On the Paradigm of Production: Marxian Materialism and the Problem of the Constitution of the Social World

Abstract

Marx’s materialism is primarily of a practical character. As even a cursory overview of his early development reveals, it was not metaphysical speculation or epistemological reflection that brought about and substantiated his transition from idealism to materialism: the effort to find solution to the social problems of his own epoch not only biographically motivated this transition, but essentially determined the meaning of the resulting answer, of Marx’s ‘historical materialism’. The ‘material life conditions of society’ and the ‘material life-activities of men in society’ are posited by it first of all not as explanatory principles of a theory of social structure and change, but as the terrain of the decisive social struggles for a coming radical-practical transformation of society. It is in this realm that, according to Marx, both the elementary causes of human suffering and the forces to do away with them can be found, and both the conditions of a revolutionary change and its basic direction can be specified. The ‘primacy’ of material production of life for Marx draws its significance first of all from the ‘pragmatic standpoint’ of a socialist transformation.