The German Ideology by Karl Marx

Marx forwards the key idea that “production of ideas or consciousnesses is directly related to material reality.” Man is the producer of ideas who himself is determined by the material reality. The idea, consciousness can never be other than the consciousness of existence, and the existence of his actual life process.”

This actual life process is of the material base which determines the consciousness. Marx takes the German Ideology an opposite stand to whole German ideology that was developed by Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel and so on. Western metaphysics, especially German idealism always undermined matter and only focused on human consciousness. On contrary Marx believes that human consciousness is shaped our of socio economic context.

Marx criticizes German ideology because it created the camera obscure of the reality. German Ideology/ philosophy descends from the heaven to earth. But Marx says we set out from actual life process.

The difference between Karl Max and Hegel is that Marx is materialist and Hegel is idealist. Marx was influenced by German ideology but reject the basic notion of Idealism. For Marx it is the material reality that determines the human consciousness but Hegel as a leading figure of German Ideology argues that it is human consciousness that determines the matter.

Marx as a believer of social economist reality argues that human beings are born in certain social reality that ultimately shapes their mental faculty. Thus for Marx all the ideas and discourse are the outcome of social reality and economic reality.

For Marx society is a conflicting ground where the exploiter appears in different names and tries to dominate or exploit the working class people. As an art critic, Marx argues that, the literature is the social product and has to reflect the social reality. So there is a deep and inseparable attachment between the literary art and society. The work of art is not like a hermit but the expression of social condition.