Joseph Dietzgen
Encyclopedia
Joseph Dietzgen was a German socialist philosopher
, Marxist and journalist. Joseph was born in Blankenberg in the Rhine Province
of Prussia
. He was the first of five children of father Johann Gottfried Anno Dietzgen (1794–1887) and mother Anna Margaretha Lückerath (1808–1881). He was, like his father, a tanner
by profession; inheriting his uncle's business in Siegburg. Entirely self-educated, he developed the notion of dialectical materialism
independently from Marx
and Engels
as an independent philosopher of socialist theory. His publications had major influences on Vladimir Lenin
and the Russian Revolution of 1917, which are rarely commented on today. Ludwig Feuerbach's works had a great influence on his early theories. He had one son, Eugene Dietzgen
.
. It was there that he first met Karl Marx
and other socialist revolutionaries, and began his career as a socialist philosopher. Following the failure of the 1848 Revolution he spent some time in the United States from 1849 to 1851, returning once again for a visit from 1859 to 1861. While in the New World he traversed the American South and witnessed first hand the lynchings which had come to characterize the slave states. During the period between his travels, Dietzgen joined the Alliance of Communists with Karl Marx back in Germany in 1852. In 1853, after marrying his wife Cordula Finke, he established his tannery business in Winterscheid, Germany. When he returned to the United States he set up another tannery in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1864 to 1868, he lived with his son Eugene in St. Petersburg
, where he was headmaster in the state tannery. He worked with the Tsar of Russia on improvement of the Russian methods. During his time spent in Russia he wrote one of his earliest texts, The Nature of Human Brain-Work, which was published in 1869. While he traveled, his wife managed the family tannery business back in Germany until he returned in mid 1869. Once he was back home, he was visited by Marx and his daughter, who proclaimed that Joseph had become "the Philosopher" of socialism. By 1870, Marx had embraced Dietzgen as a friend, and later praised him and his theory of dialectical materialism in the 2nd edition of the first volume of Das Kapital.
On June 8, 1878, Dietzgen was arrested because of the article lectured and later printed in Cologne: The future of the social democracy. He spent 3 months in prison before his trial was absolved and Joseph was released with his articles. In 1881 Joseph sent his son Eugene to the United States in order to avoid the Kaiser's upcoming army draft, to safeguard his articles and documents, as well as to secure a family home in the new world. Young Eugene was 19 when he arrived in New York, but quickly jump started a family business which still exists today as the Eugene Dietzgen Drafting Corporation. During this period, Eugene and Joseph kept in close contact through extensive letters which are currently being documented and published. In the same year, he ran for the elections of the German Reichstag
(the parliament), but emigrated in 1884 to New York City. He moved to Chicago two years later, where he became editor at the Arbeiterzeitung. Unfortunately Joseph's death in 1888 marked an end to his son's dependency, but his family line would continue to be part of some of the biggest engagements of the 20th century; from World War I, to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to the heart of World War II.
Dietzgen was later put on a stamp by the German Democratic Republic
.
, a method of understanding reality through the combination of Feuerbach's
materialism
and Hegel's dialectic. This overall principal asserts that society functions on a system of 'movers' which facilitate development; the economy (or the exchange of commodities) being the primary 'mover'. Marx emphasized the importance of this analysis indirectly in the first volume of Das Kapital, where he explains early on the importance of the commodity in understanding the effects of capitalism on use-value and surplus value. Dialectical materialism is also referenced in the Communist Manifesto when Marx states that "The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles."
Dietzgen's words and life have for some underscored the unity that existed on the political left at the time of the First International, before Anarchists, Revolutionaries, and Social Democrats were later divided: "For my part, I lay little stress on the distinction, whether a man is an anarchist or a socialist, because it seems to me that too much weight is attributed to this difference." In this, he acted to reconcile anarchists and Marxists (see Anarchism and Marxism
).
In contrast, some of his works were quoted extensively by Lenin in the latter's philosophical polemic – notably the second last work as against the very last which is ignored entirely. Hence a list of Dietzgen's relevant philosophical works with accompanying dates of composition – not publication – can help to elucidate his philosophical evolution.
, and was having a political discussion in a "vivacious and excited" manner about the "imminent collapse of capitalist
production". He stopped in mid-sentence with his hand in the air – dead of paralysis of the heart. He is currently buried at the Waldheim Cemetery
(now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park
, Chicago, a few feet away from the Haymarket Martyrs.
"The Religion of Social Democracy" (in six sermons from 1870–1875).
"Scientific Socialism" (1873).
"The Ethics of Social Democracy" (1875).
"Social Democratic Philosophy" (1876).
"The Inconceivable: a Special Chapter in Social-Democratic Philosophy" (1877).
"The Limits of Cognition" (1877).
"Our Professors on the Limits of Cognition" (1878).
"Letters on Logic" (addressed to Eugen Dietzgen) (1880–1884).
"Excursions of a Socialist into the Domain of Epistemology" (1886).
"The Positive Outcome of Philosophy" (1887).
More recent editions:
German
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, Marxist and journalist. Joseph was born in Blankenberg in the Rhine Province
Rhine Province
The Rhine Province , also known as Rhenish Prussia or synonymous to the Rhineland , was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822-1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg...
of Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
. He was the first of five children of father Johann Gottfried Anno Dietzgen (1794–1887) and mother Anna Margaretha Lückerath (1808–1881). He was, like his father, a tanner
Tanning
Tanning is the making of leather from the skins of animals which does not easily decompose. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name . Coloring may occur during tanning...
by profession; inheriting his uncle's business in Siegburg. Entirely self-educated, he developed the notion of dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
independently from Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
as an independent philosopher of socialist theory. His publications had major influences on Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and the Russian Revolution of 1917, which are rarely commented on today. Ludwig Feuerbach's works had a great influence on his early theories. He had one son, Eugene Dietzgen
Eugene Dietzgen
Eugene Dietzgen was the first son of socialist philosopher Joseph Dietzgen, born in Germany.- Early life :At age two he was taken with his father to Tsarist Russia to educate himself in Russian as well as learn his father's business of tannery...
.
Life as a revolutionary/philosopher
Early on in his youth, Joseph Dietzgen worked with the famed '48ers of the 1848 German RevolutionRevolutions of 1848 in the German states
The Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, also called the March Revolution – part of the Revolutions of 1848 that broke out in many countries of Europe – were a series of loosely coordinated protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the Austrian Empire...
. It was there that he first met Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and other socialist revolutionaries, and began his career as a socialist philosopher. Following the failure of the 1848 Revolution he spent some time in the United States from 1849 to 1851, returning once again for a visit from 1859 to 1861. While in the New World he traversed the American South and witnessed first hand the lynchings which had come to characterize the slave states. During the period between his travels, Dietzgen joined the Alliance of Communists with Karl Marx back in Germany in 1852. In 1853, after marrying his wife Cordula Finke, he established his tannery business in Winterscheid, Germany. When he returned to the United States he set up another tannery in Montgomery, Alabama. From 1864 to 1868, he lived with his son Eugene in St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, where he was headmaster in the state tannery. He worked with the Tsar of Russia on improvement of the Russian methods. During his time spent in Russia he wrote one of his earliest texts, The Nature of Human Brain-Work, which was published in 1869. While he traveled, his wife managed the family tannery business back in Germany until he returned in mid 1869. Once he was back home, he was visited by Marx and his daughter, who proclaimed that Joseph had become "the Philosopher" of socialism. By 1870, Marx had embraced Dietzgen as a friend, and later praised him and his theory of dialectical materialism in the 2nd edition of the first volume of Das Kapital.
On June 8, 1878, Dietzgen was arrested because of the article lectured and later printed in Cologne: The future of the social democracy. He spent 3 months in prison before his trial was absolved and Joseph was released with his articles. In 1881 Joseph sent his son Eugene to the United States in order to avoid the Kaiser's upcoming army draft, to safeguard his articles and documents, as well as to secure a family home in the new world. Young Eugene was 19 when he arrived in New York, but quickly jump started a family business which still exists today as the Eugene Dietzgen Drafting Corporation. During this period, Eugene and Joseph kept in close contact through extensive letters which are currently being documented and published. In the same year, he ran for the elections of the German Reichstag
Reichstag (German Empire)
The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....
(the parliament), but emigrated in 1884 to New York City. He moved to Chicago two years later, where he became editor at the Arbeiterzeitung. Unfortunately Joseph's death in 1888 marked an end to his son's dependency, but his family line would continue to be part of some of the biggest engagements of the 20th century; from World War I, to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to the heart of World War II.
Dietzgen was later put on a stamp by the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
.
Dialectical materialism
Probably Dietzgen's largest contribution to Marxist analysis was his philosophical theory of dialectical materialismDialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
, a method of understanding reality through the combination of Feuerbach's
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach...
materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
and Hegel's dialectic. This overall principal asserts that society functions on a system of 'movers' which facilitate development; the economy (or the exchange of commodities) being the primary 'mover'. Marx emphasized the importance of this analysis indirectly in the first volume of Das Kapital, where he explains early on the importance of the commodity in understanding the effects of capitalism on use-value and surplus value. Dialectical materialism is also referenced in the Communist Manifesto when Marx states that "The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles."
Dietzgen's words and life have for some underscored the unity that existed on the political left at the time of the First International, before Anarchists, Revolutionaries, and Social Democrats were later divided: "For my part, I lay little stress on the distinction, whether a man is an anarchist or a socialist, because it seems to me that too much weight is attributed to this difference." In this, he acted to reconcile anarchists and Marxists (see Anarchism and Marxism
Anarchism and Marxism
Anarchism and Marxism are similar political philosophies which emerged in the nineteenth century. While Anarchism and Marxism are both complex movements riven by internal conflict, as ideological movements their primary attention has been on human liberation achieved through political action...
).
In contrast, some of his works were quoted extensively by Lenin in the latter's philosophical polemic – notably the second last work as against the very last which is ignored entirely. Hence a list of Dietzgen's relevant philosophical works with accompanying dates of composition – not publication – can help to elucidate his philosophical evolution.
Death
Dietzgen died at home smoking a cigar. He had taken a stroll in Lincoln ParkLincoln Park
Lincoln Park is an urban park in Chicago, which gave its name to the Lincoln Park, Chicago community area.Lincoln Park may also refer to:-Urban parks:*Lincoln Park , California*Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California...
, and was having a political discussion in a "vivacious and excited" manner about the "imminent collapse of capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
production". He stopped in mid-sentence with his hand in the air – dead of paralysis of the heart. He is currently buried at the Waldheim Cemetery
German Waldheim Cemetery
German Waldheim Cemetery, also known as Waldheim Cemetery, was a cemetery in Forest Park, a suburb of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois. It was originally founded in 1873 as a non-religion specific cemetery, where Freemasons, Roma, and German-speaking immigrants to Chicago could be buried without...
(now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park
Forest Park, Illinois
Forest Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in the United States. The population was 15,688 at the 2000 census...
, Chicago, a few feet away from the Haymarket Martyrs.
Major works
Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit, 1869, engl "The Nature of Human Brainwork","The Religion of Social Democracy" (in six sermons from 1870–1875).
"Scientific Socialism" (1873).
"The Ethics of Social Democracy" (1875).
"Social Democratic Philosophy" (1876).
"The Inconceivable: a Special Chapter in Social-Democratic Philosophy" (1877).
"The Limits of Cognition" (1877).
"Our Professors on the Limits of Cognition" (1878).
"Letters on Logic" (addressed to Eugen Dietzgen) (1880–1884).
"Excursions of a Socialist into the Domain of Epistemology" (1886).
"The Positive Outcome of Philosophy" (1887).
More recent editions:
- Nature of Human Brain Work: An Introduction to Dialectics, Left Bank Books, Reprint 1984
- Philosophical Essays on Socialism and Science, Religion, Ethics; Critique-Of-Reason and the World-At-Large , Kessinger Publications, 2004, ISBN 1432615130
- The Positive Outcome of Philosophy; The Nature of Human Brain Work; Letters on Logic, Kessinger Publications, 2007, ISBN 054822210X
Collected Writings
- Josef Dietzgen, Sämtliche Schriften, hrsg. von Eugen Dietzgen, 4. Auflage, Berlin, 1930
- Joseph Dietzgen, Schriften in drei Bänden, hrsg. von der Arbeitsgruppe für Philosophie an der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR zu Berlin, Berlin, 1961–1965
Secondary literature
English- Anton Pannekoek: "The Standpoint and Significance of Josef Dietzgen's Philosophical Works" – Introduction to Joseph Dietzgen, The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Chicago, 1928
German
- SPD-Protokollnotizen S. 176; Liebknecht 1988, Biographisches Lexikon 1970, Dietzgen 1930, Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung, Digitale Bibliothek
- P. Dr. Gabriel Busch O.S.B.: Im Spiegel der Sieg, Verlag Abtei Michaelsberg, Siegburg 1979
- Josef Dietzgen, Sämtliche Schriften, hrsg. von Eugen Dietzgen, 4. Auflage, Berlin, 1930
- Joseph Dietzgen, Schriften in drei Bänden, hrsg. von der Arbeitsgruppe für Philosophie an der Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR zu Berlin, Berlin, 1961–1965
- Otto Finger, Joseph Dietzgen – Beitrag zu den Leistungen des deutschen Arbeiterphilosophen, Berlin, 1977
- Gerhard Huck, Joseph Dietzgen (1828–1888) – Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte des Sozialismus im 19. Jahrhundert, in der Reihe Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Bochumer Historische Schriften, Band 22, Stuttgart, 1979, ISBN 3-12-913170-1
- Horst Gräbner, Joseph Dietzgens publizistische Tätigkeit, unveröffentlichte Magisterarbeit an der J-W-G-Universität, Frankfurt/M, 1982
- Anton Pannekoek, "Die Stellung u. Bedeutung von J. Dietzgens philosophischen Arbeiten" in: Josef Dietzgen, Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit ; Eine abermalige Kritik der reinen und praktischen Vernunft, Stuttgart: J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., 1903