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The Philosophy of Praxis

Marxism is not, as the Austro-Marxist Rudolf Hilferding put it, “an objective, value-free science”[77] without any immediate connection to politics or the class struggle. This approach may produce results in terms of historical studies or economic treatises, but it ultimately serves to tear the revolutionary heart out of Marxism and make it just another social science like any other. Marxism is not simply an objective account of the world, or a method, or a philosophy, or a theory of history. Marxism is the proletariat’s revolutionary weapon of war. According to the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács,
the essence of the method of historical materialism is inseparable from the ‘practical and critical’ activity of the proletariat: both are aspects of the same process of social evolution. So, too, the knowledge of reality provided by the dialectical method is likewise inseparable from the class standpoint of the proletariat.[78]

What does it mean to adopt the “standpoint of the proletariat”? Although the bourgeoisie rules society, they are unable to prevent economic crises or overcome the contradictions of capitalism. Due to the fragmented nature of capitalist society, which atomizes  our view of the world, a bourgeois standpoint cannot see the real social relations, but only parts in isolation. If the bourgeoisie want to understand the contradictions of capitalism and overcome them, this requires a standpoint other than their own. At best, a bourgeois standpoint can only offer reformist solutions or other panaceas. The limits of the bourgeois standpoint are stated starkly by Lukács:

For the bourgeoisie was quite unable to perfect its fundamental science, its own science of classes: the reef on which it foundered was its failure to discover even a theoretical solution to the problem of crises. The fact that a scientifically acceptable solution does exist is of no avail. For to accept that solution, even in theory, would be tantamount to observing society from a class standpoint other than that of the bourgeoisie. And no class can do that – unless it is willing to abdicate its power freely. Thus the barrier which converts the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie into “false” consciousness is objective; it is the class situation itself. It is the objective result of the economic set-up, and is neither arbitrary, subjective nor psychological. The class consciousness of the bourgeoisie may well be able to reflect all the problems of organisation entailed by its hegemony and by the capitalist transformation and penetration of total production. But it becomes obscured as soon as it is called upon to face problems that remain within its jurisdiction but which point beyond the limits of capitalism.

Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 20-21, 54-55

An individual vantage-point cannot offer an alternative to the bourgeois standpoint, since the individual is “faced by a complex of ready-made and unalterable objects which allow him only the subjective responses of recognition or rejection.”  Another class position is needed – a position that breaks with bourgeois forms of thought and puts on the historical agenda a future without capitalism. Without this, the only solution available will only reproduce the economic form of capitalism.

An individual vantage-point cannot offer an alternative to the bourgeois standpoint, since the individual is “faced by a complex of ready-made and unalterable objects which allow him only the subjective responses of recognition or rejection.” Another class position is needed – a position that breaks with bourgeois forms of thought and puts on the historical agenda a future without capitalism. Without this, the only solution available will only reproduce the immediacy of capitalism.

That standpoint comes from the proletariat. According to Marx and Engels, the working class is the only revolutionary class under capitalism and its position in production makes them uniquely placed to overthrow it. The very conditions of life compels the working class to organize and resist, producing a larger movement. Their location in the workplace is where they produce wealth and are forced to work together for capital. With organization and consciousness, the proletariat can organize themselves collectively to run society in their own interests. The interests of the working class as a whole, regardless of whether they are consciously revolutionary, are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, leading them to struggle. The general course of working class struggles, with ever-increasing boldness and radicalism, leads them outside of a bourgeois framework. Ultimately, the proletariat is the only class with the social weight and potential power to lead a revolution. While past revolutions replaced one ruling class with another minority ruling class, the proletarian revolution is different:

“The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”[Lukacs, page 193]

The proletarian revolution is, thus, not simply a revolution of the working class, but it is a struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, no matter what class or stratum they affect.

In order for the proletariat to become a revolutionary subject, it can no longer view capitalism through the fragmented lens of bourgeois ideology, but must see society in its totality:

It was necessary for the proletariat to be born for social reality to become fully conscious. The reason for this is that the discovery of the class-outlook of the proletariat provided a vantage point from which to survey the whole of society. With the emergence of historical materialism there arose the theory of the “conditions for the liberation of the proletariat” and the doctrine of reality understood as the total process of social evolution.[Lukács 1971, 19-20.]

As we have emphasized, Marxism is defined by its understanding of totality – breaking through the veils of bourgeois thought to reveal the true underpinnings of society, its laws of motion, so the proletariat can understand what they are fighting against:

It is not the predominance of economic motives in the interpretation of society which is the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois science, but rather the point of view of totality. The category of totality, the all-round, determining domination of the whole over the parts is the essence of the method which Marx took over from Hegel and, in an original manner, transformed into the basis of an entirely new science.

Once the proletariat grasps the totality of capitalism, it ceases to be the object of history and becomes, the subject of history:

Only when the consciousness of the proletariat is able to point out the road along which the dialectics of history is objectively impelled, but which it cannot travel unaided, will the consciousness of the proletariat awaken to a consciousness of the process, and only then will the proletariat become the identical subject-object of history whose praxis will change reality.[Ibid. 197]

However, the proletariat’s understanding of totality, cannot just occur in theory, but must manifest itself in practice. As Lenin said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”[85] The Marxist world-view alone, “has shown the proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all oppressed classes have hitherto languished.”[86 Ultimately, Marxism provides the tools to study and understand society and, based on those results, it enables the working class to consciously act to change the world.