Empiricism, Science, and Philosophy in The German Ideology

Ever since the full text of The German Ideology appeared in 1932 it has been subject to persistent misreading due to the fact that the idiosyncratic nature of this work-as merely a rough, unedited, and unfinished draft as well as a fiercely polemical text-has been neglected. As a result, the majority of scholars have tended to claim that Marx and Engels in this work propose an empiricist or positivistic conception of human history and society. A critical reading that is sensitive to the peculiar nature of this text reveals that these common interpretations are wholly ungrounded and that, on the contrary, the authors develop their polemic against the Young Hegelians from an outlook that is deeply indebted to the Hegelian philosophical legacy (even though paradoxically the latter espouses an absolute idealistic viewpoint).