses of the proletariat by a communist vanguard which can translate dialectical materialism into a language which can intuitively be understood.
- Dialectics should not be defined as the laws of movement, but rather as the study of movement. The first definition would contradict dialectical movement itself by implying the existence of unchanging laws. Because everything is always changing, we should study processes, not things. Yet our understanding of a process is at the same time limited by the study of the things which it produces. For pedagogical purposes, this can be translated into the dialectic between form and content, in which everything is both a form representing a content, while this form contains a certain content which is represented by another form.
- Because all perception is mediated not only through the human senses and mind, we must reject both positivism and empiricism in their claim that the world is an unchanging collection of facts which can be directly observed by humanity. At the same time, sensation implies that there objectively exists something outside of us which it is possible to sense, and we must therefore also reject both solipsism – which claims that the only thing which exists is you – and subjective idealism, which claims that ideas exist separately from and externally impose movement on matter.
- The division of the history of philosophy into “materialists” and “idealists” by Engels is an oversimplification which implicitly reduces it to a dualism between ways of thinking which has remained mostly unchanged since the beginning of class society. Aside from this, almost no school of philosophy is purely materialist or idealist, and to attempt to divide bourgeois philosophy into these two categories is to underestimate their influence even on communists today.
- Engels sometimes overemphasizes the importance of the natural sciences over that of the social sciences, though the results from scientific experiments have often been in part predicted by theories originating from the latter. And while the natural sciences could be more important because of their more direct applicability to the productive process, this can also be the case for social sciences and their application to management.
- Engels often implies that there exists a difference between matter and ideas though they are the same, with ideas resulting from still relatively unknown chemical reactions in the brain. By emphasizing their division over their unity, a reading of this text may result in some readers reproducing this artificial and dualistic division between “thinking” and “being”.