The different conceptions regarding the philosophical grounding of Marx’s method in Marxism-Leninism.

Marx; Marxism-Leninism; Method; Dialectics; Materialism.

This master’s thesis’ theme regards the philosophical grounding of Karl Marx’s method, as interpreted by the main philosophical approaches in Marxism-Leninism or Leninism. Its general fields are epistemology, ontology and political philosophy, being located on the three fields’ intersection. Its objective is to clarify how the Marxist method, considered as the set of presuppositions, groundings and procedures used by Marx to elaborate Historical Materialism or Dialectical Historical Materialism, was understood by the main approaches of Leninism, hopping that this could provide theoretical elements do understand what Marx really did, enabling a political practice that is truly revolutionary and transforming. The thesis’ method has consisted on literature review of some of the most important philosophical works of Leninism, analyzing them in reference to their internal cohesion and in relation to their theoretical, political and economic context. The history of philosophy has been categorized it in three main periods concerning its intelligibility form: the Greek-Medieval objectivism, the modern epistemologism, and the new post-Hegelian ontologism. Thereby, a typology of philosophy was drafted based on its cognoscibility pattern, its ontology and its epistemology. Marxism-Leninism was then located and defined in Marxism, and the latter in the labor movement in general. It has been identified that the issue concerning Marx’s method is related to the conception of Marxist philosophy that the intellectuals adopt. In its turn, this is expressed in the conception of Marxist science defended, the notion of materialistic dialectics adopted, and, furthermore, in the status and function of abstraction in scientific knowledge. Based on the typology elaborated, four main philosophical approaches regarding Marx’s method in Marxism-Leninism have been differentiated amongst our references: the general ontological approach, the social ontological one, the althusserian epistemological one, and the heuristic epistemological one. Lastly, some relevant points have been advanced regarding the discussions about Marx’s method.