"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a _practical question_. Man (sic) must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedeness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reailty of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely _scholastic_ question." This was after in thesis no. 1 Marx had critiqued Feuerbach's contemplative materalism by replacing it with Marx's activist materialism, by which reality is conceived as "_sensuous human activity, practice" ; by an active rather than passive and contemplative subject in "practical-critical (revolutionary) activity."
In the same vein, in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ , Lenin, building on Engels' discussion in _Anti-Duhring_, argues that the Marxist solution to Kant's problem of the unknowable thing-in-itself is the second thesis on Feuerbach, in that things-in-themselves are known to us in the process of making them things-for-us. One example given is we prove we know coal by becoming capable of making alazarin out of it ("for us"). This "for-us" epistemology is arch-humanist, contrary to doctrines of Marxism's anti-humanism. This is not an anthropocentric error. Things-in-themselves exist, but we only have interest in them as things-for-us. Thus, economic long waves may exist in-themselves, but the truth, reality and power of our thinking about them only comes about when we know them as things-for-us, i.e. when we can CHANGE them, make them or unmake them, not just interpret them or contemplate them passively as they do their thing.
Being able to interpret or demonstrate or passively contemplate the mathematics of the capitalist business cycle is to know it as a thing-in-itself. Being able to CHANGE the business cycle is to know it as a thing-for-us. Only the latter demonstrates the truth, reality and power of our thinking about the business cycle in Marxist epistemology (and only ending capitalism will end the business cycle).
In _Capital_, Marx emphasizes labor as the source of all value and exploitation first, because this theory implicates the working class as the prime agent (active subject )of CHANGING captialism, including ending the business cycle, by establishing socialism. This is knowledge for-us. Marx later in _Capital_ also demonstrates a theory of business cycle crises, but this is a secondary concern because it is an interpretation of the thing-in-itself; unchanged by us, the working class, for-us.
This thread articulates the meaning of the legendary Marxist unity of theory and practice. In the other way round, Lenin said, "without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement", i.e. practice , changing of the world or practical-critical activity.
Charles Brown
>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 03/07/99 03:23PM >>>
j-harsin at nwu.edu wrote:/id
> "The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances are
> changed by men [and women] and that it is essential to educate the eduator
> himself [herself]" (Thesis III).
You gut the Thesis III of everything that makes it what "Wit is. I'll quote it
in a moment, but first let me point out that when Marx declares the educator needs educating and the point is that it can't be done. There *is* no one to educate the educators, and to look for that someone sets up the eternal regress of both mechanical and idealist philosophy. Here is the complete thesis:
The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and the the educator himself needs educating. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example [Engels' addition]).
The COINCIDENCE [my emphasis] of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as *revolutionising practice*. [I don't have the version unedited by Engels to hand just now -- Engels may have added the emphasis.]
The short of this is, practice is always and everywhere prior to thought, for only in the realm of practice can this coincidence occur. The task of theory is to raise these advances in practice to the level of theory, to bring them into human understanding. This task is *never* complete and never fully accurate, though the higher the level of abstraction, the more nearly complete and accurate it can be. Most criticisms of the core of Marxism (as well as the sort of dogmatism kickd off l-i last fall) come from either failing to note how purely abstract it is or from assuming that theory at this level can translate directly into political practice, an assumption that obliterates everything that lies between the abstract call for class solidarity and every detail of actual (empirical) history within which that solidarity must (with immense and possibly hopeless struggle) be realized. It is easy, for example, to say "Workers Unite." That is fundamental marxist theory (at nearly the very highest level of abstraction). Jim Hillier (formerly of leninist-international) leaps from that to attacking a discussion of homophobia is a distraction from the real issues of class. (Which is something like a mathematician saying discussion of the numerator is a distraction from the real issue of discussing fractions.)
The Eleventh Thesis grasps the core of Marxian "epistemology" even more firmly:
The philosophers have only *interpreted* the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to *change* it.
Taken as a political or ethical proposition, this is mere vulgar pragmatism. But it is in fact an epistemological proposition (and it goes as far as episemology as a branch of philosophy, i.e., history, can go. Other questions called epistemology belong solely to the domain of neuro-science). That is, it is possible to interpret the world only as a reflex from the struggle to change the world. This applies to the whole history of life on the planet, not only to the struggle against capital.
Carrol