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world. But theory still has a positive role: the proletariat finds its spiritual
weapon z in it; and it becomes a material force as soon as it lays hold of
the masses. 8 However, this 'realization' of philosophy already implies its
Aufhebung and negation. 4 How this is concretely to be understood remains
obscure. For Marx, in agreement with Feuerbach, only religion qualifies
as illusory consciousness.
The year 1844 - with the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts and The
Holy Family as inter-related in originating the philosophical starting
point - is an essential transitional stage along the road toward the final
materialist conception of history. The philosophical background contains
a double dialectic. On the one hand, the dialectic of man's self-creation
in work. On the other, the dialectic of man's alienation in the course of
history and his return from this alienation. While the first form of the
dialectic is a process which can in principle go on ad infinitum, the dialectic
of alienation leads to a final state.
It is against this background that one must understand the relation
between being and consciousness, as formulated by Marx in this period.
The basic situation is described as follows: "Thought and being ... are
of course different, but also together in unity." 5 This is explained by a
comparison between man and animal. The animal is immediately one
with his vital activity; for man the latter is the object of his consciousness;
he is it and knows it. 6 Being is, however, clearly primary in this unity.
While in the first developmental phase of his thought Marx recognizes
a positive role for philosophy, henceforth he repeats again and again that
the contradictions in reality are to be overcome not through solution in
thought but only through practice. 7
This unity of thought and being is disturbed by alienation. Conscious-
ness no longer directly overlies being; it becomes illusory. This illusory
consciousness finds expression in religion (defined in The Holy Family -
as in Engels' Anti-Diihring - as a 'phantastic reflection') above all, in
metaphysics, but also in philosophy in general, in law, state, family,
morality, science, art, 'etc.'.
This means that the overcoming of human self-alienation is "the return
of man out of religion, family, state, etc., into his human, i.e., social,
mode of being", s The works of this period do not have much to say as
to which form consciousness will have after the overcoming of alienation,
if philosophy, science, art, morality, religion, etc., are to be seen as struc-
THE MARXIST CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY 179
vertically between them so that some forms - at least under certain con-
ditions and at certain times - are true and others essentially false? Marx
himself conceived it vertically, thus consistently considering not only reli-
gion but also philosophy, morality, law, etc., as forms of false conscious-
ness. In later Marxist philosophy this demarcation line was also drawn
vertically, but not in the same place as by Marx. Here only religion is
regarded as an essentially false form of social consciousness, while philos-
ophy, morality and the other superstructural domains are false only in
class society as the expression of the consciousness of the ruling class.
Can this adjustment of Marx also be seen as a logical consequence of
his own line of thought? It seems to me that it can. For if his new view
of the historical dialectic in the third period, with its periodically recurring
revolutions, offers the possibility - as we have seen - of justifying the
occurrence of true consciousness even in earlier social formations, there
is no reason why this should be limited to one form of consciousness.
Marx himself distinguished the forms of consciousness not according to
the criterion of true and false but according to the specific character of
each. 22 Even he distinguishes within the only form of consciousness he
recognized as true (i.e., the science of nature and man) what still belongs
to alienation (e.g., bourgeois national economy) and what is true. It is
impossible to see why the same would not be true of the other forms of
social consciousness.
In any case, the later Marxist philosophy was not consistent enough in
its rehabilitation of the various forms of social consciousness when it did
not include religion in this rehabilitation and when it did not distinguish
in it what is true and what is ideological, i.e., deformed by class interests.
If one recognizes religion as a specific form of social consciousness, one
has to attribute to it a specific relation to reality: it cannot then be con-
sidered an 'essentially' false form of consciousness. The different forms
of social consciousness are to be distinguished not according to true and
false but according to the specific character of their relation to reality.
What is more, it is a eontradictio in adjecto to speak of an essentially
false reflection of reality in human consciousness. A totally false reflection
is precisely no reflection at all.
It is apparent, then, that modern Marxism has the possibility - without
betraying itself or its theoretical foundations - of putting itself into a
positive relation to religion. This seems to me to be of tremendous im-
THE MARXIST CONCEPT OF IDEOLOGY 183
REFERENCES