Pathway to Japanese Literature

Marxism and Materialism

I

Words performed a magical function.
For certain people, the very name “materialism” suggested from the outset something dubious, something repugnant.
When they heard its name, they shrugged their shoulders, made the sign of the cross, departed, and even considered taking it seriously to be something base that must not be done.
Nevertheless, Marxism—which unapologetically asserted itself as its own materialism—had now become a real force that no one could overlook.
Generally speaking, those who attempted to demonstrate the nobility of thought by evading reality merely adorned themselves in such a manner and, in doing so, inevitably exposed the cowardice and negligence inherent in their own thinking.
Just as philosophy had once achieved remarkable progress through its inspiration from the French Revolution, so too now—by intersecting with Marxism in some form—it would likely be able to escape its current unproductive state.
Marxism belonged to the long historical sequence of materialism that had been discussed in manifold meanings.
People had particularly bestowed upon it the name of modern materialism.
What exactly was meant by “modern” in this bestowed designation?
By what constitution did Marxism define itself as materialism in the first place?

Those who seek to properly grasp this question must push far away the two forms of materialism that are unfortunately most frequently associated with its name—one pertaining to theoretical views, the other to practical attitudes.
Marxism is not first and foremost physiological materialism.
It does not argue that phenomena of consciousness are derived from the material structure of the brain itself, nor that thought is secreted from the human brain as urine is excreted from the kidneys.
Such materialism is the very thing that Marx labeled as metaphysical and rejected.
Moreover, Marxism is secondly not ethical materialism either.
It is not an assertion that seeks to subordinate all human actions to the satisfaction of material desires and the pursuit of personal happiness.
Marx has launched a scathing attack against such hedonistic and utilitarian ideologies, and on this matter he always speaks with contempt and loathing.

After eighteenth-century-style crude, vulgar materialism had been rejected, how were we first to acquire an actual foundation for Marxist materialism?
We had already demonstrated that the anthropology defining historical materialism’s structure stands upon proletarian basic experience.
Our present task therefore had to be clarifying how modern materialism indeed possesses its concrete theoretical root within modern proletarian basic experience.
I maintained confidence that this assigned problem could be sufficiently resolved.

The basic experience I mean is the total structure of real existence.
Real existence is always organized within a definite structural nexus limited by historical necessity.
The organization of existence—what Aristotle calls *taxis*—lies most primordially within the dynamic dual unity of human existence and natural existence, which constitute the totality’s formative moments.
As long as it exists in reality, the human is a being in nature—that is to say, life—and nature becomes a being limited through its relation to this life.
Given that basic experience signifies for us a structured or organized existence—and therefore reality itself—people must not consider this concept to mean that someone’s consciousness or experience is being directly expressed.
When I speak of proletarian basic experience, I am not particularly referring to consciousness experienced by the proletariat or that which only the proletariat can experience.
Rather, through that term, I point to reality itself—existence endowed with a special structure.
One should understand what is existential above all through basic experience’s designation, and by no means should one understand what is conscious—and consequently what is ideal.
Rather, I contend that conscious and ideal aspects possess definite structure and organization—it is precisely for this reason that existence can move and develop—and that they only become real through existence’s process of movement and development.
The “foundation” in basic experience signifies that this [foundation] becomes the basis for various ideologies and determines them.
The reason we specifically designate real existence itself as “experience” is, as previously noted, to distinguish ourselves as sharply as possible from naive realism—which contains the tendency to regard existence as something completed in itself, thereby fixing it as static rather than grasping it particularly in motion.
Thus Basic Experience is nothing other than a dynamic totality possessing various moments that develop while mutually determining their own existentiality.
However, that which organizes and structures existence is fundamentally the mode of interaction inherent to human existence.
This very mode of interaction is historically and socially conditioned—what is termed “proletarian” constitutes a historical archetype of such modes of interaction, as well as real existence’s historical character as defined through them.
Therefore we can justly count it among existence’s historical categories.

Now, what fundamentally determines the structure of proletarian basic experience was labor.
Proletarians interacted with existence through a mode of interaction characterized as sensuous praxis.
At this point, the objects with which and alongside which they labored could not be something ideal—such as mere mental images of their minds—if labor was to maintain its essential nature.
Praxis essentially and necessarily required that its object be another independent existence distinct from the practitioner.
Therefore, even for Fichte—who had been the most thoroughgoing idealist—the self was thought to demand something other than itself as a “resistance” to be overcome in order to exert its “praxis-oriented” essence, thereby necessarily establishing the non-self.
Rather, Fichte had deduced sensation—and consequently the sensible world—from the practical fundamental determination of the self.
As long as humans engaged practically, the entity they acted upon could not be an insubstantial shadow in its existence.
In Fichte’s framework, since practice remained fundamentally an intellectual activity through and through, he could conceive that the non-self—which the self posited as its own resistance—still did not lose its ideal character.
In contrast, for us practice—as labor—was itself a human-sensory activity; thus, the entities that manifested their existence through such modes of interaction could be nothing other than independent, sensory, and material beings to the very end. Labor rendered all forms of idealism impossible.
Feuerbach states: “The fundamental defect of idealism lies precisely in its posing and resolving questions concerning the objectivity or subjectivity of the world—reality or non-reality—solely from a theoretical standpoint.”
“But in reality,” he continues, “the world becomes an object of understanding *only* because it is originally and fundamentally an object of the will—the will toward existence and possession.”*
The speculative questions of whether the world truly existed outside the mind and whether this world was sensuous-material were matters resolved within a primitive fact—one that could not even become questions—for those who interacted with existence through labor.

* Feuerbach, Ueber Spiritualismus und Materialismus, besonders in Beziehung auf die Willensfreiheit, X, 216.

Now, as those standing in structural nexus with nature through labor, humans must themselves also be sensuous beings.
With his material force, he constantly acts upon nature; through such interaction he directly apprehends his own existence as sensuous.
That is to say, labor structures nature as sensuousness and humans as such beings.
In this case, one must not understand sensuousness abstractly.
It does not signify something like sensation itself or pure sensation.
Rather, sensuousness constitutes a concept of existence's "mode of being."
It does not denote the operation of soul or consciousness itself; rather, this "existence" of real human beings—as a Greek philosopher already declared in a fragment of Plutarch's lost work: "I am not a soul but rather a human being"—demonstrates a particular mode of existing within the reality of its existence.
Humans are needless to say psychophysical unities.
When defining this existence as sensuous, it naturally does not adopt sensationist idealism's position; however, it equally absolutely does not align with mechanical materialism's stance that posits matter as utterly separate from spirit.
"Truth is neither materialism nor idealism, neither physiology nor psychology."
"Truth is nothing but anthropology (human studies)*," Feuerbach asserts.
He opposes abstract idealism and materialism, advocating instead a concrete anthropological standpoint.
Just as it is not solely the soul that thinks or feels, neither does mere cerebral matter think or feel.
Consciousness constitutes nothing other than the concrete mode of existence belonging to total human being.
Marx's declaration that "consciousness (das Bewusstsein) can never be anything other than conscious being (das bewusste Sein)" must be interpreted through this lens.
Any ideology that absolutely opposes spirit and matter—rejecting one to establish the other—remains merely abstract thought's product.
Here Feuerbach further records: "To separate humans into body and spirit, sensuous essence and non-sensuous essence, constitutes merely theoretical division.
"In practice, in life, we deny this separation.**"
A Marxist living through praxis can neither be idealist nor adherent of materialism in abstract sense.

Thus, the problem of materialism and idealism—such as “deriving” consciousness from matter or “deducing” existence from thought—had to be liberated from its own metaphysical standpoint and relocated to another foundation.
How could Marxism be materialism without losing concreteness?
The answer had already been given.
While existence determined its existentiality according to the manner in which humans interacted with it, humans directly grasped their own essence in accordance with such a mode of interaction.
Therefore, those who interacted with existence through labor—that is, sensuous-material praxis—were compelled to understand the existentiality of their own being or their mode of existence as sensuous-material.
The “matter” spoken of in Marxist materialism was thus, first and foremost, a concept of human self-interpretation—or, if our terminology permitted, a hermeneutic concept—and should not have been taken to mean pure material itself.
Labor was indeed the root that constituted concrete materialism.

* Feuerbach, Wider den Dualismus von Leib und Seele etc., II, 340.

** Op. cit., II, 345.

Labor is production in its more concrete determination.
However，modern production is particularly social in its mode.
Marx states at the beginning of the introduction to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*: “People producing in society—and thus socially determined production—is undeniably the starting point.”
“The individual and isolated hunters and fishermen with which Smith and Ricardo begin belong to the unimaginative fantasies of the eighteenth century.”
Our research should not begin with Robinson—an abstract entity that does not exist in reality—but must take as its starting point humans engaged in production within society.
Humans cannot produce without entering into certain mutual relations with one another.
They can only produce by mutually exchanging their activities.
As long as we are social beings，I cannot forever remain merely as myself.
As long as they act upon one another through their activities，I become you，and you become I.
I am an “I” to myself，and simultaneously a “you” to others.
I am both subject and object.
Therefore，Feuerbach’s following words are correct： “The real I is only that I which has you opposed to it，and this being itself is a you and an object to another I.”
“Just as no objective reality exists for the idealistic I，so too does no ‘you’ exist whatsoever.*”
Human reality first comes into being as the unity of I and Thou.
Humans are a synthetic concept.
“I exist merely as subject-object (*Sabjekt-Objekt*)，thinking—no，sensing.**” However，at this point，the synthesis or unity (*Einheit*) of subject and object is not directly equivalent to their identity (*Identität*).
The so-called systems of identity philosophy (*Identitätssysteme*) of Romanticism asserted the absolute identity of subject and object.
In contrast，for us，I and Thou，subject and object remain fundamentally distinct existences—were this not so，there could be no practical interaction between them—and it is precisely for this reason that the human being，as a social existence，is the synthesis of subject and object.
I am，from the ultimate and primary ground of my existence’s reality，essentially an existence that relates me to other existences beyond myself—one that cannot be without this relation.
If each human existence is subject-object and，in that sense，independent，then there can be no place anywhere for an ideal absolute self or pure consciousness as that which produces or sustains all objectivity.

Social production renders all forms of absolute idealism impossible.

* Feuerbach, Ueber Spiritualismus und Materialismus etc., X, 214.

** Ebd., 215.

II

Through humans interacting with one another in social production, there arises a remarkable phenomenon.
Namely, it is the submergence of consciousness.
I believe that the "problem of consciousness"—which traditional materialism has struggled most to address and has therefore served as a touchstone in every instance for all such theories—can be concretely resolved without undue strain only by fundamentally grasping this phenomenon.

The central problem of modern epistemology was consciousness.
Consciousness rather constituted the sole—or indeed all—object of study for contemporary philosophy.
It was considered the first and last problem that any philosophy must address—and therefore a self-evident, eternal one.
However, that which was self-evident to us often amounted to nothing more than a detrimental bond, while that which was eternal sometimes signified our very destiny.
We could not develop our scholarship or lives unless we positioned ourselves to dominate such things.
Were modern philosophy unable to discover a superior vantage point from which to freely engage consciousness’ problem, it would likely ossify into immobility—incapable of further advancement.
To escape this paralysis, philosophy had to forge its path through what we sought to call the historical-destructive method.
For all existence was historical, and every historical existence embodied contradictions that inevitably transformed from liberation into oppression.
To grasp this contradiction at historical necessity’s root constituted the method we demanded＊.

* This method, which holds paramount significance for our scholarship, will be examined in detail elsewhere.

All existence is discovered existence.
No existence simply exists from the beginning; rather, we encounter and discover it within history.
The emergence of consciousness at philosophy's center possesses its own historical trajectory.
Within Christianity's religious attitude—which rejects all external social life and grants sole supreme value to the individual's inner life—consciousness was first apprehended in its existential reality.
It was Augustine who, responding to religious imperatives, clarified the inner world's reality and uniqueness while unveiling consciousness's infinite richness of factual content.
The consciousness thus discovered and elucidated underwent radical transformation by Descartes' era through preoccupations with grounding cognitive certainty—particularly in mathematics and mechanics.
Whereas Augustine explicated consciousness insofar as it signified something for spiritual life, Descartes' interpretation remained perpetually steered by dominant concerns for scholarly cognition*.
Kant—for whom justifying mathematical natural science's universal validity also constituted a central problem—reconceived consciousness under the general concept of consciousness as "subjectivity," displacing it from the "realm of existence."
Consequently, subjectivity ceased being merely one form of existence and instead assumed universal significance—encompassing and governing all existence.
Husserl's modern phenomenology—which takes mathematics' and formal logic's cognitive ideality as its model—while rejecting Cartesian mind-body dualism, thoroughly interprets consciousness's existence (manifested in Augustine through fear/desire via divine relation) along Cartesian *Cogito* lines while assigning it universal meaning as existence's ultimate reducibility.
Thus consciousness—originally discovered through religious interiority and existentially defined thereby—gradually diverged from its roots, became tasked with establishing pure theory's foundations (chiefly formal logic/mathematics/natural sciences), and ultimately came to be fundamentally interpreted/elucidated solely from that perspective**.
Through this reinterpretation (Umdeutung), consciousness progressively acquired universal significance.
Yet this universality resides solely within what Marx termed "ghostly objectivity" (gespenstige Gegenständlichkeit).
Consciousness—once liberator of human life—now utterly dominates us through its ossified ghostly objectivity.
Consciousness has become an existence of contradiction.
Marxist materialism must resolve this contradiction.

* Viewing the opposition between Descartes and Augustine through the contrast of Descartes with Pascal—his contemporary who was connected to Augustine’s thought—would prove highly instructive for us (see my work *A Study of Humanity in Pascal*).

** Modern psychology too remains bound by intellectualist tendencies.
In this field, perception, representation, attention, thought, and similar matters form the principal problems.
By contrast, what was the case in medieval philosophical psychology?
Emotions or passions (Passiones) were the objects they most favored dealing with.
Even at the dawn of the modern era, Descartes and Spinoza—despite their intellectualist tendencies—produced detailed and outstanding research on passions.

When we stepped into the intellectual world of Greece, an entirely new vista opened before us.
We no longer encountered what we call subjectivity.
Rather than our modern concept of subjectivity, the Greeks considered human existence fundamentally definable as “we” (ἡμεῖόγοῶον πολιτικόn)—the political animal—and as word-possessing being (ζῶον λογιστικόν).
As long as one lived socially, individual consciousness became submerged within language as public existence.
Individuals could not socially interact without expressing their consciousness through language—submerging its subjectivity within words to render it public.
Language alone constituted society’s sole real consciousness.
Marx, who examined humans as historical-social beings, stated: “Language is as old as consciousness—language is practical consciousness existing for other humans, and therefore existing for myself as well.”
“And language, like consciousness, arises first from the desire and necessity for interaction with other humans.*”
There, spirit combined with matter—manifested through layers of moving air, sound, or simply language’s form—had been regarded as consciousness.
The “pure” consciousness that cursed matter could not be practical.
We found similar ideas in Feuerbach: “Through speech—the organ by which humans address one another—they voluntarily convey their innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires.
“But what then are the soul, inner self, and essence itself when distinguished from this sensually expressed essence?**”

* Marx-Engels Archiv, Vol. I, p. 247.

** Feuerbach, *Wider den Dualismus von Leib und Seele etc.*, Vol. II, p. 343.

Therefore, I will proactively investigate the most notable effects language exerts upon existence.
Language is social in its concreteness.
Speaking possesses a structure wherein a person speaks about something to another person.*
Through this linguistic structure, what is spoken becomes neither mine as the speaker nor his as the listener—it transforms into our communal possession.
Herein, those who lay claim to existence are “we,” “society,” and “one” in its categorical sense (German *man*—French *on*).
Only through language’s mediation does existence attain full public significance.
Society itself first emerges through this mutual public ownership of the world.
To declare language social means declaring that society exists through language.
Aristotle too asserts that humanity’s possession of *logos* grounds its distinctively social being.**
Yet when existence becomes socialized through linguistic expression—when it enters the world constituted under “one”—it assumes a striking attribute.
This we term existence’s mediocrity or neutrality.
Suppose I now go to purchase a desk.
I address the furniture shopkeeper: “Give me a desk.”
He immediately understands me and produces several desks for inspection.
This mutual comprehension arises because desks are neutralized through language.
Returning from the shop, I board a train.
Within its carriages ride high-ranking officials.
There too sit shopkeepers from backstreet stalls.

There are people filled with sorrow and others overflowing with joy as well. However, all these people are rendered mediocre through the term “passenger” and are experienced from the perspective of this term itself. If two or three empty seats are found in the train car at that time, I sit down in whichever seat is given to me without concern—because all those empty seats exist in a neutralized state as empty seats. It is through existence being in such neutrality that our particularly social practices become possible. If desks could not exist in a neutralized state, the merchant would be unable to sell desks and I unable to buy one. Language in its rootedness is not theoretical but practical; the phenomenon of existence’s mediocrity makes this clearer than anything else. Understanding language’s inherently social-practical nature remains crucial for people today who habitually prioritize logic or theory alongside logos. One must liberate oneself entirely from the common misconception that neutrality of existence stems from conceptual universality—it is generally thought that my mutual understanding with the furniture store owner arises from desk’s universal conceptuality. Yet when I say “Give me a desk,” I do not mean an abstract or theoretically universal desk but rather desire to purchase a single concrete desk—though even then, “desk” does not inherently denote the specific desk I ultimately select after examining those shown by the merchant. Were this not so, why would merchants display multiple desks or why would I engage in selection? Neutrality of existence rests neither on conceptual abstraction/universality nor particularity/individuality; rather, it independently expresses each concrete existence—what we call existence’s *Jeweiligkeit*. Every real existence signifies mediocrity; what Aristotle termed τὸ ἕκαστον refers not to individuality but existence characterized thusly. Language’s fundamentally practical nature—and this practice’s essential sociality—grounds existence’s mediocrity at its roots.

At this point, existence is naturally a relational existence.
In the “consciousness-subject” form discussed earlier, that which stands in opposition to it is existence as object or objective entity; in contrast, within the “language-we” form, that which stands in opposition can only be relational existence.
Therefore, the Greeks expressed things with the word πρᾶγμα.
Now, it goes without saying that the submergence of consciousness occurs within the mediocrity of existence.
The love and hatred we harbor toward existence—all that is subjective and internal—becomes submerged there, and consequently, the subjective and internal determinations of existence become concealed and obscured there.
Yet what is gained through this will far surpass what is lost.
The social and practical determinations of humans are exerted and can be satisfied there.

However, what must be noted most is that the mediocrity of existence—which once served to develop human sociality in this manner—has now transformed into fetters against its very development.
For such a transformation to occur, a significant change must have already been achieved in the very structure of real existence itself.
Indeed, the principle driving the mediocrity of existence in modernity is the commodity.
As commodities gradually became the dominant category and ultimately reached the point of becoming the universal category, the mediocrity of existence arrived at constraining and hindering the development of human sociality.
The mediocrity of existence thus plunged into contradiction, and with it, logos too was compelled to fall into the same contradiction.

We will now attempt to examine this matter.

＊ Aristotle has already stated that language is composed of three elements.
Namely, first there is the speaker (ὁ λϵρὶ οὖ λϵι), and third there is the person to whom he speaks (πρὸὅν).
Aristotle, *Rhetoric* 1.3.

** Derselbe, *Politica* 1.2.

That Marx’s two great mature works—which sought to elucidate the totality of capitalist society and reveal its fundamental character—both commenced with an analysis of commodities was no coincidence. Society in the modern era was in reality a commodity-producing society. At the current stage of human development, any problem—its ultimate analysis invariably pointed to the commodity, and its final mystery always lay within the structure of the commodity. The problem of commodities was not merely a specialized issue within economics as a particular science, nor was it only central to that discipline; rather, it constituted the total problem of capitalist society itself. The structure of the commodity was the prototype for the form of objectivity governing all existence in this society. In accordance with these societal characteristics, the tendency toward rendering existence mediocre was pushed to its extreme limits. And in accordance with this, consciousness became increasingly submerged from our real lives, thus rendering the materialization of existence ever more dominant. In this society, human labor—even its most inner aspects—was nothing more than a single commodity. Even the most material labor did not inherently prevent it from possessing spiritual significance. There were times when serving others and working for others could have been a manifestation of moral spirit. However, in capitalist society where commodities dominated as the universal category of all social existence, not only conscious relations between humans but all social relations themselves became submerged and engulfed. The essence of the commodity’s structure lay in human relations acquiring a material character, thus endowing this entity with that ghostly objectivity which concealed all traces of human relations under its own rigorous laws. Originally, each individual labor was a part of societal total labor, and all those parts were mutually dependent. However, in our society, the social interconnections between people who factually worked for each other were conducted in a form that became hidden from our eyes. In the capitalist world, the labor interconnections between humans were invisible. What brought this about? It was because all things took the form of commodities, circulated within the market, and humans did not rationally control the market but rather the market controlled humans through its prices. Thus relations between humans appeared as relations between commodities. This was precisely the significance of what Marx called the “fetishistic character of commodities” (*Fetischcharakter der Ware*) and exposed its secret. He wrote as follows: “The whole secret of the commodity-form therefore lies simply in this: that it reflects to humans the social character of their own labor as objective characteristics of the labor products themselves, as the socially natural properties of these things, and thus also reflects the social relation of producers to total labor as a social relation between objects existing externally to them.”

“By this *quid pro quo*, labor products become commodities—that is, sensuously supersensible or social things. … What appears before people’s eyes here in the fantastic form of a relation between things is nothing other than definite social relations between humans themselves＊.” This magical quality of the world of commodities arose from the specific social character of the labor that produced them.
Through this fundamental fact, the movement of things—behind which truly lay humans’ mutual labor—performed its own motion according to its inherent laws and ultimately came to dominate humans in turn.
Thereby, humans’ own activities and labor came to confront them as something objective and independent—that is, as commodities—governing them through their own laws alien to human existence.
To put it simply, humans were governed by the things they themselves had made.
Therein, "human self-alienation" (die menschliche Selbstentfremdung) was achieved.
The defining characteristic of capitalist society lay in the universal completion of the mediocrity of existence within such self-alienation.

＊ *Das Kapital*, I, 38–39.

What constitutes the possibility of proletarian existence within this society?
The objective reality of social existence appears "identical" in its immediacy for both proletarian and property owner alike.
For proletarians emerge as the inevitable product of capitalist social order.
Thus do proletarians share with property owners this materialization of all vital existence.
Yet the categories through which both classes mediate this identical immediate reality—elevating it to its proper objective reality—must fundamentally differ according to their divergent modes of being.

Marx expressed this in the following lucid words: “The propertied class and the proletarian class exhibit the same human self-alienation. However, the first class feels happiness and certainty in this self-alienation, recognizes this alienation as its own power, and thereby possesses the semblance of human existence. The second one feels negated in this alienation and therein sees the reality of its powerlessness and non-human existence.” He further stated: “Because the abstraction from all humanity—even from the semblance of humanity—has been practically completed in the developed proletariat; because within the proletariat’s living conditions, all living conditions of present society are synthesized at their most non-human apex; because humans in the proletariat have lost themselves, yet simultaneously not only gained theoretical consciousness of this loss but are also directly compelled by an absolute, irrefutable, unconcealable exigency—the practical expression of necessity—into rebellion against this non-humanity; for these reasons, the proletariat can liberate itself and must do so＊.”

In this way, two opposing practical attitudes toward the same immediate reality became possible. Since property owners had their existence affirmed within this society’s self-alienation, they—in accordance with the necessity of their existence—detached the phenomenal forms of this alienation from their capitalist foundations, and thus from their historicity, rendered them independent entities, and eternalized them as timeless archetypes of human relational possibilities in general: relations structured through the commodity form.

This eternalization appeared at first glance as though it were possible. For now, the structure of the commodity had reached the point of bearing universal significance as the prototype of objectivity for social existence in general. Therefore, to realize this eternalization, they erected so-called “eternal” ideologies and constructed so-called “universally valid” theories.

Truthfully speaking, this abstract eternity or universal validity itself was nothing but a reflection of the abstraction from humanity itself within human self-alienation through commodities. In capitalism’s developmental process, the structure of commodities ceaselessly penetrated human consciousness ever more deeply, ever more fatefully, ever more constitutively. All logos, under the universal and decisive domination of the commodity category, transformed into ideology in the pejorative sense—abstracted from humanity and thus detached from real existence—thereby conversely suppressing and oppressing humanity’s development.

However, property owners were not granted within their very existence the possibility of critiquing such ideology. For their existence was directly affirmed therein, and thus the examination of existence as process and as history became rejected. In contrast, because proletarians had their existence negated in present society—precisely through this negation—they could, and had to, grasp existence in terms of its dynamism and historicity. They understood that so-called eternal theories were founded upon capitalist society’s historical conditions. “The ideology of the ruling class is the dominant ideology in every era＊＊.” They understood that so-called universally valid ideology was nothing more than the property-owning class’s ideology. The proletariat, in accordance with the necessity of its existence, was necessarily critical.

I will further examine the characteristics of this critique and, in relation to that, the characteristics of Marxist materialism.

＊ *Die Heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik*, Nachlass, Volume II, pp. 132–133.

＊＊ *Marx-Engels Archiv*, I, p. 265.

III

The critique that identified ideology in its detachment from reality had to necessarily depart from reality itself.
Therefore, materialism meant first realism and positivism within those parameters.
Feuerbach, who had engaged in critiquing religious ideology as Marx’s precursor, wrote: “Speculation makes religion utter only what speculation itself conceived—and articulated far more coherently than religion ever could.”
It determined religion without letting religion define itself.
It did not emerge from itself.
Yet I made religion speak for itself.
I merely acted as its listener and interpreter; I did not serve as its guardian.
My sole purpose lay not in devising—but in removing the veil, in .
“To see correctly constituted my sole endeavor＊.”
What he attempted in *The Essence of Christianity* was precisely a “thing-faithful analysis rigorously adhering to its object—a historico-philosophical analysis＊＊” (*eine sachgetreue, ihrem Gegenstand sich aufs Strengste anschliessende, historischphilosophische Analyse*).
He further stated: “I am but a spiritual naturalist—and a naturalist can achieve nothing without instruments, without material means.”
Material means signified what we term experience.
It would have been strange indeed had we failed to find analogous thought in Marx.
He asserted: “The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary dogmas—they are real premises from which abstraction can occur only in imagination... These premises admit of verification in purely empirical fashion＊＊＊.”
Moreover, we encounter the declaration: “This mode of inquiry does not lack premises.”
It departed from real premises and never strayed from them.
We meet these words: “The premise consists not of humans in some fanciful isolation and fixity, but of humans within their actual, empirically observable developmental process under determinate conditions.”
Marx designated historical materialism’s historical investigation—counterposed to conventional idealist historiography—as “real historical narrative” (*die reale Geschichtschreibung*)＊＊＊＊.
Precisely thus did Marxism constitute realism in its original sense.

And this must be the inevitable consequence of Marxism’s theoretical structure. This theory originally contained within itself the moment of practice. However, to act practically upon existence and achieve practical mastery over it, one had to recognize the laws inherent to existence itself. “Nature cannot be conquered unless one obeys it” was a famous saying by Francis Bacon. A theory for transforming reality could have no other method than to cling tenaciously to reality itself and discern its laws of motion. Marxism, as a theory of revolution, could not be an ideology in the pejorative sense—one detached from reality.

＊ Vorrede zur zweiten Auflage vom ”Wesen des Christenthums,“Ⅶ, 283.

＊＊ Op cit., Ⅶ, 290.

＊＊＊ Marx-Engels Archiv, Ⅰ, 237.

＊＊＊＊ Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie,※（XLVI）.

It was extremely important to recognize the critical-practical significance of materialism.
Marx clarified this significance in *The Holy Family* when confronting French materialism.
According to him, French materialism contained two directions: those tracing their origins to Descartes and those to Locke.
The former had flowed into natural science proper, while the latter directly combined with socialism or communism.
For instance, Fourier had directly emerged from French materialist thought.
The connection between communism and eighteenth-century materialism resided primarily in the sharpness of critique that the latter directed against theology, idealistic metaphysics, and morality influenced by both.
Materialism opposed theology's dogmatic faith and the eternal ideas espoused by metaphysics and ethics, teaching that human morality and value judgments changed according to time and circumstances.
Marx demonstrated how socialism and communism in Britain and France were particularly closely connected with materialism's social-critical aspect.
He stated: "From materialism's doctrines concerning human nature's goodness, equal intellectual endowments, experience, habits, education's omnipotence, external circumstances' influence on humanity, industry's grave significance, enjoyment's sanctioning—to discern their necessary connection with communism and socialism required no great insight＊."
The practical philosophy of materialism had been communism's foundation above all else.
However, Marx simultaneously asserted that this practical philosophy had been communism's foundation above all else.
Yet Marx simultaneously recognized unmistakably the defects in materialism's theoretical aspects related to this practical philosophy—and consequently in this practical philosophy itself.
This defect lay first in eighteenth-century mechanical materialism's complete failure to understand existence's historicity.
Therefore it ended as an abstract theory, and the practical philosophy built upon it necessarily ended as mere fantasy.
It knew no truly realistic—and thus truly scientific—method.
Marx noted in *Capital* that "the defect of abstract, natural-scientific materialism lay in its exclusion of the historical process＊＊."
In contrast, the Marxist method—termed the "sole materialistic and therefore scientific method" (*die einzig materialistische und daher wissenschaftliche Methode*)—grasped reality in its actuality and within the historical process.
Secondly: "The chief defect of all previous materialism—Feuerbach's included—is that the object, actuality, sensibility are conceived only under objective or intuitive forms—not as sensuous human activity or practice—nor grasped subjectively＊＊＊."
The so-called "pure materialists" analyzed and dissected humans as static contemplative beings.

In contrast to this, for Marxism, productive activity—the act of material exchange between humans and nature—is the foundation of human existence, life, and consciousness.
"In the beginning was the act" (*Am Anfang war die Tat*)—hence humanity had acted before it thought—this is the foundation of Marxist materialism.

＊ Nachlass, Ⅱ, 238-239

＊＊Das Kapital, I, S. 336 Anmèrkung.

＊＊＊ Die Thesen über Feuerbach, I.

Precisely because of these aforementioned defects, traditional materialism’s transformative practice—built upon it—merely painted utopias or, failing to reach revolutionary transformation of the existing world itself, remained confined to demanding theoretical transformation of ideology.
All these forms of materialism were one-sided.
For materialism lost its realist essence when indulging in utopian practice and could not manifest its materialist characteristics when confined within the realm of ideology.
To put it simply, all of them failed to grasp the dialectical unity of theory and practice.
That which grasped this was precisely Marxist materialism.
This one valued theory first and foremost.
It defined itself as scientific socialism in contrast to utopian socialism.
“Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” (Lenin)—this was its motto.
A faithful historical-philosophical analysis of reality was its primary task.
Secondly, this materialism was essentially practical.
Marx states: “For practical materialists—that is, communists—the issue lies in revolutionizing the existing world and practically acting upon and transforming present things＊.” However, Marxism did not merely oppose theory and practice as primary and secondary; rather, it brought them into dialectical unity.
Here, theory existed precisely as demanded by practice, and practice operated precisely as guided by theory.
The opposing elements of theory and practice mutually constrained each other; practice developed by being guided by theory, and thus developed practice demanded theory at a new stage.
Theory developed practice while developing itself, and thus the developed theory demanded practice at a new stage.
Theory and practice mutually developed through each stage within such inevitable unity.
Because of this dialectical unity, theory could never become detached from the terrain of reality.
The fundamental reason why Marxism—though an ideology—could never be an ideology in the pejorative sense lay precisely here.
And precisely because of this, one should not conceive fixed dogmas under Marxist concepts, but rather should always understand it as a realistic theory in the process of development.
And the reason why Marxism was not any form of relativism or absolutism within traditional philosophical terminology lay precisely in this as well.

In this dialectical unity of theory and practice, Marxism reached the pinnacle of its actuality.
What Marxism, as a theory, possessed that was most inherent and superior—not merely in contrast to traditional materialism but to all forms of idealism—was indeed expressed within such dialectics.
And such characteristics would inevitably arise as long as Marxism took proletarian basic experience as its actual foundation.
Suppose a worker set out to make a desk: he sawed the wood, planed it, drilled holes with a chisel, and assembled the pieces.
This was step by step demanded by his very labor process.
When sawing, he required its principles, but at that moment he did not require the principles of planing.
This was first required when he advanced to the stage of planing.
The practice of sawing inevitably came to demand the principles of planing.
Or, the principles governing the use of a saw necessarily transformed into those governing the use of a plane.
In this way, for proletarian workers, theory and practice existed in dialectical unity; without this unity they could not maintain their existence—hence for them so-called ideology could not take shape.

＊ Marx-Engels Archiv, I, 241.

Because Marxism comprehends the dialectical unity of theory and practice, it cannot recognize any *Sollen* or any “ought.”
Marx states: “Communism is not a state to be created by us, nor an ideal to which reality must conform.
We call communism the real movement that sublates the present state.
The various conditions of this movement arise from existing premises＊.”
Here Engels also states: “Marx therefore never based his communist demands on our moral sentiments; rather, he grounded them upon the inevitable collapse of capitalist production society—increasingly being realized day by day before our eyes—and was satisfied with stating the simple fact that surplus value is composed of unpaid labor＊＊.”
Now, according to Marxism, this theoretical necessity must necessarily obtain practical expression.
The proletariat’s distress (Noth) is precisely the practical expression of this necessity (der praktische Ausdruck der Nothwendigkeit), Marx considers.
Now the masses of humanity have become entirely “propertyless,” and their poverty has reached an unbearable state.
The capitalist mode of production that has brought about this reality has now become an “unbearable”
force, and revolutionizing it has now become unavoidable.
The destitution of proletarian life thus issues an absolute command that can no longer be denied, ordering the transformation of society.
This is the “practical premise” of Marxist theory.
Because Marxism stands upon the dialectical unity of theory and practice, it sublates the material poverty and destitution of the entire proletariat within its theory.
Herein lies one root of Marxism’s self-definition as materialism.

＊ Marx-Engels Archiv, I, 252.

＊＊ Misère de laphilosophie, Préface, p. XII.

Now, since proletarians are born dialecticians due to the unique structure of their basic experience, they cannot—in seeking to liberate themselves from material destitution—adhere to any spiritual method wholly divorced from their fully materialized reality or society's actual conditions.
Rather, it is precisely through asserting their material demands most thoroughly that this dialectic makes them recognize they can transform not only their own reality but society's entire reality.
Yet truthfully speaking, what liberation emerges from matter's most thorough assertion—following dialectics' essence—is not matter alone.
Marx states: "The proletariat cannot free itself without sublating its living conditions; nor can it sublate these conditions without sublating all dehumanizing aspects of contemporary society subsumed within its state＊."
The proletarian movement's essence lies not in liberating this or that worker, but in freeing the entire proletariat—a feat unrealizable without sublating all classes per proletarian existence's historical nature.
Just so, proletarians demanding matter's liberation seek not satisfaction of individual desires but emancipation of all material life—unachievable without liberating total human existence per dialectical materialism's inner essence.
What thorough assertion liberates is neither mere matter nor mere spirit.
Rather through sublation of both matter and spirit does humanity's totality gain liberation.
There oppressed matter will find freedom; submerged consciousness will resurge.
There material-spiritual humanity will begin shining in its integral wholeness.
—I trust my research has shed some light on Marxism as historical materialism.

＊ Nachlass, II, 133.

——(July 1927)——