Reflection On Marxist Practical Freedom

The free and integrated development of everyone is the ultimate goal of Marxist Theory. Therefore, “freedom” is a core category of Marxist Theory. Marx not only criticized the speculative philosophy represented by Hegel of setting “realistic human” aside, but to concentrate on imaginative subject and satisfy people’s desire for freedom in a fictitious way. Moreover, he also criticized the falsity of freedom in political countries. In terms of Marx, we shall try to understand the human freedom from the perspectives of the realistic human, realistic world and material production practice. In brief, freedom directs at human practice, and shall be understood from practice. On account of this, people usually regard Marxism freedom view as “Practical Freedom”.“Practical Freedom” is developed in the process of criticism towards the freedom view and political state theory of Hegel’s speculative philosophy. Such freedom view sets about realistic human, and understands freedom from material production practice, so as to open up a new site for people to understand freedom and provide a reliable approach for people to achieve freedom. Therefore, by comparison with the freedom view of speculative philosophy and political state theory, “Practical Freedom”, with more rationality, is a kind of transcendence.However, with research focus transfer of Marx(transfer to research on political economy),the knowledge of freedom also is changing. For example, in his Marx thinks “free and conscious activities” are right freedom,but in daskapital, he thinks “material production field” always is the realm of necessity, and the real freedom cannot exist in this field. Therefore,Marx places the real freedom in “non-material field” of communist society. However afterwards, Marx thinks labor also can be the real true after acquisition of sociability and scientificity. For this reason,subsequent scholars figure out two opposite theories after their researches on Marx’s Freedom Theory. One is that Marx’s freedom is a kind of “self-determination”, while the other one is his freedom theory is determinism of practice. As a matter of fact, from the perspective of all appearances, Marx’s practical Idea of Freedom is not only the source of aforementioned two theories, but also reveals the inconsistency of the theory. Furthermore, it may give rise to a series of problems, Such as the suppression on human’s “subjective initiative”, nothingness of “morality” and human’s “lack of freedom” in either reality or socia list society. Therefore, how to position Marx’s practical Idea of Freedom remains a question worth reconsidering. In fact, the freedom in communism(future freedom) is what we desire for; however, the freedom at present should also be the goal we shall pursue. From the viewpoints of the author, in order to comprehend the Marx’s Idea of Freedom and realize human’s freedom at present, we shall deem freedom as a question that should be understood from the angle of practice. To achieve this, we shall not only take practice as the foundation of free problem generation and development, but also take it as the medium for freedom achievement; not only take freedom as the initiative of human practice, but also take it as the contradiction settlement of human and nature, human and society, human and themselves in practice.