Karl Marx & the Role of Ideas in History

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. . . . Men are the producers of their . . . ideas . . . as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces. . . . [Ideas] have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking.

This view is to be expected from a thinker who sees materialism as the basis for all relations among human beings. All relations---in thought or in the physical world---flow from material conditions. This is true even for the most fundamental development of ideas in the beginning of human existence. Ideas, at first, are "merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other person and things." Even in that beginning of history, ideas were not independent of social relations: "Consciousne

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ociety in a given period by its consciousness. "Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its consciousness. . . . " More than a society's opinion of itself is necessary in order adequately to comprehend it. Studying various aspects of the social consciousness alone will not yield an understanding either of that consciousness or of that society. . . . Consciousness must be explained in its intimate connection with, and dependence upon, the tension between productive forces and the relations of production. Ideas emerge from the historical development of social relations, but not all of those ideas are true ideas which reflect the reality of society, even with that society's contradictions and conflicts. Even ideas which are illusory are still important to Marx as necessary elements in the historical march of society. These "imaginary expressions are not at all arbitrary. They express a rigorous necessity; that of the mode of action of the relations of production. . . . These imaginary expressions arise . . . from the relations of production themselves." In other words, ideas may be imaginary impressions, but they still can tell the
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Approximate Word count = 2496
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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