Gavin Kitching - Karl Marx and the Philosophy of Praxis

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: MARXISM

Volume 6

KARL MARX AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS

KARL MARX AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS

GAVIN KITCHING

First published in 1988

This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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1988 Gavin Kitching

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ISBN: 978-1-138-85502-1 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71284-0 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-88803-6 (Volume 6) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-71371-7 (Volume 6) (ebk)

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KARL MARX AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRAXIS

Gavin Kitching

First published in 1988 by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by
Routledge
in association with Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001

1988 Gavin Kitching

Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Kitching, G.N.

Karl Marx and the philosophy of Praxis.
1. Marx, Karl, 18181883 2. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 3. Social sciences Philosophy
I. Title
300.922 B3305.M74

ISBN 0415007135
ISBN 0415007143 Pbk

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kitching, G.N.

Karl Marx and the philosophy of praxis: an introduction and critique / Gavin Kitching.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0415007135
ISBN 0415007143 (pbk.)
1. Marx, Karl, 18181883. I. Title.
B3305.M74K523 1988
335.40924dc19

For Pamela and Ewan

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Labour is the living, form giving fire; it is the transitoriness of things, their temporality, as their formation by living time. Karl Marx, Grundrisse

Can I move? Will you just let me move?! Sundance to Butch in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Introductions to the thought of Karl Marx now abound and are just one product of the positive explosion in Marxist scholarship which has taken place in the west over the last fifteen to twenty years. However, such texts divide fairly clearly into two groups. On the one hand are introductions to Marxs social and political thought concentrating on such topics as his theories of history, class struggle, the state, ideology, and his views on revolution and socialism. On the other hand and somewhat less abundant are introductions to Marxs economics, dealing with his theories of value, exploitation, capital accumulation, etc. Brief and readable texts which attempt to encompass both these dimensions are much rarer, and rarer still are texts which attempt to evaluate as well as present Marxs ideas across this range.

The rarity of texts which do attempt those tasks, and the even greater rarity of those which attempt to do it briefly, may well be a sign of wisdom. Marxs scholarship, like that of many of his great nineteenth-century contemporaries, encompassed a range of concerns transgressing the boundaries of modern-day academic specialisms. There are therefore very few modern commentators who have the confidence or perhaps the foolhardiness to deal with his thought in its entirety. To do that, and to attempt a critique, may be both arrogant and naive certainly it is extremely risky.

But there are also risks in not at least attempting such a task on behalf of the modern reader. For Marx did regard his thought or at least the thought of his mature years as a unity. For example, he would, I am sure, have regarded discussion of his social or political ideas which proceeded in abstraction from his economic theories as misleading to the point of travesty, and yet this has been done often enough. On the other hand however, he was not an economist in the modern sense (despite numerous attempts to reclaim his as such), precisely because he insisted that economic issues of value, price, production, consumption, profit could not be adequately grasped unless seen in a social and historical context.

How far Marxs thought actually was a seamless unity, how far he actually succeeded in an integration of his philosophical, historical, and economic ideas is of course a moot point, and one to which I devote considerable attention in what follows. As will become apparent, I am now quite sceptical about his achievements in this regard. None the less, such an integration was his aspiration, his project, and if we are to grasp that project and to evaluate it properly we must take it seriously and deal with it as a totality. Marx was not a philosopher, he was not an historian, he was not a sociologist, he was not a political scientist, he was not an economist. Rather, in an intellectual world which did not know these distinctions, he was both something of all these things and more than any one of them. So we are confronted by an invidious choice. We can either bowdlerize his thought by coralling it into the particular discipline in which we have been trained and feel confident, or we can risk making fools of ourselves by attempting to follow him in his total project. I have taken the latter risk.

I have been supported in taking that risk by a number of other people to whom I must give thanks. Two cohorts of sociology students at the Polytechnic of North London have borne my lectures and seminars on Marx with fortitude and have given me valuable feedback which has helped shape this book. Geoffrey Hawthorn and John Harriss gave me astute comments and stout support when I needed both greatly, as did my friend John Harrison, whose tolerance and sympathetic criticism of ideas with which he profoundly disagrees is a mark of that personal liberalism from which the whole left could benefit. Finally my thanks to all my colleagues in the Department of Sociology at the Polytechnic of North London who have provided space and time for this book to be written in an environment in which both are in increasingly short supply, and most especially to Jennie Somerville, whose comments on my original draft manuscript were often lengthy, occasionally acerbic, but always acute, and without whose efforts this book would certainly have been the worse.