Marx Engels, "German Ideology" Summary and Comments - An unpublished book known as the birth of the materialist view of history.
This time we would like to introduce a new edition of "German Ideology," written by Marx Engels, edited and translated by Wataru Hiromatsu, with an additional translation by Masato Kobayashi, published by Iwanami Shoten in 2002.
Let's take a quick look at the book.
In Germany, which was writhing in agony toward modernization, the Hegelian Left anticipated the dreams and disappointments of "modernity" in a philosophical way. The young Marx and Engels, who summed up this movement with self-criticism, laid the foundation for a worldview that transcended the paradigm of "modernity" in this book. This is the definitive edition of the well-known translation edited and edited by Wataru Hiromatsu, with extensive notes and reflections on later research results.
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This work is known as the birth of Marx Engels' materialist view of history, as indicated in the title of this article.
The writing itself was in 1845-46, when Marx was 27 and Engels 25, not long after they began tagging along in earnest.
Tristram Hunt on the process of the book's formation.Engels, The Man Marx Called General.The following is explained in the following section.
Out of this intimate and sometimes tense social relationship, something very great was born. The German Iterology, a book that Marx and Engels had collaborated on. This book, also co-written by Marx and Engels, was never published in their lifetime. The work was famously abandoned "in the face of criticism from scrawny, gnawing rats," and only found a readership in 1932.
Nevertheless, the book also served its purpose of giving the authors an opportunity to clarify their thinking, and showed that they had taken a further step forward from idealism to materialism.
It is a further conscious act of distinguishing themselves from the legacy of the youth Hegelians. As is often the case with Marx and Engels, they secured their position by persistently attacking their ideological competitors.
The thinker they had their sights set on at this time was the philosopher Max Steirner. And just as often, the level of venom with which Steirner was bombarded was at precisely the same level as the intellectual benefits Marx and Engels received from him.
Chikuma Shobo, Tristram Hunt, translated by Erika Togo, Engels: The Man Called General by Marx, p. 171
Some line breaks have been made.
The German Ideology was not published during their lifetime and only saw the light of day in 1932.
Marx and Engels thus develop their arguments in the form of criticism of their opponents, although in this work the target of that criticism is chosen to be a person named Stirner.
Please refer to the following article, which discusses in detail what exactly Marx Engels was criticizing and trying to argue for in this book.
It is quite difficult to summarize what Marx Engels is trying to say in this article alone. Although the Iwanami Shinsho version of the article goes into considerable detail, the complexity of the article makes it difficult to give a simple explanation of what Marx and Engels were saying.
It is a bit long, but please read the article above for a more detailed explanation of the book's contents.
After reading these explanations, I read "German Ideology" and found it to be too difficult to understand....
The commentary at the end of the book also mentioned this difficulty.
This translation is based on the first volume of "German Ideology" jointly written by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedlich Engels (1820 -1895) in 1845-1846. Feuerbach", which he edited and translated independently. (omitted).
The "Feuerbach" essay has been called one of the most "difficult" of Marx's and Engels's works. This is not because the philosophical terminology is difficult for readers who are not familiar with philosophy, but because of the fundamental problem of not being able to grasp the meaning and context of the text. The German original, which had been circulated for a long time as a source text, was made by cutting individual parts of the manuscript into small pieces and piecing them together based on arbitrary interpretations, which resulted in the original context being cut off. This must be said to be a fatal flaw in the text. Another factor that makes this book "difficult" is that, although it is a book of controversy, there is no edition of the manuscript with appropriate notes to contrast it with the arguments of the opponents.
Iwanami Shoten, Marx Engels, ed. and trans. by Wataru Hiromatsu, assisted by Masato Kobayashi, "New Edition of German Ideology," p. 275-276.
The reason is not that the philosophical terms are difficult to understand for readers who are not familiar with philosophy, but that there was a fundamental problem of not being able to grasp the meaning and context of the text in the first place. The German original, which had been circulated for a long time as a source book, was made by cutting up individual parts of the manuscript into small pieces and piecing them together based on arbitrary interpretations, so the original context had been cut off. This, it must be said, is a fatal flaw in the text."
This part is quite shocking.
The text was doomed, he said, even before the content was difficult to understand.
It made me think it's justified to despair of reading ...
And there is one more thing that impressed me about this book.
Here it is.
This is a photo of the manuscript, he said, with Engels on the left half and Marx on the right.
Marx's scribbling is noticeable in contrast to Engels' neat and orderly writing.
It is said that Marx's handwriting was so notoriously dirty that only Engels, who had been tagging along for years and reading Marx's letters, could decipher it.
Engels edited the second and third volumes of Capital after Marx's death, and his ordeal is visible.
Please refer to the following article in which we discuss Engels' ordeal in editing Capitalism.
To begin with, the picture of the manuscript on the cover is tremendous. I feel as if Marx's madness is manifested here. It is scary.
I have to admit that it is tough to say whether I understand their ideas by reading this book.
However, I think that experiencing the severity of the situation was the most important thing for me this time. I am grateful to have learned that one of the difficulties of Marx-Engels is due to "the flaw of not being able to grasp the meaning and context of the text in the first place," and to have also been able to see the sheer volume of the manuscript.
The above is "Marx Engels' "German Ideology" - an unpublished book known as the birth of the materialist view of history.
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