This page might take
several seconds to load because of the many YouTube videos it has embedded
in it.
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play these videos. As far as I can tell, they play as intended in other Browsers.
However, if you have
Privacy Badger [PB] installed, they won't play in Google Chrome unless you
disable PB for this site.
[Having said that,
I have just discovered that they will play in IE11 if you have
upgraded to Windows 10! It looks like the problem is with Windows 7 and earlier
versions of that operating system.]
If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the
links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View'
(in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and add
this site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's browser,
Edge, automatically
renders these links compatible; Windows 10 does likewise.
However, if you are using Windows 10,
Microsoft's browsers, IE11 and Edge, unfortunately appear to colour these links
somewhat erratically. They are meant to be mid-blue, but those two browsers
render them intermittently light blue, yellow, purple and red!
Although I am highly critical of
Dialectical Materialism [DM], nothing said here
(or, indeed, in the other Essays posted at this site) is aimed at undermining Historical Materialism
[HM] -- a theory I fully accept -- or, for that matter, revolutionary socialism.
I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the working
class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a
revolutionary thirty-five years ago.
[That puts paid to the allegation that those who reject DM
soon abandon revolutionary politics. I have never accepted DM.]
My aim is
simply to assist in the scientific development of Marxism by helping to demolish a
dogma that has in
my opinion seriously
damaged our movement from its inception:
DM --; or, in its more political form, 'Materialist Dialectics' [MD].
The
difference between HM and DM as I see it is explained
here.
It is
also worth mentioning up-front that phrases
like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality",
"ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used at this site (in connection with
Traditional Philosophy and DM), aren't meant to
suggest that all or even most members of various ruling-classes
actually invented these ways of thinking or of
seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero,
and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to
highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the
interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them.
Up until
recently this dogmatic approach to knowledge had almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who
either relied on ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run
the system
for the elite.**
However, that will become the
central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published); until then, the reader is
directed
here,
here, and
here for
more
details.
[**Exactly
how this applies to DM will, of course, be explained in the other Essays
published at this site (especially
here,
here,
and here).
In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the
argument (but this time written for absolute beginners)
here.]
Some readers have complained about the number of
links I have added to these Essays because they say it makes them very difficult
to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly lodge that complaint since they
believe everything is inter-linked, and that must surely apply even to
Essays that attempt to debunk that
very idea. However, to those who find these links do make these Essays
difficult to read I say this: ignore them, unless you want to access
further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain
topic fires your interest.
Others wonder why I have added links to subjects
or issues that are part of common knowledge (such as recent Presidents of the
USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, films, or certain words
that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays
are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't
assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally
well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit
of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies',
or any at
all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them
I will continue to provide.
Finally, several of the aforementioned links
connect to
web-pages that regularly change their
URLs, or which vanish from the
Internet altogether. While I try to update these links when it becomes apparent
that they have changed or have disappeared, I cannot possibly keep on top of
this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers
informed me
of any dead links they happen to notice.
In general, links to 'Haloscan'
no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to
RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
As of September 2022, this Essay is just under 42,000 words long.
Anyone using these links should remember that
they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier
sections.
If your Firewall/Browser has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the
"Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!
I have adjusted the
font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired
vision can read what I have to say. However, if the text is still either too
big or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!
This work began life in July 1998 and was
originally intended to be an
unpublished review of
John Rees's book, The Algebra of Revolution (henceforth, TAR), but it
soon developed into a full-blown project aimed at completely undermining the
influence Dialectical Materialism [DM] has had and still has on Marxism.
[Unless indicated otherwise, by "dialectics"
I intend the post-Hegelian use of that word,
not its classical meaning.]
However, a brief outline of relevant
parts of the author's biography might help readers understand the motivation,
length and tone of the Essays posted at this site.
I studied for a BA Honours in Philosophy at
The University of XXXX in the late-1970s, then for a PhD in the early 1980s, and
later for a Mathematics degree. After I became involved in revolutionary
politics in the early 1980s I decided to write at some point a thorough-going
refutation of DM, having come to appreciate the pernicious and deleterious effect
it has had on revolutionary socialism in particular, and the international workers'
movement in general, over the last 140 odd years. The
publication of John Rees's book in 1998 simply provided me with the impetus I needed.
My political views had swung sharply to the left
much earlier; that occurred as a result of the very minor part I played in
the UK Postal Workers' strike of
1971 -- I had at that time been a postal worker since 1969. This put me in
direct sympathy with the left of the Labour Party (as it then was).
Several years later, at the above University, I was introduced to Marxist
Humanism by one of my tutors -- a truly remarkable man who possessed the rare
gift of being able to explain Marxism in simple, everyday language, expressing
Historical Materialism [HM] in eminently comprehensible and ordinary terms free of the usual Hegelian jargon and
Hermetic obscurities.
However, right from the start I was put off
Marxism by the philosophical and logical confusion I encountered when reading
books and articles on DM -- a theory I thought unworthy of acceptance by anyone
with genuinely materialist sympathies -- as well as other publications expounding what can
only be called,
Hegelianised Marxism.
My antipathy toward the tradition from which
DM had sprung was significantly amplified by the training I received in
Analytic Philosophy from a group of first-rate Philosophers and Logicians at the above University (most of whom were prominent
Wittgensteinians and/or
Fregeans).
This ensured that I would never take Hegel or DM seriously.
And that is still the case forty years later!
The election of
Margaret Thatcher and the increasingly bitter class struggle this heralded
in the UK in the early 1980s drove my opinions further to the left. However,
while studying for my PhD on Wittgenstein, I happened to read
Gerry Cohen's
book, Karl Marx's Theory of History. A Defence. From then on my opinion
of Marxist Philosophy changed dramatically, for even though I couldn't agree
fully with Cohen's
account of HM, or his politics, I now saw that there was no need to
accept the mystical doctrines bequeathed to us by Hegel (echoed in DM -- upside down or the
'right way up') if I wanted to be a revolutionary socialist.
Hence, a year
or so after the defeat of the
National Union of Miners in 1985, I joined the UK-SWP, since they seemed to
me to be the most sincerely revolutionary and least sectarian group in the
country.
In addition, and to their credit, they didn't appear to be lost in the
cloyingdialectical fog that has engulfed other supposedly revolutionary groups.
Gerry
Healy's now defunct
WRP
specifically
comes to mind in this respect.
Unfortunately,
almost as soon as I joined the UK-SWP the leadership performed an about-face and
suddenly 'discovered' a new-found liking for DM, and articles expounding
Engels's confused philosophical ideas began to appear in their publications.
Although I now think I understand why that happened, at the time this turn of
events was truly devastating. I just couldn't understand why Marxists I had come
to respect for the clarity of their political, historical and economic analyses had suddenly grown fond of
what seemed to me to be little more than Dialectical Mysticism.
As things turned out, I was soon able to
witness at first-hand the baleful effect that DM and DL [Dialectical Logic]
can have on revolutionary politics -- in this case, on local party activists in XXXX.
Several of the latter in the run up to the defeat of the
Tory Poll Tax,
and under the direction of the party leadership, began to behave in a most
uncharacteristically aggressive and abusive manner, especially toward less
'active' comrades. To be sure, revolutionary groups require commitment from
their members, but there are ways of motivating people that don't involve
treating them simply as disposable means to a particular end.
These hyped-up activists now declared that 'dialectical' thinking meant there were no
'fixed or rigid
principles' in revolutionary politics -- not even, one presumes, the idea that
the emancipation of the working-class will be an act of the workers themselves. Although,
somewhat inconsistently, not one of them drew that particular conclusion!
Everything it seemed had now to be bent toward the 'concrete' practical
exigencies of the class struggle. 'Abstract ideas' were ruled out-of-court --
except, of course, for that 'abstract idea'. Only the 'concrete' mattered,
even if no one could say what that was without using yet more 'abstractions'!
In practice, this novel turn to the
'concrete' meant that several long-standing members of the party were harangued
until they either abandoned the party or they adapted
to the "new mood" (as the wider political environment in the UK was then
called by
the party). The latter course meant that they had to conform to a suicidally increased rate
of activity around the
fight against the Poll Tax, whether or not they or their families suffered as a
result. At meetings, one-by-one, comrades were isolated and then publicly subjected to a series of
grossly unfair and decidedly unpleasant hectoring sessions (in a way reminiscent of
what went on in the Chinese "Cultural
Revolution" -- minus the physical violence, of course --
and also
unlike the WRP where beatings were common,
so we have been told). These public inquisitions were conducted with no
little vehemence by a handful of party 'attack dogs' until their 'victims' either buckled under the strain or gave up and
left the party.
'Dialectical' arguments of remarkable
inconsistency were used to 'justify' every convoluted change of emphasis and
counter every objection (declaring them one and all "abstract"), no matter how
reasonable they might otherwise have appeared to be. Comrades who were normally quite
level-headed and reasonable became almost monomaniacal in their zeal to search out and
re-educate those who were not 100% with the program, or who hadn't
quaffed enough of the Kool-Aid. For some reason they left me alone, probably
because I was highly active at the time
and maybe because I knew a little philosophy and could defend myself.
In the end, as is evident from the record,
the Poll Tax was defeated by strategies other than those advocated by
the UK-SWP, and the "new mood" melted away nearly as fast as most of
the local, veteran comrades -- and, as fate would have it, about as rapidly as
many of the new members the party had managed to recruit at that time. I don't
think the local party in XXXX has recovered from this period of 'applied
dialectics'. Indeed, from what I can ascertain, it is about a half to a third of its
former size, and thus nowhere near as effective. I have no reason to believe
that the national body has managed to
avoid a similar fate.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
So, for twenty-five or more years, the UK-SWP has been a fraction of
its former size (despite
claims to the contrary). Coupled with a handful of subsequent splits, that
probably explains why it has been unable to capitalise on the widespread
radicalisation brought about by the
Anti-Globalisation movement, the international opposition to the US/UK invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq
(despite the prominent role it played in the
Stop the War Coalition), the serious weakness of the 'official left' in the UK
(pre-Corbyn!),
or
the fight to defend welfare, wages and pensions post 2010. This is
especially so in the UK where
recent surveys show that while there is a marked swing to the left, that
trend isn't reflected in the recruitment figures of far-left parties. The main
beneficiary of these moves was until recently the UK Labour Party, whose membership
rose by 150,000 between the General Election in May 2015 and its Annual
Conference in September that year -- largely as a result of the election of
Jeremy
Corbyn as its leader. Indeed, in theweek following his
victory 50,000 more members signed up. This trend
continued into 2016, making the UK Labour Party now one of the largest
left-wing parties in
Europe! Not one single far-left party could hope to recruit
so much as 5% of that number. If they were all lumped together as a job lot,
they could still only dream of enrolling that many that fast.
[Even though I left the UK-SWP in the early 1990s I continued to identify with it politically until at least 2012.
The self-inflicted crisis that engulfed the party later that year -- which
concerned the cover up of serious allegations of rape levelled against a leading member (links below) -- meant that I could no longer associate
myself with that party at any level. However, since Corbyn was deposed as
Labour leader in 2019 -- replaced by a neo-Blairite robot called Kier Starmer
--, Labour Party membership figures
have begun to slip back to pre-Corbyn levels, and has once again assumed its
usual class compromised and compromising pro-capitalist identity.]
My impression that there had been a disappointingly
low level of SWP-recruitment during this period has now been confirmed by
this
document, and now
this. These
figures
have also been indirectly confirmed in
a response
written by a leading member and
this by
another. However,
another document
tells us that the UK-SWP's registered membership in 2008 was in excess of 6000.
(They are due-paying members, but, of these a sizeable proportion are
inactive, which illustrates another recent turn of events -- 'non-fee-paying'
members would not have been
tolerated twenty years earlier, when I joined).
Of course, there is no way to
confirm any of these figures objectively, but they aren't inconsistent with other evidence.
[On that, see
here.]
The UK-SWP used to hold two
large annual gatherings each year (one in Skegness at Easter, and another
in London in early July). Now, they only hold one. The second of these
two used to last a whole week, but is currently (i.e., from 2007 through to 2019) projected to stretch
over four days (comprising three full-, and two half-, days). The 2007 split in Respect
further reduced the party's size and influence, and the crisis which engulfed
the UK-SWP in 2013/14 has all but finished the party off as an effective force
on the far-left. [More on that presently.]
These developments were all the more depressing given
the failure of the entire 'Dialectical Left' to make significant progress during the
most widespread and
certainly most militant resistance
mounted by European workers in the face of numerous 'austerity'
programmes introduced by both right-wing and 'leftwing'' governments -- more resistance
than there was in the 1970s and 1980s, and possibly even more than anything since
World War II. As
Richard Seymour noted:
"The 'strategic perplexity' of the left
confronted with the gravest crisis of capitalism in generations has been hard to
miss. Social democracy continues down the road of social liberalism. The
far-left has struggled to take advantage of ruling class disarray. Radical left
formations have tended to stagnate at best." [Seymour
(2012), p.191. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted
at this site.]
Of course, as Seymour also pointed out, there were
at the time
perhaps two notable exceptions to
this generalisation: the gains made by the electoral left in Greece and
France (although, by
mid-July 2015 it
was clear that the
'advances' made by Syriza in Greece
weren't worth the value of even one the ballot papers used to vote
for them -- confirming yet again the fact that
not even
'reformist socialism' can be created in one country!). However, the anti-austerity
left in Spain, spearheaded by
Podemos, has begun to make
significant electoral gains since 2015; and, as noted above, the Labour
Party seems to have revived under Jeremy Corbyn, performing far better than
expected in the
June 2017 General Election. [Seymour (2017).]
Despite this, it is far from clear that the
'Dialectical Left' have benefitted from this in any way at all. Indeed, a
political current that is forever
fragmenting, and which maintains a sort of semi-permanent internecine war between its 'member' parties,
isn't likely to grow to a size that will threaten even a handful of bosses or
local police chiefs, let alone the entire capitalist class.
"There is no question that the global
recession on the back of the constant 'war on terror' has produced a
radicalisation. Anti-capitalism is widespread. Evidence comes from the
sheer scale of popular mobilisations over the last decade. Once,
achieving a demonstration of 100,000 in Britain was regarded as an
immense achievement. When grizzled lefties looked back on the demo of
that size against the Vietnam War in October 1968, tears welled in their
eyes. Now a London demo has to be counted in hundreds of thousands, to
be a success.
"Yet this radicalisation, in Britain at
least, has not been accompanied by the growth of any of the political
currents which you would expect to benefit from this anti-capitalism.
And I mean any, even those who reject the label 'Party'. The situation the left finds itself in
is worse than when it entered the new century.... No other period of radicalisation in
British history has experienced this lack of any formal political
expression. It's not that people opposing austerity, war and much else
are without politics. They are busy devouring articles, books, online
videos and much else." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Some paragraphs merged.]
"Let's start with a simple observation: the
revolutionary left is not growing. Indeed I am perhaps being generous in
referring merely to stagnation rather than decline.... Yet we live in an age in which many revolutionary socialist groups predict a
growth in the revolutionary left -- including whatever their own organisation is
-- and indeed sometimes speak as if it's already happening. So for someone from
within the revolutionary left -- like me -- to make this comment may be somewhat
uncharacteristic.
"There are two reasons why this stagnation might surprise people and therefore
requires explanation. One is historical precedent. Previous periods of systemic
crisis -- whether the First World War, the 1930s or the post-1968 era -- have
led to a growth in the revolutionary left or in other sections of the Left (or
both). So shouldn't that be happening now? The second reason is that it's not like we have a shortage of resistance to
capitalism, or particular aspects of capitalist crisis, in the current period.
Shouldn't such phenomena -- Arab revolutions,
Occupy, general strikes in
southern Europe, a widespread anti-establishment mood etc -- find expression in
the growth of the revolutionary left?" [Quoted from
here. Link added. Some paragraphs merged.]
And yet, DM-fans still refuse to consider
any alternative explanations why this is so!
"[Break] from the toy Bolshevism that has led to the dominance of monsters like
Gerry Healy
and to grotesque fractures such [as?] have been discussed on these pages, a practice
that has meant the Left has failed to grow in circumstances that have looked
favourable.... The Left can point to some successes out of proportion with its size: the
Anti
Nazi League, the poll tax campaign, the Stop the War campaign. Have these
mobilisations resulted in any genuine lasting and durable implantation of the
Left? I'm afraid not. It has to be discussed why not. The lessons have to be
learned. Then maybe left organisations can handle incidents such as the one
which triggered this whole debate with integrity and humanity and not a squalid
clumsiness that discredits it." [Quoted from
here; accessed 13/01/2013. Links added.
Paragraphs merged.]
This malaise isn't just a UK-, or even a
Europe-wide, phenomenon; here are the thoughts of a US comrade:
"We should
start with the fact that the objective situation is tough and that the left
everywhere is having a hard time. Practically no organization or model has
succeeded as a consistent challenge to the neoliberal order, and the most
inspiring efforts in Greece and Egypt have stalled and been savagely turned
back, respectively. The US working class is disorganized and reeling under blow
after blow of austerity. The picture is defeat and flaming wreckage all across
the front line, and, in Richard Seymour's words, pointing to the example of 'the
CTU [Chicago Teachers Union -- RL] will not save us, comrades.' The American
capitalist class has done pretty well under Obama's leadership, and
profitability is at record levels (though they're not out of the woods of the
Great Recession just yet).
"So yes, the
world is not making it particularly easy to build a revolutionary socialist
organization at the moment (and perhaps for quite a while now). That also makes
it more likely that we're getting parts of our perspective and orientation
wrong. We cannot allow reference to the objective conditions to become a block
to self-evaluation, self-criticism, and change. And on the one hand, to say that
objective conditions have been extremely difficult for the past five years does
not square with our sense that the onset of the Great Recession would open a new
era of radicalization that would allow us to operate more effectively and grow.
Nor does it square with the advances in struggle in the
Arab Spring and Occupy.
Nor does it square with the assertion that there is a 'continuing
radicalization' going on right now." [Sid Patel, quoted from
here. Accessed 08/02/2014.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]
Not uncoincidentally, it looks like the
ISN (established in 2013 by ex-SWP members)
is already fragmenting! In fact, in late January 2014,
it suffered its first
serious split, but by April/May 2015
the membership voted to disband! Before the ISN was dissolved, the comments I posted at
their website were
routinely deleted -- even when they weren't about dialectics! --, and I
was then barred from posting there at all!
Another example of the disastrous consequences that result from
of this style of politics (and in the
IST, too) can be seen in the break-up of
SAG in Germany in the early 2000s. [On that, see
here.]
Who in their left mind would want to join a movement that will
in all likelihood split before they receive their party card?
Or, which will descend into yet another wave of scandal and corruption even before they
attend their first paper sale?
The idea that Trotskyism is
synonymous with abuse, corruption, internecine warfare and fragmentation has sunk so deep into the collective
mind that in August 2016, when the BBC found they had
to explain who Trotsky was and what Trotskyism is (because the UK press had been
alleging that
Trotskyists were once again infiltrating the UK-Labour Party), they did so in the
following terms:
"They [the Trotskyists]
have never had much success in elections, seeming to spend more time fighting
each other and splitting into rival factions with confusingly similar names than
taking on the powers that be." [Quoted from
here;
accessed 11/08/2016.]
As I have pointed out in several places on
the Internet:
"If you read the attempts
that have been made so far by comrades to account for this and other crises, you
will struggle long and hard and to no avail to find a materialist, class-based
analysis why this sort of thing keeps happening. Comrades blame such things on
this or that foible, or personality defect of that or this comrade, or on this or
that party structure. If we only had a different CC, or a new constitution,
everything would be hunky dory. If only the climate in the party were more open
and democratic...
"Do we argue this with respect to anything else? If only we had a different
President, different Senators or MPs! Or, maybe a new constitution with
proportional representation allowing us to elect members to Parliament..., yada yada. But this is an
endemic problem right across our movement, and has been for
generations, just as it afflicts most sections of bourgeois society. In which
case, we need a new, historical materialist explanation why it keeps
happening, or itwillkeep happening." [Slightly edited and quoted,
for example, from
here.]
Sadly, but predictably, that comment of mine has sunk without trace. It seems
that comrades still prefer to advance Idealist explanations why the far-left has
stagnated and is
regularly steeped in crisis--
like this, for example:
"There is currently a huge
crisis playing itself out within the SWP, the party I have been a member of the
past five years. Like many of us warned, this has now spread beyond our ranks
into the national press, and has been even been picked up by our international
affiliate groups in the
International Socialist Tendency. Regardless of individual's
opinion on the details of this case, it can no longer be denied that this issue
will create severe repercussions for the party. The CC have failed to lead and
much of the membership is demanding an explanation. It is also a dead end to
argue that this should stay within the party and we should simply draw a line
under it. This is in the national press and silence and failure to recognise the
problem would be political suicide with the very people we hope to work with,
the movement.... We need an entirely new
leadership, and we need to comprehensively overhaul all the democratic
structures of the party." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis and link added.
Paragraphs merged.]
Which means, of course, that this sort of
thing will keep on happening.
[In Essay Nine Part Two
I provide an explanation and analysis of this counter-intuitive
phenomenon (i.e., why
comrades refuse to apply HM to Marxism itself.)
That explanation approaches crises like those mentioned in this Essay from an entirely
different angle,
providing for the first time (ever!) an HM-explanation why our movement is
fragmentary, is constantly in crisis and
what can be done about it.]
After all, if our core theory [DM] has been lifted
from German Idealism and Mystical Christianity (upside down, or the 'right way
up'), is it any wonder that comrades automatically reach for an Idealist
explanation for events such as these?
Indeed, if the following Leninist principle lies right at
the heart of our ideology, is it really much of a surprise that our movement keeps fragmenting?
"The
splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts...is
the essence (one of the 'essentials,' one of the
principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics....
The struggle of mutually
exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute...."
[Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Italic emphasis in the original.
Paragraphs merged.]
"Splitting" is an "essential" component of this theory; "struggle" is an
"absolute". This must surely involve the relations between comrades.
An emphasis on intra-party strife and splitting thus sits right at the heart of
Dialectical Marxism!
In which case, we needn't wait for the
ruling-class to divide and conquer us, we are experts already!
Similar crises have
afflicted other revolutionary parties.001 The
disintegration of
the WRP and the
Militant
Tendency (that link takes the reader to a page and a reply posted in response to
this) confirms that this is
not only endemic and
alarmingly
widespread on the far-left, it has been so for many generations.
Indeed, here is how one ex-WRP member characterised the internal regime in that
party (linking the crisis it experienced 1985 to the recent predicament
confronting the UK-SWP -- on that, see also below):
"Rape, however, is a most abusive violent power
relation and weapon used for oppression which echoes the exploitative rule of
capital itself. For such a form of abuse to emerge in any so-called socialist
organisation -- and to 'deal' with it in the way the SWP has -- reflects the
presence of the deepest forms of degeneration and corruption which, in turn,
replicates the most insidious and inhuman forms of alienation and oppression of
capitalist domination. If a so-called socialist organisation is not a safe place
for women to voluntarily participate in its activities, then it is not worthy of
the name 'socialist'....
"Historically, and speaking from my early
political experience, socialists have witnessed such behaviour before. The
dissolution of the Workers Revolutionary Party in 1985 was sparked by the
discovery that its leader -- Gerry Healy -- had regularly assaulted party
members, sexually abusing female comrades for many years and perpetrating
various libels and slanders against socialists in other organisations. Healy's
secretary -- who was instrumental in exposing his abuses -- listed more than 20
victims. Healy used his position of power in the party to sexually abuse female
comrades....
"When
Cliff
Slaughter
in opposition to Healy -- at a meeting in London -- quoted Lenin
on morality, Healy et al accused him of purveying bourgeois morality (such
accusations will ring a bell with those currently fighting the 'elect' in the
SWP) until he actually stated subsequently to the full meeting that he had just
quoted from Lenin. This exposed how far Healy & Co had actually moved away from
'their' Lenin on questions of morality. For Healy et al, Lenin was infallible,
indisputable gospel. Nobody critiqued Lenin. Volumes
14 and
38 of the Collected
Works were treated like divine revelation....
"Corin
Redgrave
(the now dead brother of the still living actress
Vanessa)
caused uproar in a meeting in Scotland when he praised what he called Healy's
'achievements' and said that... 'If this is the work of a rapist, then let's
recruit more rapists'.... This was the sort of obscene, anti-socialist,
inhuman morality which prevailed in the Workers Revolutionary Party prior to the
break-up in 1985. This was used to prop up and validate the bizarre sectarian
notions of vanguardism: 'we are the vanguard party', etc. Verbal and physical
abuse, coercion, bullying, intimidation, emotional blackmail, humiliation,
people re-mortgaging and even losing their houses to fund the party and working
all hours (18-hour days were normal for some comrades) were all part of being a
'professional revolutionary' in the WRP. The personal life was 'toast'....
"[All this] was 'complimented' by the most abject
philosophical philistinism and theoretically dissolute publication of Healy's
very unremarkable 'Studies in Dialectical Materialism' which turned out to be an
incomprehensible dog's dinner of convoluted mumbojumbo phrasemongering and
terminological confusion. One comrade in Hull sarcastically recommended it as
'bedtime reading' when I told him I was having trouble sleeping. Because we
didn't grasp it, we thought it was 'too advanced' for us. We didn't possess the
'supreme dialectical mind of a Gerry Healy'. As things turned out, when we
looked at it as the fog started to lift, it was clear that we didn't understand
it because it was unadulterated gobbledegook. Here again, we see a
characteristic of cult-existence in which its leader was, momentarily at least,
attributed powers which he really didn't hold. None of us understood the
'Studies' and so we were told to 'theoretically discipline ourselves' like a
mental or intellectual form of self-flagellation or 'penance' found in physical
form in some religious cults or sects....
"Many people did actually have mental breakdowns
even after the break-up of the WRP. Homes broken. Divorces. Families destroyed.
'Building the party' was simultaneously the point of departure and the point of
return. Everything else was subservient to this manic 'party-building'.... The 'leaders' of these sectarian groups -- these
minilenins and tinytrotskys -- tend to attract the same degree of reverence from
their rather uncritical membership as a charismatic neo-prophet does from the
enchanted congregation of his cult. The social psychology is fundamentally the
same. Until, of course, a profound crisis sets in which shakes everything to its
foundations. And sexual abuse in a so-called socialist organisation is such a
crisis....
"Meanwhile today, in March 2013, 28 years
post-Healy, the Socialist Workers Party remains open to the accusation that it
is harbouring rapists and sexual predators whilst two women socialists are
insisting that they have been sexually abused by the accused man who is still
free to prowl around the female membership. [The ex-comrade involved has since
resigned from the SWP
in order to avoid having to answer further accusations
of sexual harassment levelled at him by the second of the two female comrades
mentioned above -- RL.]" [Quoted from
here; accessed 09/10/2013. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added. Several paragraphs
merged.]
Video One: The People's Front Of Judea --
Now
A Cliché,
But Still Painfully Accurate
Here is what Wikipedia had to say about UK
Trotskyist outfit, Workers Power:
"In 2006 the
League for the Fifth International
suffered a split which particularly affected the British section.
The minority, which left to form
Permanent Revolution
believed that the world economy was in a long upward wave (a
position they adopted from
Ernest Mandel)
and that the possibility of a crisis of capitalism was unlikely for
several more years. They criticised the majority as having an overly
optimistic perspective or a pre-revolutionary period. In 2012, two further groups split, one
criticised Workers Power's position on the
NATO intervention in Libya
and 16 more left to launch what the majority described as the
'liquidationist'
Anti-Capitalist Initiative, the latter
reducing Workers Power's membership by about a third." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 19/12/2013. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site; links in the original.
Paragraphs merged.]
And this about the League for the Fifth International:
"In July 2006 the League expelled its
Australian section, its sympathising group in Ireland and a large
minority of its British section. The International Faction was
planning to split the organisation on the eve of its Seventh
Congress in Prague. In the previous two years, the International
Faction (first as a tendency), had struggled against the
perspectives and orientation of the League. In particular, they
rejected the view that since the turn of the century there had been
an intensification in class struggle, that the world economy was
either 'stagnant' or demonstrated a 'tendency towards stagnation' in
the imperialist heartlands, which the League had summarised as
marking a 'pre-revolutionary period'. Instead, they argued that
capitalism had entered on a 'long upward wave' following the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeats of the working class
movement in the 1970s/80s and that the League had exaggerated the
extents to which breaks had occurred in social democracy.
The League regarded the credit crunch, global financial crisis and
recession as vindicating its analysis and published a critique of
the theory of the long wave in its book The Credit Crunch -- a
Marxist Analysis. The International Faction subsequently
launched a new group
Permanent Revolution.
This followed the expulsion of some members of the League's Austrian
section." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 19/12/2013. Italic emphasis and link in
the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions
adopted at this site. Permanent Revolution's side of the story can
be accessed
here. Paragraphs merged.]
[Details of the degeneration, decline and disintegration of the
US-SWP can be accessed
here,
here, and
here. A similar punch-up in the CPGB a few years ago is detailed
here. There was also a
serious split in the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) in 2010, and then
yet another a few months later -- subsequently hailed as itsexact opposite: a
'success'! On that, see
here, and
below.]
Sad though it is to say, Trotskyism's one
and perhaps only major 'success' has been to split more times than a schizophrenic
Amoeba
on speed, which is, of course, one reason why it has been such a
long-term failure.
Believe it or not, there are comrades who will bemoan this
fact in one breath, but in the very next will refuse even to entertain the
idea that their core theory ('Materialist Dialectics') alongside the
class origin and current class position of their 'leadership' have anything to do with it!
They won't even consider these as remote possibilities -- nor yet even as a microscopic fraction of a partial explanationwhy our side has
witnessed 140+ years of almost total failure. The possibility itself is
rejected out-of-hand -- and often with no little vehemence and scatological
abuse thrown in for good measure.
[Why Dialectical Marxists in general do
this is explained in detail
here.
Incidentally, anyone who doubts the above allegations should check out the
hostile responses I received
here,
here, and
here for merely suggesting
these as possiblecontributory
factors (unfortunately, these links are now dead!). Or, indeed, dear reader, take note of the response you will receive, too,
if you try the following experiment for yourself: Suggest the
theoretical possibility -- even so much as tentatively advance the idea --
that DM mightbea remote and partial reason forjust some of our woes. The
hostility, abuse and vituperation that will surely greet you should convince you
that the above allegations aren't all that wide of the mark.]
One wonders, therefore, what would become of us
Dialectical Dissidents in the unlikely event that fellow Trotskyists ever managed to secure real power. The
vitriol, hostility, lies and smears I
have had to face now for many years suggest I, for one, wouldn't last long in such circumstances!
[Please note, I am not complaining about this; I
expect this level of vitriol. If I hadn't received it, I would have concluded I had gone wrong somewhere!]
For example, in an e-mail exchange a few years ago, one
prominent Marxist Professor of Economics
--
Andrew Kliman
no less -- expressed the fervent hope that I would "Eat sh*t and die!" -- either that
or quaff some
Hemlock -- simply because I had
the temerity to question the 'sacred dialectic'. I had asked him to explain
exactly what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, which he signally failed to do. His DM-inspired vitriol was
subsequently repeated in October 2013,
here (in the
comments section -- again, this link is now dead!), but it was deleted by the moderators because
of the violent and intemperate nature of the language the good Professor thought to use. Another SWP comrade (implicitly)
accused
me of being worse than the Nazis, and for the same reason! Incidentally,
this particular comrade has now left the UK-SWP. Apparently, he still thinks
that 'truth
is tested in practice'.
In 2020 I engaged in
a lengthy
discussion with a fan of 'Systematic Dialectics', who soon resorted to
posting personal abuse and bare faced lies.
Of course, this isn't a novel feature of the far left,
or even of the UK-SWP, as the late
Colin Barker noted in a recently re-published debate with
Ian
Birchall:
"Sectarianism is the greatest possible danger in the
present situation. We have to accept people as they are, if we are to change
them. A personally friendly and open style of behaviour is required, with a
stress on those areas on which there is agreement rather than disagreement. We
have to be able to exploit disagreements and differences within the ranks of
those who oppose us, and to be very sensitive to small changes in attitude. No
one must be condemned simply as a 'Stalinist' or a 'social democrat' or a
'centrist,' and left to rot in his theoretical iniquity. We have to abandon
that destructive tradition, developed by Trotsky's epigones, of personal
unpleasantness as a means of expressing political differences. Had this been
the tradition of the Bolsheviks -- the tradition of 'ultra-hardness' that the
SLL [Socialist
Labour League, precursor of the
WRP -- RL] in particular delights in -- the Bolsheviks would never have
conquered state power." [Quoted from
here; accessed 18/02/2019. Bold emphasis added.]
That clearly went in one ear and out the other
without engaging with a single brain cell of anyone on the far left.
Stalinism and Maoism are, it would seem, far
less fragmentary; but that is only because both traditions have a long and
bloody record of imprisoning, torturing or murdering those who stray too far
from the 'path of righteousness', as opposed merely to expelling DM-infidels from the party.
[Again, anyone who thinks this poisonous
'dialectical tradition' is confined to Trotskyism should read
this and then perhaps think again.]
And yet this is the movement that is
supposed to herald a much better era for humanity to grow into!
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
This series of events initiated in me a train of
thought: as is apparent to anyone with unblinkered eyes,
Dialectical Marxism is one the most unsuccessfulmajor political
movements/ideologies in human history -- almost bar none. Given its bold aims, totalising theory and the fact that it is supposed to represent the
interests and aspirations
of the vast bulk of humanity, the opposite should be the case.
Plainly, it isn't.
As noted earlier, the record of
Dialectical Trotskyism is, if anything, even
worse. In fact, it is little short of disgraceful. And I say that as a Trotskyist!
To be sure, these observations are
less true of Academic Marxism, a hardy perennial that largely sprang
into life sometime in the 1960s,
and is still going strong -- but, alas, to nowhere in particular.
Figure One: Academic
Marxism -- The Movie
In fact, the political 'effectiveness'
of this academic current has been conspicuous by its absence -- which is an odd
sort of thing to have to say about those comrades in Universities and Colleges
around the world who spare no effort reminding us that truth is tested in
practice -- or, praxis, to use the buzz-word. For these individuals,
"practice" appears to
mean little more than attending seminars, endlessly discussing obscure
philosophical conundrums on
Internet mailing lists, writing blogs and incomprehensible books and articles
about Marx's 'dialectical method' in Das Kapital --
or even blogs about incomprehensible books and articles written by other
Academic Marxists -- that not one single worker will clap their eyes on, or
bother reading even if they do.
Ironically, just as the richest of Christian
denominations on the planet attempt to 'justify' the brazenly luxurious life-style of
Cardinals and Bishops while claiming to represent a man who lived in absolute
poverty and who condemned wealth, so these academic comrades claim to be
furthering the "world-view of the proletariat" with
theories that few
without a PhD could hope to 'comprehend'.
Hence, I find myself agreeing with John Rees's
recent summary of
Tony Cliff's attitude to Academic Marxism:
"At the same time he [Cliff] had no time either for
academic Marxism or for theory divorced from practice. Academic Marxism was for
Cliff an
oxymoron precisely because it lacked any relationship with political
practice. He found
Louis
Althusser's idea of 'theoretical practice', the notion that theory was its
own form of practice, to be ridiculous to the point of laughable. Indeed one of
his favourite jokes in this context was to parody this idea, 'I write a book,
that's the theory. You read it, that's the practice!'." [Quoted from
here; accessed 09/04/2020. Links added.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Although at the time I had no way of proving
it, the local events mentioned earlier suggested that an allegiance to DM might have
something
to do with this wider, but suitably ironic, 'unity of opposites' -- i.e., the
long-term failure of a movement that should in fact be hugely successful.
The thought then occurred to me that perhaps
this paradoxical situation -- wherein a political movement that avowedly
represents the interests of the overwhelming majority of inhabitants of this planet is
ignored by all but a few -- was linked in some way to:
(i) The contradictory
theory at its heart, DM, and,
(ii) The class origin and class position of its
leading members and theorists.
I began to wonder whether the above considerations at least formed
partof the reason why all revolutionary groups remain small,
fragmentary and lack significant impact or influence? Indeed, could they be related
to the unprincipled (if not
manipulatively instrumental)
way that
Disciples of the Dialectic tend to treat, use and abuse one another?
Maybe this also had something to do
with the rapidity with which former 'friends' and 'comrades' regularly resort to
lying, gossip-mongering, and smearing one another -- for
example, in the recent collapse of
UK-Respect (but not just there).
Indeed, until recently, a
good place to
sample much of
this 'comradely banter' was over at the
Socialist Unity
website
-- aptly so-named, presumably, because it unwittingly, perhaps even
'dialectically', managed to do the exact opposite. Its 'owner' is, or used
to be, a
huge fan of the 'dialectic'. A large
proportion of its space was devoted to highlighting every
negative factoid (of dubious provenance) it could lay its hands on to rubbish the UK-SWP
and/or its 'leaders' --
and after that Leninism in general. Many of
the contributions in the comments section at the end of each article at that
site are -- if
that were possible -- even
more hostile and uncomradely. The level of abuse and vitriol aimed at fellow
socialists has to be seen to be believed. Small wonder then that very few female
comrades ventured there -- especially given the content of the next
couple of paragraphs.
Update, September 2012:
The aforementioned 'comradely' acrimony and vitriol over at Socialist Unity
re-surfaced in the late summer of 2012
concerning the controversy around
Julian
Assange and his
alleged rape of two Swedish women -- which controversy was seriously
compounded by the offensive remarks
George Galloway subsequently made about rape. [On that see
here and
here (especially in the comments section).
See also,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.]
Readers will no doubt
have noticed that Socialist Unity has degenerated to such an extent that it
even attempted to defend Galloway and brush aside his remarks on rape as a
'mis-statement'. This, about someone who is supposed to be one of the left's most eloquent speakers?
The controversy prompted the
resignation of
two of Respect's leading female members.
[I have moved several Updatesthat used
to appear here to the Endnotes, in this case, Note 001a. Update,
May 2019: The Socialist Unity website has since folded; few will
miss it.]001a
Witness, too, the
animosity
and personal abuse also apparent in the 2007 split that fractured the US
Communist League, and the
even more recent feud (in February 2008) in the Maoist
RCP-US. In
2007/08, there was a similar, dialectically-fuelled
bust-up (this link now
appears to be dead!) in the
US wing of the
ICFI. The
2009/10 split (that link also
appears to be dead!) in the IMT/WIL
was
no less rancorous.
"The Venezuelan comrades of the IMT held
their re-founding Congress in Caracas, taking the opportunity to launch their
new paper, Lucha de Clases (Class Struggle). The comrades have had to
deal with very difficult internal conditions over the past year but have been
able to re-found the Venezuelan section of the IMT with great enthusiasm and
optimism. The unanimous feeling was that the organisation was now on a
qualitative higher level than before. Having purged the organisation of harmful
ultra-left and sectarian deviations, they are prepared to play a decisive role
within the PSUV and the Venezuelan revolution." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added. (On the reaction of
their former comrades in the Militant Tendency, see
here.)]
Notice how splits and expulsions somehow
manage to 'strengthen' the movement! Gerry Healy, DM-Guru par excellence,
was well known
for holding
similar views. Here are comments he made soon after he was expelled from the WRP for raping
more than a few female members of his party:
"A new WRP is already well under way to replace the old.
Its cadres will be schooled in the dialectical materialist method of training
and it will speedily rebuild its daily press. It will be a new beginning, but a
great revolutionary leap forward into the leadership of the British and the
international working class. It will be a revolutionary leap forward for the
[ICFI]." [Healy's 'Interim Statement' 24/10/1985. reproduced in Lotz and Feldman
(1994), pp.335-36. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases added.]
Just how great a "leap" forward and just
how effective these born-again Dialectical Day-Dreamers proved to be can be judged
from the fact that the 'new' WRP soon split again, and then again, and is now
a tiny sectlet of truly impressive irrelevance. Healy has since gone to meet The
Great Contradiction In The Sky.
Compare the above with the way that some members of the
IST responded to the crisis that engulfed the UK-SWP in 2012/13:
"[We] on the German revolutionary left...have followed the developing crisis in
the SWP with a mix of great concern and a bit of hope. There is an immense
danger that this crisis will result in a substantial, long-term weakening of the
SWP and have destructive effects on the entire
International Socialist Tendency....
However, this crisis also presents the possibility of a democratic renewal of
the SWP and the IST -- and with it a strengthening of the entire
revolutionary left." [Florian Wilde, quoted from
here;
accessed 31/01/2013. Bold emphasis and link added.]
And,
here is what ex-UK-SWP-er, Ian Birchall, had to say about that debacle:
"Initially I, and a great many comrades, were deeply depressed and stunned. If
the CC had shown some willingness to reassess the situation, to look for
reconciliation and compromise, I am sure that many of us would have responded
positively. But the CC seemed concerned only to prove how tough it was. One
CC member told me that it would be a good thing if the party lost members, since
that would strengthen it politically. He compared the situation to the 1975
split -- of which he appeared to know little. I asked him if agreed with the
late Gerry Healy's axiom that 'with every defection the party grows stronger'.
At this he did demur." [Quoted from
here; accessed 15/12/2014. Paragraphs merged; quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
This is clearly the Trotskyist equivalent of the Maoist idea that
"retreat is attack" (believe it or not, that odd idea was
also 'justified' by an appeal to the 'unity of opposites')
put about by the Maoist guru,
Ai Ssu-ch'i, in the 1930s (on that, see
here).
How and why comrades come out with such contradictory
doctrines
is -- as should seem obvious by now -- a direct result of the contradictory theory
which holds them in its thrall.
And if you complain? Well, you
just don't 'understand' dialectics...
One thing is clear: we can
expect much more of the same before we finally allow the ruling-class to turn
this planet into a cinder,
courtesy
of our own studied idiocy.
Here is what Wikipedia had to say about the
above split -- and this could itself serve as part of any future epitaph on the grave
of Trotskyism (concerning its unremitting internecine warfare and serial friability):
"In 2019,
the
CWI split four ways. The leading body of the CWI is the World Congress,
which elected an International Executive Committee (IEC) to govern between
congresses. The IEC then appointed an International Secretariat (IS) which is
responsible for the day-to-day work of the International. The majority of the IS
founded a faction called 'In Defence of a Working Class and Trotskyist CWI'
(IDWCTCWI) in November 2018 at an IEC meeting, in opposition to the rest of the
IEC. This faction held criticisms of a number of national sections of the CWI.
The majority of the IEC disagreed with the faction's criticisms, and took issue
with the methods used by faction members to conduct the debate, which included
talk of expelling one of the sections the faction was criticising.
"The
majority of the
Spanish,
Venezuelan, Mexican, and
Portuguese sections, the first three of which had joined the CWI in 2017
after leaving the International Marxist Tendency, initially supported the IS
faction but in April 2019 split with them and then left the CWI altogether to
form their own international tendency,
International Revolutionary Left. In Spain, a minority which supported the
CWI Majority reconstituted themselves as
Socialismo Revolucionario, which has been the CWI's section in Spain
prior to its 2017 merger with Izquierda Revolucionaria. A minority in
Mexico and Portugal also remained in the CWI and supported the CWI Majority.
"The
faction's leadership was concentrated in the
Socialist Party (England and Wales), as a number of members served on both
the leading body of the England & Wales section and on the IS, including its
general secretary,
Peter
Taaffe. The faction attracted support from an overall minority of the CWI's
membership. Most of the IEC, and most of the CWI's national sections,
encompassing a majority of the International's membership, stood in opposition
to the faction.
"The IEC
outlined a process of discussion and debate to avoid a split, leading to a World
Congress in January 2020, the highest decision-making body of the CWI. The
Taaffe-led IS faction initially agreed, then withdrew their participation from
the committee charged with organizing the debate, and declared they would not
participate in the IEC or the World Congress. They then held a separate
conference in July 2019, open only to CWI members who supported the faction, and
asserted that they had 'dissolved and refounded' the CWI. The majority of the
CWI continued operating and held an IEC meeting in August 2019, and declared
they will 'provisionally organize the renewed international organization with
the name "CWI – Majority".'
"In
September 2019, a minority faction of the
South
African section, the
Workers and Socialist Party (WASP), left the CWI and formed the Marxist
Workers Party in support of the Refounded CWI. The remainder of the WASP
declared itself for the CWI Majority. The same month, a majority of the
German section voted by a 2 to 1 margin to support the CWI Majority. The
minority faction formed a new organisation, Sozialistische Organisation
Solidarität -- (Sol), supporting the Refounded CWI.
"The CWI
Majority had a presence in 35 countries, making up the majority of the CWI. The
Refounded CWI claims to have sections in 11 countries. At the CWI Majority World
Congress on 1 February 2020, the name of the organisation was changed to
International Socialist Alternative." [Quoted from
here; accessed 25/02/2020. All but one link, and all italic emphases,
in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this
site. Some paragraphs merged.]
It is difficult, therefore, to
disagree with much of the following:
"British politics urgently needs a new force
-- a movement on the Left to counter capitalism's crisis
"Capitalism
is in crisis, but its opponents are writhing
around in an even bigger mess. The largest
far-left organisation in Britain, the
Socialist Workers Party, is currently
imploding in the aftermath of a shocking
internal scandal. After a leading figure was
accused of raping a member, the party set up
a 'court' staffed with senior party members,
which exonerated him. 'Creeping feminism'
has been flung around as a political insult.
Prominent members, such as authors
China Miéville
and
Richard Seymour, have publicly assailed
their party's leadership. Activists are
reported to be in open rebellion at their
autocratic leadership, or are simply
deserting en masse.
"This
might all sound parochial, the obscure
goings-on out on the fringes of
Britain's marginal revolutionary left.
But the SWP has long punched above its
weight. It formed the basis of the
organisation behind the Stop The War
Coalition, for example, which -- almost
exactly a decade go -- mobilised up to
two million people to take to the
streets against the impending Iraqi
bloodbath. Even as they repelled other
activists with sectarianism and
aggressive recruitment drives, they
helped drive crucial movements such as
Unite Against Fascism, which
recently organised a huge demonstration
in Walthamstow that humiliated the
racist
English Defence League. Thousands
hungry for an alternative to the
disaster of neo-liberalism have entered
the SWP's ranks over the years -- many,
sadly, to end up burnt out and
demoralised....
"But the
truth is that Britain urgently needs a
movement uniting all those desperate for
a coherent alternative to the tragedy of
austerity, inflicted on this country
without any proper mandate.... The history -- and failures -- of the
radical left are imprinted on my own
family, spanning four generations: my
relatives had wages docked in the
1926 General
Strike
and joined failed projects ranging from
the
Independent Labour Party to the
Communists. My parents met in the
Trotskyist
Militant Tendency in the late
1960s; my father became their South
Yorkshire organiser, and striking miners
babysat my brothers while he fought
(unsuccessfully) for revolution....
"Neither
would I argue for yet another party of
the left to be built, Leninist or not.
Britons are becoming poorer with every
passing year; the wealthy elite
continues to boom -- the increase in the
fortunes of the richest 1,000 since 2008
eclipses our annual deficit; and
Labour's leaders are still to offer a
genuine alternative to austerity. But
parties challenging Labour for the
mantle of the left languish, as they
have almost always done, in political
oblivion. In the by-election in
Manchester Central back in November, for
example, the catchily titled
Trade Union and Socialist Coalition
won an
embarrassing 220 votes and was even
beaten by the Pirate Party. If not now,
comrades, then when?... But
it is absurd that -- as we live through
a Great Reverse of living standards and
hard-won rights -- the opponents of
austerity are scattered and fragmented.
Even as their poison drives up debt,
poverty and long-term unemployment
alike, the High Priests of Austerity
remain perversely united.
"Ugly forces are more than happy to
benefit from a widespread mood of
revulsion at the political
establishment.
Nigel Farage
has
benefited from
a ubiquitous
presence on our TV screens
-- so much for a left-wing conspiracy at
[the BBC] -- but
Ukip is thriving too as
a collective middle finger stuck up at
our rulers. If the left cannot pull
itself together half a decade after
global capitalism started to totter, the
populist right knows a vacuum when it
sees one."
[Owen
Jones,
The Independent, 20/01/2013.
Several links added, and some paragraphs
merged. In 2015, Jones was
a
prominent and vocal supporter of Jeremy
Corbyn; in 2016, he performed a
U-turn, and, during the Labour Leadership
election campaign, he lent his support to
Owen Smith, a Labour MP who
overnight discovered he had a few left-wing
ideas. Jones then became one of
the more vocal
anti-Corbyn critics. Could it be
that his parents' Trotskyism taught
Jones enough dialectics to enable him to
'justify' his 'contradictory'
behaviour? Update, September 2016:
Jones now appears to have performed
yet another U-turn!
Update,
November 2019: UKIP have now all
but vanished to be replaced by Nigel
Farage's new, right-wing party,
Brexit. Update, July 2021:
Brexit has also passed into oblivion,
and Farage has been reduced to fronting
adverts on YouTube.]
Just when the most concerted and vicious attack on workers' living standards the world
has witnessed in many a generation -- perhaps ever -- gains momentum, the
far-left has shot itself in the head. At a time when the far right and the fascists are
mobilising throughout much of Europe and the USA, we have fatally compromised our ability to resist and fight back!
How many more self-inflicted wounds can
our movement take? When are we going to
start learning from history?
But, are we just unlucky?
Or, are there deeper structural and
ideological reasons for our serial screw-ups, failures and set-backs?
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Other questions soon forced themselves to the
surface:
Could it be that DM is indirectly, or even directly, connected with the tendency almost all
revolutionary groups have of wanting to
substitute themselves for the working-class --, or, at least, for
excusing the substitution of other forces for workers, be they Red Army
tanks, Maoist guerrillas, 'the peasantry', Central Committees, a 'Great
Helmsman'/'Teacher', radicalised students, 'sympathetic', 'progressive' nationalist leaders, 'leftwing' MPs,
or 'rainbow alliances'...? Indeed,
has it been used to 'justify' and rationalise seemingly endless short-term, opportunistic and cynical
tactical and strategic twists and
turns (some of which took place literally overnight -- like the 180º flips
performed by the
CPSU and the CCP in
the 1920s and 1930s), which helped destroy more than one revolution, demobilised
workers' struggles, indirectly leading to the death of millions of workers and
their families in the run up to, and during, WW2 --, or, indeed, ever since?
[As we
shall see, in each case, the answer to the above questions is, alas,
unequivocally in the affirmative.]
And there are still some on the far-left who
wonder why workers (particularly class conscious workers) across the planet ignore,
or even distrust us!
It seemed to me that researching these and
related questions might help explain why
revolutionary socialism has been so spectacularly unsuccessful for so
long. Indeed, if there are no fixed principles (according to the fixed
DM-principle that there aren't any!), it is hardly surprising
that comrades treat one another -- and are treated in return -- in an
unprincipled and manipulative way. Or, that they use a 'dialectical' version of
'Marxism' to justify whatever
is politically self-serving, expedient or opportune.
In that case, isn't DM just another part of
the "muck of ages" that Marx claimed humanity had to cast aside if a socialist
society is to be created?
Maybe not; but shouldn't it be?
Monumental
lack of success (lasting now for
over one hundred and forty years -- which means that this isn't just an
ephemeral or superficial feature of our movement) sits rather awkwardly with the emphasis
dialecticians constantly place on practice as a test of truth. Despite their long history
of almost complete failure, DM-theorists still declare that Marxism
is a
success! This they say is because it has been "tested in practice" and hasn't
been found wanting! Now, to ordinary observers,
crazy denials and implausible avowals like these
resemble a little too uncomfortably the refusal to acknowledge any damage done
to him by the
Black
Knight in
Monty Python And The Holy Grail. No matter which body part this joker
lost he still claimed he was winning:
Video Two: Monty Python's
Black Knight,
'Punching Above His Weight'?
In fact, anyone who has
ever tried to convince the DM-faithful that
Dialectical Marxism has been and still is an abject failure might
just as
well try to convince them that Karl Marx was made of cream cheese for all
the progress they will make. Indeed, it won't even register,
so deep in the sand has the collective dialectical head been inserted.
[Of course, the obverse of this is the widely held view (and not
just by ex-Marxists) that Marxismitself has been an abject
failure. Those advancing that claim fail to notice that the non-dialectical
version hasn't been road tested yet! So, the failure of Dialectical Marxism
has nobearing on Marxism itself.]
An irrational compulsion to see the world as other than it really is, is something Marxists quite rightly lay at the
door of our class-enemies -- especially those who hold religious
beliefs of one sort or other. But, it now looks like that psychological defect has come home to
roost and is perched comfortably in each dialectical skull.
Indeed, the radically perverse nature of
dialectics might help convince otherwise alert revolutionaries that
even if what they can see with their own eyes contradicts the abstract
idea that 'Marxism has been tested
successfully in practice' -- abstract because it certainly isn't concrete --, that glaring disparity can be discounted since
this 'theory'/'method' also teaches that appearances 'contradict underlying reality'! In that
case, the above incongruities are only to be
expected. Just like those who hold irrational beliefs in some 'god' or other,
DM-fans will completely ignore contrary evidence no matter how cogent it happens to be. And,
perversely,
even that incongruity only serves to further confirm the theory! For example,
we have already seen DM-fans appeal to Engels's First Law,
the transformation of 'Quantity into Quality', in order to argue that since a
given party has fewermembers
(it having split or they having left)
that must mean its quality has improved!
In a world supposedly full of
'contradictions', what else is to be expected of those who cleave to this dogma?
Hence, no material fact (no matter how
obvious, blatant or damning) is allowed to count against the fixed idea that
Dialectical Marxism has been, still is, and always will be a ringing
success.
Apparently, this is one belief over
which the infamous
Heraclitean Flux
has no hold -- indeed, it appears to be the only belief that remains rock solid, locked in
Parmenidean
stasis, year in, year
out.
Any who doubt this need only read the up-beat,
hyperventilated reports found in most revolutionary papers, and on the vast majority
of 'dialectical websites' (with few notable
exceptions):
everything is always coming
up roses. Major set-backs are quietly ignored, the
smallest success
is hyped out of all proportion,
hailed as if it were
of truly
cosmic
significance.
So, when a dozen or so hard-boiled,
leather-necked, brick-faced Bolsheviks gather together in some 'god'-forsaken
hotel or pub in the suburbs, we are regaled with the glad tidings that this marks a
significant advance
for the world-wide proletariat! Except, of course, no one bothered to tell all five
billion of them, and the latter happily returned the complement by ignoring these
numpties. A month later and what do we find? This 'party of the
working-class' has split, with one half expelling the other -- and, as if to rub it in, even that
outcome is hailed as a major
advance for the toiling masses (as,
indeed,
we saw above with the IMT and Gerry
Healy)!
The situation in the USA, with respect to the ISO, seems to be
somewhat similar, as one comrade recently pointed out:
"And there is, finally, the question of the
group's size and impact. A lot of games have been played with the categories of
'quantitative' and 'qualitative' since Convention, as if these have nothing to
do with one another. In particular, while it is now basically admitted that the
ISO has shrunk over the last several years, the leadership faction claims that
the group's 'quality' has improved. Now it is theoretically possible for a group
to decline in numbers and grow in strength -- if, for example, ten 'random'
comrades quit and we recruit five people in a single important workplace, we
probably would be stronger -- but the implications of what comrades are saying in
the
concrete context are
really quite chilling. That is, it is being argued that shedding cadre is
neither bad nor even neutral, but a positive good.
"In truth, the ISO has declined quantitatively
and qualitatively since 2008, just like the international left generally. The
fact that this has happened to basically everyone indicates that powerful
'objective' factors are engaged; the decline in itself is arguably not a sin.
What is a sin -- always and under any circumstances -- is lying to oneself about it."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 03/11/2014. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; link in the original. Bold
emphases alone added. Just how much of an 'advance' this proved to be can be seen from
the fact that, as noted above, the
ISO has now imploded.]
The conclusions drawn above are even more revealing given the
additional fact that
DM was used (again, in the shape of the law of the transformation of "quantity and
quality") to reconfigure each such serious
set-back as its opposite.
[Here
is another excellent example of this 'contradictory' phenomenon.]
The reader is invited to check
for herself the rabid optimism that (up until
recently) swept, for example, through
Respect, and then
Respect
Renewal (the 'breakaway' party), especially
here (where even
the cake that was served was "marvellous"!) --, and that after
yet another split!
Three hundred or so bedraggled comrades roll up a century-and-a-half or more after the Communist Manifesto
was first published and that is somehow something to shout from the rooftops! Of
course, all this rabid optimism has since melted away, replaced by fragmentation and bitter
recrimination, currently being camouflaged somewhat behind illusions in a revived Labour
Party under Jeremy Corbyn. [That, too, has now drifted off into the ether.]
It looks
like single-celled organisms
learn faster.
To be sure, not everyone involved in the above split was a fan of
'the dialectic' (even though significant sections were); once again, the class-origin and current class-position of the vast majority of those involved
were key
factors, for it is in this petty-bourgeois soil that sectarianism festers --
aggravated, of course, by this mystical 'theory', DM.
[Again, these phenomena have been analysed in
much greater detail in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
A century-and-a-half mismatch between theory
and observation of this order of magnitude would normally
sink an honest theory (i.e., a scientific theory), but not DM. One
consequence of
this particular 'theory' is that the message delivered to the collective dialectical brain is inverted into
its opposite, becoming a powerful
motivating force for the re-confirmation of the very theory that instructs believers to expect just
such discrepancies, just such 'contradictions'! Theorists who proudly
proclaim their materialist credentials can now 'safely' ignore material reality
-- since it is merely an 'appearance', or even an 'abstraction'
--, while
clinging to the comforting
theoretical idea that everything is hunky-dory, and the tide of history is on their side.
The fact that dialecticians almost en masse
have bought into this rosy view of reality suggests that something has gone badly wrong,
something is misfiring
inside these
Hermetically-compromised brains.
Dialectical Myopia is,
alas,
a movement-wide phenomenon. It afflicts Maoists and Stalinists, Orthodox Trotskyists
and Libertarian Communists, Non-Orthodox Trotskyists, Left Communists, 'Green'
Marxists and Academic Marxists alike.
In fact, the deep, sectarian divisions that have split the movement from top to bottom,
and from one side to the other for generations unfortunately haven't succeeded in dividing opinionover the
following
two factors:
(i) While every tendency views every other
tendency as an abject failure, a 'traitor to
the cause', the members of each given party judge
themselves to be success incarnate; and,
(ii) DM has absolutely
nothing to do with what few, if any, failures its acolytes even care to acknowledge.
Perish the thought...
This means that
the only two things in the entire universe that aren't interconnected are DM and the
long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism!
In a world governed by topsy-turvy logic like this,
fantasy is all too easily substituted for fact, reality replaced by wish-fulfilment.
The almost universal and long-term rejection
of Dialectical Marxism by practically every section of
the working-class can thus be flipped upside down so that it becomes the source of
Dialectical Marxism's
strongest support! If workers disdain Marxism, then the theory that inverted
this material fact -- transforming it into the contrary
idea that workers don't really do this (since they are blinded by "false
consciousness", have been 'bought-off'
by imperialist super-profits, or have succumbed to 'commodity fetishism',
'commonsense', or 'formal thinking') -- at
one stroke becomes both cause and consequence of the failure of revolutionary
politics to "seize the masses". That is because
hard-core fantasy like this actually
prevents its victims from facing up to the long-term, profound problems
that confront Marxism.
Of course, if there are no problems
with the core theory (DM), then, plainly, noneneed be addressed!
So, the theory that helps keep Marxism unsuccessful is the very same theory that tells those held in
its thrall that the opposite is in fact the case, and that nothing need be done about
it, even as it insulates each militant mind from a recalcitrant reality that
tells a
different story.
This means that the DM-inspired negators
of material reality can now safely ignore the fact that it universally
negates their theory in return. As a result, 'reality' has to be rotated through 180º
in order to conform with the idea that whatever happens will
always be a victory for socialism -- at least in the long term..., or..., er..., someday soon...,
er..., anyway, the movement is..., er..., building, anger is..., um..., growing, the crisis
is..., er...,
deepening... We had a whopping 300 at our last World-wide convention, comrade!
This is a contradiction of such prodigious
proportions that only those who "understand" dialectics are capable of "grasping"
it!
Ironically enough for a theory ostensively
concocted by hard-nosed Bolsheviks, the Ideal now stands proudly on its feet, the
material world having been unceremoniously up-ended. No wonder Lenin said he
preferred 'intelligent' Idealists to 'crude' materialists:
"Intelligent idealism is
closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism. Dialectical idealism instead
of intelligent; (sic) metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude, rigid instead of
stupid." [Lenin (1961),
p.274.]
But, if anything that happens can be made to agree with this
'theory', if decades of defeats, set-backs, splits and disasters count for
nothing, how can it reasonably be maintained that
practice is a test of truth? What exactly is being tested if history
is so readily ignored? If DM can't fail whatever happens, why bother with
this empty charade?
The short answer is, of course, that
practice has never been used to test the truth of
Dialectical Marxism-- despite
what the official brochure might try to tell you. Hadit been, there would be no DM-supporters
left to question that seemingly impertinent allegation, since they would have seen
Dialectical Marxism for what it is: failure writ large, refuting a theory writ small, and given up.
If one hundred-and-fifty years of defeat, retreat, disaster
and debacle are anything to go by, we can safely conclude one or more
of the following:
(a) If practice is a criterion of truth,
Dialectical Marxism stands refuted;
(b) If practice is a criterion of truth, it hasn't yet been applied to
Dialectical Marxism
itself; or,
If allegations like these drift anywhere in the vicinity
of truth, it would seem reasonable to suppose that an adherence to DM will
possess
other noxious implications or side-effects
that
its adepts might prefer to ignore, or which they can be expected to try
to
invert in like manner.
Perhaps this theory has helped aggravate the following unappealing DM-traits:
(i) Mean-spirited intolerance and disdain displayed
by comrades of one group toward those of any and all others in the
revolutionary movement;
(ii) Sectarian in-fighting concerning minor
theoretical differences over the interpretation of this or that vanishingly
small dialectical thesis;
(viii) The megalomaniacal idea that a handful of
militants gathered together in, say, a flat in
Camden, are authorised to issue
demands on behalf of the
"International Proletariat";
(ix) An irrational devotion to
quasi-mystical
theses -- involving, among other things:
(b) A commitment to the idea that nature is a unified whole where
everything is
inter-connected,
(c) The brazenly animistic doctrine that the universe is involved
in what
can only be described as an endless 'argument' with itself -- evidenced by the
alleged fact that there exist
real "contradictions" in nature
and
society --; and
finally,
(x) The tendency practically all dialecticians
have for quoting Holy Writ in
answer to any and all objections -- and
this from comrades who are otherwise proud of their independence
of mind!
All of these, and more, can and
will be attributed in
part or in whole to an acceptance of the 'dialectic' in what
follows at this site. The
prevalence of these
faults and foibles is hardly surprising given the fact that the philosophical principles
underlying DM can be traced back to the ideas and opinions of ancient and early modern
Mystics, whose theories both mirrored and expressed
well-entrenched ruling-class
priorities and
forms-of-thought.
At this point it is important to add the following
comments (taken from
here):
A word of warning upfront -- this isn't my argument:
Dialectical Marxism has failed, therefore DM is false.
It is the following:
DM is far too vague and confused for
anyone to be able to say whether or not it is true, so no wonder it has
failed us for so long.
I certainly don't believe that truth is
tested in practice (why that is so is explained in detail here)....
Nor am I blaming all our woes on this 'theory'!
[The above remarks have been (or will be) substantiated in
the following Essays: Nine Parts One
and Two, Twelve Parts Two and
Three, and Fourteen Part One -- summaries
here,
here and
here -- I
have linked to summaries since the latter three Essays haven't been published yet.]
The unity, self-discipline and
grass-roots democracy that the class war progressively forces on workers
stands in stark contrast to the petty sectarian divisiveness found in all known
revolutionary parties. Amazingly, comrades can still be found who will argue
that on the one hand workers must organise collectively to defend
themselves, while on the other they will tell anyone who will listen that voting to expel this or that faction from that or
this party will "historically" advance the cause of the working class!
Yet another 'unity of opposites' for
bemused readers to
ponder.
The fact that dialecticians can't even
see the incongruity here speaks volumes in itself. Of course, such splits
are often driven by a desire to maintain doctrinal 'purity', but that implicates dialectics all the more. It is only because
the DM-classics are generally treated as Holy Writ that the notion of doctrinal
purity makes any sense. Indeed, just like the Bible, the fathomless
obscurity of Hegel's
Logic works admirably well in this regard, too. Of course, that is further compounded by
the growing existence of a corpus of
highly repetitive, 'lesser' DM-works, which
feed off the Mystical Motherlode
like hungry piglets around a sow:
Video Three: Feeding Time On
Planet Dialectics?
The class origin of professional and
semi-professional revolutionaries -- coupled with the ideologically-compromised
theory they have adopted -- helps account for the radical mis-match between the
political and economic interests of the working-class and the
irrelevant
philosophical ideas spouted by these self-appointed 'class-warriors' --
'tribunes' of the people. In fact, Dialectical Marxists have simply lost touch with the
working class.
The differential effect on workers and
revolutionaries of the above factors is instructive in itself:while the class
war forces workers to combine, it drives revolutionaries apart.
This rather odd state-of-affairs needs explaining -- and it has been, in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two.
As a result of the action of well-known
economic and social forces, working people have had to unite to defend
themselves, so maybe the fragmentation witnessed in
our 'movement' can similarly be explained as the result of other, less
well-appreciated social and ideological forces -- those inherent perhaps in the
class origin and current class position of leading revolutionaries. As
Marx noted:
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness."
"Social being" might very well 'determine' the
ideological predilections of leading Marxists, none of whom were beamed down to
this planet fully-formed, DM-theses-in-hand. As members of the human race,
dialecticians are surely not above the material pressures that shape the rest of
us. But you wouldn't be able to conclude that by examining the inflated
view they have of themselves. As far as they are concerned,
social forces have by-passed any and all involvement in the formation of their
ideas.
[The accusation that this is just "crude
reductionism" has been rebutted
here.]
If not, it must
be a sheer coincidence that DM-fans share most of their core ideas and
attitudes with practically every
mystic who has
ever walked the earth --, who, as bad luck would have it, also occupied
analogous class positions, and hence had a commensurate need for
some form of
consolation. It must also be entirely 'coincidental' that
Dialectical Marxism
shares with all known mystical belief-systems the same propensity to fragment and
split.
Is it beyond the realms of possibility
that the historical forces, which originally helped shape class society -- and
which also gave birth to the ideas of those who still benefit from class
division --, have
played their own part this glaring
antinomy?
Those who disagree with the above and who reject it
out-of -hand need go no further.
I have no desire to wake
you from your dogmatic slumber.
The rest should consider this possibility: if
it can be shown that DM was derived from, and belongs to, an ancient,
well-entrenched, divisive philosophical tradition, which developed alongside and was nurtured by class conflict
(as indeed it
can), that
might help explain why
Dialectical Marxism has witnessed little other than fragmentation,
sectarian division and unremitting failure almost from its inception. If
DM is indeed part of a theoretical tradition that owes its life to ruling-class
patterns-of-thought, and its leading figures and theorists came from the same
class, its tendency to foment and then exacerbate division will thus
have a materialist explanation.
As I have explained elsewhere at this site:
This ancient tradition taught that behind appearances there lies a hidden
world -- populated by the 'gods', assorted 'spirits' and mysterious
'essences' -- a 'world' that is more real than the material universe we see around us,
accessible to thought alone. Theology was openly and brazenly built on this
premise; so, too,
was Traditional Philosophy.
This way of viewing the world was
concocted by ideologues of the ruling-class. These "prize-fighters" (as Marx called them) ensured that the majority were educated,
or, rather, they were indoctrinated so that they saw things the same way.
They invented this 'world-view' because if you belong to,
benefit from, or help run a society that is based on gross inequality,
oppression and exploitation, you can keep order in a number of ways.
The first and most obvious is through violence. This will work for a time,
but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation
(among other things).
Another is to persuade the majority (or a significant section of "opinion
formers" -- philosophers, administrators, editors, bishops, educators,
'intellectuals', and the like)
that the present order either (a) works for their benefit, (b) is ordained of the
'gods', (c) defends 'civilised values', or (d) is 'natural' and hence cannot be fought
against, reformed or negotiated
with.
Hence, a 'world-view' is necessary for the
ruling-class to carry on ruling "in the same old way". While the content of this
ruling ideology might have altered with each change in the mode of production, its form
has remained largely the same for thousands of years: Ultimate Truth is
ascertainable by thought alone, and can therefore be imposed on reality
dogmatically.
So, the non-worker founders of our movement
-- who had been educated from an early age to believe there was just such a
'hidden world' lying behind 'appearances' that governed everything in
existence -- when they became revolutionaries automatically looked for 'logical' principles relating to this
'abstract world' that told them that change and development were inevitable, part of the cosmic order.
Enter dialectics, courtesy of the dogmatic ideas of that ruling-class mystic,
Hegel.
Hence, the dialectical classicists latched onto this
theory, which they were already predisposed to
impose on the world
(upside down or the "right way up") -- because of their education, it seemed
quite natural for them to do so.
That is because this is how 'genuine' philosophers
have always behaved and should always behave -- or
so they had been socialised to believe.
Indeed, we find an echo of this idea in the
Communist Manifesto:
"[O]ne fact is
common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite
all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms,
or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most
radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its
development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." [Marx
and Engels (1848), p.52. Bold emphases added.]
As well as this famous passage:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society,
is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of
the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas
of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other
things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a
class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch...." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added.]
The ruling elite and their ideological 'prize
fighters' thus created an ancient and long-lasting tradition that protects and
promotes their interests. The founders of DM had these ideas forced down their
throats even before they went to school; it was part of their religious
upbringing. All they did when they became revolutionaries was throw away the
religious outer husk and -- thanks to that Christian Mystic, Hegel -- they
re-cast this
ancient, ruling-class tradition in 'dialectical language'. For them,
the hidden world of 'essences' remained more real than the "abstract" material
world we see around us (which is precisely how
Engels described it). Furthermore, this hidden world can be accessed by
thought alone -- which accounts for the dogmatic, a priori nature
of DM. [On that, see Essay Two.]
Is this then the historical and
ideological source of deeply engrained sectarian and substitutionist
thinking in our movement?
It thus became clear to me that if these
un-comradely 'vices' were to be eradicated from our movement, this malignant
tumour, DM, must be completely excised.
Of course, as noted above, this isn't to
suggest that dialectics is the only reason for the legendary failure of
Marxist ideas to "seize the masses", but it certainly helps explain why
revolutionary parties tend to be perennially small,
steadfastly suspicious (if not neurotically paranoid), religiously sectarian, routinely authoritarian,
studiously insular, worryingly substitutionist, profoundly unreasonable, consistently inconsistent and monumentally
unsuccessful.
In fact, and on the contrary, had such 'vices' led
to success, that would need explaining!
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
A supporter of this site raised a few of these issues at a national
gathering of the UK-SWP in London in July 1990. The reception he received from
one large meeting suggested two things:
(i) That there were many comrades in and
around that party (at that time) who thought like him but had no
focus for their views, and,
(ii) That the party leadership would resist any
attempt to undermine their collective commitment to the Sacred Dialectical
Mantra.
For personal (not political) reasons I let my
membership of this party lapse in the early 1990s, and although I have been
active around several issues since (for example, in connection with the massive
demonstrations in support of the NUM in the early 1990s and those in opposition
to US/UK/Israeli aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, and Lebanon between 2003-14), my
links with the UK-SWP have been merely formal.
However, it is worth noting that I still have no theoretical differences with this party (other
than those that involve an acceptance of 'Materialist Dialectics'). It is also important to add that my differences with the UK-SWP
now revolve
around
their disastrous handling of those recent rape allegations. As I noted earlier:
I continued to identify with it politically until at
least 2012. The self-inflicted crisis that engulfed the party later that year --
which concerned a cover up of allegations of rape levelled against a leading
member -- meant that I could no longer associate
myself with that party at any level
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Nevertheless, in 1998 John Rees published
TAR. This awoke me from my
non-dogmatic slumbers and motivated me to write a detailed response since his
book symbolised for me much that was wrong with Marxist Philosophy. Despite its
obvious strengths (not the least of which is its clear commitment to the
revolutionary transformation of society), TAR is a stark reminder that the very
best of socialists can have their thinking seriously clouded by
dialectical mist.
And yet TAR isn't the worst offender in this
regard; in fact, it is an unorthodox DM-text! 'Orthodox' dialecticians
will, I am sure, abhor it. They will accuse it of this or that heinous crime
against 'the dialectic': that it is a "revisionist" tract; that it is too
"concrete"; that it is not "concrete" enough; that it is too "abstract"; that it
isn't
"abstract" enough; that it underplays theoretical issues and is thus superficial
(I have already seen that one on the Internet -- but, see below); that it
is too theoretical; that it takes a "subjectivist" view of this or that; that it
takes an "objectivist" view of that or this; that it is "eclectic"; that it
isn't "all-rounded", and is too "one-sided"; that it is the work of a "sophist";
that it has been hobbled by "formalism"; that it isn't
"formal" enough; that it
is far too "empiricist"; that it isn't empirical enough; that it is a "rehash"
(this is a popular word among the DM-faithful) of such and such, or of so and so;
that is it little more than "warmed-over" (another popular dialectical buzzword) reformism, or
X-,Y-, or Z-ism; that it is Idealist, and/or
"elitist"; that it is "positivist"; that it ignores "materialist dialectics"(!);
that it fails to consider "systematic dialectics"; that it is "workerist"; that
it forgets that "matter precedes motion" (or is it the other way round?), etc.,
etc.... Indeed as
Paul LeBlanc has written:
"It is truly unfortunate that -- far from being
widely recognized as the valuable contribution it is -- this book has had little
publicity in Marxist and left-wing journals. Perhaps Rees's involvement in the
British Socialist Workers Party is seen as sufficient reason by some for
ignoring him, but this is hardly a narrow 'party' tract. It is a book of
enduring value. One of the few reviews to appear so far, in the important
Marxist journal Historical Materialism, distorts what Rees says in order to make
him look foolish and dismiss his work. The reviewer (who is capable of much
better) counts among the author's 'sins' the fact that he finds important
philosophical contributions in the work of Frederick Engels, Rosa Luxemburg,
V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Georg Lukacs -- and that Rees is critical of one
of the reviewer’s favourite thinkers, the late Raya Dunayevskaya, who engaged in
interesting Hegel and Marx scholarship and headed a still-existing
'Marxist-Humanist' current.
"Rees makes positive reference to her work but
criticizes what he sees as her attempt 'to more or less apply Hegel's categories
to the modern world' in a manner that results in an over-abundance of 'abstract
generalization' (p.108). In his opinion, Hegel's version of dialectics is
vitally important, but also fundamentally flawed; his method had to be re-worked
to be effectively utilized by Marx and others to advance revolutionary analysis
and struggle. Some might respond that he is too critical of Hegel, while others
might complain that he gives the German philosopher too much credit." [Quoted
from
here, accessed 30/11/2017. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
In fact, TAR will be dismissed simply because
that is how the 'orthodox' respond to practically everything that they themselves haven't written.
[Since the above comment by comrade LeBlanc was posted on-line, it is
now even clearer that Rees's book has been almost totally ignored by the
'orthodox defenders of the faith', contrary to my prediction that it would be
heavily criticised. Damned not by faint praise, but by being completely ignored
-- rather
like my work, too.]
Sectarianism like this has blighted all known
religions, but reproducing that noxious defect has done Marxism few favours.
Revolutionaries can't tap into the religious alienation that guarantees the
oppressed will often turn to Bishops, Priests and Imams for 'illumination',
guidance,
or consolation.
Nevertheless, the universally sectarian
predisposition evidenced by most dialectically-distracted
comrades -- and, indeed, parties -- suggests that as far as party size goes, small isn't just beautiful,
it is as
inevitable as it is desirable. After all, the smaller the party the easier it is to
control.
Hence, despite all the effort that has gone
into "building the party" on the Trotskyist left over the last seventy or eighty years, few tendencies
can boast membership rolls that rise much above the risible. Not
oneof them has
ever "seized the masses". On the Communist or Stalinist 'left', this,
too, has been the case at
least for the last fifty or sixty years. Nor, of late, has either tendency looked like they are likely to so much as lightly hug
the working class, never mind seize them. In fact, it has been more like an
ignored light tap on the shoulder.
But, hey, why change an unsuccessful
strategy or challenge a failed theory? Why indeed would anyonewho
accepts the idea that
reality is in the grip of a universal fluxwant to do such a crazy thing?
Change?
That close to home?
Are you mad?!
Have you been reading too much Heraclitus..., oh...,
wait...!
Ironically, once again, it seems that this is
one abstract principle (i.e., lack of change) to which the 'Orthodox' fondly adhere -- nay,
stoutly defend.
But, dialecticians are
supposed to be inconsistent; it is in their Idealist Contract. If
DM-fans still hope to be 'consistent' with their own belief in universal contradiction,
they must continue to preachunityall the whilepracticingdivision -- as, indeed, they do.
And we can expect them to continue sanctifying this failed
strategy, employing of a battery of familiar-sounding, well-worn
rationalisations -- such as, it represents a defence of 'orthodoxy',
'tradition', doctrinal 'purity', and rejects
'Revisionism' -- even
though Lenin argued that all scientific theories need constant revision!
"Dialectical materialism
insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the
structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute
boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into
another." [Lenin (1972),
p.312.
Bold emphasis added.]
Trotsky concurred:
"Dialectic materialism is not of course an eternal
and immutable philosophy. To think otherwise is to contradict the spirit of the
dialectic. Further development of scientific thought will undoubtedly create a
more profound doctrine into which dialectic materialism will enter merely as
structural material." [Trotsky (1971),
pp.96-97. Bold emphasis added.]
Which was an idea underlined by Engels himself:
"Just as the bourgeoisie by large-scale industry,
competition, and the world market dissolves in practice all stable time-honoured
institutions, so this dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of
final, absolute truth and of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it.
For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals
the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure
before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of
endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy
itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking
brain. It has, of course, also a conservative side; it recognizes that definite
stages of knowledge and society are justified for their time and circumstances;
but only so far. The conservatism of this mode of outlook is relative; its
revolutionary character is absolute -- the only absolute dialectical philosophy
admits." [Engels (1968),
p.588. Bold emphasis added; spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
Given the approach adopted by contemporary defenders
of the sacred flame, the above would, of course, mean that Engels, Lenin and
Trotsky were -- Shock! Horror! -- 'Revisionists!'
Dialectical
Marxists have yet to take the above
words seriously -- except, of course, they apply them to everything but their own theory!
It could be countered that Lenin also added these
thoughts:
"To analyse Machism and at the same time to ignore
this connection -- as Plekhanov does -- is to scoff at the spirit of dialectical
materialism, i.e., to sacrifice the method of Engels to the letter of
Engels. Engels says explicitly that 'with each epoch making discovery even in
the sphere of natural science ["not to speak of the history of mankind"],
materialism has to change its form'.... Hence, a revision of the 'form' of
Engels' materialism, a revision of his natural-philosophical propositions is not
only not 'revisionism,' in the accepted meaning of the term, but, on the
contrary, is demanded by Marxism. We criticise the Machians not for making such
a revision, but for their purely revisionist trick of betraying the
essence of materialism under the guise of criticising its form and
of adopting the fundamental precepts of reactionary bourgeois philosophy without
making the slightest attempt to deal directly, frankly and definitely with
assertions of Engels' which are unquestionably
extremely important to the given question, as, for example, his assertion that
'...motion without matter is unthinkable'." [Lenin
(1972), pp.299-300. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original
That clearly represents Lenin's attempt to draw a
limit on what can and what can't be criticised, which can only mean Marxism, as
he saw it, can't be a science!
However, if Marxism in the shape of
HM is to provide the ideas,
strategy and organisation necessary for a successful working-class revolution
(as I believe it can), and if I am right about the negative impact DM has had on
our movement, then the future of the human race partly depends on just
this theoretical struggle.
That is how important this
issue is.
We have no choice. We can't allow DM to
become shorthand for Dead Marxism.
Comrades,
you have nothing to lose but your small and steadily shrinking pond!
Some might wonder how I can claim to be both a Leninist and a
Trotskyist given the highly critical things I have to say about the philosophical ideas that
have formed an integral part of these two revolutionary traditions from their inception. An analogy
might help address that concern: we can surely be highly critical of
Newton's
mystical ideas
even while accepting the scientific status of his other work. The same
applies here.
I count myself as a Marxist, a Leninist and a Trotskyist
since I fully accept, not just HM (providing
Hegel's influence has been completely excised), but
the politicalideas associated with the life, work and
revolutionary practice of Marx, Engels, Lenin,
Luxemburg, and
Trotsky.
Many argue that a rejection of DM automatically disqualifies me from being a Marxist, but that would
be true only if Marxism were a religion of some sort, and dialectics a
unquestioned and unquestionable dogma.
However, one of the first difficulties that
confronts any aspiring critic is that it is virtually impossible to determine what
the above DM-theses actually amount to, especially if reliance is placed solely on
what dialecticians themselves have had to say about them. That isn't because little
has been written on these topics -- far from it, the opposite is in fact the
case --, it is because what has been published is hopelessly vague,
mind-numbingly repetitive, alarmingly superficial, and profoundly confused, if not totally incomprehensible (as this series of Essays
will
amply demonstrate).
This has meant that in every single case it
has been necessary for me to attempt to clarify key DM-theses
before criticism can even begin! Of course, in endeavouring to do this I am
fully aware that I might very well have misrepresented this or that DM-thesis, or,
indeed, every single one of them! If
that is the case, then any DM-supporters reading this or my
other Essays, who conclude that my
attempt to rephrase or clarify their theory is unsatisfactory, are invited to
contact me, correcting any
errors they might find, and say clearly -- for the first time ever -- what
their core ideas actually amount to and what they really mean. Over the
last forty years I have
struggled long and hard to that end, but in extensive detail since at least 1998, as these Essays will
confirm. However, even though I have studied logic and philosophy to PhD level, and
have a mathematics degree, I still can't make any sense of
DM.
Unfortunately, there is little prospect that the above DM-clarification will ever
emerge --
that is, if it is left to Dialectical Marxists themselves.
That is so for at
least two reasons:
(1) Dialectical Marxists appear to be incapable
of even entertainingfor one second the idea that there might possibly be anything
remotely wrong with their core theory,
DM. In fact, what I alleged above (i.e., that it is
impossible to determine with any clarity what this theory/method actually amounts to) will
itself be met with total
incredulity (indeed, as it did, for example,
here), followed by knee-jerk rejection
and open hostility. However, anyone who reads the Essays
published at this site will soon see why I have described DM in the above way.
There are several reasons for such Parmenidean,
dialectical complacency ("Parmenidean" in the sense that DM-theses
never change -- nor do its fans); they have been examined in detail in Essay Nine
Part Two. But, whatever the
cause, this closed-minded stance seriously affects the way that criticisms are
already
handled by the faithful. Invariably,detractors are
labelled 'enemies of Marxism'; they are misrepresented, misquoted,
ridiculed or abused, their motives questioned, and spurious allegations
are concocted in order to character assassinate each one of them. [On that, see here and
here. A recent (January 2014) example can
be found
here
(in the comments section).] Disconfirming facts and contrary arguments are
almost invariably
ignored. Either that, or critics (like me) are dismissed as latter-day
reincarnations of
Peter Struve,
Max Eastman
or
James
Burnham (which is, of course, the dialectical equivalent of guilt by
association).01
Dire warnings are then issued concerning the serious consequences facing
anyone who questions Holy Dialectical Writ --, along the lines that such
foolishness will lead anyone reckless enough to ignore that advice away from the true faith
-- with the names James Burnham and Max Eastman once again thrown into the
mix, as if they were bogeymen.
Of course, fellow Trotskyists who argue along these lines forget that far more of those theythemselves
count as counter-revolutionaries actually accept DM than those
they count as fellow
revolutionaries -- namely, the Stalinists and the Maoists. [The latter, of
course, will just have to ignore that comment! Except, perhaps, they can apply the same
point in reverse to us Trotskyists!] Just as one and all will fail to notice that
Plekhanov, a DM-theorist par excellence, was a
Menshevik
(as were
both of the
Axelrods);
evenMax
Shachtman was a dialectician after he split with Trotsky. And,
Gramsci
wasn't known for his support for the application of dialectics to nature. So,
there are way more counter-revolutionary- than there are
revolutionary-fans-of-the-dialectic.
[At this point, readers should wait for a few noises that sound like something
else being
swept under the rug.]
Moreover, in
universities and colleges,
Systematic Dialectics and Academic Marxism are surely the source of much
that is non-revolutionary in Marxism. [While these strains of Dialectical Marxism
are vastly more sophisticated than much else that passes for coherent thought in
this tradition, they are nevertheless completely
useless distant cousins of the hardy perennial known as 'revolutionary
dialectics'.] So, that particular subspecies of 'dialectics' is already non-revolutionary.
[The above link leads to an automatically downloadable
RTF
document.]
This is also quite apart from the fact that
countless thousands have been repelled by Dialectical Marxism because of its
many foul-ups, like those that have been highlighted
here.
In that case, and contrary to what many DM-fans
would have us believe, an acceptance of 'the dialectic' isn't super-glued to an unshakable commitment to revolutionary politics, nor is it connected with successful
revolutionary activity (and that
includes the October 1917 Revolution). Indeed,
since Dialectical Marxism has itself been a long-term stranger-to-success, and has played an active
role in
more than its own fair share of failed revolutions and monumental screw-ups, not only are its
adherents in no position to point fingers, they have no
legitimate fingers to point!
[Despite this, dialectically-distracted comrades
will be the very last to see the above points, so we are likely to
witness the same ignorant, knee-jerk dismissal of these Essays from such
benighted souls -- i.e., that anyone reading these Essays is in mortal danger of
being hoodwinked and led astray!]
This tactic is standard practice; one could
even call it a cliché. A perusal of Internet sites where I have 'debated' DM
with assorted dialecticians from all wings of Marxism will amply confirm that
apparently cynical indictment. [I have listed most of them
here.]
One reason for this knee-jerk response is the
assumption that because DM is unassailably true (despite
Lenin having said
that no theory is final and complete), criticism of it can only arise from the
suspect ideological and/or political motives -- or, indeed, the personal failings -- of
its opponents. Which is why, when I have debated this with dialecticians almost all
focus onme, not my arguments.
As Tony Collins noted, but
not in connection with DM:
"The problem is, there
is a certain way of seeing any discussion of the far-left that's started by
someone who isn't a part of it. He must by definition be an enemy and we must
therefore believe he's trying to destroy the left.... That's what happens on the far-left. We sort of
have these instinctive reactions. You can see glimpses of this all over the net
right now, with SWP members openly attacking each other, something I've not seen
ever. There's a cult-like hatred of people who used to be allies."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
The same can be said with equal validity about the reception of the ideas of those
of us on the far-left who attack DM.
Thus, if detractors are branded from the start as
insincere or duplicitous (even if there is no evidence to suggest this), or maybe, perhaps, that they are surreptitious enemies of Marxism
--, or are even cops in disguise (I have been accused of that several times!) --, then
its 'open season' and they
can be misrepresented, vilified, abused, and then ignored. Naturally, this is
about as sensible as ignoring the first signs of cancer, or attacking anyone who
diagnosed its presence and warned
of its consequences.
Unquestionably, these particular theoretical waters have been
well-and-truly muddied by the detritus stirred up by ideological currents that
are openly hostile to revolutionary socialism. Marxists are right to be
wary of the underhand tactics employed by the class enemy. However, this reactive stance
has meant that revolutionaries have repeatedly been forced onto the defensive; over time this means they have adopted a siege-like mentality. So, from these circled wagons there
seem only two ways to shoot: in or out. This 'friend
or foe' approach to theory (which, ironically enough,
violates the DM-principle that
'there are no hard and fast dichotomies'!) has meant that critics -- even
if they turn out to be comrades committed to revolutionary socialism and
HM, as I am -- will never be given
a fair hearing (or any at all) for fear that this might aid and assist
the class enemy.1 Even though this state of semi-permanent paranoia is
understandable (given the above considerations), it only serves to perpetuate
the myth that DM is without fault, above criticism and is therefore unassailably true.
[However, and alas, there are deeper and more sinister
motives at work here -- again, they have been brought to light in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
Naturally, an impregnable redoubt like this
can only be secured at the cost of rendering Marxism unscientific. There
is no science that is immune from error or beyond revision. Indeed, there are
none whatsoever that flatly refuse to take any criticism.
In light of what Lenin himself said
about the approximate nature of knowledge, Leninists should be the first
to see this point. The fact that they aren't in general prepared do so, and do not, cannot
or will not even countenance any with respect to DM suggests that for them this
theory is neither approximately true nor scientific. It
has indeed become a dogmarequiring continuous acts of
devotion,
genuflection and pusillanimous expressions of faith -- defended with the same
over-the-top irrationality displayed by the genuine
'god'-botherers among us in defence of their own brand of mysticism.
However, one thing is clear: dialecticians are
creatures of
tradition. In relation to DM, that is
perhaps
their
most powerful and enduring trait. If readers follow the links posted
here, they will see that DM-fans with whom I have 'debated'
this doctrine often make the same general point (explicitly, or implicitly): "Who are you,
Ms Lichtenstein, to
question the likes of Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao...?"
Of course, that itself ignores what Mao himself argued:
"Inner-Party criticism is a
weapon for strengthening the Party organization and increasing its fighting
capacity." [Quoted from
here.]
Just as it disregards what Marx
himself said:
"[I]t is all the more clear
what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism
of all that exists...." [Quoted from
here. Italic emphasis in the original.]
In fact, such comrades appear to have forgotten that
the progress of science is predicated on just such questioning, just such
criticism. Had these characters lived centuries ago, one can
almost imagine them arguing: "Who are you,
Galileo, to
question
Aristotle and the Church?"; "Who are you, Hegel, to question
Kant?";
"Who are you,
Feuerbach, to question Hegel?"; "Who are you, Herr Marx, to question
Ricardo?"
And even when that point is put to them it sails right
over their heads, so compromised and ossified have their critical faculties become. Small
wonder then that in Essay Nine
Part Two I liken them to
religious obscurantists.
(2) The second reason for this
theoretically moribund state of affairs isn't unconnected with the first:
DM-supporters invariably regard any attempt to examine dialectics critically as
an attack on Marxismitself
-- even where (as here) that isn't the case. This defensive posture has evidently been
motivated by
the suspicion that any attempt to clarify their core theory -- i.e., any attempt that advances
beyond yet another paraphrase or regurgitation of the 'classics', or that refuses to become yet anotherintroductionto
the basics -- might foster the
suspicion that the dogmas enshrined therein are less than perfect. Otherwise, why 'clarify' them? After all, do Christians try to
'clarify' the Gospels or even attempt to improve them?2
However, an unfortunate consequence of this reactive
stance is that DM has remained trapped in a theoretical time-warp
now lasting well over a hundred years. An almost permanent doctrinal
ossification has descended upon this theory. Despite their eagle-eyed capacity to spot change everywhere else,
DM-fans fail to notice this example of semi-permanent stasis in their own back yard.2aClearly, the faithful prefer this moribund state of affairs to one that might suggest
DM is defective in any way, and so might need to be re-examined -- along lines
Lenin suggested was the
case with anything that claimed to be scientific. TAR at least attempts
to approach this subject from a fresh angle, but even TAR in the end settles for
yet another re-working of the classics (i.e., if we include in that category the work of
György Lukács).
A theory steeped in
formalin, it seems, can't rot any further, but it is still dead for all
that.
Beyond trivialities, this means that
DM hasn't advancedtheoretically in over a century (and possibly far longer if we recall
that Lenin's work was largely a re-tailing of Hegel's 'Logic', minus its overtly
mystical content and intentions). That is how "vibrant"
this theory is. Indeed,
Tutankhamen
looks positively sprightly in comparison.
[Of course, some will dispute that allegation, but
beyond the addition of several layers of obscure jargon -- of the sort we find in Raya Dunayevskaya's
unintelligible work (Dunayevskaya (1982) and (2002)),
Roy Bhaskar's unreadable
tome, Dialectic The Pulse Of Freedom(Bhaskar (1993)), or in
Slavoj Zizek's two recent
and impenetrable books
on the subject (Zizek (2012)
and (2015)) -- nothing substantially new has been added since Lenin inflicted his
'philosophical' ideas on the DM-faithful a century ago. And even that was
a reprise of Hegel!]
This
backward-facing orientation (unique, except perhaps for a somewhat similar
approach adopted by FundamentalistTheologians) helps
explain why Lenin, for example, imagined he could advance dialectics by
retrieving concepts he unearthed in Hegel's 'logic', obsolete ideasthat had been committed to paper a good century
earlier still!3
It is instructive to contrast this conservative approach
to 'knowledge' with the way that genuine science develops. It is difficult to imagine someone
like, say,
Niels Bohr
referring back to the ideas of
Newton,
copying them out and commenting on them in detail -- and doing
practically nothing else -- in his endeavour to advance Physics.
Difficult, perhaps, but it would be impossible to believe that scientists
since Bohr's day would be happy doing exactly the same, paraphrasing
or re-packaging the classics, and doing little else. Yet this is
how the vast majority of DM-theorists conduct themselves. As noted above, TAR is
itself a recent example of this
conservative mind-set, an approach which seems happy merely to regurgitate the 'truths' handed
down from the 'dialectical worthies', dogmas that adorn this
decaying corpse like a wreath of wilted flowers.3a
Ironically therefore, the theory that posits change
everywhereelse can find no place for it at home. As already noted --
perhaps fittingly --, this situation isn't likely to change.4
Hence, DM -- the erstwhile theory of universal development -- is living
disproof of its own superficial commitment to it. Dialectical
Marxists promote philosophical ideas that have remained
frozen for nigh on a hundred years. Hegel's system (even "the
right way up") has been cemented in place; the abstract now set in
concrete.5
Another consequence of this backward-facing, doctrinaire
stance is that the vast majority of dialecticians are almost totally ignorant of
developments in
Modern
Formal Logic [MFL] and
Analytic
Philosophy (having branded them 'bourgeois', 'ideological' or even 'trivial').
This means, of course, that anyone not quite so
educationally-challenged, who tries 'debating' with DM-acolytes, will find they are doubly handicapped.
First of all, they will face accusations of being a "bourgeois
apologist", one of their "dupes"/"stooges", or
they will be branded an
"elitist" (a term popular among OTs and
ultra-lefts) for having taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with
Analytic Philosophy and MFL before passing an opinion about both. That is, of course, as rational a criticism of MFL and
Philosophy as those advanced by Creationists against Evolution and Modern Biology.
In fact, less so,
since Marxists should know better!
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist;
MFL = Modern Formal Logic.]
Second, and connected with the first, it is virtually impossible to help correct the thoughts of
comrades who are deeply mired in
logical error when they are blithely unaware of the extent, or even the profundity of their own ignorance;
still less those who are happy to wallow in a state of
profound
nescience. Since the vast majority DM-fans are almost totally
ignorant of logic
(ancient or modern), not only are they incapable of recognising for themselves
the serious logical blunders
Hegel committed (summary
here),
they are similarly incapable of even following an explanation how and why he
committed them, or how and why the DM-classicists were themselves incapable of
assessing Hegel's ideas critically. Or, for that matter, how and why they have blithely
swallowed such an glaringlycrazy theory.
Thirty or more years experience 'debating'
'dialectics' has taught me that the majority of DM-fans are quite content to
remain
almost totally ignorant of MFL and Analytic Philosophy (even while they will
happily fill their boots with the myriad confusions that litter 'Continental
Philosophy') -- and yet that hasn't
stopped them pontificating about one or both as if they were world-renowned
experts, another trait they share with Creationists.
"Psychological research suggests that people, in general, suffer from what has
become known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. They have little insight about the
cracks and holes in their expertise. In studies
in my research lab, people with severe gaps in knowledge and expertise
typically fail to recognize how little they know and how badly they perform. To
sum it up, the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task
are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that
task -- and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant
that one is not good at that task. This includes political judgment. We have
found this pattern in logical reasoning, grammar, emotional intelligence,
financial literacy, numeracy, firearm care and safety, debate skill, and college
coursework. Others have found a similar lack of insight among poor chess
players, unskilled medical lab technicians, medical students unsuccessfully
completing an obstetrics/gynaecology rotation, and people failing a test on
performing CPR." [David
Dunning, quoted from
here. Accessed 28/05/2017. Paragraphs merged; spelling
adjusted to agree with UK English.]
There is now no excuse for such self-inflicted
ignorance since there is
an abundance of sites
on the Internet that make MFL reasonably accessible to those willing to
put in the effort. Of course, it is entirely possible to be an excellent revolutionary and know
nothing about Logic -- or, indeed, Analytic Philosophy --; but if DM-fans want
to criticise either of these disciplines, ignorance
most definitely isn't bliss.
In that case, a good many of the criticisms advanced
at this site will sail
right over most dialectical heads. In order to minimise that possibility, I have endeavoured
to present the ideas and methods I have imported from Analytic Philosophy
and MFL in as accessible a form as I could manage --, even at the risk of being accused of
over-simplification.
In these Essays, therefore, I am not in general addressing academics
(Marxist or non-Marxist),
but comrades who have fallen badly behind, and who are thus totally unaware of the
advances made in these two disciplines over the last century, and who are
also unaware how badly
out-of-touch they have become.5a
In addition, I have linked to other sites --,
and I have also cited books and articles --, where the above methods and ideas have been
explained more extensively,
and
perhaps with
greater sophistication for the benefit of those who want to know more.
Nevertheless, for all their avowed love of
"contradictions", DM-theorists do not like to be contradicted, especially
"internally", as it were, by a comrade. In fact, they reject
out-of-hand all such attempts, which is odd given their commitment to the idea
that progress can only occur in this way, through
contradiction!
So, this presents us with a fittingly ironic conundrum:
If all progress and change does indeed result from "internal contradictions", then the
Essays that follow, which
highlight the many contradictions that lie at the heart of dialectics, should be warmly welcomed
by the DM-faithful. Indeed, if improvement and development can come about in
no other way, these Essays ought to be well-received by those who are
genuinely
committed
to 'dialectical' change.
The fact that they most definitely won't be
welcomed should therefore count as one of the opening
'contradictions' exposed at this site: DM stands refuted as much by its own
unwillingness to be contradicted as it is by the fact that this situationisn't likely to
change.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
It is worth emphasising at the start
that unless otherwise stated I have confined my criticisms to the so-called
"Dialectics of Nature". The extrapolation of 'dialectics' into areas governed by
HM has largely been ignored, except where
this might impact issues
relevant to the demolition of DM itself, or where (in my view) the use of
'dialectical concepts' and associated jargon fatally undermines either the credibility
or the validity of HM.
For instance, this would involve instances where,
say, the word "contradiction" is used to analyse and hence understand
Capitalism; or where comrades
employ this word indiscriminately
to describe anything and everything that happens in Capitalism (i.e., as a
"contradiction") -- and yet, when they are asked to explain what this specific word means in
such contexts they either refuse to answer, or they find they can't actually explain
themselves.
Indeed, when supporters of this site (including myself)
have sentletters to
Socialist Worker and
other publications, or have posted comments on various websites
and discussion forums asking DM-fans to explain why they keep using
"contradiction" in
this way, they have received either no adequate response, or, and far more likely, none at all.
Even where some attempt has been made to justify the use of this
word it is often accompanied by the usual, standard issue -- and by now
clichéd -- diversionary tactics, laced with no little vitriol and personal abuse.
[On the
indiscriminate and profligate use of "contradiction" in DM-circles, see
here,
here,
here, and
here;
on my attempt to elicit a response from DM-fans, for instance,
here,
here,
here, and
here. It is worth adding that my attempt to elicit what Dialectical Marxists
think they mean when they use the term "dialectical contradiction" isn'tmerely an academic exercise; there are important political reasons for
asking such questions. On that, see Essay Nine
Part Two.]
This isn't to say that I accept the validity of the dialectical jargon that has
seeped into HM; the opposite is in fact the case. However, since
the point of these Essays is to stem the flow of poison at its source, I
have almost exclusively targeted DM.6
Throughout this work HM has been sharply distinguished from DM.
Many see this an entirely bogus, if not a completely perverse distinction. However, no Marxist of any
intelligence would use slogans drawn exclusively from DM to
agitate and propagandise workers. Consider, for example, the following: "The Law of Identity is
true only within certain limits and the struggle against US Imperialism!" Or, "Change in quantity
leads to change in quality (and vice versa) and the campaign to keep
hospital HH open!" Or even, "Being is identical with but
at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved in Becoming, and the fight
against fascism!"
Slogans like these would be employed by militants ofuncommon
stupidity and legendary ineffectiveness. In contrast, when communicating
with workers active revolutionaries employ ideas drawn exclusively from
HM (albeit applied to the current state of the class war or the balance of
class forces, etc.). The best papers on the revolutionary left, for instance, use ordinary
language augmented by concepts drawn from HM to educate, agitate and
propagandise. Rarely, if ever, do they employ DM-phraseology to that end. Only deeply
sectarian 'revolutionary' papers of exemplary unpopularity and
impressive lack of impact use jargon lifted from dialectics to further the
class struggle. Newsline, the paper of the old WRP, was a notable
example in this regard -- which helps explain its irrelevance, terminal decline
and
why it had to be financed by Middle Eastern, ruling class money.
So,the distinction drawn here is madein practiceevery day by
militants. The present work merely systematises it.
[Objections to the above
line-of-argument have been neutralised in Essay Nine Part
One. See also here.]
In what follows at this site no attempt will be made to
defend HM; that scientific theory will be taken for granted. Hence, any non-Marxists reading this
material would be well-advised to go no further. These Essays aren't addressed to
them.
Should any Professional Philosophers stray onto this site,
they will find that in many places the material here only scratches the surface
of the philosophical issues raised. In a site such as
this, which isn't aimed at academics, unnecessary detail and complexity would be inappropriate.
However, in every one of my Essays I have referenced numerous
books and articles that develop or substantiate topics that have only been
touched upon, or which have merely been skated over.7
(v) Their analytic, if not
uncompromisingly relentless, style.
The first two items above aren't unrelated.
Although I have endeavoured to construct as comprehensive a case against DM as
possible, I have also sought to
raise objections to my own criticisms at nearly every stage. While that
strategy has been adopted to test my ideas to the limit, it has also been of
considerable benefit in trying (where possible) to make sense of DM -- or
render it a little clearer and thus slightly more comprehensible.
To that end, the reader will find that many
issues have been raised at this site for the very first time ever, anywhere. Core DM-theses have
been examined in unprecedented detail; most of them from a completely novel
angle. It is a sad reflection on the mental paralysis induced in those who -- in
Max
Eastman's words -- "suffer from dialectics", that DM-dogma has
escaped detailed scrutiny for well over a hundred years. It is nevertheless accurate for
all that.
Even if it should turn out that this project
is misconceived in some way, in whole or in part, it succeeds in breaking entirely new ground, as
readers will soon discover. In fact, should DM-supporters engage fairly with the
content of the Essays published at this site -- even if they remain
unconvinced by the end --,
they will find that their own ideas will emerge clarified and strengthened because of the
entirely original set of challenges advanced in this work.8
As noted earlier, it is the opinion of
the present author that DM has contributed in its own not insignificant way to
the spectacular lack of
success that has plaguedDialectical Marxism. It is an alarming fact that of all the major political ideologies
or movements in human history,
Dialectical Marxism is among theleast successful, ever.8a
The role that DM has played in helping engineer this disastrous state of
affairs partly accounts for the persistently negative, if not openly
hostile tone adopted at this site.8b
If revolutionaries genuinely wish to change
the world by assisting in a successful working-class revolution (and I certainly
count myself among those who do), then the sooner this
alien-class ideology (DM) is jettisoned the better.
In that case, if the ideas presented
here are valid, it is clear that DM has helped cripple
the revolutionary movement almost from the beginning. Because of that, those who
insist on clinging to this regressive doctrine (for whatever reason) risk
extending that abysmal record of failure, defeat and debacle well into this new century.
Unfortunately, it is far from certain whether humanity
--
oreven Planet Earth -- can take another hundred years of Capitalism.
One more protracted cycle of
DM-inspired failures could (or, and far more likely, will) help guarantee that even fewer workers
will take Marxism
seriously --, or, and what roughly amounts to the same thing, live to tell the tale
in anything remotely resembling a civilised society.
Items (iii)
and (v) in
the above list are rather different, though.
As far as (iii) is concerned, from time to time readers will find themselves asking the following question of
the author: "Well, what's your theory, then?" No alternative
philosophical theory will be advanced here, or anywhere else for
that matter. That tactic hasn't been adopted out of cussedness -- or even out of
diffidence --, but because it is a key aspect of
Wittgenstein's method
(adopted at this site) not to advance philosophical theories of any sort.
His approach in fact means that no philosophical theory
makes any sense.
[Exactly why that is so has been considered at length in Essay Twelve
Part One. A brief summary of that Essay has now been posted
here. Objections coming in from the left concerning the use of Wittgenstein's ideas have been neutralised
here.]
As far as (v)
is concerned, those unfamiliar with
Analytic Philosophy might find the overall style of these Essays somewhat
daunting, if not completelydeflating. That is because these
Essays challenge the overblown
pretentions of Traditional Philosophy, but also those expressed in and by DM.
Moreover, these Essays adopt a similar approach to
the shared assumptions upon which both traditions have been based (for example, the idea
that fundamental truths about reality, valid for all of space and time, can be
derived from thought/language alone, which can then be dogmatically
imposed on nature and society). In
the end they succeed in showing that these "ruling ideas" have been founded
on little more than linguistic confusion and systematic distortion.
Nevertheless, the analytic method is much to be
preferred sinceit tends to produce clear results.
Anyone who takes exception to this way of doing Philosophy (or, indeed, who is happy to
leave his/her head in the sand) can simply log-off this site now. I have no wish to wake you up.
Figure Four: Dialectical Alertness?
Item (iv)
also needs some explanation. The extraordinary length of these Essays has been
determined by two factors:
(a) The nature of DM itself, and,
(b) The recalcitrant attitude of its
supporters.
All of the major, and the vast majority of the
relatively minor,
DM-theories have been subjected to extensive and destructive criticism throughout this
site. Because of
DM's totalising and interconnected approach to knowledge it can be
demolished in no other way. Had a single topic been left with only superficial
wounds -- and not
fatally injured -- its supporters might easily have imagined it could be
revived. Had even one of these theoretical strands been left intact,
because of the alleged inter-connections that exist between each and every one of
its parts the temptation would have been to conclude that if one element is
viable, the rest must be so, too. Just like
Japanese Knotweed, DM would grow back. Hence, the excessive length of each of the
main Essays is partly the result this theory's holistic character, and partly
because few of its supporters have ever bothered to analyse their theory in any detail
or to any great extent --
certainly not the unprecedented scale found at this site.
Those who still think these Essays are too long should compare them
with the works of, say, Hegel, Marx or Lenin, whose writings easily dwarf my own.
Nevertheless, I have attempted to summarise my main criticisms of DM in three
Introductory Essays of
decreasing length, difficulty, and complexity,
here,
here and
here.
Finally, even though many of the
arguments presented at this site are in my view definitive, genuine
knock-down arguments in Philosophy are exceedingly rare. In
that case, readers will have to make up their own minds whether or not I
am alone in judging my Essays definitive.9
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In researching the material published at this site I
have endeavoured to consult as many DM-texts as is physically possible. These
include all the DM-classics, the vast majority of the more important secondary
works, and countless minor and subsidiary books and articles in English and several other languages.
For reasons explained on the
opening page,
these Essays were originally published on the Internet (in 2005) when they were less than half-complete. In that case, over the
next decade or so I will be
adding extensive detail
and new material as I factor in the notes I have made about the contents of the
many DM-works I have studied, but which haven't yet been referenced or fully referenced in
the Essays that have already been published. In most cases, each Essay will end up
approximately twice the length it is now.
I expect to be working on this project for at least another fifteen years.
All being well, that should take me well into the
2030s.
However, since most DM-texts simply repeat
almost verbatim what the classics have to say (quoting, regurgitating or
paraphrasing Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, etc.,
often using the same ideas,
phrases and even the very same words) -- with little attempt to clarify or amplify their
content --, much of this research in fact turned out to be exceedingly
repetitive. Indeed, on many occasions it felt as if the same book or article was
being read, over and over. That, of course, is one of the problems with DM.
[Any who doubt this should check out the hundreds of DM-texts I have
quoted in Essay Two, for example. The reason why
DM is so neurotically repetitive is explained in Essay Nine
Part Two, as is the
ideological significance of the parrot-like behaviour of its supporters,
which is
a serious character-defect DM-fans have apparently failed to notice in
themselves. That is yet another trait they share with
open and honest
religious mystics.]
Despite this, my lack of Russian (in which
language much of the secondary literature on DM had been written) has prevented
me from consulting Stalinist, post-, and pre-Stalinist works, except where they
have been translated into English (or which now can be translated with Google
Translator).10
Although Trotskyists argue that the "lifeless and wooden"
'dialectic' found in Stalinist texts contrasts unfavourably with their own
'lively and vibrant strain', a dispassionate, less partisan examination of both traditions reveals a rather different
story. While there certainly are clear differences between Stalinist,
Maoist, Libertarian Marxist, and Trotskyist applications of 'Materialist
Dialectics' to class society, as far as their commitment to the 'dialectics of
nature' is concerned, all four are virtually indistinguishable.
With respect to DM they are genetic (and somatic) Siamese Quintuplets, philosophically joined
at the head.
Again, any who doubt this easily confirmed fact
will find it substantiated in Essays Two
and Nine
Part Two.11
However, it is quite clear that there are several STDs (both
Russian and Chinese) who display
a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of "the dialectic" than
many OTs -- Lukacs,
Ilyenkov
and
Oizerman come to mind here.
[STD = Stalinist
Dialectician; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist.]
[Another four exceptions to the 'wooden and
lifeless' jibe include (a) Alexander Spirkin's analysis of the
Part/Whole relation, outlined
here; (b) Yurkovets's discussion of "quality",
(c) Bettelheim's
analysis of 'principal' versus 'secondary contradictions'; and (d) James
Lawler's attempt to make the term "dialectical contradiction" comprehensible,
analysed in detail in Essay Eight
Part Three.]
Of course, the
dogmatic nature of DM certainly
didn't prevent it
from becoming the Official State Philosophy of the former 'socialist' states of
the old 'Communist Block', where its explicit dogmatism was magnified ten-fold. But, DM
is no less
of a dogma for OTs. And yet, because of their
even less successful revolutionary credentials, Trotskyists don't
control of a single 'Trotskyist' state (degenerated, deformed or
whatever) on which they can
impose their very own
preferred set of Dialectical
Shibboleths.
As far as can be ascertained, and with respect to
DM, that is the only relevant difference.
[However, readers should take note of the political
caveat I have registered here
about "the wall of blood" that separates Trotskyism from Stalinism.]
Another preliminary point worth making is
the following: the reader will find no overall summary of DM in these Essays. While
scores of DM-texts are quoted (sometimes at length), and are analysed in
painstaking detail, I have made no effort to outline the general content of this
theory (except, very briefly,
here).
Had such a summary been attempted it would have served no purpose and would probably have
been counter-productive.
It would have served no purpose because there
are countless summaries of DM available to those who might want yet
one more -- all of which read very much
the same, anyway.
It would have been counter-productive
since, as these pages show, there is no settled interpretation of DM even among its
acolytes. They all disagree with one another over minutiae -- while they
all give lip-service to broad strokes of its core ideas and repeat them endlessly, which are then
put to almost Machiavellian,
sectarian mischief.
Hence, one more attempt to summarise DM would surely have failed.
Hardcore DM-theorists would have
responded to yet another summary of their theory (had one been attempted) in the way I have no doubt they have already
received
TAR: they would object to practically
every single word, syllable and punctuation mark. That is what they do;
that is
all they do. Dialectical Moaners like this don't change, which is, of
course, yet another suitably ironic punishment the
Parmenidean
'Deity' has mischievously inflicted upon these back-sliding
Heracliteans.
So, despite what Heraclitus said, it is all too
easy to step into this same river of DM-abuse, misrepresentation and dissembling
time and again -- especially on the
Internet.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Readers should also make note of the fact that in
what follows, if certain philosophical theories (or even DM-principles) are criticised, that doesn't
mean I accept or give credence to their presumed contradictories. Hence, if, say, I attack the
idea that reality is rational, no one should conclude that I
believe that reality is irrational.
In fact, in this specific case, I can make no sense of either alternative. Take
another example: if I criticise the use of the word "objective" (when it is
employed metaphysically, or, indeed, by DM-theorists), that doesn't mean I am a relativist (which I
am not), or that I question the validity of scientific knowledge (which I do
not). In fact, I reject this entire way of talking about 'reality',
'objectivity', and scientific knowledge (for reasons that were aired in
Essay Thirteen Part One).12
In connection with the above, it is worth making
a more general point: readers shouldn't conclude from
my use of jargon drawn
from Traditional Philosophy that I think any of it makes
sense. I am merely employing such language in order to
assist in its demise.
[Some have wondered how it is possible to
criticise certain uses of language if none of it makes sense. However, that
query itself is based on a misunderstanding of my use of the word "sense". The reader is
directed here for more
details.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
I began this project in July 1998. Since then the
Internet has transformed a researcher's capacity to work from home, and, of
course, publicise their views. It is now possible to access all of the Marxist
Classics on-line, and much else besides. Moreover, and by this means, I have
been able to obtain literally hundreds of obscure books and
articles from around the world, which would otherwise have been very difficult,
if not impossible, to access a generation or so ago. In addition, the Internet has also allowed me to link to
sites (but, particularly the on-line Encyclopedia, Wikipedia)10a
where many of the ideas and technical terms I have employed are clarified or
expanded upon. This is especially useful for those who are new
to this 'debate' and aren't familiar with specific topics or the use of certain
jargonised expressions. In addition, it has been possible to communicate with
other Marxists who have also expressed serious doubts about DM, or who have aired
critical remarks on several discussion boards, attempting to 'debate' dialectics
with those still held in its grip. Finally, it has also allowed comrades from
all over the world to read my work (thus giving it a far wider circulation than
would have been possible had it only been published in hard copy), and as a
result many have
emailed their
appreciation of, and support for, my forthright stance.
Some have complained that my use of Wikipedia completely undermines the credibility of
my Essays. When I launched this project on the Internet in 2005, there was
very little material easily available on-line to which I could link other than Wikipedia for the vast
majority of topics. In the intervening
years alternative sites have become available (for example, the excellent
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the InternetEncyclopedia
of Philosophy), so I have been progressively replacing the vast majority of
Wikipedia links with links to these other sources. Having said that, I
haven't done so for those Wikipedia links connected with geographical, historical, scientific, biographical (etc.)
facts
where the areas coveredaren't controversial, at least among
fellow Marxists. In every instance, I have endeavoured to avoid linking to
Wikipedia in relation to any key areas of my arguments against DM so that
at no point will my criticism of that 'theory'/'method' depend exclusively on such
links -- unless there was nothing else available on-line. Even
then I have also been progressively replacing those links when
I have become aware of more acceptable alternatives.
In addition to the above (as readers will soon see
if they consult the Bibliography attached to each Essay) I have provided copious
references to other published academic and non-academic books and articles
(posted on-line or printed in hard copy) in the End Notes to each Essay, which further develop or substantiate
anything I argue, claim, allege or propose.
Unfortunately, experience on the Internet has underlined
just how resistant the DM-fraternity are to any challenges to their
theory/method. It has
also highlighted how unreasonable many of them are -- hence the 'scare' quotes
around the word "debate" above.
Quite apart from the fact that DM-apologists seem incapable of reading my Essays with due care (let alone
any accuracy, that is, what few bother to do so)
-- or, indeed, with any honesty (a particularly egregious example of which
has been exposed here)
--, the responses I have posted on various Marxist/revolutionary discussion boards reveal how lamentably weak the objections
are that DM-fans (so far) have managed to level against my criticisms.
In general, DM-fans oscillate between
the twin extremes of abuse and incredulity. For some, their response has
revolved either around the safe but pointless regurgitation of 'Holy DM-Writ'
(i.e., the quotation of selected passages from the 'classics'), or they simply
rehearse the
by-now-familiar,
tired old dogmas -- as if reading the same hackneyed material for the
thousandth time will do the trick and 'put me straight' when the previous
nine hundred and ninety-nine somehow failed. To a man, woman and 'robot', one and all seem unable,
unwilling or incapable of
arguing with any cogency in support of the metaphysical theories our
ideological forebears bequeathed us. To be sure, the incapacity demonstrated
by dialectically-distracted comrades appears to be in direct proportion to their propensity to quote
Dialectical Scripture, and in inverse proportion to their ability to read with
any accuracy what I might have argued in response.13
[FL = Formal Logic.]
This supports the prediction made
earlier that DM-'true-believers' will never abandon the
faith -- whatever
dire consequences this intransigent stance holds out for our movement. In line with other
failed theories that humanity has had to endure (or even reject), it seems that an entire older
generation of dialecticians will just have to pass away before this miserable
doctrine has any chance of being flushed out of Marxism for good.
Of course, that might never
happen, and newer generations of comrades intent on initiating this long-overdue
ideological purge may fail to appear. Indeed, Marx's
own assessment -- that the class struggle could lead to the common ruin of the
contending classes -- might yet come to pass, assisted in no small measure by his
erstwhile followers' unswerving attachment to this regressive 'theory'/'method'.
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in
constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now
open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending
classes." [Communist
Manifesto.]
If the above humanitarian disaster does
indeed
come to pass, the revolutionary movement will surely have been incapacitated by the
contradictory theory at its heart as much as it will have been defeated by the
enemy at the gate.
If one
particular view aired at this site
is correct, then this misbegotten theory [DM] was in fact shaped by
ideological forms-of thought concocted long ago by a well-focussed class enemy. The latter -- or, rather, their 'prize fighters'
--, were, of course, engaged in this 'activity' either for their own ends or those of
their patrons, oblivious of the misbegotten use to which dialecticians would one
day put their ideas. This ruling-class approach to philosophy (which gave birth
to DM) was imported into revolutionary socialism by theorists who
weren't workers. The foundersof Dialectical Marxism were
apparently far more impressed by the
ideas they inherited from Traditional
Thought
than they were with their supposed commitment to
philosophical
radicalism.
However, it is now clear that the pernicious influence exercised by these ruling-class ideas -- which had been smuggled into our movement
long before the proletariat could provide them with an effective, materialist
counter-weight -- is
seriously
impeding the scientific development of Marxism.
This is partly a result of (a) The fact that
these alien-class dogmas have been ossified into what has come to be known as 'The
Real Marxist Tradition', and (b) The additional fact that its adherents are
either blithely unaware of,
or they don't really care about, the link between this ancient
ruling-class thought-form and
the long-term failure ofDialectical Marxism itself.
Even worse, the vast
majority of comrades plainly feel they can ignore the class-compromised
origin of this theory
(even while inconsistently chiding yours truly for my alleged reliance on 'bourgeois
logic' and 'reactionary philosophy'), in the erroneous belief they are defending a radical tradition when
they are in effect promoting an ancient Hermetic
and Neoplatonic
world-view (upside down, or 'the right way up').
[There is more on this in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary
here).]
However, as is plain to all those who aren't blindfolded, our movement is slowly dying.
Not only is this woeful 'theory'/'method' partly responsible, it helps prevent anything
being done about it. Dialectical Marxism thus contains the seeds of its own demise.
Its core 'theory'/'method' not only motivates the propensity of Dialectical Marxism
to fragment, it convinces those held in
its thrall that nothing need be done about it. That is because they regard their movement as
'success incarnate' -- since DM has
been "tested in practice", despite the fact
that practice
itself tells a
completely different story. All the while, the real "gravediggers of
Capitalism" (i.e., workers) have shown they want nothing to do with it.
001. Of course, this
isn't just a problem for Trotskyists. The BBC had this to say about a
recent UK criminal case, involving three individuals who had been imprisoned
and treated as if they were slaves -- some of whom were sexually abused over a period of thirty years
-- by a cabal
of quasi-Maoists:
"The couple
accused of holding three women as slaves for
more than 30 years were activists in a
Maoist group in London. It was a period when
the UK had a plethora of small left-wing
collectives and communes. Aravindan
Balakrishnan, known as Comrade Bala, and his
wife Chanda ran a bookshop and commune from
a large building in
Brixton. Balakrishnan
had been a member of the Communist Party
of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the
early 1970s but split and formed his own
collective in 1974 -- the Workers'
Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong
Thought. It comprised about 25 people.
"The group
was not unusual. There were about 20 Maoist
groups active in the UK in the 1970s, says
Michel Hockx, director of the
SOAS China
Institute at
SOAS, University of London.
All followed the ideology of Chinese
communist leader, Mao Zedong, who put
industry under state ownership,
collectivised farming and ruthlessly
suppressed opposition.
'All [the UK
groups] considered themselves Maoists, but
they fought against each other about who was
in possession of the right ideology.... Some
were fairly militant, they would actively
promote overthrowing the capitalist systems
and class systems. Others practised communal
living, equality as a group.'
"In some of
the groups work would be collectively
organised, people took meals together,
shared possessions and would take part in
political planning together.... It wasn't
just Maoists, there was a great deal of
other radical activism at the time.
'There was
general ferment in society. In terms of
radical politics people were very engaged by
the war in Vietnam, significant numbers of
young people were protesting about that,'
says
Prof Dennis Tourish, author of The
Dark Side of Transformational Leadership.
'It was also the three-day week, the
collapse of
Franco
in Spain, the 1968 Paris
riots, there had been the assassination of
Kennedy and Martin Luther King. There was a
mood of radicalisation. Many people were
drawn to far-left causes at one time or
another.'
"Robert
Griffiths, general secretary of the
Communist Party of Britain,
has described Balakrishnan's Maoist sect
as the 'breakaway of a breakaway of a
breakaway'. The term used was 'splittist'.
Groups would part company and suspend
members who did not toe the party line or
presented a different view of the same
ideology. Fringe groups would then form,
often creating angry rivalries with their
former comrades.
'Each spilt
had its own pope, its divine leader, but
they were all trying to colonise the same
belief systems,' adds Tourish.
"Left-wing
groups were active across the UK, but in
Brixton in south London, there was a ready
supply of short-term empty houses in
neighbourhoods that Lambeth Council was
gradually clearing for its housing
programmes. It provided ample choice for
people looking to set up squats and
communes.
'There were
also plenty of empty or under-used small
shop premises, like that at Acre Lane, which
has been linked with the Mao Zedong
Memorial Trust,' says Alan Piper, of the
Brixton Society. 'Some of these groups took
a closer interest in local affairs, and went
on to organise squats or housing co-ops or
print workshops, or even to contest local
council elections. Others were more oriented
to national or international causes, so had
a lower profile in the immediate area,' he
adds.
"Not all of
the fringe groups were based around
communes. The Workers' Revolutionary
Party encouraged their members to share
accommodation, according to Tourish, but it
was not mandatory.
'They had a
number of other techniques to draw in
members and reinforce their commitment....
It was only a small party -- at its peak it
had around 1,000 people -- but for example
they put huge effort into producing a daily
newspaper which they would then spend their
days trying to sell, and being ignored and
ridiculed for it. That effort raised their
commitment, and gave the members a very
powerful group identity....'" [Quoted from
here; accessed 27/11/2013. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site; several paragraphs
merged. Some links and
italics added.]
This
cult's
leader
was
finally found
guilty
in
December
2015:
"Det Sgt
Paul
Wiggett
said the
cult
leader's
daughter
was
scared
of her
father
and that
she
'genuinely
believed
the day
she left
the
house
she was
going to
explode
' that
her life
would
come to
an
end'.... Balakrishnan
came to
the UK
from
Singapore
in 1963
and
enrolled
at the
London
School
of
Economics.
By the
1970s he
was
heading
a Maoist
group
known as
the
Workers
Institute,
based in
Acre
Lane,
Brixton,
and had
gained
several
followers.
But over
the
years
this
group
dwindled
to six
women
and was
transformed
into a
'cult of
Bala',
where
his
followers
were
only
allowed
to read
left-wing
texts
and were
sexually
assaulted
and
beaten.
Giving
evidence,
Balakrishnan
denied
sex
assault
allegations
and
insisted
two
victims
in the
commune
had
'pushed'
him to
have sex
and
competed
for his
attentions,
even
with the
mother
of his
daughter.
He said
his
views
were
grounded
in the
teachings
of the
Chinese
revolutionary
leader
Chairman
Mao
which
'meant
almost
everything
to
him'...."
[Quoted from
here;
quotation
marks
altered
to
conform
with
conventions
adopted
at this
site.
Several
paragraphs
merged.]
"The problem is, there
is a certain way of seeing any discussion of the far-left that's started by
someone who isn't a part of it. He must by definition be an enemy and we must
therefore believe he's trying to destroy the left.... That's what happens on the far-left. We sort of
have these instinctive reactions. You can see glimpses of this all over the net
right now, with SWP members openly attacking each other, something I've not seen
ever. There's a cult-like hatred of people who used to be allies."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis added.
Paragraphs merged.]
"Yet
even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the
most avid digital feminists will tell you that it's become toxic. Indeed,
there's a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by
their involvement in it -- not because of sexist trolls, but because of the
slashing righteousness of other feminists. On January 3, for example, Katherine
Cross, a Puerto Rican trans woman working on a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Centre,
wrote about how often she
hesitates to publish articles or blog posts out of fear of inadvertently
stepping on an ideological land mine and bringing down the wrath of the online
enforcers. 'I fear being cast suddenly as one of the "bad guys" for being
insufficiently radical, too nuanced or too forgiving, or for simply writing
something whose offensive dimensions would be unknown to me at the time of
publication,' she wrote....
"Further, as Cross says, 'this goes to the heart of the efficacy of radical
movements.' After all, this is hardly the first time that feminism -- to say
nothing of other left-wing movements -- has been racked by furious contentions
over ideological purity. Many second-wave feminist groups tore themselves apart
by denouncing and ostracizing members who demonstrated too much ambition or
presumed to act as leaders. As the radical second-waver
Ti-Grace Atkinson
famously put it: 'Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly
sisters.'
"In
'Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,' a 1976 Ms. magazine article,
Jo Freeman
described how feminists of her generation destroyed one another. Trashing, she
wrote, is 'accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical
to the Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist.
These feelings are reinforced when you are isolated from your friends as they
become convinced that their association with you is similarly inimical to the
Movement and to themselves. Any support of you will taint them…. You are reduced
to a mere parody of your previous self.'
"Like
the authors of #Femfuture, Freeman was trashed for presuming to represent
feminism without explicit sanction, in this case of the group she'd founded with
Shulamith Firestone. It began, she told me, when the left-wing magazine
Ramparts published a neck-down picture of a woman in a leotard with a
button hanging from one breast. The group decided to write a letter to the
editor. Four members drafted one without Freeman's knowledge, and when they
presented it to the rest of the group, she realized it was too long and would
never be printed. Freeman had magazine experience, and she decided to write a
pithier letter of her own under her movement name, Joreen. When Ramparts
published it but not the other one, the women in her group were apoplectic, and
Freeman was excoriated at their next meeting. 'That was a public trashing,' she
says. 'I was horrible, disloyal, a traitor.' It went beyond mere criticism:
'There's a difference between trashing someone and challenging them. You can
challenge someone's idea. When you're trashing someone, you're essentially
saying they're a bad person.'
"For
feminists today, knowing that others have been through similar things is not
necessarily comforting. 'Some of it is the product of new technologies that
create more shallow relationships, and some of it feels like this age-old
conundrum within feminism,' Martin [this is feminist activist,
Courtney Martin,
mentioned near the beginning of this article -- RL] says. 'How do we disentangle
what part is about social media and what part is about the way women interact
with one another? If there's something inherent about the way women work within
movements that makes us assholes to each other, that is incredibly sad.'"
[Michelle Goldberg, quoted from
here; accessed 30/01/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site; some links added. Spelling adjusted to
UK-English. Bold emphases added.]
[More-or-less the same can be said about the extreme
vitriol on the left currently surrounding the
'debate' over LGBTQ
gender identity -- although, the
intimidation,
threats and
physical violence are coming fromone side only, which is why
"debate" has been put in 'scare quotes'. In relation to this, it is hard to see how those who
complain that 'trans women' have been told they aren't 'real women' can
possibly argue consistently when they
also claim that there are no 'real women' anyway.]
Naturally, in this specific case DM is hardly to blame -- although, as I have pointed out,
wherever DM shows its face, it only succeeds in making abad situation worse.
The class origin and current class position of certain feminists is,
however, a much more
significant factor.
As noted above, acrimonious verbal
exchanges have taken place, and are still ongoing, in connection with 'Intersectionality' (on that, see,
for example,
here and
here).
"Symptomatic of this, the atmosphere in the SWP
is becoming fractious and poisonous. Accusations of the hacking of opposition
email accounts and epithets like 'malignant tumour' and 'systematic liar' are
thick in the air. The responsibility for this criminal, sectarian vandalism lies
exclusively with the leadership; the comrades of the opposition, whatever our
disagreements with them, are rebelling against a crass bureaucratic regime of an
unaccountable, apparatus power. They deserve the solidarity of all partisans of
the workers movement." [Quoted from
here. I have no way of knowing whether or not these allegations are true,
but if they are, it wouldn't surprise me; 'defending our tradition' in such a
climate amounts to doing whatever it takes to rubbish, demean, misrepresent
or
trash 'the opposition'. We saw something similar in the
2016 Labour Party
Leadership Election.]
Several more examples of
vitriol and
personal abuse directed at UK-SWP-ers by other SWP-ers and ex-members can
be read
here, in the main article and in the comments section.
Update, October 2013: The leadership of the
UK-SWP have just mounted a rearguard defence of their conduct (on that,
see here);
for a response, check
this out.
Even more shocking, this was reported to have
been said at the conference:
"We aren't rape apologists
unless we believe that women always tell the truth -- and guess what, some women
and children lie." [Quoted from
here. Several other sources on Twitter confirmed this allegation.]
What is worse still, that comment
received a round of applause!
Update, 30/12/2013: Indeed,
there has now been a
mass resignation of 165 comrades from the SWP.
In response to my
trenchant criticisms of DM the main tactic adopted by
Dialectical Mystics is to ban me from posting on their discussion boards --
RevLeft,
RedMarx and the
Association
of Musical Marxists(!!) being among the latest to censor me. That would appear to be because
I am far too effective at challenging DM. In fact, the latter
two sites banned me
within a couple of weeks of my first post there (as, indeed, have many pages on
Reddit).
Readers can judge for
themselves the extent and depth of my unprincipled and heinous thought crimes from
this thread. [RedMarx has since closed, so this link
is now dead. Revleft is now all but defunct, too. Update, November 2019:
RedMarx has now been revived, but I am still banned.]
This tactic has also been copied by the break-away UK-SWP site, the
International Socialist Network [ISN], clearly bringing their own brand
of incipient Stalinism with them from the UK-SWP.
Another favourite response is for dialectically-distracted comrades to claim that these Essays contain
"nothing new" -- or, that they have been "plagiarised".
This is just the latest example (my reply can be found
here).
However,
anyone reading my work (hopefully with their sectarian and partisan blinders
removed) will soon
discover that much of the content of my Essays is
entirely original. If I have borrowed from others that has invariably
been acknowledged.
[If anyone disagrees,
please
email me with the details and I will
not only apologise I will gladly acknowledge the debt.]
However, when those who advance the
above accusations were challenged to reveal where these "plagiarised" ideas have appeared before,
not oneof themhas responded with the details. Either they can't provide the information or they simply enjoy
being enigmatic. I suspect other motives.
[Unfortunately, the first two of the
above three links are now dead!]
Others claim that I quote the
dialectical classics "out of context" (for example,
here and
here), but when they are asked to provide the 'right context' they all fall suspiciously
silent.
In fact, in many places I endeavour to quote the entire
context (for example, here),
but even where I don't, it isn't easy to defend Engels, for instance, from
the charge of blatant inconsistency, especially when he tells us the following
in one breath:
"Finally, for me there could be no question of
superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it
and developing them from it." [Engels
(1976), p.13. Bold emphasis
added.]
But then, in the next he says
something like this:
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter.
Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be….
Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter.
Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as
the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing
in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be
created; it can only be transmitted…. A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one
of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Ibid.,
p.74. Bold emphases added. Paragraphs
merged.]
[There are in fact several score
dogmatic pronouncements like this in Engels's work alone; they have been
reproduced
here, alongside similar passages from
over fifty other DM-theorists/authors.]
But do we really need much
context to appreciate the glaring inconsistency in the above examples?
Especially since Engels adopted a well-worn,
traditional approach to Philosophy,
one that has been practiced for well over two thousand years, and one that all
dialecticians likewise employ (which was also demonstrated at length in
Essay Two)?
In addition, beleaguered dialecticians
often claim that they are "too busy" to work their way through these Essays
(or even respond to them), a convenient excuse that allows them to continue advancing
all manner of baseless accusations about me and my work, copying glaring errors
off one another without actually having read even so much as one of my Essays, or, indeed,
without checking their facts. [An excellent example of this ignorant
response can be found
here; a more recent one,
here (in the comments section).]
To be sure, no one has
to read a single word I write, but those who refuse to read my work only
make fools of themselves when they pass
comment on material about which they clearly know nothing.
[Perhaps the worst offender
in this regard, who posted under the name "Volkov", can be found
fabulating away
here (alas, that link is now dead!) and at RevLeft
under the name "Axel1917". This comrade was an 'expert' in all I have ever had to
say, even though he openly admits he hasn't read any of my Essays. In addition,
he never tires of telling others to avert their tender eyes from my work lest their highly sensitive
DM-brains are irreparably harmed by anything I have to say!]
Another excuse often thrown up by
the DM-Faithful is that my work is far too long -- a 'failing' that doesn't
prevent them wading through Hegel's 'Logic', or, indeed, Das Kapital. It doesn't stop them dismissing my work as a "rant" (another
favourite term of abuse), or a "screed" (ditto), even while they continue to
pass judgement on the content of my Essays from a position of
total ignorance. They even refuse to read the
short summaries I
have
written, and regularly warn others to 'stay away'
from my site!
However, when I write short articles they are
called
"superficial"; when I write long and detailed Essays, they are
deemed "too long", or they are
written off as "tedious" and "boring". In fact, dialecticians already "know the truth" --, and it
has "set
them free" (i.e., "free" from having to read anything that might disturb
their dialectical daydreams).
Another recent ploy is to argue that while I
might have examined and criticised the ideas of dialecticians A, B and
C, I should rather have
looked instead at those of X, Y and Z. Another will then complain that
while I might have examined the work of A, B and X, I should
instead have concentrated
on C, D, and Z! Yet another will then advise me to confine my attention to
A, D, and W..., and
so on.
Trotskyists complain if I quote Stalin
or Mao's
work; Maoists and Stalinists moan if I do likewise with Trotsky's (or even
with "Brezhnev era revisionists").
Non-Leninist Marxists will bemoan the fact that I haven't confined my remarks
to Marx's work or Hegel's, advising me to ignore the confused or even
"simplistic" ideas to be found in Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Trotsky's
writings on the subject!
Of course, because these comrades
haven't read my work, none of them know that I have in fact examined the work of A, B, C, D,..., W, X,
Y
and Z (and that includes Marx and Hegel -- as well as DM-theorists that many of my critics have never even heard of!). In fact, since most of
the material dialecticians produce is highly repetitive (check out
Essay Two for scores of examples!),
it often means that reading A's work is
tantamount to reading almost everyone else's!
However, the most
common complaint on the Internet coming in from academic,
or
quasi-academic, Marxists is that I have
ignored much more substantive theorists -- such as
Lukacs,
Marcuse,
Adorno,
Habermas,
Žižek,
Ollman, and the like. [I have explained why I have done this, for
example,
here.]
The work of several of these
HCD-theorists
will be examined in later stages of this project.
This 'friend-or-foe' reaction is rather odd in view of what Engels had to say about rigid
dichotomies:
"For a stage in the outlook
on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all
opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical
method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no
hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which
bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises
also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is
the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage.
Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical
categories retain their validity." [Engels
(1954), pp.212-13.
Bold emphasis added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
This "You-are-either-with-us-or-you-are-against-us" mentality
plainly runs counter to the above
ex cathedra pronouncement.
Nevertheless, other than those listed
above, the most common reactions to my work (from comrades
with whom I have 'debated' this 'theory' on the Internet, or elsewhere) are the following:
(1) An
expression of total incredulity that there could possibly bea single genuine
Marxist --
let alone a Trotskyist! --
who would eventhink to question this dearly beloved doctrine, or who
claims (as I do) that Philosophy in its entirety is a completely bogus discipline.
[Here
is a recent example of this reaction on Reddit.] This reaction is often
accompanied by a parallel accusation that anyone foolish enough to do this can't
be
a Marxist -- even though Marx himself
rejected Philosophy
and enjoined others to do likewise!
Naturally, the above reaction would mean that who counts as a Marxist is decided
by
definition (and a rather narrow definition, too: i.e., "Only those who don't
question tradition are genuine Marxists", an odd attitude for avowed
anti-traditionalists to adopt) -- and, incidentally, such a
'definition' totally
ignores Lenin's argument that no
scientific theory is above criticism.
(2) A hasty retreat to the view that dialectics
isn't "a royal road to truth", merely a "method".
Comrades who offer this response have plainly failed to notice that it completely undermines its
'objectivity'.
Indeed, as noted earlier, one leading Marxist Professor of Economics,
Andrew Kliman
no less, told
me in an email exchange to "Eat sh*t and die!" -- either that, or
quaff some
Hemlock --
just because I had the temerity to ask him to explain what a "dialectical
contradiction" is, especially when I subsequently pointed out that
his 'explanation' was defective!
Scatological abuse is, alas, almost
de rigueur from such comrades.
Here is one of the
latest (incoherent) examples. [Unfortunately that link is now dead!] Here
is another.
Naturally, thirty yearsor more of having to face vilification like
this would make anyone
(other than a 'saint') rather tetchy, if not downright aggressive, in response.
[Once more, I hasten to add that I am
not complaining. I expect
such dishonest and abusive responses, and for reasons highlighted in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
Indeed, on this page the reader will
see that my forthright and robust reaction to their underhanded attacks is
something that DM-fans themselves can't stomach, the poor lambs.
Sure, they are 'allowed' to post endless abuse -- as well as lie about me
and my ideas --, but I must take
it lying down and be
all sweetness and light in return.
(4) The posing of bemused questions like the following: "What other
concepts are there that could possibly account for change?"
The apparent obviousness
of the reply that these comrades hope to elicit (viz.: "You're right,
there are none, so dialectics must be correct. How foolish have I been!") is itself
clearly a
direct result of the conceptual void that DM has created inside each dialectical
skull.
As will soon become apparent to
anyone who reads the Essays posted at this site
(but especially
this one), there are in
fact countless words and phrases in the
vernacular (for instance, nearly every verb and adverb), as indeed there are
also in the sciences,
that enable change of every conceivable variety or
complexity to be depicted, studied and thus explained -- and in limitless
detail, too. In fact, ordinary words achieve this incomparably better than the
lifeless and obscure jargon Hegel concocted in order to fix something that wasn't broken.
Every single one of these ordinary terms can be appropriated with ease and used in HM.
The vast majority of revolutionary papers already do this.
They have to if they want to communicate
with
workers!
(5) The hurling of the
usual time-honoured slurs in my general direction -- e.g., "hysterical", "mad", "anti-Marxist", "positivist",
"sophist", "logic-chopper", "naïve realist", "revisionist", "eclectic",
"relativist", "post modernist", "bourgeois stooge", "pedant",
"absolutist", "elitist", "empiricist"...,
-- to name but a few.
But, when
DM-fans are described as "mystics" in return they wax indignant and complain
about "name-calling". Once more, they are allowed to
dish it out -- but not very well --, while they plainly can't take it in return,
poor dears.
(6) The attribution
(to me) of ideas I do not hold, and which can't reasonably be inferred from anything I have
said or written -- e.g., that I am a "postmodernist" (which I am not), an
"empiricist" (same comment), a "positivist" (ditto!), a "Popperian"
(I am in fact an anti-Popperian), that I am a "sceptic" (that
slur cast simply because I challenge accepted dogma, when Marx himself said
we should subject everything to ruthless criticism, and Lenin declared that all
knowledge is provisional), that I am an "anti-realist" (when I am in fact
neither a realist nor an anti-realist -- with respect to philosophical theories,
I am in fact a "nothing-at-all-ist" -- which mustn't be confused with
Nihilism,
I simply reject all philosophical theories, not 99.9%, but 100% as
incoherent non-sense),
that I am a "reformist" (when I am the
exact opposite), or that I am a "revisionist"
(when Lenin enjoined us all to question accepted theory, and Mao himself
apparently rejected the
NON).
This is just the latest slur along these lines, where a desperate DM-fan alleges that I
promote
"the sophist confusions of Wittgenstein, as if this is going to lead to the
emancipation of the working class" -- even though my signature: "The
emancipation of the working class will be an act of the workers themselves"
was facing him
on the very same pagewhere he posted that comment.
Naturally, this comrade predictably failed to inform us what these "sophist
confusions" were. [On Wittgenstein, see
here.]
Once more, these
accusations and allegations are often advanced by comrades who haven't read any of my Essays
-- but
that doesn't prevent them from being 'experts' about me and my work, or from
making things up about me. Either that, or they have merely skim-read a
few random, isolated paragraphs lifted from my work. Naturally, they would be the first to
complain if anyone were to do likewise with the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin.
Trotsky, Mao or Stalin.
[This
is just one of the latest examples;
here is another.]
Indeed, Engels himself waxed indignant with
Dühring over precisely this point:
"In connection with Herr Dühring's examination of the
Darwin case, we have already got to know his habit,
'in the interests of
complete truth' and because of his 'duty to the public which is free from the
bonds of the guilds', of quoting
incorrectly. It becomes more and more evident that this habit is an inner
necessity of the philosophy of reality, and it is certainly a very
'summary treatment'.
Not to mention the fact that Herr Dühring further makes Marx speak of any kind
of 'advance' whatsoever, whereas Marx only refers to an advance made in the form
of raw materials, instruments of labour, and wages; and that in doing this
Herr Dühring succeeds in making Marx speak pure nonsense. And then he has
the cheek to describe as comic the nonsense which he himself has
fabricated. Just as he built up a Darwin of his own fantasy in order to try
out his strength against him, so here he builds up a fantastic Marx.
'Historical depiction in
the grand style', indeed!" [Engels
(1976), p.159. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
While Dühring was rightly pilloried for doing
this, apparently it is perfectly OK for dialecticians to do the same to yours truly!
Here, too, is John Molyneux:
"Marxist materialism is
repeatedly attacked by the method of oversimplifying and caricaturing it to the
point where it is obviously false...." [Molyneux (2012), p.36.]
And yet, that is precisely
what he and other DM-fans regularly do when they attempt to summarise, discuss
or criticise FL -- or, indeed, my work.
In many cases, the
standard of debate displayed by DM-fans
sinks almost to the embarrassing level on display
here (which was written by a rather benighted Creationist). Alas, that is
especially true of
the reaction I have received from fellow Trotskyists;
here,
here,
here and
here are excellent examples of the crass responses to me coming in from UK-Trotskyists, who seem incapable of defending their 'theory' without resorting
to prevarication, deflection, lies and abuse. Often, they become emotional,
irrational, even
childish, content merely to post supercilious remarks in order to
deflect from their obvious incapacity to defend DM effectively, or at all.
A recent comment by
Owen Jones could very
well apply to many of the above comrades:
"Thing is, it always comes
across as though they're rattled, rather than proving hurtful, which I suspect
is the partial aim. Above all, it's a convenient way of avoiding having to
engage with my arguments -- just make it about me and my real motives,
and they think their work is done." [Quoted from
here; accessed 12/07/2015. Italic emphasis in the original.]
Having said that, there is a major difference between DM-fans
and the Creationists alluded to above: the former
are far more abusive!
Here,
here and
here are particularly good examples of abuse from one particular Marxist-Leninist
[M-L] comrade (which were posted in 2015) -- a serious defect further compounded
by this
individual's insecure grasp even of DM, a failing only exceeded by his somewhat tenuous grip on rationality.
[Once again, I'm not complaining about this, I expect it. I am
merely highlighting it in order to expose the intellectual bankruptcy displayed
by
DM-fans.]
Finally, here is a video severely criticising an
Introductory Essay of
mine, posted on YouTube in 2015 by another M-L:
Video Four: A Largely
Incoherent 'Defence' Of DM
Although the personal attacks on me in this video
are few and far between, it is peppered with sarcasm, condescension, distortion,
falsehood and blatant lies --, and, just like the benighted comrade mentioned a
few paragraphs back, this M-L clearly doesn't know his own
theory too well. For example, he openly admitted he had never heard of
'external contradictions' -- he
even implied that I had invented the term(!) -- and this despite the
fact that his heroes, Stalin and Mao, used it several times! I have responded to
him
here,
here
and here,
where I have exposed his many egregious errors, his woeful ignorance (even of his own
theory!), and his downright lies.
This benighted M-L then posted a second,
even
longer,but highly repetitive and largely incoherent video, to
which I have also responded
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, here,
here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
[I have posted this many responses since the video in question is over an hour
long and this M-L doesn't like to read long replies. I have now collected
together all the links to my responses to him and posted them
here.]
(7)
A
rejection of "bourgeois logic" (i.e., modern
Fregean
and
post-Fregean Logic) supposedly in my work.
This is
perhaps one of the oddest responses to my Essays mainly because (i) I use very
little such logic in my them, and (ii) DM-fans who react this way invariably know
absolutely no MFL (and, in
most cases, they are equally ignorant of AFL), even while they have uncritically
swallowed the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' that infests Hegel's work.
Hence,
for such individuals a lack of specialist knowledge ironically makes each of
them an expert logician, which is another 'dialectical' conundrum for readers to
ponder.
As noted earlier,
psychologists have now given this syndrome its own name: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
--
whereby those who know very little about a given subject are at the same time in
the grip of the delusion
that they are in fact experts in that very subject! Apparently, it also helps
explain why so many voted for that serial incompetent, Donald Trump! By
parity of reasoning, that
would make George W Bush a leading Theoretical
Physicist, and the late
Ronald
Reagan a world-renowned brain surgeon.
Some
complain even when this has been pointed out to them.
Here is an excellent example.
Furthermore, these 'dialectically-debilitating' qualities are often
garnished with stereotypical, ill-informed and misguided comments maligning
Wittgenstein as a "bourgeois" apologist, or even a mystic -- as if Hegel himself
was a "hoary-handed proletarian"!
[On this particular issue, see my Additional Essay, Was
Wittgenstein a Leftist? -- the content of which has been summarised in an
article I wrote, published
here
(unfortunately that link is now dead!). However, a version of it can be accessed
here.]
Of course, it is possible to be an effective revolutionary socialist while knowing little or no logic, but if
comrades are going to pontificate about MFL (or even AFL), they should at least have
the decency to learn some first!
(8) Of late, desperate defenders of the dialectic have adopted
one or more of the following
tactics (when the
ridiculous nature of their
core belief system has
been exposed by yours truly):
(a) They deny that the DM-classics actually say the things I
allege of them;
(b) They try to argue that the decidedly odd things
we find in the Dialectical
Grimoire
mustn't be taken literally (they're merely "metaphorical",
"hypothetical" or even "whimsical");
(c) They claim that Engels, Plekhanov, Trotsky, Lenin,
and Mao
aren't DM-authorities. [Yes, they're that desperate!]
They even try to maintain (a) and (b) in the face of
chapter and verse that tell a different story (recent examples of this desperate dialectical dodge can be found
here,
here,
here, and
here). They also do this despite the fact that it has been pointed out to them that
similar tactics have been adopted by Christians (in relation to the ridiculous things we find in
The Bible)confronted by
the advancement of scientific knowledge. In which case, these more open and honest (Christian) mystics
also
try to
sell us the idea that the Book Of Genesis, for instance, is "metaphorical", or 'poetically true'.
In relation to (c), exactly who is the authority in matters dialectical the
above fans-of-the-dialectic steadfastly refuse to say, even when asked!
So, it seems that DM-supporters will say anything, pull any dodge,
try any
ploy, invent, lie, twist and turn beyond even the knotted pretzel stage, rather than
allow the theory that history has already refuted to be even
slightly questioned.
[An excellent recent example of dialectical
mendacity like this can be found in
the warped logic and frenetic special-pleading found
here (written by one "Gilhyle").]
Figure Six: Dialectical
'Reasoning' -- But Only
After It Has Been Straightened-Out A Little!
Indeed, bourgeois 'spin
doctors' look straight-forward, open, honest and truthful in comparison!
(9) Finally, dialectically-distracted comrades more
often than not either:
(i) Refuse to respond to the vast majority of my
criticisms; they
simply ignore them,
(ii) Brand them "nonsense", but refuse to
explain why -- or,
(iii) Claim that many
of my arguments
address a "strawmen";
so they brush them aside and retreat into a
protracted
dialectical sulk -- especially after I have exposed the many errors and
non-sequiturs that litter their counter-arguments.
[An excellent recent
example of option (ii) above can be found
here. The individual concerned, who posts under the name "Jochebed 1", said
he had read my Essays and then decided they were "unsystematic
nonsense". When I
pointed out to him that, somewhat miraculously, he had managed in
less than an afternoon to read all 2.1 million words
posted at
this site
he went rather quiet. An example of box (iii) idiocy has been posted
below. (That 2.1 million word figure is now badly out of
date; the number of words now exceeds 5 million.)]
"But there is also an embarrassing side to Bryan: the
'great commoner' was a Bible-banging fundamentalist. When officials in Dayton,
Tennessee decided to roast
John
Scopes
for teaching evolution in 1925, they called in the ageing Bryan to
prosecute. The week-long trial became a national sensation and reached its
climax when the defence attorney,
Clarence
Darrow, called Bryan to the stand and eviscerated his Biblical verities. 'Do
you believe Joshua made the sun stand still?' Darrow asked sarcastically. 'Do
you believe a whale swallowed Jonah? Will you tell us the exact date of the
great flood?' Bryan tried to swat away the swarm of contradictions. 'I do not
think about things I don't think about,' he said. The New York Times
called it an 'absurdly pathetic performance', reducing a famous American to the
'butt of a crowd's rude laughter'. This paunchy, sweaty figure went down as an
icon of the cranky right. Today, most Americans encounter the Scopes trial and
Bryan himself in a play called Inherit
the Wind. I once played the role of Bryan and the director kept saying:
'More pompous Morone. Make him more pompous.'" [James Morone, London Review of
Books,
21/02/2008.]
If my experience is anything to go by, the vast
majority of DM-supporters "do not think about things they don't think about", either.
An excellent recent series of examples, courtesy of one wing of The Dialectical Know-Nothing Tendency,
was kindly provided for us by a comrade operating under the pseudonym
"Futurehuman" in The Guardian's
comments section -- see, for example,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here. This comrade insists on inflicting on his readers obsolete,
dogmatic and confused ideas
he stumbled across in Hegel and Engels's work, but steadfastly refuses to defend them in the
face of my criticisms.
[It should be obvious that I have posted there under the pseudonym "RosaL001".
You will need to use the search function
in your browser (if it has one!) to locate both sets of
comments. At the first of the above links, however, this comrade did initially
attempt to
post a weak defence of his ideas, but subsequently he merely sank
into a, by-now-familiar, dialectical sulk. This comrade is also the author of Malek
(2012), about which book I will be commenting in some detail in a later re-write
of Essay Seven Part One. By the way, I am not 'outing' this comrade; in the
above comments pages he
acknowledged himself as the author of the said book. The latest example of this
can be found
here.]
DM-fans react more-or-less in the same
way to the
many serious problems their theory faces, highlighted in the Essays published at
this site. For example,
when confronted with the fact that not all changes in 'quality' are
sudden (or, indeed, proceed in "leaps", to use the buzzword) -- e.g., melting
metal, glass, plastic, butter, resin, toffee, tar, and chocolate -- DM-fans either ignore
these glaring exceptions, or they brush them aside (often for no stated reason). This was indeed
the response of one of the
leading theorists of the CPGB,
who seemed to think it a minor point that almost every metal in the universe disobeys
this aspect of Engels's 'Law' (as, indeed, do all
amorphous solids, which have no distinct melting point). Moreover, when asked to define the length of a dialectical "node",
without fail they all become evasive -- either that, or
they change the subject, distracting attention from this 'awkward' subject.
A recent example of this can be found
here (in the replies of 'redmaterialist').
Any who still doubt these tactics are
employed by DM-fans should
perhaps consult: (a) The numerous passages reproduced in the Essays posted at this site;
(b) The material churned-out by any
randomly-selected DM-fan; or (c) The many discussion boards and Marxist
sites that have sprung up on the Internet (for example,
here).
[However, in relation to (b) above, readers
should also consult the comments I have added to the end of
Note
11, below. (c) Is now out-of-date since
most revolutionary discussion boards have closed down.]
Update, 23/03/2010:
Perhaps the most desperate slur levelled against me over the last thirty years
is the accusation that I am acop!
2. As
is the case with those committed to spreading the 'message' of that other 'holy
book', The Bible, the dialectical faithful seem to think that only
heretics would either want to alter, revise, or add to the content of the
sacred DM-canon. One can well imagine a Christian (or even Muslim)
Fundamentalist saying something like the following: "Why clarify the Word of God? Who are you to presume
to know better than the Lord and His Holy Prophets? You can't improve on
perfection...", etc., etc.
While dialecticians certainly give some
thought to DM, and endeavour to debate it among themselves, internal
dialogue is heavily constrained by organisational and psychological
factors analysed elsewhere at this site (for example, in Essay Nine
Part Two).
(iii) Their thoughts on DM-related topics
cover an extremely limited range of
topics.
For
instance, the vast majority of DM-fans illustrate Engels's 'Three Laws' with the
same hackneyed examples (boiling water, balding heads, plants negating seeds, Mendeleyev's
Table, the link between North and South poles of a magnet, wave-particle duality -- and, of course, those pesky Mamelukes),
despite the fact that it is relatively easy
to show that these 'Laws' fail to work
even here!
In addition we are informed by one and all of the
"limitations" of FL (and this by comrades who can't even get
Aristotle right!),
that "internal contradictions" motivate every instance of change in the entire
universe for all of time, while in the same breath these comrades
will swear blind that they haven't "imposed" dialectics on nature!
Hoary old DM-clichés like these are dusted off, year-after-year, as if they were still cutting edge
philosophy, when they more closely resemble
Mickey Mouse Science,
and demonstrably
so.
[Apologies for the mixed metaphors!]
It also helps explain why DM-fans
refuse to confront ideas they can't handle, or why they pretend that there are
no genuine problems with their theory. Any such
'difficulties' (where they are even so much as reluctantly or
partially acknowledged) are often rejected out-of-hand,
and for no good reason -- other than,
of course, to point out that since these 'difficulties' are incompatible with the edicts promulgated
by the Dialectical Founding Fathers, they must be completely false. End of
story.
[The knee-jerk responses from
this comrade serving as an
excellent example of the above impregnable 'dialectical redoubt'.]
Or, as noted earlier, it is also assumed
--
without any evidence -- that DM-critics must have questionable,
if not sinister ulterior
motives. This has perhaps been one of the most frequent reactions to my work. [It
certainly motivates the vast majority of the responses listed
here.] Failing that, spurious reasons
are invented in order to explain why dialectics "hasn't been disproved" by my
Essays. [Three excellent recent examples of this type of
response can be accessed
here,
here and
here.]
2a. Some
might be tempted to question the assertion that DM hasn't changed much in over
150 years, arguing on the contrary that DM is a vibrant, changing theory. [An
excellent recent example of this counter-claim
can be found
here.]
Admittedly, there have been a few peripheral changes to the theory,
but when they are examined closely they merely amount to minor, even
insignificant, elaborations
of the 'eternal truths' laid down by Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin and Mao. Where there have beenless insignificant changes (for example,
when the
NON has been binned by this or that dialectician),
they are almost invariably anathematised with accusations of "Revisionism!" by The Guardians Of The Sacred Dialectical Flame.
[This topic has been discussed in more detail in
several
Essays at this site, particularly Essay Thirteen
Part One. See also Note 5, below.]
Academic Marxism [AM] is, of course, an entirely different matter, but since that Dialectical Dead End is irrelevant
both to revolutionary socialism
and
the class war, I have
largely ignored it. In order to appreciate just how useless a discipline AM
is, readers might like to check out a
'debate' I
had with a fan of 'Systematic Dialectics' in 2019-20. Failing that, they
might like to struggle through Zizek (2012, 2015) and Bhaskar (1993).
3.In general, it
isn't easy for dialecticians to accept the accusation that DM is a dogmatic,
backward-facing theory even after
it has been pointed out to them, or even substantiated with a
mountain of evidence. In fact, it is nigh on impossible
for them to acknowledge that easily demonstrated fact -- nor yet appreciate its significance. That is partly related to:
(b) The fact
that, after 2400+ years of Traditional Thought (where this dogmatic approach to
Philosophy is de rigueur),
this style of reasoning has become part of the philosophical landscape, as it were. In fact,
this approach has been around for so long that few notice itor recognise
it for what it is (even though Kant highlighted its pernicious influence over
two centuries ago (Kant
(1953)). A
priori
dogmatism thus seems quite normal, natural and uncontroversial in the eyes of
most DM-fans,
and, of course,
Traditional Thinkers. In this way, the ideas
of the
ruling-class, alongside the
a priori methods invented and employed by their "prize fighters",
have found their way into Marxism --, and no one
in the movement bats an eye!
Quite the
reverse in fact; ruling-class forms-of-thought find some of their most
enthusiastic defenders among the DM-faithful. [This is especially the case with
respect to those who hail from the
HCD-Tendency.]
And the above is relatively easy to explain, too, in view
of the
class origin or current class
position of the overwhelming
majority of Dialectical Marxism's leaders and main theoreticians. A recent example of this can be found
here (more specifically
here, and in the ensuing discussion), as well as
here. A more pernicious and insidious set of examples of this malaise can be accessed
here,
here, and
here.
As far as (a) above is concerned, while
DM-supporters never tire of telling us that they refuse to impose their ideas
on nature and society (adding that DM isn't a "master key" capable of unlocking
the deepest secrets of the universe), that isn't what
they actually do. Dialecticians en masse readily foist
their theory on nature and society. [That allegation has been fully substantiated in
Essay Two.]
For instance, DM-apologists don't usually regard Lenin's philosophical work as an example of dogmatic
reasoning. On the contrary, they see it as a genuine contribution to science -- or
at least to
philosophy and revolutionary theory.
But, that
is despite the fact that Lenin didn't even attempt to marshal any
supporting evidence for the things he so boldly asserted (for example, in his
Philosophical Notebooks [PN]), andin spite of the fact that he
affirmed the truth of numerous universal, all-embracing 'propositions', which he
confidently declared were applicable to all of reality for all of
time,
whenit is clear that no amount of evidence would prove sufficient to
substantiate claims like these. It can
be seen, too, when Lenin claimed, for instance, that dialectics reflects the
"eternal development of the world". [PN,
p.110.] He even contradicted the usual DM-claim that dialectics isn't
a "master-key" capable of unlocking the door to universal, a priori knowledge:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the
contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all
phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all
processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous
development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of
opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone
furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…." [Lenin
(1961),
pp.357-58.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
A key that unlocks universal secrets
is different from a "master key" in name alone. Of course, these are the sort of things that
only a deity could possibly know.
In fact, as noted earlier, dialecticians can still be found who
will read the following passage from Engels, but who will also fail to notice (or they will even
deny!) that it is as good an example of a priori dogmatics that
has been
imposed on the world as one could wish to find:
"Never anywhere has there been matter without
motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable
as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and
indestructible as matter itself…." [Engels
(1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]
A few pages later Engels even added the
following:
"Finally, for me there could be no question of
building the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it
and developing them from it." [Ibid.,
p.13.
Bold emphasis added.]
So, even Engelswas oblivious of what he was doing!
Nor will they view the following comment of
Trotsky's this way:
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly in
size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he
axiom 'A' is equal to 'A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does
not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists
'tolerance' which is established not by formal logic…, but bythedialectical logic issuing from theaxiom that everything
is alwayschanging…. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws:
change of quantity into quality, development through contradiction, conflict and
form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability,
etc…." [Trotsky
(1971), pp.64-66. Bold emphases added.]
Of course, Hegel 'established' no such thing. He, too,
derived this 'law' from a superficial examination of what water supposedly does
when it is heated or cooled, but from which truly impressive 'body
of evidence' he extrapolated this idea
across the entire universe for all of time. Trotsky simply took Hegel at his
word and failed to subject that Christian mystic's Mickey Mouse Science
to the sort of critical scrutiny he applied, for example, to reformism.
Or, this from Mao:
"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the
law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.... As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook,
the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand
the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations
with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as
their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its
movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The
fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it
lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal
contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....
"The universality or absoluteness of
contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the
process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process
of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to
end.... There is nothing that does not contain
contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist....
"Thus it is already clear that contradiction
exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the simple
or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological
phenomena.... Contradiction is universal and absolute,
it is present in the process of the development of all things and permeates
every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1937),
pp.311-18. Bold
emphases added, several paragraphs merged.]
DM-fans ever since have simply continued in the same
vein -- there are
in fact
countless examples of a priori
dogmatics like this both in the Dialectical Classics and the writings of
'lesser' DM-luminaries.
The above theories weren't discovered by scientists,
either, and neither were they derived from the evidence available even in Hegel's day;
the same is the case with the greatly increased body of scientific knowledge
to which we now have access. On the contrary, they were all concocted by ancient
and early modern mystics (like
Heraclitus,
who effortlessly 'derived' a universal thesis, true for all of space and time, from a "thought
experiment" about stepping into a river!). They too did this before there
was any evidence at all to speak of. Naturally, this means that no DM-thesis
represents
a 'summary of the evidence',
as is sometimes claimed.
How, for example, could Engels's pronouncements about matter and motion have been
derived from 19th
century knowledge? Or even from contemporary science?
"Never anywhere has there been matter without
motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable
as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and
indestructible as matter itself…." [Engels
(1976), p.74. Bold emphases added.]
Worse still, it turns out that what little evidence DM-theorists have
scraped-together in support of their hyper-bold,
universalist claims fail to support their theory (as my Essays have shown
--
particularly Essay Seven Part One).
If Lenin's philosophical dogmatism is now
contrasted with his other, more tempered claims
-- where he insists that science is only ever partially
true, and is always revisable -- the above instances of hyperbolic dialectical exaggeration are all
the more reprehensible.
"…[the] basis of philosophical materialism
and the distinction between metaphysical materialism and dialectical
materialism. The recognition of immutable elements…and so forth, is not
materialism, but metaphysical, i.e., anti-dialectical, materialism….
Dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every
scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists
on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving
matter from one state into another." [Lenin (1972),
p.312.
Bold emphasis added. Several more DM-passages that say the same sort of thing
have been posted here.]
Hence, it
is difficult to see how Lenin could possibly have asserted (with such
confidence) the universal and omnitemporal validity of DM-theses
while at the same time maintaining the belief that DM hasn't been
imposed on reality -- and while holding the idea that
knowledge in general is only ever partial, approximate and relative.
Especially when he also said the following:
"WhatMarx and Engels criticise most sharply in British and American socialism is
its isolation from the working-class movement. The burden of all their numerous
comments on the
Social-Democratic Federation
in Britain and on the American socialists is
the accusation that they have reduced Marxism to a dogma, to 'rigid orthodoxy', that they consider it 'a credoand not a guide to action'."
[Lenin, 'Preface to
the Russian Translation of Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Dietzgen,
Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Friedrich Sorge and Others',
1907, quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphasis and link added. Italic emphases in the original.]
"[Marxism is] [a]bsolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire
recipes...." [Lenin, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
Contrast
the above with the following:
"In the first conception of
motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive,
remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject,
etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to
knowledge of the source of 'self'-movement. The first conception is lifeless,
pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing;it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in
continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of
the old and the emergence of the new. The
unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative.
The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Bold emphases
alone added. Paragraphs merged.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
None of this looks at all
"relative" and non-dogmatic --, especially those items Lenin calls "absolute".
Except, of course, when it comes
to DM. Then it is open season and everyone has a licence to impose
their ideas on nature and society. As we will see,
in relation to dialectics, Lenin was quite capable of dogmatising with the
best and using DM as a test of 'orthodoxy'.
It could be objected that revision doesn't mean abandonment of the
theoretical gains of the past; scientific development builds on the advances
achieved by previous generations.
The picture is in fact far more complex than this, as will be
argued in Essay
Thirteen Part Two, and yet the truth is that if anyone tries to argue with the
faithful that DM can be, or should be, even so much as slightly revised in
line with Lenin's advice, even with respect to the minutest of details, they
risk being assailed with what is perhaps the most powerful word in the DM-phrasebook:
"Revisionist!", and the DM-Inquisition will be on their case.
Dialecticians clearly pay lip-service to Lenin's more modest claims (as, indeed,
he did, too!). Clearly, what he said
applies to everyone else, not DM-apologists, to every other theory,
not theirs.
In fact, no amount of evidence could substantiate
the sort of universal claims Lenin, Engels, Plekhanov, Dietzgen, Stalin, Mao and
Trotsky repeatedly asserted about all of reality for all of time.
In this regard, it is instructive to
contrast dogmatic dialectical discourse like this with, say, the much more
measured,
genuinely scientific approach found, for example, in Darwin's careful,
empirically-based classic, On The
Origin Of Species.
In fact, and in direct response to several recent
posts of mine,
this site thought it timely to publish yet another rendition of The
Dialectical Catechism for the faithful to meditate upon, perhaps as a
prophylactic measure to ward off my evil influence -- indeed, as I pointed out
at the time:
I can only think that you are publishing all this
material on dialectics as some sort of response to my recent demolition of one
of its core ideas -- that is, I have been able to show that if this 'theory'
were true, change would be impossible. So reproducing the above material is no more
of an effective response than it would be for Christian Fundamentalists to
publish passages from the Book of Genesis on-line in response to Darwin. This 'theory' has been thoroughly demolished
at my site. Get over it. [Paragraphs merged.]
More-or less the same can be said of the scores
of videos about DM and 'Marxist Philosophy' that now festoon YouTube,
all of which rehearse the same handful of basic ideas (almost as if no one had
summarised them before). This is one of the latest -- check out my reply to
it in the comments section, and make a note of its author's pathetic
response:
Video Five: Night Of The Living-Dead-Theory
4. Again,
experience on the Internet suggests that not only are DM-acolytes impervious to
argument, they are living disproof of their claim that everything in
reality is always changing. They never do and apparently never will. It
looks like a whole generation of DM-supporters might have to die out
before fresh theoretical air is
allowed to filter into Marxism.
But, I for one will not be holding my breath waiting
for that to happen. [No
pun intended.]
5. As
noted above, the accusation that DM hasn't changed
significantly in over a hundred years will be substantiated in Essay
Thirteen
Part One.
This rather bold and controversial claim is often contested by
DM-apologists, who then appeal to examples drawn from the development of Marxist
social,political and economic theory since the turn of the
previous century. However, the
above allegation was
directed solely at DM, not HM,
so pointing to advances in HM is hardly relevant.
Another
aspect of the defensive stance adopted by dialecticians is the fact that few of
them fail to argue that hostile critics of Dialectical Marxism always
seem
to attack
"the dialectic". This then allows them to brand all such detractors "bourgeois
apologists", which in turn means that
whatever the latter say can safely be ignored as, 'plainly', ideological.
However, it has surely escaped their
attention that the reason 'the dialectic' is attacked by friend and foe alike is
that it is by far and away the weakest and most lamentably feeble area
of traditional 'Marxist Philosophy'. Far from it being an "abomination" to the
bourgeoisie (even though the State Capitalist rulers of Eastern Europe, the
former USSR, Maoist China and North Korea are, or were, rather fond of it, as
are those sections of the bourgeoisie that publish books and articles on dialectics, or,
indeed, on
'Marxist Philosophy'),
'the dialectic' has in fact visited an abomination on revolutionary
socialism.
So, our enemies attack dialectics
precisely because they think they have found our
Achilles
Heel.
In contrast, revolutionaries like the present writer attack it
for the opposite reason -- to rid Marxism of its Achilles Heel.
Admittedly, Trotsky tried to respond to this
line-of-argument along the
following lines:
"Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of
tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the camp of
opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently
with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals consider the
dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time they take
advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to verify
differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long known
fact is backed by all the evidence of experience." [Trotsky
(1971), p.94. Bold emphasis added.]
But,
Trotsky's argument actually works both ways, for if it is difficult for workers to verify the
"differences" he mentions, then that plainly allows others (such as party
leaders, party hacks and party theorists)
to manipulate workers with ideas they don't understand (indeed, no one
understands), or can't check (i.e., those found in DM
itself). And, far from it
being the case that only workers find it hard to defend -- or even understand --
this 'theory' so that they are capable of detecting such "differences",
DM-theorists themselves have shown that they, too, don't understand their own
theory (as these Essays have also repeatedly demonstrated, particularly
this one)! That isn't because it
is a difficult theory to grasp; it is because it is based on incomprehensible Hegelian
gobbledygook
(upside down and the 'right way up').
However, as the Essays published at this site
also show, there is now no good reason to cling to these vague and confused DM-fantasies, even though there
are
easily
identifiable psychological and ideological motives why they are, have been,
and will continue to be embraced by the DM-faithful.
Hence,
the conclusion is inescapable: petty-bourgeois revolutionaries maintain
their commitment to this mystical and misbegotten set of doctrines for contingent psychological,
opportunist and
ideological reasons,
and for no other.
[There is much more on that in Essay Nine Parts
One and Two.]
[The "Ah, but what about 1917?" defence
has also been neutralised --
here.]
The class origin and current class position of comrades like Trotsky
works against them, as well. After all, they, too, aren't above (i.e., they
aren't exempt from) Marx's declaration
that:
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [Marx
(1987), p.263.]
[The "Ah, but that's just crude reductionism!" riposte
has been defused
--
here.]
5a. Those who object to
my alleged reliance on 'bourgeois thinkers/theory' should read
this and then
perhaps
think again.
There is a notable exception to this negative
assessment (i.e., that DM-fans are woefully ignorant of
MFL and Analytic Philosophy); one comrade has openly
declared on the Internet that he is "learning logic" so that he can
respond to,
or even neutralise, my
criticisms.
[That declaration can be found
here, along with my reply,
here (as well as in subsequent posts on the same page). In fact, the Maoists
at that
site were considerably more comradely toward me than most of my fellow Trotskyists
have been!]
Update, September 2022: Over
fifteen years
later and still no sign of
this comrade or his newfound expertise in logic!
Not that it will do her/him much good; very little of my case against DM
relies on FL!
6.
Some readers might be surprised to find little or no discussion or analysis of
AM at this site --, particularly the work
of theorists like
Lukács,
Sartre,
Althusser,
Derrida,
Žižek, and the 'Frankfurt
School' -- or, indeed, the work of 'Continental
Philosophers' in general --, or,
for that matter, much of what passes for 'Systematic Dialectics'.
That is
because:
(a) The vast
bulk of the above work relates to issues that are connected with, or are integral
to, HM.
(b) Both revolutionary
socialism and the class war have largely been unaffected by AM (whatever deleterious
effect it might have had on the minds of highly educated and otherwise
politically astute comrades), and,
(c) I can make little sense of much that
passes for 'theory' in this genre. [On that, see
Chomsky's comments, posted
here.]
Indeed, most of the material that has so far emerged
from this 'tradition' strikes me as little more than
a determination to produce highly convoluted prose, impenetrable jargon, and then more of the
same in order to 'explain', or comment on, the last batch of gobbledygook produced
by yet another AM! This theoretical quagmire is littered with ideas and concepts
that are about as comprehensible and transparent as a theological treatise on the
'Incarnation' of Christ. This current in Marxism is in effect a sort of 'woollier-than-thou'
approach to Theory.
Hume's
bonfire has never been more sorely needed...
[Some have taken exception to the above comment
since it appears to resemble illiberal and intolerant attempts to burn books,
but it shouldn't be taken literally. It amounts to little more than "Consign
these works to the basement area of the library to gather dust!" Or even "Leave
them to the gnawing criticism of the mice."]
Marx likened Philosophy to
masturbation
(or, rather, he said that it stood to science as masturbation does to sexual
love). Well the above thinkers appear for all the world to be engaged in their
own collective 'circle-jerk', which is probably why their influence on the class
struggle has been close to zero, and will no doubt approach zero asymptotically
as their writings become more prolix over time; and, of course, as the working-class
continues to grow and continues to ignore them en masse.
Having said that, much of what is concluded
in Essay Twelve (i.e., about the
ruling-class origin of metaphysical and philosophical thought) also applies to this
highly insular body of 'Marxist theory', as well as those who seem determined to keep churning
out yet more of it.
[A summary of the above Essay can be accessed
here. In fact, Marx abandoned Philosophy, root-and-branch, by the
late 1840s, and advised others to do likewise. On that see
here. See also,
here.]
7. These Essays have been written from the perspective of a
specific current within
Analytic Philosophy -- and, it is worth adding, it
represents a minority and
highly unpopular viewpoint among Analytic Philosophers, too! However, since
the vast majority of DM-fans clearly lack any sort of background in this genre,
many of the points made at this site have had to be pitched at a verybasic
level. Professional Philosophers will, therefore, find much here that will
irritate them. That, however, is their problem. As I have already noted,
this site isn't aimed at them.
In addition, I have endeavoured to write much
of this material with the following thought in mind: "If this or that passage
isn't accessible to ordinary working people, re-write it!" Now, I don't think for one second
that I have everywhere succeeded in achieving that level of clarity or
directness, but most of the material at this site has been written and
re-written well over fifty times (no exaggeration!) with that sole aim in
mind. This process will continue indefinitely. Naturally,
it is for members of the target audience (i.e., working people, should they ever
read these Essays!) to decide if I have succeeded or failed in achieving my
stated aim.
Indeed, and in this regard, I am happy to bejudged bythemalone.
Even though the content of this site has been
heavily influenced by the work of
Frege and
Wittgenstein, it strives to remain consistent with HM. That will strike some
readers as an impossible (if not a pointless) task. That misapprehension has also
been addressed in another Essay at this site.
8. There is no chance that DM-fans
will give the material published at this site a fair hearing. In fact, after nigh on thirty-five years,
and out of the hundreds of DM-fans (again, no exaggeration!) with whom I have
'debated' this 'theory', I can count the number of comrades who have engaged
fairly with me (that is, without them resorting to
knee-jerk rejection, fabrication, abuse, lies or slander) on the fingers of a severely mutilated hand.
It is worth recalling that according to DM, no progress can be made except through
internally-generated contradictions -- i.e., in this case, contradictions
exposed by someone inside the movement, one presumes.
That is why a naive observer might be tempted to conclude that these Essays would be welcomed by the DM-faithful.
But any such will be sorely mistaken.
Nevertheless, it is also why these Essays won't be favourably received. Not even DM-fans can put their own theory
of 'change through contradiction'
into practice by allowing it to be contradicted itself!
The problem with dialecticians is that they
do not (or perhaps cannot) recognize the glaring 'contradictions' in DM (or they brush them aside with what I have elsewhere called the "Nixon
defence").
As far as change
is concerned, this can only mean that:
(i) Their theory can't
actually develop (that is,
according to their own theory of change it can't do so if it has no 'internal
contradictions'), or,
(ii) If they refuse to examine
the glaring 'contradictions' I have exposed, their theory of
change itself must be defective, since that must mean these 'internal
contradictions' don't in fact change
anything!
But, if
their theory of change is misguided (i.e., if these 'internal contradictions'
do not in the end cause change), then dialecticians can safely ignore any
'contradictions' I point out, including this one!
Of course, if DM can't change
(presumably that will be because, for the first time in history, human beings
have invented a theory with no 'internal contradictions'!), it would
imply DM
is absolutely true, and Lenin's claim that all knowledge is relative and
incomplete is itself mistaken!
Whichever way we turn core DM-theses
take body blow after body blow.
In that case, DM-theorists should welcome the many
'contradictions' I have exposed in their theory, even if only to save it
from such easy refutation!
Unfortunately, however,
that particular outcome will sink their theory even faster!
[This rather ironic, fatal dilemma has been tweaked some
more
here, and
here.]
8a. Of
course, that depends on how the word "successful" is understood.
Unfortunately, however, on any reasonable interpretation of that term, this allegation (i.e., that of all the major political ideologies
and/or movements in history, Dialectical Marxism is amongtheleast successful) turns out to be true.
[On that, see
Essay Ten Part One.]
8b. It is worth
underlining yet again that I am not blaming all our woes
on dialectics. I have to keep repeating those words since comrades who read these
them still persist in claiming -- deliberately,
it has to be concluded --, that I am blaming the
failure of Dialectical Marxism solely on DM, no matter how many times they
are told otherwise!
What I am
doing is claiming that this 'theory' is partly responsible for the long-term
failure of Dialectical Marxism.
[The extent to
which I think that is the case is detailed in Essays Nine
Part Two and Ten
Part One.]
9.
Since beginning this project I have discovered several somewhat similar
points raised in Eric Petersen's, The Poverty Of Dialectical Materialism, an
excellent book (that is, if we ignore what he has to say about Philosophy in
Chapter 2, and Logic in
Appendix A), which I first read in January 2005.
Also, in early 2005, I happened across
the work of Denis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth. Their invaluable study --
On The Edge: Political Cults Right And Left -- greatly amplifies several
of the points I have made here about
sectarianism, etc.
It needs adding, though, that I completely distance myself
from their comments about Leninism.
[A summary of Tourish's ideas can be accessed
here.]
10. However, DM itself still seems to be alive and well in China (boosted no
doubt by its close
affinity with
Daoism). Because of that, I have consulted several books on 'Chinese
Dialectics', which have been written or translated into English.
10a.
Some Marxists turn their noses up at Wikipedia, but that is probably the result of
no little intellectual snobbery (possibly coming in from the
HCD
fraternity), or perhaps even a result of sectarian disdain (possibly coming from
LCDs). But,
where my own expertise is relevant, this on-line source is in general
reasonably reliable (although, on the few occasions where I disagree with what
it has to say I have explained why (in one or two of my Essays, or in discussion sections over
at Wikipedia itself -- for example,
here).
In which case, I have no reason
in general to question other pages where my expertise is lacking. Even
so, there are noother sources on the Internet that are anywhere
near as comprehensive or as accessible.
On the other hand, as I have noted
in the main body of this Essay, where
possible I have been progressively replacing Wikipedia
links with links to any acceptable or authoritative alternative sites I can find. If readers know
of still others, I'd appreciate it if they
informed me of them! Fortunately, or unfortunately, Wikipedia
pages are continually being altered, edited and revised. I have generally made a
note of this wherever I have linked to such pages, and where I am aware of substantive changes.
11.
That is, of course, why Trotskyist bookshops (such as
Bookmarks in London) find they can sell works written by
STDs and
MISTs.
However, the comments in the main body of
this Essay aren't meant to suggest that Trotskyism
and Stalinism are literally Siamese twins. Far from it. At least as far
as a clear commitment to international revolution and the self-activity of the
working class are concerned (among many other issues!), the two couldn't
be further apart. Nevertheless, as far as their commitment to DM is concerned, it is difficult to slip a
party card between them.
[That controversial claim has been examined in
more detail in Essays Two and Nine Part Two.]
12. On Internet discussion boards this has perhaps been one of
the hardest messages to get across, not least because comrades there tend to accept
the traditional idea that Marxism actually needs a 'philosophy'
of its own. Why that is so is seldom ever raised. [The few arguments advanced in its favour
have been critically examined in Essay Twelve
Part One.]
However, it is often assumed that if I query a
specific
'philosophical' thesis I must therefore accept an opposing doctrine (which I never do --
I
invariably reject both). In fact, we no more need Philosophy than we need
Religion:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
and link added.]
Moreover, the ubiquity of religious
beliefs and philosophical theories in class society shouldn't fool us into thinking they
are either inevitable or necessary to 'the human condition'.
Indeed, as
Essay Twelve points out, because
Traditional Thought represents and expresses ruling-class priorities, and both
Theology and Philosophy appeal to, or employ, dogmatic ideas of
one sort or another -- which approach to 'knowledge' is, again, based on the unsupported
belief that there is an underlying "rational"
structure to reality, accessible to thought alone -- it is clear that
both are the result of what turn out to be analogous alienated social conditions.
As Marx pointed out:
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an
independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations
of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive,
systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and
philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence
of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a
consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only
to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is
abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual
world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a
realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis added.]
"The ideas of the ruling class are
in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material
force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class
which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the
same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally
speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject
to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the
dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as
ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one,
therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other
things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a
class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Ibid., pp.64-65, quoted from
here.
Bold emphasis added.]
"In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their
will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of
material life conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a
certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come
into conflict with the existing relations of production or -- this merely
expresses the same thing in legal terms -- with the property relations within
the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of
the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an
era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or
later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying
such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material
transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined
with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious,
artistic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an
individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness
must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict
existing between the social forces of production and the relations of
production." [Marx
(1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]
"...philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381.]
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted
consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement,and itsuniversal basis of consolation
and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call
on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion
is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo." [Marx
(1975c),
p.244. Bold emphases alone added.]
Even more instructive: in Essay Nine
Part Two I show that the
quasi-religious devotion displayed by DM-fans to the 'dialectical world-view' is
actually
a consequence of the same alienating forces that also motivate and encourage
theological myth-making by that other group ofsocial victims (i.e., the religious
and the superstitious). One
cause, two similar effects.
[This argument has now been summarised
here. This topic will
also be explored at greater length in Essay Twelve (summary
here.)]
13. Two recent examples of this phenomenon can be accessed
here and
here
(the first link no longer works; the second will take the reader to a post that was published just after I had intervened on the site in question) -- but there are many more
just like them.
As noted earlier, the only other 'argumentative
ploy' that DM-apologists seem to have available to them (in response to my
Essays) is to ignore totally whatever they don't like or can't answer. As noted
above, such
comrades appear to know little FL (many indeed proudly and openly boast about
this rather un-edifying and self-imposed intellectual defect), but that doesn't
stop them informing the world of its many 'shortcomings'. In this they perhaps stand to
MFL rather like the Pope does to any advice he gives on marriage
and sex. Except the Pope has the decided edge here; he is, so we are told, of
the male sex and hence, at a minimum, heat least knowssomething (even if that isn't much) about what he
is talking about. The same can't be said of the vast majority of DM-fans in
relation to their comments about FL.
[FL = Formal Logic; MFL = Modern Formal
Logic.]
[These comments don't, of course, apply
to the work of
Graham Priest, a highly sophisticated
philosopher and logician. Priest's ideas will be criticised in subsequent Essays. Until
then, the reader is directed
here and
here for more details.]
However, whenever I attempt to
recast my anti-DM
arguments in mind-numbingly simple and basic terms so that child could follow them
dialecticians lambaste them for their 'banality', or their 'superficiality'. On
the other hand, when they are presented at length, in all their complexity, they
moan even more loudly, and throw out insults like "elitist",
"ivory tower", "academic", "pedantic",
"semantics". They even complain about "walls of text", or they grumble that they are
being "talked down to". [The author of the videos
mentioned earlier displayed several of these 'endearing' personality traits all
rolled into one.]
Page-after-page of
impenetrable Hegelian gobbledygook they happily down before breakfast; a few
pages of clear argument from yours truly and they throw even more toys out of the
pram.
(1) Unlike the convention adopted in USA, 'scare'
quotes employed at this site uses single quotation, not double
quotation, marks.
(2) When quoting a passage of text from another
site, book, article or paper, double quotes are employed. When those outside
sources also use double quotes in the body of a quoted text they will be
replaced by single quotation marks. If that double-quoted text the employs single
quotes to quote someone else, they in turn will be replaced by double quotes,
and so on. For example, this body of text:
Professor NN once said "Anyone who quotes the first
line of the
Gettysburg Address
'Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal' cannot consistently support racism..."',
will be rendered as follows:
"Professor NN once said 'Anyone who quotes the first
line of the Gettysburg Address"Four
score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal" cannot consistently support racism...'."
(3) When directly mentioning a name, word or phrase as such
(even if it isn't in the English Lexicon), double quotation marks will be used.
For example:
The phrase "Karl Marx" is in fact a Proper Name, and
so is "Trotsky"; but "BuBuBu" isn't even a word let alone a name.
(4) Single, 'scare quotes' will be used in relation
to any terms deemed to be suspect, controversial or of otherwise dubious import,
such as, 'dialectical contradiction', 'quantity' passes into 'quality',
'abstraction', 'negation of the negation' and 'consciousness'.
[Why the last
item in that short list is deemed to be of dubious import is covered in Essay
Thirteen Part Three; specifically,
here and here,
but also all the way through that Essay.]
Several of Marx and Engels's works listed below have
been linked to the Marxist Internet Archive, but since Lawrence & Wishart
threatened legal action over copyright infringement many no
longer work.
However, all of their work can now be accessed
here.
More-or less the same can be said of the scores of videos about DM and 'Marxist Philosophy' that now festoon YouTube, all of which rehearse the same handful of basic ideas (almost as if no one had summarised them before). This is one of the latest -- check out my reply to it in the comments section, and make a note of its author's pathetic response:
Video Five: Night Of The Living-Dead-Theory