The sixth thesis on Feuerbach and the determination of human nature by social relations
The sixth of the Theses on Feuerbach , written in 1845, provided an early discussion by Marx of the concept of human nature. It states:
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliches Wesen = 'human nature']. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:
- 1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract — isolated - human individual.
- 2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as 'species', as an inner 'dumb' generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way. [2]
Thus, Marx appears to say that human nature is no more than what is made by the "social relations". Norman Geras's Marx and Human Nature (1983), however, offers an argument against this position. [3] In outline, Geras shows that, while the social relations are held to "determine" the nature of people, they are not the only such determinant. However, Marx makes statements where he specifically refers to a human nature which is more than what is conditioned by the circumstances of one's life. In Capital , in a footnote critiquing utilitarianism, he says that utilitarians must reckon with "human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch". [4] Marx is arguing against an abstract conception of human nature, offering instead an account rooted in sensuous life. While he is quite explicit that "[a]s individuals express their life, so they are. Hence what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production", [5] he also believes that human nature will condition (against the background of the productive forces and relations of production) the way in which individuals express their life. History involves "a continuous transformation of human nature", [6] though this does not mean that every aspect of human nature is wholly variable; what is transformed need not be wholly transformed.
Marx did criticise the tendency to "transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property". [7] For this reason, he would likely have wanted to criticise certain aspects of some accounts of human nature. Some people believe, for example, that humans are naturally selfish – Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes, for example. [8] [9] [10] (Both Hobbes and Kant thought that it was necessary to constrain our human nature in order to achieve a good society – Kant thought we should use rationality, Hobbes thought we should use the force of the state – Marx, as we shall see, thought that the good society was one which allows our human nature its full expression.) Most Marxists will argue that this view is an ideological illusion and the effect of commodity fetishism: the fact that people act selfishly is held to be a product of scarcity and capitalism, not an immutable human characteristic. For confirmation of this view, we can see how, in The Holy Family Marx argues that capitalists are not motivated by any essential viciousness, but by the drive toward the bare "semblance of a human existence". [11] (Marx says "semblance" because he believes that capitalists are as alienated from their human nature under capitalism as the proletariat, even though their basic needs are better met.)
Needs and drives
In the 1844 Manuscripts the young Marx wrote:
Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities – as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs – essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers. [12]
In the Grundrisse Marx says his nature is a "totality of needs and drives". [13] In The German Ideology he uses the formulation: "their needs, consequently their nature". [14] We can see then, that from Marx's early writing to his later work, he conceives of human nature as composed of "tendencies", "drives", "essential powers", and "instincts" to act in order to satisfy "needs" for external objectives. For Marx then, an explanation of human nature is an explanation of the needs of humans, together with the assertion that they will act to fulfill those needs. (c.f. The German Ideology, chapter 3). [15] Norman Geras gives a schedule of some of the needs which Marx says are characteristic of humans:
...for other human beings, for sexual relations, for food, water, clothing, shelter, rest and, more generally, for circumstances that are conducive to health rather than disease. There is another one ... the need of people for a breadth and diversity of pursuit and hence of personal development, as Marx himself expresses these, 'all-round activity', 'all-round development of individuals', 'free development of individuals', 'the means of cultivating [one's] gifts in all directions', and so on. [16]
Marx says "It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are ... genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal." [17] [18]
Productive activity, the objects of humans and actualisation
Humans as free, purposive producers
In several passages throughout his work, Marx shows how he believes humans to be essentially different from other animals. "Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation." [5] In this passage from The German Ideology, Marx alludes to one difference: that humans produce their physical environments. But do not a few other animals also produce aspects of their environment as well? The previous year, Marx had already acknowledged:
- It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwellings, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty. [19]
In the same work, Marx writes:
- The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being – i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour reverses the relationship so that man, just because he is a conscious being, makes his life activity, his essential being, a mere means for his existence. [20]
Also in the segment on estranged labour:
- Man is a species-being, not only because he practically and theoretically makes the species – both his own and those of other things – his object, but also – and this is simply another way of saying the same thing – because he looks upon himself as the present, living species, because he looks upon himself as a universal and therefore free being. [21]
More than twenty years later, in Capital, he came to muse on a similar subject:
- A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. [22]
From these passages we can observe something of Marx's beliefs about humans. That they characteristically produce their environments, and that they would do so, even were they not under the burden of "physical need" – indeed, they will produce the "whole of [their] nature", and may even create "in accordance with the laws of beauty". Perhaps most importantly, though, their creativity, their production is purposive and planned. Humans, then, make plans for their future activity, and attempt to exercise their production (even lives) according to them. Perhaps most importantly, and most cryptically, Marx says that humans make both their "life activity" and "species" the "object" of their will. They relate to their life activity, and are not simply identical with it. Michel Foucault's definition of biopolitics as the moment when "man begins to take itself as a conscious object of elaboration" may be compared to Marx's definition hereby exposed.
Life and the species as the objects of humans
To say that A is the object of some subject B, means that B (specified as an agent) acts upon A in some respect. Thus if "the proletariat smashes the state" then "the state" is the object of the proletariat (the subject), in respect of smashing. It is similar to saying that A is the objective of B, though A could be a whole sphere of concern and not a closely defined aim. In this context, what does it mean to say that humans make their "species" and their "lives" their "object"? It's worth noting that Marx's use of the word object can imply that these are things which humans produces, or makes, just as they might produce a material object. If this inference is correct, then those things that Marx says about human production above, also apply to the production of human life, by humans. And simultaneously, "As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production." [5]
To make one's life one's object is therefore to treat one's life as something that is under one's control. To raise in imagination plans for one's future and present, and to have a stake in being able to fulfill those plans. To be able to live a life of this character is to achieve "self-activity" (actualisation), which Marx believes will only become possible after communism has replaced capitalism. "Only at this stage does self-activity coincide with material life, which corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals and the casting-off of all natural limitations. The transformation of labour into self-activity corresponds to the transformation of the earlier limited intercourse into the intercourse of individuals as such". [23]
What is involved in making one's species one's object is more complicated. In one sense, it emphasises the essentially social character of humans, and their need to live in a community of the species. In others, it seems to emphasise that we attempt to make our lives expressions of our species-essence; further that we have goals concerning what becomes of the species in general. The idea covers much of the same territory as "making one's life one's object": it concerns self-consciousness, purposive activity, and so forth.
Humans as homo faber?
It is often said that Marx conceived of humans as homo faber , referring to Benjamin Franklin's definition of "man as the tool-making animal" – that is, as "man, the maker", [25] though he never used the term himself. It is generally held that Marx's view was that productive activity is an essential human activity, and can be rewarding when pursued freely. Marx's use of the words work and labour in the section above may be unequivocally negative; but this was not always the case, and is most strongly found in his early writing. However, Marx was always clear that under capitalism, labour was something inhuman, and dehumanising. "labour is external to the worker – i.e., does not belong to his essential being; that he, therefore, does not confirm himself in his work, but denies himself, feels miserable and not happy, does not develop free mental and physical energy, but mortifies his flesh and ruins his mind". [26] While under communism, "In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature". [27]
Marx and race
There are multiple examples of racism in Marx works, with adverse references to people of colour including those of Black African heritage, Indians, Slavs and Jews. For example;:
- "The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I'm glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a 'friend,' even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. ... It is now quite plain to me—as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify—that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses' flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow's importunity is also nigger-like." Karl Marx, "Marx to Friedrich Engels in Manchester", 1862 [28] [29]
- Tremaux "proved that the common Negro type is the degenerate form of a much higher one ... a very significant advance over Darwin." Karl Marx, letter to Friedrich Engels, August 7, 1866
- "Take Amsterdam, for instance, a city harboring many of the worst descendants of the Jews whom Ferdinand and Isabella drove out of Spain and who, after lingering a while in Portugal, were driven out of there too and eventually found a place of retreat in Holland. ... Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted about the locale of the hard cash in a traveler's valise or pocket than these little Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader ... These small Jewish agents draw their supplies from the big Jewish houses ... and practice great ostensible devotion to the religion of their race." Karl Marx, "The Russian Loan", 1856
- "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. ... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man—and turns them into commodities. ... The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. ... The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general." Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question", 1844
- "This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities." Karl Marx, "The Russian Menace to Europe", 1853
- "Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew, as is every Pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets. ... The fact that 1,855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish money-changers out of the temple, and that the money-changers of our age, enlisted on the side of tyranny, happen again to be Jews is perhaps no more than a historic coincidence." Karl Marx, "The Russian Loan", 1856
- "The expulsion of a Leper people from Egypt, at the head of whom was an Egyptian priest named Moses. Lazarus, the leper, is also the basic type of the Jew." Karl Marx, letter to Friedrich Engels, May 10, 1861
- "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were fantasy-mongers, that the Israelites were idolators ... that the tribe of Simeon (exiled under Saul) had moved to Mecca where they built a heathenish temple and worshipped stones." Karl Marx, letter to Engels, June 16, 1864
- "Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we shall call its history is but the history of the successive invaders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society." Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853
- "Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs, do not belong at all to the Indo-German race, but are des intrus [intruders], who must again be hurled back beyond the Dnieper, etc." Karl Marx, letter to Friedrich Engels, June 24, 1865 [28] [30] [31] [32]
Human nature and historical materialism
Marx's theory of history attempts to describe the way in which humans change their environments and (in dialectical relation) their environments change them as well. That is:
- Not only do the objective conditions change in the act of reproduction, e.g. the village becomes a town, the wilderness a cleared field etc., but the producers change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language. [33]
Further Marx sets out his "materialist conception of history" in opposition to "idealist" conceptions of history; that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for instance. "The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature." [5] Thus:
History does nothing, it "possesses no immense wealth", it "wages no battles". It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; "history" is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims. [34]
So we can see that, even before we begin to consider the precise character of human nature, "real, living" humans, "the activity of man pursuing his aims" is the very building block of Marx's theory of history. Humans act upon the world, changing it and themselves; and in doing so they "make history". [5] However, even beyond this, human nature plays two key roles. In the first place, it is part of the explanation for the growth of the productive forces, which Marx conceives of as the driving force of history. Secondly, the particular needs and drives of humans explain the class antagonism which is generated under capitalism.
Human nature and the expansion of the productive forces
It has been held by several writers that it is Marx's conception of human nature which explains the "development thesis" concerning the expansion of the productive forces, which according to Marx, is itself the fundamental driving force of history. If true, this would make his account of human nature perhaps the most fundamental aspect of his work. Norman Geras wrote (italics in original): "historical materialism itself, this whole distinctive approach to society that originates with Marx, rests squarely upon the idea of a human nature." It highlights that specific nexus of universal needs and capacities which explains the human productive process and man's organized transformation of the material environment; which process and transformation it treats in turn as the basis both of the social order and of historical change. G.A. Cohen wrote: "The tendency's autonomy is just its independence of social structure, its rootedness in fundamental material facts of human nature and the human situation." Allen Wood wrote: "Historical progress consists fundamentally in the growth of people's abilities to shape and control the world about them. This is the most basic way in which they develop and express their human essence."
In his article "Reconsidering Historical Materialism", however, Cohen gives an argument to the effect that human nature cannot be the premise on which the plausibility of the expansion of the productive forces is grounded:
- Production in the historical anthropology is not identical with production in the theory of history. According to the anthropology, people flourish in the cultivation and exercise of their manifold powers, and are especially productive - which in this instance means creative - in the condition of freedom conferred by material plenty. But, in the production of interest to the theory of history, people produce not freely but because they have to, since nature does not otherwise supply their wants; and the development in history of the productive power of man (that is, of man as such, of man as a species) occurs at the expense of the creative capacity of the men who are agents and victims of that development.
The implication of this is that hence "one might ... imagine two kinds of creature, one whose essence it was to create and the other not, undergoing similarly toilsome histories because of similarly adverse circumstances. In one case, but not the other, the toil would be a self-alienating exercise of essential powers". Hence, "historical materialism and Marxist philosophical anthropology are independent of, though also consistent with, each other". [41] The problem is this: it seems as though the motivation most people have for the work they do isn't the exercise of their creative capacity; on the contrary, labour is alienated by definition in the capitalist system based on salary, and people only do it because they have to. They go to work not to express their human nature but to find theirs means of subsistence. So in that case, why do the productive forces grow – does human nature have anything to do with it? The answer to this question is a difficult one, and a closer consideration of the arguments in the literature is necessary for a full answer than can be given in this article. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Cohen had previously been committed to the strict view that human nature (and other "asocial premises") were sufficient for the development of the productive forces – it could be that they are only one necessary constituent. It is also worth considering that by 1988, Cohen appears to have considered that the problem was resolved.
Some needs are far more important than others. In The German Ideology Marx writes that "life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things". All those other aspects of human nature which he discusses (such as "self-activity") are therefore subordinate to the priority given to these. Marx makes explicit his view that humans develop new needs to replace old: "the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs". [42]
Gerald Cohen's criticism
One important criticism of Marx's "philosophical anthropology" (i.e. his conception of humans) is offered by Gerald Cohen, the leader of Analytical Marxism, in "Reconsidering Historical Materialism" (in Callinicos, ed., 1989). Cohen claims: "Marxist philosophical anthropology is one sided. Its conception of human nature and human good overlooks the need for self-identity than which nothing is more essentially human." (p. 173, see especially sections 6 and 7). The consequence of this is held to be that "Marx and his followers have underestimated the importance of phenomena, such as religion and nationalism, which satisfy the need for self-identity. (Section 8.)". Cohen describes what he sees as the origins of Marx's alleged neglect: "In his anti-Hegelian, Feuerbachian affirmation of the radical objectivity of matter, Marx focused on the relationship of the subject to an object which is in no way subject, and, as time went on, he came to neglect the subject's relationship to itself, and that aspect of the subject's relationship to others which is a mediated (that is, indirect), form of relationship to itself."
Cohen believes that people are driven, typically, not to create identity, but to preserve that which they have in virtue, for example, of "nationality, or race, or religion, or some slice or amalgam thereof". Cohen does not claim that "Marx denied that there is a need for self-definition, but [instead claims that] he failed to give the truth due emphasis." Nor does Cohen say that the sort of self-understanding that can be found through religion etc. is accurate. Of nationalism, he says "identifications [can] take benign, harmless, and catastrophically malignant forms" and does not believe "that the state is a good medium for the embodiment of nationality".
Karl Marx was a German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his intellectual endeavours. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their human nature, and their selves. Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class.
In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the economic relationships of production and exchange as relationships among things rather than among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services.
Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice. "Praxis" may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realizing, or practising ideas. This has been a recurrent topic in the field of philosophy, discussed in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, Ludwig von Mises, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paulo Freire, Murray Rothbard, and many others. It has meaning in the political, educational, spiritual and medical realms.
Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism.
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and social transformation. Marxism originates with the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, and as a result, there is no single, definitive "Marxist theory". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts.
Influences on Karl Marx are generally thought to have been derived from three main sources, namely German idealist philosophy, French socialism and English and Scottish political economy.
Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend is a 1983 book by the political theorist Norman Geras, in which the author discusses the philosopher Karl Marx's theory of human nature with reference to Marx's Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach. Geras argues that Marx did not deny the existence of a universal human nature, and maintains that the concept of human nature is compatible with historical materialism.
Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in a humanist interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to human thriving" from a critical perspective rooted in Marxist philosophy. Marxist humanists argue that Marx himself was concerned with investigating similar questions.
The correct place of Karl Marx's early writings within his system as a whole has been a matter of great controversy. Some believe there is a break in Marx's development that divides his thought into two periods: the "Young Marx" is said to be a thinker who deals with the problem of alienation, while the "Mature Marx" is said to aspire to a scientific socialism.
Marxist–Leninist atheism, also known as Marxist–Leninist scientific atheism, is the antireligious element of Marxism–Leninism. Based upon a dialectical-materialist understanding of humanity's place in nature, Marxist–Leninist atheism proposes that religion is the opium of the people; thus, Marxism–Leninism advocates atheism, rather than religious belief.
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book The Essence of Christianity, which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Mikhail Bakunin, Richard Wagner, Frederick Douglass, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Classical Marxism is the body of economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their works, as contrasted with orthodox Marxism, Marxism–Leninism, and autonomist Marxism which emerged after their deaths. The core concepts of classical Marxism include alienation, base and superstructure, class consciousness, class struggle, exploitation, historical materialism, ideology, revolution; and the forces, means, modes, and relations of production. Marx's political praxis, including his attempt to organize a professional revolutionary body in the First International, often served as an area of debate for subsequent theorists.
The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, also known as the Paris Manuscripts or as the 1844 Manuscripts, are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by Karl Marx. They were compiled and published posthumously in 1932 by the Soviet Union's Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute. They were first published in their original German in Berlin, and there followed a republication in the Soviet Union in 1933, also in German.
Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided societies that struggle against each other, and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historians follow the tenets of the development of class-divided societies, especially modern capitalist ones.
The German Ideology, also known as A Critique of the German Ideology, is a set of manuscripts written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels around April or early May 1846. Marx and Engels did not find a publisher, but the work was retrieved and first published in 1932 by the Soviet Union's Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute. The book uses satirical polemics to critique modern German philosophy, particularly that of young Hegelians such as Marx's former mentor Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own. It criticizes "ideology" as a form of "historical idealism", as opposed to Marx's historical materialism. The first part of Volume I also examines the division of labor and Marx's theory of human nature, on which he states that humans "distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence".
The socialist mode of production, also known as socialism or communism, is a specific historical phase of economic development and its corresponding set of social relations that emerge from capitalism in the schema of historical materialism within Marxist theory. The Marxist definition of socialism is that of production for use-value, therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning. According to Marx, distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs"; Soviet models often distributed products based on the principle of "to each according to his contribution". The social relations of socialism are characterized by the proletariat effectively controlling the means of production, either through cooperative enterprises or by public ownership or private artisanal tools and self-management. Surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole.
Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew from various sources, and the official philosophy in the Soviet Union, which enforced a rigid reading of what Marx called dialectical materialism, in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied as aesthetics, ethics, ontology, epistemology, social philosophy, political philosophy, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought. The theory is also about the struggles of the proletariat and their reprimand of the bourgeoisie.
Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science. As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of functional contradictions within and among social relations, which derive from, but are not limited to, the contradictions that occur in social class, labour economics, and socioeconomic interactions. Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development.
Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx located historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods.
