# The German Ideology - Author: [Karl Marx](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx.md) - Quotes: 14 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology ## Quotes > It is in fact not the consciousness dominating life but the very life dominating consciousness. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/it-is-in-fact.md) > Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/language-comes-into.md) > Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/thus-while-the.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work.md) > Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love. p. 103 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/philosophy-stands-in-the.md) > Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/where-speculation-ends.md) Topics: [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md) > For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interests the common interest of all the members of society, that is, sality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution appears from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/for-each-new.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md) > Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/communism-differs-from.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md) > Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the hoe market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and broad as much as possible by differential duties. p. 183 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/manufacture-was-all.md) > The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they are effective, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will. > > The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics of a people. Men are the producers of their conception, ideas, etc. — real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/the-fact-is-therefore.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md) > 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. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/communism-is-for.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md) > In civil law the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi itself asserts on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely independent of the community, and on the other the illusion that private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary disposal. p. 188 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/in-civil-law.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md) > The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/the-first-premise.md) Topics: [history](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history.md), [human nature](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/human-nature.md) > For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/for-as-soon.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [work](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work.md) > Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests. p. 187 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/karl-marx/the-german-ideology/through-the-emancipation.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md)