On the Use and Abuse of the Theses on Feuerbach

Max B. Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Sun Apr 9 11:07:24 PDT 2000


G'day Max, Now, you know I'm not one to agree with Carrol lightly, but I do reckon Carrol is on to what the young Marx was after here. If you take the other ten theses and the first part of *The German Ideology* (upon which the two lads - but mostly Marx - were just embarking at this time) as context, you can see it's all about working out 'the materialist conception of history'. The XIth thesis is wonderful rhetoric (which is why it's on his headstone, no doubt), but its original raison d'etre was to make the point Carrol uses Mao to make: history is our practical sensuous activity - it is within practice, then, that we generate our thinking and it is within this context that our thinking du jour must be located - else you open yourself to Marxist criticisms of ahistorical, idealist and idle contemplation. Thesis II helps a lot here, I think.

And yeah, it was a pretty wild idea at the time - the 27-year-old Marx was beginning to toy with the notion of tipping Hegel upside down in a philosophical environment still ruled by 'the German Ideology' as represented by Karl's erstwhile drinking buddies (who cop an absolute earful in the book).

Cheers, Rob.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sounds right to me, but . . . You might note I never specifically alluded to 'activism' in opposition to contemplation. That was the instant assumption of CC.

One can engage in noble, selfless activism to zero useful political effect. This indubitable fact upsets people because it is taken as a necessary slur on the motives of well- meaning people. That it can be deployed as a slur is true enough, but there is also an objective problem in question.

Emotions, sometime masquerading as philosophy, often seem to get in the way of a realistic discussion. LP is the best example of this-- posting some news account of another atrocity of capitalism as a substitute for argument.

Most of the people I deal w/professionally think that what I do is just as impractical or noxious as what I think CC and some others do (activism or contemplation). The difference I think is that I realize there is a problem to be solved, whereas others delude themselves into thinking the answer is obvious--that politics is easy.

mbs



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