The German Ideology

The German Ideology (German: Die Deutsche Ideologie) is a collection of manuscripts written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1845–1846. After their failure to find a publisher, Marx famously stated that they had left the work to "the gnawing criticism of the mice", and it went unpublished during their lifetimes. The book as it is known today is a "literary collage", an editorial construction from the chaotic and untitled manuscripts first published in their entirety in 1932 by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.

The book is a major work of political and philosophical thought, considered the first to be recognizably "Marxist". In it, Marx and Engels articulate for the first time their materialist conception of history, also known as historical materialism. This new worldview posits that the material conditions of individuals' lives—specifically their mode of production—form the basis of society and that consciousness and ideas are products of these material realities, not the other way around. The famous formulation, "Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life," originates from this text.

A large portion of The German Ideology consists of detailed and often satirical polemics against some of their fellow German philosophers, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Max Stirner, as well as a critique of "True Socialism". Marx and Engels accused these "Young Hegelians" of engaging in a purely philosophical struggle against "phrases" rather than critiquing the real, material world from which those phrases arose.

The published book is typically divided into three parts, though the original manuscript was left incomplete and unrevised. Part I, "Feuerbach", contains the most systematic exposition of historical materialism and is the most frequently published and studied section, often being read in isolation. The book is considered a crucial text for understanding the development of Marxism, as it marks Marx and Engels's definitive break from German idealism and sets the foundation for their later economic and political works, including The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.