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THE DOORS OF WISDOM

CONTEMPORARY EAST EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

2.

Stefan Anguélov,

“Reflection and Practice”

As Engels once said, the fundamental question of philosophy is the relationship of mind and being. This question has two aspects. First, which is primary, consciousness or being, and which is secondary? Second, can thought gain knowledge of being, i.e. is the world knowable or not? In the history of philosophy the many answers to these questions can be grouped into two main groups : the one materialist, the other idealist.

The materialist is not content to acknowledge the primary and objective existence of matter, for him truth resides in the correspondence of human thought with objective reality. The opposite viewpoint, idealism, asserts the primacy of spirit and consciousness, matter being secondary and only a function of them; for the idealists, knowledge is authentic if it conforms to certain rules of consciousness—knowledge is veridical when it is obvious (the evidence theory), or incontestably clear (Remke), or when it is useful (the Pragmatists), etc.

In the final analysis, it is easy to deduce that the problem of cognition amounts to the recognition or to the denial of the objective character of the reality known to us. One’s attitude to this fundamental question is the touchstone of the philosophical position of any writer.

The foundation of the epistemology of dialectical materialism is constituted by the recognition of the objective world and the reflection of the world within human consciousness. But contrary to the older materialism, which was contemplative primarily, the Marxist philosophy uncovered the dialectical materialistic character of the knowing process, and for the first time it saw praxis (practice) as the foundation, the aim, and the criterion of cognition.

Repeatedly, whole groups of bourgeois philosophers have proclaimed that the theses of Marxist philosophy had been disproved. One may recall the futile attempts made by Mach’s followers, who tried to go “beyond” materialism and idealism, to overcome the “narrowness” and the “dogmatism” of Marxism. During his lifetime, Lenin disproved the arguments of this empirio-criticism, a new variety then of subjective idealism. Lenin demonstrated that Mach and Avenarius, as well as their followers Bogdanov, Bazarov, Chernov, and a certain number of other revisionists (in the form of a “purely scientific” and “realistic” theory of reality), were reducing the objective world to a bundle of sensations, and human knowledge simply to a consciousness of these sensations.

More than half a century now has passed. Today idealistic philosophy confers new labels upon itself neo-positivism, existentialism, and Neo-Thomism. While the Neo-Thomists are erecting a Chinese Wall between relative truths on the one hand (according to them “accessible” to science), and absolute truths on the other (which faith alone gives “access”), the existentialists declare that existence itself is man’s essence (existence preceding it), and no object is possible without the subject. Whereas the neo-positivists substitute for the world of objective reality the notions of sensation and the terms and combinations of language, the phenomenalists invent a transcendental region situated “on this side” of the subject and object, which is neither material nor spiritual. Such thinkers, with firm though unjustified convictions, claim to have “refuted” and “surpassed” the materialistic theory of reflection. Nor can one leave out here philosophical revisionism.

Among the latest pretending to be Marxists, some of them gaining distinction for their extraordinary activity, are Henri Lefebvre, Laszek Kolakowski, Gajo Petrovic, Mihailo Markovic, Predrag Vranicki, Rudi Supek, Milan Kangrga, and many others.

The essence of all their theses can be summed up in this fundamental assertion: they maintain that the theory of reflection is incompatible with Marxism. “Veridicity”, Kolakowski maintains, “considered as that conformity of ‘resemblance’ between the human psychic state and a reality entirely independent of it, is in effect incompatible with the Marxist conception of the world”. Recently a group of Yugoslav philosophers have supported similar propositions. Reanalyzing the classical texts of Marxism, these authors strive to construct a theory of knowledge vastly different, in which the “subject-object” relation is thought of in a different light. Hence they arrive at a point of denying the existence of a Marxist theory of reflection, and attempt to oppose the category of “praxis” (practice) to that of “reflection”.

In effect, such an assertion means a total rejection both of dialectical materialism and Marxism in general. However, contemporary revisionists decline to acknowledge this. Displaying an abundant arsenal of ratiocinations and specious objections, these authors refuse to admit their deviation from Marxist doctrine, presenting themselves as “creative” Marxists.

When one studies closely the conceptions of the philosophers of revisionism, one sees appearing certainly (through the jumble of sophisms and the protestations of fidelity to “authentic” Marxism) idealist notions hostile to dialectical materialism. While V. Bazarov, the Russian disciple of Mach, had attempted, in his time, to “accommodate” Engels to empirio-criticism, contemporary revisionists are trying to “fit” Marx into the spirit of existentialism, pragmatism, neo-positivism, and Neo-Thomism. Here they are only the faithful disciples of Pierre Bigot, Sidney Hook, Jean Calvez, Jean-Paul Sartre, E. Tir, Y. Homes, E. Mounier, etc., all of whom try to model the young Marx in their own image.

Rejecting the fundamental thesis of Marxism, which states that matter possesses existence in its own right (external to and independent of human knowledge), the French revisionist Lefebvre proposes a “new” definition of matter: “To a coherent materialism, the term and concept ‘matter’ signifies the infinity of a given being”. In response to the question of the independence of its existence from the cognizing subject, Lefebvre readily answers: “There is no object without a subject, no subject without an object: this conception must be understood in the framework of practical (social) activity, and not in the framework of pure knowledge”. According to the writer, this would be Marx’s conception.

Thus, from Marxist positions, which assert that man humanizes nature in his evolution and the unreality of thought isolated from praxis, the revisionist philosophers tend to interpret these positions entirely falsely, when they maintain, groundlessly, that nature does not exist outside of the sphere of human activity, of praxis. “Separated from man”, writes Kolakowski, “matter is nothingness. In this sense, to put the question about the existence of matter ‘in itself’ is tantamount to questioning oneself over the existence of nothingness”. In the same study, Kolakowski criticizes Kant for posing the question of the existence of a “thing in itself”, something independent of the subject, asserting this to be nonsense. Further on, this author delivers his own thought: “If it is correct to say, from Marx’s point of view, that consciousness is a representative process, it is even more correct to maintain, generalizing his thought, that things are reflected knowledge”. According to Kolakowski, matter is essentially that which resists human effort. He calls this “anthropological monism” or an “anthropocentrist” position, of which (according to him) the young Marx shared.

Moreover, Mihailo Markovic defends a similar conception in his theory of knowledge. According to him, the theory of reflection is not really typical of Marxist philosophy, while the other alternative, praxis, would conform perfectly to the spirit of the original Marxist thought. Later we will see what Markovic understands by “praxis”. Right now, let us follow his statement. The thesis of praxis, he asserts, makes possible the foundation of direct knowledge of the external world, whereas positions oriented towards the reflection theory lead only to supposition or belief. With the premise of the theory of reflection, it is difficult to account for errors in judgment, mythical notions, or representations of objects which are later created in the process of labor. According to Markovic, Damianovic, and Petrovic, the theory of reflection is to be seen as classical “mimeisthai” (meaning an ordinary imitation of the natural environment), and therefore would be incompatible with the Marxist concept of man, in so far as he is a creature of praxis. G. Petrovic, noticing that thoughts connected intimately with the theory of reflection are to be found not only in the works of Lenin and Engels, but also in Marx, hastens to add; “How could we make this theory tally, even in its ameliorated version, with the Marxist theory of man as a creature of praxis?”. Milan Kangra arrives at some even more radical findings. He attributes to Marx an absurd idea : nature can be nothing more than an accomplished product of man, a product and result of human activity. To him, there is no dialectic outside of human praxis, for “without human activity and out­side of it nothing is created and nothing produced”.

It is not difficult to see how all these writers, though claiming to be Marxists, in fact identify the object with the knowing subject. Thus, all cognition is autocognition. All these notions are but paraphrases of the arguments of subjective idealism, and the authors pretentions to have elucidated the relation “subject-object” in a new way (starting from Marxist premises) are but neo-Fichtean nonsense. Fichte had fancied himself with having indissolubly tied the “ego” with the “environment”, consciousness and the object affirming that man cannot extricate himself from this predicament. This nonsense was taken over by Avenarius in the form of his “principal coordination”. This same antiquated view is found again, under new labels, in existentialism, pragmatism, and even with certain Neo-Thomists. “Without man, nature makes no sense”, the Neo-Thomist Calvez has recently written, “it has no notion, it is a chaos, indifferent and undifferentiated matter, and as a consequence, nothingness”. “The perception and the thing perceived, the representation and the thing represented”, writes Professor Dimitre Mikhalcev, “are not two different things, but one and the same”.

The idealist essence of these philosophical conceptions clearly becomes evident in their definition of “matter”. When one says that matter is the permanent possibility of sensation (in J. S. Mill), or that it is a complex of “elements” (Mach), or finally that which gives resistance to human effort (Kolakowski); we remain within the bounds of agnosticism and idealism.

The dialectic of object and subject in practice, does not imply a necessary mutual coordination among them, as the contemporary critics of Marxism pretend. The subject and object are to be found in the relation of interaction, but they are relatively independent and non-equivalent. The object’s existence, matter’s existence, nature’s, independent of man and humanity, is the premise of man’s existence and of society.

The cognitive image and the object which is reflected by it constitute a paradoxical (antinomique) union. They are united, since the image gives us a faithful cognition of the object, it is a copy, a photograph of the object; however, they are contradictory (antinomiques), because the cognitive image and the object which it reflects are not one and the same thing. And this is true not only when we study the relation object-subject from a genetic point of view (i.e. when we establish that the object pre-existed prior to all consciousness, giving birth to consciousness in the course of its evolution), but also when the object of knowledge is conceived as a product of human activity. When thinking, we always possess not the object itself, but the image of it. “Our sensation, our consciousness”, said Lenin, “is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it”.

Human knowledge is nothing other than the subjective image of the objective world. This knowledge is subjective in the sense that it is an act of the subject, of man. The mind is objective when it gives a faithful knowledge of the world. Clearly, the object is reflected in our minds in various degrees of fullness and adequateness. Knowledge is a process by which we proceed from the unknown to the known, from superficial and one-sided knowledge to thorough and all-sided comprehension. Thought is not incompatible with the state of partial reflection, nor is it incompatible with the transformation of reality, nor with the existence of mythic conceptions, etc. The existence of the anti-Marxist notions of the revisionists proves this. The character of the image of knowledge is a function of the totality of circumstances, in the first place, and one’s social position, of one’s world outlook, and one’s class.

However, what criterion allows us to determine if the psychic content conforms to objective truth? Marxism provided a scientifically grounded answer to this question. According to Marx, Engels, Lenin, and their followers, the criterion of knowledge resides in praxis, that is, man’s socio-historical, material activity, in the course of which man transforms the objective word to satisfy his needs.

What is the source of the ideas of the contemporary “innovators” of Marxism? The answer is the erroneous interpretation of the young Marx. Marx introduced praxis into epistemology, and argued for the notion that not only is man a creation of nature, but nature is also a creation of man. Essentially, we must find out what Marx and the Marxists mean by “praxis” and the “humanization of nature”, showing also how the “innovators” interpret these same terms. Lefebvre, Kolakowski, Markovic, and many others, again display commendable efforts in interpreting these concepts in the spirit of pragmatism and voluntarism, but not in their actual Marxist sense.

When we study, with a minimum of attention, the works of the early Marx and Engels during this early period of Marxist formation, we notice Marx’s fundamental views (in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844) are still in the making, though the seeds of later conceptions can be found, yet insufficiently developed. Moreover, the essence of that which characterizes Marx, as the creator of a new outlook, is not to be found in the imperfections of these early works but in their aspirations : the critique of bourgeois political economy, constructing in a general way a new materialist conception of history. This tendency is clearly expressed in Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, and in Marx and Engels' German Ideology, and their Holy Family.

Transcending the imperfections of mechanical and contemplative materialisms, Marx uncovered the active aspect of human consciousness and highlighted the role of practical activity. In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx stressed that it was idealism, not materialism, which had brought forward the active aspect of consciousness. Marx urged that materialism ought to stress this also, but on a different plane, not on the abstract and mythical level of idealism, but in regards to the sensuous activity of man (praxis). Man’s practical activity is many-sided : production, class struggle, scientific-experimental research, artistic creation, etc. The fundamental aspect of all these activities, conditioning all other forms, is material production.

As Marx indicates, man knows by acting, by transforming the world. For him praxis is not only the criterion of truth; it constitutes the basis and goal of knowing. At first, men broke the nut to separate the edible almond from the shell, and only later did the intellectual operation known as “analysis” appear. Thus man’s mind was indissolubly bound to his working activities; only later was cognition separated from them, rising to the theoretical plane, cognition gaining a relative independence.

How does this relative autonomy of thought express itself? Being the reflection of the objective world and in its appearance on the level of practical activity, consciousness exerts an active influence on the being which engenders it. The active role of consciousness manifests it first of all at the time of the determination of the possible orientation of practical activity, the “transformation” of the object on the ideo-intellectual plane precedes its material transformation. Here we see arise the essential difference between the practice of man and animal activity.

The subjective aspect of praxis is not restricted to the direct influence brought about by the subject’s consciousness upon his transforming activities. In the unfolding of practical activity, the natural environment surrounding man, constituting an indispensable condition of his existence, tends to become a human environment more and more. In so far as practical activity assumes a fundamentally social character, man’s environment (using Marx’s expression, “humanized nature”), being the objective result of accomplished practical activity, can be said to represent the material incarnation of man’s social essence. The tools of production, for example, arise in the development of practical processes, not as a result of nature’s evolution, but as material objects in which are objectified the results of conscious and creative activity on the social level; already accomplished in the past, and for that reason assuming well-defined social meanings.

Besides the subjective aspect, praxis possesses an objective side whose importance is decisive. As far as praxis is concerned, subject and object are interactive, as material realities. This interaction is realized in conformity to objective laws independent of the subject and its consciousness. Consciousness possesses a relative autonomy only, manifesting itself, among other things, in the search into various possibilities for the utilization of one or another aspect of the action of objective laws. Orienting and regulating praxis is always limited within the framework of the objective world. Within practical activity, only those goals corresponding to objective laws, to objective reality, are realizable.

Work, experience, and practical activity constitute the origin of thought, which owes to them not only its formation but also its continued existence. All the logical operations of mind always find their sanction in the evolution of social practice, revealing as well the historical character of their contents. Praxis, in establishing the veridicity of its abstractions, on the one hand, completes the process of knowing, on the other, determines its evolution; for the final stage of the gnosiological cycle can always be considered as the initial stage of a new and higher cycle. Besides these features, praxis sets the tasks of theorization, and constitutes the basis of knowing. Simultaneously, it is the goal of knowing, for it is not the free play of the mind; and it is the means, the organ, of man acting on the concrete plane, because man can only exist by transforming his milieu and adapting it to his needs. We must acknowledge the objective character of praxis as essential and decisive. Neglecting the objective, dialectical character of praxis, denying its essential aspects, by bringing out its secondary aspects, inevitably leads to subjectivism and arbitrary theory.

Idealism has concentrated its speculations on the subjective aspect of man’s practical activity. By considering these subjective aspects on an absolute plane, separating them from their existing, objective base, the subjective idealists render praxis as something fundamentally arbitrary, dependent wholly upon consciousness. Such subjectivistic and voluntaristic views were held by Berkeley, Fichte, and the followers of Mach, Today, these same conceptions are revived by the pragmatists, existentialists, neo-positivists, and contemporary revisionists.

Lenin was not content just to refute the Machist theories. He drew our attention to the fact that systems using terms such as “experience” and “praxis” can conceal equally either materialist or idealist philosophy,

In so far as we are Marxists, it is our duty to examine the manner in which idealists juggle terms such as “experience” and “practice”, to bring out the true sense they assign to them. Thus, the pragmatists proclaim that their philosophy is completely foreign to “abstractions”, to “metaphysics”, and to “idealism”, for this outlook exalts life, practice. What do the pragmatists mean by “practice”? This concept means for them inner experience, what they call “pure experience”. Pure experience splits into subject and object. Therefore, pragmatism includes in the notion of “practice” the entirety of man’s psychic life, including dreams, superstitions, etc. Pragmatists such as Jim Kork and Sidney Hook go so far as to “discover” an identity of conception of practice for both Marx and John Dewey. Contemporary revisionists commit themselves to a similar task : “demonstrating” that Marx, fundamentally, was not a Marxist, but a pragmatist.

The revisionists reason thusly: since human knowing occurs within the process of praxis, there is introduced in cognition, a subjective element which is bound to one’s system of perception and to social conditions and necessities. Furthermore, since man always acts consciously, praxis is essentially a socially conscious activity. This affirmation in itself is perfectly valid. But the revisionists commit a fatal error in making invalid inferences from a correct proposition: in effect, they conclude that we cannot speak either of the “absolute autonomy” of reality or of the existence “in itself” of praxis.

These authors’ attempts to substitute “praxis” for “reflection” bring them inescapably to the position of subjective idealism. They themselves seem to have realized this by “taking their distance” from idealism. Thus, Markovic asserts that the adoption of his “anthropological” positions does not lead to idealism, since the notion of praxis’s content necessarily implies an object; for praxis unfolds on something, and by so doing always entails modifying a thing.

These verbal acrobatics omit the essentials : the explicit recognition that the object of knowledge exists independently of the gnosiological process. Nature exists long before praxis, and exists independently of man. Man did not create nature; he influences and transforms it. Man’s practical activity assumes a socio-historical character, and, for this reason, it cannot be reduced to sensuous elements, nor to the formal elements of cognitive activity.

The revisionists commit still another errors from the fact that man acts as a conscious being in the course of his practical activity, one cannot strictly infer that consciousness is identical with one’s being. In the course of their production and their mutual contacts, people are not always aware of the social relations they create, nor of the laws governing the development of these relations. In his critique of Bogdanov’s anti-Marxist theory of the identity of social being and social consciousness, Lenin emphasized explicitly that, though the producer in the area of the world’s economy is conscious of the fact that he is introducing one modification or another in technical production, he is by no means aware of the fact that he is thus modifying social being. Man’s activity on the social plane (economic life, generation of the human species, production and exchange of goods, etc.) creates a causal chain of events which is objectively indispensable, but which is entirely autonomous is regard to social consciousness.

Contemporary revisionists are not at all embarrassed in presenting their subjective idealist conceptions as Marxist. However, considering the fact that their conceptions are inconsistent with the classics of Marxism-Leninism, they attempt to extricate themselves from this antinomy by putting forward even more captious arguments. As Kolakowski holds: “Our attempt to explicate that which, in our view, is the fundamental principle of the epistemology of Marx, we are brought to a very simple conclusion : Marxism in its process of formation has formulated the matter in an embryonic state, to which, in the course of evolution of thought stemming from Marx, radically different conceptions were substituted by Engels, and specially by Lenin”.

The founders of Marxism are Marx and Engels. In their first works, edited in common, they submitted the ideological heritage of classical German philosophy to an exhaustive criticism, and, based on the revolutionary practice of the proletariat and on the evolution of science, created a materialistic dialectic for the philosophical foundation of their new conception of the world. Later on, when Marx had begun his research on Capital, the two friends decided to divide their work; accordingly, Engels undertook to carry on the philosophic polemics. It is equally well known that Marx, far from being against Engels’ published philosophical essays, entirely shared Engels’ conceptions! Marx revised Engels’ manuscript Anti Dühring, and even edited the economic section of this work.

Lenin was a great disciple of Marx and Engels, continuing their work. Thus, one can raise the question of the motives of those revisionists who strive to oppose Lenin to Marx and Engels. It seems necessary to them in order to mask as Marxism their subjective idealist notions. Their motive is clear: under the mask of Marxism, they fight against it. This is actually one of the principal methods of struggling against the world socialist system and the international communist movement.

The future belongs to communist militants, because they are guided by the victorious doctrine of Marxism-Leninism in their practical activity, also because their work wins the hearts of the ordinary people of the world, Obviously, this does not mean that Marxism has solved all problems, nor that there are no longer controversial questions in philosophy. It means that following Marxism we come closer and closer to the truth (without necessarily exhausting it) while following other course, Lenin teaches us, only brings confusion and error.

SOFIA, BULGARIA