Marx complains about the Young Hegelians, "it has not occurred to any one of [them...] to inquire into the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings" (6). While he repeats again and again that he himself does so - that is, attempt to consider his material surroundings, - my immediate reaction is to wonder at the unjustifiability of the description of his own 'history' to "not set out from what men say... [but rather to] set out from real, active men" (14). My question is how he can - or whether he even tried to - resolve the contradictionb between the fact that what he's writing is what he is saying, or what others are saying. This is definitely a more philosophical question of mine - how does he know that his interpretation, just because it is more 'obviously' "empirical," actually is so? It's his interpretation, just as the Hegelians' were the idealist interpretation of history. I.e. science, or rather our supposedly scientific knowledge, is as equally heresy.
My second question is whether his analysis of bourgeois intellectual domination is sufficiently accurate. Do the dominant "control" what is intellectual? Or are they not as equally alienated by it? Marx asserts as "self-evident" the superiority of the communist society, so capitalists must be as equally alienated by the ideology that benefits them as the proletariat who is disadvantaged by it.
I find your second point interesting, and agree that Marx looks at this issue from only one side. All he states about man being alienated by way of being too ideological or too focused, consciously, should also apply to that of the wealthy, upper class. To add to your argument, I would also like to point out the irony of Marx's stance on 'action-focused' lifestyles. Speaking generally, those with these conscious-driven, intellectual type jobs would most likely be of the upper class while those who work day to day directly with only materials and their hands occupy the proletariat. If the bourgeois are free from intellectual domination as Marx suggests, why are they (theoretically) more consciously driven than the working class?
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