Marx and the Critique of Epistemology

Abstract

Marx’s critique of epistemology consists in revealing the social conditions that presuppose epistemology. The problem of epistemology for Marx is the question of the objectivity of our thinking. But this question for him cannot be separated from the question of the nature and scope of social practice. The epistemological problem is based on a separation between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge, and Marx unifies them by their common source, which is human productive activity. This source, the activity, is simultaneously mental and manual, subjective and objective, and it constantly changes the subject and the object. The subject knows the object by theorizing the unconscious activity and social relations that underlie its reality. Objective thinking grasps the social dimension of reality and does not abstract thinking from social production or practice. Marx’s contribution to the problem of epistemology is presenting the social concrete dimension of the object, the subject, and the activity that unifies subject and object and surpasses skepticism. Following Hegel, we do not need a criterion of knowledge; we just observe and adjust the correspondence between theory and practice. For Hegel, objective reality is the externalized essence of man, which is self-consciousness, while for Marx, social reality is the externalized essence of man, which is the ensemble of social relations. This externalization happens through activity, which is an abstract cognitive activity for Hegel, while it is a concrete practical activity for Marx. Hegel considers this externalization as alienation when the subject fails to recognize himself in the object, while for Marx, alienation occurs only when the productive activity itself is objectified through wage labor. Hegel replaces the traditional separation between subject and object with their alienation considering that they have the same unifying source before their split, but Marx’s alienation is a contradictory unity between subject and object. Overcoming alienation for Hegel is reunifying subject and object in absolute knowing, while for Marx, the starting point is the unity between humanity and nature, subject and object, and the task is to overcome an inversion of roles between subject and object whereby capital, a social object produced by man, subjugates human activity to itself and assumes the role of the social subject. Finally, Marx’s critique of political economy consists in theorizing the social relations that underlie the capitalist social reality as a whole, which is grasping the essence of social reality as the alienated essence of man.