AMD 2

For AMD 2 I continued reading Marx’s German Ideology. Nearly all of the reading was of a section entitled “Concerning the Production of Consciousness”. Marx gives an account of the influence of the world market, or more properly different dynamics within the market, on human ideas. Much of the section is the rejection of the work of Ludwig Feuerbach, a man who accepted some Marxist principle, while rejecting others and instead taking a Hegelian stance. Feuerbach is classified as a “dialectical materialist”; Marx commends him for realizing man is an “object of the senses” yet faults him for not conceiving that man is a “sensuous activity”. Marx says the ruling ideas of an epoch are the ideas of that epoch’s ruling class; this ruling class is an abstract class possibly consisting of a combination of men from other classes. The principles prevalent in a society are those which characterize the power dynamics; for instance, America has separation of power manifested in bureaucracy because of the lack of a majority group at the founding, equality due to the degree of democracy, and a shame based virtue system due to its representative democracy and media scrutiny of elections. Sam Engel