The relation of Theory and Practice

[Widerstand]

I have stumbled upon this problem a lot in various texts recently, so I wondered how the folks here view the relation of Theory and Practice, or rather what relation there should be.

Some movements and thinkers have propagated a primate of either, but personally I find that to be a wrong approach. As far as I'm concerned, and as I have always viewed it, Theory has to be the framework preceding Practice: It serves as a model not only of the situation in which the subject operates, but also of the very operations the subject can use to alter the object and situation. However, Practice may lead to new experiences, which may demand an altered Theory. As such I view the relation between them as cyclic, a movement you could say: Theory -> Practice -> experience -> adjusted Theory -> adjusted Practice -> experience, etc. It is arguable that this model poses a primate of Theory, but I don't think so. I think ultimately, all Practice has to, sooner or later, be put into a theoretical context to be effective (where the definition of 'effectiveness' itself depends upon a theoretical goal), but Theory without Practical application is essentially useless. Practice always must be the goal of all Theory that has the aspiration of being relevant. As such I would prefer a somewhat flawed Theory with the possibility of practical application to a more sound Theory that excludes the element of Practice, on the justification that the formers flaws could be reformed by Practice.

[blake 3:17]

I think ultimately, all Practice has to, sooner or later, be put into a theoretical context to be effective (where the definition of 'effectiveness' itself depends upon a theoretical goal), but Theory without Practical application is essentially useless. Practice always must be the goal of all Theory that has the aspiration of being relevant. As such I would prefer a somewhat flawed Theory with the possibility of practical application to a more sound Theory that excludes the element of Practice, on the justification that the formers flaws could be reformed by Practice.

I think your basic spirit here is right. One of my frustration with armchair radicals is that a single flaw in either theory or practice becomes an excuse for abstension. I'm not saying you have to be doing political work all all all the time, but it is better to learn from actually doing "stuff".

There are very real tensions between movement activists and radical or revolutionary intellectuals. My hope is always that they can support each other.

My main objection to what you've written above is that theory should always have a practical application. People should feel OK with exploring intellectual or cultural pursuits without needing to justify them on practical grounds. Rooting one's self in a community, a body of thought, or a scientific or artistic discipline shouldn't have to be justified by immediate practical needs. And practical activity shouldn't have to correspond some big theory all the time.

[Zanthorus]

What exactly does 'practice' mean in this context, and what exactly counterposes the activity of 'practice' to that of 'theory'?

I think, if practice is understood as activity towards the achievement of our goals, then theoretical activity itself is a type of practice. Further, I think practical intervention can provide theoretical clarification.

[Widerstand]

My main objection to what you've written above is that theory should always have a practical application. People should feel OK with exploring intellectual or cultural pursuits without needing to justify them on practical grounds. Rooting one's self in a community, a body of thought, or a scientific or artistic discipline shouldn't have to be justified by immediate practical needs. And practical activity shouldn't have to correspond some big theory all the time.

I'm not proposing that we should only think to "do", nor that everything we do should be for our political agenda. That would be humanly impossible. However I do believe that our life and actions should reflect our politics.


What exactly does 'practice' mean in this context, and what exactly counterposes the activity of 'practice' to that of 'theory'?

I think, if practice is understood as activity towards the achievement of our goals, then theoretical activity itself is a type of practice. Further, I think practical intervention can provide theoretical clarification.

Ah. Yes, that's a point I've also encountered recently. The act of theorizing surely can be seen as Practice. However I would still insist that Theory and Practice are not the same. Rather, Practice is the physical manifestation of Theory, and Theory is ... the mental representation of Practice? If that makes any sense.
But a definite line can't be drawn between Theory and Practice, which is why, as I said, I believe they constantly influence each other. I think you raise a good point, namely that they are part of each other and form a whole.

[Zanthorus]

Ah. Yes, that's a point I've also encountered recently. The act of theorizing surely can be seen as Practice. However I would still insist that Theory and Practice are not the same. Rather, Practice is the physical manifestation of Theory, and Theory is ... the mental representation of Practice? If that makes any sense.

My problem with this is that it draws on the tendency within European culture, exemplified by Descartes among others, to make an artificial seperation between the 'physical' and the 'mental', which goes even deeper to the continuing inability of our culture to visualise human beings as a part of nature, and instead seeing humanity and nature as somehow opposed (Whichever side one chooses to take in the struggle). This points more broadly to the seperation between man and nature which is a cornerstone of the production and reproduction of capital, during which humans simultaneously dominate their own conditions of production and are dominated by those conditions through the seperation of the labourer from his means of life and the setting of one against the other. This manifests itself in a more specific form in the division between mental and manual labour.

In my opinion, one of the key aspects of the Communist project is the breaking down of the division between mental and manual labour, a commitment to "activity as all-sided in it's production as in it's consumption" (Marx, Grundrisse). If this is our goal, then why reproduce the artificial division between mental and manual labour in our day to day organisational work and the general movement towards Communism? I think this can lead down dangerous roads, like the division between intellectuals and militants which blake: 137 mentions. Within organisations, this division can produce a situation where the numerous militants exist only to do grunt work in order to promote the perspective of a couple of intellectuals in the central committee.

[Widerstand]

My problem with this is that it draws on the tendency within European culture, exemplified by Descartes among others, to make an artificial seperation between the 'physical' and the 'mental', which goes even deeper to the continuing inability of our culture to visualise human beings as a part of nature, and instead seeing humanity and nature as somehow opposed (Whichever side one chooses to take in the struggle). This points more broadly to the seperation between man and nature which is a cornerstone of the production and reproduction of capital, during which humans simultaneously dominate their own conditions of production and are dominated by those conditions through the seperation of the labourer from his means of life and the setting of one against the other. This manifests itself in a more specific form in the division between mental and manual labour.

In my opinion, one of the key aspects of the Communist project is the breaking down of the division between mental and manual labour, a commitment to "activity as all-sided in it's production as in it's consumption" (Marx, Grundrisse). If this is our goal, then why reproduce the artificial division between mental and manual labour in our day to day organisational work and the general movement towards Communism? I think this can lead down dangerous roads, like the division between intellectuals and militants which blake: 137 mentions. Within organisations, this division can produce a situation where the numerous militants exist only to do grunt work in order to promote the perspective of a couple of intellectuals in the central committee.

All of these are certainly true points. But doesn't saying that 'mental labor' is still 'labor' (which I agree with), and then insisting that education is required for emancipation (I'm not sure if you do, but I do), still assume a primate of mental work/theory, that actually shouldn't be there? Could we call that part of the contradictions of capitalism, that labor is either mental or physical when in fact the aspects should be inseparable?

edit: Or maybe, the correct position would be that Theory and Practice are in a cyclical, dialectical relationship, where there is a continuous movement from one to the other, negating each other temporarily without ever negating the process. Or perhaps we will see that negation in the realization of communism and the synthesis of 'mental' and 'manual' labor? hm...

[Zanthorus]

All of these are certainly true points. But doesn't saying that 'mental labor' is still 'labor' (which I agree with), and then insisting that education is required for emancipation (I'm not sure if you do, but I do), still assume a primate of mental work/theory, that actually shouldn't be there?

I agree that education is an integral part of Communist activity, but I don't think this really has anything to do with theoretical clarification, so much as teaching other people what's already been clarified.


Could we call that part of the contradictions of capitalism, that labor is either mental or physical when in fact the aspects should be inseparable?

Unfortunately, that isn't going to lead to a breakdown in capital's (re)production process, so no.

[ckaihatsu]

I think your basic spirit here is right. One of my frustration with armchair radicals is that a single flaw in either theory or practice becomes an excuse for abstension.


That's not being "armchair" -- that's being either ultra-leftist or perfectionistic.





I'm not saying you have to be doing political work all all all the time, but it is better to learn from actually doing "stuff".


Experience has its limits, though, because of the inherent formalism in the material world (of politics, etc.) -- certainly we don't need to re-learn things if we got it the first time. And education either accelerates the learning we gain from experience or else replaces the need for it altogether.





There are very real tensions between movement activists and radical or revolutionary intellectuals. My hope is always that they can support each other.


My hope is that learning / intellectualism can enlarge the fertile ground that supports actual activism on the ground -- look at the widespread backing that the strikers and students have in France right now....





My main objection to what you've written above is that theory should always have a practical application. People should feel OK with exploring intellectual or cultural pursuits without needing to justify them on practical grounds. Rooting one's self in a community, a body of thought, or a scientific or artistic discipline shouldn't have to be justified by immediate practical needs. And practical activity shouldn't have to correspond some big theory all the time.


It's *not* a simple reciprocal two-way street here -- practical activity *should* have to correspond to some big (correct) theory all the time, because if it didn't then the activists are either just lucky fools or worse.

On the other hand, a correct scientific or aesthetic discipline is the historical accumulation of good-practice human knowledge -- its enlargement, separate from on-the-ground activity, can spur class consciousness more widely and solidly. Hypothetically if class consciousness is widespread enough the revolutionary activity on the ground would be as easy as walking in the door.

[syndicat]

We can think of practice as activity or action where there is some associated criteria of sucess or failure, of better or worse performance. Reasoning and investigating are also practices. For example, reasoning has criteria of success or failure (as in logic for example).

But theory is not a practice tho it is developed through kinds of practice. A theory is a set of assumptions, hypotheses, models, etc. which can be a basis for action. We can't act in the world at all without beliefs or assumptions that provide a guide or ground of action. If I step off the curb to cross the street, I assume that green light won't just switch back to red in two seconds or the street suddenly open up and swallow me. i have a certain picture or set of assumptions about my world, my surroundings, my society etc. And i act in the context of these assumptions.

I think that practice does have primacy over theory in th following sense. What is the reason to hold onto a theory? How do you know it's a good picture or understanding of things? Well, you need to test it. And we do that through practice. If things don't work out...in some organizing campaign or project for example...this is reason to revist the assumptions your activity was based on.

[YKTMX]

There is a one word answer to this question that everyone seems to have neglected so far: organization. Organization is the only proper means of relating theory to practice and practice to theory. It's only when the working class creates independent political organs expressing its essential interests that a truly proletarian theory can emerge - a theory, in other words, that relates and generalizes the experience of the class in its day-to-day struggle for economic and political emancipation from Capital.

Also, "theoretical practice" is an Althusserian canard that even Althusser said was a pile of shit. There is no such thing as 'theoretical practice'. There is dialectical and historical materialism - the theory and practice of the workers' revolution - and there is abstract structuralist bullshit. And never the two shall meet.

[blake 3:17]

I think that practice does have primacy over theory in th following sense. What is the reason to hold onto a theory? How do you know it's a good picture or understanding of things? Well, you need to test it. And we do that through practice. If things don't work out...in some organizing campaign or project for example...this is reason to revist the assumptions your activity was based on.

In my years on the Left, I've been part of groups/movements that theoretically shouldn't have worked but did, and been part of group/movement that theoretically should have worked but didn't.

To insufficiently theorize strategies from these experiences would be a mistake. In the past 10 years I feel like a lot of the ground has shifted -- social democrats have turned into liberals, the state is harsher, working people have more debt and financial hardships. These forces tend to conservatize people, but also open room for more imaginative radical politics.


If this is our goal, then why reproduce the artificial division between mental and manual labour in our day to day organisational work and the general movement towards Communism? I think this can lead down dangerous roads, like the division between intellectuals and militants which blake: 137 mentions. Within organisations, this division can produce a situation where the numerous militants exist only to do grunt work in order to promote the perspective of a couple of intellectuals in the central committee.

I think the militant activsts get stuck with a lot of the grunt work, whether the central leadership is composed of intellectuals or bureaucrats. The duality sometimes seems cleaner in certain kinds of movement or party activities. Within the unions or social democratic organizations, the lines are fuzzier.

On a related note, are folks on this thread familiar with Michael Albert of Znet? I read his memoirs last year, and there was some really interesting stuff on collectives and the divisions of mental and manual labour. South End Press was based on very egalitarian principles and they ended up chucking out a collective member who only wanted to do manual labour/grunt work and not participate in collective decision making. Albert's position is essentially anti-managerial.

I've been involved in sometimes hyper democratic groups where everybody has to decide on everything which is just exhausting and burns people out who aren't 100% commited 100% of the time.

My poor attempt at a relevant Zen koan: Every cook can govern, but can every governor cook?

[ckaihatsu]

My poor attempt at a relevant Zen koan: Every cook can govern, but can every governor cook?


Here, lemme fix that up for ya....

'What is the sound of one cook governing?'


x D