The issue on whether the epistemological view of Engels and the Marxists can be identified to Marx opens the question on what Marx’s actual view on knowledge. This debate on Marx’s epistemology is divided between realist and idealist interpretation of his texts: the former reads that for Marx knowledge is a copy of an independent reality existing outside of man, while the latter views that for the same philosopher, knowledge is in some sense constructed by the subject. This study contributes (...) to the discussion by closely reading the epistemology of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. The Manuscripts contain important epistemological remarks that are subject of scholarly debate. The scope of the study aims to read the texts on their own terms, and through that, avoid the reductive readings of Marx that plague his interpretations. Through this approach, this study argues that Marx in the Manuscripts conveys an idealist epistemology based on his concept on how human need shapes human cognition. Marx further develops this idealism in the texts in his critique of political economy, where he shows that this science is grounded on the estranged need. In the end, this study underscores that the Manuscripts’ idealism shows a part in Marx’s thinking that underlines the role cognition plays to address forms of estrangements brought by the structures of private property. It highlights how Marx empowers man as capable of resolving the estrangements in the society through the development of both action and cognition. (shrink)

From the point of view of the development of Chinese Marxist philosophy, this paper comprehensively analyzes the current phenomenon of “Return to Marx” by pointing out: the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” meets the need to reconstruct ideology during the time of social change in China and it is a theoretical manifestation of the shift from planned economy to market economy in China; the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” embodies the academic path of the past ten years of Chinese Marxist (...) philosophy; the phenomenon of “Return to Marx” places too much emphasis on logic while too little emphasis on history. This understanding, the epistemological root of “Return to Marx”, has caused the negative effect and is also worth our attention and further study. (shrink)

The article discusses the historical background and transnational context of the dialogue between East-European communist philosophy and Western existentialism. It does so by first outlining the exchanges between Lukács, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. Subsequently three major forums of East–West philosophical dialogue are surveyed, that took place during the 1960s: the ‘Morals and Society’ colloquium, organized by Instituto Gramsci in Rome in May 1964; the Korčula summer school, organized by the Praxis group between 1964 (...) and 1975; and the International Congress for Philosophy organized in Vienna in September 1968. This series of events and the dialogue and confrontations that they engendered prove that, contrary to the exclusively negative reception of existentialism in the socialist camp in the 1950s, but also contrary to the distorted representation, which can be found in dissidents’ recollections and which became dominant after the fall of communism, which excluded any possibility of dialogue between the two sides during socialism, such a dialogue has taken place, and led to mutual appropriations on both sides. (shrink)

Following Hannah Arendt’s insights into the affinities between Marxism and the philosophy of life, this article reconstructs a theoretical position that we propose to call ‘vitalist Marxism’. This position conceives of life not only as an essential foundation of the production process, but also as a critical resource for resistance to the capitalist logic of exploitation. We highlight the role Georges Canguilhem (1904–95) played in developing this position, in particular by depicting tools and machines as ‘organs of life’. Drawing on (...) Canguilhem’s early writings as well as unpublished manuscripts, we show that this ‘organological’ understanding of technology was rooted in the increasingly anti-fascist reception of Marx in France during the 1930s. Against the background of today’s protests against climate destruction, racism, and anti-feminist violence, all of which invoke the defense of basic living conditions, we argue that the critical position of vitalist Marxism acquires remarkable topicality. (shrink)