Praxis and the responsibility of intellectuals

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from "War and Revolution," the July 1971 Draft Perspectives Thesis for News and Letters Committees, Part III, "Praxis, Responsibility of Intellectuals and Our Tasks." The text of the full Draft, written while Dunayevskaya was completing the book Philosophy and Revolution, is included in the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, #4454.

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"The chief defect of all materialism up to now (including Feuerbach's) is that objective reality, what we apprehend through our senses, is understood only in the form of the object of contemplation; but not as sensuous human activity, as practice; not subjectively. Hence, in opposition to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism.... Feuerbach wants sensuous objects really distinguished from objects of thought but he does not understand human activity itself as objective activity." --Karl Marx

All serious struggles in a revolutionary movement have always taken place, not over "tactics," but over revolutionary perspectives. But the theoretic void in the Marxist movement since the death of Lenin--nearly a half-century ago--has been so great that one is tempted to believe that there has been a void in time itself. Those who claim the name of Marxism have let slip out of their minds, not only this half-century, but also the century and a half since Marx worked out his theory of proletarian revolution, his philosophy of liberation as a philosophy of human activity which is the absolute, dialectic opposite of the alienated labor to which capitalism consigned the working class.

Time does not, of course, stand still. Just as Nature does not like a vacuum, so the human mind rebels against a void, against a "forgetting" of theory, against a retrogression in history, both as "past" and present, and a stifling of what is first to be. Because of this elemental and compelling need from the movement from practice itself, we must expose the current reduction of Marx's concept of praxis to the "practice," i.e., the carrying out, by the rank and file, of the "theory," i.e., the Party line that the leadership, the intellectuals, have elaborated for them. This is not a "translation" of the word, praxis, it is a perversion. The fatal character of this mis-interpretation of "praxis" is more relevant for our day than for that of Marx, when he was alive to work out a revolutionary alternative and thereby discover a whole new continent of theory--Historical Materialism. We must consider anew the historic period in which Marx lived as he saw it.

PRAXIS AND DIALECTIC

To this day, Marxists are shamefaced about Marx's alleged "glorification" of the proletariat, and do not accept his analysis of the revolt of the Silesian weavers of 1844 as having had a "conscious and theoretical character." Nevertheless, it was this, just this type of vision, that led Marx to break, not only with exploitative bourgeois society, but also with "socialists," "communists," and academic materialists who could not do what "idealism" had done--develop "the active side" (Marx's emphasis) of subjectivity.

Though the class nature of capitalist society is decisive, Marx did not limit his analysis of subjectivity to the difference between petty-bourgeois, egotistic subjectivity and proletarian, social subjectivity. Indeed, he insisted that "human activity itself" was "objective" (Marx's emphasis). Marx defined praxis as "revolutionary, critical-practical activity." Put concisely, Marx's great discovery--Historical Materialism--illuminated the whole of society as well as its transformation.

As shapers of history, as "Subject," the workers were becoming whole men and women, achieving a synthesis of mental and manual labor, of theory and practice, of philosophy and revolution. Of course, it is what men do that is decisive in history, but theory remains an active force because ideas are not abstractions. They have a dialectic of their own and are integral to praxis itself. Praxis has many forms and each and every one is dialectical--develops through contradiction. Thus, even when it is seen as no more than "material activity," i.e., alienated labor, it is this very alienation that produces the "quest for universality" so that class struggles at the point of production lead to political struggles and finally burst out as social revolution.

That these basics of the Marxism of Marx could be reduced to "the small coin of concrete questions," as Trotsky phrased it, speaks volumes about the administrative mentality of our state-capitalist age. Thus today's Trotskyists, along with the "New Left," follow Stalinism (be it Russian or Chinese or the "Structural" Althusser variety in France) with their endless discussion of "tactics." Their turning away from the Humanism of Marx, labeling it "pre-Marxist," speaks volumes about our age, but says nothing at all about its absolute dialectic opposite--the movement from practice to theory. It is as if revolutionary power does indeed come "out of the barrel of a gun" instead of the self-activity of the masses in elemental outburst. They likewise disregard the very nearly continuous movement that began in the 1950s in East Europe and has since covered the globe. Yet this movement, not only as practice but as elements of theory, is far richer than its political expression in any existing party "to lead," including those who are not tied to a state power and do throw around the word revolution with great abandon. Nowhere have theoreticians--I naturally do not mean petty-bourgeois intellectuals but those who claim the name of Marxism--met their historic responsibilities.

Everywhere, no matter where we look--the challenge from practice has not been met: Look at France in the near-revolution of May 1968, or the U.S. of 1970-71 where a million poured out in anti-war demonstrations, but [were] quiescent in the face of the "My Lais" committed against Blacks right here. Look at the "New Left" in Great Britain who are tied, not to an actual party, but only to a concept; or look at Japan, where back in 1960, far in advance of the mass outbursts in any of the technologically advanced countries, the youth proclaimed their opposition to the U.S. and to their own government, and did so in the face of opposition from Communism, which wished to restrict the snake-dancing mass revolt to protests only against the U.S. Or look at Africa, where a new Third World was born, or to Italy, where no less than two million workers joined the Communist Party in opposition to private capitalism. But Italy is now face to face with the rise of neo-fascism because neither private capitalism nor state capitalism could stop the economic crises and total decadence. Again, everywhere, the challenge from practice has not been met.

Indeed, most have even failed to recognize the impotence of ceaseless activism sans philosophy. This failure is certainly not limited to this pragmatic land. Our task, however, will be illuminated by taking a look at Italy. The Il Manifesto group, which was expelled from the Communist Party, posed some of the most cogent questions. No one else in the Left has even attempted to face the "why" of the defeat of France 1968, when 10 million workers were out on general strike, when the students, the catalyst for this near-revolution, were the most politically advanced in the world, and revolutionary enough both to recognize the pivotal role of labor and to establish a new form of organization--the worker-student action committee. This was the highest stage reached--and reached in a technologically advanced land--in the turbulent 1960s when only the Third World seemed to make history. The Il Manifesto group, both in its own statement and in the interview with [Jean-Paul] Sartre, raised the burning questions of the day on class, on spontaneity, on the masses and the party.

ROLE OF INTELLECTUALS

And yet even though they were all intellectuals--and I don't mean petty-bourgeois but revolutionary theoreticians who accepted the key role of the proletariat in any social revolution--there was no tackling of new economic categories, such as state-capitalism, much less philosophic concepts. Instead, by holding on to loose old terms, like "advanced stage of capitalism," grappling with no philosophic concepts despite the fact that they were moved by a desire for a "revolutionary alternative" to the existing Communist Party which was practicing class collaborationism, they actually were talking on the same level as "the Party." They were concerned with proving that the need for individual freedom "is not simply a residue of 'humanism' which antedates capitalism." No wonder that not only were no "answers" forthcoming, but even correct questions seemed to lose their relevance.

Thus, although they caught the revolutionary spirit of the age--"the subjective maturity of the working class"--they could not spell out any "new form of organization" since this was linked, not with needs emerging from mass practice, subjectively, from below (a live "Subject"), but only to "conditions of struggle in the societies of advanced capitalism."

Thus, though they[1] rightly criticized [Herbert] Marcuse's glorification of "the Great Refusal" as well as [Daniel] Cohn-Bendit's "spontaneity"--as if a "counterculture" and "negation" of the old, were sufficient unto the day, that is, the revolutionary alternative--they too "elaborate" no new alternatives. It is as if a Maoist tinge to the concept of the Party were the answer to "a new form of organization."

Thus, even where they touch the implication of the need of "the transcendence of the Leninist or Bolshevik model of the party"...their end result is in the working with old categories as if there is a continuity instead of a discontinuity in capitalism itself. The transformation into absolute opposite of the first workers' state into a state-capitalist society, they attribute to paralysis in thought. To use Sartre's phrase, "the mode of existence of the Parties (which) paralyzes their (the intellectuals') collective effort of thought." How could it be otherwise when suddenly intellectuals, who joined to fight the status quo, must now express, not the mass struggle for freedom, but a state ideology, a State Plan, a State Economy?

Intellectuals (and not only where state power and outright exploitation of labor is practiced as in Russia and China, in East Europe and Cuba, but intellectuals of our state-capitalist age who do want to uproot capitalism as they see it and work for emancipation of labor) have completely and totally forgotten (because it is not organic to them as it is to labor) what Marx meant by a class-less order. It is not just a dialectical "principle" which is at stake; it is a life and death struggle. It is what Hegel called "individualism that lets nothing interfere with its universalism," i.e., freedom, and Marx called labor's "quest for universality" which underlines alienated labor's struggle to abolish the old exploitative society, and creates a new, class-less one where "the freedom of the individual is the basis of the freedom for all."

It is for this and for no other reason that Marx felt compelled to break with the bourgeoisie also on the very concept of what theory is. He saw theory coming from labor and only labor because labor is not only muscle but Reason. It is this which "disciplined" Marx. Historic responsibilities of Marxist intellectuals begin with listening to the masses, and not being caught in the delusion that it is the intellectual brain wave which produces theory. Once you can hear and do listen to the voices from below as if your life depended on those voices--because it does--then, and only then, can you elaborate theory, not because you become a mere recording machine, but because, having recorded these voices, your task far from ending has just begun. That defines not only intellectual responsibility but our tasks, and the key work remains projection--projection of Marxist-Humanist ideas.

PREPARATION FOR REVOLUTION

First and foremost, of course, is the concretization of the Perspective on War and Revolution in a manner which will determine not only our activities in the anti-Vietnam war movement, but in all class struggles, Black struggle, Women's Liberation, Chicano, Indian. The determinant for all activities as well as writings, talks as well as relations--all without exception--is the concept of social revolution. We must free our minds from thinking that this is exhausted in the anti-Vietnam war activity as if that is the equivalent of a social revolution. There is no equivalent when there is no uprooting of class relations in one's own country, no ending of racism, no making inseparable the forces of revolution from their Reason.

And there can be no social revolution when one, like the Trotskyists, hangs on to one or another group of state-capitalist societies calling themselves Communist. Nor can there be a spontaneous, elemental mass uprising when one is concentrating on "shortcuts." No matter how great the martyrs like Che [Guevara] who "lead" it, there can be no social revolution when one substitutes himself for the masses, or when the method used in the projection of ideas repeats the capitalistic division between mental and manual labor, with intellectual "prerogatives" blotting out workers' thoughts. One must practice theory by uniting the two daily in every struggle, in every human relation, be it Black and white, youth and adult, men and women, actual class struggle or merely the manner of writing them up so that the story itself projects philosophy and revolution. In a word every single act is a theoretic preparation for revolution the day before, the day of, and the day after revolution.

NOTES:

1. I'm referring to Rossana Rossanda and Lucio Magri of Il Manifesto as both articles and interview with Jean-Paul Sartre are in Socialist Register, 1970.

Explore the fully dialectical, humanist meaning of Praxis in Philosophy and Revolution by Raya Dunayevskaya.

"[Historical Materialism's] new dimension...could only have emerged from human beings, masses, classes, themselves reshaping history. That, that precisely, marks the uniqueness of Marxian materialist dialectic, which is both class-rooted and Humanist. It is this which enabled Marx to elicit from the praxis of the Parisian Communards 'storming the heavens,' the stripping off of the fetishism of commodities and the establishment of the totally new social relations as 'freely associated labor.'"

Philosophy and Revolution, a classic of Marxism, a key work of Marxist-Humanism. Only $24.95. To order, click here.

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