Keywords

Practice, a pivotal category of Marxist historical materialism, holds a similar prominent place in the Chinese form. While inheriting the Classical Marxist view of practice, the view of practice of the Chinese form further explores the nature and scope of practice, and provides a new critical dimension for the Chinese form to intervene in literary works by introducing practice into literary criticism.

1 Marx on Praxis

The classical Marxist discourse on practice, based on the practical activities of human beings, finds its lineage in the Western philosophical tradition from Aristotle to Kant. Marx’s extensive research on practice is based on both ontology and axiology or theory of value, and can be found in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Theses on Feuerbach, and The German Ideology.

1.1 Marx’s Concept of Praxis and Western Traditions

Marx’s concept of practice developed on the basis of Western ideological and theoretical traditions and background. Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Fichte directly influenced Marx’s view of practice, which was supported by the whole classical cultural tradition from ancient Greece, and not just by classical German philosophy, classical political economy, or scientific socialism. It is upon this solid foundation that Marx’s view of practice developed, which then became the thought resources of Marxist practical materialism.

1.1.1 Aristotle’s View of Practice

In the history of Western philosophy, Aristotle was the first person to incorporate the concept of practice into his philosophical thinking, and his thoughts on practice originated from the negotiation and planning of the political life of the Greek city-state. Aristotle’s research on practice is mainly found in his Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics.

In the Metaphysics (Volume VI), Aristotle divided the sciences into three categories: (1) the theoretical sciences (mathematics, natural sciences, and first philosophy [i.e., metaphysics]); (2) the practical sciences (ethics, politics, economics, and rhetoric); and (3) the productive science (Aristotle 2016, pp. 98–100).With a comparison of these three main forms, we can understand Aristotle’s concept of practice in the Nicomachean Ethics as follows:

Theoretical contemplation is the activity of thinking about what is immutable and necessary or about the nature of things; it is the activity of inaction. Practice or producing, on the contrary, is the activity of acting on something that can be changed by one’s own efforts for some good purpose. Therefore, practice or producing is for things that are within our power, i.e., things that may be in one state or another for our reasons. Producing is the activity of bringing something into being, the purpose of which is the product of something other than the activity. Practice is a moral or political activity, of which the purpose can be either external or practical. Practice expresses the Logos (reason), the nature (quality) of man as a whole. (Liao 2003, p. 11)

A theoretical science has two characteristics: First, it is concerned with universal and eternal unchanging being. Second, it is contemplation with the aim of seeking truth. In contrast, practice deals with things that can be changed with effort, and it is primarily an action for the good and benevolent. The science of practice differs from the science of production. Production is the activity of bringing something into being and aims at something external. Practice is an activity characterized by virtue, aiming at the act itself, and primarily the moral and political actions of human beings.

With respect to the connotation of practice, Aristotle advocated for action. He believed that we possess virtue, not by contemplation, but by practice—“…a person is practically wise not only by knowing, but also by being disposed to act” (Aristotle 2004, p. 135). In the Nicomachean Ethics, he proposed, “…we become just by doing just actions, temperate by temperate actions, and courageous by courageous actions” (Aristotle 2004, p. 23). The view of practice as action is, again, linked to purpose. According to Aristotle, practical activity always points to a certain purpose, and in Metaphysics he says, “these [movements] are not cases of action, at least not of complete action, since none is an end. But the sort in which the end belongs really is an action” (Aristotle 2016, p. 148). This purpose is to achieve good governance and good life. As such, Aristotle’s practice is linked to ethics. The highest good on earth lies in practice, which involves the core Aristotelian concept of wisdom (also interpreted as “practical wisdom”). Aristotle states, Wisdom is “a true and practical state involving reason, concerned with what is good and bad for a human being” (Aristotle 2004, p. 107). Aristotle intended to raise wisdom to the level of the ultimate purpose of ethical goodness, so that human behavior and activities are in line with moral and rational decisions. It is difficult to define goodness in the abstract sense. As Aristotle indicated:

But this we must agree on before we begin: that the whole account of what is to be done ought to be given roughly and in outline.…and the spheres of actions and of what is good for us, like those of health, have nothing fixed about them. Since the general account lacks precision, the account at the level of particulars is even less precise. For they do not come under any skill or set of rules: agents must always look at what is appropriate in each case as it happens, as do doctors and navigators. (Aristotle 2004, pp. 24–25)

Thus, action, purpose, and the highest good constitute the inner logic of Aristotle’s practice—(ethical) virtue leads us to the right purpose, that is, to the purpose by virtuous action.

Aristotle’s elevation of practice to a fundamental way of being had a powerful influence on Marx’s concept of practice. While Aristotle’s practice refers mainly to political and ethical life, Marx’s practice covers political life, but the practice of material production is its dominant and core part, and only through the practice of material production can people live a real human life. This is the fundamental divergence between Marx and Aristotle’s concepts of practice.

1.1.2 Kant on Practical Reason

Kant was the first philosopher who elevated practice to the position of practical philosophy in a real sense and planted the seed for a new and modern view of practice. Kant’s thoughts on practical philosophy are primarily embodied in his Critique of Practical Reason, one of his three major critiques. Following Aristotle’s inclusion of practice into the field of political ethics, Kant gave careful consideration to the philosophy of practice. He viewed practical reason as a rational faculty of the subject that aims at humans themselves, thus distinguishing it from speculative reason that seeks to know a priori objectified principles. Moreover, in arguing for the primacy of pure speculative reason and pure practical reason, Kant highlighted the primacy of practical reason saying, “in the union of pure speculative with pure practical reason in one cognition, the latter has primacy, assuming that this union is not contingent and discretionary but based a priori on reason itself and therefore necessary” (Kant 2015, p. 98). In response to the transgression and arrogance of reason, Kant proposed to demarcate the capacity of reason and to correct it with practical reason, which demonstrated his theory that the moral practice of man out of free will is superior to pure cognition. He advocated correcting pure reason through practical reason, thus placing practical reason above pure reason.This challenged the epistemological view of practice which opposes reason to practice and cognition to practice held by philosophers such as Descartes, and foreshadowed the further development of Marx’s theory of practice.

Over the course of the history of Western practical philosophy, Kant played a role in carrying the past and paving a way for future. The distinctive turn to practical subjectivity in Kant’s philosophy was of great significance to Marx’s understanding of human life from the viewpoints of subjectivity and sensibility.

1.1.3 Sublation of Hegel and Feuerbach in Marx’s Concept of Practice

Hegel and Feuerbach had a considerable influence on Marx’s view of practice, and yet Marx went beyond them because his notion of practice is largely grounded in the course of history.

In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx noted:

The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehend s objective man—true, because real man—as the outcome of man’s own labour. (Marx 1975a, pp. 332–333)

Marx affirmed the thought that “Hegel regards the self-production of man as a process” and suggested that the “real man” is “the result of his own labor,” that is to say, the subject is the result of practice.

On the concept of the subject, Marx changed the connotation of Hegel’s dialectics on the basis of abstract mental substance:

Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature, posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be something objective. (Marx 1975a, p. 336)

The “man” here is no longer a derivative of Hegel’s “absolute idea,” but “real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 36). In this way, Marx brought about “German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 36) and asserted that study of practice is no longer built on what is imagined or thought, but on “real, active men” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 36), consequently, practice becomes the objective activity of man.

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx criticized the old materialist viewpoints, including Feuerbach’s, for observing object things apart from the practical activities of human beings and for not recognizing that social life is practical in its essence. He clearly expressed his view of practice:

The chief defect of all previous materialism—that of Feuerbach included—is that things [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialism, was set forth by idealism—but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christentums, he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of practical-critical, activity. (Marx 1975b, p. 4)

Starting from intuitive materialism, Feuerbach, who was unaware of the subjective initiative of practical labor, looked at human society through a static lens, and limited himself to revealing the alienation of man only in the religious sphere. Marx was not satisfied with this and believed that in the presence of nature, man is not only passive, but also active and motivated. This is reflected in the fact that man, through his free and conscious activities, not only satisfies his biological needs, but also transforms nature, making it a product of man, a humanized nature, a confirmation of his own essential power, and an object of the objectification of his essential power, where the subject “sees himself in a world that he has created” (Marx 1975a, p. 277).

1.2 The Connotations of Marx’s View on Praxis

The inclusiveness of practice allows for different dimensions of understanding and interpretation. Marx also focused on different aspects in his study of practice. In the case of practice as an “objective activity,” the unity of subject and object lies exactly in practice, which already has an ontological meaning. If materially productive labor is taken as the basic form of practice, and if the alienation of the subject and its social transformation as a result of labor are examined from the perspective of the labor for material production, such study is inclined toward axiology. However, both the objectified activity and the practice of material production are intrinsically connected as both are founded on the relationship between human beings and reality, and both are embodied in the objectification of man’s essential powers.

1.2.1 Practice as an “Objective Activity”

In European philosophy, the subject-object category is generally understood and used in the sense of thinking and being, consciousness and matter. Marx also used the subject-object category in the sense of thinking and being in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. It was only in his works such as The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 that Marx demonstrated the connotation of practice at the ontological level, interpretating practice as a sensuous and objective activity, and arguing that the subject transforms the external world in the same process by which the subject transforms itself. The relationships between human beings and the world and among human beings themselves are seen as practical resulting in a new elaboration of the subject-object category.

In Marx’s view of practice, practice is an “objective activity,” and only in objective activity can reality become the reality of man’s essential powers such that he can confirm his own being in reality Marx elaborated, “it is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man in society the world of man's essential powers—human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers—that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, become objects which confirm and realize his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object” (Marx 1975a, p. 301). Such an understanding of practice as a process of objectification is conducive to breaking away from the habitual dichotomy of subject and object such that the mutual transformation and shaping of subject and object constitute a process of continuous objectification.

1.2.1.1 Formation and Development of Subject and Object

Practice, as a process of objectification, is the bidirectional movement of “objectification of the subject” and “subjectification of the object.” The objectification of the subject is to project oneself into the object so that one’s own essential power is realized in the object, whereas the subjectification of the object is to make the object change from being-in-itself to being-for-itself through one’s practice and to leave marks of the subject on it. In this way, through practice, human beings turn the existence outside themselves into the object of their own activities, into their own object. Therefore, the subject is the objectified subject and the object is the objectification of the subject, and the unity of the two lies nowhere other than in practice. In this sense, the subject cannot equal to consciousness, since the subject is formed in practice instead of merely in mental activities. Moreover, the object cannot equal to being. The object is not a “thing-in-itself” in the Kantian sense, but the objectification of the subject. In a word, both the subject and the object are the products of human practice.

With respect to the objectification of the subject, Marx stressed that only through the objective relationships between human beings and object, and between subject and object, can one behaves and confirm oneself as a real person, a true human being—“man does not lose himself in his object only when the object becomes for him a human object or objective man” (Marx 1975a, p. 301). Human beings must objectify their essential power into “real, sensible objects,” “create a world of objects,” and express and confirm their essential power through the realistic relationships between themselves and objects, between subject and object. Hence, it is impossible to form the completeness of subject and object without practice, thus, “The object of labour is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created” (Marx 1975a, p. 277). From the point of view of practice, self-consciousness arises from the otherness of reality, and the subject can only reflect on himself in the world he has created. Marx also suggested that human sensations also arise in the process of objectification:

…in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. (Marx 1975a, pp. 301–302)

The aesthetic capability of human beings takes shape precisely by engaging in objectified practical activities, and one’s aesthetic experience is the result of practice, even if there exists a certain genetic accumulation of talent.

While Marx emphasized the subjective initiative of human beings in practice, he also pointed to the objectification of the object in practice. Although nature pre-existed human beings, and although laws of the nature do not depend entirely on human beings’ will, no relationship can be established without human activity or without activity external to human beings. Engels and Marx in The German Ideology propounded, “He (Feuerbach – author’s note) does not see that the sensuous world around him is not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed [a product] in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations…” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 39). The environment and nature in Marx’s view are the result of objectification and cannot be detached from human activity. The object of human cognition is not an eternal or established thing but a product of human beings’ own historical activity, that is, the objective world can be transformed in principle and, vice versa, the subject realizes itself in the process of transforming the object.

Both subject and object form and develop in practice. Without practice or without the activity of objectification, there would be no subject or object, and it would be impossible to promote the process of history. As Marx indicated, “a non-objective being is an unreal, non-sensuous thing—a product of mere thought (i.e., of mere imagination)—an abstraction” (Marx 1975a, p. 337). Consequently, in practice there is no unchanging subject or object, and both are transformed simultaneously in the activity of objectification, which is precisely the dialectics of practice. The history of human practice is at the same time the history of the development of human society, and practice, as a founding point, becomes a historical activity that dialectically unifies the relationships between subject and object, and their limitation and transcendence.

1.2.1.2 Materiality of Subject and Object

When studying the relation between subject and object, Marx never deviated from the materialist position he had always held. In his letter to Engels, Marx stated, “As long as we really observe and think, we can never escape materialism” (Marx 1988, p. 183). The reason why the subject and the object can create or form the object is that the subject and the object as well as the human and the object, are objectifying, and they are all natural beings in “nature.” As Marx implied:

Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature, and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being above nature and man—a question which implies the admission of the unreality of nature and of man—has become impossible in practice. (Marx 1975a, pp. 305–306)

The prerequisite for practice is the existence of nature and the realistic human being, and Marx defined the activity of the subject as an objectifying activity while affirming “the priority of external nature” (Marx 1975a, p. 40). He said, “The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous external world. It is the material on which his labour is realized, in which it is active, from which and by means of which it produces” (Marx 1975a, p. 273). What is particularly emphasized here is the materiality of the subject. According to Marx, human being “only creates or posits objects, because he is posited by objects—because at bottom he is nature” (Marx 1975a, p. 336). However, what is special about the matter that makes up the human body is that it has unique creativity and expressiveness, including the human consciousness. As for the process of objectification, consciousness is not some unfathomable, mysterious phenomenon, but something that we can see, hear, and handle, that is, the materiality of consciousness. In this sense, the subject is also the object. This is another perspective in which Marx surpasses Hegel.

Marx defined the term “materialism” by “the relationship between cause and effect” (Marx 1988, p. 183) rather than relying only on “the nature that preceded human history” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 40). As such, Marx regarded his “new materialism” (Marx 1975b, p. 5) as being “practical materialist” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 38).

1.2.2 Practice as Material Production and Alienation

What is related to and distinct from practice as an “objectified activity” is Marx’s study of practice from the perspective of material production. Marx elevated material production to the core element of practice, and among all practical activities, material production is the basic form of practice. This is significantly different from the contempt for the labor of material production by thinkers since Aristotle. In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx gave a fundamental and primary position to the practice of material production, which makes one what one is and which makes history what it is; “the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour” (Marx 1975a, p. 305). At the social level, material production plays a decisive role in the development of human society and even in the whole superstructure, and “religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law” (Marx 1975a, p. 297).

1.2.2.1 Practice and Alienated Labor

For Marx, true human productive labor is a free and conscious activity as he elaborated in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844:

An animal forms objects only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty. (Marx 1975a, p. 277)

Marx defined the concept of practice as “the free and conscious life activity of man,” namely, the activity of confirming one’s essential power through the objectification of human essence.

Alienated labor runs counter to human nature and to man’s free and self-conscious creative activity. Regarding this type of labor, Marx clearly stated, “not merely in present conditions but insofar as its purpose in general is the mere increase of wealth—that labour itself, I say, is harmful and pernicious” (Marx 1975a, p. 240). Marx mostly associated his critique of alienated labor with his discussion of practice. In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx devoted a large part of his indictment to revealing the phenomenon of alienated labor as a universal reality in capitalist economic society:

We proceed from an actual economic fact. The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. (Marx 1975a, pp. 271–272)

Marx went on to precisely delineate the alienation of the worker:

the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more values he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the more powerful labour becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious labour becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature’s servant. (Marx 1975a, p. 273)

The relationship between the workers and the product of his own labor is an alienated one, and the material wealth of society is not proportional to the happiness of human beings, which is precisely alienation.

The issue of alienation in practice is not just peculiar to productive labor. It exists in all dimensions of human society, including artistic and aesthetic activities. Later, the issue of alienation has been fully expounded in Western Marxism.

1.2.2.2 Practice as the Real Material and Revolutionary Force

Marx started with alienated labor to reveal the problems in social development. While condemning alienated labor, he saw the necessity and significance of the phenomenon of alienation in history, and deduced the theory of communism with “positive sublation of alienation” at its core. Sun Bokui (孙伯鍨) and Zhang Yibing (张一兵) in Into Marx mentioned:

Marx began to study economics at the end of 1843 and was soon influenced by Hess’s view of the history of economic alienation. According to Hess, the existing society was a society of economic alienation, which was deeply exhibited in the alienation of money. He gathered that the only way to get out of this alienated society was to act, so he put forward a philosophy of action. Hess said that Feuerbach proposed a theoretical humanism, but he himself proposed a practical humanism. Although the actions Hess spoke of had ethical shock, his emphasis on transforming the world through action had a direct influence on Marx. (Sun and Zhang 2012, p. 120)

Inspired by the philosophy of action embedded in Hess’ view of the history of economic alienation, Marx’s analysis of the relationship between alienated labor and private ownership led to the famous proposition of liberating the working class and all mankind as a whole:

From the relationship of estranged labour to private property it follows further that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from servitude, is expressed in the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not that their emancipation alone is at stake, but because the emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation… (Marx 1975a, p. 280)

In this way, the state of alienation becomes a necessary condition for human beings to move toward complete freedom and full development, and alienated labor will eventually revert to free human activity. Such “actual communist action” (Marx 1975a, p. 313) is practice. It is only through practice that the sublation of private property and alienated labor can be achieved.

Marx held the view that revolution and emancipation should take place not only in the realm of consciousness, but also in real life—“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Marx 1975a, p. 8). Practice is to take part in the real struggle in order to transform society. As Engels and Marx, in The German Ideology, propounded, “We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things” (Marx 1975b, p. 49). They went on to discuss, “for the practical materialist, i.e., the communist, it is a question of revolutionizing the existing world, of practically coming to grips with and changing the things found in existence” (Marx and Engels 1975, pp. 38–39), and that in order to “achieve real liberation only in the real world and by real means” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 56).It was also from this position that Marx deemed that Feuerbach “does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of practical-critical, activity” (Marx 1975b, p. 6).Marx highlighted:

We see how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of man. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of understanding, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one. (Marx 1975a, p. 302)

Therefore, we can conclude from the above that, only practice is indeed the real material and revolutionary force.

2 The Chinese Form’s View on Praxis

The study of Marxist practice has been much discussed in Chinese academia, and it has been heatedly debated in philosophy, aesthetics, and literary theory, with notable achievements in the study of practical aesthetics. It has been indicated that “Practical aesthetics is not only one of the few in-depth theories that can take a place in the history of Chinese thought in the twentieth century, but also one of the rare contributions that Chinese thinkers in the twentieth century have made to the international aesthetic community and even to the history of human thought, leaving a historical mark” (Wang 2006, p. 863). However, the debate has also left some questions for further study. In the case of Chinese literary criticism, there are a few connections with the category of practice, and also the application of the practical dimension to illuminate and interpret literary works is lacking. It is this lack that inspires our passion to study the category of practice from the perspective of literary criticism. The introduction of the concept of practice into the Chinese form, and the creative interpretation and application of practice in accordance with the development of society, is a necessity for Chinese Marxist literary criticism.

2.1 The Nature of Praxis

The concept of practice in the Chinese form builds itself on Marx’s theory of practice, and further examines it in terms of its nature and scope, forming an ontological view of practice in the process. However, the Chinese form rarely talks about practice from the perspective of exchange or alienation, instead, it emphasizes subjective and spiritual aspects, and stresses the primacy of practice from an angle of opposing dogmatism, thus giving the view of practice in the Chinese form an idealistic spirit.

2.1.1 Material and Spiritual Activities of Human Beings

As far as practice is concerned, the labor of material production is the most elementary and fundamental meaning of the concept of practice. Considering the practice of material production as a central part of practical activity is where Marx surpassed Aristotle.

Productive labor is a fundamental part of practice, and in the process of transforming nature, human beings change society and history, and ultimately themselves. However, Marx did not exclude other practical activities, and he mentioned two types of production, namely material and mental production. In his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx listed several approaches in which the human mind has mastered the world, such as artistic, religious, and practical-spiritual mastery. Today, with the enrichment of human activities, the scope of practice has once again expanded, extending to the realities of human activities such as politics, ethics, and religion, as well as the mental labor of human work such as art, aesthetics, and scientific research. In 1937, Mao Zedong pointed out clearly in “On Practice”:

Man’s social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms—class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man’s knowledge. (Mao 1965a, p. 296)

While Marx’s view of practice focuses on the material production of human beings, practice in Chinese Marxism has more connections with politics and culture. This type of practice differs from the practice of material production, but it is regarded as an objectified activity, which is common to all practical activities. It is Chinese Marxism’s contribution that explicitly extends human practice from material production to political, cultural, and even artistic activities.

Today, with the rapid advancement of technology, heavy physical labor is gradually decreasing, and more time is available for leisure; consequently, the scope of objectified activities will keep becoming wider. Jiang Kongyang (蒋孔阳) once stated, “What labor creates is not only material products, but also the realization of such essential human powers as thought and feeling, intelligence and wisdom of the laborer” (Jiang, 2014, p. 524). In the sense of the realization of the essential power of human beings, practice covers the material activities of human beings, as well as their spiritual and even emotional activities. If practice is understood as the free creation of human beings, freedom is then connected with aesthetics, which includes the emotional aspect of practice, free will, and creativity. As such, one’s artistic and aesthetic activity is also part of one’s practical activity. Since the free spirit of the subject embodied in practice is closely interweaved with art and aesthetics, the practical dimension goes into literary activity as it should.

2.1.2 The Initiative of the Subject

Influenced by Kant, Marx, while recognizing the reality of the object, stressed the fundamental position of the subject in practice, especially highlighting the importance of the subject’s senses, “because my object can only be the confirmation of one of my essential powers”, and “just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear” (Marx 1975a, p. 302). The Chinese form, on the basis of Marx’s understanding of the object and reality from the perspective of the subject, has its own unique characteristics in understanding the activity of practice from the aspect of the subject. Its emphasis is on the initiative and execution of the subject, and objectification is understood as the initiative, practical or historical activity of the human being, in which the experience and ability of the subject are extremely important.

First, this is manifested by the fact that the subject is not a material appendage and has free will and passion for life. The subject is able to objectify its essential power because it has the ability to create objects. With respect to literary activity, “the raw material of literature and art in popular life undergoes processing by revolutionary writers to become literature and art in conceptual form, which serve the popular masses” (Mao 1943, p. 72). In this process, the creative subject is active and purposeful, and only through the active role of the subject’s free feeling and aesthetic pursuit can the subjectivized transformation of the object be realized. Second, the subject is not an appendage of history. The essence of history is that it is the product of human activity, and there is no “purely objective law” without human subjects. Within the Chinese form, the subject in the concept of practice is not a metaphysical and speculative, objectified subject, but a people composed of each concrete individual, who will transform in the process of changing the environment and thus create history. In the process of objectification, the initiative of the subject of the Chinese form changes not only the economic and social structure, but also its own spiritual life.

This creativity of the subject does not come out of nothing, nor behave at will—it only realizes itself in the process of practice. Creation is a process of objectification and is generated within relationships. Any type of activity, including literary work, is a process of interaction between subject and object, and it is impossible to practice without any object at all. Moreover, while affirming the transcendence of the creative subject, it is also necessary to see the historical stipulation of the creative subject and be wary of the weakening of the externalization of the object caused by the expansion of the subject. The subject’s excessive desire for control needs to be curbed. Freedom in practice is a kind of autonomy of choice, and the ideal practice should be the unity of the transcendence of the subject and the historical prescriptiveness.

2.1.3 Primacy of Practice

The primacy of practice, as affirmed by the Chinese form, is in the context of human activity as a whole, and not just in terms of the relationship between theory and practice, nor is it in the Chinese traditional sense of “knowledge” and “action.”Footnote 1 If practice is defined as the activity that confirms itself through the objectification of the essential power of human beings, then all activity is practice, including theory itself. On this issue, Louis Althusser put it in a similar way when he stated, “theory is a specific practice which acts on its own object and ends in its own product: a knowledge” (Althusser 2005, p. 173). In his view, the relationship between theory and practice is not understood as one between two opposing concepts, but one in which both are practical activity, except that theory is a particular kind of practice that belongs to the realm of knowledge. In this way, all levels of social being belongs to different fields of practice, including economic, political, ideological, technical, and scientific practice.

The Chinese form’s reverence for the primacy of practice is motivated by a backlash against theoretical dogmatism. Mao Zedong criticized the erroneous tendency, “They can only cite odd quotations from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin in a one-sided manner,” “Such an attitude towards Marxism-Leninism does a great deal of harm” (Mao 1965b, p. 19). In view of the lessons learned from the blind adherence to certain creeds in history, Mao pointed out in his “On Practice” that “Marxists hold that man’s social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world” (Mao 1965a, p. 295). The “criterion for testing truth,” is an embodiment of the primacy of practice. In social change, the primacy of practice is expressed in the revolutionary function of changing the status quo. To achieve the all-around human emancipation, “actual communist actions” (in Marx’s language) are required. These actions can take place in political, economic, and ideological spheres, and all of these issues need to be addressed through practice.

The primacy of practical activity emphasizes not only an empirical fact, but also a grasp of the “rich totality of the object with many stipulations and relations.” As Marx suggested, “The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse” (Marx 1989, p. 38), and only by taking into account the multiple aspects of the concrete object can practice not become absurd. The primacy of practice is consequently the totality of the concrete, that is, what Marx called “the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete” (Marx 1989, p. 38). Practice has primacy when using thought to master the concrete. The “truth” in the “seeking truth from facts” advocated by the Chinese form is the approach of rising from the abstract to the concrete, which is a comprehensive consideration of many factors. In this process, the primacy of practice is inseparable from reason and methodology.

2.2 The View on Literature from the Dimension of Praxis

The Marxist sphere of practice is ontological in nature, showing a transcendence of the old materialism and idealism. As Marx pointed out, “Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism, and constitutes at the same time the unifying truth of both” (Marx 1975a, p. 336).Footnote 2 This ontological and practical intervention provides a novel theoretical reference for the construction of the Chinese form, and prompts us to ponder over the nature of literature, to re-examine previous theories and criticism, and to enrich our understanding of literary activity through reflection.

2.2.1 Literature Arises from the Relationship of Objectification

With regard to practice as objectification, literature is not a mere copy of life with a preference for the object. It is neither a creation of the writer’s mind with a sole focus on the subject, nor is it a formalist system independent of society and the author. Literature, as the embodiment of the essential power of human beings, is the product of the objectification of the subject and object. It arises from the relationship of objectification, which is reflected in the mutual transformation and construction between the creative subject and the object.

The creative subject and social life are in an interdependent and mutually shaping relationship in the process of practice. Without the creative subject, social life cannot become the source of creation; vice versa, without the creative materials and objects, the creative subject will lose its support and cannot confirm itself. In the practice of creation, the creative subject has the characteristic of initiative and drives one’s inner potential to create literary works with aesthetic value and thought significance, leading to one’s own transformation. Social life is not a fixed coordinate, instead, it will assume varying complexion under the action of the creative subject, thus forming a two-way reconstruction process between the creative subject and social life. In addition, the writers and their work also form a process of objectification. Literary works are the objectified products of writers. In the process of creation, not only the creative subject creates the work, but also the subject itself changes quietly and creates a new self.

2.2.2 Critical Theories Under a Literary View of Practice Theory

The subject of creation, social life, and literary works exist in an objectified interrelationship. Neglecting the relationship between them or overemphasizing any single part of them will lead to vulgar materialism or idealism, which is the greatest inspiration from the practical dimension of Marxist literary criticism. Bringing the perspective of practice into literary theory and criticism, and reflecting on the problems of these theories can help us re-examine and correct biases in terms of epistemology and modern linguistic theories.

2.2.2.1 Reviewing the Theory of Literary Reflection from the View of Practice

Since the 1950s, under the influence of Soviet literature and art, the dominant literary theory in China has been the model of active theory of literary reflection. It focuses on the relationship between literature and social life, stages the cognitive value of literature, and stresses the initiative of the subject and the role of literature as an ideology in promoting social progress. It calls on writers and artists to participate in and experience the lives and struggles of the people, to understand and familiarize themselves with all kinds of people, and to strive to pursue new lives. These concepts have played a major role in promoting the development of Chinese literature and art. The epistemology-based literary theory of reflection constructs a relatively complete theoretical system, because it builds on a materialist ontology and asserts that literature is a reflection of social life and that literature needs to reflect real life with literary images. From a point of view of practice, however, there are some inherent contradictions in the theory of literary reflection.

First, the theory of reflection is founded on the dichotomy between subject and object. The theory of reflection separates the subject from the object. With the writer as the subject and social life as the object, the subject should and can only create valuable literary works by going deep into social life. In this description, the subject-object relationship is a relationship of knowing and being known, or a relationship of depicting and being depicted. However, this distinction is essentially a mechanical materialism based on the dualism of the division of subject and object. Regarding the emphasis on the subject-object dichotomy, materialism and idealism are not entirely opposed to each other since both recognize the existence of subject and object. The difference between them lies only in the former’s emphasis on the object and the latter on the subject. Aesthetic predecessorsFootnote 3 have offered pioneering studies and contributions to such reflection.

Second, the theory of reflection has a partial grasp of the object. The theory of reflection regards social life as an enriched mine, an object to be explored in depth. From a point of view of practice, this understanding lacks an objectifying observation of social life, because the object does not exist outside the subject but is formed in the very process of objectification of the subject. The function of literature is not only the search for truth, but also the integration of emotions and ideals, expression of thoughts on life, and transcendence of reality. In artistic creation, social life presents various styles and colors under differentiated subjects’ writing which is precisely the expression of individual subjects’ free emotions and aesthetic pursuits in the objectification. This is the result of the objectifying observation of social life and the transformation of social life into the subject.

Third, although the theory of reflection highlights the initiative of the subject, it is based on the subject and its role and does not note the opposition, interaction, and mutual shaping between the subject and the object. The emphasis on the subject from the point of view of practice differs from that of the expressionist idea in literary theory, which advocates that art is the expression of the artist’s subjective spirit, in that the projection of the subject needs to be subjected to the constraints of objectification: the constraints of real life as objectification cannot be ignored. From the point of view of practice, the relationship between social life and literature is not merely one of source and creation, nor of background and writing, but rather a transformation of opposites. The aesthetic process is an objectified spiritual creation in which the subject and object are transformed, reshaped, and enhanced through constant proximity, resistance, adjustment, and adaptation.

The meditation on the theory of reflection is not to deny epistemology completely, let alone to replace it with a view of practice. Admittedly, epistemology has its own rational and profound points, and it is an important aspect of literary activity. However, from the perspective of updating critical theory and research paradigms, the practical viewpoint is more historical and open, because the objectification of the subject and object not only constitutes the history of the construction of the subject and object, but also, the dynamics embodied in the practical process can lead to a rich variety of possibilities for the development of literary activities.

2.2.2.2 The Perspective of Practice and Linguistic Ontology of Literary Criticism

Since the 1980s, the Chinese literary world has been impacted by the modern Western linguistic turn. In the field of modern literary criticism, the role of language has changed from a medium or tool to an ontological attribute of literature, being rewarded and even worshiped by literary theory and criticism. Linguistic ontology highly symbolizes everything. The world is then divided by language, the subject is constructed in a series of signs, and meaning thus arises merely from the relationship between signs. This formalist criticism, which uses linguistic ontology as a theoretical weapon, is also problematic when viewed from the perspective of practice.

Formalist criticism, based on linguistic ontology, completely symbolizes the world and constructs both subject and object with signs, thus eliminating the boundary between subject and object. This indicates the rejection of the subject. The writer’s creative process and passion are excluded from formalist literary criticism, and literary creation is no longer about writers as subjects writing books, but about “scriptors” in Roland Barthes’s language. New Criticism, which flourished in American colleges and universities in the 1940s, was even more extreme, treating literature as an impersonal system. Wimsatt and Beardsley’s “intentional fallacy” and “affective fallacy” excluded not only the author but also the reader from the realm of criticism when measuring the value of literary art. These criticisms were originally intended to counter positivist criticism and romanticist criticism in the nineteenth century, but ended up being overkill. The total disregard for the existence and the initiative of the subject does not correspond to the reality of literary criticism, and the criticism engaged in by these new critics is already and always a practical activity, and has the dynamism of the subject.

Another problem with formalist criticism based on linguistic ontology is that the subject and the object are both vitiated and bleached. Although formalist criticism focuses on the inner relations of the text, it emphasizes that the text is only words. Thus, in the process of symbolization, the materiality of all objects is quietly canceled, and literary criticism is reduced to a word/sign game in which different people have different perspectives. The process of materiality and objectification advocated by pragmatism can be seen as a corrective to this formalist criticism dominated by linguistic ontology.

3 The Dimension of Praxis and Literary Activities

After discussing the theoretical characteristics of the practical sphere, the practical dimension of the Chinese form becomes “concrete”Footnote 4 again, and it is another exploration of the Chinese form to integrate the perspective of practice into literary criticism.

3.1 Literary Criticism in the Process of Objectification

As a form of practical activity, literary criticism is also a relational whole that unites the objectification of human creativity. However, the practice of literary criticism has a particular nature, because its object, literary activity, is a “free life activity” full of sensibility and imagination. The dimension of practice the Chinese form emphasizes the initiative of the subject of literary criticism in the process of criticism, thereby transforming literary criticism.

3.1.1 The Dimension of Practice and the Subject of Literary Activity

The subject of literary activity includes both the creative subjects and the subjects of appreciation and reception. These subjects will change the world and realize themselves in the process of creation and reception through a creative spiritual activity. In the dimension of practice, the critics must carefully identify how the subject of literary activity relates to reality and thus to the text itself, how it projects its aesthetic passions and values into the text, and how the subject and the object interpenetrate and transform each other in a series of intricate relationships.

Since the creative subject of literary activity has more aesthetic freedom and transcendence than other subjects, the active role of the creative subject is the principal aspect to be concerned with in the practical dimension. The creative subject has aesthetic transcendence and the power to reshape society in the process of objectification. As Shelley said, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” (Shelley 1910, p. 359). This is a great affirmation of the creative subject. The subjective emotions and value choices of creative subjects in literary activities have a profound influence on human emotional demands and the guidance of realistic behavior. Although the creativity of creative subjects is not directly objectified into the material practice of transforming reality, the influence of their excellent works on people is subtle and immeasurable. Moreover, literary creation, as an activity of practice, is not only production and expression, but also a process of self-realization. The creative subject can be painful, moved, and even excited when creating, and is later purified in this process, as many writers feel when they talk about their experiences of creation.

The receiving subject is also creative. The creativity of the receiving subject is first expressed in the interpretation of and discoveries in the text in the reception, that is, revealing those things that are ignored and obscured in the text. When reading Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary,” people mostly saw that the madman used the cry of “cannibalism” to express his accusation against the feudal society, but they hardly realized that the madman was simultaneously reflecting on himself. Someone found the line “Have I eaten my own sister’s flesh” and interpreted it in a new way—feudal society was a “cannibalistic” society, in which many people, including the “madman” himself, became “cannibalistic” members. This is a profound reflection with great relevance. With the discovery and interpretation of the object by the receiving subject, the text takes on a new meaning. The creativity of the receptive subject is also expressed through the productive character of the interaction between receiving subject and the text, that is, the generation of a new text, as in the case of Barthes’ reinterpretation and fragmentation of Balzac’s Sarrasine in S/Z (Barthes 1975). As an objectifying activity, the “structure-of-appeal (Appellstruktur)” (Wolfgang Iser) within a literary text can also stimulate and impact the receiving subject, so that it can be transformed or purified in the process of literary appreciation.In addition, we also need to recognize the differences of the receiving subjects. A reader with rich reading experience and a child who is ignorant of the world will obviously have very different interpretations of Cao Xueqin’s A Dream of the Red Mansion. The richness of the subject determines to a certain extent the meaning and value of the object, that is to say, the subject actually participates in the construction of the object.

The subjects of literary activity are also compound, being both individual and social. This is because any individual’s activity is always carried out under certain historical conditions and in certain social relations, thus the individual subject inevitably bears the traces of a social subject. Moreover, individuals are always in history. She/he is placed in the context of history, and the self-realization of subjectivity often has the imprint of the spiritual characteristics of certain era or nation. Thus, the subjectivity of literary activity is a unity of the subjectivity of the individual and the social subject, individual self-realization, and the spirit of the nation of the time. By studying the subject within the practical dimension, we can not only better grasp the changes of the subject itself, but also understand the vicissitudes and development of society.

3.1.2 Practical Dimension and the Text as a Spiritual Product

The text, the object of literary criticism, is a particular spiritual product and a multifaceted, colored aesthetic object. With the introduction of the practical dimension, the literary text will no longer be regarded as a mere object, but as the objectified creation of the human beings that are concentrated in it. As an aesthetic creation, it has more aesthetic freedom and transcendence than other objectified creations and is also a specific and individual aesthetic object.

Text as a special spiritual product raises higher demands to the subject of criticism. The subject of criticism under the practical dimension, when confronted with a text, instead of just appreciating or evaluating the text, projects and devotes himself or herself to the text. The text is thus no longer a formalist system completely independent of society and the author. It becomes an ongoing process of externalizing meaning. On the one hand, the subject of criticism injects one’s own emotional experience and ideals into the text and realizes itself in the textual analysis; on the other, the text is constantly externalizing its meaning with the critics’ observation and gives a unique appearance. Moreover, this objectification cannot be done all at once and the subject of criticism cannot grasp all the meanings of an excellent text in one go. One needs to make new discoveries and interprets multiple meanings to the text with readings in many times. Also, in dialogue with the same text, different subjects of criticism can also discover, enrich, and differentiate the meaning of a work, thus giving it multiple meanings.

The nature of the interaction between literary criticism and the text is diverse and not limited to ethical or political aspects, but also offers aesthetic pleasure and philosophical reflection. In each time of reading, the subject of criticism and the text complete a mutual reflection. It is in those times of objectification that the subject of criticism completes its own shaping, consequently making the text richer. In this process, literary criticism and the text are actually shaped and elevated by each other.

It has to be noted that the mutual shaping of literary criticism and text in the practical dimension is done by the subject of criticism and the text. While enjoying the process of objectification with insight and vividness, the critics may fail to have an overall grasp of the literary activities.

3.1.3 The Dimension of Practice and Ideal Way of Being

While the dimension of practice in literary criticism forms an objectification relationship between critics and the text, the practical character of Marxism determines that literary criticism always points to society and reality, which is a distinct characteristic of Marxist literary criticism. The objectification study of the subject and text in the practical dimension is ultimately a reshaping of society through practice. Therefore, the practical dimension of literary criticism will not and cannot be entirely “literary” criticism. It will resort to literature to ultimately point to something “beyond” literature, and through the text as an intermediary, it will build a relationship with the real world.

The practical dimension of literary criticism can use the anti-alienation nature of literary works to promote the development of the real world in a direction that is more congruent with human needs. As Wang Yuanxiang (王元骧) affirmed, “We see the practical nature of art as a dual creation that not only creates the work, but ultimately transforms the world through the transformation of human beings” (Wang 2002, p. 58). However, this transformation of the world is through the revelation of literary works that reshape the social ethos and ideals while also influencing people’s outlook on life and values. Moreover, the purpose of practice is not only self-affirmation, but also making every individual happy. Thus, the practical dimension of literary criticism combines the observation of literary works with human beings’ way of being in their everyday life.

Literary criticism has a reshaping and reciprocal relationship with literary works and social life, in which the subject transforms the object through the active role of free emotion and aesthetic pursuit. Correspondingly, social life is not only reshaped by literature in the process of creation, but also by literary criticism, that is, literary criticism reformulates social ethos and ideals through its comments on literary works.

3.2 An Inquiry into Praxis

The notion of practice is a historical concept that develops all the time, and thus the reflection on itself forms a part of it. Reflection is also a unique ability of human beings. In a sense, practice without reflection is always incomprehensive. As society develops and times change, the Chinese form of Marxist literary criticism will continue to adjust and deepen its view of practice, and will continue to reflect on issues related to practice. Such constant reflection and dialogue should become the norm of the dimension of practice in Chinese Marxist literary criticism.

3.2.1 Consciousness and Unconsciousness in Practical Activities

Practice is ordinarily considered to be a human activity with a goal, meaning, and value, but whether human unconscious activity should be included in practice needs to be discussed.

On the title page of Die Eigenart Des Asthetischen (The Specificity of the Aesthetic), Lukács quotes from Marx’s Capital, “We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it” (Marx 1996, p. 85)—and devotes a chapter to discussing the rhythm, proportion, symmetry, and decorative patterns in primitive societies from the perspective of aesthetic genesis. The mechanism of the formation of this sense of form actually already involves the aesthetic unconscious. According to Freud, “The first of these unpopular assertions made by psychoanalysis declares that mental processes are in themselves unconscious and that of all mental life it is only certain individual acts and portions that are conscious” (Freud 1989, p. 45). By the unconscious, Freud refers to the repressed or forgotten mental states hidden within us, including dreams and latent desires in literary works. If these phenomena are dismissed merely as animal instincts, then many human mental activities, including the political and the ethical unconscious, are all excluded from practice. Moreover, the boundary between conscious and unconscious activities is blurred, as the unconscious is inhibited by reason or consciousness, but at the same time it is very active, and when reason is lax, the unconscious can throw off the bond of rationality and enter the realm of consciousness. Many human artistic practices often lie in the space between the conscious and the unconscious, and therefore human artistic practices will modify the current existing view of practice.

This brings up the question of whether practice, as an objectified human activity, is always purposeful. This is not always the case. Although the purpose of practice is to make the real world conform with human needs, most activities involving human beings have mixed benefits and drawbacks, and what one gains in the process of objectification is comparable to what one loses. It is debatable that wrong activities do not belong to practice. The process of objectification does not mean that all practices are absolutely error-free, and some practices may even have the opposite purpose and result to their original intention, bringing alienation or even distress to human beings. However, even a failed practice is not entirely meaningless; it offers some experience or lesson, as well as reflection, and human beings will achieve a new self-affirmation through self-negation. In addition, some practices may seem purposeful at a time, but later there will be unexpected problems and limitations. Kant suggests that, given the transgressions and arrogance of reason, it is necessary for practical reason to delimit and correct the capacity for reason. Who, then, will correct practical reason? Perhaps only practice itself. As the free activity of human life, practice should be a kind of experimentation and exploration. In the process of exploration, there are bound to be problems and mistakes, and therefore practice should be allowed to be error prone. In this way, practice is endowed with another kind of ability—error correction capability. Therefore, Chinese Marxist literary criticism with the spirit of practice will inevitably adapt with the development of society and changing times, and produce new theories and categories in this process. The ability to correct mistakes also reflects the wisdom and courage of Marxist literary criticism.

To conclude, we may say that practice is a free, but not necessarily self-conscious activity. The unconsciousness and purposelessness of practice will challenge continuously the definition of practice.

3.2.2 Finiteness and Infinity of Practice

The relationship between the finiteness and infinity of practice is also examined by the objectification activity. Human practice always falls under certain historical conditions and cannot go beyond the era. The constraints on practical activity come from the potential constraints of the object, that is, the “thing-in-itself,” and also from the constraints of the subject’s own conditions, which are not always omnipotent and may lead to destruction if one completely ignores one’s own limitations. In addition, it is necessary to consider the constraints of internal and external factors in the process of objectification, so it is necessary to set limits in the process of mutual transformation, which must also involve mutual respect, between subject and object.

The finite and infinite nature of practice necessarily involves the problem of alienation. Alienation is present in practice, or rather, practice itself constitutes alienation. Although the phenomenon of alienation today is quite different from the alienation in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, there is no fundamental difference in its essence. The horrific scenario of uncontrolled human expansion shown in contemporary science fiction films is a good warning to us. The excessive pursuit of scientific research and social development may bring disastrous consequences. The state that “The flowers are not in full bloom and the moon is not yet full” described by a poet Wang Anshi of Song Dynasty may be the ideal scenario. Practice cannot be unrestrained, and this is what many literary works have left us to think about. However, the escape of alienation should not be at the cost of stopping exploring, which is like “decapitation just to heal the head.” Looking back the history, we may find that progress can be achieved in alienation. Capitalist society has caused the alienation of workers, but in the process of alienation, workers created great material wealth, which laid the very foundation for the progress of society. This is precisely the dialectic of alienation. The paradox of life is everywhere, and we can return to ourselves only through alienation, or in other words, realize our return to ourselves through alienation.

The finite and infinite nature of practice is also related to the ideal. The charm of the ideal lies precisely in its infinity and inaccessibility, just like absolute truth, which is always ahead and inspires people to strive for it. But the ideal is often unattainable, and what we can do is to form a trajectory to the infinite and the ideal through countless finite objectification processes. The practical dimension of literary criticism is to inspire every individual to develop in accordance with human needs with the help of works of literature and art. The emphasis on the historicity and open nature of practice constitutes another main characteristic of the practical dimension of Marxist literary criticism.

In short, the value of the Chinese form’s acceptance and application of the practical dimension is that literary criticism must always grasp literature in the context of objectified relationships, rather than merely focusing on literature and one or another aspect of it. Ultimately, the Chinese form of praxis will lead people to achieve a complete emancipation through literature. Marx famously said in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, “…the perceptible appropriation for and by man of the human essence and of human life, of objective man, of human achievements—should not be conceived merely in the sense of immediate, one-sided enjoyment, merely in the sense of possessing, of having” (Marx 1975a, p. 299). This phrase has several meanings. First, it emphasizes the “appropriation” of human essence and life, instead of alienation or total alienation. Second, how to achieve this “appropriation” is “by man,” that is, through human practice. The third is “for man” which is the purpose of practice, that is, to achieve the full and free development of man, which is the fundamental task of the practical dimension of the Chinese form.