Annotation of German Ideology I

“The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.” (Marx, German Ideology)

In this passage, Marx, first, defines production, including the mode of production and the means of production, as an expression; expression of man’s life, or nature. Therefore, production is not a simple act of man to provide livelihood and survive. It is an activity during and by which man expresses his nature. Marx’ explanation tries to solve two problems:

1)      It tries to find a solution to this question that does man have an intrinsic nature or its nature is something that shapes in the course of time. Marx defines man’s nature as a synthesis of his needs and the mode of satisfying it. In other words, needs – food, shelter, sexual relationship, recreation etc. – of man is the substratum of his nature, but the needs are satisfied in a concrete way determined by geography, climate, demography etc. Man, as a species, has a universal nature stemming from the interaction of his needs and Nature, and all human beings, depending on their role in the process of production, contribute to the creation of this nature, but every individual has its own nature too. Particular conditions surrounding men is a medium that connects the nature of individual and the nature of the universal (species).

2)     Marx observes that human nature can be explored in an empirical way. So, there is no China Wall between Man, as a phenomenon, and its essence, and refuses the Kantian separation of the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-itself.

As Kant finds a separation between the thing-in-itself and the thing-for-itself, Marx criticized Feuerbach for finding a similar contradiction between consciousness and feeling. Feuerbach, who notices not always our feelings and senses (empirical perception) do not match our consciousness, divides perception into two types: one that perceive simple obvious empirical things and the one that can penetrate profound philosophical things. Marx believes Feuerbach is wrong in addressing both, because even simplest things that are apparently perceived in the way of immediate knowing or “intuition” are the product of historical process.

“He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, modifying its social system according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age it has become “sensuous certainty” for Feuerbach.” (German Ideology)

So, Marx subsumes sensation under perception and vice versa in his historical study of society.

“But things are never quite satisfactory. We feel a need. Our needs are never given directly from nature, there is always a gap, a gap between need and its satisfaction, and that delayed gratification is overcome, negated by labour. Without a gap between needs and their satisfaction there is no labour, activity perhaps but not labour. Labour itself generates new needs, needs met by new products. Thus intuition is subsumed under the concept. In the process the universal is being constructed. Nature is supplemented by a ‘second nature’ in the form of an artificial environment; along with the separation of consumption and production comes a division of labour, the possibility of supervision of labour – the differentiation of theory and practice, and a surplus product.” (Andy Blunden, Forward to Hegel’s Logic)

The gap between needs and satisfaction is filled by labour in a broader vision is the contradiction between theory and practice and the reason for many divisions and contradictions because the distance between these two points are left in darkness, and the more these distance the more diverse will be the routes proposed by persons. Ideologies, in some way, the effect of the delayed gratification of needs. In the nature, animals satisfy their needs in the most direct and immediate way, when they are in need for food, water, shelter and mate they approaches their aims soon and satisfy their needs. However, man, a creature with the faculty of thinking and analyzing, delays this process in order to weigh a way against others, and when the need and satisfaction is very separated in time and space has to wrap his will in a cover of ideologies.