The German Ideology: A New Abridgement

by Karl Marx

A new abridgement of Marx and Engels’s 1846 reckoning with the philosophical tradition, edited and with an introduction by philosopher Tom Whyman.

Edited and with an introduction by philosopher Tom Whyman, this new abridged version The German Ideology sheds new light on one of the most difficult, disputed texts in Marx’s oeuvre.

Written in 1846 and subsequently abandoned by Marx and Engels, only to be rescued in the 1930s by researchers in the USSR, The German Ideology is the high point of Marx’s philosophical a brilliantly insightful, still thrillingly radical work of materialist philosophical therapy. Yet there remains no wholly satisfactory stand-alone version in English, with only a heavily abridged 1970 edition edited by C.J. Arthur, or a facsimile edition taken from Vol. 5 of the Marx-Engels Collected Works, which does not include satisfactory scholarly notes, currently available. 

In this new Repeater Classics edition, Tom Whyman seeks to remedy this. By expanding on generally-available abridgements to include the bulk of the section on Max Stirner, as well as amending the translation, adding notes and providing a new critical introduction, this new edition of The German Ideology will allow non-specialists to engage with this critical work for the first time. 

At a time when interest in Marx's work is increasing, as people look for an alternative to our currently failing political system, this new edition of The German Ideology will bring Marx's most substantial vision of what communism might actually be like to a whole new audience.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction

239 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2022

About the author

With the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.

German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.

Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).

The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.

Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.

Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.

Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.

Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .

People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.

Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

Reviews

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The German philosophical scene was clearly a bit of a welter in the mid-19th century – think of the cantina bar scene from the first Star Wars movie, only with pen-wielding philosophers rather than extraterrestrials with ray-guns. And the student of philosophy who wants to get a sense of what a wild and woolly scene German philosophy was around, say, 1846 would do well to take up this edition of The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

I would particularly recommend this Repeater Books edition of The German Ideology, edited by Tom Whyman, a British writer and philosopher who teaches at the University of Durham in northern England. My reason for this recommendation is partly because Whyman provides a thorough and helpful contextual grounding for where The German Ideology fits into the overall Zeitgeist of the mid-1800’s.

Another reason why this edition of The German Ideology stands out for me is because of the way in which Whyman as editor and commentator takes a refreshingly irreverent approach to the Marx-Engels text itself – an irreverence reflected in the book’s cover illustration that shows Marx and Engels as Punch-and-Judy puppets with clubs in hand. There is nothing here of the Marxist hagiography that one would have once seen in, say, the German Democratic Republic.

As Whyman explains in a perceptive introduction, The German Ideology was once something of a lost text within the Marx-Engels oeuvre. Marx and Engels were not able to find a publisher for the work – unsurprisingly, for reasons that will be discussed below – and The German Ideology was not published until 1932, when it was unearthed by Soviet researchers at Moscow’s Marx-Engels Institute.

Whyman sets The German Ideology within the overall German philosophical scene of the 19th century – one in which the German idealism of Immanuel Kant and the dialectical reasoning of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had had a decisive influence. The dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels takes shape against this background.

Briefly, Marx and Engels placed their materialist philosophy in opposition to Kantian idealism – like Aristotle in Raphael’s fresco The School of Athens (1509-11), pointing at the ground to express his belief that all things can be measured in material terms, while his old teacher Plato points at the sky to express his continual belief in un-measurable higher ideals and a “World of Forms.” And Marx and Engels felt that the Hegelian dialectical approach could be utilized to lead the thoughtful reader toward what they saw as the “higher truths” of communist ideology.

This “new abridgement” (as the book’s subtitle has it) of The German Ideology begins with an abridgement of what Marx/Engels scholars call “The Chapter on Feuerbach” – or, as editor Whyman wittily puts it, “Some Notes Which Aren’t Actually on Feuerbach, But Which Were at One Stage Fudged Into a Chapter Called Feuerbach”. The “Feuerbach” in question is Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72), a philosopher aligned with the “Young Hegelians” who felt that Hegel’s dialectical reasoning called for a more radical questioning of society’s values (in contrast with the conservative “Old Hegelians” who felt that a proper application of Hegelian dialectics proved that society was pretty verdammt perfect as it was).

Marx and Engels seem to feel that, while Feuerbach in some ways had made a good start (he had raised plenty of German hackles with his critiques of Christianity), he hadn’t gone nearly far enough. In this chapter, the two discuss many concepts that will be familiar to readers of The Communist Manifesto, or of Das Kapital. They discuss their belief in an economic system that started with the “feudal system of land ownership [that] had its counterpart in the towns in the shape of corporative property, the feudal organisation of trades” (p. 41).

Any economic system, in their system of reasoning, works within an historical context that is centered around social class. For them, “the satisfaction of the first need (the action of satisfying, and the instrument of satisfaction which has been acquired) leads to new needs; and this production of new needs is the first historical act” (p. 45).

The division of labour, within the Marx/Engels system, “only becomes such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears” (p. 48). Marx sarcastically adds that “The first form of ideologists, priests, is concurrent” (pp. 48-49). The class system then takes its shape from the division of labour: “[S]ociety regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic” (p. 52).

One of the things that struck me about The German Ideology -- and, perhaps, one of the reasons why the book never found a publisher – is Marx/Engels’s dismissive and sometimes vitriolic attitude toward everyone who’s not already on-board with them. Marx slightingly speaks of “alienation,” at one point, as “a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers” (p. 55).

In response, editor Whyman points out that “Marx here seems to ridicule the term “alienation” (Entfremdung)”, and then adds that Marx had written his own piece on “Alienated Labour” years before, and that “Essentially, if you are ‘alienated’ from something, you lack what Marx and Engels…call ‘conscious mastery’ of it” (p. 86). I liked how Whyman could write appreciatively of what he finds intellectually invigourating about Marxian ideology, while at the same time pointing out where he feels that Marx and Engels are basically talking nonsense.

“When the crude form in which the division of labour appears with the Indians and Egyptians calls forth the caste system in their state and religion,” Marx and Engels write, “the historian believes that the caste system is the power which has produced this crude social form” (p. 60). In fact, Marx and Engels believe, what is at work in any society that has not yet achieved communism is the class system through which the members of the ruling class seek to force intellectual, ideological, and philosophical conformity on all people who do not have the good fortune to be members of the ruling class.

Marx and Engels build upon their ideas regarding a class system, writing that “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas – i.e., the class that is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (p. 60). They add that the “subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be abolished until a class has taken shape, which has no longer any particular class interest to assert against the ruling class” (p. 67).

In the Marx/Engels system, feudalism leads to capitalism, and capitalist systems must be overthrown by socialist revolution before worldwide socialism can lead to a global communist system that, Marx and Engels believe, will bring about a truly just and fair social order. Looking at the small capitalist German states of their time (decades before the establishment of a politically unified Germany in 1870), Marx and Engels denounce the industrial capitalism of their time, writing that “in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are more subjected to the violence of things” (p. 68).

It will surprise no one that the future authors of The Communist Manifesto advocate for communism, writing that “Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character, and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals” (p. 71).

If you thought that Marx and Engels were perhaps being unduly harsh on Feuerbach in the Chapter on Feuerbach, then just wait until you get to “Sankt Max” or “The Chapter on Stirner (Heavily Abridged)”. In real life, Max Stirner (1806-56) was a fairly conventional minor post-Hegelian philosopher; but to hear Marx and Engels tell it, Stirner is an outrage against common sense and the worst thing to happen to philosophy ever. They go on in that vein for page after page after Seite für Seite.

Some of it gets quite personal, in a way that seems unworthy of thinkers of Marx and Engels’ intellectual power. Sometimes they call him “Saint Max,” and at other times they refer to him as “Sancho,” as if he is a philosophical Sancho Panza taking up one quixotic post-Hegelian quest after another. At one point they denounce Stirner as “a parochial Berlin school-master…whose world extends from Moabit to Köpenick and ends behind the Hamburger Tor” (p. 159). Editor Whyman archly notes in a responding footnote that “Stirner’s life as Marx describes it would be considerably more aspirational nowadays” (p. 195), as prices in those parts of Berlin have gone up considerably since 1846.

After a while, it begins to sound as though two upper-level philosophy majors – Carly and Fred, let’s call them – are really ticked off at their classmate Max, and are blogging late into the night, fueled by double shots of Bacardi and cans of Red Bull, till their effusions sound something like this:

Dudes! Dudettes! Mad Max Stirner is at it again. OMG! He has totally gone beyond Thunderdome, with all his crap about psychological/rational egoism. Who does he think he is – the Great Humongous? But it gets worse – he gets downright Furiosa when he goes on about social institutions being all-in-the-mind. Society is a ghost? Only the individual is reality? Communism is infected with idealism and superstition? WTF! We oughtta kick his butt all the way down Fury Road. Hey, Max! Two philosophers enter – one philosopher leaves!

It's a pity that Carly and Fred feel obliged to go on with their personal denunciations for so many pages of The German Ideology, because there are places where they actually engage the ideas with which they disagree – as when Marx and Engels denounce Stirner as an example of “the German philosophical conception of history”, stating that “The speculative idea, the abstract conception, is made the driving force of history, and history is thereby turned into the mere history of philosophy” (p. 105). Carly and Fred add that this version of the history of philosophy is not even the real history of philosophy, but rather the history of philosophy “as it was understood and described by recent German philosophers, in particular Hegel” (p. 105).

One of the things I found most interesting from The German Ideology was the glimpse that the book provides into the German society of Marx and Engels’ time. Germany, at this time, was still a quarter of a century away from political unification; there was no “Germany” in those days, but rather a collection of generally poor and often combative little states where everybody spoke German.

Such unwelcome political realities no doubt influenced passages like one where, in the context of a dismissal of political liberalism, Carly and Fred denounce “the impotence, depression, and wretchedness of the German burghers, whose petty interests were never capable of developing into the common, national interests of a class, and who were, therefore, constantly exploited by the bourgeois of all other nations” (p. 107).

Marx and Engels’ critique of German society extends to the main stream of German philosophy as well: they write that “In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive….We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real-life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process” (p. 200). One sees here, in short, much that will re-emerge in later works like The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

Reading The German Ideology, I thought about my own German ancestors, who actually lived in Berlin (my great-grandfather Albert Haspel emigrated to die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika before the First World War). I don’t think my ancestors travelled in the same social circles as did all these philosophers – my last name, in German, means “one who makes spools for the storage of yarn” – but I couldn’t help wondering if Haspels of 175-180 years ago ever heard the names of these philosophers being bruited about in the shops and wine-bars of the Berlin of those times. The German Ideology did more for me in terms of the insights it provided into German life in the mid-19th century, than it did in terms of its expression of Marxist philosophical ideas with which I fundamentally disagree.

[Charles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tom Whyman’s abridgment of Karl Marx’s & Friedrich Engels’s German Ideology is about as unnecessary a book as you could imagine. Apart from cutting, pasting, sprinkling in a few footnotes, and writing up an introduction, I’m at pains to figure out what exactly Whyman’s contribution is.

First, the translation. It’s the same one from Marx & Engels Collected Works, Volume 5. Oddly enough, though, neither Whyman nor his publishers apparently felt any obligation to acknowledge this book even is a translation, let alone give credit to the translators.

Second, the Whyman abridgment is inferior to that of C. J. Arthur (which, as explicitly acknowledged in Arthur’s Editor’s Preface, is translated by W. Lough, C. Dutt, and C. P. Magill). The superiority of Arthur’s abridgment is largely due to the absence of long passages, enough to cobble together an entire chapter, from Marx’s and Engels’s extended attack on Max Stirner.

Third, Whyman’s abridgment is repetitive. There’s virtually nothing in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Whyman’s book that isn’t a word for word repetition from the first two chapters. Ironically, this silly repetition of already-covered material not only serves to lengthen the book, it actually makes Whyman’s abridgment longer than the C. J. Arthur abridgment.

Finally, by the time you get to the very last bit (Whyman’s abridgment of his abridgment of this abridgment), Whyman basically suggests the entire German Ideology can be boiled down to Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach. Too clever by half.

P.S. The cover art alone almost put me off this abridgment. I should have listened to my instincts and just not bothered. This abridgment definitely involves some clownery, though.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great abridgment - Tom makes this more digestible with funny footnotes and from time to time “I don’t know why they said this” lol. As with anything like this a lot probably went over my head but on a first read I feel like I grasped something in materialism that I can picture better

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone claims to be a Marxist, or a communist, or anything else of that variety, first ask them if they've ever read The German Ideology. One of the greatest thinkers (if not the greatest) in the entirety of history, and especially relevant to our contemporary politics, so often fraught with idealist nonsense of both a left and right variety. The quality of the notions expressed within is such that it puts to shame the liberals, both classical and contemporary - while the former generally has the excuse of chronology, you truly wonder how any hack like Nozick managed to get the following he did when it's plain to see he's never actually read anything worthwhile by Marx. I also found the annotations here extremely useful, as unfortunately I am not nearly well-read enough to appreciate the collection of literary references that Marx makes throughout the work.

[Sam Farnsworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book and marx is a funny writer. If I was an 1840s German contrarian I would be elated at discovering this. Marx really gets into the weeds with a lot of Stirners ideas which seems to me irrelevant today and at times he is a little repetitive on the material reality emphasis. Overall solid read though and would recommend to all those online theorists out there if only so they would stop watching youtube.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

The German Ideology is the book by Marx which switched me on to his thinking when I read extracts from it (in David McLellan's 'Selected Writings') as an undergraduate. The outline of an approach to history founded in the analysis of social relations seemed like the only sensible way to develop a better understanding of history and society.

I subsequently read C J Arthur's abridgement (published by Lawrence & Wishart in 1970) and this reinforces the "standard" view that the important part of the book is the first section, ostensibly on "Feuerbach" which sets out historical materialism as an approach to understanding history, and that the second (longer) section critiquing Stirner is largely irrelevant.

Whyman's new abridgement is superb. He clearly situates Marx's work in the context of his separation from the Young Hegelians and the wider contemporary themes in German thought. It's important to understand this context to situate Marx's writing, to understand what he is arguing against, and not just to see The German Ideology as a disconnected statement of theoretical truth.

That said, Whyman draws out the key theoretical insight from the first section, connecting the understanding of history to the development of social relations under the influence of the productive forces. Footnotes scattered through the text make it feel like you are reading along with Whyman, and in particular draw out the dynamic nature of Marx's thought. This is not a mechanistic materialism, but a dynamic and analytical process which creates the means by which any society can be analysed. Whyman particularly highlights the way Marx disclaims a dogmatic attachment to any particular outcome, identifying 'communism' with the movement that seeks to overthrow the current state of things, whatever that may be.

Whyman's abridgement also summarises the section on Stirner. When I was at university, this section was ignored as irrelevant to modern thought. And yet as abridged by Whyman this section really speaks to the modern world. Stirner is essentially saying that any individual can overcome their circumstances by an act of will and Marx refutes this, pointing out that Stirner ignores the implications of the wider society which limits our ability to control our own circumstances.

The abridgement of the section on Stirner is fascinating for many reasons, not least that this is the section that Derrida focuses on in "Spectres of Marx". Derrida draws attention to a shared "spectral" element in both Marx's and Stirner's writing. This is interesting, but not I think as insightful as the opposition that Whyman makes clear in his abridgement between the individualist approach of Stirner, which draws parallels with modern "fake it until you make it" thinking, and the more holistic social analysis of Marx where each individual situation is coloured by the overall social position of an individual within the constellation of classes. This might have seemed irrelevant in the seventies, but Stirner seems very close now to modern individualist thinking and Marx's critique is therefore more interesting than might have been the case when I was originally introduced to this book.

Whyman has therefore produced a really interesting abridgement by bringing the section on Stirner back into focus, while avoiding the mystifications of Derrida, and focusing instead on the development by Marx of a concrete analysis of the social versus the individual, something which feels wholly relevant to the world of today.

This review is also on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

Along with a post on Bartleby that I wrote after reading Whyman's abridgement: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

30/4/2025: Nothing to add on second reading, this remains a superb abridgement of a fascinating book.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a fascinating aggregate of marx and engels' earliest manuscripts exploring communism not from a philosophical perspective but from a materialist and scientific framing. my thoughts can be explained by two of the most interesting (to me) quotes:

"In just the same way, a whale taken from the ocean and put in the Kupfergraben [canal in Berlin], if it possessed consciousness, would declare this situation created by "unfavourable circumstances" to be unwhale-like, although Sancho could prove that it is whale like, if only because it is its, the whale's own, situation, -- that is precisely how people argue in different circumstances."

m&e previously touch upon egoism's logical outcome as communism, but i believe this analogy is even more persuasive than any syllogism they could have presented as that argument. as the ruling class is responsible for the predominant ideas of any epoch in history due to their control of both material and mental production, the power imbalance between displacer and whale does not in the least bit appear exaggerated.

"Incidentally, when for example the bourgeois tells the proletarian that his, the proletarian's, human task is to work fourteen hours a day, the proletarian is quite justified in replying in the same language that on the contrary his task is to overthrow the entire bourgeois system."

in the spirit of the universality of m&e's claim, let's take a look at modern society. the US's 15$ minimum wage argument has been going on for so long that the new livable wage is somewhere above 30$ in most states. and that's just livable. the idea of working an 8 hour work day for the equivalent of 24 hours' rent (more if you'd like to have weekends), utilities, and food to sustain oneself is an untenable bill to pass in our legislative systems. to even think about hobbies, supporting a family, retirement one day, and social outings (due to the dearth of third spaces in capitalist countries) is further impossible. m&e posit that the equal response to being subjected to living a life spent worrying about the former leaving little time to dream about the latter is an overthrow of the entire bourgeois system.

[Maty Candelaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Marx but the painstaking critique of Max Stirner gets old very fast.

At first when Marx calls Stirner a Saint, it’s a bit funny, and it has a relevance of distinguishing Marx’s materialist analysis from those he deems “holy” or idealist. I very much wonder why Marx and Engels spent so much time on “Saint Max” specifically.

Yet, there are so many wonderful moments of the book — I.e. “philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world, the point is to change it”, “communism is the real movement which abolishes the present state of things”… Or in other words, Marx’s power is in how he can invert the thinking of idealist’s by historically situating their thought as being grounded in real human “intercourse”, as opposed to the other way around (i.e. ideas themselves grounding human intercourse). Some of Marx and Engels best moments are in these masterful inversions of Kant, Hegel, and the Young Hegelians.

Chapter one felt the most pressing to me. Unfortunately, much of the abridgment (and I imagine the manuscripts themselves) are bogged down by a drawn out and tiring polemics. But then again, the work was not published in the authors lifetime, and themselves are not fully authored by Marx and Engels solely. Maybe if i was more read on Stirner, I would feel differently. I think Marxist’s should familiarize themselves with the text regardless of somewhat boring and drawn out polemics.

[Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion a must-read for anyone who would like an opinion on communism (which is to say anyone interested in contemporary politics or history). Marx and Engels clarify and respond to critique and common misconceptions of communism. I increasingly find Marx to be very funny in his responses. Made me wish to understand more of the young hegelians and hegel in general, so as to fully appreciate some aspects of the novel; though I don't think an indepth knowledge is necessary to get the gist.

Overall incredible and made me feel much more confident in the picture painted of communism by Marx and Engels.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about re-defining how history is driven : not by ideas, but by people - the rewriting of it by Marx is highly fascinating.

It also brings more clarity and balance to the work of Marx where - unlike many people think - everything is not black and white.

I read somewhere in this book that the level of women’s emancipation represents the level of evolution of a society. Nice work Karl.

The analysis of the gap between countryside and the towns based on the evolution of the place of consommation in the society was also super interesting.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stupendous book - one which is really helped the editor, who pared this down to what would make sense to an ordinary reader. Marx is intimidating, but this edition I actually feel like I understood!