The German Ideology

Karl Grün: Die Soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien. Marx and Engels’s next target, Karl Grün, is both a “true socialist” and pretentious would-be litterateur whose ornate style they ruthlessly mock. They offer a selection of quotes of Grün’s pseudoscientific and pseudo-poetic musings on happiness and socialism, pointing out his affinity for folksy German metaphors. Grün declares “man” to be the final result of world history, which is itself of course the product of philosophy. Grün arrogantly dismisses the socialist and communist movements of other countries, advising the French to study Hegel more closely. To Grün, Germany’s lack of real political and economic development is an advantage that allows Germans to more accurately grasp the “essence of man.”

Marx and Engels point out that many of Grün’s ideas are copied from Moses Hess, losing whatever interesting dimensions they once had in the process. These theories include the belief that by putting Feuerbach’s philosophy into practice one can discover “true socialism.” Grün also plagiarizes at length from Lorenz Stein, whose biography of Henri de Saint-Simon is copied—often incorrectly—directly into Grün’s critique. Grün attacks Saint-Simon to prove the superficiality of French socialism and the superiority of German socialism but cannot even correctly restate the basic details of Saint-Simon’s biography. Marx and Engels stress that Stein’s book is already full of errors, but Grün adds even more, indicating how poorly he understands the French socialism he claims to critique.

Next Grün turns to Charles Fourier but ignores all the most interesting and worthwhile aspects of Fourier’s theories, according to Marx and Engels. Instead, Grün opposes Fourier’s abstract categories with his own, all the while ignoring the material conditions of labor entirely. Grün always returns to the “essence of man,” claiming that Fourier’s attempts to systematically understand human society ignore this mystical essence. Fourier—whom Marx and Engels also criticize extensively—at least bases his ideas on the premise of actual material conditions, something Grün is unable or unwilling to do. Ultimately, Fourier’s failure, from Grün’s point of view, is that he criticized “the manifestations of civilization” and not the “essence of man”—that is, he criticized reality and not philosophy.

Marx and Engels see Grün’s criticism as further evidence of his ideological approach, as he believes religion and politics to the basis of social life, while its actual material conditions are just “manifestations.” Grün’s solution is just as ideological, as he argues that one only needs to correctly perceive the unity of production and consumption to resolve the contradiction between them. Marx and Engels emphasize Grün’s ignorance of the basics of political economy and the relationship between supply and demand. Grün sees socialism as the freedom of consumers, a nonsensical position that ignores the actual relationship of consumption to production. It is no coincidence, suggest Marx and Engels, that economic theories based off consumption alone are invariably reactionary.

Grün then criticizes Étienne Cabet, using Cabet’s ideas and politics as a stepping stone toward the development of German “true socialism.” Grün quotes extensively from Cabet, often misunderstanding him entirely or coming to completely incorrect conclusions, distorting the views of the philosophers whom Cabet quotes and criticizes. In fact, Cabet is often incorrect, and Grün’s credulous plagiarism reveals his ignorance of history.

Lastly, Grün tackles Proudhon. While Grün broadly agrees with Proudhon’s critique of property, he avoids engaging closely with it, instead declaring that everything will be resolved once a new society appropriate for the “essence of man” is built “when true property relations are established.” Marx and Engels suggest that German ideologists are unable to offer compelling critiques of Proudhon’s theories (which are themselves flawed) because Proudhon is attempting to adapt Hegel’s dialectics. In order to critique this project, one needs to actually understand Hegel’s method, something the Germans—Feuerbach included—are all unable to do.