No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Theory and Practice in Marx and Marxism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
The identification of theory and practice is a critical act, through which practice is demonstrated rational and necessary, and theory realistic and rational (Antonio Gramsci).
In contemporary sociological and political theory the opposition of theory and practice refers to a number of aspects of the relationship between theories of various kinds and social life. It can refer, for example, to the relationships between the various sciences (particularly the social sciences) and their ‘objects’, between scientific knowledge and its necessary practical applications and broadly between social science and politics. Many Marxist writings since Lenin attempt to unite those three levels in a theory of the total society with a practical intent. This theory is intended to inform practical political activity in order radically to change the complex of social institutions which make the theory itself possible, in this way abolishing the theory in practice. That theory and practice in this sense can inseparably inform each other in this way within the politics of the labour movement, is one meaning in Soviet Marxism of the phrase ‘the unity of theory and practice’.
- Type
- Papers
- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 14: Marx and Marxisms , September 1982 , pp. 157 - 176
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1982
References
1 Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Hoare, Quintin and Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 365.Google Scholar
2 See Fay, Brian, Social Theory and Political Practice (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), Ch. 1.Google Scholar
3 See Lachs, John, Marxist Philosophy: A Bibliographical Guide (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1967), 90–92Google Scholar, Meyer, Alfred, Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 104–107Google Scholar; and Wetter, Gustav A., Dialectical Materialism: A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 256–257.Google Scholar
4 See Lukács, Georg, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923), translated by Livingstone, Rodney (London: Merlin Press, 1971), 197–199Google Scholar; and Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (1929) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 112–113Google Scholar, for accounts of this aspect of Marxist thought. Mannheim also discusses (104ff.) the conceptions of theory and practice found in four other historical-political parties and tendencies in addition to the socialist-communist one.
5 Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Milligan, Martin (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), 102 and 95.Google Scholar
6 Theory and Practice, translated by Viertel, John (London: Heinemann, 1974), 1.Google Scholar
7 Ibid, 1–2.
8 See Wetter, Gustav A., op. cit.Google Scholar
9 Praxis and Method: A Sociological Dialogue with Lukács, Gramsci and the Early Frankfurt School (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979).Google Scholar
10 Ibid., especially Part Four. See also Nizan, Paul, The Watchdogs: Philosophers and the Established Order, translated by Fittingoff, Paul (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Cohen, J. M., ‘Philosophy in the Academy’, Radical Philosophy (Summer 1972)Google Scholar; Manser, A. R., ‘The End of Philosophy: Marx and Wittgenstein’, Inaugural Lecture, University of Southampton, 1973Google Scholar; and Metaphilosophy 8, Nos. 2 and 3 (04/07 1977)Google Scholar (papers by Nathanson, Becker and Lazerowitz).
11 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, The German Ideology (1845) (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965), 50.Google Scholar
12 Theory, meaning a set of principles of an art or technical subject as distinct from its practice, were first juxtaposed in that sense in English in 1613. The opposition was used to refer to abstract knowledge opposed to practice in 1624. The use of the word ‘theory’ to refer to a mental scheme or conception of something to be done dates from 1597. The adjective ‘practical’ was opposed to theoretical, speculative or ideal from 1617 onwards. (Shorter Oxford Dictionary.)
13 Lobkowicz, Nicholas, Theory and Practice: History of a Concept from Aristotle to Marx (Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1967), 3–5.Google Scholar
14 The German Ideology, 50.Google Scholar
15 The Socialist Decision (1933), translated by Sherman, Franklin (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 114.Google Scholar
16 The German Ideology, 31.Google Scholar
17 See Remmling, Gunter W., Road to Suspicion: A Study of Modern Mentality and the Sociology of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar
18 Essays on the Sociology of Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), Part One.Google Scholar
19 Kilminster, , Praxis and Method, Ch. 2.Google Scholar
20 ‘Sociology of Knowledge: New Perspectives’, Sociology 5, Nos. 2 and 3 (1971).Google Scholar
21 Georg Lukács's concept of the ‘imputed’ consciousness of the proletariat is a doctrine which notably lends itself to the kind of legitimation of power mentioned in the text. See Kilminster, , op. cit., Part Two.Google Scholar
22 Elias, Norbert, ‘Theory of Science and History of Science’, Economy and Society 1, No. 2 (05 1972), 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 See Bottomore, Tom, Marxist Sociology (London: Macmillan, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lichtheim, George, From Marx to Hegel and Other Essays, (London: Orbach & Chambers, 1971)Google Scholar. I would add that a systematic sociological comparison of the three modern historical configurations in which the relations between theory and practice became a burning issue for intellectuals—Germany in the 1840s, the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and Western Europe and the USA in the late 1960s—remains to be undertaken.
24 Lenin, V. I., The three sources and three component parts of Marxism (1913)Google Scholar, in Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Selected Works in One Volume (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1973).Google Scholar
25 This formulation is Alfred Schmidt's, from The Concept of Nature in Marx, translated by Fowkes, Ben (London: New Left Books, 1971), 114Google Scholar. Although, like Marx's remarks on the transcendence of idealism and materialism via the category of practice, it does not separate the epistemological and ontological dimensions in the two doctrines. Consequently, in this respect the text is ambiguous at this point. In Marx, however, the ambiguity may be a product of his attempting to recast the debate in a way which moves away from the older philosophical materialism towards a theory of social mediations in which extra-human nature is independent of human beings but not a final ontological level. (See Schmidt, ibid., Ch. 1 and 113ff.)
26 ‘Marxism and the Classical Definition of Truth’ in Marxism and Beyond (London: Paladin, 1971), 75Google Scholar. See also Bloch, Ernst, On Karl Marx (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971).Google Scholar
27 See Axelos, Kostas, Alienation, Praxis and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1976), 145ff.Google Scholar
28 See Kolakowski, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Moore, Stanley, ‘Marx and the Origin of Dialectical Materialism’, Inquiry 14, No. 4 (Winter 1971), 420–429CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Livergood, Norman D. in Activity in Marx's Philosophy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).Google Scholar
29 On the difference between Marx's theory of truth and that of pragmatism I agree with Ernst Bloch (op. cit., 92) that ‘for Marx an idea is not true because it is useful, but useful because it is true’.
30 Bottomore, T. B. and Rubel, M. (eds.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 84Google Scholar (Theses on Feuerbach).
31 Ibid., 82.
32 Paraphrased from the Introduction to the ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843–1844)Google Scholar, in Karl Marx: Early Texts, McLellan, David (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), 121–122.Google Scholar
33 See the contribution to this volume by Steven Lukes.
34 Theses on Feuerbach.
35 On unresolved tensions and ambiguities in Marx's concept of labour and their consequences for attempts to put his theories into practice, see Berki, R. N. ‘On the Nature and Origins of Marx's Concept of Labour’, Political Theory 7, No. 1 (02 1979), 35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 The German Ideology, 48.Google Scholar
37 Rotenstreich, Nathan, Theory and Practice: An Essay on Human Intentionalities (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 58–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38 The German Ideology, 30Google Scholar. See also 276, 282 and 290.
39 Ibid., 30.
40 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, The Holy Family (1845) translated by Dixon, R. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1956), 164.Google Scholar
41 Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, I (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar. See also Human Figurations, Gleichmann, Peter R., Goudsblom, Johan and Korte, Hermann (ed) (Amsterdam: Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 1977).Google Scholar
42 See Elias, Norbert, ‘Sociology and Psychiatry’ in Foulkes, S. H. and Prince, G. Stewart (eds), Psychiatry in a Changing Society (London: Tavistock, 1969)Google Scholar, and ‘Problems of Involvement and Detachment’, British Journal of Sociology 7 (1956), 226–252.Google Scholar
43 See Williams, Raymond, ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory’, New Left Review No. 82 (11–12 1973)Google Scholar; Coulter, Jeff, ‘Marxism and the Engels Paradox’ in The Socialist Register 1971, Miliband, R. and Saville, J. (eds) London: MerlinGoogle Scholar; and Bauman, Zygmunt, ‘Praxis: The Controversial Culture-Society Paradigm’, in The Rules of the Game: Cross-Disciplinary Essays on Models in Scholarly Thought, Shanin, Teodor (ed.), (London: Tavistock, 1972).Google Scholar
44 Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics, translated by Ashton, E. B. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 3.Google Scholar
45 See Heinemann, F. H., Existentialism and the Modern Predicament (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953)Google Scholar, and Steiner, George, Heidegger (London: Fontana/Collins, 1978), Chs. II and III.Google Scholar
46 Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence’ in Dreitzel, Hans Peter (ed.) Recent Sociology No. 2 (New York: Macmillan 1970)Google Scholar and Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979), Ch. 1.Google Scholar
47 See Rose, Gillian, ‘How is Critical Theory Possible? Theodor W. Adorno and Concept Formation in Sociology’, Political Studies 24, No. 1 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48 See Bauman, Zygmunt, Socialism: The Active Utopia (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975).Google Scholar
49 Kilminster, , op. cit., Ch. 14.Google Scholar
50 See Steiner, George, op. cit.Google Scholar, and Weinstein, Deena and Weinstein, Michael A., ‘An Existential Approach to Society: Active Transcendence’, Human Studies 1, No. 1 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51 I am grateful to Aidan Foster-Carter, Ahmed Gurnah and Alan Scott for many stimulating discussions of this paper and to Zygmunt Bauman and Bill Rees for detailed comments on an earlier draft.