This edition makes easily accessible the most important parts of Marx’s and Engels’ major early philosophical work, and is ideal for students. It includes a brilliant exposition of historical materialism, and is Marx and Engels’s first presentation of the new revolutionary philosophy, written with all the freshness of a new discovery.
The full text, which Marx and Engels were unable to get published in their lifetimes, occupied some 650 pages. This lengthy polemic was introduced by a brilliant exposition of the fundamental ideas of historical materialism which Marx and Engels were then working out, and is included in this volume. This is their first presentation of the new revolutionary philosophy, written with all the freshness of a new discovery.
This edition contains the first part of the complete work, together with a number of excerpts presenting the key points of the text overall, and which remain highly relevant today.
The editor has added an introduction dealing with the place of The German Ideology in the evolution of Marxism and containing a summary of the contents and controversies which occupy the parts of the work not printed here. Marx’s famous Theses on Feuerbach and his unfinished Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy are added as appendices.
Translated by W. Lough, C. Dutt and C. P. Magill.
Editor’s Preface
Editor’s Introduction
The German Ideology
Preface
I. Feuerbach, Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook
A. Idealism and Materialism
The Illusions of German Ideology
First Premises of Materialist Method
History: Fundamental Conditions
Private Property and Communism
B. The Illusion of the Epoch
Civil Society – and the conception of History
Feuerbach: Philosophic, and Real, Liberation
Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas
C. The Real Basis of Ideology
Division of Labour: Town and Country
The Rise of Manufacturing
The Relation of State and Law to Property
D. Proletarians and Communism
Individuals, Class, and Community
Forms of Intercourse
Conquest
Contradictions of Big Industry: Revolution
II. Selections From the Remaining Parts of the German Ideology
Kant and Liberalism
The Language of Property
Philosophy and Reality
Personal, versus General, Interest
One-sided Development
Will as the Basis of Right
Artistic Talent
Utilitarianism
The Philosophy of Enjoyment
Needs and Conditions
The Free Development of Individuals
Language and Thought
“True” Socialism
Supplementary Texts
Karl Marx. Theses on Feuerbach
Karl Marx. Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy
Name and Authority Index
Subject Index
