Marx's Practical Materialism: The Horizon of Post-Subjectivity Philosophy

In mainland China, in the recent decades, once discarded Western Marxism studies have reached a peak. To study humanism, alienation, subjectivity and practical materialism, epistemology and aesthetics, interchange and social ontology as well as cultural philosophy, existential philosophy, philosophy of daily life, has entered into the scope. Wang Nanshi and Xie Yongkang, in this book on practical materialism, have succeeded a comprehensive study to reflect the major aspects and theoretical bases of this philosophy. Marxist philosophical theoretical research had not been so successful for some time. This has been fairly evaluated and investigated in this book to open a new scope, revealing the past theoretical regress. On the one shore was dialectical and historical materialism theory of Marxist philosophy propagated in college text books which was scientist, and naturalist and on the other shore was critical historical materialism of Young Lukacs and Korsch, which put the subject- proletarian practice in the center, to solve the problem of unity between subject and object isomorphic with the unity of nature and history. The issue put by the former was the existence of general principles applicable to both spheres. The latter had centered the issue on the existence of natural being opposite to social history. Lukacs' gave a negative answer to these two issues. As to history, general principles would be abstract and Lukacs had viewed the nature as a "socio-historical category". Although both schools led their own journey, both had failed to grasp the real essence of Marx's philosophical theories on materialism, metaphysics, dialectic and complex human practice. The essence of the philosophical revolution achieved by Marx, which makes him an outstanding modern philosopher, was his practical materialist theory and his view on the relation between practice and theory. Readers will surely find a thought provoking debate and vision in the book.