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Peter Josef Dietzgen (December 9, 1828April 15, 1888) was a German socialist philosophy, Marxist, and journalist.
Dietzgen 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 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as an independent philosopher of socialist theory. He had one son, Eugene Dietzgen.
On June 8, 1878, Dietzgen was arrested following the publication of a lecture he gave in Cologne, The Future of the Social Democracy. He spent 3 months in prison on remand before his trial was held. Although Joseph was released along with copies of his article, he was re-arrested twice and finally released. Joseph Dietzgen - a sketch of his life by Eugene Dietzgen 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 thriving family business in Chicago, the Eugene Dietzgen. It became one of the world's top drafting and surveying supply manufacturers and distributors and remained such through most of the 20th century. The company still exists today as a division of Nashua Paper, and its two buildings still stand in Chicago's now trendy Printer's Row and Lincoln Park areas.Eugene Dietzgen During this period, Eugene and Joseph kept in close contact through extensive letters which are currently being documented and published. In the same year, Joseph ran for the elections of the German Reichstag (German 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.Feldmann, Vera Dietzgen, interview by Joshua J. Morris. Joseph Dietzgen Research (May 2, 2008)
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 and 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." This suggests he took a more conciliatory, or relaxed view of the disputes of the moment (see Anarchism and Marxism).
In the earlier "Thirteenth Letter on Logic", Joseph Dietzgen gave the following summary of his philosophical positions:
"The red thread winding through all these letters deals with the following points: The instrument of thought is a thing like all other common things, a part or attribute of the universe. It belongs particularly to the general category of being and is an apparatus which produces a detailed picture of human experience by categorical classification or distinction. In order to use this apparatus correctly, one must fully grasp the fact that the world unit is multiform and that all multiformity is a unit.It is the solution of the riddle of the ancient Eleatic philosophy: How can the one be contained in the many, and the many in one
An explicit evocation of the Eleatics (Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, and Melissus of Samos) in particular is distinctive, and sets the language apart from the "mainstream" of dialectical materialism as is more commonly considered.
After his death Joseph's son, Eugene, gave the following view of the relevance of his father's philosophy:
If the founders of historical materialism, and their followers, in a whole series of convincing historical investigations, proved the connection between economic and spiritual development, and the dependence of the latter, in the final analysis, on economic relations, nevertheless they did not prove that this dependence of the spirit is rooted in its nature and in the nature of the universe. Marx and Engels thought that they had ousted the last spectres of idealism from the understanding of history. This was a mistake, for the metaphysical spectres found a niche for themselves in the unexplained essence of the human spirit and in the universal whole which is closely associated with the latter. Only a scientifically verified criticism of cognition could eject idealism from here. (p iv)
This prompted a negative reaction from Georgi Plekhanov, one of the earliest Russian Marxists (as well as co-founder of the Iskra magazine and Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party), in an article published in 1907:
Despite all our respect for the noble memory of the German worker-philosopher, and despite our personal sympathy for his son, we find ourselves compelled to protest resolutely against the main idea of the preface from which we have just quoted. In it, the relationship of Joseph Dietzgen to Marx and Engels is quite wrongly stated" Plekhanov, "Joseph Dietzgen"
It is of note that Vladimir Lenin extensively quoted the writings of Joseph Dietzgen in his later notorious polemic against Ernst Mach (and more pertinently and directly, his rival Alexander Bogdanov), (which was later made part of exemplary canon under Stalin). Elsewhere Lenin also made notes concerning Dietzgen among the works later grouped into his Philosophical Notebooks (Collected Works, Vol. 38., Lawrence & Wishart, 1980). Bakhurst, D. On Lenin’s Materialism and empiriocriticism. Stud East Eur Thought 70, 107–119 (2018)
In the note on pages 403-406 he compared him unfavourably to Feuerbach:
...To be does not mean to exist in thought. In this respect Feuerbach’s philosophy is far clearer than the philosophy of Dietzgen. “The proof that something exists,” Feuerbach remarks, “has no other meaning than that something exists not in thought alone.”
In his 1938 book on Lenin, written after the work had already been given the status of a paradigm of philosophy in the USSR, Pannekoek included a highly critical response to the text. In particular, Pannekoek charged that Lenin had completely ignored Dietzgen's last composed philosophical work and therefore misunderstood the development of Dietzgen's thought. Pannekoek, A. "Lenin as Philosopher"
In his polemic against Lenin, Pannekoek appeals to Dietzgen as an authority on Marxist philosophy. The writings of Dietzgen are most discussed and attract the most interest in the context of these debates, but have otherwise fallen into obscurity in present-day philosophy.
Dietzgen figured on a commemorative postage stamp issued in the German Democratic Republic.
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