Marx, Lenin and Physical Culture

At the time Marx was writing, metaphysics was in the grip of a dualism that separated mind from matter and, under the influence of Christian theology, often exaggerated a distinction into an antagonism; in such a world-view, body and soul were seen as warring parties with the body cast as the villain of the piece. Marx rejected the dualist philosophy and stressed that not only was there an intimate relationship between matter and mind, but that the former largely determined the latter. In his view, political and social institutions and the ideas, images and ideologies through which people understand the world in which they live, their place within it and themselves — all these ultimately derived from the ‘economic base’ of society — the class relations into which men had to enter with one another in order to produce: “In the social production which people carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their wills: these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.”