Political Science · Western Political Thought
UGC NET December 2015 Political Science
'Man must eat before he thinks. To eat he must produce. Production is a basic activity.' Who said this?
AMao
BRosa Luxemburg
CLouis Althusser
DKarl Marx ✓ Correct
Correct answer: (D) Karl Marx — The statement that man must produce before he can think is Karl Marx's, expressing his materialist conception of history.
Explanation
★The statement that man must produce before he can think is Karl Marx's, expressing his materialist conception of history.
★For Marx the production of the means of subsistence is the first historical act, prior to politics, religion, and philosophy.
★The way people produce their material life shapes their social, political, and intellectual life, not the reverse.
★This is the core of historical materialism, in which the economic base conditions the superstructure.
★Engels stressed the same point in his graveside speech, comparing Marx's discovery to Darwin's.
★Luxemburg and Althusser were later Marxists, but this basic formulation is Marx's own.
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