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Vol. 2, Part 4: The Historiography of True Socialism
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The German Ideology, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Philosophy and the World
Materialism vs. Idealism
History and Theory
National Character
Criticism and Irony
Communism
Summary
Analysis
“Doctor Georg Kuhlmann of Holstein”. For their final examination of “true socialism,” Marx and Engels turn to a lecture given by Georg Kuhlmann. While Kuhlmann is praised extensively by other “true socialists,” Marx and Engels see him as a simple charlatan—though he may believe in his own elaborate claims. This is characteristic of adherents of idealism, who are always committed to their own religious worldviews. Kuhlmann’s popularity is due to the idealist tendency to seek out great individuals whose ideas will change history—the exact opposite of the actual relationship between history and philosophy.
Marx and Engels’s last target is a much more minor figure who is barely even involved in the German socialist movement. Kuhlmann is not important for his own sake. Rather, he’s important because the positive reception he has received reveals the widespread biases and unspoken desires of the German petty bourgeoisie. In Kuhlmann, they have found a philosopher who will incorporate all the grand ideas of German philosophy into a comforting assurance that everything will be alright, and their own lives do not need to change.
Active
Themes
Marx and Engels compare Kuhlmann to a miracle worker; just as science dispels the illusions of magic, analyzing the material conditions of society dispels the illusions of idealism. Kuhlmann’s long-winded lecture is ultimately little more than a religious justification for the status quo. He argues that labor, value, and inequality are all given by nature—some must work, while Kuhlmann philosophizes. Kuhlmann dissuades his listeners from struggling for a different world, arguing instead that they should seek change within themselves. It is no surprise, suggest Marx and Engels, that Kuhlmann’s self-justifying theory is so popular among the ideologists of the German petty bourgeoisie.
