PRACTICE
AND KNOWLEDGE
by Thomas Weston, from the website http://marxistphilosophy.org
What
Practice Is
All
labor contains several elements: a
goal or goals, a plan of activity for achieving those goals, and actual
movements that carry out that plan by changing the form of previously existing
material. People often think of labor as a synonym for work, either the
kind you get paid for or housework and child care. But the characteristics just
mentioned apply to lots of activities beyond work. Playing sports, engaging in
politics, balancing your checkbook—all these involve goal-directed
physical activity conducted according to a plan. We will use the term practice for labor in this wider sense,
and our intention is to use the term to particularly emphasize the activity of
labor, as opposed the planning aspect.
Patterns of
Practice
Often
the word ÒpracticeÓ is used to refer not to one particular activity, but to a
continuing pattern of activity, as when someone says ÒMy practice is to pay the
bills on the first of the month.Ó What is called ÒpracticeÓ in sports or music
deliberately builds up patterns of practice so that future labor will be more
successful, for example, by playing a game or an instrument well. Political
practice fits into this category as well. Making a speech a meeting only one
time is less likely to win over your audience than doing it as part of a
repeated pattern of practice. Such a pattern of practice will also provide much
better information for the person who makes the speech. As a rule, continuing
patterns of practice will provide more material for knowledge, as well as
developing the capabilities of those who engage in them more than single
incidents of practice will.
Although
it sounds odd to say so, practice is not limited to what is practical. People
usually call an activity practical if it is part of Òmaking a living,Ó raising kids, paying the bills. These productive activities are
the kinds of practice that most people engage in most often. Artistic or
scientific practice donÕt need to be practical in
these ways, of course, but they still have a connection to practical life.
In
the capitalist system, the practice of production inevitably leads to other
kinds of practice, the practice of political conflict and class struggle. Production
takes place in the midst of various social conflicts. There are battles over
who owns what businesses, over what the pay and hours are, and what tasks that
jobs involve. There are also numerous political and legal fights that affect
production, for example: Who pays what taxes and how those taxes are used? What
public services are there and who gets them? There are social battles
concerning who is shot by the cops, or goes to prison,
fights in wars, or starves to death. Finally, there are the battles the working
class has fought in some countries to overthrow capitalism. All of these
conflicts and many others like them are practical, and engaging in them is part
of practice.
War
Although
revolution involves war, most wars are not fought about human liberation, but
about which ruling class will get the wealth. Under capitalism, capitalists
fight wars for profits and the labor and raw materials (like oil) that
capitalists need to make profits and keep their rivals from making them. The
practice of these battles between the capitalists of different countries is an
extremely important source of knowledge, particularly the knowledge of the
technology that is used for weapons. During a war, enormous efforts are make to
improve weapons and to modify social organization to contribute to victory.
Modern wars have often been a key source for new scientific discoveries and
technological improvements in electronics, metallurgy, medicine, nuclear
physics, etc.
The
danger and misery of fighting a war, and the atrocities committed by the
warring sides make soldiers and their families change their thinking on many
topics, adopting new goals and making new demands. The Second World War, for
example, changed many peoplesÕ ideas about the roles and capabilities of women,
about racial equality, colonialism, etc. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq and
Afghanistan have made people very skeptical about the U. S. governmentÕs aims
and its use of war to pursue them. War is a kind of social practice that
profoundly affects knowledge. Since it also weakens at least some of the
warring sides, however, war also provides one of the most important
opportunities for revolution.
Scientific
Experiments
Besides
production and social conflicts, there are other important kinds of practice.
One kind of practice that is essential for knowledge is scientific
experimentation. Experimentation and careful observation provide the evidence
for theories in science, whether natural or social. Experimentation is a form
of labor in which obtaining information is the main intended result of making
planned alterations in some material. Experimentation is often similar to the
practice of economic production in the sense that it involves skills and
instruments similar to manual labor–experimental scientists often
literally Òget their hands dirty.Ó Much experimentation is itself conducted
with the intention of applying the results to other practical activities, like
economic production or war. In other cases it is part of research conducted for
political purposes like sending a mission to the Moon or to Mars to enhance
national prestige. Even when such direct connections to production or politics
are not present, and whether it is part of research that beneficial or harmful
to the working class, experimentation is practice. Other examples of practice
that may not be practical (that is, not part of production or social conflict)
include playing baseball, drawing a picture, or other artistic activities.
Practice
Forms Us
Not
everyone engages in production, but no one can avoid the practical kind of
practice altogether. This is obvious for workers, but it is true of the rich,
too. Even people who inherit millions have to take action to control how their
money is spent and prevent others from taking it from them. Since people are
changed by the activities they do, practical activities help make individuals
the particular people they are. For most people, the practice of production
takes up most of their time and effort, so their concern with this practice is
strong, and the effects it has on them are profound.
People
are formed by their practical activities and needs, and anything else they do
has to happen on the basis of these activities. But even practice that is not
directly involved with production and class struggle can be an important source
of information for knowledge.
We
summarize what practice is as follows:
Practice is human activity that deliberately changes
the form of some previously existing material. The kinds of practice that are
most important for knowledge are production, personal involvement in social
struggles, war, and scientific experimentation.
The Test of
Practice
The
materialist point of view in the theory of knowledge is that the ultimate test
of any view is the effect that the theory has in practice. Marx developed the
concept of practice that we outlined earlier and defended the idea that
practice is the fundamental source of knowledge and the criterion of truth.
Marx wrote that whether something that someone has thought up is objectively
true or not is something that can only be decided by referring to practice.
That a view is true, and thus has Òreality and power,Ó can only be proved by
its success in practice. Arguing over the reality or non-reality of some idea,
completely apart from practice, is merely an exercise in hair-splitting.[1]
These statements do not mean that theoretical
controversies are not important. They do mean that controversies
can only be settled by connecting the contending views to practice and testing
what happens. Frederick Engels wrote
that
ÒNatural science, like philosophy, has hitherto entirely neglected the
influence of men's activity on their thought... But it is precisely the
alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is the most
essential and immediate basis of human thought.Ó[2]
In
this passage Engels is talking about knowledge of nature, but the point is a
general one. It is human interaction with something through practice, and not
simply that thing by itself, which is the most essential and direct basis for
knowledge of that thing. Let us call this idea the primacy of practice. The
primacy of practice includes the idea that practice with one kind of thing is
the most important basis for knowledge of that sort of thing. Understanding of
political activism comes primarily from the present and past practice of
political struggles. Ideas in physics need to be tested by scientific
experiment and observation of physical systems. Different areas of knowledge
are not unconnected with each other, but some kinds of practice are more
directly relevant than others to a particular statement or theory.
It
is important to realize that the primacy of practice is different from the
pragmatic conception of truth. The primacy of practice does not mean that a statement is true
because it works for us. It means that the only way that we can tell whether a statement is true is by
seeing whether it works. A theory that is never tested in practice could be
true, just by dumb luck. We only find out
whether it is true by testing it in practice. Practice makes the truth or
falsity of a theory known to us, and
also changes the world in other ways at the same time. But practice doesn't
make truth, since truth is a matter of correspondence with reality.
Practice
Versus Passive Observation
It
is important that the knowledge we get through practice is more than we get just
by paying attention, or observing carefully. Practice includes changing or
trying to change the thing you want to know about, but changing something can
reveal its true properties in ways that might never be suspected by a passive
observer. Changing something can reveal its hidden weaknesses or unexpected
capacities to resist, causal qualities that would not show up in mere
observation. Passive observation can only reveal what is superficial, or at
least out in the open. It is a fundamental contention of materialism that all
things have at least some aspects to their nature that are not superficial, not
obvious, an "inner" nature which is more difficult to discover. This
does not mean, however, than just any kind of guess about that inner nature
reality is part of materialist philosophy. Dialectical materialism rejects the
idea that there are gods, ghosts, and magic in the inner nature of things.
Theories that say that these things exist are disproved by practice, and
believing them makes it much harder for people to understand how they
themselves can change society.
January 3, 2012, revised February 8, 2012
ÒPractice and
Knowledge,Ó by Thomas Weston. From the website http://marxistphilosophy.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported
License.
Permissions beyond the
scope of this license may be available at diamat@nym.hush.com..