moments designated contain all the others” (SM 173 ). In other words, to
reason dialectically is to think holistically. But it is also to accept the
concept of dialectical temporality, or, as he explained earlier, to recognize
a certain “action of the future as such” (SM 92 n.). That is an essential
feature ofpraxisas totalizing – not merely a retrospective summation
but a goal-focused project.
Again inSM:
The very notion ofpraxisand that of dialectic – inseparably bound together – are
contradictory to the intellectualist idea of a knowledge. And to come to the most
important point,labor, as man’s reproduction of his life, can hold no meaning if its
fundamental structure is not to project. In view of this default – which pertains to the
historical development and not to the actual principles of the doctrine – existentialism,
at the heart of Marxism and taking the same givens, the same Knowledge, as its
point of departure, must attempt in its turn –atleastasanexperiment– the dialectical
interpretation of History.
(SM 175 , emphasis added)
Thus far, the dialectic is a heuristic. We are in the formal mode of
gathering and identifying the components of the social ensemble. In fact,
Sartre never surpasses the formal mode in volumeiof theCritique(see
CDRi: 818 ).
What makes this undertaking “existentialist” is its emphasis on the
project of the laborer, his/her physical overcoming and fashioning the
resistance of the material object to yield “worked matter,” as he will say
in theCritique. It is “into this very Knowledge and into the universality
of concepts, [that existentialism] wants to reintroduce the unsurpassable
singularity of the human adventure.” So Sartre concludes: “Thus the
comprehension of existence is presented as the human function of
Marxist anthropology” (SM 176 ).
Sartre states categorically: “The essential discovery of Marxism is that
labor, as a historical reality and as the utilization of particular tools
in an already determined social and material situation, is the real foun-
dation of the organization of social relations. This discoverycan no longer
be questioned” (CDRi: 152 ,n. 35 ). Following Marx, he takes physical
labor to be the most basic form of praxis:
In so far as body is function, the function need and needpraxis, one can say thathuman
labor, the originalpraxisby which man produces and reproduces his life, isentirely
dialectical: its possibility and its permanent necessity rest upon the relation of interiority
338 Individuals and groups:Critique of Dialectical Reason