Kommentar zu Hegel und Marx, Chapter 5
The Reversal of Subject and Predicate
Marx’s procedure can be stated in a single sentence. Hegel, he says, makes the predicate into the subject and the subject into the predicate: the Idea appears as what is active, and the real relations — family, civil society, the state — appear as that in which it expresses itself.
“Family and civil society are the presuppositions of the state; they are what is properly active; but in speculation this is reversed. Once the Idea is turned into a subject, however, the real subjects here — civil society, family, ‘circumstances, arbitrariness, etc.’ — become unreal, objective moments of the Idea, meaning something other than themselves.” (MEW 1, 206)
The procedure comes from Feuerbach, where it made good sense. Feuerbach’s critique of religion shows that the properties ascribed to God are taken from man: it is not God who created man in his image, but the reverse. Whoever exchanges subject and predicate back again gains something by it — he finds the real author of what had been credited to an alien authority.
Marx transfers this to Hegel. In Hegel’s case, the Idea stands in the place of God, and real human beings stand in the place of the dispossessed author.
Before asking whether the transfer holds, we must establish what it aims at. It aims at a manner of speaking that really does exist in Hegel and cannot be interpreted away.