He argued that the separation between objective world, and our subjective interpretation of it, was not sharply divided into two components that existed independently. Instead, it was a feedback mechanism, in which we, as humans, manipulated the objective world, through activity, and in turn it would influence our perception of it. The way we come to know reality, according to Marx, is through "praxis." That is, the only way to understand the world is to get involved with it and experience it.
"Thesis 11: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it. "
History, to Hegel, consisted of objective events and our subjective narration of those events. For Marx, the mechanism of history involved man interacting with the world through thought. However, thought is only valuable when it is "tested" against reality and in turn informed by reality. Man affects reality through thought and activity, and this is the mechanism of history. This was a direct response to Hegelians, like Feuerbach, who argued that history could be separated distinctly between the objective and subjective.
This is why "labour" is so central to many of Marx's theories. Labor, according to Marx, was man's life activity aimed primarily at transforming the objective world to better suit his needs. Labor was, therefore, the exact method by which history developed because it required man to experience the world in order to know how to change it. Humans can only be understood in terms of their activity, that is, their labor. Marx argued, that we make our history ourselves, through our own activity/labor and manipulating the material world, not some metaphysical force which Hegel called "spirit."
An example of Marx's theory of "Praxis" would be current political polling. Political polls intend to gain objective information about who voters are more likely to vote for. However, once this information is released out into the public, it's likely to influence a few minds. Specifically, it might influence people to change their mind about who to vote for, to stop paying attention, and could even cause them to not vote at all.
This is Praxis. We produce theories about the reality of our social world, then those theories influence our perception of the reality of the social world. Our theories, and perception of reality, are constantly feeding each other and therefore; it's impossible to separate the objective reality of the social world from our subjective perceptions of it.
Ultimately, Marx was still a "Hegelian" in a few different ways. For one, he believed that history was on "rails." In other words, every epoch contains within it the seeds for the next. For example, the seeds for capitalism existed deep within Feudalism, making capitalism an inevitable result of Feudalism. Marx, also like Hegel, believed that history's end result would be a society in which absolute freedom would be possible: Communism.
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