On the Use and Abuse of the Theses on Feuerbach

[Carrol Cox]

Anyone who makes casual use of the Eleventh Thesis on
Feuerbach is going to be expressing vulgar pragmatism, not
any historical use of Marx's (extraordinary and wonderful)
mumblings to himself as he was feeling his way towards what
has since come to be called historical materialism. His focus
in all 11 of the theses is epistemology -- he is thinking not
about political activism but on the questions of the reality
("this-sidedness") of knowledge as they had been debated
in Germany from Kant through the young Hegelians. One
can best get a feel for the thrust of the eleventh thesis by
pairing it with Mao's observation that if one wanted to know
what a pear tastes like, one had to participate in the changing
of the world by biting into one.

Carrol