Characterized as a whole Marxism is, as Gramsci put it., the philosophy of praxis. In the XIth thesis on Feuerbach, Marx states the essence of this philosophy: “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” [1] This famous thesis, however, can and has been interpreted in various ways.
Considered in isolation and independently of the meaning of praxis in Marx's works, the XIth thesis reduces to the statement that Marx’s philosophy is a revolutionary one—it is an interpretation of the world meant to change it. But if Marx’s thesis meant only that and no more, then Marxism would be just another philosophy, since it is not the first one to aim at the transformation of the world. French materialism in the 18th century was definitely revolutionary and politically active; it was definitely praxis-oriented and wanted to substitute a new, “correct” social order for the old one. But although politically radical, its revolutionary spirit was not philosophically revolutionary. To understand this a thorough analysis of Marx’s concept of praxis is needed. In earlier materialist theories, praxis was something externally forced upon a pre-given reality. It transformed reality, but it had no relation whatsoever to its structure; “. . . reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively.” [2] For Marx praxis is not a principle opposed to and struggling with reality, but reality itself. In fact, Kant himself revealed the secret of previous kinds of materialism when he separated pure from practical Reason, thus restricting praxis to moral practice and to the preservation and realization of individual autonomy. Hence, if we identify reality with what is given., then praxis cannot be real.
When Marx regarded reality not as object but as praxis, as human [45/46] sensuous activity, subjectively, i.e. when he saw object and subject in reality as inseparable and identical, he also criticized idealism. Idealism, he says, naturally “does not know . . . real, sensuous activity as such.” [3] Marx goes beyond all previous types of materialism and idealism by pointing out their essential identity, an identity found in their one-sidedness; that is to say, neither of them regards “human activity itself as objective activity.” [4] For so-called philosophical materialism the object is given, while activity itself in its “dirty-Jewish form of appearance” [5] becomes only external; and, though idealism regards activity as the essence of reality, it does away with the objective side.
The central concept of Marxist philosophy, its point of departure and arrival, is praxis. In practice subjective and objective aspects form an inseparable unity. The dialectical identity of subject and object in praxis, furthermore, is to be regarded as an ontological and not as an epistemological statement. For the individual subject of cognition, reality, exists solely as object, that is, as a thing in itself existing “objectively”, independently of the subject’s cognitive activity. To avoid misunderstandings, which emanate even from Marxists, the following must be said, and must be absolutely clear. The subject is not an isolated subject with its discrete consciousness. At the very moment when the subject is considered to be an “abstract, isolated human being”, social life becomes just as objectively “external” as nature. But, as Marx states it in the VIth thesis on Feuerbach, this isolated human being is a mere presumption: the presumption of the fetishistic consciousness. In the consciousness of the man of alienated society, of a society in which human relations appear in the form of relations between things, and thus, in which social movements seem to be activities of isolated persons, it is the isolated individual who appears as subject, as a bare subject; while the world in its totality, society and all of its members, just like nature, appear as objects, as bare objects. The idea which projects the essence of the real subject (that is, of the human species) beyond reality and which conceives reality in its totality (nature and society) as the object [46/47] of this transcendent subject must be regarded as the transcendent formulation of the appearance mentioned above (fetishistic consciousness). This appearance, however, does not cease to exist by being recognized as such. The consciousness of the fact that man's social relationships are the products of his own activities does not mean that man controls these relationships. Within these alienated social conditions, man's subjection still exists, even if he is not dependent upon forces outside him or upon laws independent of him, but on the products of his own activities. The recognition of the fetishistic appearance gives the subject the potentiality of bringing this dependency to an end through revolutionary activity, the potentiality of transforming the “natural” character of social laws.
The dialectical identity of subject and object is the secret of the revolutionary spirit, of Marxist philosophy; man can only get rid of the shackles of the fetishism of a "given" reality if he recognizes that the "given" reality is the product of his own activity. In this sense, even the most revolutionary bourgeois philosophy only "interprets" reality. Theoretically and practically, it only creates the preconditions for a possible realization of a political establishment adequate to already existing social conditions. Thus in reality, Marxist philosophy is the first to go beyond interpretation and to change the world, a world which is not already "given" but which is objectified human praxis itself. In this philosophy, praxis arrives at "self-consciousness", and that is why Marxism is a revolutionary turning-point in the history of philosophy.
We should not disregard the fact, however, that, by giving unity to object and subject, praxis is an objectifying activity. By discovering this, Marx succeeded in overcoming the limits of bourgeois materialism in a non-idealistic way. We have in mind this formulation: "it is the . . . production of material life which determines social life-processes". The means of production of material life presupposes nature, which is, in fact, only an object for the subject, for man. The identity of object and subject for Marx, in contrast to Hegel, is not realized in the Absolute Idea, not in a mystical way. Man is a [47/48] natural being who realizes and forms his own reality (social life) in the course of his everlasting, "forcing back" of the boundaries of nature. Praxis, the identity of subject and object, is nothing else but social life growing out of nature.
Thus Marx's philosophic approach is the comprehension of objectivity, of reality, as subjective, sensuously real human activity, as praxis. Can this approach be made consistent with the "scientific" approach, which considers its subject matter to be exclusively objective?, which regards its subject matter as an objectivity independent of man., as movements of objects determined by causal relations and by objective laws equally independent of man?, which endeavors to exclude from its subject matter every anthropomorphic and anthropocentric feature?, whose specific features, in contrast to human areas of knowledge, expels teleology from its domain? Is it not the case that the objective "scientific'' approach to reality thus has not removed itself from the approach of fetishizing objectivity, which had been the characteristic of materialism preceding Marx? Furthermore, do science and philosophy, then, necessarily complete one another in some sense?
The necessity and importance of science in human life and society can only be denied on the basis of some kind of romantic standpoint, according to which "human problems" can only be solved through the denial of technical achievements, by means of a return to some kind of ancient state of affairs where man and nature confronted each other without any mediations. But this can only be done by abolishing man's humanity. Even in the course of using the most primitive instruments, there is—consciously and unconsciously—a utilization of the causal relations of objective nature independent of man. When science constructs its deanthropomorphic view of nature, it does nothing but recognize, generalize, and systematize those presuppositions which are hidden in even the most primitive activities of our labor. It would I e very difficult to believe that science has achieved its practical successes in spite of, and not as a result of, its approach. A really effective science became possible precisely as a result of the rise of the deanthropomorphic approach of Galileo. [48/49]
Thus apparently, there are two conflicting approaches: that of philosophy, apprehending the object as subject, and that of “science”, knowing only the object and assigning the subject the task of reflecting the object. The contrast between the two approaches is not only theoretical; modern types of Lebensphilosophie, e.g. existentialism, definitely reject the “scientific” approach, denying that science can describe reality, regarding science only as a tool, one which can be very useful for achieving certain results, but which has nothing to do with reality. Within Marxism, too, we can find views rejecting the "scientific" approach, throwing out any kind of facticity, any objective laws of reality, recognizing the positivist standpoint in such approaches. This tendency states that any assumption of an object without a subject springs from the fetishistic consciousness of the world of bourgeois society, from an alienated consciousness for which social relations between men appear in the form of relations between things.
This criticism can be applied not only to bourgeois social science but to such interpreters of Marxism, too, who, from the philosophy of praxis and from the dialectical unity realized in it, "stepped back to philosophical materialism" (Gramsci). This interpretation, this stepping back, the danger of which has been called to our attention by Gramsci, characterized the entire official Marxism of the Stalin Era, and it "culminated" in Stalin's statements, according to which social laws, just as in the case of natural laws., "are the reflections of the objective reality in people's heads". This view is indeed the fetishistic consciousness created by alienation, by reified human relations. It reflects that state of affairs when "man's activity becomes a power alien and opposed to him, being subjected to it instead of being its ruler".
It by no means follows from Marx's view, that all of reality must be considered as man's own activity. However, if we say that deanthropomorphic natural science were also borne by such a fetishistic consciousness, we implicitly consider nature as human activity. By considering positivism to be the acceptance of such an objective view [49/50] of nature, we ourselves give ground to a positivistic account of natural science. More precisely, we thereby accept this interpretation, setting philosophy as the only possible interpretation of reality outside of this positivistic view of nature. The view which considers natural science not as knowledge of actual nature but only as a fixation of merely subjective experiences states exactly the same thing about the content of the theories of natural science as modern positivism.
It is not possible that the reality which is the subject matter of science is different from that of philosophy's? Also, that the subject matter of science, i.e. the reality described by it, is in fact a mere object not only for cognition but also for human objectifying activity?—while the subject matter of philosophy, the reality described by philosophy, that is, social life, praxis, is such an object which is at the same time the subject as well? In our opinion, this is the case. Consequently, the "scientific" and the "philosophical" modes of inquiry are not two different methods of approach to one and the same reality (in which it should only be asked whether the two are complementary to each other, or whether one of them should be eliminated in order to reach the right way of approaching reality) but both are the only possible ways of approaching their own subject matter.
Those who say that there is no object without a subject do not accept this solution, however. According to them, nature for man is given only in and thus it cannot be separated from praxis. Undoubtedly., they say, there is something resisting man's material activity, there is something confronting man; that can be called nature, if we care to call it that,, but the concrete structure of this something, those concrete forms in which it appears, its “rationality”, the causal relations and regularities valid in it, and thus everything that is seen by man as an object, can by no means be an objective characteristic of this something, i.e. a characteristic independent of human praxis, but it is, on the contrary, created by praxis. Arguments supporting this view cannot really be handled in a cavalier manner. Adherents of this view argue, first of all, that positing a "rationality" of nature, i.e. the supposition that some kind of regularities are at work in nature, [50/51] necessarily introjects a transcendent element into nature. Where does this rationality come from, if we do not posit some kind of reason which constructed it, a supernatural reason or a spirit? Order is an offspring of praxis, and the separation of "order" from praxis is just as much an alienated product as is the separation of regularities in society from human activity. Even if one admit the objective existence of a structure in nature, one existing prior to man, they ask, Where is that nature today? Humanized nature cannot be identified with nature "in itself". They also refer to Marx: "But nature too, taken abstractly, for itself, and rigidly separated from man, is nothing for man." [6] What is more, in defense of their view, they could even refer to the Marx of the "Theses on Feuerbach", to that Marx who drafts in a definite form his praxis-oriented dialectical philosophy: "The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question." [7] The same can be said about questions referring to an objective nature isolated from praxis. Marx's view on the relation of truth and praxis can only be interpreted correctly if we see that truth itself comes about only in praxis. Theory as a picture reflecting reality does not exist; it is a part of praxis, and thus does not stand above it.
First of all, we have to admit that for man nature in its "Being-for-itself" is really nothing. Nature is only given to us in praxis, in activity, Accordingly, the meaning of nature changes historically, not only in the sense that human activity transforms the originally given environment, i.e. it objectively changes "nature", but also in the sense—and this is more important—that man's picture of nature is constantly formed and transformed by man's metabolism with nature. Differences of interpretation are often a consequence of the fact that, by and within praxis, nature is penetrated more and more. The elementary particles of matter have by no means always belonged to what nature means to man. More and more, phenomena of a novel qualitative nature are discovered in nature, and, in most cases, that is why man is compelled to reinterpret those already at hand.
Since natural science always forms its view of nature by means of [51/52] the practice of a given age, then not even the most exact natural science can give man the view of nature; the natural sciences of an age cannot separate themselves—at least not radically—from the productive activities of their age, from their patterns of concrete objectifying activity. This does not force us to say that the view of nature of the sciences is a projection of an alienated social praxis. The concrete content and depth of our view of nature are bound to praxis, and nothing can be known of nature not connected with praxis, with the social mode of existence. This, and only this, is stated by Marx. But the fact that science's deanthropomorphic view of nature assigns a definite structure to nature reflects something which is the same as our description of it (without added human praxis), and is proved by praxis itself. It is explained by the fact that, to overcome the resistance of that particular "something", we need definite presuppositions, for the realization of our human purposes concerning nature is a function of our knowledge of nature. Nevertheless, we should not concentrate on partial elements. The realization of a practical task is not proof, in itself, of the truth of the concepts which make the solution possible. This can only be said by a pragmatist, who identifies truth with its possible use.
The difference between the concepts of praxis (as criteria of truth) in Marxism and pragmatism does not lie in the fact that in pragmatic theory truth is identified with usefulness, while for Marxism praxis is the criterion of truth. Using such phrases (and very often Marxists could not argue in any other way) the difference is only verbal. A Marxist would often add to the pragmatic account by saying that this truth is also objective. The difference is to be looked for somewhere else, in the interpretation of praxis itself. For the pragmatist praxis consists only in individual acts, but according to Marxism praxis is social life itself. The Marxian criterion of truth based on praxis is not to be identified with utility or success in definite, co