Ends and Means

Also known as “purpose and means”. Categories that reflect the relation between two factors peculiar to human practical and cognitive activity. It is a fundamental feature of the social movement that is peculiar to and different from the motion of matter in nature that subjects pursue intended aims with the help of certain means. The end is the result of the activity that the subject expects to achieve; the means is the tool, intermediary and method and way by which the subject achieves its end.

Marx’s analysis of the labor-process revealed the purposive factor peculiar to human activity. He said: “But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.” The end is the anticipated result of the activity established in the form of an idea, not subjectively self-generated in the human brain, but the reflection of the objective being. Lenin pointed out: “Men’s ends are engendered by the objective world and presuppose it.” The emergence of an end and the realization of it are both conditioned by socio-historical conditions. Men can only set an end according to certain socio-historical conditions and achieve it of their own by reshaping objective things. Men’s ends and purposive activity must conform to laws of objective things themselves because activities whose end is at odds with the laws and trend of development of objective things will fail.

The realization of an end must depend on certain means. When analyzing the labor-process, Marx said: the laborer interposes the means of labor, such as tools, between himself and the object of labor “to make other substances subservient to his aims.” Means are the intermediary used by the subject to transmit its activity to the object and change the form of the object in order to achieve its end. Means also includes the method and way for achieving an end. Making and using means is not done as one pleases. Making and using means is, in the last instance, an exploitation of the attributes of objective things and objective laws.

End and means are interconnected and interdependent. The end determines the means. The end of the subject’s activity determines the mode and method of its activity. Men make and use means in order to achieve a certain end. Here, means that are not connected with the end and cannot actually be used to achieve a certain end lose their significance as means. Setting an end and achieving it also depends on means. Means are the material conditions to achieve an end and also the actual power to achieve an end. End and means can transform into each other under certain conditions. The making of a certain means can become the end of the subject’s activity at a certain stage, and the realization of an end can become a means to pursue a new end. The reciprocal conditioning and promotion between the means and the end constitutes the history of purposive and creative human activity.

Marxism requires to dialectically unify end and means according to objective laws and historical and actual conditions and opposes a one-sided emphasis on the end or on the means. Both voluntarism which only talks about the ends regardless of actual conditions for achieving them, and pragmatism which resorts to any means for an end are erroneous. Marxism opposes the idea that “the end justifies the means”. If the means required for an end are unjustified, then the end is also unjustified.