Marxin Feuerbach-teeseistä "filosofian uuteen käytäntöön"

Abstract

In the article, I examine the basic question of the relationship between theory and practice in Marxist theoretical and political debates. At the centre of the analysis are Karl Marx's Feuerbach Theses on Feuerbach (1845), and in particular the last, eleventh thesis, in which the 'interpretation of the world' and the 'transformation of the world' emerge. As a prelude to my presentation of the theses, I will analyse Marx's views on the two 'target classes' of his intellectual work, the working class and the bourgeoisie, as they emerge in his The Capital. In my article, I read Feuerbach's theses as a kind of 'agenda', a plan of action that grounds and directs Marx's understanding of the relationship between theory and practice, the working class and his ('Marxian') theory. In the final part of the article, I will discuss the material that these Marxian views provided for Antonio Labriola and Antonio Gramsci in their work on Marx's materialist conception of history, ’the philosophy of praxis'. In this context, I will refer to Louis Althusser's view that Marx and Gramsci (as well as Lenin) opened up the prospect of a 'new practice of philosophy'. In the final section of my article, I will consider what this 'new practice of philosophy' might mean in concrete terms, in the light of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1929–1935).