The Holy Family

The full title is The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism—Against Bruno Bauer and Company. A work by Marx and Engels criticizing the subjective idealism of the Young Hegelians and also their first joint work. Written from September to November 1844, published in a single edition in February 1845 in Frankfurt.

In the early 1840s, Marx and Engels began to co-operate closely, and successively accomplished a transformation from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. A group of Young Hegelians headed by Bruno Bauer radically morphed ideologically into antiquated and vulgar subjective idealism and completely degenerated politically into an ideologically conservative and politically reactionary sectarian clique. In December 1843, Bruno Bauer and others founded the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (General Literature Journal), advocating subjective idealism based on self-consciousness, declaring that the only positive factor in the process of world history was their theoretical activity, namely “pure criticism” of “spirit”, and calling it “critical criticism”. At the end of August 1844, Marx and Engels met for the second time in Paris in order to criticize the theoretical and political views of the Young Hegelians, expose the harmful reactionary ideas, defend and elaborate their new materialist and communist views, and they decided to co-write The Holy Family. They parodied Bauer and his company “Holy Family” to satirize their arrogance in front of the masses, as if Jesus and his disciples were preaching among the people from above the Earth. The Holy Family profoundly criticized the Young Hegelians and preliminarily expounded the new world outlook of historical materialism in the making, with the following fundamental points of view: First, it criticized the philosophy of speculative idealism and emphasized the reality of the objective world. Marx and Engels upheld the principle of materialism, emphasized the materiality of the world, pointed out that the objective world does not depend on illusions, specters, concepts, categories dependent on self-consciousness, but on the real existence; they exposed the absurdity and ridiculousness of the Young Hegelians' taking “self-consciousness”, “spirit” and other thinking activities as the subject of creation, as well as its features of speculative idealism and philosophical-epistemological roots; they criticized that it is impossible to correctly understand the laws of development of history of society or to grasp the historical reality of different historical periods and their characteristics without the practical activities of the masses. Second, it revealed that self-consciousness is not the fundamental driving force of society, and elaborated the decisive part played by material production in social development. Marx and Engels pointed out that that it is not self-consciousness but material production that determines historical development, and emphasized material production of society as the fundamental starting point for the observation of history, which had touched upon the fundamental principle of materialism that the mode of production plays the determining role in social development. Third, Marx and Engels criticized the opposition between the masses and the spirit, and demonstrated the great historical part played by the masses. Marx and Engels criticized the erroneous view of speculative idealism, which puts the “mass” and the “spirit” in absolute opposition to each other, and held that only ideas reflecting social reality and the interests of the masses are the driving force of development of society; they criticized the individualistic heroistic conception of history, and put forth the important principle of historical materialism that the masses play a decisive role in history. Fourth, they criticized the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie and pointed out the historical trend that the capitalist private property will inevitably collapse. Marx and Engels analyzed the class relations and the social position of the proletariat in capitalist society, pointed out that “proletariat and wealth are opposites”, and emphasized that the capitalist exploitation and oppression suffered by the proletariat was by no means an illusory fantasy as the young Hegelians believed, but “complete reality”. It was the class oppression of the proletarians by the propertied class, and it was bound to die out eventually with the development of society. Fifth, it analyzed the contradictory movement of capitalist society and clarified the historical mission of the proletariat of liberating itself and all mankind. Marx and Engels illustrated from the point of view of estrangement, the violation of human nature by private property, that both the propertied class and the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. Whereas the propertied class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, the class of the proletariat feels annihilated in this estrangement and it sees in its powerlessness and sees the reality of inhuman existence. Not only are the proletarians consciously aware of this elimination, but they are also directly driven by their poverty and dehumanization, which inevitably generates indignation against this condition—contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life thus they demand the total negation of that nature. The proletariat must emancipate itself and be able to achieve self-emancipation, so the proletariat is the class which can truly undertake the historical mission of abolishing private property, sublating human estrangement, emancipating itself and all mankind. Sixth, they pointed out that revolutionary practice is the fundamental way for the proletariat to realize its emancipation. Marx and Engels analyzed the contradictory movement inherent in capitalist society—the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and pointed out that it the Young Hegelians’ reduction of the contradiction and struggle between the two to an opposition between the categories “having” and “not having”, and their substitution of the concept of sublation (“Aufhebung”) for the actual class struggle was absurd and reactionary. In order to emancipate itself, the proletariat must resolutely abandon the abstract preachings of speculative philosophy and carry out resolute revolutionary struggle.

The Holy Family is a work with the character of a battle cry in which Marx and Engels declared war on speculative philosophy. Although it retained some influence of Feuerbachian humanism and did not elaborate precisely some important concepts and principles of historical materialism, it was the beginning of transcending Feuerbach philosophy, replaced the cult of abstract man with the science on the real man and his historical development, and played an important role in the opposition to Young Hegelians. In this regard, Engels once pointed out: “The cult of abstract man, which formed the kernel of Feuerbach’s new religion, had to be replaced by the science of real men and of their historical development. This further development of Feuerbach’s standpoint beyond Feuerbach was inaugurated by Marx in 1845 in The Holy Family.” Lenin held that “laid the foundations for what would develop into a scientific revolutionary materialist socialism”.