THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH - Joseph Palayolikunnel (B09028)

THE MARXIST CRITERION OF TRUTH
A criterion of truth is a rule, or norm, or standard, or test by which
we distinguish true judgments from those which are false. Since the
judgment is a natural mental process, the criterion of truth must be a
natural norm or test, well within the reach of every individual. Since
the judgment is an intellectual process, the criterion of truth must
be discoverable by the intellect. Since matter determines
consciousness, knowledge must be conceived in a realistic fashion; the
subject does not create the object, for the object exists
independently of the subject; knowledge results from the fact that
copies, reflections, or photographs of matter are present in the mind.
The world is not unknowable but is thoroughly knowable.
Naturally the true method of knowing consists solely in science
combined with technical practice; technical progress shows well enough
the degeneracy of all agnosticism. Though knowledge is essentially
sense knowledge, rational thought is necessary to organize these
experiential data. Positivism is "bourgeois charlatanry" and
"idealism," because we do actually grasp the essences of things
through phenomena. So far Marxist epistemology sets itself up as
absolute naive realism of the usual empiricist type. The peculiarity
of Marxist materialism lies in the fact that it combines this
realistic outlook with another one, the pragmatic. From the notion
that all contents of our consciousness are determined by our economic
needs it follows equally that each social class has its own science
and its own philosophy.
An independent, nonparty science is impossible; the truth is whatever
leads to success, and practice alone constitutes the criterion of
truth. Both these theories of knowledge are found side by side in
Marxism without anyone trying very hard to harmonize them. The most
they will concede is that our knowledge is a striving for the absolute
truth, but that for the moment it is simply relative, answering to our
needs. The Marxist dialectic considers theory and practice to be a
single entity and that what men actually do demonstrates the truth.
The criterion of truth is inextricably intertwined with social power.
Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops
step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently
man's knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step
by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to
the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided.
Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of
the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually
happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the
anticipated results in the process of social practice (material
production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants
to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results,
he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the
objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in
his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas
to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can
thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is
the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit".