Who is the subject of criticism? Marx's social realization of philosophy

Pauline Clochec

University of Picardie Jules Verne

From 1844 to The German Ideology, Marx's conception of philosophical  criticism evolved in such a way as to substitute labour for philosophy as the historical agent of criticism, and to rectify his conception of  criticism accordingly. For Marx, the question is to put philosophy to the test of labour, making it the subject or rather, avoiding the  psychological denotation of the term ‘subject’, the operator of historical development, in both its constructive and destructive  dimensions. This decentring of criticism towards philosophy implies shifting the analysis of the bearers and the practical space in which  criticism operates from the public space and the role of intellectuals in it, to the economy and social groups defined according to their  economic position and action (social classes and the social forces and relations of production). Philosophy is thus realised through labour,  no longer in the sense that the demands intellectually established by the philosophical critique of the established order would then simply be applied concretely in society through the action of workers, but in the sense that labour itself is henceforth understood as the effective  operator of historical transformation.