The Philosophy of Praxis (International Library of Social and Political Thought)

Where do ideas and practice meet? How important are the ends that men pursue in understanding their actions? For some philosophers, ideas have a history of their own and develop quite independently of the activities of real men. For others, ideas are no more than a gloss, a rationalisation of day to day practice. It is a central concept of Marxism, however, that theory and practice constantly inform and influence one another. Lenin said "there can be no revolutionary practice without revolutionary theory". Sánchez Vázquez shows that this dialectical relation between ideas and day to day activity is the central column of Marxist thinking. Marx stood Hegal on his head and surpassed Feuerbach precisely because he put ideas, thought, back into the history of real men. Men change the world through a conscious activity whose object is to create a different society. It is that consciousness, those purposes, which transform the working class into the sculptor of its own destiny. Praxis, then, is central Marxism. In his study of the development by Marx of the concept of praxis, and its political consequences, Sánchez Vázquez considers many areas of human activity, and distinguishes between conscious praxis and a practice realized with no transforming purpose in view. He deals with the problem of violence and non-violence, of productive and non-productive labor, and gives particular attention to the work of the artistic creator. The most important determination is simply stated: without a development of theory the conscious transformation of society by the working class is impossible; without that activity, ideas themselves become sterile. Sánchez Vázquez was born in Algeciras in 1915. During the Spanish Civil War, he was director of Ahora, published by the Juventud Socialista Unificada; he served as a commissar in the fifth Army Corps. After the war, he found asylum in Mexico and became a Professor at the Universidad Autonoma.