>>> "james daly"
The source I have found most helpful in understanding what Marx meant by idealism is Lucio Colletti's brilliant books *Marxism and Hegel*, and *From Rousseau to Lenin*. The essential message is summed up in his illuminating Introduction to the Penguin edition of Marx's *Early Writings*.
^^^ CB: Why not got straight to _the_ source , Marx himself ? in _Capital_, a "late" writing. Straight from the horse's mouth , so to speak.
"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
This is elaborated in the Introduction to Hegel's *Philosophy of Right*,
^^^^ CB: To be exact, idealism is "inverted consciousness":
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm
Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right Karl Marx in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844 For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.
The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis [“speech for the altars and hearths,” i.e., for God and country] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of himself in the fantastic reality of heaven, where he sought a superman, will no longer feel disposed to find the mere appearance of himself, the non-man [Unmensch], where he seeks and must seek his true reality.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
^^^
in such metaphors as that the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk, and that when philosophy paints its gray on gray (e.g. the originally multicoloured Parthenon reduced to an engraving in a dictionary of antiquities?) a form of life has grown old. Philosophy can only interpret the world, not change it.
^^^^ CB: Or as Marx, Engels and Lenin emphasize ( and they are in agreement on these issues; the idea that Engels misrepresents Marx on "materialism and idealism" is nonsense), the test of _theory_ is practice. Note that Marxists are for theory contra the anti-theoreticians mentioned in the heading of this thread.
This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com