GUIA DE ESTUDOS PARA O CAPÍTULO I

DE ‘A IDEOLOGIA ALEMÃ’: Feuerbach:

Oposição entre a Concepção Materialista e
Idealista
Preface. Innocent and childlike fancies
People: Ludwig Feuerbach, Young Hegelians, Hegel, Utopians.

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you explain the first half of the first paragraph in terms of the concepts of
modern life?

2. Can you give examples of the three programs to “liberate people from
imaginary beings”?

3. Can you explain what Marx means in the final paragraph in terms of socialist
ideas?

Part A. Idealism and Materialism

§ I . The Illusions of German Ideology
Terms: Absolute Spirit, Fictitious Capital, Ideology, Critique, Substance, Self-
consciousness, System, Religion, Dogmatism, Consciousness.

Questions for discussion:

1. What explanation does Marx give for the character of German ideology, “the
connection of German philosophy with German reality”?

2. Can you think of present-day examples of people who criticise their own
“teacher”, but do so within the conceptual and practical framework they learnt
from their teacher?

3. Can you give a plausible and convincing defence of the view of the “Old
Hegelians”?

4. What is the argument between the “Old Hegelians” and the “Young
Hegelians” and why is Marx so contemptuous of the Young Hegelians?

§ II . First Premises of the Materialist Method

Terms: Being, Empiricism, Abstract, Individual, Nature, Labour, Mode of
Production, Relations of Production, Division of Labour, Forces of
Production, Tribal Society, Slave Society, Private Property, Proletariat, Feudal
Society, Politics, Idealism, Positive, Science.
Questions for discussion:

1. Can Marx legitimately just cite “the real individuals, their activity and the
material conditions under which they live” as his premises? How else could one
begin a science?

2. “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or

anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from
animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence” Is this just
a nice piece of rhetoric justifying labour as the criteria for distinguishing
humans from animals, or is it something more than that?

3. Give an example from the present-day of “Each new productive force ...
causes a further development of the division of labour.”

4. “The various stages of development in the division of labour are just so many
different forms of ownership”. Can you give examples from recent times of
different forms of ownership arising on the basis of changes in the division of
labour?

5. Can you give examples of what Marx calls “the language of real life”?

6. Can you examples to show that “in all ideology men and their circumstances
appear upside-down”?

7. What roles does Marx assign to philosophy in the final paragraph of this
section?

§ III. History: Fundamental Conditions

Questions for discussion:

1. What are the three “moments” of history, three fundamental conditions

which Marx outlines at the beginning of this section, and what is the fourth?

2. “Language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for
that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well.” Can you explain
“for that reason alone”?

3. What does Marx call thr first true division of labour?

4. Marx says that if consciousness conflicts with the existing social relations, this
can only be because the existing social relations have come into conflict with the
forces of production. Explain.

§ IV. Private Property and Communism

Questions for discussion:
1. What is the relation between property and division of labour? and in what
way does Marx contradict the conception derived from day-to-day experience
in bourgeois society?

2. “Communist society ... makes it possible for me to do one thing today and
another tomorrow, ... just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, herdsman or critic” How seriously can we take this? Isn't this the
most extreme utopianism? What do you think?

3. Marx's remark in footnote 2 about struggles within the state being reflections
of wider struggles; how does this fit with the idea of the state as an instrument
of one class against another?

4. How does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the
exchange of products, rules the whole world?

5. “Individuals certainly make one another, physically and mentally, but do not
make themselves.” What does this mean?

6. “Communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples 'all at once'
and simultaneously” — is this possible? or does this not mean what it seems to
mean?

7. “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an

ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real
movement which abolishes the present state of things” — what is the point that
Marx is making here? And how is it consistent with the point about “real
premises” at the start of this chapter?

Part B. The Illusion of the Epoch

Terms: Civil Society, State, Spirit,

Questions for discussion:

1. How can Marx refer to the state as “idealistic superstructure”?

2. What has “the history of communism proved.”?

3. In "Preconditions of Real Liberation": is this not a determinist or fatlist

position? to say that liberation is impossible until the material conditions for a
new mode of production are in existence?

4. “As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far
as he considers history he is not a materialist.” Explain.

5. How does Marx prove that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of
any epoch?
6. Exactly how can a class give its ideas the form of universality and why? and
what is meant by “hegemony”?

7. Outlines the three steps by which an idealistic theory of history is created.

Part C. The Real Basis of Ideology

Questions for discussion:

1. Enumerate the difference stages in the development of the division of labour

and productive forces that Marx mentions from the Middle Ages up to
capitalism.

2. In what sense do these further extensions in the division of labour bring

about a unification of productive forces?

3. What is meant by the separation of the state from civil society?

4. What is meant by the illusion that property is based on private will, and that
law is based on general will?

Part D. Proletarians and Communism

Terms: Class, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeois
Society, Individualism, Freedom, Communitarianism, Equality, Means of
Production, Universal, Distribution.

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you describe the process by which, according to Marx, the bourgeois
emerged as a class?

2. How does personal freedom develop, what is the relation between personal
freedom and the community, and how does this differ from the liberal idea of
this relation?

3. What contradiction does Marx see as the driving force in social development?

4. How does Marx explain that “consciousness can sometimes appear further
advanced than the contemporary empirical relationships”, and why does
this need explaining?

5. What is Marx's position on the role of force in history?

6. Can you give present-day illustrations of the productive forces appearing to

have an independent existence?

7. “Modern universal intercourse can be controlled by individuals, therefore,

only when controlled by all.” Explain. 8. Can you put in your own words teh
four points which close this chapter on the possibility, necessity and specific
charcter of the social revolution?
Andy Blunden, 2002
Study Guide for Engels’ Socialism: Utopian &
Scientific
Chapter 1 - Socialism
People: Hegel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Münzer, Levellers, Babeuf, St.
Simon, Fourier, Robert Owen, Kant, Proudhon, Weitling.

Terms: Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Class, Right, Equality, Utopia, Communism, Mi

ddle Class, Reason, Property, Commodification, Mode of
Production, Productive Forces, Distribution & Exchange, Socialism, Bourgeois
Society, Civilisation, Poverty, Petit-Bourgeoisie, Private Property,Doctrinaire
Socialism, Science.

Questions for discussion:

1. Why were the earliest socialists “Utopian”?

2. What did the leaders of the French Revolution hope to achieve and what
went wrong?

3. In what way did Saint-Simon's conception of class differ from Engels’ idea of
nobility, bourgeoisie and proletariat?

4. Were Robert Owen's efforts doomed to failure? If so, why?

5. Engels heaps praise on Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen. What exactly does he
credit each of them with having achieved?

Chapter 2 - Dialectics
People: Hegel, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Diderot, Heraclitus, Bacon, Locke,
Darwin, Kant, Newton, Linnaeus, Chartists,

Terms: Dialectics, Metaphysics, Positive & Negative, Cause &

Effect, Limit, Abstract & Concrete, Contradiction, Chance &
Necessity, Idealism, Spirit (Idea), Truth, System &
Method, Materialism, Mechanical Materialism, Nature, Logic, Formal
Logic, Class Struggle, Being, Capitalism.

Questions for discussion:

1. What is dialectics?

2. What is the difference between the dialectics of the ancients and the dialectics
of Hegel?

3. What is the problem with the dialectics of Hegel?

4. What did Engels mean when he said that modern materialism “no longer
requires the assistance of that sort of philosophy which, queen-like, pretended
to rule the remaining mob of sciences”?

5. Why is Hegel's philosophy important to socialism?

Chapter 3 - Historical Materialism

Terms: Historical Materialism, Distribution & Exchange, Feudal Society, Means
of Production, Division of Labour, Exchange, Commodity, Private
Labour, Market, Socialisation, Wage Labour, Concentration of
Capital, Alienation, Fetishism, Overproduction, Crisis of
Capitalism, Credit,Public Property, Privatisation, State, Slave Society, Planned
Economy, Freedom, Democracy.

Questions for discussion:

1. What major changes in the division of labour and productive forces have
taken place in recent decades, and what political and social changes have been
associated with these changes?

2. How would you apply Engels' observation that “the final causes of all social
changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in
men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes
of production and exchange” to a major social movement of our times, such as
the Women's Liberation Movement or the rise of Fundamentalism?

3. Engels refers to the arrival of planned production with the factory system.
Exactly what did he mean by this?

4. Engels defines the underlying or central contradiction in the development of

capitalism in a series of different ways (highlighted in italics). Find all these
different definitions: what does each mean, and is the sequence in which they
are presented of any particular significance?

5. Engels places a lot of emphasis on production of “commodities”. What is a

commodity? and what human needs can you think of that are met by means of
commodities today that were not supplied by commodity production, say, 50
years ago.

6. Engels mentions a couple of examples of a “vicious circle” in the

development of capitalism. What were they?

7. What does Engels mean by the “rebellion of the productive forces”, and what
are the “productive forces”?

8. Engels refers to the necessity for the state to take over running the Post Office,
railways and so on because the capitalists can't do it themselves. How has this
worked out in history since Engels' times and what are the comparable issues
today?

9. Engels says “This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the
social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the
harmonizing with the socialized character of the means of production”. How
would you see this idea as indicating the way the socialist movement would
change its form over time?

10. Engels says: “Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly,
forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with,
them.” Does this mean we need to understand economics better to be able to
control society?

11. Which different relations between the State and the community does Engels
mention as having arisen down the ages? What could it mean for the state to
become “the real representative of the whole of society” and why would it then
disappear?
Andy Blunden, 2002
Study Guide for Marx’s 18th Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte
See Neue Rheinische Zeitung for Marx and Engels' reporting of the events of June
1848 - May 49, and Class Struggles in France, 1848 - 1850 and Engels' 1895
introduction for more analysis of the events of 1848-50 in France.
Chapter 6 has a succinct time line of the period.

Chapter 1 - The Course of French Revolution: Feb. 1848 to Dec. 1851

People: Hegel, Robespierre, Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Danton, Guizot.

Terms: Bourgeoisie, Proletariat.

Questions for discussion:

1. What were the three periods Marx identifies in this period and what were the
main events that marked out the development of each phase?

2. “All great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. ...
the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Can you think of modern
day events like this, or instances from your personal experience?

3. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do
not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing
already, given and transmitted from the past” Can you illustrate what this
means in terms of current political problems?

4. Can you give contemporary examples of how political leaders “conjure up

the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle
slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in
time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”

5. But Marx says “The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead
bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content”, so how is it possible for
the working class to avoid simply borrowing its slogans from the past?
6. Marx describes the difference between the way a bourgeois revolution
progresses in contrast to how the proletariat develops politically. Why is there
this difference?

7. Can you describe the process whereby the defeated proletariat got itself back
into the struggle in the “third period”?

8. Marx describes the broadening and narrowing of the base of the government.
At what point was it broadest and why, and at what point was it narrowest and
why?

Chapter 2 - The Downfall of the Republicans

Terms: Bonapartism, Freedom.

Questions for discussion:

1. How did it come about that a proletarian uprising put a group of

reactionaries into power?

2. How did the republicans undermine the freedoms which the French
Revolution had claimed to establish, and how was the struggle over these rights
reflected in the Constitution?

3. What do you think about Marx's analysis of the relative position of the
President and the Legislature, thinking in terms of the government in your own
country?

4. What mistake did the republicans make in making a constitution that was
impossible to amend, and why were they thrown out?

5. How did Napoleon come to be able wield power in France, and what lesson
does Marx say he learnt from the Barrot Ministry and the Party of Order?

Chapter 3 - The Rise of Louis Bonaparte

Terms: Legitimists, Historical Materialism,

Questions for discussion:

1. Who were the Constitutionalists, the Girondists and the Jacobins?

2. Can you think of examples in your own experience of situations, maybe in

the workers' movement, where every party relied on the party to its left, and on
the other hand, where every party relied on the party to its right? And what
happens at the end?

3. What were the social bases of the House of Bourbon, the House of Orleans,
the Legitimate Monarchy and the July Monarchy?

4. What function does the Monarchy perform for the bourgeoisie, and on the
other hand, why does Marx say that only a republic can make their rule
complete?

5. What brought the petty bourgeoisie and the workers together and what price
did the proletariat pay for this support?

6. “What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in
their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond
in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems
and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter
practically.” What do you think about this?
7. What general lessons would you draw about the class struggle from this
chapter?

Chapter 4 - The Defeat of the petty-bourgeois democracy

Terms: Class, Democracy.

Questions for discussion:

1. According to Marx what is the specifically French type of bourgeois rule, and
what is the either-or alternative?

2. What does Marx mean by: “all the so-called bourgeois liberties and organs of
progress attacked and menaced its class rule at its social foundation and its
political summit simultaneously.”?

3. What does Marx mean by: “the bourgeoisie confesses that its own interests
dictate that it should be delivered from the danger of its own rule.”?

Chapter 5 - The Struggle of the Constituent Assembly with

Bonaparte
Terms: Lumpen Proletariat, Decembrists, State.

Questions for discussion:

1. What was Bonaparte's own social base and how did he maintain it?

2. How did Bonaparte gain control of the army?

3. Why did the party of Order become powerless, why was it unable to do
anything about Bonaparte?

Chapter 6 - The Victory of Bonaparte

Terms: Historical Materialism,

Questions for discussion:

1. “This bourgeoisie, which every moment sacrificed its general class

interests, that is, its political interests, to the narrowest and most sordid private
interests, ... now moans that the proletariat has sacrificed its ideal political
interests to its material interests”. What does this mean?

2. What does Marx claim to be the effects of the industrial and commercial
crises of 1851?

3. Can you explain what was referred to in this sentence: “If by its motion to
restore universal suffrage the executive power appealed from the National
Assembly to the people, the legislative power appealed by its Quaestors' Bill
from the people to the army”?
4. How many different social classes can you recall Marx referring to in this
chapter, and how did Marx describe the political dispoition of this class?

Chapter 6 - Summary
Terms: State, Ideology, Centralisation and Decentralisation,

Questions for discussion:

1. “The social republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy, ... it was drowned

in the blood of the Paris proletariat, but it haunts the subsequent acts of the
drama like a ghost.” Are there other events that you see like this?

2. Marx judged that the proletariat was correct not to revolt after the coup of
December 2. On what basis, and have you had experiences where the same kind
of issues were involved? Who was calling upon the proletariat to fight, and
why?

3. See Lenin's comment in State and Revolution. How has Marx arrived at these
conclusion which Lenin sees as being so significant?

4. Marx says that Bonaparte “represented” the small-holding peasants. On what

basis does Marx claim this connection?

5. “The small-holding peasants form an enormous mass whose members live in

similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other.
Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing
them into mutual intercourse.” How does this observation fit with the notion
of social class? Is this “enormous mass” a social class?

6. To what does Marx ascribe the improverishment of the peasantry, and what
is the political effect of this impoverishment?

7. “The centralization of the state that modern society requires arises only on
the ruins of the military-bureaucratic government machinery which was forged
in opposition to feudalism.” Can you explain what this means?

8. “By protecting [the middle class's] material power, [Bonaparte] revives its
political power.” How did this process work itself out?

9. What was the net result of the events of 1848-51 for the French proletariat?
Andy Blunden, 2002
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Study Guide
Preparatory Reading:
An earlier draft: Principles of Communism (November 1847)

I: Bourgeois and Proletarians

People: Metternich, Guizot, Morgan.

Terms: Class & Class struggle, Feudal Society, Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, Free
Trade, Market, Commodification, Capital, Productive Forces.

Questions for discussion:

1. Why and how do Marx and Engels praise capitalism in this chapter?

2. The word “commodification” was not invented until recently, but do you
think that this chapter is talking about commodification?

3. What does the Manifesto tell us about the how the proletariat changes as
capitalism develops and in making the revolution?

4. What are Marx and Engels saying about “globalisation” in this chapter?

II: Proletarians and Communists

Terms: Party, sectarianism, State, Property, Private Property, Freedom, Wage
Labour, Individualism, Women's Liberation, Democracy, Socialism.

Questions for discussion:

1. What do Marx and Engels mean by the Communists not forming a separate
party?

2. What do Marx and Engels mean by abolition of private property and how do
they answer the various refutations of this program?

3. What does the Manifesto mean by “winning the battle of democracy”?

4. Stalin claimed that the 10-point program had been achieved in the Soviet
Union by the mid-1930s. Do you think this claim is valid?

5. How many of point in the 10-point program have been achieved by the
working class in your country? If some of the points have been achieved under
capitalism, what does this fact tell you about the Communist Manifesto? Why is it
that some have been at least partially achieved, and yet some seem as far away
as ever?
6. What do you think an anarchist or a reformist would make of the last part of
this chapter? Do you think they would agree, and if not why not?

7. How would you describe the concept of Freedom put forward in this
chapter?

III: Socialist and Communist Literature

Terms: Reformism, Middle Class, Petit-bourgeois, Utopia, Division of Labour.

Questions for discussion:

1. What sort of criticism were "feudal socialists" making of capitalism, and do

you know anyone like that today?

2. What sort of "socialism" is envisaged by "petty bourgeois socialists" and do

you know of any parties like this today?

3. What is wrong with "true socialism" and do you know anyone like that
today?

IV: Position of Communists in Relation to Various Parties

Terms: Chartists. Social Democracy.

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you recite the last paragraph of the Manifesto?

Prefaces to Various Editions

Questions for discussion:

1. What important change was made in the Manifesto in 1872 and what event
brought about this amendment?

2. How did Marx and Engels rate the chances of communism in Germany,
England, America and Russia?

Further Reading:

When the Manifesto was written: The June (1848) Revolution.

The early working out of the historical perspective: The German Ideology.

Andy Blunden, 2002