Essay Ten Part One -- Practice Refutes Dialectics

Readers should take note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final view on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.

This Essay should be read in conjunction with Essay Nine Parts One and Two. Much of what I argue below depends on the conclusions reached in those two Essays.

Sections of this work are based on my experience of life inside one particular wing of un-orthodox Trotskyism, but I have no reason to think that what I have to say here is unrepresentative of other revolutionary tendencies within Trotskyism in general, or, indeed, beyond. Naturally, readers will have to make up their own minds on that one.

Also, the claims I make here about the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism [henceforth DIM -- please note the use of the word "dialectical" here!] should not be taken to imply that I am arguing as follows: DIM is a long-term failure therefore Dialectical Materialism [DM] is false. My argument, which is based on the results of the Essays that have preceded this one, is in fact: Since DM is far too vague and confused for anyone to be able to say whether it is true or false, and since it is based on the ruling-class, mystical ideas Hegel inflicted on humanity (upside down or 'the right way up'), no wonder it has failed us so badly and for so long.

I syncopate this argument with the following dilemma: If truth is tested in practice then practice has delivered an unambiguous message: DM cannot be true. On the other hand, if DM is true, then truth cannot be tested in practice. Either way, DM is holed well below the waterline.

Finally, may I draw the reader's attention to what I posted on the opening page of this site:

It is important to emphasise from the outset that I am not blaming the long-term failure of DIM solely on the acceptance of the Hermetic ideas dialecticians inherited from Hegel.

If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.

This Essay is just under 36,000 words long; a summary of some of its main points can be found here.

Quick Links

Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections. [If you have a pop-up blocker in your Firewall, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these links won't work!]

(1) Practice And Truth

(a) Binding The Future

(b) Bad Start -- But It Gets Worse

(c) A Short-Sighted View?

(d) This Forgets About The Dialectical Inter-Play

(e) Science Converges On The Truth?

(2) Dialectics -- Tried And Tested?

(a) Appearances To The Contrary

(b) In Fact, History Refutes Dialectics

(c) Anti-Dialectical Impertinence?

(d) Capitalism Verified In Practice?

(e) Mass Seizure Versus Critical Mass

(f) SWP-UK And Respect

(3) Excuse Central

(a) Dialecticians Have Nothing To Lose But Their Prozac

(b) Excuses, Excuses

(c) Practiced At Ignoring Practice

(d) The Excuse Dumpster

(i)    Excuse One: Flat Denial Of Failure

(ii)   Excuse Two: "Objective" Factors

(iii)  'Excuse' Three: Ignore The Problem

(iv)   Excuse Four: "It's Too Early To Tell"

(e) The Silence Of The DIMs

(4) Lenin And The Tumbler

(a) The Electric Light Orchestra

(b) Lenin's Abstract Account Of Concrete Objects

(c) Lenin's Impractical Advice

(d) The Relevance Of Relevance

(5) Reductionism And Its Opposite -- HEX

(a) HEX And Scepticism

(b) For Whom The Noumenon Tolls

(c) Engels's Divergent 'Realism'

(d) 'Commonsense' To The Rescue?

(e) The Reduction Of HEX -- To Absurdity

(f) Yet Another Dialectical Inversion

(6) Notes

(7) References

Abbreviations Used At This Site

Practice And Truth

At this stage, it could be objected that the considerations advanced in the Essays posted at this site ignore the plain fact that truth is confirmed in practice. This frequently repeated DM-claim was summarised by Lenin as follows:

"From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphasis in the original.]

Similarly, the author of TAR both asks and answers his own question:

"[H]ow are we to be sure that our theory is correct? The answer is that there is a point where the theory and the consciousness of the working class meet -- in practice." [Rees (1998), p.236.]

Other dialecticians agree; here is Rob Sewell:

"Marxists have always stressed the unity of theory and practice. 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it', as Marx pointed to in his thesis on Feuerbach. 'If the truth is abstract it must be untrue,' states Hegel. All truth is concrete. We have to look at things as they exist, with a view to understanding their underlying contradictory development. This has very important conclusions, especially for those fighting to change society....

"The idealist view of the world grew out of the division of labour between physical and mental labour. This division constituted an enormous advance as it freed a section of society from physical work and allowed them the time to develop science and technology. However, the further removed from physical labour, the more abstract became their ideas. And when thinkers separate their ideas from the real world, they become increasingly consumed by abstract 'pure thought' and end up with all types of fantasies." [Rob Sewell, quoted from here.]

These comments are underlined by Sewell's comrades-in-arms, Woods and Grant:

"The ability to think in abstractions marks a colossal conquest of the human intellect. Not only 'pure' science, but also engineering would be impossible without abstract thought, which lifts us above the immediate, finite reality of the concrete example, and gives thought a universal character. The unthinking rejection of abstract thought and theory indicates the kind of narrow, Philistine mentality, which imagines itself to be 'practical,' but, in reality, is impotent. Ultimately, great advances in theory lead to great advances in practice. Nevertheless, all ideas are derived one way or another from the physical world, and, ultimately, must be applied back to it. The validity of any theory must be demonstrated, sooner or later, in practice." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.84-85.]

All this is, of course, just a reiteration of Marx's famous words:

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." [Marx (1968), pp.28, 30.]¹

From this it could be argued that if dialectics has been tested in practice and has been verified countless times, then the abstract, academic points raised in these Essays can be ignored -- as mere "sophistry", perhaps?

However, as we will see, far from practice being the Ace-in-the-Hole that DM-fans imagine it to be, it is in fact their Black Spot.

[TAR = The Algebra of Revolution (i.e., Rees (1998); DM = Dialectical Materialism; DIM = Dialectical Marxism, or Dialectical Marxist, depending on context.]

'Binding' The Future

We saw in Essay Three Part Two that traditional theories found it impossible to specify conditions/principles that could guarantee (with necessity) the future occurrence of (past or present) contingent events, nor could they guarantee that the one would 'resemble' the other. For example, would, say, the effects of fire tomorrow resemble their effects today? In short, they could find no way of guaranteeing the regularity of nature.

Empiricists could only appeal to the past (and to obscure mental 'habits') upon which to build such expectations, these days often expressed as part of a probability calculus. Unfortunately, the problem with 'habits' of mind is that not only are they creatures of contingency, equally incapable of guaranteeing their own constancy, but the course of nature is not in fact bound by their many and varied fancies. And this afflicts the probability calculus, too: probabilities can only be specified where we have knowledge, and since we cannot know the future we plainly cannot bind the future with such calculi. We may express our various certainties in diverse ways, but these will only ever remain as 'subjective' and unreliable as 'habits of the mind' ever were.

Hence, empiricists found it impossible to guarantee that their own calculi will give the same results tomorrow -- that is, not without compromising concessions being made to rationalism (disguised perhaps as part of a counterfactual law rooted in possible world semantics, or founded upon an "inference to the best explanation") --, vitiating the whole exercise. Indeed, as seems plain, what is highly probable today could be highly unlikely next week (especially given the fact that every event is, in its own way, unique (as Hegel too acknowledged), and thus impossible to regiment). Short of an appeal to a 'necessary law', how could anyone safely conclude otherwise?

In contrast, rationalists of various sorts sought recourse to 'law', 'the natural light of reason', 'logic' (with the most desperate among them even invoking something called 'dialectical logic' -- a bogus discipline based on a series of Hegelian howlers) to lock-in future, non-actualised contingencies, taming them now as 'law-governed' certainties. The Real became Rational one more.

In Essay Three Part Two, we saw that desperate ploys like this also failed to work for they had to appeal to the necessary connection between 'ideas', or between 'concepts' -- or, to be more honest and accurate, they had to appeal to the verbal expression of such 'laws', 'concepts' and 'categories' --, to justify whatever was imagined to exist between events in nature, making this account entirely circular.

Anyway, 'necessary connections' are no less unreliable than their feckless, contingent cousins ever were. Not only are they all annoyingly located in the here-and-now -- even if they are supposed to be aimed at locking-in the there-and-then --, when expressed in language/'thought', they simply reduce to a series of brute facts about the way human beings think they think, or imagine they knit ideas, concepts and/or words together. But what guarantees are there that human thought processes (linguistic practices and the use of rules) will always remain the same, or that today's certainties will not end up on top of that ever-growing scrap heap of past failures?²

Traditional Metaphysics could not solve this 'problem', and it remains 'unsolved' to this day. Modern versions of traditional Philosophy are no less susceptible to corrosive 'epistemological acid' like this -- for whatever is offered by way of a 'solution' must of necessity exist in the here-and-now --, the there-and-then forever mocking its feeble pretensions.

Unless someone invents a time machine (and the epistemological equivalent of superglue (Krazy glue), which is powerful enough to convert the contingent deliverances of our minds into the necessary thoughts of the 'divine', and all possibility of error and future mutability is cast into eternal darkness), even our best laid theories remain depressingly locked in the contingent present, formed as they must always be on the back of yet more brute facts about the way we humans think we think. All the while the course of nature takes no heed. The Future even less.

Hence, traditional Philosophy cannot fail to fail, and not just here. [The disconcerting reasons for its practitioners' consistent and heroic emulation of Sisyphus are given in in Essay Twelve Part One.] But for now, we need merely note the insubstantial attempts made by dialecticians to solve this intractable 'problem'. How do they guarantee that today's 'truths' are not the content of tomorrow's trash can? In their case, this question is all the more pressing in view of their open commitment to universal Heraclitean change.^2a

Unfortunately, as we have seen throughout these Essays, reality has seldom been kind to such Hermetic parvenus; no less so here. For, in order to tame the voracious appetite of this epistemological monster, dialecticians sit it down and offer it a slap-up meal, for their theory places its most important criterion of truth -- practice -- in the future, and thus out of reach!

Naturally, this concedes ignominious defeat even before the first course has even been ordered.

Bad Start -- But It Gets Worse

However, stepping back from high theory to examine low dialectics: as we have seen, dialecticians appeal to practice as their most important criterion of truth. But, we will soon discover that as far as DIM is concerned, not only is past practice best wiped from memory (since it has delivered little else but long-term failure), on-going practice is no less thoroughly depressing. And, the prospects of future practice are about as reassuring as a confirmed drug addict's promises to quit.

[PMT = Pragmatic Theory of Truth; COT = Coherence Theory of Truth; CTT = Correspondence Theory of Truth. DIM = Dialectical Marxism/Marxist, depending on context.]

Nevertheless, a reliance on practice means that DM-epistemology has inherited many of the weaknesses of the PMT. In fact, is possible to show that the PMT collapses into the CTT, which in turn depends on the COT. And, as is well-known, the COT has always enjoyed a close, if not unhealthily incestuous relationship with Idealism.³

Moreover, the idea that truth is confirmed in practice is dependent on the CTT, not the other way round (as several of the quotes above, and in Note 1, confirm).

This is because, if a theory, T, predicts that for some sentence "S" expressing a prediction P of T, and practice brings it about that what S says actually occurs, then in order to judge that S is indeed the case, it would have to be compared with relevant changes in reality, to see it P had been correct. Manifestly, no one would try to guess whether S is true (i.e., that P was correct); and there is no way that more practice could confirm that S was indeed the case. So, the confirmation of the results of practice is dependent on correspondence relations, not the other way round.⁴

To give a concrete example: if, say, party RR sets out to help win a strike by, among other things, mounting a series of meetings, distributing leaflets, organising marches, making collections, widening the dispute, advocating active picketing, and so on (on the basis of revolutionary theory, predicting that one or more of these will win that strike) -- and that strike was won as a result --, the fact that those predictions had been successful could not itself be confirmed by yet more practice.

[Here "S" would be something like "Workers at the NN plant demand a 10% rise in wages and a 35 hour week, and party RR advocates the following: The strike at NN will only be won if we call for public meetings, extensive leaflet distribution, well-supported marches, work-place and public collections, a widening of the dispute  drawing in other workers, involving the surrounding community, active mass picketing...".]

A successful outcome would be clear from the way that the world had changed in line with earlier expectations (i.e., if the said workers received the 10% pay award and the 35 hour week). But who in their left mind would try to ascertain that this was so by having another march, or holding more collections? In that case, practice cannot serve as a fundamental test of truth.⁵

Of course, the above example is rather simplistic, but it was deliberately chosen to illustrate the point that even if practice were a criterion of truth, it would still be parasitic on the CTT. So, for instance, if party RR at some point in the future puts together a strategy, or series of strategies and tactics, to win a revolution (as and when that revolution was unfolding), and it was won successfully as a result, nobody still in command of their senses would think to confirm that the said revolution had actually been won by staging more practice --, such as another revolution!

Despite this, it is worth noting that practice is not a guarantor of truth anyway. Incorrect theories often make successful (practical and theoretical) predictions -- as, for example, Ptolemy's system did for many centuries. In fact, the allegedly superior Copernican system was no more accurate than the older, geocentric theory had been.⁶ Indeed, Ptolemy's system was refined progressively in line with observation for over a thousand years, and it became more accurate as a result. Despite that, it was no nearer to what we might now regard as the 'truth'.⁷

And, correct theories can sometimes fail, and they can do so for many years. For instance, Copernican Astronomy predicted stellar parallax, which was not observed until 1838 with the work of Friedrich Bessel, three hundred years after De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was published.

Similarly, Darwin's theory of descent through modification made predictions that were at variance with patently obvious facts: the persistence of inherited variations. The latter were inconsistent with Darwin's own "blending"* theory of transmission. Given Darwin's account, new and advantageous variations should be blended out of a breeding population, not preserved or enhanced. It was not until the advent of genetically-based* theories of inheritance forty or so years later that Darwin's theory became viable.

Moreover, this new 'synthetic theory' did not achieve success by preserving anything from the old blending theory (and, because of that fact, that defunct theory cannot be seen as an approximation to the 'truth', toward which later developments more closely inched their way). Indeed, because of the difficulties his ideas faced, Darwin found he had to incorporate Lamarckian* concepts into later editions of his classic book in order to rescue his theory. Hence, in the period between, say, 1865 and 1900 there were good reasons to reject Darwinism (as many serious biologists did). This means that the development of the most successful theory of the 19^th century (and one of the most successful ever) actually contradicts the DM-account of truth, by making incorrect predictions.⁸ [*Links below.]

In addition, the sections that early Darwinists edited into or out of their theory did not move what was left of Darwin's theory closer to the 'truth', either. In fact, these changes achieved the opposite effect, since they relied on openly Lamarckian principles. Even worse, as Darwin himself noted, his theory was contradicted by (and is still contradicted by, and might always remain contradicted by) the fossil record. This massive obstacle is still largely ignored, downplayed, re-interpreted, or explained-away by Darwinians. The fact that 'orthodox' neo-Darwinism is probably incorrect however has not stopped Marxists of almost every stripe from hailing it as if it were the biological equivalent of the Holy Grail.⁹

Furthermore, some theories can make both successful and unsuccessful predictions. Consider the 'contradictions' between Newtonian Physics and observation -- those that prompted both the discovery of Neptune and the 'non-discovery' of the planet Vulcan:

"The arguments which terminate in an hypothesis's positing the existence of some trans-Uranic object, the planet Neptune, and the structurally identical arguments which forced Leverrier to urge the existence of an intra-Mercurial planet, the planet 'Vulcan', to explain the precessional aberrations of our 'innermost' solar system neighbour are formally one and the same. They run: (1) Newtonian mechanics is true; (2) Newtonian mechanics requires planet P to move in exactly this manner, x, y, z, …; (3) but P does not move à la x, y, z; (4) so either (a) there exists some as-yet-unobserved object, o, or (b) Newtonian mechanics is false. (5) 4b) contradicts 1) so 4a) is true -- there exists some as-yet-undetected body which will put everything right again between observation and theory. The variable 'o' took the value 'Neptune' in the former case; it took the value 'Vulcan' in the latter case. And these insertions constituted the zenith and the nadir of classical celestial mechanics, for Neptune does exist, whereas Vulcan does not." [Hanson (1970), p.257.]

[More details in Hanson (1962). There are many other examples like this in the history of science. This claim will be documented more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

However, we do not have to appeal to the natural sciences for more examples of this; there are plenty to be found in revolutionary practice itself.

For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the SWP-UK argued that the UK Poll Tax could only be defeated by the active involvement of organised labour. A strategy of civil disobedience (coupled with demonstrations and meetings) was regarded as insufficient to beat this tax. Admittedly, the SWP did not counterpose these tactics, but argued that both should be built together.

As it turned out, the other strategy won.

A Short-Sighted View?

It could be objected that the above examples clearly ignore wider and/or longer-term issues. In the first case, the Ptolemaic system was finally abandoned because it proved inferior to its rivals in the long run. The same applies to Darwin's theory, which when combined with Mendelian genetics, is closer to the truth, something that is also true of Newtonian Physics, which has been superseded by the TOR.¹⁰

[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]

Furthermore, the Poll Tax simply reappeared in a modified form as the present-day Council Tax. To be sure, the total defeat of such regressive taxes (etc.) must wait for the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism; here the involvement of the organised working class is essential.

All this is undeniable, but the above response is unfortunately double-edged: if it is only in the long run that we may determine whether or not a theory is successful, then that theory might never be so judged. As we saw in Essay Three Part Two (summarised above), this is because future contingencies could always arise to refute that theory -- no matter how well it might once have seemed to 'work'. In fact, if history is anything to go by, this has been the fate of the vast majority of previous theories. Even though most, if not all, at one time 'worked', or were well-supported, the overwhelming majority were later abandoned. As Stanford notes:

"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18^th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19^th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9.]

[See also Stanford (2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2009), and Lyons (2002, 2003).]

So, if anything, practice shows that practice is unreliable!

Furthermore, and independently of the above, if it's only in the long run that superior theories win out, or can be seen to be superior, then for most of the time inferior theories could make (and have made) successful predictions. In that case, we would have no way of telling the good from the bad for most of the time.

These observations apply equally well to dialectics. If Dialectical Marxists have to wait for the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism before they know whether their theory is correct, then they might not only have a long time to wait, they could find that Marx's caveat (reproduced below) in the end refutes everything (i.e., everything but that anti-deterministic pronouncement itself). Clearly, Marx and Engels would not have put this passage in the Communist Manifesto if practice always determined truth, and correct theories invariably worked -- whatever they might appear to have said elsewhere:

"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." [Marx and Engels (1968b), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis added.]

Anyway, such long-term promissory notes cannot tell us today whether 'Materialist Dialectics' is now correct. Indeed, as noted earlier, this is one of the main weaknesses of pragmatic criteria: they are projective, not merely assertoric.

Furthermore, an appeal to the "closer approximation" of a particular theory to the truth would be to no avail (or, at least, of no help to fans of the 'dialectic'); as we have seen throughout this site, in this respect DM is not even in the running.

This is partly because its own precepts condemn its adherents (and humanity) to infinite ignorance (on this, see below), and partly because its core theses make not one ounce of sense (on that, see Essays Two through Eleven Part Two).

Of course, speculation about the length of humanity's sojourn in DM-inspired 'epistemological limbo' is a separate matter. However, the whole point of the exercise had been to use practice as a crucial test of the truth of theory. It is not now to the point to appeal to yet more theory (i.e., "approximation to the truth") to bail out the practice.

Part of the problem with this sort of alethic consequentialism is that conditions and circumstances change -- a fact which dialecticians would be the first to acknowledge. But, this minimal point of agreement only serves to weaken their case, for if they continue to pin their hopes on outcomes alone to vindicate their theory, then, as noted above, it might never be judged correct. Indeed, the opposite could turn out to be the case, especially if events unfold in unexpected ways -- an outcome clearly allowed for by Marx and Engels, as noted above, too.

Naturally, in such circumstances, an appeal would have to be made to mitigating factors to save the theory from any awkward facts that might emerge -- as, indeed, the SWP had to do when the aforementioned rival strategy won in the anti-Poll Tax campaign, and as Marxists in general do to explain the long-term failure of DIM.

But, if such additional (possibly theoretical) principles have to be deployed to reinterpret each and every apparently refuting outcome -- in order to explain why the latter do not actually disconfirm the theory, but 'conform' to it -- then pragmatic criteria are clearly irrelevant.

Of course, in the Poll Tax dispute, the explanation for the failure of SWP-UK tactics merely underlined the temporary and limited nature of any victory for workers under Capitalism, at the same time as reminding activists that what might appear to be victories are really only partial and/or transient this side of a successful revolution.

Now, there is nothing at all wrong with such claims -- except that the more of these there are the more it becomes apparent that pragmatic criteria are no use at all.

And this fact should be apparent even to hard-nosed Bolsheviks, if they but thought about their own practice with respect to practice. There seems to be little point in appealing to practice if the results have to be constantly reinterpreted when outcomes fall short of expectations -- as they almost invariably seem to do for us Marxists.¹¹

Indeed, when confronted with the glaring and long-term failure of DIM, dialecticians do just this -- they deny that it has been tested in practice and thus shown to fail, promptly appealing to "objective factors" to account for its long and sorry record. On the other hand, the few successes DIM has witnessed they happily attribute to 'Materialist Dialectics'. In that case, practice can only ever win: it is never used to account for failure, only success. Hence, practice and the theory that inspired it need never be altered, since they can never fail. And so this sorry theory staggers on through yet another half-century of defeat.

Once more, the reason for saying this is that pragmatic theories are eternal hostages to fortune. Because of that, those who appeal to practice as a test of truth should feign no surprise when future contingencies fail to match repeatedly dashed expectations.

Dialectical Inter-play

To be fair, Rees does refer his readers to several other criteria that supposedly underpin the legitimacy of DM:

"There is no final, faultless, criterion for truth which hovers, like god, outside the historical process. Neither is there any privileged scientific method which is not shaped by the contours of the society of which it is a part. All that exists are some theories which are less internally contradictory and have a greater explanatory power….

"[A theory's] validity must be proven by its superior explanatory power -- [which means it is] more internally coherent, more widely applicable, capable of greater empirical verification -- in comparison with its competitors. Indeed, this is a condition of it entering the chain of historical forces as an effective power. It is a condition of it being 'proved in practice.' If it is not superior to other theories in this sense, it will not 'seize the masses,' will not become a material force, will not be realized in practice." [Rees (1998), pp.235-37.]

DM-theorists generally argue along the same sort of lines (as the quotations given in Note One will confirm).

In which case, it could be argued that DM-theorists do not just appeal to practice as a guide to truth; in point of fact they argue that there is a dialectical interplay between theory and practice.

Unfortunately, the "other criteria" on show have also proven inadequate, whether taken singly or as a job lot. Despite what Rees says, and as we have seen in Essays Eleven Part One, and Seven Part One, DM-theorists cannot in fact appeal to greater consistency to buttress their theory since they openly admit that the world is fundamentally contradictory. Hence, if DM is to reflect nature faithfully it can't fail to be contradictory, too.  Worse still: the closer DM approaches the supposed 'truth' about this avowedly contradictory world, the more it should reflect the latter accurately, hence the more contradictory it should become! So, far from it being the case that increasingly accurate theories should be "less internally contradictory", if DM were correct, they should in fact become more contradictory!

Moreover, in view of the fact that, upon closer examination, every single DM-thesis collapses into incoherence with alarming ease -- as has been demonstrated time and again in these Essays -- DM wouldn't even make the bottom of the reserve list of theories capable of explaining reality.

On top of that, as will be demonstrated in Essay Three and below, DM-epistemology is radically flawed. Apart from anything else, it would condemn humanity to infinite ignorance about anything and everything.

Given all of this, the alleged 'dialectical-interplay' between theory and practice would be far better described as 'diabolical'.

[Other criteria to which dialecticians appeal in order to validate their theory seem to depend on the CTT, which will be criticised in Part Two of this Essay. See also here.]

Finally, we have seen that the dialectical process itself is highly suspect -- where any sense can be made of it, that is. This means that even if DM were ever to be vindicated in practice, we should regard that in the way that astronomers, say, might view any 'successes' that astrologers might report -- i.e., as sheer coincidence.

Science 'Converges' On 'The Truth'

Again, it could be objected that modern scientific theories are remarkably successful, which must mean that they are closer to the truth, and that is why they work. The same is true of DM.

This doctrine has recently been called "Convergent Realism". I will discuss this theory in more detail in a later Essay. In the meantime, the reader is referred to Laudan (1981, 1984). See also here. [This links to a PDF.] In addition, cf., Stanford (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2009).

Independently of this, it's worth pointing out that a theory's success does not imply it is 'nearer the truth'. This is because:

(1) We have already seen that success does not imply truth to begin with -- nor do they imply 'approximate truth'. For example, Ptolemy's theory wasn't even approximately true, even though it made successful predictions for well over a thousand years. Neither were many of the theories mentioned above.

(2) But, does scientific theory "converge on the truth"? To be sure, theories not only have to survive rigorous testing, they evolve over time. But, the fact that certain theories remain viable does not imply they are converging on some unspecified, and unspecifiable 'truth'. The fact that such theories remain viable for some time is down to further obvious and banal fact that they have so far survived. However, that does not mean that they are "closer to the truth". Indeed, in order to be bale to say this, we should have to know what that 'truth' is so that such 'proximity judgements' might themselves be deemed true! And, statements of faith to one side, how might that be achieved?

(3) Furthermore, the survival of a theory no more implies it is closer to the truth than the fact that an organism survives in nature means that it is 'closer to the truth', or closer to its 'true form'.^11a

For example, there is no such thing as the true form of a cat, which all cats are evolving toward. Cats just survive. Truth does not enter into it. So successful cats do not prove cats are true. Moreover, cats, like theories, could become extinct one day, no matter how well they once survived, or 'worked'. Indeed, most of the species that have ever existed are now extinct. Does that mean that they were unsuccessful when they were around? Hardly. And did that guarantee they would always remain so? Clearly not. And the same goes for any and all theories (as the history of science confirms).

However, in response it could be objected that theories are not like cats, dogs, or any other species; they are either (partially-) true or they are not. Species cannot be characterised this way in any meaningful sense.

Maybe not, but the DM-link between practice and truth makes the analogy with cats all the more apt, for on this account, theories are true because they work. Now, the reason why some theories work/survive and others do not is analogous to the way certain species do in fact survive. There are all sorts of historical, social and ideological pressures on theories, which, like the environmental impact on organisms, filter out those suited to that environment.

In that case, the fact that a theory survives/works does not imply it is true. To be sure, a case for the obverse inference might well be made (i.e., that a 'true' theory will or should work/survive -- however, we have already seen that this is also somewhat doubtful), but not this. Unless we know on independent grounds that a theory is 'true', its survival cannot be used to infer its 'truth'. And, as we have seen, practice itself cannot discriminate the 'good' from the 'bad', often for over a thousand years.

(4) There are other reasons for arguing that no scientific theory could be true, even when they made true (and novel) predictions. This is not because they are all false, or of indeterminate truth-value, but because they are incapable of being true or false. In fact, as will be shown in Essay Thirteen Part Two, they operate more like rules, and thus they are not the sort of thing that could be true or false.

If all this is so, then the emphasis revolutionaries place on practice as a guide to truth is misguided at best --, which is all to the good, given the points raised in the next section.

Revolutionary Practice

Appearances To The Contrary...

Despite the above, it could be argued that the actual success of revolutionary practice speaks for itself; this alone shows the above comments are either seriously misguided or are simply "academic"/"sophistical".

Indeed, revolutionaries often appeal to 1917 as just such a success. The Party that advocated 'Materialist Dialectics' won the day, they argue. Here is Trotsky arguing to that effect (in his Open Letter To Burnham):

"You are not unacquainted with the great role played by Iskra in the development of Russian Marxism. Iskra began with the struggle against so-called 'Economism' in the labour movement and against the Narodniki (Party of the Social Revolutionists). The chief argument of the 'Economists' was that Iskra floats in the sphere of theory while they, the 'Economists,' propose leading the concrete labour movement. The main argument of the Social Revolutionists was as follows: Iskra wants to found a school of dialectic materialism while we want to overthrow Czarist autocracy. It must be said that the Narodnik terrorists took their own words very seriously: bomb in hand they sacrificed their lives. We argued with them: 'Under certain circumstances a bomb is an excellent thing but we should first clarify our own minds.' It is historical experience that the greatest revolution in all history was not led by the party which started out with bombs but by the party which started out with dialectic materialism." [Trotsky (1972), p.100. Bold emphases added. "Iskra" changed to italic emphasis. Spelling altered to conform to UK English; quotation marks also altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Trotsky, of course, is not alone in making a claim like this.

However, as we saw in Essay Nine Part Two (here), such an appeal cannot successfully be made by dialecticians since it is clear from the record that the revolutionaries involved did not use DM (or even 'Materialist Dialectics') to propagandise and organise the Russian working class. [As noted above, the evidence for this seemingly wild claim can be found in Essay Nine Part Two.]

Does anyone really think that Bolshevik workers, having to face up to the likes of General Kornilov, were all that interested in the fact that Being is different from but at the same time identical with Nothing, the contradiction resolved in Becoming? Or that the Totality is a mediated whole? Or that ice negates water? Or that there are UOs everywhere? Small wonder then that dialectics gets no mention in this period.

This is, of course, all quite apart from the fact that the 1917 revolution has now gone backwards, confounding the NON.

So, to answer Trotsky, the party that used DM/'Materialist Dialectics' (if it did) also screwed up.^11b

[NON = Negation of the Negation; UO = Unity of Opposites.]

In Fact History Refutes Dialectics

Nevertheless, as it turns out, past events do give clear testimony --, unfortunately for DM-fans, they speak of the long-term failure of DIM.

Hence, dialecticians would be well advised to avoid using practice as a test of the correctness of their theory.

When a list is constructed of all the 'successes' that 'our side' has 'enjoyed' over the last 150 years or so it soon becomes obvious that it is depressingly short. Worse: our 'successes' are easily out-numbered by our 'failures'. A shortened list of both is given in Figure One, below.

Figure One: The Dialectically-Depressing List

Naturally, this does not mean that we can't explain all the set-backs, defeats, catastrophes, screw-ups, tragedies and disasters that have plagued the labour and socialist movement over the last 150 years, but we can only do so if we appeal to yet more theory, not more practice. Nor does this mean that theory and practice should be counterposed. However, if we insist on making practice a test of the truth of revolutionary socialism, we would surely have abandoned Marxism years ago, since our failures greatly outnumber our successes.¹²

[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; DIM = Dialectical Marxism/Marxist.]

Furthermore, it is only when viewed against a sophisticated enough theoretical background that is it possible to classify such events one way or another. For example, OTs in general regard the 'victory' of North Korea in the 1950s as a 'success', whereas the IST view it as a draw/stand-off between rival imperialisms. Similarly, the IST is inclined to interpret the events in Eastern Europe seventeen or so years ago as a 'partial success', whereas unreconstructed Stalinists and OTs (and others) look upon them as a major defeat for workers.¹³

Anti-Dialectical Impertinence?

In response, it could be argued that the above list is highly prejudicial since it is padded out with dozens of failures that not only pre-date revolutionary Marxism, but also with those that have nothing to do with 'Materialist Dialectics'.

But, if these are filtered out -- along with the corresponding successes enjoyed by these non-revolutionary Marxist movements -- the list would be even more depressing!

As noted above, many of the items in the list are open to re-classification upon closer examination, and that includes most if not all of our 'successes'. Naturally, the validity of that observation itself depends on when that judgement is made --; indeed, as Zhou Enlai once remarked of the French Revolution, "It's too early to tell".

For example, although the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was a resounding success twenty-five years ago, the resurgence of the BNP over the last four or five years could lead to the future re-classification of the ANL in the other column. If everything is subject to change (according to DM), so are reputations. History is no respecter of the past; no status is locked in permanent stasis -- which is why, of course, pragmatic criteria are so unreliable.

Moreover, several outwardly successful movements could turn out to be exactly the opposite if they are given an unsympathetic reading. For instance, the massive demonstrations around the world in 2003 failed to stop the invasion of Iraq. Was this a success or a failure?

(1) This was clearly a success if it is regarded as the latest high-water mark of the anti-Capitalist movement -- especially if every other relevant political and historical factor involved is taken into account, including (a) how close the movement came actually to stopping the war, (b) the fact that this movement has so far forestalled further imperialist 'adventures', and (c) how it has drawn in a new layer of revolutionaries.

(2) On the other hand, it could be viewed as a failure if its explicit aims are read into the equation.

This alone shows that the concepts of success and failure are highly contestable; they are theory- and context-dependent. No doubt in the long run many 'failures' will turn out to be 'successes', but that just underlines the point being made here: if we have to wait for the future to tell us if DIM is a 'success', and is thus correct, that would be an implicit admission that we cannot (on that basis) determine whether it is so now.

Capitalism: Verified In Practice?

In stark contrast to our somewhat patchy record, the Capitalist class has been highly successful -- whatever else one thinks of their rotten and unstable society -- on most measures of success.

They have not only conquered virtually every square inch of the planet and won countless revolutions (as well as practically every major battle they have fought against 'our side'), their ideas dominate society (even if somewhat precariously at times). The bourgeoisie have clearly transformed the earth, and continue to do so.

Hence, if practice were a reliable guide, we would have to declare ourselves supporters of the Capitalist system!

The fact that dialecticians do not do this -- and rightly so -- suggests that in practice they themselves do not practice what they preach, i.e., that practice is a guide to truth.¹⁴ But, that can only mean that, based on their own criteria once more --, and since they do not adopt it in practice --, their theory is defective.

Mass Seizure Versus Critical Mass

The various criteria of truth that John Rees outlined in TAR -- coupled with his theory of scientific knowledge -- unfortunately paint DIM into a rather tight theoretical corner. Consider the following:

"[I]t is impossible simply to stare at the world as it immediately presents itself to our eyes and hope to understand it. To make sense of the world, we must bring to it a framework composed of elements of our past experience; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience." [Rees (1998), p.63.]

But, if all knowledge depends on such a "framework", the question naturally arises as to how we know whether this "framework" is itself correct.

In his consideration of Lukács's allegedly "class reductionist" theory, Rees tackled this problem head on:

"In a certain sense, of course, all truth is relative -- it is just that some theorists do not acknowledge this elementary fact. There is no final, faultless, criterion for truth which hovers, like god, outside the historical process. Neither is there any privileged scientific method which is not shaped by the contours of the society of which it is a part. All that exists are some theories which are less internally contradictory and have a greater explanatory power…. [I]f the truth is the totality, then it is the totality of working class experience, internationally and historically which gives access to the truth…. [A theory's] validity must be proven by its superior explanatory power – [so that it is] more internally coherent, more widely applicable, capable of greater empirical verification -- in comparison with its competitors. Indeed, this is a condition of it entering the chain of historical forces as an effective power. It is a condition of it being 'proved in practice.' If it is not superior to other theories in this sense, it will not 'seize the masses,' will not become a material force, will not be realized in practice." [Rees (1998), pp.235-37.]

Nevertheless, several issues arise from these not entirely consistent claims.

(1) Anyone not already convinced of the truth of Marxism could take the last couple of sentences of the above passage as proof that revolutionary socialism is a failure by its own lights. Up to the present, our failures not only greatly outnumber our successes, they dwarf them in significance. The combined failure of  the German, Chinese and Spanish revolutions, for example, is of incalculable proportion. The reversal of the Russian Revolution is perhaps even more catastrophic. Just one of these far outweighs all our successes put together.

Although we might wish this were otherwise, it is nonetheless a fact that Marxism is the most unsuccessful of all the major political ideologies in human history. This fact is so glaringly obvious that few Marxists are prepared to acknowledge it, even when it is staring them in the face. Acute Dialectical Myopia sadly afflicts most militants.

Not only has the bulk of the working-class proven to be highly resistant to our ideas, its "advanced sections" have, too. Even in Russia in 1917 the majority of the population was ignorant of (or resistant to) DIM ideas. True, a large proportion of the proletariat became revolutionary (drawing in behind them for a time significant sections of the peasantry -- who were not, however, "class conscious" Marxists) --, but this fleeting success must be set against the depressing fact that the vast majority of the billions of workers and their families who have lived on earth over the last 150 years or so have known -- and still know -- nothing whatsoever of the DIM tradition. And they show little sign of changing their minds.

Hence, when Rees says:

"If it is not superior to other theories…it will not 'seize the masses'…." [Ibid., p.237.]

the only conclusions possible are: (a) either Rees's criteria are defective, or, so far (b) DIM is an inferior theory.¹⁵

This does not mean that things cannot change, or even that there is no explanation for this depressing state of affairs (especially given the conclusions of Essay Nine Part One). But, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of workers remain 'un-seized' by DIM, which fact refutes the above claims.

(2) This passage effectively consigns any test of DM's truth to the future, unwittingly conceding the point made earlier. [This was that the veracity of this theory cannot be ascertained now, but only when or if it "seizes the masses" at some unspecified point in the future.] The question Rees avoided was: How do we know whether DM is true now?

Again, it could be argued that this is not so; Rees actually appealed to the "superior explanatory power" of 'Materialist Dialectics', its greater internal "coherence" and capacity for wider "empirical verification", as part of the proof of its superiority. Nevertheless, as he also admitted, all of these will remain academic unless and until this theory is made effective by mass support and successful practice. This is the epistemological hook from which all of Rees's (and all of DM-theorists') other criteria hang. But, as we have seen, this slender support cannot bear the weight that is constantly put upon it.

Moreover, we have also seen that based on internal coherence (as a criterion of correct theory) DM is not even in the running.

Finally, as far as the other two criteria are concerned (i.e., explanatory power and empirical verisimilitude), what little alleged superiority DIM in fact enjoys in this regard derives solely from the scientific nature of HM. Indeed, as will be argued in other Essays, the confused nature of the former only succeeds in undermining the scientific status of the latter. Truth be told: this is the only genuine success DIM can claim for itself: to have derived its few successes from HM!

Excuse Central

Dialecticians Have Nothing To Lose But Their Prozac

Plainly, the results of "practice" have not been too kind to Dialectical Marxists. Indeed, they have been even less kind to Dialectical Trotskyists [DTs] -- comrades not known for their 'mass following'. In fact, practice has not looked at all favourably on DIMs of every stripe for close on a hundred years.

To reiterate: all Four Internationals have failed (or have vanished) or are failing -- indeed, even the League for the Fifth International has spilt (already!).¹⁶

The 1917 revolution has been reversed; we are no nearer to (and arguably much further away from) a Workers' State now than Lenin was in and around 1918. Practically all of the former 'socialist' societies have collapsed (and not a single worker raised his or her hand in their defence). Even where avowedly Marxist parties can claim some sort of mass following (for example, in Nepal and parts of India) it is passive and electoral --, and those parties themselves have openly adopted reformist programmes, otherwise known as "Stagism" (despite the contrary-sounding rhetoric).

So, if truth is indeed tested in practice, practice has delivered a rather clear verdict: 'Materialist Dialectics' does not work, therefore it cannot be true.

But, do dialecticians draw this obvious conclusion?

Are you joking?!

In fact, this is a far safer bet:

Figure Two: A Dead Cert In Comparison

Excuses, Excuses...

When confronted with such overwhelmingly disconcerting facts, dialecticians tend to respond in one or more of the following ways:

(1) Denial: They flatly deny that DIM has been an abject failure. Typically, such comrades point to 1917 and/or the handful remaining 'socialist' states on the planet --, or, perhaps, to the few rays of hope there are in the world right now (i.e., Cuba and more recently, Venezuela). Some even argue that none of the above failures refutes Marxism, often in the same breath as appealing to practice as a proof of their theory!

[Psychologists call this syndrome "Cognitive Dissonance". More on that in Essay Nine Part Two: generally here, but more specifically here.]

(2) Shift The Blame: If DIMs admit to failure, they blame it on "objective factors", or on other Marxist parties. "Objective factors" include the vicious and aggressive response of the capitalist class, a relatively weak, divided or underdeveloped proletariat -- which is passive, has been bought-off perhaps by imperial super-profits, or has been distracted by "false consciousness" (and the like) -- compared to a well-organised and focused ruling-class.

These are then often linked to the failures in strategy, tactics, and theory of the various revolutionary groups involved in previous debacles.

[But, it is worth noting, these are invariably never the errors of the party to which that particular excuser belongs. It is always "those other guys" who screwed up; they did not "understand" dialectics, you see.]

(3) Nothing To See Here: They simply ignore the problem. This is the 'head-in-the-sand' syndrome we have met several times already, only it is here applied to the results of practice.

(4) Whistling  In The Dark: They say it's too early to tell. After all, it took many centuries to see the back of Feudalism. If so, it's wildly unrealistic to expect DIM to triumph overnight.

Each of the above will be responded to below.

Highly Practiced At Ignoring Practice

Now, there doesn't seem to be much point in dialecticians claiming that 'Materialist Dialectics' guides all they do, avowing that truth is tested in practice, if when the latter reveals its long-term verdict, it is denied, disregarded or explained away.^16a

Look again at these rather uncompromising declarations:

"From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Emphasis in the original.]

"[H]ow are we to be sure that our theory is correct? The answer is that there is a point where the theory and the consciousness of the working class meet -- in practice." [Rees (1998), p.236.]

"Marxists have always stressed the unity of theory and practice. 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it', as Marx pointed to in his thesis on Feuerbach. 'If the truth is abstract it must be untrue,' states Hegel. All truth is concrete. We have to look at things as they exist, with a view to understanding their underlying contradictory development. This has very important conclusions, especially for those fighting to change society....

"The idealist view of the world grew out of the division of labour between physical and mental labour. This division constituted an enormous advance as it freed a section of society from physical work and allowed them the time to develop science and technology. However, the further removed from physical labour, the more abstract became their ideas. And when thinkers separate their ideas from the real world, they become increasingly consumed by abstract 'pure thought' and end up with all types of fantasies." [Rob Sewell, quoted from here.]

"The ability to think in abstractions marks a colossal conquest of the human intellect. Not only 'pure' science, but also engineering would be impossible without abstract thought, which lifts us above the immediate, finite reality of the concrete example, and gives thought a universal character. The unthinking rejection of abstract thought and theory indicates the kind of narrow, Philistine mentality, which imagines itself to be 'practical,' but, in reality, is impotent. Ultimately, great advances in theory lead to great advances in practice. Nevertheless, all ideas are derived one way or another from the physical world, and, ultimately, must be applied back to it. The validity of any theory must be demonstrated, sooner or later, in practice." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.84-85.]

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. [Marx (1968), p.28.]

It might well be wondered, therefore, what sort of practice could possibly constitute a test of dialectics if, whatever the results, 'Materialist Dialectics' is always excused or exonerated? What precisely is being tested if the outcome of every 'test' turns out to be the same (i.e., a "success") -- otherwise it is either ignored or re-configured as just such a success?

Indeed, exactly which example and what form of practice has worked? What permanent successes can our side point to over the last 80 years -- or ever?

In view of this, it's pretty clear that not only has dialectics never been tested in practice, dialecticians are highly practiced at never actually testing it.

And they are even better at refusing to admit it.

In that case, why not just declare that DIM is, and always has been, a success, with or without any tests at all? [Of course, such a response would be an implicit acknowledgement that truth is not tested in practice, after all.]

This would be a more honest and appropriate conclusion based on the sort of practice we have so far witnessed -- i.e., that which constantly ignores the results of practice!

Recall these earlier words of mine:

From this it could be argued that if dialectics has been tested in practice and has been verified countless times, then the abstract, academic points raised in these Essays can be ignored -- as mere "sophistry", perhaps?

What becomes of this volunteered response if, as we can now see, the results of practice, and not just these Essays, are themselves permanently ignored?

In fact, given the many and varied exposés of DIM published at this site, is it not rather the case that its long-term failure is not the least bit surprising?

But, what else can we expect from a theory that has been so thoroughly compromised by the appropriation of ruling-class forms-of-thought? Or that has so completely trampled upon the reputation of Marxism itself?¹⁷

The Excuse Dumpster

However, taking each of the above excuses one at a time:

Excuse 1: denial

Those who think DIM is a ringing success have so far failed to reveal where and how it enjoys this blessed condition.

[Presumably there's a Workers' State on the outer fringes of the Galaxy?]

[DIM = Dialectical Marxism/Marxist.]

Systematic denial of reality of this order of magnitude is difficult to counter -- without recourse to professional help, that is.

In fact, there is no debating with hardcore Idealism of this sort -- i.e., with an attitude-of-mind that re-interprets the material world to suit tightly held, comforting ideas, which then encourages its adepts to bury their heads in their own idea of sand.

Anyone who can look at the international situation and fail to see that our entire movement is not only deeply divided, it's in long-term, seemingly terminal decline -- and that the vast majority of workers have never been, and are not now "seized" by DIM --, is probably more of a danger to themselves, but certainly not the ruling-class.¹⁸

Now, some who have read through the above might be tempted to dismiss it with yet another wave of the hand as false at best, malicious at worst. After all, it could be argued, 'Materialist Dialectics' was a major success in Russia in 1917, in China in 1949, in Eastern Europe after World War Two, and has been in various other places (such as North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela and parts of Africa) since.

The use of 1917 to illustrate the success of 'Materialist Dialectics' has already been batted out of the park (here and here). However, the bottom line is that whatever the excuses, the former USSR is no more, and neither are the vast majority of the former 'socialist' states.

Reality has intervened and delivered its own untoward verdict on both DIM and the former USSR -- and its satellites.

Confronted with this, some might want to argue that the failure of 1917 (or the long-term failure of Dialectical Bolshevism in the former USSR, etc.) cannot be blamed (even partially) on 'Materialist Dialectics'. But, if that is the case, then it cannot also be argued that 'Materialist Dialectics' was (even partially) responsible for the success of the 1917 revolution (especially when the record shows that 'Materialist Dialectics' featured nowhere in it). Indeed, if the short-lived success of 1917 is attributable (partly) to 'Materialist Dialectics', then so is the long-term failure of Dialectical Bolshevism.

More or less the same can be said of the former "People's Democracies" in Eastern Europe. There the NON received a fatal blow as history proceeded to 'negate' the heroic work it had done 'negating' Capitalism in the late 1940s courtesy of Russian tanks (but mysteriously, not courtesy of workers).

So, it rather looks like history has refuted 'Materialist Dialectics' in this case, too.

----------oOo----------

The following comment is for STD and OT silicate-lovers alone:

The alleged ruling-class of the former communist states (i.e., workers) were signally quiet when those regimes were toppled, having raised not one finger in defence of these "Workers' States"/"People's Democracies". Indeed, and in many cases, they happily joined in tearing them down. Contrast that with the way workers have fought in Nepal in 2006, or as they have in the Lebanon, in Serbia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Burma, Bolivia (more recently), Thailand and Kyrgyzstan, to name but a few.^18a

[NON = Negation of the Negation; STD = Stalinist Dialectician; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; NOT = Non-Orthodox Trotskyist.]

[On this, see the pictures on the opening page of this site.]

----------oOo----------

The following is for NOT-silicate-lovers:

Unfortunately, Stalinism/Maoism has proven to be far more successful than Trotskyism has ever been (despite the above glaring failures), so the demise of the State Capitalist regimes is small consolation.

What can NOTs point to that is a comparable success?¹⁹

----------oOo----------

Taking the other examples: those who think North Korea is a Workers' State are hardly likely to respond to anything I have to say (even if they ever read it!). Indeed, anyone who can look at that dysfunctional society and then regard the working class as the ruling-class, or its state-form as in any way socialist, is surely way beyond the reach of rational argument.

To be sure: such benighted souls deserve all the grief they will doubtless receive when North Korea, too, 'falls'.

Again, more or less the same comment applies to China -- even under Mao.²⁰ Of course, we can all see what this 'socialist paradise' has now become, with its free market 'reforms' and 'socialist billionaires'.

As elsewhere, the NON seems quite powerless to prevent the onward, reactionary march of history, as the latter undoes its own 'progressive' moves of yesteryear.

But, why is history picking on so many "Dialectical Workers' States"?

Cuba, the one shining light left in the orthodox firmament, is, of course, not a Workers' State.²¹

Venezuela is, as yet, different. Clearly, only time will tell whether or not it will move forward toward a successful revolution. One thing is for certain, though: the working class will need to act independently of the Chavez regime (howsoever 'progressive' the latter might seem to some) for this to happen. [Cf., Sustar (2007) and Gonzalez (2004). See also this interview, and this.]

Naturally, some readers will reject the above analyses, but as Essay Nine Part Two showed, such a rejection could only be maintained on the back of yet more 'Materialist Dialectics' (a theory which sanctions all manner of contradictory conclusions), coupled with no little substitutionist rationalisation. Now, since it was alleged (and demonstrated) in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, that DM/'Materialist Dialectics' encapsulates the ideology of substitutionist elements in Marxism, a rejection of the above by OT/STD-theorists would be no surprise. On the contrary, it is to be expected. Hence, the inadvertent confirmation that this provides me is only to be welcomed. [On this, see Cliff (1960).]

Excuse 2: Shift The Blame

It is undeniable that objective factors have hindered the revolutionary movement. These include a relatively well-organised, ruthless, rich, powerful and focussed ruling-class, imperialism and  an expanding growing economy -- compounded by racism, sexism, nationalism and sectionalism among workers --, and so on.

But, dialecticians are quite clear: the veracity of a theory can only be tested in practice. Now, since that requires the subjective input of active revolutionaries (with 'Materialist Dialectics' to guide them -- allegedly), this aspect of practice has plainly not worked.

Or, if it has worked, then the meaning of the word "success" must have changed.

We thus face three possible alternatives:

(A) 'Materialist Dialectics' has never actually been tried out, or put into practice.

(B) Revolutionaries have been using another theory all along (which fact they kept remarkably well hidden). Or,

(C) The theory they say is central to all they do is indeed a monumental failure.

Clearly, either of (A) or (B) would constitute a refutation of 'Materialist Dialectics' (in view of what dialecticians themselves say about practice), and (C) would be a fatally-damaging admission. Small wonder then that many DM-fans opt for Excuse 3, below.

However, whenever revolutionaries reluctantly bring themselves to acknowledge the subjective side of failure, they often blame it on a lack of "revolutionary leadership" (but, this is then brazenly attributed to other parties/traditions, never their own), all the while forgetting to note the input of dialectics in all this. [On this, see here.]

But, to repeat: if 'Materialist Dialectics' is as central to Marxism as dialecticians believe, then it cannot be unrelated to DIM's long-term lack of success.

Once more: which party can claim the opposite over the last 80+ years? Has anyone, anywhere won the mass of workers to their side? Or, helped create a Workers' State that remained such? Or, recorded even so much as a medium-sized, permanent success?

Despite this, many still argue that the failure of DIM is not connected in any way with 'Materialist Dialectics'. In fact, this is one of the most common criticisms made of these Essays: the allegation that dialectics is partly responsible for our failure.

Although, it must be said, those advancing this criticism almost invariably ignore the qualification I make (i.e., when I assert that DIM is only partly to blame), no matter how many times they are told! Naturally, that allows them to attack this 'straw man', and thus these Essays, opening the way to yet another generation of failure!

Nevertheless, and despite the above, this is a rather odd objection (the claim that DIM has nothing to do with our failure). Isn't everything in the DM-universe supposed to be inter-linked?

Here is a reasonably representative selection of DM-quotations to that effect:

"Dialectics is the science of universal interconnection…." [Engels (1954), pp.17.]

"The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existences extending from stars to atoms, indeed right to ether particles, in so far as one grants the existence of the last named. In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident that matter is unthinkable without motion." [Engels (1954), p.70.]

"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:].... [E]ach thing (phenomenon, process, etc.)…is connected with every other…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other…." [Lenin (1961), p.221. Original emphases removed, and bold added.]

"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Ibid., pp.196-97. Original emphases removed, and bold added.]

"The world being in constant motion, we must consider phenomena in their mutual relations, and not as isolated cases. All portions of the universe are actually related to each other and exert an influence on each other…. All things in the universe are connected with an indissoluble bond; nothing exists as an isolated object, independent of its surroundings….

"In the first place, therefore, the dialectic method of interpretation demands that all phenomena be considered in their indissoluble relations; in the second place, that they be considered in their state of motion….

"Since everything in the world is in a state of change, and indissolubly connected with everything else, we must draw the necessary conclusions for the social sciences…." [Bukharin (1925), pp.65-76. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]

"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard Nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things…are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.

"The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in Nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena….

"The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being…." [Stalin (1976b), pp.837-40. Bold emphases added.]

"Dialectical materialism appears at first sight to be a return to the original Greek view of the world from which philosophy started. And, indeed, like this Greek materialism, it sees the world as a single interconnected whole in endless motion….

"Every 'thing' is itself vastly complicated, made up of innumerable sides and aspects, related in various ways to every other thing." [Guest (1939), pp.38, 53. Bold emphases added.]

"The material base of this law lies in the actual interdependence of all things in their reciprocal interactions…. If everything that exists has a necessary and sufficient reason for existence, that means it had to come into being. It was pushed into existence and forced its way into existence by natural necessity…. Reality, rationality and necessity are intimately associated at all times…." [Novack (1971), pp.78-79. Bold emphasis added.]

"Its world-conception is Materialist alike in its Objectivity and in its Activity -- in that the world is conceived as a totality, and by means of its inseparably connected and never ceasing interacting movements.

"And it is Dialectical in that these inter-acting movements are recognised as begetting, of necessity, a perpetual self-transformation of the Universe as a whole -- a universally inter-connected series of processes in which old forms, formations, and inter-relations are constantly being destroyed and replaced by new forms…." [Jackson (1936), p.626. Bold emphasis added.]

"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as just an agglomeration of things, each existing independently of the others, but it considers things as 'connected with, dependent on and determined by each other.' Hence, it considers that nothing can be understood taken by itself, in isolation….

"The dialectical method demands, first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnection with other things." [Cornforth (1976), pp.71-72. Bold emphases added.]

"The material world is not only a developing, but also a connected, integral whole. Its objects and phenomena do not develop of themselves, in isolation, but in inseverable connection or unity with other objects and phenomena….

"One of the most important aims of materialist dialectics is the study of the world as an integral connected whole, the examination of the universal connections of things." [Afanasyev (1968), pp.84-89. Bold emphases alone added.]

Not much grey area there -- everything is interconnected. So, dialecticians who are a little more honest than the rest, who acknowledge that that DIM has failed (in howsoever small a way), are faced with a dilemma here: either they reject universal interconnectedness, or they admit that the failure of DIM is connected with 'Materialist Dialectics'.

On the other hand, those who reject any connection at all between 'Materialist Dialectics' and the long-term failure of DIM, cannot claim in one breath that all things are inter-related, but in the very next deny any such link!

So, whether or not there have been "objective" factors, practice itself has refuted the subjective side of DIM: 'Materialist Dialectics'.

Moreover, since the Essays published here show that DM/'Materialist Dialectics' is not so much false as far too confused even to be assessed for its truth or falsity -- and thus that it is incapable of being put into practice --, the long-term failure of DIM is no big surprise. Indeed, because this theory arose from the brains of card-carrying ruling-class theorists (like Hegel and Plotinus), this is doubly no surprise.

Under such circumstances, had DIM been a success, that would have been the surprise!

Faced with this, some comrades argue that DM/'Materialist Dialectics' does not feature in the day-to-day deliberations of revolutionaries, and even if it did, the above argument would be inapplicable anyway. If DM is too confused to put into practice (as I claim), it cannot have played even a partial role in the alleged long-term failure of DIM. Or so it might be maintained.

However, as Essay Nine Part One shows, 'Materialist Dialectics'/DM has been used (rather like the incomprehensible dogmas of Christianity are still used, for example, in times of war) to manipulate opinion, and thus deflect revolutionary cadres away from revolutionary socialism itself. Now, even a totally incomprehensible theory/world-view can be used to that end, especially one like 'Materialist Dialectics'/DM, which, because it pictures the world as fundamentally contradictory, sanctions any and all contradictory conclusions that can be derived from it, and their opposites. [Evidence for that can be found here.]

However, those comrades who argue that DM/'Materialist Dialectics' is not central to Marxist practice are clearly at odds with Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky (and a host of other DM-luminaries). Consider Trotsky's viewpoint, for example, as recorded by George Novack:

"[O]ur discussion glided into the subject of philosophy…. We talked about the best ways of studying dialectical materialism, about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and about the theoretical backwardness of American radicalism. Trotsky brought forward the name of Max Eastman, who in various works had polemicized against dialectics as a worthless idealist hangover from the Hegelian heritage of Marxism.

"He became tense and agitated. 'Upon going back to the States,' he urged, 'you comrades must at once take up the struggle against Eastman's distortion and repudiation of dialectical materialism. There is nothing more important than this….'

"I was somewhat surprised at the vehemence of his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the principal defendant in absentia in the Moscow trials, and because of the dramatic circumstances of his voyage in exile, Trotsky then stood in the centre of international attention. He was fighting for his reputation, liberty, and life against the powerful government of Stalin, bent on his defamation and death. After having been imprisoned and gagged for months by the Norwegian authorities, he had been kept incommunicado for weeks aboard their tanker.

"Yet on the first day after reunion with his cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was for a Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend dialectical materialism against its opponents!" [Novack (1978), pp.169-70. Bold emphases added. Spelling changed to conform to UK English.]

The accuracy of Novack's memory is supported by the following comment of Trotsky's:

"...It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism. After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills vulgar empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level. On January 20, 1939, I wrote to comrade Shachtman concerning his joint article with comrade Burnham, 'Intellectuals in Retreat':

'The section on the dialectic is the greatest blow that you, personally, as the editor of the New International could have delivered to Marxist theory.... Good We will speak about it publicly.'

"Thus a year ago I gave open notice in advance to Shachtman that I intended to wage a public struggle against his eclectic tendencies. At that time there was no talk whatever of the coming opposition; in any case furthest from my mind was the supposition that the philosophic bloc against Marxism prepared the ground for a political bloc against the program of the Fourth International." [Trotsky (1971), p.142. Bold emphases added.]

And, faith in this theory is not confined to the past; here is part of the Preface to the new edition of RIRE:

"Ted Grant was an incorrigible optimist all his life. Marxists are optimistic by their very nature because of two things: the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and our faith in the working class and the socialist future of humanity. Most people look only at the surface of the events that shape their lives and determine their destiny. Dialectics teaches one to look beyond the immediate, to penetrate beyond the appearance of stability and calm, and to see the seething contradictions and ceaseless movement that lies beneath the surface. The idea of constant change, in which sooner or later everything changes into its opposite enables a Marxist to rise above the immediate situation and to see the broader picture." [Woods and Grant (2007), p.13; quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

[RIRE = Reason In Revolt, i.e., Woods and Grant (1995).]

Similarly, such comrades risk becoming eclectic opportunists, and/or narrow-minded dogmatists, according to Lenin:

"The gist of his theoretical mistake in this case is substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical attitude is: 'on the one hand, and on the other', 'the one and the other'. That is eclecticism. Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces. I have shown this to be so on the example of politics and economics....

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties, qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world....

"Formal logic, which is as far as schools go (and should go, with suitable abridgements for the lower forms), deals with formal definitions, draws on what is most common, or glaring, and stops there. When two or more different definitions are taken and combined at random (a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel), the result is an eclectic definition which is indicative of different facets of the object, and nothing more.

"Dialectical logic demands that we should go further. Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel. (Let me add in parenthesis for the benefit of young Party members that you cannot hope to become a real, intelligent Communist without making a study -- and I mean study -- of all of Plekhanov's philosophical writings, because nothing better has been written on Marxism anywhere in the world.)" [Lenin (1921), p.90-93. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Countless other passages from the DM-classics could be quoted in support of the centrality of this theory to practicing revolutionary dialecticians. Hence, the finger of blame for the long-term failure of DIM must point (partially, at least) at this theory.

Nevertheless, if such comrades insist that 'Materialist Dialectics'/DM has no practical implications, then they should be the last to complain if this 'theory is totally excised from Marxism.

Excuse 3: Ignore the problem

This is probably the safest alternative for dialecticians to adopt: completely ignore the problem (or, failing that, explain it away). It is certainly the option that inadvertently helps further the interests of the ruling-class, since it prevents the serious theoretical problems our movement faces from ever being addressed, guaranteeing another century of failure.

Indeed, the bosses could not have designed a better theory aimed at screwing around with our heads if they had tried, initiating in our movement a monumental waste of time as our best theorists vainly try to grapple with Hegel's fluent Martian in order to make some sort of sense of it -- unsurprisingly, none so far!

And even if this were not the case, and success were indeed an unfailing criterion of truth, since there is as yet no socialist society on earth, we will only know if DM/'Materialist Dialectics' is correct after the event. So, this criterion cannot tell us whether Marxism is correct now. [Incidentally, that partially disposes of Excuse Four.]

In fact, the following declaration could itself become true:

"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." [Marx and Engels (1848), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis added.]

According to this, the "contending classes" could wipe each other out --, or at least the class war could result in their "common ruin" (which outcome itself is not at all easy to square with the NON; why this is so will be explored in Essay Three, Part Five).

However, judging from the way that dialecticians themselves disregard the deliverances of practice, this suggests that even they do not accept this criterion -- in practice.

For in practice, they ignore it.

As noted above, pragmatic theories (like this) are hostages to fortune; those who adhere to them should not act surprised if history pays little heed of their dialectically-compromised day-dreams, and delivers decade after decade of refutation.

There are other (much better, and more materially-based) ways of confirming the validity of HM. [These will be explored in an Additional Essay to be published at this site at a later date.]

Excuse 4: It's too early to tell

This we might call the 'Whistling In The Dark' excuse.

Now, to state the obvious, it is not easy being a revolutionary. Not only are we in the overwhelming minority, we face unremitting hostility from the capitalist press -- but, more often even worse hostility from other (supposed) revolutionaries --, and our ideas are openly rejected by the vast majority of workers (except in times of struggle, when a small minority sometimes listens). On top of that, we have to face up to the depressing fact that our side has seen little other than failure for many generations -- and this is the case even if we go back as far as the English and French revolutions!

So, in the face of that, it is little wonder that dialecticians tell themselves comforting stories to restore their morale.

But, just like the Second Coming, the future seems continually to mock hopes anchored in the present.

Nevertheless, even Christians try to appeal to something tangible to convince themselves they are not in the grip of an irrational delusion of some sort (be this the 'signs of the times', or personal experiences of 'god', or whatever).

But, to what can dialecticians appeal?

Well, perhaps this: dialecticians tell us, year in year out, that Capitalism is in crisis (but, there are far too many references to that end for me to quote them all here and hope to have space for anything else -- in fact, readers should visit this site, type the word "crisis" in the search box, and see what results emerge), and they have been doing this now for well over a hundred and twenty years.

Figure Three: Back By Popular Demand --

Now Entering Its Second Glorious Century

But, how much of this is in effect crying wolf?^21a

Well, according to one source, this is an odd sort of crisis:

"23. Global GDP has doubled in the last ten years. The combined growth in the world capitalist economy over the three years 2003-5 has been the biggest for 30 years. GDP growth in 2004 was the highest in more than decade. The same year South America experienced its highest growth for nearly 20 years.

"24. In the first five years of the 21^st century growth in global per capita GDP has reversed the decline of the previous 20 years. This is because the rapid growth of capitalism in the youthfully populated countries of Asia has more than compensated for continued per capita GDP decline in the ageing OECD and because the bourgeois statisticians measured the addition of the former workers states to the world capitalist market as a decline in capitalist production, rather than an increase in it.

"25. The current upturn in the business cycle has surpassed (or will soon surpass) the peaks of the last business cycle. Profits as a share of GDP in 2004/5 in the USA were at a 75-year high and a 25-year high in Japan and Eurozone. Industrial capacity utilisation in the USA is in excess of 80%. for example. The unemployment rate in the OECD and EU is less than 10-15 years ago, the proportion of the population in work is greater." [Quoted from here.]

So, according to this, it looks like Capitalism is nowhere near the end of its capacity to develop the productive forces.

Another source posts this 'crisis-ridden' graph:

Figure Four: World Growth -- Sick, Sick, Sick...

Here's another:

Figure Five: Crises, Crises Everywhere!

And future prospects do not look too 'good', either:

"The International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) forecast for the growth of the global economy for the year has been raised.

"The IMF predicted a 4.9% global growth rate in April but has now revised this figure to 5.2% for both this year and the year to follow, based on the impact of several rapidly expanding economies worldwide.

"Central to the increased prediction is the accelerating growth seen in the Chinese, Indian, and Russian economies, which together represent over one half of the 5.2% global economic growth projected for this year.

"China alone has seen its growth forecast increase from 10% to 11.2%, making it the biggest factor in global economic growth, for the first time. The Eurozone area's growth estimate has increased from 2.3% to 2.6%." [Quoted from here.]

A leader in a recent edition of the Guardian newspaper poured even more cold water on the looming crisis in crisis claims:

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to turn on the radio or television or open a newspaper without being deluged with evidence of an international crisis. Whether it is another City pundit spelling out the apocalyptic consequences of the sub-prime lending crisis in the US, fresh write-offs by investment banks, rogue trading in France or yet more evidence of a UK housing recession, the message is almost universally gloomy. Evidence of recession is everywhere except one place: the economic statistics themselves.

"Yesterday the National Institute, an independent research body, after considering the effects of the international crisis, cut its prediction for growth in the UK in 2008 from 2.2% in October to 2% . Hardly a crisis. In fact it would be a very happy outcome considering what is supposed to be happening around us. Remember, at both ends of the 1980s the UK suffered not a mild slowdown, but negative growth. The figure of 2%, according to the NI, is a shorthand way of saying there is a 75% chance of growth being in the range 1% to 3% and a 25% chance of it being outside that range. Either way, as the NI's Ray Barrell said on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, 'there is no clear evidence that the economy is slowing down sharply'. John Kay, the independent-minded economist, hinted on the same programme that most of the media pundits these days were from the City and may be producing gloomy forecasts because that was a better way to pursuade (sic) the Bank of England to reduce interest rates, rather than complaining about falling profits....

"You might think from the headlines that there had been a collapse in house prices: yet the latest figures from Nationwide show that house prices in January were 4.2% above a year ago, or double the rate of consumer price inflation. It could equally well be reported as a continuing boom, albeit at a lower pace.

"Nor is there evidence of collapse elsewhere. The French and German economies are doing quite well and, for all the talk of recession in the US, the latest GDP figures show expansion of 0.6% in the fourth quarter of 2007 after 4.9% in the third quarter. That is getting close to an official recession (two successive quarters of negative growth) but it is not there yet and there is a stimulation package planned. As for the whole world, the IMF recently downgraded its forecasts and now expects global growth of 4.1%, with a warning that it could be worse because of 'financial market turmoil'. How much City woes will affect the real economy that the rest of us live in is unclear. For instance, there is evidence that US sub-prime borrowers are defaulting on mortgages (especially when they are higher than the property's value) rather than taking a hit on their credit cards as in earlier recessions. They are letting banks take the strain." [Guardian, 02/02/08, p.32. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

To be sure, there could be a slump around the corner [Callinicos (2007), Geier (2008)] -- indeed, Financial Markets across the world are decidedly jittery as this is being written (but read this [Anonymous (2007)]).

And if you are used to whistling in the dark, you are probably telling yourself this right now.

However, we can only go on "crying wolf" for so long before even we begin to smell a rat.

[Apologies for that mixed metaphor!]

[Added in 2010: To be sure, the crisis arrived, but if Dialectical Prophets have been constantly predicting this for many years, sooner or later they were bound to be right! However, as the boy who cried wolf found out, who (other than the inveterately faithful) now believes that Dialectical Economists know any more than bourgeois economists what is going on? Indeed, as we will see, there were plenty of the latter who predicted this slump.

More recent comments on this crisis can be found in Note 21a.]

So, DM-fans who are tempted to reach for Excuse Four should pause for thought -- and that thought should focus on one or both of the following:

(1) Is there anything in the history of DIM to suggest dialecticians won't continue to screw up?

(2) Is it really too early to decide that DIM inspires about as much confidence as a drug addict's promises to quit?

[Recall, this is not to question the revolutionary character of the working class, nor the falling rate of profit. Far from it. It is to question whether dialecticians should be trusted either with Marxist theory or with workers' confidence. (Or, indeed, whether workers will ever trust them again.)]

Independently of the above, there is another nagging doubt: How do we know that 'Materialist Dialectics' is correct?

Not in the future, but right now?

No appeal to practice can answer that query (as we have seen), and an appeal to yet more 'Materialist Dialectics' would be of even less help (as we have also seen).

In fact, the only thing we can appeal to is HM --, and to an HM stripped of all those consoling and contradictory phrases derived from the Hermetic writings of that modern-day Godfather Of Opiates: Hegel.

The Silence Of The DIMs

Truth "tested in practice", so we are told; but practice has faltered badly for most of the last 150 years.

What is the DIM-conclusion? Why -- dialectics is a monumental success!

And, the evidence for this is..., well, what?

Deathly silence.

Cue tumbleweed; cue rustling leaves; cue distant church bell...

Figure Six: The Evidence Just Keeps Stacking Up...

Lenin's Theory Takes A Tumble

The Eclectic Light Orchestra

The connection between dialectics and practice does not stop there. In the section in TAR that deals with Lenin's contribution to DM-epistemology, John Rees refers his readers to a passage which records Lenin's avowed attempt to counter something he called an "eclectic" tendency in the Bolshevik Party (one that has have already been examined briefly, above).

According to Lenin, this 'deviation' involved certain comrades (to wit, Bukharin and Trotsky) in an attempt to view matters from disparate and disconnected angles, displaying an "on the one hand this, on the other that" attitude of mind. In response to this Lenin advocated the dialectical method as a necessary corrective.

The flexibility this introduces helps prevent tactical "rigidity", so we are informed. This is because it involves:

"[A]n all round consideration of relationships in their concrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces." [Lenin (1921), p.90.]

It is at this point that Lenin commented on that hapless tumbler:

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world." [Ibid., pp.92-93.]

While Lenin mentioned a few of these interconnections, their "infinite number" meant it was impossible to list them all -- as, indeed, he admitted:

"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity….

"[D]ialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world." [Ibid., p.93.]

However, there are several serious problems arising from the above that threaten to undermine DM-epistemology in its entirety.

An Abstract Account Of Concrete Particulars

While Lenin extolled the virtues of concrete analyses, what he offers here is clearly abstract -- that is, it's a description that involves a generalisation, and one which is surely impossible to confirm. In fact, Lenin made no attempt to substantiate his main point that any randomly-chosen object is connected with everything in the entire universe and has an infinite number of "mediacies".

[DL = Dialectical Logic.]

Moreover, none of those listening to him challenged him on this (if the record is to be believed). Why was this? If science and Bolshevism are supposed to be joined at the hip, as it were, one would have thought that someone should have asked Lenin how he could possibly know all this about an innocent glass beaker. How could Lenin possibly know that all objects are inter-related in the way he alleged -- or that their connections were infinite in number (or even bigger than, say, 10¹⁰⁰⁰⁰⁰)?²²

And why on earth does DL require it if it is indeed a fact?

Do scientists require grass to be green, or water wet?

Practically Impracticable

However, these problems do not stop there. Surely, a more pressing question for revolutionaries is whether Lenin's methodological criteria are at all practicable. Is it even sensible to take everything (or even most things) into consideration before any course of action is contemplated, let alone carried out? As should seem obvious to anyone who has ever had to make a decision at any point in their life, it is impossible to take Lenin seriously here. His advice would not actually prevent rigidity, as had been its aim; on the contrary, it would encourage eternal prevarication, and hence suicidal inaction.

Consider the following unlikely scenario: In late 1917, when Lenin was pressing the case for an insurrection, on the night before the decisive move couldn't a rather confused comrade have argued as follows?

"Comrade Lenin is being presumptuous and dogmatic -- his analysis will undoubtedly lead to serious mistakes.

"We cannot stage the action he suggests until we have first of all considered its infinite connections with everything in the universe, as he himself recommends.

"In that case, I suggest we wait until we have received all the data from the recent study of Proxima Centauri, the report on the latest archaeological dig in Luxor, the weight of comrade Bukharin's entire family, the detailed report on the mating habits of Stag beetles in Mexico, the average length of every wombat born in the Southern Hemisphere in the last ten thousand years, a comprehensive analysis of the dietary habits of Mohawk Indians in the early spring of 1636, the result of the three thirty at Belmont…".

Of course, such an intervention would have been regarded as completely crazy, and rightly laughed off as totally ludicrous -- but only by those who disagreed with Lenin's advice about the absolute necessity of taking into account the "infinite" connections everything has with the entire universe, before anything is undertaken.

The Relevance Of Relevance

Clearly, the 'intervention' above was farcical because it raised issues that were patently irrelevant to the matter in hand. But, Lenin did not mention relevance. Comrades who doubt this might like to re-check what Lenin actually said about that tumbler, and everything else, to see if they inadvertently missed that particular word first time round:

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world….

"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Bold emphases added.]

Clearly, the word "relevant" does not appear in this passage; Lenin failed to mention it.

And, as if to make things worse, he did not regard this strategy as an optional extra:

"[D]ialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world." [Ibid., p.93. Bold emphases added]

"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…." [Ibid., p.90. Bold emphases added.]

Moreover, had Lenin mentioned relevance it would have made his other comments rather pointless. Why, for example, insist that consideration must be given to the infinite connections every object and process has if the overwhelming majority are totally irrelevant and should be ignored?

Worse still, who is to decide what counts as relevant? As seems clear, it would always be open to comrade NN to accuse comrade MM of "rigidity" if the former's set of 'relevant connections' was more inclusive than the latter's.

Again, these difficulties don't stop there. Extending the picture: As the circle of relevant considerations is allowed to increase, the number of borderline cases (each of which would now surely become an occasion for further accusations of "rigidity", if ignored) will increase even more rapidly. [Why this is so is demonstrated in Note 23.]²³

Even worse still: The wider we expand the circle of relevant considerations, the faster borderline cases will stack up, only to be ignored perhaps by the next allegedly "rigid" comrade in line. Ironically, the more Lenin's advice is taken -- and the wider the relevance net is cast -- the greater this rigidity will seem to become, as ever-increasing numbers of such marginal cases pile up that have to be omitted on alleged grounds of "irrelevance".

Wags might even call this "the law of increasing marginal returns".

Now, it goes without saying that tactical inflexibility is a luxury unsuccessful revolutionaries will only ever enjoy posthumously. Even so, it is still possible (if not highly advisable) to ignore Lenin's advice here without ever implying such rigidity. Indeed, if revolutionaries had to spend an infinite (or even a large finite) amount of time considering everything before they did anything, they would of course do nothing, rigidly or non-rigidly.

Quite the contrary, this clearly means that we must base revolutionary activity on criteria that are far less impractical. In point of fact, as noted above, Lenin's suggestion invites hyper-prevarication, as more 'inclusive' (i.e., less "rigid") comrades dredged-up ever more obscure "mediacies" which must be considered before any specific action was contemplated. And this would surely happen unless such tactical decisions were hedged about with endlessly controversial and increasingly recondite relevancy clauses. Naturally, no revolutionary in his or her left mind would do this. In practice, activists rightly ignore Lenin's criteria -- advice not even he could have followed.

Small wonder then that there is no evidence that he ever did.²⁴

Reductionism -- Or 'Inflationism'?

Surprising at it might seem, Lenin's comments are also connected with 'reductionism'.

Hex And Scepticism

TAR and other DM-texts almost invariably depict reductionism in negative terms, while DM-holism is offered as up an effective bulwark against it.²⁵ For example, the part/whole relation is described in the following way:

"One important point to note about this approach is that it is, by its very nature, opposed to reductionism." [Rees (1998), p.5.]

This is because it:

"…presupposes the parts and the whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole mutually condition, or mediate, each other. And a mediated totality cannot form part of a reductionist philosophy because, by definition, reductionism collapses one element of a totality into another without taking account of its specific characteristics." [Ibid., pp.8-9.]

The merits of Rees's claims (and argument) are not of immediate concern here (they will be, however, in Essay Eleven Part Two and in Essay Three Part Three), but his attempt to counterpose his own approach to CAR, which involves something that would be more accurate re-named, "Hegelian Expansionism" [henceforth, HEX] --, which others call "Inflationism" --, is.²⁶

[CAR = Cartesian Reductionism; follow the link for an explanation.]

Now, several consequences of a HEX-like methodology were outlined in the quotations given earlier from Lenin: HEX holds out the prospect of an infinite task ahead of anyone rash enough to take his approach seriously.

HEX-type investigations proceed in the opposite direction to those taken by CAR-like analyses. One of the avowed aims of reductionism is to depict the properties of objects and processes in terms of its more basic (perhaps elementary) parts, or to account for them with as few general laws as possible. However, the problem with reductionism is that while it is possible to make a start it is not possible to bring it to an end. [Why this is so will not be entered into here.]

In contrast, the situation with HEX is far worse; while it is also impossible for HEX to reach a conclusion, it cannot even begin. The reason for saying that is bound up with the fact that instead of seeking increasingly fundamental units, HEX-theorists aim to find ever wider, more involved and inclusive connections, which must be explored before any attempt to depict the "specific characteristics" of anything in particular can even begin.

This, of course, immediately stops the dialectical roller-coaster in its tracks because no element in this metaphysical wild goose chase is ascertainable before all the rest have been -– meaning, of course, that none ever will be. Since one half of this open-ended meander through seemingly endless epistemological space involves the completion of an infinite task, neither option is viable. Therefore, the entire process cannot end, and it cannot even begin.

HEX-lovers themselves admit that their approach delivers only "partial" truths (at best). To be sure, these are supposed to edge humanity ever-closer to "absolute truth" (if tested in practice). Nevertheless, the infinitary nature of the task ahead of them completely undermines the whole exercise. Each element in the Totality in effect lies at the centre of a set of 'concentric circles' (or 'spheres', if we move into a metaphorical 'third dimension') with infinitely expanding regions of ever-broader 'interconnections' emanating outward from that centre.

Unfortunately, the indefinite expansion of the radii of each of these circles of "partial knowledge" would have no discernible effect on the remaining level of ignorance. This is because the difference between a large finite number of facts (representing the current state of "partial knowledge") and the infinite number of facts constituting "Absolute" knowledge, is itself infinite.

If a finite cardinal of arbitrary size is subtracted from the smallest transfinite cardinal, the latter remains the same size (always assuming, of course, that post-Cantorian cardinal number theory is itself correct -- I will pass no comment on that here).

Hence, the following would be true (for arbitrarily large n):

So, even if humanity accumulated knowledge (in terms of facts, connections and theories) comparable to that depicted by the real number above (i.e., the power of ten), the difference between that number and the smallest 'infinite' cardinal would itself still be infinite.²⁷

["À_o" (pronounced aleph zero) is the 'smallest' transfinite cardinal, so we are told.]

For Whom The Noumenon Tolls

Now, Engels's view of all this was as follows:

"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.233-35. Italic emphasis in the original.]

[Lenin said more-or-less the same as we saw above.]

But, this means that no matter how far science advances, humanity would still be no nearer "absolute" knowledge than it is at present, or than it was 20,000 years ago. In that case, clearly, the "asymptotic progress" metaphor is a highly (i.e., infinitely) misleading picture of the progress of scientific knowledge.

In the final analysis, therefore, DM possesses its own version of Kant's unknowable Noumenon -– but one that has been given a temporal twist and projected into the 'infinite' future.

To repeat a point made earlier: according to DM, since the entire nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole -- and vice versa --, and since we do not, and never will know the whole, we cannot and will not ever know the part. In which case, Engels should have said (rather like the character Manuel from Fawlty Towers): "Fundamentally, we know nothing" -- i.e., "Fundamentally, we are infinitely ignorant of everything".

Hence, there seems to be little point in bragging about DM's ability to penetrate to the heart of reality -- or to grasp the "thing-in-itself" -- if it now turns out that the results of this particular example of dialectical-bravado have to be postponed forever.

In that case, if the road to epistemological Nirvana is paved with such god-like intentions, human ignorance must always remain infinite.^27a

Engels's Divergent 'Realism'

Again, the process of 'increasing knowledge' was also summarised by Engels in the following way:

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically." [Engels to Schmidt (12/3/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975), p.457.]

Reading between the lines here, it is quite clear that Engels himself sort of half understood the implications of what he was saying: this approach to knowledge in fact undermines itself since human beings will forever remain infinitely ignorant of everything, and thus of anything (by the Wholist principle, outlined above), including the truth of Engels's own claims to that end!

In the face of this, as elsewhere, Engels's reaction is instructive: he just ignored the problem -- even though, on this view, no matter how much human beings might like to think they know, that would in fact advance them not one nanometre closer to the Holy Grail of 'Absolute Knowledge'.

Nevertheless, even this way of depicting things is misleading. The idea of an asymptotic approach in mathematics is connected with the concept of a limit -- if the limit concerned can be shown to exist. But, if a given series has no limit, a set of its partial sums cannot in fact "approach" anything at all. Such a series is therefore said to be divergent -- not convergent. Engels's argument depends on knowledge converging on a limit which he manifestly neglected to show exists.

Moreover, and as far as can be ascertained, not one single DM-theorist (even those who are familiar/competent with mathematics and logic) has noticed this major flaw in Engels's 'theory', let alone attempted to rectify it.²⁸

Naturally, this means that the asymptotic approach metaphor is completely inappropriate. Either that, or Engels knew there was a limit, constructed it, but forgot to write the proof in the margin of the above letter -- a bit like Pierre Fermat, perhaps.

However, before anyone tries to locate the proof of 'Engels's Last Theorem', it would be far wiser to conclude that his claim was yet another example of a priori legislation (for instance, that there is indeed such a limit) -- ultimately derived from the HEX-pert himself, Hegel -- and one that has been dutifully, and uncritically copied by generations of the DM-faithful ever since.

In that case, another annoying dialectical inversion now confronts DM-fans: knowledge is not in fact asymptotically convergent on an absolute limit, but divergent. Worse still, in a part/whole system -- where the nature of the part is completely conditioned by the whole (and vice versa) -- what is known is qualified by what is not. If that is so, what little is 'known' implies that human beings will forever remain trapped in a bottomless pit of infinite ignorance -- even supposing we could assert this much with any confidence (which, if HEX were correct, plainly we can't).

This means that the sum total of what we now 'know' about the "specific characteristics" of any part of the Whole is overwhelmingly outweighed by the black hole of infinite ignorance around which we humans must forever orbit, and whose grip we can never shake off. Given HEX, this dark pool of ignorance will neither evaporate nor dissipate.²⁹

And that is why HEX cannot begin; because we are infinitely ignorant of every element in the Totality, we can assert nothing with any confidence about it -- or about anything supposedly in it. Whatever is said about any object or process has an infinitely high probability of being completely wrong, given the great "cloud of unknowing" that forever surrounds everything. This is true even with respect to the humblest of objects found in this fathomless Whole -- like that tumbler (again, always supposing we could say even that much!).

And there is little point directing our attention to what we know already, since, on this view, not only could we know nothing about anything, we would be infinitely ignorant of everything. [However, on that, see below.]

[One feels another reminder is in order, here: anyone who objects to all this should reach for yet another 'Nixon' card, and all will become 'clear'.]

But, if nothing said about any object is even remotely correct (indeed, on this view, if it is 'infinitely' incorrect), then even a reference to 'it' must surely become problematic. In fact, given this depressing view, each putative 'it' might not in fact be an 'it', since, of course, any assertion that 'it' was indeed an 'it' must itself be infinitely wide of the mark.

And yet, this is the Dialectical Mangle into which Engels happily fed Marxist theory!³⁰

'Commonsense' To The Rescue?

It could be objected here that if we begin with the naïve beliefs of the common man or woman (as Lenin himself suggested) then we would have a secure basis from which to begin our search for more accurate knowledge:

"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imagined, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge." [Lenin (1972), p.69; cf., p.279.]³¹

But, given Engels's asymptotic approach metaphor, this response cannot be correct. Unless we possess the entire truth about something as insignificant as a tumbler, say, we could only assert with infinite lack of confidence that there was indeed just such a set of truths about, or "mediacies" relating to, 'it' --, or, to anything else, for that matter.

And as far as that metaphor itself is concerned, we are certainly in no position to conclude that humanity is approaching a single unified limit, as opposed to countless thousands of limits, or none at all, about anything --, or, indeed, whether or not we are catastrophically diverging to infinity.

But, even if it could be shown that there is such an infinitary process of knowledge with respect to ordinary things, that would still be of no help to the beleaguered dialectician.

First of all, that 'proof' itself would undermine this metaphor. This is because, at least here (in relation to the above conclusion about that infinitary process itself), a 'concept' will have coincided with its 'object' --, contrary to the metaphor itself. But, if that metaphor is faulty in this case, if one 'concept' can be shown to disobey these protocols (and thus 'coincide' with its 'object'), what faith can we have that it captures anything of worth to begin with?

Secondly, if we are infinitely ignorant of everything (including tumblers -- and metaphors) then we are in no position to assert that any of the naïve beliefs of humankind are correct -- for example, that this or that 'object' is in fact a 'tumbler'!

Once again, to do so would undermine the metaphor itself, for here another 'concept' (i.e., 'tumbler', if it is a concept) would coincide with its 'object' --, to use for now such obscure Hegelian jargon.

[It is worth pointing out that the above does not in any way express my views on the matter; it is merely aimed at drawing out the absurd consequences of Engels's and Lenin's 'theories'.]

So, the unwise introduction of an infinitary process conditioning knowledge does not support, it actually undermines, naïve 'commonsense' -- and alarmingly quickly, too. It certainly does not confirm it. In fact, given a sufficiently large increase in 'partial knowledge', most or all of the deliverances of 'commonsense' could turn out to be completely mistaken.

Consider a few examples of 'commonsense'/'pre-scientific' beliefs that were formerly held true, but which are no longer given credence -- and this is after only the finite advance in knowledge humanity has experienced over the last couple of thousand years:

Whales are not fish; chairs, tables and floors are not really solid; the earth is not stationary, nor is it flat or located at the centre of the universe; madness is not caused by demon-possession; isolated spinsters are not witches, and their cats are not instruments of the Devil; comets are not messengers of the gods, and neither are dreams, rainbows, diseases, earthquakes, eruptions, birth defects, tea leaves, the flight of birds, entrails, wars, famines, droughts, plagues and madness; apes and humans are not unrelated; the continents are not fixed and mountain ranges are not stationary; planets are not unblemished heavenly beings propelled along by angels, nor do they move in circles attached to crystalline spheres; terrestrial motion is not solely rectilinear; motion itself is not maintained by the constant application of a force; there is no 'natural place' that matter seeks out (and gravity is not even a force); intelligence is not inherited; the sky is not blue; grass is not even 'objectively' green (in fact colour is not an 'objective' property of anything, and neither is heat, taste or sound); life is not a force; fossils are not 'sports of nature', nor were they planted by 'God' to test our faith; light does not emerge from our eyes to hit the seen object when we look at something; slavery is not natural; poverty is not deserved; tobacco is not healthy; animals are not divine beings, nor are they merely 'machines'; left-handedness is not a sign of the Devil, and neither are birthmarks, congenital defects and cleft pallets; women are not sub-human and neither are other 'races' (in fact, there are no 'races'); blood-letting does not cure disease, and disease itself is not caused by an imbalance of humours; 'flu is not the result of some form of cosmic 'influence'; fire is not caused by a substance (Phlogiston) escaping from an object; there is no such thing as the evil eye; kings and queens are not descended from the gods nor can they cure the sick by mere touch; birth defects are not caused by pre-natal influences; light does not always travel in straight lines; parallel lines can both intersect and diverge; there are negative numbers, and 'imaginary' numbers; one is a number (Greek mathematicians denied this), and so is zero; some numbers are irrational; all four legs of a galloping horse are out of contact with the ground at some point; males can become female (after suitable surgery); hysteria is not caused by a wandering womb; bumps on the head do not reveal character; it is not the function of the brain to cool the blood; metals cannot be transformed into gold; mass is not conserved -- and it is also possible that energy isn't either; velocity is not absolute, neither are space and time; atoms are not indivisible, nor are they like diminutive planetary systems; there aren't exactly five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and quintessence); heat is not a fluid, neither are magnetism and electricity; Saddam Hussein did not possess WMD, and Tony Blair is not to be trusted; and so on.³²

Figure Seven: Film That Confounded Artists

With such a list (here massively truncated), and with the support of this ill-advised epistemological 'theory', who could point to a single 'commonsense' or scientific belief and claim it will remain eternally secure? Especially given the fact that for thousands of years human beings believed some or all of the above (and more) -- and given the additional fact that humanity's infinite stumble toward the mythical asymptotic finishing tape of 'Absolute Knowledge' has hardly left the epistemological starting blocks.³³

Indeed, if we now count the above 'journey' as having begun slightly before the advent of civilisation (approximately 10,000 years ago), then, compared with the length of time that anything recognisably human has been on the planet (i.e., approximately 1,000,000 years), this epistemological expedition has been underway for about 1% of human existence. In addition, if we regard the most significant part of this journey as having begun with the scientific revolution in the 17^th Century, that percentage itself would shrink to under 0.1%. Furthermore, if we assume that human beings might last until the Sun becomes unstable (in about 5 billion years time), and introduce that immense interval into the equation, then even that tiny percentage (i.e., 0.1%) would begin to look rather large in comparison. This being so -- and given the asymptotic metaphor (along with the rest of DM-epistemology) -- who could say with confidence that any of our presently held 'commonsense' and/or scientific beliefs will survive for that long -- including belief in the existence of tumblers?

Admittedly, DM-theorists believe that human knowledge is relatively transient, even if dialectically cumulative. They would be among the first to admit the insecurity of 'commonsense' beliefs. Despite this, they also maintain that the connection between erroneous ideas adopted in the past and the more accurate scientific beliefs that replaced them is not accidental; the two are 'dialectically linked' by social progress and technological advance. On that basis, it could be argued that it would be wrong to conclude that the incorrect 'commonsense' beliefs of previous generations are totally without merit, and even more erroneous to saddle DM-theorists with such a view. Since these beliefs were a product of their time, they surely helped prepare the ground for the more objective theories of today -- as, indeed, the latter will in turn help create even more accurate and universally applicable theories in the future. Furthermore, a material account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of superstitious and mystical beliefs (but not just these) also shows how and why they are/were related to the specific Modes of Production, etc., in which they emerged.

Few of the points in the previous paragraph will be challenged here (or anywhere else, for that matter) by the present author (although the language in which they are expressed will be revised considerably); indeed, this approach to knowledge will be used to great effect in several Essays posted here to provide a novel analysis of the origins of Metaphysics, and thus of the ideological roots of DM (i.e., in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, and in Essays Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen).

Despite this, it is clear that DM-theorists are actually claiming something quite different about 'commonsense' beliefs. [However, a detailed analysis of this will be postponed until Essay Thirteen.]

Nevertheless, the picture painted above (even if it is highly sketchy) is in fact undermined -- not confirmed -- by DM-epistemology. To reiterate: this is because one implication of Engels's and Lenin's theory is that humanity is and always will be infinitely ignorant. This does not just compromise 'commonsense' and "naive realism", it obliterates them.

Indeed, and far worse, it throws into doubt all that has ever been written or said by dialecticians themselves.

Given this view, we would now have no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as 'Absolute Truth', or that we are approaching it, or that truth is the whole, or even that Lenin wrote MEC -- and a host of other banalities.

Infinite ignorance cloaks all of these in unmitigated stygian gloom.

Conversely, we would have no good reason to disbelieve the deliverances of any theories that contradicted DM/'Materialist Dialectics' in this area. Quite the contrary, in fact --, we would have excellent reasons to believe them, and that is because that would at least permit us to hold some true beliefs!

Thus, for each DM-thesis there is an infinite gap separating it from 'final truth' (if indeed there is such a state). Hence, we will always have infinitely many reasons for rejecting DM-epistemology in favour of any theory not holding to such a view of knowledge -- since, once more, the opposite of DM-epistemology at least allows us to form/hold some true beliefs.

In that case, the rejection of DM-epistemology is strongly recommended by DM-epistemology itself!

Hence, we may accept DM-epistemology only on condition that we are prepared to reject it; DM-invites its own repudiation in order to save humanity from irredeemable scepticism.

[MEC = Materialism and Empiro-Criticism (i.e., Lenin (1972); QM = Quantum Mechanics.]

HEX Reduced To Absurdity

Compare this sorry tale with that revealed by mitigated reductionist practice (in science): the latter has actually produced astounding results in every field in which it has been applied. From Genetics to QM, Organic Chemistry to Geology, Medicine to Computing, detailed descriptions and explanations of countless processes and phenomena in nature have been developed over the last few hundred years.

In stark contrast, HEX has yet to provide anyone with a single explanation of anything in the natural world.

Now, this is not meant to deny the importance of holistic explanations in science -- nor yet to endorse metaphysical reductionism --, but HEX is not the same as scientific holism. HEX postulates an infinite system of interconnections; scientific holism simply makes do with a large finite set.

In addition, it does not unwisely claim that:

"…[T]he entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts." [Rees (1998), p.5.]

As we have seen, this means that humanity will always remain ignorant of the nature of any part until they knew the full details of every connection it had with the whole, and vice versa. But, since the former will never happen, the latter cannot ever take place. Indeed, in view of the fact that the Whole will forever remain unknown, human beings will never be in a position even to say what its connections with the parts are, or what relationship each part has with any other, and hence what each of them actually is -- given that the entire nature of any part depends on its relation to other parts and to the whole (and vice versa). [More on that here.]

Yet Another Dialectical Inversion

This Essay began by reminding readers that theorists (and not just dialecticians) have yet to find a way of guaranteeing that their theories about the contingent present can in some way bind the future course of events with any sort of necessity. Traditional answers were cast into outer darkness in Essay Three Part Two, but here we have seen that the DM-answer is as weak and flawed as any could be.

Dialectical HEX-ologists claim to be able to see the infinite in the finite, the Absolute in the conditioned. According to them, general words occurring in ordinary and/or scientific contexts imply that there is just such an Absolute (a 'we-know-not-what', which is in reality a 'we-will-never-know-what'), connected with each and every object and process in existence.

Knowledge, they claim, is edging ever closer to an absolute limit. But, as we have discovered, this endless meander implies the opposite: infinite ignorance.

DM-theorists make much of their ability to explain connections, history, causation and development in nature, etc. However, when we examine the assembled article -- and ignore the brochure -- we find that given 'Materialist Dialectics', human knowledge soon becomes lost in the dismal inner recesses of their nebulous Totality -- the permanently ideal Absolute of DIM's alleged inversion of Hegel.

Notes

1. Here are a few dialecticians who say more-or-less the same sort of thing:

"The fundamental principle of scientific thinking lies in the following: a proposition is true if one can prove that it applies in certain specific conditions, or if there is an acknowledged precedent for its having been so applied. This principle may be termed the principle of 'realisability'. Through the realisation of an idea in practical action knowledge is measured against, compared with, its object and reveals the actual degree of its objectivity, the truth of its content. The veracity of a principle can be proved only by its successful practical application. Any proposition which is directly or indirectly confirmed in practice, or which may be effectively realised in practice, is correct. If a person compares his concept of things with other concepts that have been practically tested, he thereby indirectly, through this correct image, compares his own concept with the object itself. Correspondence between a concept and its object is fully proved only when one can find, reproduce or create such an object, corresponding to the concept that one has formed. The truth of a theory is the necessary guarantee of its realisability. For example, the practice of launching artificial earth satellites confirmed the correctness of the theoretical propositions and calculations on the basis of which these satellites were built." [Spirkin (1983), pp.215-16. Bold emphasis added.]

"The laws according to which the planets move were first set forth by the astronomer, Kepler. I test their correctness and the degree of their exactitude by observing the course of the planets. One of the best ways of determining whether I actually know things is experiment research. If I wish to know whether I have truly discerned that water consists of two elements, of oxygen and hydrogen, which are combined in certain proportions of weight, how do I determine that my contention is correct? Through experiment -- of two kinds: first, by bringing oxygen and hydrogen together under certain conditions of temperature and of pressure, and thus producing water; second, by reducing water, through chemical means, into hydrogen and oxygen. Through this experiment I discover that this idea is no delusion but corresponds to the actual nature of the thing. Such experiments are made on a small scale in the chemical laboratory; they are made on a large scale in industry. Industrial practice is likewise a test of the truth of my perception. Such experiments are not only appropriate in nature, but also in society. Politics in the last analysis is nothing but a series of experiments in the realm of society. If, for example, I set up the law that the small farmers must be won for the revolution in order to partition the land of the great landed proprietors among them, this can be false or true. I learn whether it is true by putting the matter to a test.

"We now conclude: practice, the activity of man, is the test of the possibility and extent of his knowing things. If from oxygen and hydrogen I can compose water, then to this extent I have correct knowledge of the nature of water. [Thalheimer (1936), p.153. Bold emphasis added.]

"Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of practice, indissolubly united with the struggle for socialism....

"...This is the source of all its teachings, and in that service its conclusions are continually tried, tested and developed." [Cornforth (1976), p.125. Bold emphasis added.]

2. In short, not even thought can guarantee its own future deliberations.

This should not be taken to mean I'm a sceptic; I am merely sceptical of the a priori theories concocted by traditional philosophers. [More on this in Essay Twelve Part One.]

Incidentally, this topic is connected with Wittgenstein's discussion of 'rule-following'. More will be said about that, and the social origin of meaning, in Essay Twelve (that is, the Parts of Essay Twelve that haven't been published yet), and in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

2a. This is an even more problematic for those who, like dialecticians, believe that everything is in the grip of universal change, for if everything is in flux, then not even that belief can remain the same for long.

On the other hand, if that belief does, then not everything is in constant change, which means that that belief itself will have to change, too (since it is false)!

[The 'relative stability' argument is put to the sword here.]

3. If truth is to be tested by outcomes (in practice), then clearly the latter must be identified correctly; that is, propositions reporting them should themselves be known to be true, or capable of being confirmed true. For that to happen, those propositions must 'correspond' with those outcomes. But, that just means that the PMT is dependent on the CTT (as several of the quotations in Note One acknowledge, anyway).

However, outcomes cannot be tested by reference to further outcomes. At some point, they must be compared with predictions (or expectations), which later take place as expected. So, when the latter correspond with the former they will be judged correct. But, once again, that means that the PMT collapses into, or is parasitic upon, the CTT.

A good example of this can be found in Lars Lih's analysis of what he describes as Lenin's predictions in 1917 (I hesitate to quote this, since it comes from a deeply sectarian rag):

"The four wagers of Lenin in 1917.

"The Bolshevik decision to make revolution was based on four key predictions, or 'wagers', says Lars T Lih: international revolution, soviet democracy, peasant followership and progress towards socialism. This is an edited version of the third speech he gave to the CPGB's Communist University.

"'I am going to talk about the fate of the "four wagers" made by Lenin in 1917. They are: the wagers on international revolution, on soviet democracy, on steps toward socialism, and on what I call "peasant followership".

"'First I will look at them in 1917, and then assess how Lenin thought they were turning out. By late 1918-early 1919 he is still very confident that most of them are paying off, but then he begins to realise in several ways that they are not. Then I will move ahead to 1922-23 and Lenin's final writings, where I think he achieves a shaky synthesis of sorts.

"'I should say that the term "wager" which I use is not meant to imply in any way something adventurous or risky. It comes from Pyotr Stolypin's peasant policy, known as a wager, or betting, on the strong. In other words, it refers to a policy intended to produce certain results, based on the prediction that events will turn out in a certain way....

"'I will not speak much about Kautsky in this talk, but I will begin with a Kautsky quote from 1904:

"The practical politician, if he wishes to be successful, must attempt to see into the future much like the theoretical socialist. Whether this foresight takes the form of a prophecy will depend on his temperament. But he must at the same time always be prepared for the appearance of unexpected factors which will frustrate his plans and impart a new direction to developments, and he must always be ready to change his tactic accordingly."

"'And that is how I am approaching this subject: Lenin is making predictions and when he sees they are not working he tries to deal with the new situation.

"'My source for all this -- since Lenin wrote little in terms of lengthy texts during this period -- is his speeches. That was a big element of Lenin's role in power: he made speeches to mainly party or sympathising audiences, where he would pound home the big message about what was happening. I think he was sincere in what he was saying, so when he started to recognise things were changing this was reflected in his speeches. There is a human drama in this: you can see his painful disappointment coming right to the surface.'" [More details here. Formatting and quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

This is partly where the pragmatic theory that Lenin advocated meets the material world, in predictions which must be compared with reality. Hence, according to the above, Lenin not only made predictions, he adjusted his ideas when they failed to turn out as expected, indicating that practice is not the sole determinant of truth.

It is possible to try to block this objection by claiming that "correct" does not mean "truth-by-correspondence", but "in-agreement-with" -- or even "in accord with relevant criteria". However, if that is so, then the PMT will simply collapse into the COT. But, since it is possible to show that all theories of truth collapse into the COT, anyway, the suggested response above would at least have the merit of speeding up the whole process. [This will be demonstrated in Essay Ten Part Three.]

This means that if we rely on philosophical theories of truth, the route back to Idealism is ineluctable. In this respect, at least, Hegel was quite correct -- all philosophical truth is Ideal:

"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; §316.]

Which is just one more reason to reject it.

[I try and explain why this is so in Essay Twelve Part One.]

It could be objected that practice is merely a guide. This is how Phil Gasper puts it (commenting on a passage taken from Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, quoted below):

"Commentators who deny that Marx was a realist claim that this passage shows that he defined truth in terms of practical success, not in terms of some kind of correspondence with independent reality, and that he rejected arguments about whether thought actually does correspond with reality as 'scholastic'. But this is to misread Marx's (admittedly somewhat obscure) formulation. His claim is that practical success is a guide to truth, not that truth is literally no more than practical success, and what he rejects as scholastic is not the question about whether thought corresponds to reality, but the attempt to answer that question purely theoretically, without reference to practice. In fact there are numerous passages where Marx explicitly accepts a correspondence view of truth. In the Afterword to the second German edition of Capital, for instance, Marx says that an adequate description is one in which 'the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror', and he adds that 'the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought'." [Gasper (1998), p.141.]

However, this attempt to read the CTT into the vague and idealist metaphor of the mirror will not work (as we will see in Essay Three Part Four), but independently of that, Marx was quite clear:

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question." [Marx (1968), p.28. Bold emphasis added.]

Notice that? "Man must prove the truth...in practice." A "guide" is not a proof.

Indeed, Lenin saw things the same way:

"From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]

However, in an e-mail, Phil has pointed out that the sort of proof he means is not demonstrative proof:

"You probably won't be surprised to hear that I don't accept your criticism of my interpretation of the second thesis. I think you are confusing 'proof' in the sense of a mathematical or logical demonstration with 'proof' in the sense of a test (as in "the proof of the pudding is in the eating"). I take 'proof' in the second thesis to be intended in this second sense. So what Marx is saying is that the test of whether an idea is true is its practical success. If an idea is practically successful, that is evidence (although not decisive evidence, since it may be outweighed by other factors) that it is true (i.e. that it corresponds to reality). In other words, practical success is a guide to truth."

This is a valid criticism, but it is not too clear if a theory can be compared with a pudding. Theories make predictions and can used to help explain the world (and in the case of Dialectical Marxism, help change it); this is not so with puddings. Anyway, this does not affect the negative conclusions drawn in this Essay, since, as we have seen, practice is not just an insecure guide, it is more often than not an unreliable guide to truth, and it is even less dependable guide when it comes to revolutionary practice, as we will also see.

Anyway, it is worth pointing out that Phil seems to agree here that even a modified PMT, to which dialecticians appeal, depends on the CTT.

[Although, this should not be taken to mean that Phil accepts the PMT!]

4. Note, this is not to suggest that I accept the CTT, but, as we will see in Essay Three Part Three (and as several of the above quotations confirm, anyway), DM-theorists certainly seem to.

5. It could be objected that this caricatures revolutionary practice. Even the quotations given in this Essay show that no dialectician of any intelligence argues that practice alone is a criterion of truth. Successful practice coupled with the CTT (i.e., when the results of practice are compared with the world, viewed in the light of other criteria) establishes the truth of DM.

Maybe so, but the point of this section is merely to undermine the claim that practice is any sort of test of truth, even when it is linked in with additional criteria. [Anyway, these other criteria will be examined later (here and here), and in several other Essays.]

6. Naturally, this puts considerable weight on the interpretation of the word "work", but that just underlines the weakness of theories that share any concepts with the PMT. As noted above, the term itself is not easy to define (philosophically or otherwise) without borrowing ideas drawn from the CTT, and hence the COT.

7. As we now know, the universe can be described in countless different ways -- just so long as we are prepared to make the enough adjustments elsewhere.

So, for example, according to Physicists, it does not matter whether we hold the earth to be stationary, and make the rest of the universe move relative to it, or otherwise. [On that, see here.]

Naturally, for reasons of "simplicity" we might prefer not to do this, but who says the universe has to work according to our notions of "simplicity"? And who says anyone knows what anyone else means by "simplicity" in such contexts? Of course, some might want to appeal to Ockham's razor here, but Ockham's razor is merely a methodological device aimed at pruning the amount of work scientists have to do. Unfortunately, it also allows rank amateurs to think they are qualified judge in such matters. Worse, it has no clear or a priori or a posteriori rationale to recommend it, despite the almost religious respect many show toward it. [This topic is examined in more detail here.]

On Copernicus, stellar parallax and Ockham's razor, see here.

The background details to this will be fully referenced in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

8. On this, cf., Depew and Weber (1995), Desmond and Moore (1992), and Gayon (1998). [On the weaknesses of Neo-Darwinism, see here, and Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Of course, it could be argued that this is in fact in line with the DM-account of scientific progress -- that is, that theories face contradictions which are later resolved in a superior theory. This argument will be destructively analysed in Essay Thirteen Part Two. However, for present purposes it is sufficient to note that this DM-response is also future-oriented, and thus susceptible to the serious difficulties outlined earlier in this Essay.

9. On this, see Schwartz (1999). Also see here, and the essay links here.

This should not be taken to mean I reject either evolution or Darwinism! [See Note 8, above.] It is just that the history of science has taught us not to treat everything that scientists tell us as unrevisable gospel truth, for they constantly change their minds. [More on that in a Essay Thirteen Part Two. In the meantime, see here and here.]

10. To be sure, it could be argued that it was the incorrect aspects of Darwinism that were responsible for these erroneous predictions.

But this is not entirely true; natural selection (which is presumably correct) when coupled with the blending theory (presumably incorrect) predicted that 'beneficial' variations would disappear. Of course, in the long-term, this mis-match became more obvious, but, as is argued in the main body of this Essay, if we can only tell in the long-term whether a theory is correct or not (in whole or in part), then that would leave us with no way of deciding whether it is correct now.

11. It could be objected that this ignores the 'dialectical interplay' between theory and practice. That objection will be neutralised presently.

11a. I have, of course, borrowed this argument from van Fraassen (1980). This argument has been criticised in Leplin (1997), to which I will respond in Essay Thirteen Part Two (not yet published). In the meantime, the reader should consult Kukla and Walmsley (2004). This analogy is worked out in more detail in Hull (1988). [However, I must add that I do not agree with everything that Hull or van Fraassen say!]

11b. The usual replies elicited by such an accusation are all fielded below.

12. Readers will note the relatively massive scale of the 'defeats' our side has suffered compared to the modest and temporary gains made in the last 150 years. For example, the catastrophic blow delivered to our side by the failure of just two revolutions (e.g., those in Germany and Spain between 1918 and 1939) far outweigh all our successes combined, and by several orders of magnitude.

[On the German Revolution, see Harman (1982); on Spain, see Durgan (2007), and Beevor (2006).]

13. UK-SWP

As far as the practical successes of the SWP itself are concerned things are little clearer -- but, mercifully, only slightly less depressing.

However, in general the success of revolutionary theory is interpreted in a far more mundane fashion by SWP-activists. Among other things, this involves discussion of tactical issues (related to current opportunities for intervention) at branch level, at the national conference, special caucuses and meetings, or annually at "Marxism" (etc.) -- alongside whatever prospects there are for building the party and furthering the struggle. In addition, this includes a consideration of the possibilities for spreading revolutionary propaganda, or for initiating agitation --, depending on the level of struggle at the time. Nevertheless, the criteria for practical success in such circumstances are notoriously unclear; they appear to be based largely on anecdotal reports and impressionistic analyses, often published (until recently) on the same page of Socialist Worker each week (i.e., page 12).

Like other revolutionary parties, the SWP publishes few statistics. Indeed, it is unclear whether any accurate data are ever scientifically collected; naturally, this means that anecdotal information becomes disproportionately important by default.

On this, see Tony Cliff's recent autobiography -- Cliff (2000). Despite its many other excellent features, Cliff's book is full of just such impressionistic analyses. To say the least, this is an odd feature of a movement that prides itself on its otherwise scientific credentials. Of course, such data -- if they were collected -- could fall into the wrong hands (why that is important is unclear; as if MI5 and Special Branch do not know already!). Nevertheless, this still means it is impossible to tell whether SWP practice is a success or not.

This unofficial (or semi-official, but still anecdotal) statistical base usually includes the following items: the number of papers sold, new comrades enrolled, "contacts" recorded and interventions initiated, the numbers -- or the ratio -- of workers to non-workers attending particular demonstrations, how much money was raised in the latest appeal (and how fast it rolled in, and from whence it came), how many prominent, semi-official and/or official union branches and representatives signed or supported the latest petition, lobby, open letter or appeal, the proportion of workers to non-workers in the party, and so on.

Of course, all of these have to be part of the way a revolutionary party relates to the working-class and its struggles -- at least, if only as a means of testing the latter's subjective mood. But, since no clear data are collected, assessment of the nature and extent of the party's successes remains fixed at the impressionistic level. Hence, it's not possible to confirm scientifically the effect of SWP activity, or test the claim that it is successful.

Nevertheless, the fact is that the SWP-UK appears to be (at most) half the size it was 20 years ago -- this suggest that its practice has not been, should we say, "synonymous with success".

The evidence supporting the above observation is, alas, equally non-scientific:

● The SWP's annual theoretical conference, Marxism, currently lasts only five days (in fact, it is more like three full-, and two half-days), as opposed to stretching across an entire week, as it used to do up to a few years ago. The one planned for 2008 is scheduled to last 3 full days, and to half days, too (while Marxism 2010 will last four and a half days). [I attended Marxism 2007 (the first time I had been to this gathering since 1990), and it was a rather sad and tiny affair compared to 17 years ago.]

● The other jamboree (at Skegness, over Easter) was axed in the early 1990s.

● A recent fund-raising drive (early 2007) badly failed to meet its target (after being aired for several months), which is the first time I can recall that happening in over 25 years. The next (autumn 2007) is also dragging its feet; all mention of it was dropped from Socialist Worker in early 2008. Issue Number 2083 (12/01/08) says that £126,279 had been collected so far; the next issue (2084, a week later) does not mention the collection. Had the target been reached, one feels certain that it would have been reported. The latest fund drive in Autumn 2008 is beginning to falter, too. After three and a half months it had reached £140,087 (Socialist Worker 2132, 20/12/08, p.3). It was initiated in early September 2008, by mid October it had reached £75,053 (Socialist Worker 2122, 11/10/08, p.3), and by mid November it totalled £119, 357 (Socialist Worker 2127, 15/11/08, p.3), the rate of increase falling off dramatically as December approached. [The 2009 appeal was somewhat similar.]

● The meetings/events section in Socialist Worker (invariably on page ten) is a fraction of its former size.

Now, the fact that the SWP has played such a leading role in the anti-war movement since 2002 (and in Respect since 2004) suggests that recent "party-building" has been an abject failure. Under circumstances like this, the party should be expected to be doing far better than it is.

My guess that there was a disappointingly low level of recruitment during this period has now been confirmed by this document (written by John Rees -- alas, himself no longer a member of the SWP!) -- and now by this one (authored by John Molyneux), indirectly by this one (written by Chris Harman), and this one (by Alex Callinicos). Another document (written by Neil Davidson, commented upon by several of the above) puts the 2008 membership at over 6000, which is hard to reconcile with the facts given above.

Rees also alleges the following:

"The result of not following this course is that the party structure and the active membership are in a worse condition than at any time since the early 1980s. Preconference aggregates involved perhaps a sixth of the membership. It is unlikely that total branch attendance is any greater on average. There is a division in the membership and the active membership is in crisis."

A recent BBC Radio Four programme (aired in two 15 minute slots in April 2008: "From Trotsky to Respect"), however, asserted that the current membership is 7,000. From the above comments, this too is difficult to believe. [It might, however, be a figure that includes inactive members. Anyway, no information was given as to how the data had been collected, or to what they referred.]

This assessment is echoed in an article written by Mark Steel (who has now left the SWP), published in Internal SWP Bulletin (November 2007), and posted on-line here.

"For by whatever criteria you wish to use, our party has shrunk to a shadow of the size it was even a few years ago. In many areas where the SWP once represented a chaotic pump of activity that connected with all that was vibrant, energetic and rebellious in the city, now the meetings are tiny, bereft of anyone under forty and attended out of duty. Not many years ago, in most towns you were never far from a line of hastily slapped-up Socialist Worker posters, so they were almost an accepted part of any city centre, and there must be people who supposed the council was obliged to ensure they stayed up, on grounds of maintaining local heritage. But you'd have to conduct a diligent search now to find anything of the sort."

Steel's views are outlined in more detail in Steel (2008); but see also Callinicos (2008a).

Unfortunately, in September 2007, a serious crisis erupted in Respect. By late October, it had become pretty clear that Respect was doomed, and will emerge significantly weaker as a result. I will not enter into who is to blame for this debacle. We can just chalk it up as yet another failure on the left if, as seems likely, Respect remains in fragments.

In fact, by early November 2007, Respect had split. Here is the case for the defence (an analysis with which I largely agree, I might add -- minus the hyperbolic use of the phrase "witch hunt", a phrase it seems which was inspired by John Rees, but which phrase is now 'avoided' by SWP-ers who once used it liberally, since Rees has now resigned from the SWP). By early December 2008, this crisis had spread into the heart of the SWP. On that, see here.

This is what I have written about this and other splits in Essay One:

Sad though it is to say, Trotskyism's one major area of 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, comrades will bemoan this in one breath, but in the next refuse to accept that their core theory (dialectics) has anything whatsoever to do with it! They will not even consider the possibility, not even as a partial cause of our side's 150 year long tendency to fragment. [Why this is so is explained here.]

[Anyone who doubts this should check the response I received here, here and here, for just suggesting this as one possibility. But this is a regular, almost knee-jerk reaction.]

...Witness, too, the ease with which former 'friends' and 'comrades' soon descended into lying, gossip-mongering, fabricating and smearing other 'comrades' in the recent collapse of UK-Respect. A good place to sample much of this infighting is at the Socialist Unity website -- so named, presumably, because it (unwittingly, perhaps even 'dialectically') records the opposite tendency. Much of its space is now devoted to highlighting every negative factoid of dubious provenance it can lay its hands on to rubbish a prominent UK revolutionary party and its 'leaders'. The comments are no less hostile and uncomradely.

[See also the acrimony and personal vitriol expressed in the recent (i.e., Summer 2007) split in the US Communist League, and the even more recent feud (February 2008) in the Maoist RCP-US. A similar, dialectically-fuelled bust-up is currently underway (2007/08) in the US wing of the ICFI. The recent split (2009/10) in the IMT/WIL was no less acrimonious. One thing is certain, and as history shows, we can expect much more of the same before we finally allow the ruling-class to ruin the planet courtesy of our studied idiocy.]

Here is a comment by the IMT on the above split:

"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 added.]

Notice that yet more splits and expulsions somehow 'strengthen' the movement!

...[N]o material fact (no matter how obvious or damning) is allowed to count against the fixed idea that DIM has been, and still is, eminently successful.

This is perhaps one unchanging belief over which the infamous Heraclitean flux has no jurisdiction.

Anyone who doubts this need only read the neurotically up-beat reports one constantly finds in most revolutionary papers, and on the vast majority of Marxist websites (with few notable exceptions): everything is coming up roses, all the time. Major set-backs are largely ignored, and the smallest success is hyped out of all proportion, and then hailed as if it were of cosmic significance

Hence, when a couple of dozen hard-boiled, leather-necked, brick-faced Bolsheviks gather together in some god-forsaken hotel in the suburbs, we are regaled with the glad tidings that this marks a significant advance for the world proletariat! Except, of course, no one bothered to tell all four billion of them, and they happily returned that complement by staying away in their hundreds of millions. A month later, and what do we find? This 'party of the working-class' has split, with one half expelling the other, or vice versa --, and as if to rub it in, even that is hailed as a major advance for the toiling masses (as we saw above with the IMT)!

Self-deception of this order of magnitude is clearly pathological.

[This is another excellent recent example of this phenomenon.]

[Check out the rabid optimism that (up till recently) swept through Respect, and then Respect Renewal (the 'breakaway' party), especially here (where even the cake that was served was "marvellous"!) --, and this after yet another split! 300 or so turn up 150 years after the Communist Manifesto was published and that is something to shout from the rooftops!

Single-celled organisms learn far faster, it seems.

Of course, not everyone involved in this split was a fan of dialectics (even though significant sections were); in this, the social/class origin and nature of the vast majority of those involved is the key factor, for it is in this petty-bourgeois soil that sectarianism festers -- aggravated by this mystical 'theory'. (This is analysed in more detail in Essay Nine Part Two.)]

[The best account so far of the split, from a neutral standpoint, can be found here. The best SWP versions (to date) can be read here and here.]

The expulsion of the US franchise of the IST -- the International Socialists -- in 2001, for reasons that still remain unclear --, has not helped, either. Currently, the IST has no organised representation in the USA (now that Left Turn has resigned from the IST). This means that right at the heart of the capitalist system, the IST is without any organised influence!

[Many of the relevant documents can be found here. An alternative view of this, the most damaging recent split, and the slow decline of the IST alongside its international fragmentation, can be found here, but I do not know enough to say whether it is correct or not.]

Yet more successful practice?

At the time of writing the above, much of the UK-SWP's activity revolves around the promotion of their half of the remains of the Respect split: the Left List in the 2008 London mayoral and local elections. Hence, success here will be interpreted in limited electoral terms (but not exclusively in those terms).

Update, Autumn 2008: unsurprisingly, the Left List did remarkably badly in the May elections. For example, in the London Mayoral election, their candidate polled 16,796 first preference votes (0.68%), under a quarter of the BNP's total, and under a half of the Christian People's Alliance!

Fielding 14 candidates in the London Assembly constituency election, the Left List gained a total of 33,438 votes (1.4%), slightly behind the fascist National Front, but twice the BNP's figure. In the Additional Member vote the Left List gained 22,583 votes (0.9%), just short of one tenth of the Green Party, but almost one sixth of the BNP (who won a seat!), and less than a half of Respect Renewal (who gained 59,721 -- or 2.4%). Nationally, the picture was no less depressing.

Respect Renewal did not do well nationally, either; although this site tries to put a shine on these rather poor results.

Another dialectical success story?

Nevertheless, figures from 2007 suggested that Respect was already beginning to falter a year earlier. In the July 2007 Southall bi-election, for example, Respect received 1.6% of the vote in a predominantly Asian area. It was then too early to tell if this was a freak result or not. However, the subsequent Shadwell bi-election painted the opposite picture (where Respect won the seat with 43% of the vote).

Update, Autumn 2009: the SWP in Belfast has just split from the IST. More details will follow when I can find a less sectarian source of information! The same has happened in New Zealand, too.

Update, February 2010: Lindsey German and John Rees (whose book on dialectics prompted these Essays), along with 58 other members, have just resigned from the SWP. [However, see also here.]

Update, Summer 2010: In the UK General Election, in the face of an suicidally unpopular Labour government and the prospect of deep cuts both in the Welfare State and working class livings standards, the left's front parties -- Respect-Unity Coalition (the old Respect Renewal) and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (to which the UK-SWP were affiliated) -- received a derisory number of votes; 33,251 and 12,275, respectively, compared to 564,331 for the Nazi BNP. [The Green Party received 285,616.] In view of all the recent in-fighting, this was no big surprise.

Yet another Dialectical Disaster.

Can anyone spot a pattern here...?

Now, this may be yet another sheer coincidence, but the precipitous decline in the UK-SWP's fortunes -- exacerbated by the above splits --, began after its open adoption of DM in the mid-1980s. [Details can be found here.]

How many 'coincidences' do we need before we draw the appropriate conclusion?

[It was alleged in Essay Nine Part Two that DM aggravates the inherent sectarianism of petty-bourgeois elements in DIM. The above events seem to provide us with further confirmation.]

Nevertheless, even if it were possible to check practice against theory, the interpretation of the former is not a given.

For example, UK-SWP recruitment figures are an unreliable indicator of success. This is partly because of the untoward haste with which many new members are enrolled. [Indeed, it used to be a joke that all you had to do was look at a Socialist Worker seller to be recruited.] It is also partly because many new recruits remain largely ignorant of revolutionary socialism -- that is, beyond the basics -- for the entire duration of their membership (which is, alas, often very short -- and that fact is itself not unconnected with the previous point).

[This anecdotal observation should, of course, be regarded as no more (nor no less) reliable than 'official' anecdotal claims themselves are (even those to the contrary).]

Despite this, up until a few years ago recruitment figures appeared regularly in Socialist Worker, where they were not only seen as a measure of success, they served as a morale booster. Naturally, the rate of recruitment to revolutionary parties will be sensitive both to the vicissitudes of the class struggle and to the relative strength of the 'official' left, but the fact that so many new comrades drop out so soon after joining could (and should) be interpreted as a failure.

However, the lack of data at present suggests that recruitment is not going too well. [Although, I was told unofficially that over a thousand new members were enrolled at Marxism 2007. Let's hope the SWP manages to hang on to these newbies for a change. Other rumours suggest, though, that the party lost many (key) members in the above split in Respect.]

Now, the SWP is one of the most successful revolutionary parties (in the UK), so the above reflects rather badly on the many groups/tendencies I have not mentioned. They too are hardly "proving" the truth of DM in practice. As I pointed out in Essay Nine Part Two:

This means that despite the fact that every last one of these sad individuals continually strives to "build the party" few revolutionary groups boast membership roles that rise much above the risible. In fact, all we have witnessed since WW2 is the creation of yet more fragmented sects -- but still no mass movement. [Anyone who doubts this should look here, here, here and here. Or now, here.]

To be sure, the general course of events taking place during major class upheavals may be obvious for most revolutionaries to see, but outside of this the phrase "tested in practice" -- regularly bandied about by DIMs -- is about as accurate as most bourgeois election promises.

It won't do either to appeal to the success of revolutionary theory in 'predicting' or explaining, after the event, the course of Capitalist development over the last 150 years or so. This is because this will also depend on yet more theory for its interpretation.

For example, the regular booms and slumps that afflict Capitalism appear to occur cyclically, and they seem to have imposed on them several subordinate waves of different periodicities and amplitudes. The exact status of all this is a matter of dispute among Marxist (and non-Marxist) economists. These so-called "Kondratieff cycles" also 'fit' large-scale economic phenomena (but they do not appear to have any obvious revolutionary implications). Clearly, the analysis of a complex set of ideas like this should be carried out with some degree of theoretical sensitivity and mathematical sophistication. Even so, any empirical evidence that is introduced in order to help discriminate between rival interpretations will itself be highly theoretically-coloured.

As the late Chris Harman noted [Harman (1984), pp.132-36; cf., also Mandel (1975) and (1995)], the long waves postulated by Kondratieff may be completely re-drawn if other statistical techniques are employed. But, that just confirms something mathematicians have been aware of since at least Leibniz's day: through a finite number of points a potentially infinite number of curves can be drawn. So, this fact alone cannot be used to disprove/discredit a given theory, for all theories are subject to the same constraints. The data themselves cannot determine which line or curve fits them (and simplicity is not a 'natural' given, either, as noted above).

Furthermore, SWP-theorists have themselves found it necessary to modify Marx's original theory to explain subsequent economic developments. This has involved new accounts of the following: the former USSR, Imperialism, Monopoly Capitalism, Nationalism, The Permanent Revolution, and the Permanent Arms Economy to help explain, among other things, the occurrence of long-term booms, periods of stagnation, protracted crises, and the nature of the struggles that have flared-up in the intervening years.

However, this re-vamped theory is not without its own problems. For example, it faces the not inconsiderable task of accounting for the rather strange behaviour of Capitalism over the last ten or twenty years. At present certain parts of the world are growing strongly, and have been doing so for a record number of years. [This was written in 2007. The current worldwide crisis is commented upon below, and in Note 21a.]

In a relatively recent article, for example, Rob Hoveman (who was later expelled from the SWP) noted that the US economy has witnessed its longest post-war period of growth [Hoveman (1999b)], but his explanation for this did not include any reference to increased military spending. Similarly, articles by Chris Harman also attempted to account for the American boom (and the aforementioned crisis) in terms that also failed to include any reference to the Permanent Arms Economy (except, perhaps, up to the mid-1980s), either. Even so, Harman pointedly referred to other factors to explain the odd behaviour of the economy -- these were connected with inflated stock prices in the USA, the increased rate of exploitation of workers, and the growth of credit (etc.). [E.g., Harman (1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b, 2005, 2007a, 2007b, 2008a, 2009b); cf., Callinicos (1999). See also Kidron (1967, 1970, 1974), and Cliff (1957).]

Having said this, Harman (2009a) has returned to explaining the long boom (in the twenty-five or so years following WW2) by appealing to the Permanent Arms Economy, but not, apparently the current crisis. [The same seems to be true of Callinicos (2009), too.] See also Kliman (2009).

No doubt, the state of the world economy will be satisfactorily explained by SWP-theorists -- one day. [At any rate, it is worth pointing out that rival theories are not fairing much better!] But, even if SWP 'theory' were performing well that would still not mean it was the 'right' theory. The entire set of theories could be wrong. We need criteria other than "predictive power" and "practice" to decide whether or not Marxism is 'correct'. [I will attempt to outline what these are in a later Essay.]

Incidentally, the scare quotes around the word "theory" above were deliberate -- the descriptor "The Theory of the Permanent Arms Economy" is misleading. When it is compared with other sophisticated economic theories, the detail (factual, mathematical and theoretical) that supports this 'theory' is rather thin. Chris Harman does an excellent job spreading it as far as it will go [in Harman (1984)] --, but calling it a "theory" is a little premature, to say the least. Of course, this does not mean that it is a bad hypothesis, or that it is misguided (or even that I disagree with it!); but, it does mean that much more work will need to be done before we can begin to flatter it with the title "theory". [On this, see Kidron (1977), and Harman (1977).]

It is worth noting here that Robert Brenner's recent attempt to construct a theory of modern Capitalism has (rightly or wrongly) been given short shrift by SWP-theorists. But, in the main, the criticisms comrades have levelled against Brenner are themselves analytic/theoretical, not factual. Where the latter look factual, the dispute in fact centres on the interpretation and significance of certain sets of data, not the data themselves. [Cf., Brenner (1998, 2002, 2006), Callinicos (1998, 1999), Harman (1999, 2004), and Hoveman (1999a). See also the discussions here and here.] See also Choonara (2009), which contains a very useful survey of the state of current theory on the Marxist left.

Cf., also Note 21a, below.

14. It could be objected that this is ridiculous; the success of Capitalism does not prove it 'true', nor does it establish its superiority. Capitalism is a decaying/dying social form which has reached the end of its 'progressive' phase.

Maybe so, but since that claim is itself a hostage to fortune, it cannot be used to show Capitalism will always fail, or indeed that Marxism must prevail. So far, the plain fact is that the success of Capitalism stands in stark contrast to the meagre gains our side has made. We can only re-configure this picture in the here and now if we drop pragmatic criteria.

Again, it could be objected that Capitalism is actually failing now. Such an objector might even point to, say, the instability and manifest evils we see around the world as evidence of that fact. But, it's always open to a supporter of the present system to claim that the successes so far chalked up by Capitalism mean that these "evils" can and are being eradicated (or at least ameliorated) by more and better Capitalist development (indeed, several of its apologists do claim precisely this).

As we know, this is completely false. But to which practice (and to which successes?) -- not to which theory -- can we point to neutralise that response?

Capitalism is far more successful (in terms of achievements/practicalities) than anything we have so far managed to cobble-together.

Again, it could be argued that the success of Capitalism is in fact down to the working-class, not the bourgeoisie.

Doubtless this is correct, but supporters of this rotten system would merely point out in response that it not only took Capitalism to organise the working class, the latter have in fact resisted DIM for 150 years.

This is not to excuse Capitalism; it's simply to point out that the above claims can only be countered factually/theoretically, not pragmatically.

Indeed, and in view of our track record, an appeal to practice alone here would be tantamount to an admission of defeat!

15. Some might object and point out that Rees puts these comments in the future tense:

"If it is not superior to other theories…it will not 'seize the masses'…." [Ibid., p.237.]

That objection will be addressed presently.

16. Is this the Sixth International in the making? Must we run out of ordinal numbers before workers begin to sign-up en masse to this series of lame dialectical ducks?

Or, before we figure out they are not the least bit interested in Mystical Marxism?

16a. Of course, there are those who deny dialectics features prominently in the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries. If that is so, then those who adopt this view will not mind if this theory is entirely excised from Marxism, will they?

However, and oddly enough, in 'debate' many of the latter say the opposite when that theory is under attack, as it has been in these Essays. An excellent recent example of this can be found in the responses given to me here.

Even so, the idea that our core theory, which is supposed to govern everything Marxists both think and do, has nothing to do with how things have turned out for revolutionaries is bizarre in the extreme.

[On this attempted defence in general, see here.]

17. These allegations have been substantiated throughout this site; the former more particularly in Essay Twelve, here and here, the latter in Essay Nine Part Two.

18. This should not be taken to mean that I think that things cannot change!

After all, that is why I began to write these Essays!

18a. It's salutary to note that many of these were in defence of limited democratic demands. The fact that workers in their tens of thousands were prepared to face down tanks and heavily armed soldiers in pursuit of such limited objectives throws into stark relief their failure to do likewise in defence of something supposedly more important: 'their' state, 'their' revolution.

19. On the former USSR and the 'People's Democracies' see Cliff (1950, 1996, 2003). See also Binns (1986), Binns and Hallas (1976), and Harman (1988).

20. Sceptical readers are referred to Nigel Harris's book Mandate of Heaven for more details. [Harris (1978); also see Hore (1987, 1991).]

21. The evidence supporting that allegation can be found in Binns and Gonzalez (1980), Binns et al (1980), and Binns (1983).

21a. The current state of confusion on the left (i.e., when this was written in January 2008) about whether it's appropriate even to use the word "crisis" to depict the present state of Capitalism can be gauged from the discussion at Louis Proyect's site here. Even now (Summer 2010), opinion is divided as to whether or not the global economy will go into "meltdown".

The poor record Marxist's have of 'predicting' crises is noted by Robert Brenner:

"Marxist economists are famous for having accurately predicted seven out of the last one international economic crisis.  Perhaps for that reason, many in recent times have been unusually cautious about once again 'crying wolf,' even as the evidence of international economic dislocation has mounted around them.

"Today, however, prediction is no longer necessary.  The international economy, outside of the United States and Europe -- perhaps 50% of the world -- is already experiencing an economic downturn that is worse than any that has occurred since the 1930s." [Robert Brenner. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

The above was written in September 1998; looks like Brenner was also "crying wolf" back then, something he admits to doing, here:

"I would have been a bit embarrassed, but not really surprised, if I had used the term crisis carelessly at that moment and even, unintentionally, left myself open for a catastrophist interpretation. In early October 1998, roughly the time I was writing this piece -- the financial economy was freezing up, and the international financial system seemed on the verge of collapse. For a good inside view of the scene at the time, and how it appeared and felt, see the opening pages of the book The Fed by the leading financial journalist Martin Meyer. Describing the subjectivity of the several thousands of bankers and central bankers and financiers and finance ministers who had just descended on Washington for a meeting of the World Bank and IMF, Meyer writes 'It turned out to be an experience they will never forget as long as they live, a weekend of pure terror, as though an asteroid were descending on earth.' Meyer does not hesitate to go on to use the term crisis (and panic) to characterize the economic situation in general, and the financial meltdown in particular. So -- I thought to myself -- writing pretty soon after this moment -- after the NY Fed had been obliged to bail out that hedge fund and Greenspan to cut interest rates outside the regular meetings of the Fed -- I could easily have used the word crisis misleadingly and without sufficient thought." [Robert Brenner. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Fortunately, we are blessed with 20/20 hindsight. [However, one thing I have learnt over the last 25+ years is never to believe/trust a single economic prediction, no matter from whom it originates.]

To be sure, traditional economists fare no better here, but when it is recalled that Marxists are supposed to possess the correct scientific method, this is nothing to be proud of, nor is it something we should be shouting from the rooftops. [On this in general, see the timely warnings in Faulkner (2009).]

Nevertheless, the current "crisis" could be the biggest since the 1930s, (or the biggest since the last incorrect assessment) -- but just like someone who predicts rain every day, when it finally does rain, that fact is not to his/her credit.

And so it seems that this "crisis" might be the worst for 70 years; here is one recent survey, issued in August 2008. Only time will tell, however, whether this is yet more "whistling in the dark".

Update, October 2008: It now looks pretty clear that this is a crisis of unique proportions, with several major banks and financial institutions around the world, but particularly in the USA, failing or having to be nationalised. As I write, the Senate and House of Representatives are deciding on whether to buy up the 'toxic debts' in the USA to the tune of $700 billion, and it is far from clear that even this will restore confidence. On this see Callinicos (2008b), and Harman (2008).

However, as I noted above, if our side constantly predicts crisis, it is hardly surprising if we get it right in the end.

Unfortunately, this crisis was also predicted by bourgeois economists, for example Pettifor (2006), and political figures (for example, Vince Cable of the UK Liberal Democrats is said to have predicted it). Indeed, there were many such warnings (for example, here, here, here, and here). The Guardian newspaper carried a story on Saturday, 24/01/09 about economist Nouriel Roubini who also predicted this crisis. [Brockes (2009); also see the Wikipedia article on Roubini.] Does this prove that non-Marxist economic analyses are correct, too?

Indeed, John Rees now admits:

"The current economic crisis did not begin with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. It was obvious at least from the collapse Northern Rock a year ago. There is no theoretical agreement on the CC about the likely depth and length of the recession. In the course of attacking me for saying that the SWP had been late in responding to the recession Chris Harman told the last NC that we had no idea how deep the recession would be on the very day that Lehman Brothers collapsed. Just a day later Martin Smith opened a joint CC and local organisers meeting with the words 'we've been late on the recession.' In the Manchester pre-conference aggregate Alex Callinicos admitted that he had been late in seeing the depth of the recession because he did not want to seem like one of those Marxists who are always claiming there is going to be a crisis of capitalism." [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

As Andrew Kliman also acknowledges:

"Because Marxists are famous for 'predicting five out of the last three recessions', I need to point out two things before continuing. First, the term crisis does not mean collapse, nor does it mean slump (recession, depression, downturn). A crisis is a rupture or disruption in the network of relationships that keep the economy operating in the normal way. Whether or not it triggers a collapse or even a slump depends upon what happens next." [Kliman (2008), p.61. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

Comrades, it seems, are no more accurate here than non-Marxists. However, what Kliman says about the use of the word "crisis" does not in fact conform to the way it is employed by Marxists. As we have already seen, this over-used word is constantly applied to everything and anything by 'crisis-hungry' comrades. Indeed, but ironically: since everything in Capitalism is in constant "crisis", Marxists cannot in fact claim to have predicted this crisis. Or, no more than the boy who cried "Wolf!" can be credited with foreseeing the eventual attack by Canis lupus.

[As noted above, there is a salutary and timely warning in Faulkner (2009).]

22. The real source of Lenin's 'semi-divine' knowledge of the alleged existence of infinite inter-connections (which everything supposedly has with everything else) is revealed here.

23. This idea is based on the observation that if borderline cases of relevant/non-relevant considerations are to be found anywhere, they will occur along the outer margin of these ever-expanding 'circles' of interconnections (to extend this metaphor a little), as the links each non-"rigid" comrade is actively considering extend outwards. Since the latter regions are in effect 'annular rings', their areas will increase in proportion to the square of the difference between the radii of the surrounding circles. Plainly, this means that as the supposed interconnections widen, borderline cases of 'relevance' will increase even faster, being proportional to the square of the aforementioned radial differences.

Given Lenin's analogy, this would mean that the more interconnections any given comrade includes -- in order to lower his or her 'non-rigidity coefficient', as it were --, the more (i.e., squared more!) borderline cases there will be for him/her to have to ignore because of issues of relevancy, or because of the time available.

In which case, the charge of "rigidity" would become increasingly apposite as greater numbers of such borderline 'relevancies' were progressively ignored. So, the less 'rigid' a comrade appeared to be, they more 'rigid' they would in fact have to become -- the more that anyone took Lenin's advice, the more "rigid" he/she would automatically appear to be! This is because (of necessity) he or she would have to ignore more borderline cases than would any other comrade who rejected Lenin's advice, and who incorporated fewer connections in his or her analysis on the basis of stricter relevancy clauses -- and, of course, because of the reasonable demands of "sound common sense".

Indeed, if the two-dimensional concentric circles mentioned above are replaced by three dimensional concentric spheres (as a more realistic image of the all-round development of knowledge), the situation would become even worse. Here the volume of each annular shell containing the next set of controversial 'irrelevances' would increase in proportion to the cube of the difference in their radii.

And if we hit this 'problem' with all our metaphorical might, and move to n-dimensional 'knowledge space' (which option we could only exclude if we wish to be accused of "rigidity", even here!), the situation would be worse still, and to the nth power!

24. In fact, had they taken Lenin's advice seriously, the Bolsheviks would still be discussing the October insurrection (with its infinite "mediacies"). Their meetings would surely have begun to resemble those of the "People's Front of Judea (Official)" portrayed in Monty Python's Life Of Brian.

Unsurprisingly, even Lenin omitted the infinite "mediacies" he said this hapless tumbler enjoyed. There is no evidence (in the written record of the meeting during which Lenin raised this (dare we say) irrelevant epistemological requirement) that he went on to list the infinite "mediacies" of anything -- or even so much as 10¹⁰ "mediacies" of a single thing in his entire life.

Even less surprising: Those who pay lip-service to the letter of Lenin's advice have yet to list so much as 0.001% of the large finite number of "mediacies" -- mentioned in the last sentence (i.e., 10¹⁰) -- about anything relevant to issues of concern to dialectics, let alone about sundry items of glassware.

25. From dialectical writings in general -- and from TAR in particular -- it is unclear whether every variety of reductionism is to be deprecated, or only certain versions.

Nevertheless, whatever successes reductionist strategies have enjoyed in the physical and natural sciences, these are, of course, glaringly unsuccessful in the social sciences. Why that is so will not be entered into here -- but, they have nothing to do with the sorts of reasons outlined in TAR. On reductionism in general, cf., Nagel (1961). [More on this in Essay Three Part Three.]

26. DM-Holism is examined in detail in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two.

27. Concerning the "infinite", see Blay (1998), Hunter (1996), Lavine (1994), Moore (2001), and Robinson (2003). For a clear outline of Wittgenstein's views on this topic, see Rodych (2000, 2007), and Shanker (1987), pp.161-219.

27a. It could be objected that even partial truths are still partially true. In which case, DM does not imply scepticism. The comments in this Essay seem to want to ignore that simple fact.

Or so it could be argued.

However, the above alleged fact is itself infinitely far from the truth (if Engels is to be believed), and as such it stands an incalculably high probability of being completely wrong -- that is, it does so this side of an infinite dialectical-meander through epistemological space, actually reaching dialectical Valhalla, allowing DM-fans finally to declare it to be an 'absolute truth'!

In MEC (and in PN), Lenin declared that the Ether was "objective", but that alleged fact turned out to be no such thing; there is no Ether (so we are told). If he could be so completely wrong here, then Lenin's putative fact cannot even be declared partially true. [More on this in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

Of course, much of this is connected with Hegel's criticism of what he calls a "bad infinity" (a criticism that must also apply to Engels and Lenin's epistemology, it's worth noting) -- counterposed to what he deemed a "genuine infinity"; but Hegel's solution (if such it may be called) is unavailable to Marxists -- at least, to those of us who determined to reject Idealism.

I will say more on this in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six. [However, for Hegel's views on infinity, see Houlgate (2006), pp.370-435.]

28. Objections to this particular analysis are fielded here, and in Note 29, below.

29. It might be objected that a function might be able to map results that could lie asymptotically close to a limit in one sense, but infinitely distant from it in another. For example, the curve y = 1/x is close to (but still infinitely far from) the x-axis, when, for instance, x = 1 x 10^100000000000.

However, as pointed out in the main body of this Essay: that analogy only works if the limit (in this case, y → 0 as x → +∞) can be shown to exist. Once again, Engels failed to do this with respect to the 'limit' implied by his metaphor.

Again, it could be argued that certain iterative functions in mathematics might yield infinite sequences -- and yet that does not mean that the distance between any intermediate value given by a partial sum of that function and the point toward which it is converging is itself infinite. For example, the sequence: 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +...+ 1/2^n-1 converges on 2 (as n → +∞), but none of the rational numbers (formed from the partial sums of this series) is "infinitely far" from 2.

This is not strictly correct, but even if it were the case, the above would have been an effective response had Engels bothered to prove that the limit he claims exists (implied by the asymptote metaphor) actually does exist; but since he didn't, it isn't.

The only way this sceptical conclusion can be avoided would be to deny that 'Absolute knowledge' is in any way infinitary. Clearly, that would place a condition on the object of knowledge before we knew what it was! Of course, it would also mean that several passages from the DM-classics (quoted in the main body of this Essay) would need to be revised/ignored/ditched, along with the above 'asymptote' metaphor, since they plainly do imply such an infinitary task. Indeed, they go further -- they actually say it's infinite.

30. Of course, these conclusions are completely crazy, but that is why they constitute an effective reductio of Engels's claims.

31. This is (partly) how this passage of Lenin's will be handled in Essay Thirteen Part One:

Before we examine whether Lenin's argument is successful in its own right, it is worth pointing out to the many dialecticians who question the deliverances of 'commonsense' (which I take to be the same as "naive realism", referred to by Lenin), and who also regale us with the 'appearance/reality' distinction, that 'commonsense' cannot be called into question if it is to act as a basis for the Lenin's theory of knowledge.

[Those who think this an unfair criticism should read on before they finally make up their minds.]

Despite this, and given the other complexities that DM introduces, Lenin's alleged foundation stone soon starts to look much less substantial. According to DM-epistemology, knowledge depends on the completion of an infinite process (the precise nature of which still awaits clear exposition) before the very first thing can be known about anything in the DM-"Totality" with anything other than infinite uncertainty.

We have already seen that this approach to knowledge means that nobody would be in a position to say what even a simple tumbler is before everything about everything is known.

In response, it could be argued that the above picture is just another unfair caricature of dialectical epistemology. In reply to that, it is worth emphasising that any objector who raises this point would similarly be in no position to assert it successfully -- unless and until we are given a clear account of DM-epistemology. After over 150 years, we are still waiting...

Indeed, give DM-epistemology itself, no would be able to assert this and hope to be correct until they too had completed the aforementioned infinite pilgrimage to Dialectical Mecca!

Dialectical 'knowledge' of any sort is permanently locked in sceptical hell, if Engels and Lenin are to be believed.

Even so, it is worth reflecting on the sort of response that, say, a Phenomenalist might make to Lenin's claim that his theory begins with "naïve" beliefs of ordinary folk, and builds from there. She might wonder what, for instance, the word "image" is doing in such prosaic surroundings. Indeed, she might even suggest that if we were to ask the average man/woman about what he/she knows of the world, the word "image" would appear nowhere in the reply.

Hence, not only is the aforementioned dialectical meander through infinite epistemological space counter-productive (since it implies permanent and infinite ignorance of everything and anything), it begins in the wrong place! 'Commonsense' -- whatever it is -- neither starts nor ends with images. [To be sure, certain forms of phenomenalist psychology might do this, but 'commonsense' does not.]

It is worth pressing this point home: there is no evidence that the "naïve" beliefs of anyone -- not even those of DM-fans -- are based on imagery of any sort; but there is much to suggest that they are not. Hence, there is no evidence that ordinary people or sophisticated socialists believe the following:

"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world…." [Lenin (1972), p.69.]...

In order to see this, consider the following example; suppose worker NN asserted the following:

L1: "That policeman hit me over the head with a truncheon."

Now, only a rather desperate defender of the Police would respond with:

L2: "You are mistaken. What you experienced was in fact only the image of a policeman clubbing you."

We can be reasonably sure that this worker does not need to wait for the 'asymptotic-train-of-knowledge' to hit the 'absolute-buffers-of-eternal-certainty' before he/she can claim to know what happened on the picket line when the Police attacked it. Indeed, such a worker would be right to feel angry if told that his/her knowledge of the uniformed assailant was only relative and partial. In fact, we can be quite certain now (without the presence of an accompanying image -- and even before the epistemological train leaves the dialectical sidings on its endless meander to nowhere in particular) that this worker knows he/she was hit on the head and who was responsible for it.

Indeed, this would be the line Socialist Worker and other revolutionary papers would take if one of its correspondents witnessed Police violence -- in cases like the Police riot in Chicago in 1968, or in Red Lion Square London in 1974, or in relation to the death of Blair Peach in Southall 1979, the Miners' Strike, the picketing at Wapping, the march against the Nazis at Welling, the Police riots in Trafalgar Square in 1990, those in London in April 2009, those in Genoa in 2001 and 2003, or even those in New York and San Francisco in 2003, etc., etc. In fact, their readers would know precisely when they could stop trusting Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers: just as soon as they began reporting events in the way that Lenin characterised "objectivity", or if they ever started referring to the "images" in people's heads as evidence supporting claims made about Police violence, as opposed to the incidents themselves, video footage, witness reports and medical data (etc.) --, or if they were foolish enough to insist that every "mediacy" had to be taken into consideration before anyone could decide what had happened on the picket line or demonstration, and what to do about it.

Not surprisingly then, in the Miner's Strike (etc.) the actual incidents were reported in Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers; they wisely omitted all reference to "images", and to "partial" or "relative knowledge", let alone to any obvious "asymptotes" that might otherwise be only of interest to sundry Idealists.

In practice, not one single revolutionary paper begins with "images" (nor do they bang on about concepts converging on reality, to eternity) -- not even the very worst Union bureaucrat would come out with these sorts of excuses for further prevarication!

In fact, it is a little surprising that die-hard supporters of Lenin's theory never point out to the editors of Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers where they are going wrong in reporting events in the real world. Why hasn't a single admirer of MEC written to these papers to insist that reports of, say, BNP violence be replaced with descriptions of images in victim's heads? Whatever one thinks of the letters in Marxist papers, unless they are heavily censored, not a single one ever points out that these papers' reports are defective because they record the actual events in the world, recklessly ignoring images inside the skulls of observers and victims alike.

Anyway, despite what he said, Lenin himself did not actually begin with the "naïve" beliefs of mankind. In fact, he did quite the opposite: he undermined them from the start (indeed, he began with the theories of previous ruling-class hacks). He did this by reducing these ordinary beliefs to images. The same could be said of any socialist (reporter or otherwise) who thought to do likewise by writing about the images of Police brutality inflicted on the images of miners, which occurred in their image of Orgreave, in an image of 1984, in any paper (or image of one).

In fact, Lenin's starting point here is consistent with what was highlighted earlier as the open denigration of the vernacular (and the experiences of ordinary people) by DM-theorists --, which tactic dialecticians have copied from the aforementioned ruling-class hacks. [More on this in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

Clearly this is the real "copy theory of knowledge": reproduce the ideas and modes of thought of alien-class thinkers -- make sure your ideas an exact image of theirs...

It could be argued here that Lenin is in fact interested in relative truth and objective knowledge, whereas the above would abolish both of these, thus lapsing into some form of relativism, postmodernism, or subjectivism.

In answer, it is worth pointing out that DM-epistemology (as outlined by Engels and Lenin) itself implies that knowledge will always be infinitely far from the truth. So, far from Lenin being interested in 'relative' truth'', his own comments show he was actually talking about almost total error.

Now, I am neither a relativist nor a postmodernist; philosophically, as I pointed out in Essay One, I am a nothing-at-all-ist -- and that should not be taken to be the same a nihilism, but a total rejection of all philosophy as just so much hot air. Hence the above accusation is itself wide of the mark.

32. Plenty more examples here.

The retailing of this list does not, of course, imply I concur with every such 'revision'!

33. Recall, once more, that this way of analysing knowledge is diametrically opposed to the approach I would normally wish to adopt. It is manifestly unworkable, and is merely being deployed here as a reductio of this hopeless 'theory'.

This topic is examined again in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two, and in Essay Thirteen.

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--------, (2009a), Zombie Capitalism. Global Crisis And The Relevance Of Marx (Bookmarks).

--------. (2009b), 'The Slump Of The 1930s And The Crisis Today', International Socialism 121, pp.21-48.

Harris, N. (1978), The Mandate Of Heaven. Marx And Mao In Modern China (Quartet Books). [Part VI can also be found here.]

Hegel, G. (1999), Science Of Logic (Humanity Books).

Hitchcock, C. (2004) (ed.), Contemporary Debates In The Philosophy Of Science (Blackwell).

Hore, C. (1987), China: Whose Revolution? (SWP Publications).

--------, (1991), The Road To Tiananmen Square (Bookmarks).

Houlgate, S. (2006), The Opening Of Hegel's Logic (Purdue University Press).

Hoveman, R. (1999a), 'Brenner And Crisis: A Critique', International Socialism 82, pp.57-74.

--------, (1999b), 'Altered States', Socialist Review 233, p.10.

Hull, D. (1988),  Science As A Process. An Evolutionary Account Of The Social And Conceptual Development Of Science (University of California Press).

Hunter, G. (1996), Metalogic (University of California Press, 2^nd ed.).

Jackson, T. (1936), Dialectics (Lawrence & Wishart). [Part of this work can be found here.]

Kidron, M. (1967), 'The Permanent Arms Economy', International Socialism, First Series, 28, pp.8-12.

--------, (1970), Western Capitalism Since The War (Penguin, 2^nd ed.). Part One of this can be found here.

--------, (1974), Capitalism And Theory (Pluto Press).

--------, (1977), 'Two Insights Don't Make A Theory', International Socialism, First Series, 100.

Kliman, A. (2008), 'A Crisis For The Centre Of The System', International Socialism 120, pp.61-76.

--------, (2009), 'Pinning The Blame On The System', International Socialism 124, pp.85-94.

Kukla, A., and Walmsley, J. (2004), 'A Theory's Predictive Success Does Not Warrant Belief In The Unobservable Entities In Postulates', in Hitchcock (2004), pp.133-48.

Laudan, L. (1981), 'A Confutation Of Convergent Realism', Philosophy of Science 48 (1981), pp.19-49; reprinted in Boyd, et al. (1991), pp.223-45, Papineau (1996), pp.107-38, and Curd and Cover (1998), pp.1114-1135.

--------, (1984), 'Realism Without The Real', Philosophy of Science 51, pp.156-62.

Lavine, S. (1994), Understanding The Infinite (Harvard University Press).

Lenin, V. (1921), 'Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation And The Mistakes Of Comrades Trotsky And Bukharin', reprinted in Lenin (1980), pp.70-106.

--------, (1961), Philosophical Notebooks, Collected Works, Volume 38 (Progress Publishers).

--------, (1972), Materialism And Empirio-Criticism (Foreign Languages Press).

--------, (1980), On The Question Of Dialectics (Progress Publishers).

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Lyons, T. (2002), 'Scientific Realism And The Pessimistic Meta-Modus Tollens', in Clarke and Lyons (2002), pp.63-90.

--------, (2003), 'Explaining The Success Of Scientific Theory', in Mitchell (2003), pp.891-901.

Mandel, E. (1975), Late Capitalism (Verso).

--------, (1995), Long Waves Of Capitalist Development (Verso, 2^nd ed.).

Marx, K. (1968), Theses On Feuerbach, in Marx and Engels (1968a), pp.28-30.

Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1968a), Selected Works In One Volume (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (1968b), The Communist Manifesto, in Marx and Engels (1968a), pp.31-63.

Moore, A. (2001), The Infinite (Routledge, 2^nd ed.).

Rees, J. (1998), The Algebra Of Revolution (Routledge).

Robinson, G. (2003), Philosophy And Mystification. A Reflection On Nonsense And Clarity (Fordham University Press).

Rodych, V. (2000), 'Wittgenstein's Critique Of Set Theory', Southern Journal of Philosophy 38, pp.281-319.

--------, (2007), 'Wittgenstein's Philosophy Of Mathematics', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Schwartz, J. (1999), Sudden Origins. Fossils, Genes, And The Emergence Of Species (John Wiley & Sons).

Shanker, S. (1987), Wittgenstein And The Turning-Point In The Philosophy Of Mathematics (State University of New York Press).

Spirkin, A. (1983), Dialectical Materialism (Progress Publishers).

Stalin, J. (1976a), Problems Of Leninism (Foreign Languages Press).

--------, (1976b), 'Dialectical And Historical Materialism', in Stalin (1976a), pp.835-73.

Sustar, L. (2007), 'Where Is Venezuela Going?', International Socialist Review 54.

Thalheimer, A. (1936), Introduction To Dialectical Materialism. The Marxist World-View (Covici Friede Publishers).

Trotsky, L. (1971), In Defense Of Marxism (New Park).

Van Fraassen, B. (1980), The Scientific Image (Oxford University Press).

Woods, A., and Grant, T. (1995/2007), Reason In Revolt. Marxism And Modern Science (Wellred Publications).

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