By
reading young Marx' and Engels' “German Ideology” – a work they
never published, seemingly because Marx didn't want to draw the
attention of the public to a half forgotten author named Max Stirner,
extensively treated in the essay – the reader clearly sees two
groups of people emerging: “German philosophers” on the one hand,
“we” on the other. The “we” here may indicate the authors,
Marx and Engels, or an entire movement that promotes a new way of
thinking.
In
direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to
earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not
set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as
narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men
in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of
their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the
ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.1
Ideas
and worlds change, but we still feel comfortable down here. Thoughts
remain linked to subjects, at least in English: it's we who think,
“we ascend”. When reading the German text in original, we might
see ourselves posted into a different universe where there are no
subjects.
Ganz
im Gegensatz zur deutschen Philosophie, welche vom Himmel auf die
Erde herabsteigt, wird hier von der Erde zum Himmel gestiegen. D.h.,
es wird nicht ausgegangen von dem, was die Menschen sagen, sich
einbilden, sich vorstellen, auch nicht von den gesagten, gedachten,
eingebildeten, vorgestellten Menschen, um davon aus bei den
leibhaftigen Menschen anzukommen; es wird von den wirklich tätigen
Menschen ausgegangen und aus ihrem wirklichen Lebensprozeß auch die
Entwicklung der ideologischen Reflexe und Echos dieses
Lebensprozesses dargestellt.
“Here
it is risen from earth to
heaven”: Pure thought is moving up and down. In German, we don't
need a real subject in passive phrases. “Hier wird gestiegen”,
alternatively “Es wird hier gestiegen”, with “es” being only
a placeholder: no real subject is indicated here. Thought doesn't
seem the product of individuals; it is floating around. That may
appear strange, since Marx and Engels are not exactly known for
ghost-like visions of thoughts and ideas. But why then do these
materialists use a grammatical form that abstracts from the thinking
individuals?
First,
their choice may be due to author's politeness, as Weinrich2
states. They elegantly avoid indicating themselves. Second, by not naming the real subjects, Marx and Engels create a firm
opposition to “German philosophy”, as they are not going to
attach just another member to the chain of philosophical authors who,
each one pretending to give the true and new thought, remain mere
philosophers, producers of ideas linked to names, like brands.
Marx
and Engels are not presenting themselves as the creators of just
another philosophy. The authors want to
underline the objectivity of their thought, and this is, as we see by
the image they give by using impersonal passive, apt to
mystification. Their language announces the entire historical
movement of Marxism. This is lost in the English translation.
The
Italian versions are even worse. Not only do they have to transform
the passive (since intransitive verbs in Italian cannot be turned
into passive voices), they have to do it with the impersonal pronoun
“si” which is identical to the reflexive pronoun. In that way,
stylistically they ignore the opposition between Marx' thought and
“Philosophy”, and also lose the differentiation between the
subjects the theory is talking about and the theory itself.
Esattamente
all’opposto di quanto accade nella filosofia tedesca, che discende
dal cielo sulla terra, qui
si
sale dalla terra al cielo.
Cioè non si parte da ciò che gli uomini dicono, si immaginano, si
rappresentano, né da ciò che si dice, si pensa, si immagina, si
rappresenta che siano, per arrivare da qui agli uomini vivi; ma si
parte dagli uomini realmente operanti e sulla base del processo reale
della loro vita si spiega anche lo sviluppo dei riflessi e degli echi
ideologici di questo processo di vita.3
If
you want to understand it, read it in German.
2Harald
Weinrich: Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache, 4th rev.
edition Hildesheim – Zürich – New York (Olms) 2007, pp.
179-181.
3 https://www.marxists.org/italiano/marx-engels/1846/ideologia/capitolo_II.html.
There is no appreciable difference between this version and the more
recent Bompiani edition.
