This page might take a few seconds to load because of the many YouTube videos embedded
in it.
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play these videos. As far as I can tell, they play as intended in other Browsers.
However, if you have
Privacy Badger [PB] installed, they won't play in Google Chrome unless you
disable PB for this site.
[Having said that,
I have just discovered that they will play in IE11 if you have
upgraded to Windows 10! It looks like the problem is with Windows 7 and earlier
versions of that operating system.]
If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the
links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View'
(in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and add this
site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's browser,
Edge, automatically
renders these links compatible; Windows 10 does likewise.
However, if you are using Windows 10, IE11 and Edge unfortunately appear to colour these links
somewhat erratically. They are meant to be mid-blue, but those two browsers
render them intermittently light blue, yellow, purple and red!
Firefox and Chrome reproduce them correctly.
Several browsers also appear
to underline
these links erratically. Many are underscored boldly in black, others more
lightly in blue! They are all meant to be the latter.
Finally, if you are
viewing this with Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols
I have used;
Mozilla often replaces them with an "º'.
There are no such problems with Chrome, Edge, or Internet Explorer, as far as I
can determine.
Readers are advised that the material presented in this Essay should be read in conjunction with Essay
Nine
Part One
(where several conclusions I seem to take for granted below were substantiated), as well as Essay Ten
Part One(where this part of the story has been concluded).
Some of my critics have claimed that 'dialectics' is harmless,
or that it has had no negative impact on revolutionary socialism, so why not
just ignore it? This Essay aims to show both of those
contentions are seriously mistaken.
Nevertheless, it is important to
emphasise what I am not doing in this Essay: I am not arguing that
Dialectical Materialism/Materialist Dialectics [DM/MD] have helped ruin Marxism
and therefore they are false. My argument is in fact as follows:
The
Essays published at this site
show that DM/MD make not one ounce of sense -- indeed, to such an extent
that it is impossible to
determine whether they are trueor false. Hence, it is no big surprise
to find out they
have not only
helped cripple our movement, they have assisted in no small way in its
degeneration and
corruption.
[Why I include degeneration and corruption will also
be explained below; for example,
here and
here.]
Nor am I blaming all our woes on DM/MD
(note the italicised word "helped" the last but one paragraph). However,
that topic will be
the main theme of Essay Ten
Part One,
so readers are directed there for more details.
Our 'woes' clearly have several diverse
causes; nevertheless, this Essay highlights two of the main reasons why Dialectical Marxism has
now become almost synonymous with long-term failure, corruption and sectarian in-fighting.
Namely (and in order of importance):
(a) The class origin, socialisation, and class position of the founders of our movement,
as well as those who now lead it or control its ideas; and,
(b)
The philosophical theory with which they have unfortunately saddled Marxism.
[Note also the
use of the term "Dialectical Marxism". I am not
criticising Marxism, nor am I claiming it has failed -- the non-dialectical version hasn't been
road-tested yet!]
Of course, there are
other contributory reasons why our movement has been such a long-term failure,
but the few revolutionaries who are even prepared to acknowledge
our appalling record are already well aware of these
other factors. Hence, in what follows I have largely ignored the latter
causes. That
doesn't mean they aren't important, but I would merely be raking over familiar territory if I included them in this
Essay, making it even longer than it already is!
Readers new to my ideas would be wrong
conclude from the title of this Essay (or, indeed, this site) that it is all
about DM and the effect it has had on Marxism. This Essay and this site are
just as much focussed on the class origin of the founders of our movement, and of
those who currently control its ideas, as they are on DM.
As such, they break entirely new ground -- as anyone who reads on will soon
discover --, providing for the very first time, anywhere**, aHistorical Materialist explanation why our movement so often fails and why much that we on the
Revolutionary Left touch sooner-or-later becomes corrupt, fragmentary and
then turns to dust.
(**) This
particular comment is no longer strictly true; a partial
explanation for the malaise that has afflicted the revolutionary left for over a century has now been posted
here. I have reproduced the core of its argument
below. While this 'new' explanation echoes Trotsky's analysis of
substitutionism (a topic covered
more fully in
Part One of this
Essay), it omits:
(a) Any mention
of the wider class-based and structural problems our movement has faced, and
still faces; and,
(b) It completely ignores the historical and ideological
roots of that fatal defect; nor does it consider:
(c)
Why this keeps happening, and will keep on happening unless we recognise the
problem and its causes.
I
have addressed those issues at this site, but
more specifically in the material presented below.
Another analysis, which I think also
beaks new ground, has just been posted
here, up-dated
here.
While it is encouraging to see comrades
(at last!) attempting to account
for
the serial disasters that regularly engulf the far-left (in political and
sociological terms), the analyses that have
so far appeared, including the above two, still refuseto consider
-- even as a remote possibility -- the issues
raised in and by the previous handful of paragraphs. Indeed, the author of the second of
the above articles, who is also the owner
of the blog in question, even refused to post my contribution to the debate! Below,
I also endeavour to explain
why such discussion has been deliberately curtailed, why debate on this issue is still
heavily constrained
and why certain, shall we say, 'sensitive' topics are considered taboo.
In fact, they don't even make it onto the edge of the radar screen.
Update 01/01/2014: I ought to add
that my latest contribution, brief though it is, has just been published at the
above site!
These untoward events
-- i.e., the many disasters and debacles experienced by the far-left -- were predictable given
the things you will read below, as are the many more we will witness in the
years to come
if what I have to say is ignored. [Which it will be! That is also explained
in what follows.]
Unfortunately,
long-term failure,
sectarian in-fighting, fragmentation, expulsions and bureaucratic cover-ups appear to be the only
areas where fellow revolutionaries display genuine expertise or have won any notable
'success'!
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As is the case with all my
work, nothing here should be read as an attack
either on Historical Materialism [HM] -- a scientific theory I fully accept --, or,
indeed,
on revolutionary socialism. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the
working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a revolutionary
thirty-five years ago.
My aim is simply to assist in the
scientific development of Marxism by:
(i) Demolishing a
dogma that has in
my opinion seriously
damaged our movement from its inception:
DM -- or, in its more 'political' form, MD;
(ii) Exposing the class origin and class position of
leading comrades who
invented, accepted or who now promulgate this theory; and,
(iii) Revealing
at least
one source of the countless splits, debacles and disasters we have witnessed
on the far-left over the last hundred or so years.
The
difference between
DM/MD and HM as I see it is explained
here.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Several readers have
complained about the number of links I have added to these Essays because they
say it makes them very difficult to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly
lodge that complaint since they believe everything is interconnected, and
that must surely apply even to Essays that
attempt to debunk that very idea. However, to those
who find such links do make these Essays difficult to read I say this: ignore them -- unless you want to access
further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain
topic fires your interest.
Others wonder why I have linked to familiar
subjects and issues that are part of common knowledge (such as the names of
recent Presidents of the
USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, the titles of
popular films, or certain words
that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays
are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't
assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally
well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit
of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies',
or any at
all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them
I will continue to provide.
Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links
connect to
web-pages that regularly change their
URLs, or which vanish from the
Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent
that they have changed or have disappeared I can't possibly keep on top of
this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers
informed me
of any dead links they happen to notice.
In general, links to 'Haloscan'
no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to
RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
I have also linked
to Woods and Grant's book, Reason in Revolt, in this Essay several times,
but the link I have used now only takes the reader to parts of the second edition
instead of the entire book, as used to be the case. However, anyone who wants to
access a complete version of that edition can now do so
here. I haven't changed the scores of links to the old
site in what follows since they used to take the reader to
specific chapters of that book, but that faculty is no longer available, it
seems.
Some
of the links I have posted below -- which were meant to take the reader to
Richard Seymour's blog, Lenin's Tomb -- no
longer seem to work, either. It now appears there has been a slight change in
that blog's URL. It will take me some time to correct them all!
For those who might find the length of this Essay somewhat daunting
-- it is, after all, about the same length as a 500 page book! -- I have summarised
some of its main points
here.
Others who might still be puzzled by the length of this Essay should
perhaps reflect on the fact that anything
shorter would hardly do justice to this crucially important and universallyneglected
topic.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
A section devoted to the on-going crisis
in the UK-SWP that used to form part of this preamble
has now been moved
since
these opening comments were becoming a little too long. A new section: 'The
Last Death Throes Of The UK-SWP?' has just been added
to the Appendices as a result of the latest wave of resignations following on
the December 2013 Conference. [On that
particular
crisis, see also
here and
here in the same Appendix.]
Update 09/06/2014: We now learn of
new accusations of rape, this time in the Swedish Trotskyist, Socialist
Justice Party (affiliated with the
CWI). More details
here (trigger warning: descriptions of sexual violence),
alongside allegations that this is a historic problem that stretches across the entire left.
Update 13/12/2016:
Two
years on and
this is the only new information I could find on-line about the above
allegations.
I am only publishing this on the Internet because several comrades whose
opinions I respect urged me to do so, even though the work you see before you is less
than half complete. Many of my ideas are still in the developmental stage, as it
were, and need much work and time devoted to them before they mature.
In addition, this Essay has been written
from within the Trotskyist tradition, but because I have found my work is
being read by other Marxists I have had to incorporate an analysis of the
negative influence that items (a) and (b)
above have also had on Communism and Maoism. Since I am far less
familiar with those two political currents, many of my remarks in that area
are even more tentative than they are elsewhere. I will, of course, add more details
(and precision) as my researches
continue.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Independently of the above, it is worth pointing
out that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality",
and "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) -- used at this site in connection with
Traditional Philosophy and the concepts that underpin DM/MD (upside down
or 'the right way up') -- aren't meant to imply that all or even
most members of various ruling-classes actually invented this way of thinking or of
seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero,
and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to
highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the
interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them.
Up until recently this
dogmatic approach to knowledge had almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who relied on
ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run the
system
for the elite.
However, that theme will become the
central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published; until then, the reader is
directed
here,
here and
here for further
details.)
[Exactly
how and why the above applies to DM has been explained in other Essays
published at this site (especially
here,
here
and here).
In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the
argument (but this time written with absolute beginners in mind)
here.]
It is worth pointing out, too, that a good 50% of my case
against DM/MD (along with much that I have to say about the class origin and
class position of leading Marxists) has been relegated to the End Notes.
Indeed, in this particular Essay, most of the supporting evidence is to
be found there! That policy has been adopted in order to allow the main body of
the Essay to flow a little more smoothly. If readers want to appreciate more
fully my case against petty-bourgeois Marxism and its theory -- DM/MD -- they
will need to read this material, too. In many respects I have qualified or
greatly
amplified what I have to say in the main body of this Essay. I have also raised objections to my own arguments (some obvious, many not -- and some that will
no doubt have occurred to
the reader), which I have then proceeded to neutralise.
I explain why I have adopted this tactic in
Essay One.
If readers skip this material, then my
response to any
qualms or objections they might have will be missed, as will my expanded comments,
supporting evidence
and clarifications.
Since I have been debating this theory
with comrades for well over 30 years, I have heard all the
objections there are! (Links to many of the more recent 'debates' on the
Internet can be found
here.)
Anyone who can't be bothered to plough
through all the material I have presented in this Essay can use the
Quick Links below, or consult the summaries of key points I have posted
here,
here
and
here.
A very basic outline of my overall objections
to DM/MD can be accessed here; why I embarked on this project is
explained
here.
Anyone puzzled by the unremittingly
hostile tone I have adopted toward DM/MD (and, indeed, toward anyone who
propagates either or both of these
theories/methods) should read
this
if they want to know
why.
Some parts of this Essay are, unfortunately, a little
repetitive. I am in fact trying to make the same point from several different
angles. An "all-round" perspective, as Lenin might have said.
Incidentally, I have no
illusions that this Essay (or any of the other Essays published at this site)
will make a blind bit of difference, or even that it will get a fair hearing
from the DM-faithful. Dialectically distracted comrades cling to
DM/MD for non-rational reasons (explored
fully in what follows). It will take revolutionary workers themselves
to rejuvenate our movement and save dialecticians from themselves. This will
only happen if or when the proletariat rid the world of the alienating forces that make it
attractive for the DM-faithful to look to mystical concepts ('contradictions', 'the
negation of the negation', 'unities of opposites', 'determinations',
'mediations', 'moments' -- upside
down or 'the right way up') to help explain, and thus influence, social development.
What I hope to achieve is prevent younger comrades from catching this
Hermetic Virus.
Finally, in what follows I am dealing with
all forms of Dialectical Marxism, not just with Dialectical
Trotskyism (or even with the structure and ideology of the UK-SWP!). Some of the things
I have to say therefore apply to all forms of Dialectical Marxism, while all of
them apply to some.
[On the almost identical use of DM across
all forms of
Dialectical Marxism, see here and here.
Again, on the difference between HM and DM, see
here.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As of May 2024, this Essay is just
over 227,500 words long. As noted earlier, a muchshorter version of some of its main
points can be accessed
here;
an even shorter one,
here.
This Essay was becoming
rather unwieldy so I have moved the Appendices to a
separate area.
The
material below doesn't represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is
merely 'work in progress'.
Anyone using these links must remember that
they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier
sections.
Also, if your Firewall/Browser has a 'pop-up' blocker, you
might need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or the links above and below
won't work!
I have adjusted the
font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired
vision can read what I have to say. If the text is still either too
big or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!
This half of Essay Nine deals with several
of the important background reasons for the long-term failure of Dialectical
Marxism, linking it with the class origin and class position of those who
control, or have controlled, its ideas and party structures. It also
exposes the reasons why dialecticians cling to
DM
like terminally insecure limpets, despite
the damage it has done to Marxism
and the fact that it has presided over
150 years
of almost total failure.
In these respects Part Two of Essay Nine is a continuation of the argument developed in Part One, which is further elaborated
upon in Essay Ten Part One
--
where the usual
replies advanced by dialecticians to allegations like
the above will be dealt with -- alongside several
more general, background theoretical
issues (concerning the relation between theory and practice).
[Spoiler alert: In the aforementioned
Essay it will be shown
that truth can't be tested in practice, and that even if it could,
practice has returned a very clear verdict: Dialectical Marxism has been refuted
by history. Notice the use of the phrase "Dialectical
Marxism", here -- and not "Marxism" --, as noted above, non-Dialectical
Marxism hasn't been road tested yet. Some might think that the phrase "non-Dialectical
Marxism" is an
oxymoron;
I have dealt with that response
here and
here.]
In which case,
dialecticians would be well advised to stop appealing to practice as proof
of the correctness of their theory.
In Essay Ten Part One, I
will also reveal
why the claim that Dialectical Marxism has been
a long-term and
abject failure is no exaggeration.
[To save on needless repetition, from now on,
when readers encounter the abbreviation "DM" ("Dialectical Materialism") on its own, they should
in general view
this as incorporating a reference to MD ("Materialist Dialectics"), as well -- and/or
vice versa.]
Even though it had been blindinglyobvious to many for some time, several comrades
have recently voiced concern that the revolutionary left is stagnating, if not
experiencing steady and long-term
decline.
Here, for example, is
Richard Seymour:
"The 'strategic perplexity' of the left
confronted with the gravest crisis of capitalism in generations has been hard to
miss. Social democracy continues down the road of social liberalism. The
far-left has struggled to take advantage of ruling class disarray. Radical left
formations have tended to stagnate at best." [Seymour
(2012), p.191. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
Of course, as Richard points out, there are two notable exceptions to
this generalisation -- the gains made by the electoral left in Greece and
France (although, by
mid-July 2015 it
was clear that the
'advances' made by Syriza weren't
worth the paper on which voters had voted for them -- confirming yet again
thatnot even
reformist socialism can be built in one country!), but it is far from clear that the 'Dialectical Left' have benefitted
(or will benefit) from this in any way. In addition, the anti-austerity
left in Spain, spearheaded by
Podemos, began to make
significant electoral gains in 2015. Finally, the UK
Labour Party left has experienced a
meteoric rise in numbers culminating in the
election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Despite this, the 'dialectical
left' has seen no corresponding growth.
A movement that is constantly
fragmenting, and which maintains an almost incessant internecine war between its member parties,
isn't likely to grow to a size that will threaten even a handful of bosses or
local police chiefs, let alone the entire capitalist class.
Nor is it ever likely to impress radicalised workers
or the young.
"There is
no question that the
global recession on the back of the constant 'war on terror' has produced a
radicalisation. Anti-capitalism is widespread. Evidence comes from the sheer
scale of popular mobilisations over the last decade. Once,
achieving a demonstration of 100,000 in Britain was regarded as an immense
achievement. When grizzled lefties looked back on the demo of that size against
the Vietnam War in October 1968, tears welled in their eyes. Now a London demo
has to be counted in hundreds of thousands, to be a success.
"Yet this radicalisation, in
Britain at least, has not been accompanied by the growth of any of the
political currents which you would expect to benefit from this anti-capitalism.
And I mean any, even those who reject the label 'Party'. The situation the
left finds itself in is worse than when it entered the new century.... No other period of
radicalisation in British history has experienced this lack of any
formal political expression. It's not that people opposing austerity,
war and much else are without politics. They are busy devouring
articles, books, online videos and much else." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases added; some paragraphs merged.]
"Let's start with a simple observation:
the
revolutionary left is not growing. Indeed I am perhaps being generous in
referring merely to stagnation rather than decline.... Yet we live in an age in which many revolutionary socialist groups predict a
growth in the revolutionary left -- including whatever their own organisation is
-- and indeed sometimes speak as if it's already happening. So for someone from
within the revolutionary left -- like me -- to make this comment may be somewhat
uncharacteristic. There are two reasons why this stagnation might surprise people and therefore
requires explanation. One is historical precedent. Previous periods of systemic
crisis -- whether the First World War, the 1930s or the post-1968 era -- have
led to a growth in the revolutionary left or in other sections of the Left (or
both). So shouldn't that be happening now?
"The second reason is that it's not like we have a shortage of resistance to
capitalism, or particular aspects of capitalist crisis, in the current period.
Shouldn't such phenomena -- Arab revolutions, Occupy, general strikes in
southern Europe, a widespread anti-establishment mood etc -- find expression in
the growth of the revolutionary left?" [Quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added; some paragraphs merged.]
"[T]here
have been some notable, in some cases historic, movements of resistance. The
global anti-capitalist movement which began with mass demonstrations against the
World Trade Organisation in Seattle in 1999 was a signal event. It brought
together climate change and environmental activists with trade union
demonstrators -- the famous teamster-turtle alliance. It named the enemy in the
most general political terms: capitalism. And it self-identified as an
'anti-capitalist' movement. This was new. I remember watching the BBC main news
bulletin where the commentator said 'anti-capitalist protestors took over the
centre of Seattle today'. I'd rarely heard the BBC use the word 'capitalist',
let alone the words 'anti-capitalist' before. This term became the hallmark of
many demonstrations to this day. It had a great strength: an immediate
identification of the entire system as the problem. But there was also a
corresponding weakness: a much lower level of direct workplace struggle than in
the 1968-1975 period.
"Even so the
movement's political strength became greater as the anti-war movement arose,
involving many of the same forces, in response to the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq in 2002-2003. Again, just as the anti-capitalist movement had
popularised to millions of ordinary citizens language once the exclusive
property of the left, so the rise of the mass anti-war movement made
anti-imperialism a mass popular force on a scale that even exceeded that
achieved by the anti-Vietnam protests. At the same time, and partly as a
consequence, establishment politics became hollowed out to an unprecedented
degree. Faced with mainstream parties all of whom embraced neo-liberalism at
home and defended imperialism abroad the old system began to crack. Political
party membership fell and turnout in elections declined. Opinion polls revealed
that public faith in politicians, the police, the media and other pillars of the
status quo were at historic lows.
"And yet at the
same time the organisation of the left was also facing a crisis. The Labour Left
has probably never been weaker. The Communist Party left is much reduced after
the body blow of the East European revolutions of 1989, far longer and deeper in
their effect on the left than many thought at the time. The revolutionary far
left has, in all too many cases, retreated into sectarian isolation. In fact the central paradox of left politics can
be formulated in this way: at a time when an unprecedented level of ideological
radicalism have seized large sections of the working class the far left has been
unable to strengthen itself because it is wedded to 1970s models of industrial
militancy which prevents it from understanding the tasks before it." [Preface to
the new edition of The ABC of Socialism, quoted from
here. Accessed 21/06/2014.
Bold emphases and link added; several paragraphs merged. As we have seen, while
the Labour Left did recover dramatically (at least for a few years prior to
2019), the
revolutionary left still hasn't.]
Of course, Rees's explanation for the failure of the
far-left to make any progress is itself misplaced; even sections of the left
that have abandoned "1970's models of industrial militancy" have made little or
no progress. We must look elsewhere for the reason why the revolutionary left
has signally failed to connect with recent waves of radicalisation, and
explore areas
dialecticians like Rees stillrefuse to examine. Even worse, they will reject out-of-hand any attempt to do so.
It is quite remarkable that
comrades who will, in one breath, extol the virtues of
HM
but will, in
another,
refuse to apply it to the far-left itself.
"The paradox of the present
situation is that capital is weak -- but the radical left is much weaker.
Alternatively, capital is economically weak, but much stronger politically, less
because of mass ideological commitment to the system than because of the
weakness of credible anti-capitalist alternatives....
"By contrast today, nearly
seven years after the financial crash began, the radical left has not been
weaker for decades. We have seen the following pattern over the past 15 years.
The period between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s can be described as an era
of good feelings for the radical left. In the immediate aftermath of the
collapse of the Stalinist regimes in 1989-91 neoliberalism had seemed
all-conquering. But the Seattle protests of November 1999 marked the beginning
of a wave of new movements of resistance demanding another kind of globalisation
that were based not just in the North but in parts of the Global South. The
events of 9/11 and the proclamation of a global state of emergency by the
administration of George W Bush provoked an extension of resistance from the
economic to the political, as the altermondialiste [Anti-Globalisation -- RL]
networks that had emerged from Seattle and the July 2001 protests at Genoa
launched the anti-war movement responsible for the unprecedented day of global
protest against the invasion of Iraq on 15 February 2003....
"But May 2005 represented the
high-water mark for the radical left in Europe. Afterwards the process went into
reverse. Sometimes this took the form of organisational implosion: the splits in
the
SSP
in 2006 and in Respect in 2007 removed the most serious left electoral
challenges the Labour Party had faced for decades. Sometimes there were
electoral reverses, such as that suffered by the Bloco in 2011. Sometimes it was
both:
Rifondazione
cracked up as a result of both electoral eclipse and a series
of splits following its participation in 2006-8 in the centre-left coalition
government of
Romano Prodi, who continued the neoliberal and pro-war policies of
their predecessors.
"Disarray set in among the
radical left before the onset of the economic crisis: thus
George Galloway
launched his attack on the role of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) within
Respect in August 2007, just as the credit crunch was beginning to develop. But
the process of fragmentation has continued against the background of the crisis.
Although developments in France have exercised a major influence on the radical
left internationally, new political formations came relatively late there: the
Parti
de Gauche, which split from the
Socialist Party
in 2008, and the
Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste
(NPA) launched at the beginning of 2009 by the
LCR. But, bested electorally by the Parti de Gauche and its allies (mainly
the Communist Party) in the Front de Gauche, the NPA suffered an agonising
internal crisis in 2011-12. This ended with the departure in July 2012 of
several hundred members, including many of the historic cadre of the LCR, to
form
Gauche Anticapitaliste
as part of the
Front
de Gauche.
"Meanwhile, the other major
organisation of the European revolutionary left, the SWP, suffered no less than
four splits -- one in the immediate aftermath of the Respect crisis in 2010, one
involving a group of mainly young members in Glasgow in 2011, and two associated
with the intense crisis in 2012-13 precipitated by allegations of rape against a
leading member. This crisis saw about 700 members (including, once again, some
of the historic cadre of the SWP) leave and three new far-left groups formed. Of
course, this particular drama underlines that the splits had very specific
driving forces: setting the SWP's troubles in context in no way dismisses the
issues of oppression and women's liberation that for many were the central
issue. But the broader pattern seems undeniable, as is indicated by the internal
divisions that affected the largest far-left group in the United States, the
International Socialist Organization, in 2013-14....
"Some 35 years ago, at the
dawn of the neoliberal era, Chris Harman wrote a memorable analysis
in this journalof the crisis the European revolutionary left was then
experiencing. That crisis was much more severe and concentrated than what we are
currently experiencing because it represented the collapse, in an astonishingly
short period of time, of many of the quite substantial far-left formations that
had emerged during the great upturn in workers' struggles of the late 1960s and
early 1970s -- formations that had grown very quickly, but that proved to lack
the political strength to cope with the downturn in class struggle that
developed in the second half of the 1970s. The present crisis is much more
diffuse, but in some ways more threatening, because the revolutionary left is
much weaker than it was in 1979. This makes the attempts to split and even to
destroy organisations such as the NPA and the SWP so irresponsible. These
parties represent decades of concentrated efforts by thousands of militants to
develop credible revolutionary alternatives. They are not to be thrown away
lightly." [Callinicos
(2014), pp.111-36.
Links and bold emphases added. Since the above was written, the ISO has
imploded, and has now disbanded
itself.]
In the above
article, Callinicos makes no attemptto apply a class analysis to this
decline -- and this decline is long-term, too, onethat has been
on-going now for several generations despite the upturns Callinicos mentions (which turned out to be temporary,
'false dawns', anyway). For far
too many the revolutionary left is now largely toxic. Callinicos not only fails to
acknowledge this, he ignores his own and the UK-SWP's role in helping to accelerate this
steady decline. To be
sure, Callinicos discusses several other plausible factors that have contributed
to the current weakness of the far-left, but he signally failed to explain why
it has a propensity to fragment (he just notes that it happens) or its
tendency to decay into crises of corruption (which, in the case of the UK-SWP,
he briefly mentions, but soon shrugs off, blaming others for its inevitable
consequences).
"[Break]
from the toy Bolshevism that has led to the dominance of monsters like
Gerry Healy
and to grotesque fractures such have been discussed on these pages, a practice
that has meant the Left has failed to grow in circumstances that have looked
favourable.... The Left
can point to some successes out of proportion with its size: the
Anti Nazi
League, the poll tax campaign, the Stop the War campaign. Have these
mobilisations resulted in any genuine lasting and durable implantation of the
Left? I'm afraid not. It has to be discussed why not. The lessons have to be
learned. Then maybe left organisations can handle incidents such as the one
which triggered this whole debate with integrity and humanity and not a squalid
clumsiness that discredits it." [Quoted from
here; accessed 13/01/2013.
Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. Links added.]
This malaise isn't just a UK or even a
European phenomenon; here are the thoughts of a US comrade:
"We should
start with the fact that the objective situation is tough and that the left
everywhere is having a hard time. Practically no organization or model has
succeeded as a consistent challenge to the neoliberal order, and the most
inspiring efforts in Greece and Egypt have stalled and been savagely turned
back, respectively. The US working class is disorganized and reeling under blow
after blow of austerity. The picture is defeat and flaming wreckage all across
the front line, and, in Richard Seymour's words, pointing to the example of 'the
CTU [Chicago Teachers Union -- RL] will not save us, comrades.' The American
capitalist class has done pretty well under Obama's leadership, and
profitability is at record levels (though they're not out of the woods of the
Great Recession just yet).
"So yes, the
world is not making it particularly easy to build a revolutionary socialist
organization at the moment (and perhaps for quite a while now). That also makes
it more likely that we're getting parts of our perspective and orientation
wrong. We cannot allow reference to the objective conditions to become a block
to self-evaluation, self-criticism, and change. And on the one hand, to say that
objective conditions have been extremely difficult for the past five years does
not square with our sense that the onset of the Great Recession would open a new
era of radicalization that would allow us to operate more effectively and grow.
Nor does it square with the advances in struggle in the
Arab Spring and
Occupy.
Nor does it square with the assertion that there is a 'continuing
radicalization' going on right now." [Sid Patel, quoted from
here. Accessed 08/02/2014.
Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis and links added.]
But,
"self-evaluation" and "self-criticism" doesn't apparently stretch as far as
applying an HM analysis to this chronic problem!
And, here are the comments of the
ISO-Renewal Faction:
"The international revolutionary
Left is in the throes of a serious crisis. This crisis has manifested itself
most clearly in organizational terms in the debacle of the Socialist Workers
Party in the UK; in the splits in the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste in France;
and in the attack on the revolutionary Left within SYRIZA. In practical terms,
it has manifested in the inability of the Left to steer major events: the
stalemate in the struggle against austerity in Greece and the growth of fascism;
the twists and turns of the Egyptian revolution; and the reversals suffered by
the defeat of the
Wisconsin Uprising, the dramatic repression of Occupy, and
even the setbacks in spring 2013 after the heroic
Chicago Teachers' Union strike
testify to this fact. And on the theoretical plane, there remain large questions
about the character of neoliberalism and the current crisis; the shape of the
international working class at the end of the neoliberal period; and the
strategies and methods for the Left to organize a real struggle against a system
in crisis. It is a crisis that requires a deep re-examination of all previous
assumptions on the part of the entire international Left.
"We believe this crisis
has impacted the ISO as well, though we think that it is a more significant
development than simply 'the demoralization and disorientation experienced by
the Left in the wake of Occupy'. While the SWP's crisis is far more serious than
ours, we believe both crises (as well as the others mentioned) grow out of the
same general political background common to the entire revolutionary Left. In
the ISO, the response to this crisis has shifted from a perceived new political
openness in the first half of the year (most notably
Ahmed Shawki's talk at Socialism 2013 on Perspectives for the Left, which
was interpreted as such by people well beyond the ISO); to a debate around the
March on Washington and the United Front; to a closing of ranks, a renewed focus
on routines and low-level political education, and a retreat from
outward-looking events such as the regional fall Marxism conferences. The
assertion in the NC [National Committee -- RL] report that the ISO was 'under attack' was quite stunning to
us. But it has now become clear that the 'attack' is really a bout of
self-doubt, in our estimation brought on by the same factors that have
precipitated the crisis of the international Left: a misunderstanding of the
neoliberal period and its crisis, and a frustration at the ability of the Left
to advance." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 08/02/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Links and bold emphases added.
There are now reports of
yet another rape
cover-up, but this time in the ISO itself!
As we will see later, the
failure to address an autocratic leadership in the ISO (which, for example,
attempted to bury this set of rape allegations) ultimately led to its
precipitous demise five years after the above was written.]
The
above comrades call for "a deep re-examination of all previous
assumptions on the part of the entire international Left" but those words fell
on deaf ears. Not even those who wrote them were listening!
But,
who wants to join a movement that will
in all likelihood split before they receive their membership card?
Or, which will descend into yet another wave of scandal, corruption, and cover-ups before they
attend their first paper sale?
As I have pointed out in several places on
the Internet:
"If you read the attempts
that have been made so far by comrades (here and elsewhere) to account for this
and other crises, you will struggle long and hard and to no avail to find a
materialist, class-based analysis why this sort of thing keeps happening.
Comrades blame such things on this or that foible or personality defect of that
or this comrade, or on this or that party structure. If we only had a different
CC, or a new constitution, everything would be hunky dory. If only the climate
in the party were more open and democratic...
"Do we argue this with respect to anything else? If only we had a different
Prime Minister, different MPs or Union Leaders! Or, maybe a new constitution with
proportional representation allowing us to elect left-wing representatives to
Parliament..., yada yada.
"But this problem is endemic right across our movement, and has been for
many generations, just as it afflicts most sections of bourgeois society. In which
case, we need a new, class-based, materialist explanation why it keeps
happening, or it will keep on happening." [Re-edited, and quoted,
for example, from
here.]01a
And yet, comrades
still refuse to approach the crisis that has recently engulfed the UK-SWP with
any such analysis; they still refuse to apply Marxism to
Marxism itself! A point brought out recently in another blog (although the
author also neglected to develop an
HM
analysis of this
crisis!):
"Someone, probably the late
John Sullivan, once pointed out the irony that
parties adhering firmly to
historical materialism are even firmer in refusing to apply it to their own
organisations; instead insisting, like the best idealists, that they be judged
on their programme alone." [Quoted from
here; accessed 01/01/2014. Link
and bold emphasis added.]
In its place, comrades prefer to write the sort of
superficial analyses they would sharply criticise if they were applied to any
other group, or, indeed, any other topic -- such as the following:
"There is currently a huge
crisis playing itself out within the SWP, the party I have been a member of the
past five years. Like many of us warned, this has now spread beyond our ranks
into the national press, and has even been picked up by our international
affiliate groups in the
International Socialist Tendency. Regardless of [any?--
RL] individual's
opinion on the details of this case, it can no longer be denied that this issue
will create severe repercussions for the party. The CC have failed to lead and
much of the membership is demanding an explanation. It is also a dead end to
argue that this should stay within the party and we should simply draw a line
under it. This is in the national press and silence and failure to recognise the
problem would be political suicide with the very people we hope to work with,
the movement.... We need an entirely new
leadership, and we need to comprehensively overhaul all the democratic
structures of the party." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis and link added.
Minor typo corrected; paragraphs merged.]
Another UK-SWP comrade had this to say in the
March 2013 Special Pre-Conference Bulletin:
"The question therefore becomes how
do we organise ourselves in any given period, and, more particularly, how do we
need to organise today? It ought to be clear to everybody
that our present arrangements are not provably fit for purpose. Either that
or we [are? -- RL] the unluckiest party in the world having suffered a string of crises(Respect, Counterfire, IS Group,
Disputes Committee) in rapid succession. In
a situation like this there can be a tendency to 'batten down the hatches', seek
internal scapegoats and meet internal criticism with impatience, censure or even
disciplinary measures....
[The following] are some
organisational areas...where I think we currently fall short of what is needed
to make us a more successful and effective Leninist party." [Quoted from
here, p.68. Bold emphases
added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site. Accessed 08/03/2013. Although the criticisms and suggestions this comrade
then proceeds to make look eminently reasonable, they clearly fall far short of what is required.
Paragraphs merged.]
Here is another account from across the Atlantic concerning the collapse of the
US-SWP (but the points made are clearly far
more general in scope):
"This
process can be described by the term 'regression to the mean.' In statistics,
that term describes the tendency of 'outliers' -- facts or observations that are
substantially different from the average -- to shift over time towards the
average. In Marxist politics, it means that a small group that achieves
excellence in one or another respect will tend to lose these characteristics
over time, unless its strong points are reinforced through immersion in broad
social struggles.
"The
'mean' -- that is, the profile of the average small Marxist group -- includes
these features:
"A conviction that the small group, and it alone, represents the historic
interests of the working class.
"A high ideological fence separating members from the ideas and discussions of
the broader Marxist movement.
"A hostile relationship to other Marxist currents.
"A haughty attitude to social movements: the group's interventions, when they
occur, focus on self-promotion and recruitment.
"An internal discipline aimed not at fending off blows of the class enemy but at
restricting discussion and keeping the members in line.
"A conservative approach to Marxist doctrine, aptly summarized by Marx in 1868:
'The sect sees the justification for its existence and its "point of honour" not
in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular
shibboleth which distinguishes it from it.'" [Quoted from
here. Accessed 15/01/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. The comrade is quoting from
Marx's letter to Schweitzer, 13/10/1868.]
But,
still
no attempt was made to provide a
class analysis. Indeed, as far as can be determined, none of the articles posted
at the site from which the above was taken (which presents a detailed history
of the decline of the US-SWP) even so much as attempt to apply Marxism to
Marxism itself.
Nevertheless, "crises" like these are endemic on the
far-left. As if organisational tinkering can affect issues related to the
class origin and class position of those who 'lead' our movement, who control
its ideas! As if simply immersing the party in wider activity can erase awkward
facts about the class origin of our 'leaders' and their core theory, DM!
And, there is no sign that comrades in the
UK-SWP 'opposition' (or elsewhere, for that matter)are even asking the right questions. Here is
one of the latest examples from
this faction:
"In just a few weeks, the
desire to analyse how we got to this point has resulted in many faction members,
both longstanding and new cadre, starting the process of attempting to fill
some theoretical gaps. This is fantastically encouraging, and a glimpse at
how political pride can be rebuilt and how fruitful honest collective discussion
is. The very fact of the conference is a victory, but if we accept that silence
must follow, then we have not achieved what we set out to achieve." [Megan T., and
Mike G., quoted from
here; accessed 09/03/2013. Bold emphasis added.]
Other than arguing for an open, democratic
party (an excellent aim in itself), filling in the above "theoretical gaps"
doesn't seem to involve any attempt to develop an HM-analysis of the class
origin and class position of the party 'leadership', coupled with their commitment to
thought-forms
appropriated from the class enemy --, crystallised in DM.
Which means, of course,
that these 'crises' will keep on happening.
And if you complain? Well you
just don't 'understand' dialectics...
Why is this?
I will endeavour to answer that question in what
follows.
This Essay and the other two mentioned in the
Preface are aimed at approaching
catastrophes like these from an entirely new angle, providing for the first
time an HM-explanation why our movement is
constantly in crisis, constantly fragmenting, constantly screwing-up -- and
what can be done about it.
In addition to providing a class analysis of
leading figures in Dialectical Marxism today and in the past, as well as those
responsible for its ideas, this Part of Essay Nine will also aim to show how and why:
(1)
DM
has been, and still is, detrimental to Marxism.
(2) DM has assisted in the repeated fragmentation of our
movement.
(3) DM has contributed in its own way to the long-term failure of Dialectical
Marxism itself.
And why:
(4) DM helps convince dialectically-distracted comrades that
there arein factno problems that need addressing (in this regard) -- and, even if there were,
DM (supposedly Marxism's core
theory!) and the class origin of leading Dialectical Marxists, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
them!
As intimated above, this Essay will also show that:
(5) The
class origin of leading members of Dialectical-Marxist parties is one of the
main reasons why revolutionary politics is deeply sectarian,profoundly unreasonable,
serially abusive, alarmingly fragmentary, studiously arrogant, and notoriously ineffective.
DM thrown into the pot, of course, only succeeds in
making a bad situation worse.
I will also explain how and why
it manages to do that, too.
Part
One demonstrated that DM not only doesn't,
it can't
represent a generalisation of working class experience; nor can it express their
"world-view", whoever tries to sell
it to them.
Worse still, it can't even represent the
generalised experience of the revolutionary party!
It was also shown in Part One that DM
can't be "brought" to workers
"from the outside" (as Lenin seemed to suggest -- please note
the use of the word "seemed" here!), because it has yet to be brought
to a sufficient level of clarity so that its own theorists can even so much
as begin
to understand it themselves,beforethey think to proselytise unfortunate workers.
In that sense, dialecticians are still waiting for their own
theory to be "brought" to them, from the "inside"!
It was alleged in Essay Twelve
Part One (and in other Essays posted
at this site,
here,
here and
here) that
DM is a form of
Linguistic Idealism (LIE)
and, as such, encapsulates and expresses key
features of
ruling-class ideology.
[On my use of the phrase "ruling-class ideas/ideology", see
here.]
However, what has not
yet been established is how it is
even conceivable that generations of leading revolutionaries with impeccable
socialist credentials could have brought with them into the workers' movement ideas
derived from the class enemy --, or, at least, from Philosophers who gave
voice to the interests and priorities of that class.
Surely, that alone shows the allegations made
in these Essays are completely misguided, at best, mendacious, at worst.
Or, so it could be argued...
Of course, even its own most
loyal and avid supporters can't -- indeed, don't
-- deny that
dialectics itself had to be introduced into the workers' movement from the outside.
Neither Hegel,
Feuerbach, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky,
Stalin nor Mao were
proletarians.
Moreover, there is no evidence that workers in the 19th
century were avid readers of Hegel's Logic. The same can be said of
workers since.
[The claim that
Dietzgen,
for example, was an exception to the above generalisation has already been
refuted,
here.]
As is
well-known, Hegel's system is the most absolute form of Idealism yet invented
and was itself situated right at the heart of an age-old ruling-class
tradition (aspects of which are examined in detail in Essay Twelve and Fourteen
(summaries here
and here)).
Lenin
admitted as much -- without
perhaps realising the full significance of what he was saying:
"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources
and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
added; paragraphs merged.]
More-or-less the same can be
said about Plekhanov's (incautious) admission:
"Marxism is an integral
world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is contemporary materialism,
at present the highest stage of the development of that view upon the world
whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by
Democritus, and
in part by the
Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher." [Plekhanov
(1908), p.11. Italic emphases in the original; links and bold
emphasis added. I have covered this topic in much more detail
below.]
Despite this, the
importation of
Hegel's ideas into Marxism is often justified on the basis that he lived at
a time when the bourgeoisie were therevolutionary class, which
meant his ideas
weren't
as 'ideologically-tainted' -- so to speak -- as those of later thinkers.
Now, that excuse might work in relation to theorists
like Smith
or
Ricardo,
but it can't work with Hegel. Not only did he live in
politically and economically backward Germany, where there was no such revolutionary bourgeois
class, his ideas represented a continuation of ruling-class thought and a regression to earlier mystical ideas about nature and society. [On that, see
Essay Twelve Part Five and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries
here and
here).]
Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination
were Hegel's ideas scientific, unlike those of Smith and Ricardo.
[That doesn't imply their work can't be criticised, as,
indeed, Marx amply demonstrated.]
Nor can it be argued that Marx derived
HM
from Hegel; in fact (as Lenin himself half admits) both he and Hegel were influenced by the Scottish
Historical School (of
Ferguson,
Millar,
Hume, Smith,
Steuart, Robertson,
and Anderson).01
If anything, Hegel's work
helped slow
down the development of Marx's scientific ideas by mystifying them.
It could be argued that Marx derived other
important concepts from Hegel (such as alienation or species being), but these
ideas (or others very much like them) can be found in
Rousseau,
Fichte
and
Schelling
(who
were far clearer thinkers than Hegel ever was).
Moreover, these concepts are easily replaced with materialist analogues -- which
explains why Marx subsequently dropped them, adopting others. [On that,
see White (1996).]
Finally, no dialectician, as far as I know, would
argue the same for other figures who were writing at about this time, and who were
much closer to the revolutionary class action (as it were). Does anyone think this of
Berkeley?
And yet he lived in and around what was the leading capitalist country on earth at the time:
Great Britain. Or,
Shaftesbury and
Mandeville? Slap bang in the middle, those two. And, it is little use pointing
out that they wrote shortly after the
reactionto the English Revolution,
since Hegel did, too, after the reaction to the French Revolution. Nor is it any use arguing that these
two were card-carrying ruling-class hacks, since the same can be said of Hegel.
Or, even that one of them was an aristocrat. It might be news to some,
but Hegel wasn't a coal miner or a stable hand!
Indeed, the only reason Hegel is
chosen for special attention is because of contingent features of Marx's
own biography. Had Marx's life taken a different course, or had Hegel died of
typhoid forty years before he actually did, does anyone really think we would now be
bothering with 'dialectics'? It is no surprise, therefore, to find that Marx himself moved
away from Hegel and Philosophy all his life.
[The first of those controversial allegations
was substantiated in
Part One
of this Essay;
the second,
here.]
In that case, and contrary to what Lenin said, we should exclude Marx
(at least in relation to his more mature work) from the above, seriously
compromised
ruling-class philosophical lineage.
Independently of that, it could be objected
that this allegedly class-compromised background isn't sufficient to condemn
DM. After all, it could be argued that the
advancement of humanity has always been predicated on practices, concepts and
theories developed by individuals freed from the need to toil almost every day to stay
alive -- for example, the ideas and work of scientists, philosophers,
mathematicians, technologists, inventors and the like. Surely, that doesn't automatically
impugn every idea drawn from outside the workers' movement or from non-workers. Neither does it mean
that philosophical notions are in general of no use to revolutionaries. Indeed,
denouncing certain beliefs justbecause they are alien to the
working-class is not only ultra-left, it is inconsistent with core
HM-principles. In that case, the fact that DM
is based on Hegel's system doesn't automatically condemn this theory/method, especially if
it has been given a
materialist make-flip (as Marx himself argued), and which has subsequently been tested in practice
for well over a century.
Furthermore, the origin of DM
goes back many centuries, and is related in complex ways to the development
of class society and thus of humanity itself. Admittedly, that implicates this process in the formation of
ideas representing the theoretical interests of former and current
ruling-classes. But, even if that is granted, such ideas have also
contributed to the overall development of human knowledge -- indeed, many of them
have been integral to the advancement of science -- and thereby of the forces of
production. Considerations like these don't compromise DM in any way; on the contrary, as
Lenin noted, this complex set of connections (linking DM with the
very best of human endeavour, theoretical and practical) constitutes one of its strengths. Dialectical thought is
thus not only
part of the theoretical maturing process of humanity, it is a key component in
its further development.
However,
DM isn't quite so easily
excused. That is so for several reasons:
(1) DM-theses make no sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise is
invited to say clearly (and for the first time ever) what sense they do
make. As the Essays posted at this site have shown, anyone who attempts that modern-day
'labour of
Sisyphus'
will face an impossible task.
(2) DM-concepts
hinder the development revolutionary theory and practice. We saw that in more detail in Essay Ten
Part One -- for example, in
connection with Lenin's advice relating to a certain glass tumbler. [Other examples
are given below.]
(3) DM is locked inside a tradition of thought that has an impeccable
ruling-class pedigree.
No wonder then that it hangs like an
albatross around our neck, to say nothing of the
negative effect it has had on generations of Dialectical Marxists (they are detailed
below, too).
(4) Although many claim that science is intimately connected with earlier
philosophical and religious/mystical forms-of-thought, that is less than half the truth. Indeed, materialist
and technological aspects of science haven't been as heavily dependent on such
ruling-class ideas as many believe. [That rather bold claim
will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two (when it is published sometime
in 2025).]
(5) DM-concepts
undermineordinary language
and
common understanding.
That means workers have had these alien-class ideas inserted
into their heads against the materialist grain, as it were. As such, DM (a) fosters passivity, (b) rationalises
substitutionist ideology,
(c) aggravates sectarianism and (d) helps motivate corruption.1a [There is more on each of these
accusations below and
in Part One,
where they have been fully substantiated. On the phrase
"common understanding", see here.]
(6) The materialist flip allegedly
performed on Hegel's system, so that its 'rational core' might be appropriated
by revolutionaries, has been shown not in fact to have been through 180º,
as is often claimed, but through thefull 360.
[On that, see especially Essays Twelve
Part One and Thirteen
Part One.]
(7) It isn't being claimed here that DM is false
because of its ruling-class pedigree; on the contrary, it is being
argued
that it is far too vague and confused even to be
describedas true or false; it doesn't make it that far.
Nevertheless, its deleterious effect on Marxism itself can be traced back
to its origin in ruling-class forms-of-thought. [More on that throughout this Essay, and
in Essay Fourteen Part
Two.]
(9) Finally, and perhaps more importantly, DM has played
its own small but not inconsiderable part in helping to engineer the
long-term
failure of Dialectical Marxism in all its forms. In addition, as noted
above, DM has
aggravated the personal, organisational and political corruption that petty-bourgeois party
'leaders' have brought with them into the movement.
These are serious allegations; those that haven't already been substantiated (in other Essays) will be expanded upon and defended in what follows.
In
spite of this, it could be argued that
the above counter-response is totally unacceptable since it ignores the fact that some of
the
very best
class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it
into the fabric of every classic and post-classic Marxist text. Indeed, without
dialectics there would be no Marxist theory. As Trotsky noted, without it
Marxism would be like "a clock without a spring":
"While polemicising against
opponents who consider themselves -- without sufficient reason -- above all as
proponents of 'theory,' the article deliberately did not elevate the problem to
a theoretical height. It was absolutely necessary to explain why the American
'radical' intellectuals accept Marxism without the dialectic (a clock without
a spring)." [Trotsky
(1971), p.56. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Which is rather odd since Essay Seven
Part Three has shown that ifDM were true, change would be impossible.
So, Trotsky got this the wrong way round: without DM, Marxism gains a spring.]
How could this even be
conceivable
if the above allegations were correct? How would it even be possible for the
very best class fighters in history to have accepted and then promoted this
allegedly 'ruling class form-of-thought'? What alternative theory or
literature (that has been tested in the 'heat of battle', as it were) can Ms
Lichtenstein point to that recommends her ideas, or suggests they are as superior to those found in this proven tradition, one stretching back now over
150 years?
Much of the above volunteered response (in fact, it is a
very brief summary of a handwritten letter sent by
John Molyneux
to a supporter of this site many years ago) is demonstrably
misguided. The
link between DM
and successful practice was irrevocably severed by Essay Ten
Part One, and will be further undermined
in what follows. Sceptical readers are referred back to it.
Furthermore, very few of the classic Marxist texts
(that is, outside the DM-cannon -- i.e.,
AD, DN, MEC, PN, etc.)
even mention this 'theory' (except a few might do so perhaps in passing). Indeed,
despite an 'orthodox' tradition that says differently -- and as
Part One
of Essay Nine shows, here
and
here
--, Das
Kapital itself is a
Hegel-, and DM-free zone. But, even if that weren't
the case, the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such a long-term failureought to raise serious questions about the
deleterious affect 'dialectics' has had on HM
and
on revolutionary practice in general.
Indeed, if Newton's theory had been as
spectacularly unsuccessful as Dialectical Marxism has been, his ideas would have
faced peremptory rejection within a few years of his classic work,
Principia, rolling off the press.
In addition, a continuing commitment
to dialectics just because it was good enough for the 'founding fathers'
of our movement -- and for no other reason -- is itself based on the sort of
servile, dogmatic and conservative
mind-set
that permeates most religions.1b
There is, indeed, something decidedly
unsavoury witnessing erstwhile radicals appealing to tradition as their only
reason for maintaining their commitment to such class-compromised ideas --
especially since this doctrine hasn't served us too well for over a century, and remains unexplained to this day.
As it turns out, and as will now be argued, the reason why the majority
of revolutionaries not only willingly accept the ruling-class ideas
encapsulated in DM,
but also cling to them like terminally-insecure limpets, is connected
with the following four considerations:
(2) Lenin's warning that revolutionaries may sometimes respond to
defeat and disappointment by turning to Idealism and Mysticism.
(3) The
biographies and class origins of leading Marxist dialecticians.
(4)
The fact that
DM
not only helps mask the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism itself,
it
provides its acolytes with a source of consolation for unrealised expectations and
repeatedly dashed hopes.
These
seemingly controversial allegations will now be expanded upon, and then defended in depth.
[The
other counter-arguments summarised in the
previous sub-section will also be tackled as this Essay
unfolds.]
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted
consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and itsuniversal basis of consolation
and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call
on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion
is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo." [Marx
(1975b),
p.244. Bold emphases alone added;
some paragraphs merged.]
Of course, no one is suggesting that
Dialectical Marxism is a religion --
but it certainly functions in way that means it is analogous to one.
So, "philosophy is nothing but religion rendered into thought". In other words, philosophy is a far more abstract source of
consolation. Naturally, that in turn means the same is the case with DM (although I am
not arguing that Marx drew that inference -- but if he were consistent,
he
should have).
These serious allegations
along with their basis in
HM will now be explained and defended.
Plainly, revolutionaries are human beings with ideas in their heads, and every
single one of them (i) Has had a class origin of some sort, (ii) Later assumed a class position (as a
result of work or party/revolutionary activity), or (iii) Currently has a
current class position. The overwhelming majority of those who have led our
movement, or who have influenced its ideas, didn't come from the working class. Even
workers, if they become full-time or "professional revolutionaries", are thereby
rendered de-classé -- or
even become petty-bourgeois -- as a result. Since the social being of these comrades
is a reflection of their class origins and current class position, it is no
surprise, therefore, to discover that they have allowed "ruling ideas" to dominate their
thought.
Of course, the allegation that the above
individuals have appropriated these ideas -- which is because of their class origin or current class position --, will be regarded by dialecticians as so
patently false it will be rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism".
Nevertheless, as far as I am aware, no
Marxist Dialectician has subjected the origin of DM, or the reasons for its
adoption by the vast majority of comrades, to any sort of class, oreven
historical materialist, analysis.
Apparently, that thought hasn't even occurred to them!
To be sure, they will often subject the ideas of their
opponents or their enemies (both Marxist and non-Marxist --
examples
of which are given
below) to some form of
impromptu class analysis, but they never do the same with respect to their own
adoption of
ruling-class
thought-forms, nor yet the acceptance of such ideas by the vast majority of
fellow Marxists; certainly not for their approval by every single leading
Marxist (except Marx).
Apparently, that thought doesn't occur to them, either!
This
suggests that dialecticians
see themselves as exempt from a class analysis
of the origin of their own ideas, and that they somehow think they are immune from the
material
constraints that affect the rest of humanity.
[We will see this frame-of-mind
resurface elsewhere as arrogance, compounded by an almost
sociopathic attitude
often adopted toward fellow Marxists (and especially female comrades), in what
can only be described as a
Raskolnikov-like manner.]
Nevertheless, it will be maintained here that these comrades have adopted such
ruling-class ideas for at least four reasons:
First:
Because of their petty-bourgeois, non-working class origin -- and as a result of
their socialisation and the 'superior' education they have generally received in
bourgeois society -- the vast majority of the above comrades had
"ruling ideas", or ruling-class forms-of-thought, forced down their throats
almost from day one.
[More on this below. See also Essays
Two and Three Parts
One and
Two.]
Second: Because Dialectical Marxism
has been so spectacularly
unsuccessful, revolutionaries have had to convince themselves that (a)
This isn't really so,
(b) The opposite is in fact the case, or that (c) This is only a
temporary state of affairs. They have to do this otherwise many of them would simply give up.
In view of the fact that they also hold that truth is tested in practice they
have also been forced to conclude that one or more of (a), (b) and (c) must be the case.
However, because dialectics teaches
them that
appearances are "contradicted" by underlying "essences"
(i.e., that what might on the surface appear to be such-and-such is in reality
the exact opposite), it is
able to fulfil a
unique role
in this regard, motivating or rationalising (a), (b) and/or (c), above. In this way, it
provides comrades with much needed
consolation in the face of 'apparent failure', convincing them that everything
is fine with the core theory -- or perhaps even that things will change for the
better, one day. This
then 'allows'
them to ignore the
long-term
failure of Dialectical Marxism, rationalising it as a mere "appearance", and hence
either false or
illusory.
So, faced with 150 years of set-backs,
defeats and disasters, revolutionaries who will in all seriousness tell
any who will listen
that "truth is tested in practice", will also, in the next breath, respond with something
like the following: "Well, these set-backs, defeats and disasters don't prove
dialectics is false!"
The results of practice are thus
universally ignored, and for the above reasons. At which point, for such
individuals, practice ceases to be a test of the truth of DM.
Hence, just like the genuinely and openly religious -- who every day look upon the evil and
suffering in the
world and see it as its opposite, as an expression of the 'Love of God' who
will make all things well in the end -- dialecticians survey the last 150
years and still see the 'Logic of Universal Development' moving their way, and then infer that all will
be well in the end, too. Here, for example, is Plekhanov:
"And so every phenomenon,
by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or
later, but
inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…. When you apply the dialectical method
to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change
eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….' In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit
consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from
the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin
and destruction…. [M]odern science confirms at every step
the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into
quality….
"[I]t will be understood without
difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical
thinking...[that]
quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to
changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps,
interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…."
[Plekhanov
(1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold
emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged. (Unfortunately,
the Index page for the copy
of this book over at
The Marxist Internet Archive has no link to the
second half of Chapter Five, but it can be accessed directly
here. I have informed the editors of this error.
Added June 2015: they have
now corrected it!)]
"All that exists can be taken as an example
to explain the nature of dialectics. Everything is fluid,
everything changes, everything passes away. Hegel compares the power of
dialectics with divine omnipotence. Dialectics is that universal
irresistible force which nothing can withstand." [Plekhanov (1917),
pp.601-02. Bold emphasis added.]
Reading
Plekhanov with his reference to 'divine omnipotence', we can perhaps see why
Marx
was right.
[Admittedly, not every DM-theorist is as deterministic as Plekhanov, but which
of the above statements (for instance, about the universal applicability of the
dialectic, or the fact that
everything changes into its opposite) are they prepared to abandon?]
This means that the theory that prevents DM-fans from
facing reality (since it tells them that 'appearances' are contradicted by
'essence') is the very same theory that prevents them from examining
the role it has played in this long-term failure,
inviting yet another
generation of set-backs and disasters by masking these unwelcome facts.
Apparently, therefore, the only two things
in the entire universe that
aren't interconnected are the long term failure of
Dialectical Marxism and its core theory!
[This theme is developed below, and in
Essay Ten Part One
(where the usual
objections
to these allegations have been
neutralised).]1c
Third:
Just like the Bible, which supplies
its acolytes with a surfeit of 'reasons' to accuse others of not 'understanding the Word
of God', Dialectical Marxism, with its own 'sacred texts' beloved of the
'orthodox', also provides dialecticians with an obscure theory that 'allows'
them to claim that other, rival DM-theorists, don't
'understand' dialectics -- or even that they ignore/misuse it --, and that only they,
the 'true bearers of the flame', are capable of grasping its inner meaning. This then 'enables' them to anathematise and castigate
the rest as un-Marxist, or even
anti-Marxist. In short, it puts in the hands of inveterate sectarians (of
which Dialectical Marxism has had more than its fair share) an almost infinitely malleable,
ideological tool that is pliable enough to prove anything whatsoever and its
opposite (often this trick is performed by the very
same theorist, in the same
article or speech), simply because it glories in
contradiction.
[Again, scores of examples (and that is no exaggeration!)
of the above phenomena are given below.]
Fourth: It provides dialecticians with
an exclusivising set of dogmas that sets them above the 'common herd' -- or,
indeed, above those
who are lost in the banalities of 'commonsense' and the cloying mists of 'formal
thinking'. This now 'confirms' their
self-appointed, pre-eminent status in both the class war and the workers' movement,
since they alone understand the fundamental nature of reality and the direction
it is taking.
In short, DM is theideology of substitutionist elements within Marxism.
[That topic was discussed
in more detail in
Part One.]
In addition, the above phenomena have the effect of
making far too many such comrades insufferably arrogant, which further motivates them into treating
others in the movement (often those in the same party!) with haughty contempt,
condescending indifference, or even callous inhumanity. After all, if you are
the
sole
bearers of 'the word delivered from off the dialectical mountain top', this makes you
special, even superior to the 'rank-and-file', which means that anyone who
disagrees with you deserves
ostracism and expulsion, at best, imprisonment or death, at worst.
[Those serious allegations will
also be substantiated
throughout the rest of this Essay.]
[The
question whether the above analysis is an example of 'crude reductionism' is
taken up again in even more detail,
below.]
Despite this, it might still be wondered how
this relates to anything that is
even remotely relevant to the ideas formed, accepted, or even entertained by hard-headed revolutionary
atheists. Surely, it could be argued, any attempt to trace a commitment to
DM back to its origin in supposedly alienated
thought-forms is both a reductionist and an Idealist error.
Fortunately,
Lenin himself supplied a
materialist answer to this apparent conundrum [i.e., why Marxists turn to
mysticism], and John Rees kindly outlined it for us when he
depicted the period of demoralisation following upon the failed 1905 Russian revolution in the
following terms:
"[T]he defeat of the
1905 revolution, like all such defeats, carried confusion and demoralisation into the
ranks of the revolutionaries…. The forward rush of the revolution had helped
unite the leadership…on strategic questions and so…intellectual differences
could be left to private disagreement. But when defeat magnifies every tactical
disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a
re-examination of the fundamentals of Marxism, theoretical differences were
bound to become important. As
Tony Cliff
explains:
'With politics apparently failing to
overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of
philosophical speculation became the fashion….'
"Philosophical fashion took a
subjectivist, personal, and sometimes religious turn….
Bogdanov
drew
inspiration from the theories of physicist
Ernst Mach and philosopher
Richard
Avenarius…. [Mach retreated] from
Kant's ambiguous idealism to the pure idealism
of
Berkeley
and
Hume…. It was indeed Mach and Bogdanov's
'ignorance
of dialectics' that allowed them to 'slip into idealism.' Lenin was right to
highlight the link between Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his
failure to react correctly to the downturn in the level of the struggle in
Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79, quoting
Cliff
(1975), p.290. (This is
Volume One of Cliff's political biography of Lenin.) Bold emphases and links added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Some paragraphs merged.]
Cliff
himself continues:
"With politics apparently failing to
overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of
philosophical speculation became the fashion. And in the absence of any
contact with a real mass movement, everything had to be proved from scratch
-- nothing in the traditions of the movement, none of its fundamentals, was
immune from constant questioning.... In this discussion
Bogdanov,
Lunacharsky,
Bazarov
and others tried to combine Marxism with the
neo-Kantian theory of knowledge put forward by Ernst Mach, and Richard
Avenarius. Lunacharsky went as far as to speak openly in favour of fideism.
Lunacharsky used religious metaphors, speaking about 'God-seeking' and
'God-building'.
Gorky
was influenced by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky.... Lenin's reaction was very
sharp indeed. He wrote to Gorky, 'The Catholic priest corrupting young
girls...is much less dangerous precisely to "democracy" than a priest without
his robes, a priest without crude religion, an ideologically equipped and
democratic priest preaching the creation and invention of a god.'" [Cliff
(1975), pp.290-91. Bold emphases and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged; minor typo
corrected.]
It is quite clear from this that the
experience of defeat (and the lack of a significant materialist input from a mass working-class
movement) re-directed the attention of leading revolutionaries toward Idealism
and the search for mystical explanations for the serious set-backs Russian
Marxists had witnessed in and around 1905.
Plainly, that search provided these comrades with some form of
consolation, just as Marx had alleged of religious affectation pure and simple, and as Lenin
himself had implied.
But, there is another outcome that Rees and others failed to notice: this
major set-back turned Lenin toward philosophy and dialectics. They were subjects he
had largely, but not completely, ignored up until then.2 While it is true that Bogdanov and the
rest turned to Mach, Berkeley,
Subjective Idealism, and other assorted
irrationalisms, it is equally clear that Lenin himself looked to Hegel and Hermetic Mysticism,
for the same sort of explanation.
Nevertheless,
Lenin's warning shows that revolutionaries themselves aren't immune from the
pressures that prompt human beings in general to seek consolationin order to counteract
disappointment, demoralisation and alienation. As we have seen, Lenin was well
aware that ruling-class
ideas, which 'satisfy' such needs, could enter the revolutionary movement from the "outside",
or which would become much more prominent and influential under such circumstances.
Even more
acute and profound disappointments confronted Lenin a few years later
when WW1 broke out. Kevin Anderson takes up
the story (without perhaps appreciating its significance):
"The outbreak of World War 1
in 1914 shattered European liberals' belief in peaceful evolutionary progress.
To Marxists, however, most of whom already believed that capitalism was a
violent and warlike system, an equally great shock occurred when, yielding to
the pressure of domestic patriotic sentiment, most of the world's socialist
parties, including the largest and most important one, the German Social
Democracy, came out in support of the war policies of their respective
governments.... So great was the shock to Lenin that when he saw a German
newspaper report on the German Social Democracy's vote to support the war, he
initially thought that it was a forgery by the Prussian military for propaganda
purposes....
Once he arrived in Bern,
Lenin moved quickly in two seemingly contradictory directions: (1) he spent
long weeks in the library engaged in daily study of Hegel's writings, especially
the Science of Logic, writing hundreds of pages of notes on Hegel,
and (2)...he moved toward revolutionary defeatism...." [Anderson (1995), p.3.
Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged. See also Krupskaya's remarks,
here.]2a
Just as Christians often turn to the Bible in
times of stress or when depressed, so Lenin looked to the writings of that Christian
Mystic, Hegel. Thoroughly disappointed with the course of events (in this capitalist "vale of tears"),
Lenin turned his face toward this (major) source of
quasi-religious consolation,
and away from the material world of woe, and hence in the direction of a
hidden world governed by a gaggle of equally invisible entities -- all those 'abstractions', 'essences', 'concepts', and, of course,
the Hegelian Trinity of 'Being',
'Nothing' and 'Becoming' -- fortified by
a battery of no less mysterious forces
comprising the DM-Trinity, 'contradiction', 'sublation', 'mediation'.
Is it possible, then, that revolutionaries of
the calibre of Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Plekhanov and Trotsky (to name just the
five most important) were tempted to
seek metaphysical
consolation of the sort depicted at this site? Is this
really the case, even though Lenin accused others of this himself? Is it even conceivable
that they opened themselves up to the alien-class ideas that later found
expression in DM, and for the above reasons?
As we have seen in other Essays posted at
this site (especially Essays Three Parts One
and Two, Twelve
Part One, the rest of
Twelve, and Fourteen Part One
(summaries here
and
here)), and as
Lenin himself acknowledged,
dialectics is
shot-through with ideas, concepts and thought-forms imported from Traditional Philosophy (which
ideas, concepts and thought-forms were in turn invented by theorists who,
undeniably,
had material and ideological interests in rationalising both the status quo
and ruling-class hegemony). Indeed, in many
places it is hard to tell the
difference
between DM and open
and honest
Mysticism
(as Essay Fourteen Part One will demonstrate, when it is
published -- until then, check
this out).
[I have
summarised this external, alien-class influence
later
in this Essay, too.]
This more than merely suggests
that the above
allegations aren't completely wide-of-the-mark.
On the contrary, as we will
see, they hit the bull's eye smack in the middle.
But, is there anything in
the class origin and class background of leading comrades that pre-disposed
(and still pre-disposes)
them toward such an unwitting adoption of this rarefied form of ruling-class ideology?
The first of these questions can
be answered relatively easily by focussing on item
Four above, and then on the periods in which revolutionaries
invented, sought out, or reverted in a major way tousing or appealing
to classical concepts found in DM. Upon
examination, a reasonably clear correlation can be seen to exist between periods of
downturn in the struggle and subsequent 're-discoveries' of Hegel and DM by aspiring
dialecticians -- with the opposite tendency kicking in during more successful times.3
As Rees pointed out:
"...[D]efeat magnifies every
tactical disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a
re-examination of the
fundamentals of Marxism.... Lenin was right to highlight the link between
Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his failure to react correctly to the
downturn in the level of the struggle in Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79.]
It is no surprise, therefore, to find that most (if not
all) of Engels's work on the foundations of DM was written in the post 1860s
downturn, after
the massive struggles for the vote
in the UK, up to the
Reform
Act of 1867, following on the demise of
the Chartist Movement
and after the
Paris Commune
had been defeated
in 1871.4
Similarly, Lenin's philosophical/dialectical writings were largely confined to the period
after the defeat of the
1905
Revolution, and before the short-lived
successes of 1917.
Trotsky's dialectical ruminations
(including his Notebooks and his wrangles with
Burnham) date largely from
the 1930s, after the major reverses that took place in the post
1917-1926
period in
Europe and internationally, in
China,
then subsequently in
Spain,
following upon his own isolation and
political quarantine
later in that decade. He had shown very little actual interest in
such matters before then.5
Indeed, Trotsky admitted as much in his 1935
Diary:
"It's been about two
weeks since I have written much of anything: it's too difficult. I read
newspapers. French novels.
Wittel's
book about Freud (a bad book by an envious pupil), etc. Today I wrote a little
about the interrelationship between the physiological determinism of brain
processes and the 'autonomy' of thought, which is subject to the laws of logic.
My philosophical interests have been growing during the last few years,
but
alas, my knowledge is too insufficient, and too little time remains for a big
and serious work...." [Trotsky (1958), p.109. Bold emphasis added.]
As should seem obvious from the above: Trotsky's interest in philosophy
coincided with the period of his political quarantine, and he admits he had paid little attention to it before.
Stalin, too, only became obsessed with
dialectics after the defeat of the
Deborinites post-1929, and after the failure of the Chinese and German
revolutions (although he had written about this theory
in 1901). Likewise, Mao himself 'discovered' a fondness for this
Hermetic Horror Show after
the crushing defeats of the mid-1920s.6
More recently, the obsessive devotion shown
by OTs toward the minutiae of DM follows a similar
pattern: (i) Just like many 'End
Times' Christian
sects, OTs almost invariably adopt and promote a permanentcatastrophist view of
everything that happens (or is ever likely to happen) in capitalist society
(capitalist crises are always getting worse, anger is always 'growing', etc.,
etc. -- I have covered this in more detail,
here), and (ii) OT
parties
are constantly splitting and expelling. Hence they face continual disappointment and demoralisation. Naturally, relentless disillusion requires regular,
concentrated doses of highly potent DM-opiates.
Just to take one example: an OT of the stature of
Ted Grant
(along with
Alan Woods)
only 're-discovered' hardcore DM after his party
had booted him out,
which expulsion itself followed upon the
catastrophic collapse of the
Militant Tendency in the late 1980s -- this turn toward
mystical forms of consolation materialised in the shape of that
ill-advised, poorly argued and badly researched book, RIRE.7
[OT = Orthodox
Trotskyist; NOT = Non-Orthodox Trotskyist; RIRE = Reason In Revolt, i.e.,
Woods and Grant (1995/2007); TAR = The Algebra of
Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
This regressive doctrine doesn't just
afflict OTs, NOTs show similar, but less chronic, signs of
dialectical debilitation.
For example, the overt use of DM-concepts
by leading figures in the
UK-SWP
(a NOT-style party) only began in earnest after the downturn in the class
struggle in the late 1970s, and more specifically following on the defeat of the
National Union of Miners
in 1985. In this respect, therefore, TAR itself represents
perhaps the high-water mark of this latest retreat into consolation by UK-SWP
theorists. [That sentence was written before John Rees, TAR's author,
resigned from the SWP!] The fact that this newfound interest in DM has nothing to
do with theoretical innovation (and everything to do with repetition,
reassurance and consolation) can be seen from the additional fact that TAR adds nothing new
to the debate (about 'dialectics'), it merely repeats significant parts of it, albeit from a
different perspective -- for the gazillionth time.
So much for
're-examining the basics'!8
[I have added much more detail concerning the UK-SWP's
mystical turn to Note 8.]
Given
the overwhelming experience of defeat,
debacle, disaster, and retreat that the international labour movement and the
revolutionary tradition have collectively faced over the last 150 years, these correlations
are quite striking (even if they aren't the least bit surprising) -- for all that no one seems to have noticed them before!9
If the movement has known
little other
than defeat, then it
becomes vitally important for revolutionaries to account for, re-interpret
and then re-configure
their view of this depressing state-of-affairs.
[IO = Identity of
Opposites; NON = Negation of the Negation; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; NOT =
Non-OT.]
Among Maoists, Stalinists and Trotskyists (OTs and
NOTs
alike) this tactic has often assumed a thoroughly dishonest form, which has
frequently sought to re-classify defeats as hidden victories (involving a
novel use of the IO-dodge, and a quasi-religious use of the NON-ploy; examples
of both of these are given below). Clearly, this has 'allowed' factors
other than the theoretical failings of the parties involved to be blamed for the setbacks
our side has experienced.
As should seem obvious, a movement can't learn from its
mistakes if none are ever made -- or, rather, if Dialectical Marxists never admit to making any! Indeed, it looks like
DM-theorists are the only life-form
in the known universe that
not only does not, but can't, learn from recalcitrant reality. As we will see, the
NON and the belief that appearances 'contradict' underlying 'essence' stands in
the way of them emulating the rest of sentient life on the planet, learning from
past mistakes.9a
Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the
aforementioned dialectical-dodges mean that significant parts of our movement have
engaged in the deliberate rotation of material reality so that
their (in)version of Hegelian Idealism can remain on its feet. Instead of
flipping Hegel, material reality has been up-ended in order to conform with a
set of ideas
held about it.
Hard-headed revolutionaries have spun reality
through 180º,
stuck their own theoretical feet in the air, inserted their collective head in the sand,
and have proclaimed -- despite the fact that virtually every aspect of
revolutionary practice has failed for much of the last hundred years, and in the face of the grim
realisation that the
overwhelming majority of workers ignore DM, and have done so for many generations
-- thatDialectical Marxism has been tested
successfully in practice and now represents the objective "world view" of the
proletariat!10
Theoretical
inversion like this has, unsurprisingly, prompted a headlong retreat into fantasy of the
type noted
in the last sub-section. Such flights-of-fancy have been reinforced by the
profound
narcolepsy induced
in comrades by the constant repetition of the same tired old formulae, obscure
jargon, and hackneyed phrases.
A simple but effective Dialectical Mantra, internalised and regurgitated by all
serious adepts -- which boasts such hardy perennials as the dogma that Capitalism is
riddled with 'contradictions', even though not one of those who intone this
shibboleth
seems able to say
why these are indeed contradictions to begin with (on that, see
here and
here,
in the comments section at the bottom -- unfortunately, the comments sections
has now vanished!) has helped insulate them from material reality. In the DM-tradition-dominated
and Ideally-constructed world, annoying facts are simply ignored -- or they are flipped
upside down. 'Post-truth'
isn't a recent phenomenon; DM-fans have been promoting it for over a century.
Anyone who doubts this should try the
following experiment: chose any randomly-selected,
dialectically-distracted comrade and attempt to persuade
them to acknowledge the long-term failure of
their own brand of Dialectical Marxism (that is, if the latter has been around long enough!). Unless you are extremely
unlucky, you will soon
discover how deep this particular head has been inserted into the nearest
non-dialectical sand dune.
[On the
excuses usually given for the failure of Dialectical Marxism (that is, where
failure is
even so much as acknowledged!), see Essay Ten
Part One.]
To that end,
boilerplate phrases will be dusted-off and
given another airing almost as if they were still in mint
condition. Even a cursory glance at the debates that have taken place over the
last five revolutionary generations will reveal the sad spectacle of theorists
mouthing dialectical slogans at one another as if those on the receiving end
hadn't heard them a thousand times already, and those chanting them hadn't intoned them just
as often.11
Alongside this there has emerged a correspondingly
robust refusal to face up to reality. In my experience, this ostrich-like characteristic is
found most glaringly among OTs
-- perhaps because Trotskyism is by far and away the most unsuccessful and
fragmentary wing of mainstream Dialectical Marxism --, but this malady is
also represented to varying degrees
throughout the rest of the revolutionary and communist movement, with
MISTs perhaps winning
the Silver Medal in this event.12
As already noted, an excellent example of this is
the knee-jerk quotation of the phrase "tested in practice" in support of the
supposed (but imaginary) universal validity of DM.
Even though
realitytells a different story, we regularly encounter the following 'whistling in
the dark' type of argument:
"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 -- [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.
Bold emphasis added.]
[More fantastical material like this has
been posted
here.]
However, Dialectical Marxism -- never
mind Dialectical Trotskyism -- has never actually "seized the masses"; except perhaps briefly
in Russia, Germany, Italy and France, it has never
even got close to lightly hugging them. But this unwelcome fact isn't allowed to
"rain on their
parade" or interrupt the reverie. So, this inconvenient aspect of reality is simply
inverted and the opposite idea is left standing on its feet (as,
indeed, the
above passage amply confirms) -- or, alternatively, it is
simply ignored.
Failing that, of course, the
happy day when DM finally manages to captivate the
masses is projected way off into the future where it becomes a safe 'fact', insulated from easy refutation.
Of course, beyond blaming the mass of the
population for their own failure to appreciate this wondrous theory -- a
rhetorical tactic beloved, for example, of Stalinists and Maoists, who tell us
the ungrateful masses need a
'Great Teacher' to set them straight --, few
DM-fans have ever paused to wonder why the
overwhelming majority
of workers/human beings stubbornly remain locked in 'un-seized' mode, so deep in the sand
has this collective,
Hegelianised brain now been wedged.
Since DM is regarded as the very
epitome of scientific and economic knowledge (a veritable "Algebra of Revolution", if you will),
the fault can't lie with this theory (perish the thought!), so the
'problem' must be
located elsewhere. The
'solution' is, apparently, staring us in the face: why, the masses themselves are to blame!They are gripped by
"false
consciousness", trapped in a world dominated by
"formal thinking". "Static" language and "fixed categories" dominate their
lives, this sorry state of affairs further compounded by the "banalities of commonsense". Indeed, they have been
seduced by "commodity fetishism", or have been bought off by
imperialist "super-profits".
Material reality is once more inverted so
that a comforting idea is allowed to remain on its feet. Only a vanishingly small
fraction of humanity has ever 'seen the light'; the vast majority of working people are
hopelessly lost, staggering around in
stygian gloom
--, this peremptory verdict itself
justified by a theory that not one of its acolytes can actually explain, even to
each other!
Such is the deleterious effect on
Dialectical Marxists
of a diet rich in
Silicates.
Naturally, this means that dialectics must be brought
to the masses "from the outside", whether they like it or not.
Up to present, however, the
signs
are that this
has been a
clear and consistent "Not!"
But, the conclusion is never drawn -- it doesn't
even make the edge of the radar screen -- that workers will never accept a theory
that clashes with their materially-, and socially-grounded
language, and which is counter to their understanding and experience -- or
which, because of this,isn't even a materialist theory!
This isn't to put workers
down; as Part One demonstrated,
this theory is beyond anyone's comprehension, and that includes those who
invented it and those who now disseminate it.
At this point it could be countered that in a revolutionary upheaval daily experience and
commonsense aren't sure and safe guides to action. Hence, a revolutionary party
needs a theory that not only transcends the immediate, but has been tested in practice.
And yet, HM
has provided, and still provides us with just such a
theory. Even better: its concepts clash neither with the vernacular nor
with common understanding. Quite the contrary, as we saw in
Part One of this Essay,
HM
actually depends on both!
On the other hand, and with respect to concepts
drawn from DM, the
proffered rejoinder
in the last but one paragraph is as misguided as any could be. As Part One of this
Essay has also shown, not one single thesis drawn from DM relates to anything a human
being, let alone a worker, or even a Marxist, could experience. So,
this isn't to put workers down. Not even those who invented this theory,
or those who now disseminate it, understand it. [Again, that was established in
Part One.] In that case,
it can't
be an expression of the party's practice; nor can it be, or have been, tested in
practice (as we will see). Moreover, as Essays Twelve
Part One, and subsequent Parts
of Essay Twelve (summary here) and
Fourteen Part One (summary
here) show, DM is based on concepts
derived from over
two
millennia of deeply entrenched, ruling-class ideology.
Given its origin in Mystical
Christianity, it is no big surprise thatDM fails to mesh with
material reality, and hence that it can't be used to help change it.
Still less surprising is the fact that it has failed us for so long.
Nor, it seems, has anyone even
considered the
effect that DM has had on the standing of revolutionaries in the eyes of
ordinary workers, or on their respect for Marxism itself, whose parties are
now widely regarded as little more than a standing joke, comprised of nothing but
warring sects
dominated by obscure and irrelevant ideas.
Video One: The First
Anti-Dialectical Joke In History?
Still less thought has gone into the extent to which
this 'theory'
(with its egregious logic)
has only succeeded in undermining the reputation of HM viewed as a science, just as precious little attention has been paid to the
fatally-compromised
credibility of anyone who accepts DM.
Well, would you listen to, or even respect,
the opinions of anyone who accepts the
theoretical equivalent of Astrology or
Crystal Gazing?
However, as noted in the
Introduction,
revolutionaries are unlikely to abandon DM in spite of the noxious effect
it has had on their own thought, let alone their own movement --, or even in the face of the steady blows that yours truly rains down upon it.
Whether or not DM
actually spells the Death of Marxism
is obviously of no concern to those held in its thrall, which is why many who might have made it this far will reject much of what this Essay
has said, and will
read no further.
This is
once more hardly
surprising:indeed,it is
difficult to see clearly with your head stuck in what is perhaps the
psychological equivalent of
the
Gobi Desert.
It has been maintained above that
DM
appeals to, and hence satisfies, the contingent
psychological needs of certain sections of the revolutionary movement, comrades
who, because of their class origin, class position or their socialisation, and
in response to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism, cling to DM in a
way that makes
a drowning man look positivelyindifferent toward any straws that might
randomly drift past him.
[Any who doubt this should try 'debating' with
comrades who are held in thrall to this theory. And good luck! (On that, see
here.)]
As noted earlier, that is because dialectics
is a source of consolation analogous to the solace religion
provides believers. That is, while DM supplies its acolytes with consolation in the
face of dashed hopes and unrealised expectations, it also provides them with a defence against the acid of disillusion by re-configuring each defeat as
itsopposite.
For example, in relation to the 2013-2014 crisis in
the UK-SWP, this is what
Mark Steel had to say:
"SWP members who have taken a stand on the current issue seem bewildered as to
why their leaders behave in this illogical way. But the reason may be that the
debate isn't really about the allegations, or attitudes towards feminism, it's
about accepting that you do as you're told, that the party is under attack at
all times so you defend the leaders no matter what, that if the party's
pronouncement doesn't match reality, it must be reality that's wrong. Dissent on
an issue and your crime is not to be wrong about the issue, it's that you
dissented at all." [Quoted from
here. Bold
emphasis added.]
As we will see, DM plays a key role in
this regard, since it teaches the faithful that reality contradicts the way the
world appearsto be
to those not 'in the know'.
This is worryingly similar to the way that theists manage to persuade themselves that,
despite appearances to the contrary, death, disease and suffering are not
only beneficial, they actually confirm 'the goodness of God'! Both clearly provide
believers with a
convenient excuse for
refusing to face the facts.13
In other words,
DM is the
"opiate" of the
Party, the heart of a seemingly hopeless cause.13a00
For those Dialectical Marxists who live in a
world divorced from the day-to-day life and struggles of ordinary workers --
i.e., for professional revolutionaries, academics and itinerant theorists, who aren't employed in the world of
work
alongside workers --,
HM
clearly isn't fundamental enough.
In fact, these individuals -- who, for whatever reason, are cut-off from the world of
collective labour --
clearly require their own
distinctive world-view,
or 'method', expressed in and by a theory that has itself been abstracted (cut-off) from
the world of 'appearances', and thus from material reality itself.
This 'world-view'/'method' must incorporate a theory that adequately represents the (now)
alienated experience of these erstwhile 'radicals'; it
must not only be divorced from ordinary language and
common understanding, it must
be distanced from working class experience and hence from
genuinely
materialist forms-of-thought. In addition, it must help rationalise,
justify, and promote the pre-eminent organisational and theoretical position
that DM-theorists have arrogated
to themselves -- that is,
it must ratify their status as 'leaders of the
movement and the class'.
To
that end, it must be a 'theory'/'method' that only they are capable of "understanding"
-- or so they have convinced themselves.
[To save the reader's
annoyance, I will henceforth drop the phrase "theory"/"method" and just use "theory"
instead. Readers should, however, understand I mean both.]
Even then, they must be able to employ this theory to
'prove' that members of other Marxist groups either (i) Don't "understand"
dialectics or (ii) They misuse and/or distort it. [On that,
see below.]
What better theory is there then that fits the bill than one that is based on an incomprehensible set of ideas Hegel concocted in the
comfort of his own head (upside down or 'the right
way up')?
DM is thus beyond workers' experience (indeed, anyone's experience) -- not by
accident -- but because it is meant
to be that way.13a0
Naturally, this not only renders DM immune from
refutation, it also transforms it into an ideal intellectual device for
getting things the wrong way round (or, indeed, upside down). It is thus an ideal
tool for keeping 'reality' Ideal.
As an added bonus, this 'theory' helps
insulate militant
minds from the defeats and setbacks revolutionaries
constantly face -- just as it inures them to the dire consequences of the theory itself
(some of which have been detailed below).
DM isn't just the opiate of the party,
it expresses thevery soul of professional revolutionaries.
Abstracted not just from the class, but also from humanity itself, this faction
within the labour movement naturally finds abstraction
conducive to (a) The way it
sees the natural and social world, and (b) The way it views the working class
itself -- that is, as
an abstractobject of theory, not avery realsubject of history.
[This also helps explain why
Engels and other DM-theorists regard matter as an "abstraction".
The centrality of 'abstraction' and its importance for DM-theorists was
underlined in Essay Three Parts One
and Two.]
Moreover, it also exposes the motivating factors that underpin the belief that DM is the
"world-view" of the proletariat -- plainly, such proletarians aren't
real workers they are
members of an abstract class of 'workers' kept at arms length by a set of dogmas
only the terminally naive or the psychologically challenged among them would
swallow!13a01
Of course, that also helps account for Dialectical Marxism's long-term
lack of impact on workers themselves.
The
Indoctrination And 'Conversion' Of Marxist Dialecticians
It is important to point out
that the ideas I am about to rehearse in this sub-section:
(A) Bear no relation to those
advanced by the anarchist,
Jan
Machajski. I am not arguing that 'intellectuals' are at every level
automatic and implacable enemies of the working class -- or even that workers
are only interested in economic struggle -- just that
'intellectuals' can no more escape the class forces that shaped
them than workers can. [On this, see also Note
3, where I attempt to supply some of the theoretical background to this
line-of-thought. On
Machajski,
see here (second section).]
(B)
Share nothing with the myth invented and propagated by 'Leninologists', summed
up by Hal Draper:
"According to the myth,
endlessly repeated from book to book, Lenin's 'concept of the party':
"(1) saw the party as
consisting mainly of 'intellectuals,' on the basis of a theory according to
which workers cannot themselves develop to socialist consciousness; rather, the
socialist idea is always and inevitably imported into the movement by bourgeois
intellectuals;
"(2) posited that the party
is simply a band of 'professional revolutionaries' as distinct from a broad
working-class party;
"(3) repudiated any element
of spontaneity or spontaneous movement, in favour of engineered revolution only;
"(4) required that the party
be organized not democratically but as a bureaucratic or semi-military
hierarchy." [Draper
(1999), pp.187-88. Formatting adjusted to agree with the conventions adopted
at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
My
case (here summarised) is as follows:
[1]
The party should ideally consist of socialist workers and 'intellectuals' (as well as
others less easy to categorise separately). However, it is an undeniable fact
that 'intellectuals' (petty-bourgeois and/or déclassé) have not only shaped our core ideas, they have led the
movement for over a century. In and of itself that isn't a problem. What
is problematic is their importation of ruling-class ideas into our movement.
These non-working class 'intellectuals' have appropriated concepts and ideas derived
from the very worst forms of Christian and
Hermetic Mysticism (via Hegel).
Workers themselves
can, and have formed socialist ideas.
However, as we have seen throughout this site, DM has absolutely nothing to do with
socialism, so the admission that workers are capable of developing socialist
ideas doesn't imply they have also developed ideas that are unique to DM. [This was covered in
detail in Part One.]
[2]
There are "professional revolutionaries" in the party -- but, as Draper
notes:
"It can easily be shown, from Lenin's copious
discussions of the professional revolutionary for years after WITBD [i.e.,
Lenin (1947) -- RL], that to Lenin the term meant this: a party activist who
devoted most (preferably all) of his spare time to revolutionary work."
[Draper (1999), p.193. Italic emphasis in the original.]
However, it is also clear that a layer
in
the above class of "professionals" is also composed of "full-timers", "party functionaries",
and petty-bourgeois or de-classé 'intellectuals'. Draper was concerned to
repudiate the myth that the party was formed only of 'intellectuals',
full-timers and functionaries. Of course, these three groups can and do
overlap.
"The point of defining a professional
revolutionary as a full-timer, a functionary, is to fake the conclusion, or
'deduction': only non-workers can make up the party elite, hence only
intellectuals (sic). This conclusion is an invention of the Leninologists, based on
nothing in Lenin." [Ibid.,
p.193. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
[Point (3)
above lies beyond the scope and aims of this site; the ramifications of (4) will be
considered throughout the
rest of this
Essay.]
[This sub-section isn't aimed at solving the
knotty problem of the role of the individual in history, merely raise questions
about the nature of petty-bourgeois individualism and how it has affected
revolutionary socialism.]
The mind-set mentioned in the previous main section
is intimately connected with the following:
(i) The way that leading revolutionaries -- or
those who have shaped Marxist theory -- were socialised in and by bourgeois
society long before they had even heard of Marxism, and,
(ii) How this socialisation affected their subsequent theoretical, political,
and organisational development.
The rest of this
Essay will expand on each of these issues, along with several others.13a1
However, this topic introduces difficult questions about the role of the individual in
revolutionary activity, and hence by implication, the role of the individual in
history. In turn, this raises further issues connected with the age-old
conundrum concerning the relation between 'free will' and 'determinism'. [I will say much more about
that controversial topic in
Essay Three Part Five. Until that Essay is published readers are directed
here and
here for more details.]
Given the constraints imposed on every human being by their class origin or
current class position,
Dialectical Marxists have struggled to explain how individuals,as
individuals can have an
impact on the class war -- or at least an impact that doesn't imply they are
merelyautomatonstotally in thrall to social and economic forces. Plainly, that is because they
have largely accepted the parameters of discourse laid down in and by Traditional
Thought,
an error of judgement seriously compounded by the importation of obscure ideas
into Marxism that have only succeeded in further clouding the issue. Small wonder
then that they have found it difficult to account for 'free will' in the face of
the sort of 'rigid determinism' posited everywhere else by their own
theory. As is the case with other 'problems' thrown up by DM, this conundrum was 'solved'
simply
by throwing the word "dialectical" at it, as if that term possessed
magical powers all of its own.
Here is a classic example
of this genre (from Engels himself):
"Another
opposition in which metaphysics is entangled is that of chance and necessity.
What can be more sharply contradictory than these two thought determinations?How is it possible that both are identical, that the accidental is necessary,
and the necessary is also accidental?Common sense, and with it the majority
of natural scientists, treats necessity and chance as determinations that
exclude each other once for all. A thing, a circumstance, a process is either
accidental or necessary, but not both. Hence both exist side by side in
nature; nature contains all sorts of objects and processes, of which some are
accidental, the others necessary, and it is only a matter of not confusing the
two sorts with each other.... And then it is declared that the necessary is the
sole thing of scientific interest and that the accidental is a matter of
indifference to science. That is to say: what can be brought under laws, hence
what one knows, is interesting; what cannot be brought under laws, and
therefore what one does not know, is a matter of indifference and can be
ignored.... That is to say: what can be brought under general laws is regarded
as necessary, and what cannot be so brought as accidental. Anyone can see that
this is the same sort of science as that which proclaims natural what it can
explain, and ascribes what it cannot explain to supernatural causes; whether I
term the cause of the inexplicable chance, or whether I term it God, is a matter
of complete indifference as far as the thing itself is concerned. Both are only
equivalents for: I do not know, and therefore do not belong to science. The
latter ceases where the requisite connection is wanting.
"In
opposition to this view there is determinism, which passed from French
materialism into natural science, and which tries to dispose of chance by
denying it altogether. According to this conception only simple, direct
necessity prevails in nature.... [T]hese are all facts which have been produced
by an irrevocable concatenation of cause and effect, by an unshatterable
necessity.... With this kind of necessity we likewise do not get away
from the theological conception of nature. Whether with
Augustine and
Calvin we call it the eternal decree of God, or
Kismet [Destiny -- RL] as the Turks do, or whether we call it necessity, is all pretty
much the same for science.There is no question of tracing the chain of
causation in any of these cases; so we are just as wise in one as in another,
the so-called necessity remains an empty phrase, and with it -- chance also
remains -- what it was before....
"Hence
chance is not here explained by necessity, but rather necessity is degraded to
the production of what is merely accidental. If the fact that a particular
pea-pod contains six peas, and not five or seven, is of the same order as the
law of motion of the solar system, or the law of the transformation of energy,
then as a matter of fact chance is not elevated into necessity, but rather
necessity degraded into chance....
"In
contrast to both conceptions, Hegel came forward with the hitherto quite
unheard-of propositions that the accidental has a cause because it is
accidental, and just as much also has no cause because it is accidental; that
the accidental is necessary, that necessity determines itself as chance, and, on
the other hand, this chance is rather absolute necessity. (Logik, II, Book
III, 2: Reality.) Natural science has simply ignored these propositions as
paradoxical trifling, as self-contradictory nonsense, and, as regards theory,
has persisted on the one hand in the barrenness of thought of
Wolffian metaphysics, according to which a thing is either accidental or
necessary, but not both at once; or, on the other hand, in the hardly less
thoughtless mechanical determinism which in words denies chance in general only
to recognise it in practice in each particular case....
"The
previous idea of necessity breaks down. To retain it means dictatorially to
impose on nature as a law a human arbitrary determination that is in
contradiction to itself and to reality, it means to deny thereby all inner
necessity in living nature, it means generally to proclaim the chaotic
kingdom of chance to be the sole law of living nature....
"The
evolution of a concept, or of a conceptual relation (positive and negative,
cause and effect, substance and accidency) in the history of thought, is related
to its development in the mind of the individual dialectician, just as the
evolution of an organism in palaeontology is related to its development in
embryology (or rather in history and in the single embryo). That this is so was
first discovered for concepts by Hegel. In historical development, chance
plays its part, which in dialectical thinking, as in the development of the
embryo, is summed up in necessity." [Engels (1954),
pp.217-22. Italic emphasis in the original. Bold emphases and links
added. Four minor typos corrected. (I have informed the editors over at the
Marxist Internet Archive). On this, see also
below.]
How that settles this issue Engels neglected to tell his readers. Merely reminding us
that Hegel said this or that is no solution if what the latter dogmatically asserted is
even more obscure than the 'problem' it was meant to solve! So, it was a bit rich
of Engels
to add this comment:
"Anyone can see that this is the same sort of science
as that which proclaims natural what it can explain, and ascribes what it cannot
explain to supernatural causes; whether I term the cause of the inexplicable
chance, or whether I term it God, is a matter of complete indifference as far as
the thing itself is concerned." [Ibid.]
Translated, this pans out as:
"What Engels can't actually explain can safely be ascribed to
'dialectical causes'; whether he calls this explanation 'supernatural' or
'dialectical' is 'a
matter of complete indifference as far as the thing itself is concerned.'"
Different wording, same implication: both remain a total mystery.
"This
second definition of freedom [proposed by Dühring -- RL], which quite
unceremoniously gives a knock-out blow to the first one, is again nothing but
an extreme vulgarisation of the Hegelian conception. Hegel was the first to
state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is
the insight into necessity
'Necessity
is blind only in so far as it is not understood.' [Engels is
here quoting
Hegel (1975), p.209, §147 -- RL.]
"Freedom
does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the
knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically
making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the
laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental
existence of men themselves -- two classes of laws which we can separate
from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of
the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with
knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man's judgment is
in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with
which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty,
founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many
different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is
not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control.
Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external
nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore
necessarily a product of historical development. The first men who separated
themselves from the animal kingdom were in all essentials as unfree as the
animals themselves, but each step forward in the field of culture was a step
towards freedom." [Engels (1976),
p.144. Bold emphases alone added.]
But,
how
do dialecticians respond to the counter-argument that human decisions are also
'determined' by events in the
CNS? How is it possible to
isolate the human will from the
'deterministic' course of nature? As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Three,
dialecticians appeal to Engels's First Law
[Q«Q],
and, hey presto, freedom just 'emerges' from necessity. Simple really. As
we also saw in the aforementioned Essay (and in Essay Seven
Part
One), that 'law' is far too shaky and insubstantial to support any conclusion much heavier
than an amoeba
on a crash diet.
Simply asserting that a given action is 'free' if it is in accord with, or based on,
knowledge of the "laws of external nature" is itself of little use if those
actions themselves have been 'determined' by other laws about which we might not
yet be aware. Even more to the point is the question whether those actions
were themselves uncaused? So,
for example, if woman decides to raise her arm and throw a ball, and we now
suppose that all such actions are uncaused, then the action of throwing that
ball would be unrelated
to the woman concerned -- indeed, as Hume pointed out over two hundred
years ago (on that, see
here,
Section VIII). In that case, they wouldn't be the actions of that individual -- no more than being pushed
out of a tree, for instance, would be an action of the individual who had been
so pushed. On the other hand,
if they are caused, they must have been 'determined' in some way, and so
can't be 'free'. Throwing the word "dialectical" at the page (or the screen) in no
way resolves this conundrum -- any more than calling the Christian Trinity a
"mystery beyond our understanding" solves its insurmountable problems.
[I
hasten to add that the above does not represent my view; I have only
included it in the Essay in order to highlight several of the theoretical hurdles implied by the
traditional theory
DM-supporters have bought into, even if they think they have 'solved it somehow'.
My 'solution' to this age-old 'problem' is to dissolve it. To that end, I
have approached this pseudo-problem from an entirely different angle in
order to expose the irredeemable confusion that first motivated it in Ancient Greek
Thought -- and, indeed, which still motivates it today. Again, more details on
this can be foundhere and
here.]
Other
dialecticians have echoed the above non-solution advanced by Engels; here is Lenin:
'Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between
freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the appreciation of necessity.
"Necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood."
Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in
the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically
making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the
laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental
existence of men themselves -- two classes of laws which we can separate from
each other at most only in thought but
not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity
to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a
man's judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the
necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined....
Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external
nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity'....
"Firstly,Engels at the very outset of his argument recognises laws of
nature, laws of external nature, the necessity of nature -- i.e.,
all that
Mach,
Avenarius,
Petzoldt and Co.
characterise as 'metaphysics.' If
Lunacharsky had
really wanted to reflect on Engels' 'wonderful' argument he could not have
helped noticing the fundamental difference between the materialist theory of
knowledge and agnosticism and idealism, which deny law in nature or declare it
to be only 'logical,' etc., etc.
"Secondly, Engels does not attempt to contrive 'definitions' of freedom and
necessity, the kind of scholastic definition with which the reactionary
professors (like Avenarius) and their disciples (like
Bogdanov) are
most concerned. Engels takes the knowledge and will of man, on the one hand,
and the necessity of nature, on the other, and instead of giving definitions,
simply says that the necessity of nature is primary, and human will and mind
secondary. The latter must necessarily and inevitably adapt themselves to
the former. Engels regards this as so obvious that he does not waste words
explaining his view. It needs the Russian Machians to complain of
Engels' general definition of materialism (that nature is primary and mind
secondary; remember Bogdanov's 'perplexity' on this point!), and at the same
time to regard one of the particular applications by Engels of this
general and fundamental definition as 'wonderful' and 'remarkably apt'!
"Thirdly,Engels does not doubt the existence of 'blind necessity.'He admits the existence of a necessity unknown to man. This is
quite obvious from the passage just quoted. But how, from the standpoint of the
Machians, can man know of the
existence of what he does not know? Is it not 'mysticism,'
'metaphysics,' the admission of 'fetishes' and 'idols,' is it not the 'Kantian
unknowable thing-in-itself' to say that we
know of the existence of an unknown necessity? Had the Machians given the matter
any thought they could not have failed to observe the complete identity
between Engels' argument on the knowability of the objective nature of things
and on the transformation of 'things-in-themselves' into 'things-for-us,' on the
one hand, and his argument on a blind, unknown necessity, on the other. The
development of consciousness in each human individual and the development of the
collective knowledge of humanity at large presents us at every step with
examples of the transformation of the unknown 'thing-in-itself' into the
known 'thing-for-us,' of the transformation of blind, unknown necessity,
'necessity-in-itself,' into the known 'necessity-for-us.' Epistemologically,
there is no difference whatever between these two transformations, for the basic
point of view in both cases is the same, viz., materialistic, the
recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of
external nature, and of the fact that this world and these laws are fully
knowable to man but can never be known to him with finality. We do not
know the necessity of nature in the phenomena of the weather, and to that extent
we are inevitably slaves of the weather. But while we do not know this
necessity, we do know that it exists. Whence this knowledge? From the
very source whence comes the knowledge that things exist outside our mind and
independently of it, namely, from the development of our knowledge, which
provides millions of examples to every individual of knowledge replacing
ignorance when an object acts upon our sense-organs, and conversely of ignorance
replacing knowledge when the possibility of such action is eliminated.
"Fourthly, in the above-mentioned argument Engels plainly employs the
salto vitale [energetic somersault -- RL] method in philosophy, that is to
say, he makes a leap from theory to practice. Not a single one of the
learned (and stupid) professors of philosophy, in whose footsteps our Machians
follow, would permit himself to make such a leap, for this would be a
disgraceful thing for a devotee of 'pure science' to do. For them the
theory of knowledge, which demands the cunning concoction of 'definitions,' is
one thing, while practice is another. For Engels all living human practice
permeates the theory of knowledge itself and provides an objective
criterion of truth. For until we know a law of nature, it, existing and acting
independently and outside our mind, makes us slaves of 'blind necessity.'
But once we come to know this law, which acts (as Marx pointed out a thousand
times (sic)) independently of our will and our mind, we become the
masters of nature. The mastery of nature manifested in human practice is a
result of an objectively correct reflection within the human head of the
phenomena and processes of nature, and is proof of the fact that this reflection
(within the limits of what is revealed by practice) is objective, absolute, and
eternal truth (sic).
"What is the result? Every step in Engels' argument, literally almost
every phrase, every proposition, is constructed entirely and exclusively upon
the epistemology of dialectical materialism, upon premises which stand out
in striking contrast to the Machian nonsense about bodies being complexes of
sensations, about 'elements,' 'the coincidence of sense-perceptions with the
reality that exists outside us,' etc., etc., etc. Without being the least
deterred by this, the Machians abandon materialism and repeat (à la
Berman) the
vulgar banalities about dialectics, and at the same time welcome with open arms
one of the applications of dialectical materialism! They have taken
their philosophy from an eclectic pauper's broth and are continuing to offer
this hotchpotch to the reader. They take a bit of agnosticism and a morsel of
idealism from Mach, add to it slices of dialectical materialism from Marx, and
call this hash a development of Marxism. They imagine that if Mach,
Avenarius, Petzoldt, and all the authorities of theirs have not the slightest
inkling of how Hegel and Marx solved the problem (of freedom and necessity),
this is purely accidental: why, it was simply because they overlooked a certain
page in a certain book, and not because these 'authorities' were and are utter
ignoramuses on the subject of the real progress made by philosophy in
the nineteenth century and because they were and are philosophical
obscurantists." [Lenin (1972),
pp.219-23. Bold
emphases and links alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
And
yet, just like Engels and Hegel before him, Lenin failed to explain how
'freedom' can emerge from 'necessity' -- except Lenin inserts invective,
bluster and abuse in place of cogent argument, providing his readers with a classic example of
"philosophy practiced with a mallet". Simply asserting that a passage from Hegel
or Engels solves this knotty 'problem' might work for the many
true-believers
Dialectical Marxism attracts to its ranks, but even they will struggle to fill
in the gaps in the above 'argument' (which is, of course, why, when challenged, they
resort to abuse almost
from the get-go, just like Lenin).
We
have already seen (in Essay Thirteen
Part One) that Lenin's
theory restricts the immediate source of knowledge to 'images in the head':
"All
knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is
true. But the question arises, does
objective reality 'belong to perception,' i.e., is it the source of
perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no,
you are inconsistent and will inevitably arrive at subjectivism, or agnosticism,
irrespective of whether you deny the
knowability of the thing-in-itself, or the objectivity of time, space and
causality (with Kant), or whether you do not even permit the thought of a
thing-in-itself (with Hume). The inconsistency of your empiricism, of your
philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the
objective content of experience, the objective truth of experimental knowledge."
[Lenin
(1972), p.142. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"For instance, the materialist Frederick
Engels -- the not unknown collaborator of Marx and a founder of Marxism --
constantly and without exception speaks in his works of things and their
mental pictures or images..., and it is obvious that these mental images
arise exclusively from sensations. It would seem that this fundamental
standpoint of the 'philosophy of Marxism' ought to be known to everyone who
speaks of it, and especially to anyone who comes out in print in the name of
this philosophy.... Engels, we repeat, applies this 'only materialistic
conception' everywhere and without exception, relentlessly attacking Dühring for
the least deviation from materialism to idealism. Anybody who reads Anti-Dühring
and Ludwig Feuerbach with the slightest care will find scores of instances when
Engels speaks of things and their reflections in the human brain, in our
consciousness, thought, etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas are
'symbols' of things, for consistent materialism must here use 'image,'
picture, or reflection instead of 'symbol,' as we shall show in detail in
the proper place." [Ibid.,
pp.32-33.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"[S]ensation
is an image of the external world...." [Ibid.,
p.56. Bold emphasis added.]
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external
world…." [Ibid.,
p.69.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
"The doctrine of introjection is a muddle, it
smuggles in idealistic rubbish and is contradictory to natural science, which
inflexibly holds that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations,
i.e., the images of the external world, exist within us, produced by the action
of things on our sense-organs." [Ibid.,
p.95.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be
made from this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and
which materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology --
is that outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies
and that our perceptions are images of the external world." [Ibid.,
p.111.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Thus, the materialist theory, the theory of
the reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity:
things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images." [Ibid.,
p.119.
Bold emphasis added.]
"For the materialist the 'factually given' is
the outer world, the image of which is our sensations." [Ibid.,
p.121.
Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"[S]ense-perception is not the
reality existing outside us, it is only the image of that reality."
[Ibid.,
p.124. Bold emphasis alone added.]
In
which case, Lenin can't possibly claim to know anything at all 'objective' even about
Engels (let alone about anything else), since all he has available to him are 'images' of Engels's
writings with no way of knowing whether or not these 'images' are valid or are
illusory. It is no use
appealing to practice or even science perhaps as two possible ways of validating these 'images' since, once again, all
anyone (including Lenin) has is an
'image' of practice and an 'image' of science, if Lenin is to be believed.
Plainly, no 'image' can guarantee the veracity
of any other 'image'. Small wonder then that Lenin
again substituted bluster for proof -- clearly, in order to distract attention from the
gaping holes in his argument. Indeed, as we saw in Essay Thirteen
Part One, as a
result of his ill-advised and confused arguments, Lenin
only succeeded in trapping himself in a
solipsistic universe of his own making, leaving him in the same predicament
as the subjective idealists he was criticising. And that in turn was because
he and they both accepted
the parameters laid down by post-Renaissance Philosophers -- compounded by an
acceptance of a bourgeois
individualist theory of knowledge. [On that,
see Essay Three
Part Two.]
Be
this as it may, these Engelsian pseudo-solutions bequeathed to subsequent
generations of DM-theorists an unresolved (and irresolvable) 'problem', which is
why they uncritically regurgitate the above 'arguments' verbatim in the vain hope that
repetition constitutes proof -- imagining that parroting a series of assertions based on
what doesn't even remotely look like a solution will become a solution to the 'problem' of the
relation between the individual and history if it is repeated often enough.
'Triumph of the will'
at least with respect
to theory, in this case, one feels.
However, questions remain: Do we actually have 'free will'? Or, are we all slaves to
necessity and mere pawns in its hands? Are we capable of acting and
deciding for ourselves? What exactly is 'revolutionary agency'? Subsequent
dialecticians have wrestled with these knotty problems long and hard, but they have either (a)
Reproduced the above non-solution, or they have (b) Elaborated on it
rendering it even more prolix and baroque --, perhaps
drawing on certain aspects of contemporary Philosophy. [Callinicos (2004), for
instance, is an excellent example of this genre. I will say more about
Callinicos's 'solution'
in Essay Three Part Five.]
"For the
materialist, all of reality is based on matter, including the human brain which
is itself a result of the organization of matter in a particular way. In this
view, the abstract idea of 'tree' was developed by humans from their experience
of actual trees. 'It is not consciousness that determines being,' wrote Marx,
putting it another way, 'but social being that determines consciousness.'
[D'Amato is here attributing to Marx a
bourgeois
individualist theory of knowledge/abstraction, little different from that
invented by John Locke,
not realising that Marx was referring to social being here (even though
D'Amato actually quoted the phrase!), not individual experience -- RL.]
"Probably
the most popular form of idealism is 'free will' -- the idea that individuals
can do anything they set their mind too (sic). For example, the view that 'you can
beat poverty if you really try hard' implicitly accepts the idea of free will.
Poverty, in this view, is not a social phenomenon caused by, for example, a
plant closing or a chronic illness in the family. Rather, poverty is some kind
of personal choice.... Marx and
Engels ridiculed the view that ideas
determine reality. 'Once upon a
time, a valiant fellow had the idea
that men were drowned in water only
because they were possessed with the
idea of gravity,' they wrote. 'If
they were to get this notion out of
their heads...they would be
sublimely proof against any danger
from water.'
"But by
rejecting 'free will,' Marx didn't
embrace 'determinism' -- the idea
that human beings are slaves to the
blind forces of history. 'The
materialist doctrine,' wrote Marx, 'that men are products of
circumstances and upbringing, and
that, therefore, changed men are
products of other circumstances and
changed upbringing, forgets that it
is men who change circumstances.' For Marx,
people 'make their own history, but
they do not make it just as they
please; they do not make it under
circumstances chosen by themselves,
but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted
from the past.'
"Human
behaviour is first shaped by our
physical makeup. We must labour
cooperatively in order to eat, drink
and find shelter. At any given stage
in human development, the level of
production -- and the social
relations based on that level of
production -- shape our limits and
possibilities. 'People
cannot be liberated,' wrote Marx and
Engels, 'as long as they are unable
to obtain food and drink, housing
and clothing in adequate quality and
quantity. "Liberation" is a
historical and not a mental act and
it is brought about by historical
conditions.' Ideas can
and do shape history -- but only if
those ideas are embraced by millions
and only if the social and material
conditions for their realization
exist." [Quoted from
here; accessed 24/12/2016.
Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this
site. Spelling changed to agree
with UK English. Several paragraphs
merged.]
But, and once again, simply asserting that
humans can do this or that, when your theory also implies they can't since they
are all subject to
natural necessity, is no solution.
Here
is John Molyneux of the UK-SWP, also choosing Box (a):
"Before dealing directly with these issues it
is worth noting that bourgeois thought has never been able to resolve the
problem of determinism. Rather it has swung back and forth between voluntarist
idealism, which ignores social conditions and places all the emphasis on 'great'
individuals and ideas, and mechanical materialism which stresses the
unchangeable nature of people and society. Both these positions reflect aspects
of bourgeois society viewed from the top down. On the one hand the bourgeoisie
standing at the head of society, freed from productive labour and living off the
exploitation of others, is able to flatter itself that its ideas and deeds rule
the world. On the other hand looking down on the masses it sees them there as
mere objects, passively driven this way and that by the requirements of capital
accumulation. Bourgeois ideology thus attacks Marxism both for being too
deterministic and for not being deterministic enough....
"Debates about determinism have also occurred
amongst those claiming allegiance to Marxism. At different points in time both
passive determinist and highly voluntarist interpretations of Marxism have
flourished. The most important example of the determinist trend was the version
of Marxism developed by
Karl Kautsky which dominated German Social Democracy and
the
Second International in the period leading up to the First World War. In
Kautsky's view the economic laws of capitalism guaranteed the growth in numbers
and consciousness of the working class to the point where power would
'automatically' fall into its hands. All that was required of the socialist
movement was that it build up its organisations, strengthen its vote and avoid
adventures while patiently waiting for economic development to do its work. It
was of this period that
Gramsci wrote that 'the deterministic, fatalistic and
mechanistic element has been a direct ideological "armour" emanating from the
philosophy of praxis [Marxism -- JM] rather like religion or drugs'.
"At the opposite pole, the most extreme cases
of voluntarism trading under a Marxist label were Maoism and Guevarism. Maoism
proclaimed not only the possibility of industrialising China by will power in
the disastrous
Great Leap Forward but even the direct transition to complete
communism in China alone without any regard for objective material circumstances.... Guevarism, basing itself on the special case
of Cuba, developed a theory of revolution instigated by a small band of
guerrillas in the countryside. 'It is not necessary', wrote
Guevara, 'to wait
until all the conditions for making revolution exist: the insurrection can
create them'....
"By absolute determinism I mean the view that
every event in the history of the universe from the big bang to the end of time
and every human action from the writing of Capital to whether or not I
raise my right eyebrow is inevitable and could not be other than it has been, is
or will be. The argument in favour of absolute determinism is that every
event/action has its cause or causes, and that these causes determine precisely
the nature of the said event/action and that these causes are themselves
completely determined by prior causes. Thus every particular event or action is
part of an infinitely complex but absolutely inevitable chain reaction inherent
in the singularity or whatever lay at the origin of the universe.... [Molyneux
is here deliberately confusing, or equating, determinism (or 'absolute determinism') with fatalism -- RL.]
"However, it also involves the belief that
human behaviour is 'ultimately' reducible to the movements of the physical
particles of which humans are made up and which are held to obey universal
natural laws. Some such view as this, even if not openly proclaimed, seems to
have influenced those Marxists who have held an absolute determinist position.
Such Marxists, however, have generously held that for the purposes of social
analysis it was unnecessary to effect a reduction to the level of physics since
human behaviour was governed by social laws which were akin to natural laws in
their operation.
"Discussing absolute determinism,
Ralph
Miliband comments, 'This is not a view that can be argued with: it can only
be accepted or rejected. I reject it and pass on'. Miliband has a point in that
it is impossible to cite empirical evidence which refutes absolute determinism
(just as it is impossible to cite facts which 'prove' it). Nevertheless it is a
view which can be argued with. Bearing in mind Marx's dictum that:
'In practice man must prove the truth,
that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking. The dispute
over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a
pure scholastic question.'
[Molyneux is here quoting the first of Marx's
Theses on Feuerbach -- RL.]
"It is possible to assess the advantages and
disadvantages of absolute determinism from the standpoint of practice."
[Molyneux (1995), pp.39-42. Italic emphases in the original; links added.]
I
will discuss Molyneux's article in much more detail in Essay Three Part Five,
but his 'solution' to this ancient problem in the end plainly revolves around practicalities,
the dialectical equivalent of
Samuel
Johnson's attempted refutation of
Bishop
Berkeley's
Subjective Idealism --
by kicking
a stone! Moreover, any response that amounts to little more than "I
personally can't
believe this theory or its implications" has no place in Marxism, or, indeed,
in any self-respecting scientific theory.
Finally, here is Rob Sewell (of the
IMT), happily choosing Box (a), too:
"In the
past, the role of the individual in history (the 'subjective factor' in Marxist
terminology) has been the subject of heated debate. There are many bourgeois
historians even today who believe that history is made by 'Great Men and
Women'.... Supposedly through their force of character, they have shaped history
while the masses play little or no role.... Little attention is played to economic,
political or social forces which operate largely behind the scenes.
"There are
those who argue that individuals determine nothing, but are thrown about by the
greater objective forces of history. This school of thought represents fatalism,
where individuals act as mere marionettes, their strings pulled by some
invisible hand. This idea is derived from a Calvinist doctrine that all human
action is divinely predestined, like some lunar eclipse.... The
domination of Fate rules out any idea of individual freedom and the independent
activity of the masses. We are all reduced to the role of pawns. [Sewell is
doing the
opposite of Molyneux by deliberately conflating, or identifying, fatalism
and determinism -- RL.]
"This is
however not the case. History is made by people. Marxists, unlike the
superficial fatalists, do not deny the role of the individual, his (sic) initiative or
audacity (or lack of it), in the social struggle. It is the task of Marxism
to uncover the dialectical relationship between the individual (the subjective)
and the great forces (objective) that govern the movement of society.
Historical materialism does not dismiss the role of the individual, of
personality, in history, but sees this role in its historical context. Marxism
explains that no person, no matter how talented, capable or farsighted, can
determine the main course of historical development, which is shaped by
objective forces. However, under critical circumstances, the role played by
individuals can be decisive, the last decisive link in the chain of causality.
Under certain circumstances, the 'subjective factor' can become the most
important fact in history....
"In
relation to the importance of decisive leadership in the socialist revolution,
Lenin's role in 1917 stands out as decisive. Could another Bolshevik leader,
even Trotsky, have substituted Lenin's role? Trotsky believed not. Given the
concrete conditions, where the Bolshevik Party had to be rearmed in April 1917
for the socialist revolution, only Lenin had the necessary authority in the
party. The conservative pressures from the other leaders would have had been too
great an influence without Lenin. In other words, the importance of the
conscious subjective factor stood out with greater force than ever before.
Lenin's role could not have been duplicated. This was due not simply due
(sic) to his
personal qualities, but his exceptional standing within the Bolshevik Party.
While the Bolsheviks led the workers and peasants, Lenin led the Bolshevik
Party. He was the leader of the leaders.
"One of the
fundamental reasons for this critical role of leadership or the subjective
factor in our epoch, stems from the fact that all the major objective conditions
for the overthrow of capitalism are rotten ripe (the integration of the world
economy, the inability of capitalism to take society forward, the chronic
instability and impasse of the system, the elements of barbarism emerging, the
existence of mass unemployment, etc). The defeat of the numerous revolutions
since the October Revolution of 1917 has been due to the failure of leadership
of the mass organisations, whether they are social democratic or Stalinist. For
the successful socialist revolution, a mass party is needed with a far-sighted
revolutionary leadership schooled in the ideas of Marxism ('the memory of the
working class'). The Bolsheviks under the Leadership of Lenin and Trotsky was
able to provide this. They provided the dialectical unity of the objective
and subjective factors." [Rob
Sewell. Accessed 24/12/2016. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
Once again, Sewell solves this
'problem', like the others, by throwing 'dialectics' at it, without even a perfunctory
attempt to explain how this
advances the argument as much as one nanometre.
In the end, echoing Plekhanov [Plekhanov
(2004b)], DM-theorists are forced to conclude that the individual
personality, say, of Lenin, or the psychological differences between him and other
leading Bolsheviks, was the (final) decisive factor in the 1917 revolution! Of course,
this observation is also heavily qualified by the objective historical circumstances surrounding
both Lenin and that revolution. Nevertheless, in the end, 'subjective' factors 'tipped the
balance' in this instance, as they also appear to have done in relation to other
'revolutionary actors' and events, and, indeed, with respect to Marxists in general.
"Without Lenin no October Revolution" is the clear message conveyed by the above.
In what follows, I have no desire to question
that particular conclusion -- although I will qualify it greatly in Essay Three
Part Five.
However, if it is admitted that 'subjective'
factors (of the above sort) are important, if not decisive, in revolutionary theory,
then it can
hardly be claimed that the ideas such individuals bring with them into
Marxism are insignificant and can therefore be discounted.
We will soon
see, however, that these individuals openly
admit that they inherited many of their core ideas from ruling-class ideologues
-- a general point Marx underlined, anyway:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society,
is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling
ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of
the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas
of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other
things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a
class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added.]
The next sub-section will further develop
this point, underlining its all too easily missed significance.
[Readers should not assume that the argument
presented in this section, or even the rest of this Essay, in any way supports,
condones or agrees with the caricature of Lenin's views expressed in What Is
To Be Done? (On that, see
Part One of
this Essay.) When I speak about ideas brought into the movement from the
"outside", I am, of course, referring to ruling-class doctrines imported into
the movement by leading Marxists, which later coalesced to form DM. I am not
speaking about 'revolutionary consciousness'!]
This now brings us to a consideration of the
factors that define and shape the mind-set, role and status of leading Marxists
as well as that of HCDs. Unlike
most workers who finally become revolutionaries, the vast majority of 'professional revolutionaries'
(and all of the leading revolutionaries, which also includes Marxist
'intellectuals') join, or have be recruited into, the
revolutionary socialist movement as a result of one or more of the following 'subjective'
factors:
(i) Their own personal or intellectual commitment to the revolution
(for whatever reason),
(ii) Their 'rebellious' personality (howsoever that phrase is understood),
(iii) Their alienation from the system,
(iv) Other contingent psychological or
social motivating factors (for example, in Lenin's
case, the
execution of his brother, Aleksandr) --,
but, significantly,
(v)Not as a direct result
of their
(collective) involvement in the class war.
"We begin to recruit from sourcesnone too healthy….
Freaks always looking for the most extreme expression of radicalism, misfits,
windbags, chronic oppositionists, who had been thrown out of half a dozen
organizations…. Many people came to us who had revolted against the Communist
Party not for its bad sides but for its good sides; that is, the discipline of
the party, the subordination of the individual to the decisions of the party in
current work. A lot of dillettantish, petty-bourgeois minded people who
couldn't stand any kind of discipline, many of the newcomers made a fetish of
democracy…. All the people of this type have one common characteristic; they
like to discuss things without limit or end…. They can all talk; and not only
can but will; and everlastingly, on every question." [James P. Cannon, History
of American Trotskyism, pp.92-93, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
[Items (i)-(iv) above might appear to be
'subjective factors', but in view of what was argued in
the previous
sub-section, and what James Cannon has just admitted, this is no mere appearance: they are subjective. Readers
are referred to that sub-section or more details.]
"A worker comes to socialism
as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of
escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass,
which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to
socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality,
and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual.But just here he comes
up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At
the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined,
even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class
movement. Today every newcomer finds, in the Western European countries, the
colossal structure of working-class democracy already existing." [The
Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added.]
These
individuals become
revolutionaries through their ownefforts, or they do so under the influence of
someone else (a parent, partner, sibling, friend, teacher, author,
another revolutionary, or even a novel!),13a1a but not (in general) through
participation in collective action, in strikes (etc.), at their own
place of work --that is,ifthey work.
[Concerning Lenin's radicalisation by his reading of
What is to be Done?, a
novel written by
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, see
Note 13a1a
(link above) -- and Lenin wasn't the only one influenced this way.]
Of course, Trotsky was
here speaking about 'intellectuals', but his comments also apply to most
individuals who drift into the movement -- that is, those that aren't workers
and who don't join
as a result of a direct involvement the class war, through collective
action. In which case, if these
individuals aren't, or weren't, members of the working class, they can't
come "to socialism as a part of a whole, along with [their] class", whether or
not they are 'intellectuals'. Not everyone
outwith the working class is
an 'intellectual', but both 'groups' (the 'intellectuals' and the
'non-intellectuals') still join the movement under the circumstances Trotsky
outlined
-- and that included Trotsky himself!
Lenin (quoting
Kautsky)
added the following thoughts about these 'intellectuals':
"The problem
'that again interests us
so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia and the
proletariat. My colleagues' (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and
editor) 'will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually
exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inept tactics to try
to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it
manifests itself in classes, not in individuals. The individual intellectual, like the
individual capitalist, may join wholly in the class struggle of the proletariat. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not
of this type
of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall
mainly speak in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the
word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the
stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the
intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain
antagonism to the proletariat.
'Thisantagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and
capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life
is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at
the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his
labour power, and he himself is often enough subjected to exploitation and
social humiliation by the
capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism
to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are
not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and
ideas.
'...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for
his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter....'"
[Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a),
pp.161-62. Bold emphases
alone added. Minor typos corrected -- I have informed the editors over at
the Marxist Internet Archive. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be
found
here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs
slightly from the on-line Russian version ]
To be sure, Lenin and Kautsky were describing hostile
(anti-Marxist) intellectuals, but much of what they had to say also applies to those who
move in the opposite direction, and becomeprofessional revolutionaries-- as Kautsky
himself admits:
"The
individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may join wholly in the
class struggle of the proletariat." [Ibid.]
Except, concerning the above individuals, their 'hostility' toward the proletariat
is often latent and lies under the
surface (although, from several such individuals we regularly hear words like "workerist",
or "economism",
and who also spare no effort telling us that ordinary workers are prisoners of "banal commonsense",
bought off by "super-profits", and are in thrall to "formal thinking").
However, this
latent 'hostility' later exhibits an entirely different set of characteristics; as we will see, this
typically, but
not exclusively, surfaces as
a haughty, arrogant, contemptuous, even impatient attitude toward other
revolutionaries and, indeed, workers themselves, which later morphs,
under specific social and political conditions, into various forms of
substitutionism. It is then that this latent hostility fully surfaces, rationalising
and justifying (even ignoring or explaining away) the continued oppression and
exploitation of workers -- as we saw, for example, in those "already
existing socialist" states (now defunct), and now maintained in those states that still claim they are
socialist/communist. We
witnessed this, too, as
generations of Marxist 'intellectuals' ('east' and 'west') rationalised, supported, or advocated
the
"revolutionary
defence" of those anti-worker and oppressive regimes. Of course, this wasn't,
or isn't the case with every such Marxist
'intellectual' or 'professional revolutionary', but their class origin or
current class position can't fail to have affected their
view of, and attitude toward, workers and fellow revolutionaries in general.
Indeed, as we will see
as this Essay unfolds.
This conclusion is forced on usunless we choose to regard
such 'individuals' as 'saints', who exist above, or are far removed from, the pressures
to which
every other human being is subject while they live in class society. Any
who cavil at this point might be tempted to conclude that they alone perhaps --
unique in all of humanity over the
last five or ten thousand years -- they alone are capable
of rising above such mundane and prosaic forces, and are able to do so against the pull of
social gravity.
So, Lenin and Kautsky's class
analysis also applies to Lenin and Kautsky, as well as other petty-bourgeois,
or déclassé, Dialectical Marxists.
Again, this must be the case otherwise we would have to conclude that Lenin and
Kautsky were committed to an Idealist
theory on this specific issue. That is, they would be trying to account for the theories,
ideas and attitudes adopted by 'intellectuals', petty-bourgeois, or even déclassé Dialectical Marxistson the basis of who they "identified" with
-- butnot
on their class origin and current class position --, or even their psychological orientation toward other
classes. Except perhaps: in the case of the attitude of intellectuals (etc.) toward the bourgeoisie,
that
would
at least have
economic and social roots (underlined by Lenin and Kautsky, as we have just
seen). However, with respect to their orientation toward the working class
it would have no such implications, just
a mind-set based on..., er..., maybe..., lifestyle and latent antagonism:
"Hence
the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the
proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not
proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and
ideas." [Ibid.]
But:
"Thisantagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and
capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life
is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at
the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his
labour power." [Ibid.]
If
the intellectual isn't part of the capitalist class and has to sell 'his'
labour-power just like workers do, then the only thing that could possibly swing 'him' behind the bourgeoisie is "his
standard of life", or 'his' socialisation. But, it would be interesting to see how many intellectuals
enjoy a
standard of living on a par with an average member of the capitalist class.
Their precarious economic condition would surely make them the Janus Class, as
Marx characterised the petty-bourgeoisie, a class fraction that could break
either way. [On this, see Draper (1978), pp.288-316.] But, whichever way they
finally do break, their socialisation will always predispose them toward the ideas
and thought-forms of the ruling-class.
So, Lenin/Kautsky tell us that some
'intellectuals' side with the bourgeoisie, which implies, of course, that others identify with the
proletariat -- for example, Marx, Engels and Lenin! But, if Lenin and Kautsky were
correct, their own ideas wouldn't be a function of their class position
as such,
they would be the sole function of other ideas they held -- contradicting Marx:
"It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness." [Marx
(1968), p.181.]
If those who identify with the
proletariat and those who don't identify with them originate in,
or belong to, the same class
faction (i.e., petty-bourgeois or déclassé intellectuals), then the only
factor that would distinguish them, that would motivate them into choosing one over
the other (bosses or workers), would be the contingent ideas they had adopted or formed, not their class
position as such. But, as has been noted several times, those in this class fraction, on both sides of the class war, have
already imbibed ideas
inherited from previous generations of ruling-class hacks.
While it is undeniable
that there are significant differences between Marxist intellectuals and/or
"professional revolutionaries", and non-Marxist intellectuals,
because they both come from, or now belong to, the same class faction, they are still either petty-bourgeois or
they are déclassé -- and, to repeat,they share the same range of ruling-class ideas.
Plainly, their attitudes and beliefs can't
change the class to which they belong, or from which they have emerged. So, there
remain far more basic ideological similarities between those who break either way
(again, siding with the capitalist class or with the working class) than there are
differences -- especially since both halves of this class fraction have had
ruling-class ideas forced down their throats almost from day one, and which they subsequently
employ in the class war:
"In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their
will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of
material life conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life.... In studying
such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material
transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined
with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious,
artistic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an
individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness
must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict
existing between the social forces of production and the relations of
production." [Marx
(1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]
[It
could be agued that if the above were correct, then it would imply that workers
themselves
can use philosophy to help fight their corner in the class war. I have dealt
with that riposte in Part One,
here.]
The
above applies no less to Marxist intellectuals; the only factors that
distinguish them from those who do not 'side with the revolution' are those that
were mentioned
earlier,
and in the previous
sub-section. Although the ideas held by both sets of individuals originated
outside the working class, subjective factors finally determine the side with which
they subsequently identify -- which is what one would expect of those who are
quintessential 'individuals' and who religiously defend their individuality:
"A worker comes to socialism
as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of
escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass,
which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to
socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality,
and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual.But just here he comes
up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At
the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined,
even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class
movement." [Trotsky, op cit; bold emphases added.]
"He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his
individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter...." [Kautsky, op cit; bold
emphases added.]
[More on this
later,
where I deal with the clichéd rebuttal that this is just 'crude reductionism'.]
So,
and once more, such comrades enter
the movement committed to the revolution as an
Idea, as an expression of their own personal and intellectual integrity --
maybe also because of anger directed against the system (for whatever reason),
or their idiosyncratic alienation from class society (again, for whatever
reason).
However, and once more, they aren't revolutionaries for
proletarian or materialist reasons; that is, they don't side with the
proletariat as a result of a
direct or immediate experience of collective action, or as a direct consequence of
working class response
to exploitation --, but for individual, albeit often very noble, reasons.
This means
that from the beginning(again, by-and-large),because of their
class position and non-working class origin and upbringing, they act
and think like individuals (indeed, as Trotsky noted, and Lenin implied). This
now (i) Affects any new ideas they
are capable of forming and the inferences they are capable of making, (ii)
Colours their attitude toward such ideas, (iii) Skews
their activity inside the movement, and (iv) Slants the relationships they
develop with other
revolutionaries and with workers themselves.
This isn't to malign such individuals, but to remind
us that this is a class issue -- again, as Lenin and Kautsky noted:
"...[I]t relates to
classes, not to individuals." [Loc cit.]
Although this
is indeed a class issue, it affects how those caught up in revolutionary
politics
behave as individuals. How else could class influences be expressed?
As noted above, these individuals have had their
heads filled with "ruling ideas" almost from the day they left the cradle --
which indoctrination was itself a direct result of the 'superior'
education and the bourgeois/petty-bourgeois socialisation to which they had
been subjected. So, when
those who might later 'side with the revolution' encounter Hegel's work (or even DM),
it seems quite 'natural' for them to latch on to his (and its) dogmatic and a priori
dogmas -- among the most important of which is the claim that change is part of the cosmic order
(when, as we now know, and quite fittingly, that
that is the opposite of the truth). "Natural" in the sense that their class origin and current position has already
delivered them up as atomised, socially-isolated individuals with no collective identity,
just
as Lenin and Trotsky argued. Hence, before they became revolutionaries, or
even Marxists, they had already been weaned on a diet of ruling-class
ideology and
boss-class
forms-of-thought.
This means that Hegel's doctrines (upside down or
'the right way up') mesh seamlessly with ideas they had already internalised even before
they encountered them
-- another of which is that it is the job of 'genuine' philosophers to use
'abstraction' in order to concoct a
priori theories such as these. Marx's famous words, therefore, apply equally
well to
them:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society,
is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other
things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a
class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas
of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added.]
Notice how Marx argued that:
"The class which has the means
of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the
means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar,
therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an
epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence
among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate
the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...."
[Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
So, they rule also as
"thinkers", and this they do in "its whole range". Moreover,
those who have no control over the system itself -- which includes every single one of the
DM-classicists, as well as those who have led the movement and who have shaped
its ideas ever since -- are
also "subject" to its vice-like ideological grip. The "ruling
intellectual force" can't fail to have affected these 'intellectuals'
(Marxist or otherwise).
But, we needn't
guess here. Dialecticians openly acknowledge
this influence, if not glory in it. [On that, see the next
sub-section.]
Moreover, for reasons
also outlined in Note 13a2, they are happy
to return the 'favour', gladly assisting in the elaboration and dissemination of
alien-class though-forms in books and articles on DM, or 'systematic dialectics'
in general --, which is, of course, how and why the ruling-class manage to "control
at the same time...the means of mental production",
and hence control the ideas promoted and promulgated by Dialectical Marxists
themselves.
Naturally,
"the means of mental production" have changed markedly since Ancient Greece
dominated 'western' thought, but the last fifteen centuries or so (again, in the
'west') saw this hegemony initially coalesce in and around the Roman
Catholic Church, in Monasteries and later in Universities. But, since the
Renaissance intellectual control has become increasingly diffuse, spreading its
filaments out from the Universities to include itinerant thinkers (those
patronised by the rich as well as those with private means). Of late, "the means of
mental production" have also enabled the intellectual labour of freelance
and screen writers, journalists, editors,
producers, TV, radio, and
internet pundits. The livelihood and
reputation of those caught up in this are likewise largely dependent on factors highlighted by
Lenin and Kautsky:
"[Their]
standard of life is bourgeois, and [they] must maintain it if [they are] not to
become...pauper[s]; but at the same time [they are] compelled to sell the
product of [their] labour, and often [their] labour-power....
[They do] not fight by means of power, but by argument. [Their] weapons
are...personal knowledge,...personal ability,...personal convictions. [They] can
attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for
[their]
individuality seems to [them] the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that [they submit] to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. [They recognise] the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
[they count themselves] among the latter...." [Op
cit.]
Hence, those
who later became 'leading revolutionaries' (and who had also been "subject to"
the full force of this indoctrination
before they became Marxists), have had their thinking shaped by the ideas
and thought-forms of the
ruling-class.
The above
considerations help explain why Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and Dietzgen (to mention just a
few) thought it quite natural and uncontroversial to regard previous
(non-working class) thinkers as their precursors,
and, indeed, the source of many of the concepts and methods they imported into
Dialectical Marxism (for
example, the yet-to-be-explained
'process of abstraction'),
and hence look to them for
inspiration.
Here are just a few
examples where this influence is openly admitted:
"With
this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further
about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a
thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state,
and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly
what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives
us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of
measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness,
the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a
decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial
bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally
true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of
molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat,
light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics
of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided
leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary
chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within
the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. --
Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Engels
(1976), pp.82-83
Bold emphases added.]
"Marxism is an integral
world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is contemporary materialism,
at present the highest stage of the development of that view upon the worldwhose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by
Democritus, and
in part by the
Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher." [Plekhanov
(1908), p.11. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases and links added.]
"According to Hegel, dialectics is
the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive,
and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that
life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general
any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out
of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence
and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes;
and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting
its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of
phenomena….
"At a particular moment a moving body is
at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if
it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become
motionless.
Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as
there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in
the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that
dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not
only to cognition of nature….
"And so every phenomenon,
by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or
later, but
inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…. When you apply the dialectical method
to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change
eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….' In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit
consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from
the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin
and destruction…. [M]odern science confirms at every step
the idea expressed with such genius byHegel, that quantity passes into
quality….
"[I]t will be understood without
difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical
thinking...[that]
quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to
changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps,
interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…."
[Plekhanov
(1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163.
Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged.]
"The theory of socialism, however,
grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by
educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By
their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and
Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia.
In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy
arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class
movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among
the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia."
[Lenin
(1947), p.32. Bold emphases added.]
"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources
and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
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)….
[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth
is
always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say
after Hegel." [Lenin
(1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases 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." [Lenin
(1961), pp.196-97.
Italic emphases in the original; bold added. Some paragraphs merged.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly
in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he
axiom 'A' is equal to 'A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does
not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists
'tolerance' which is established not by formal logic…, but by the
dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing…. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into
quality, development through contradiction, conflict and form, interruption of
continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc…." [Trotsky
(1971), pp.64-66. Bold emphasis added.]
"I should like to make the reader
understand what the professors, so far as I know them, have not yet understood,
viz., that our intellect is a dialectical instrument, and instrument which
reconciles all opposites. The intellect creates unity by means of the variety
and comprehends the difference in the equality. Hegel made it clear long ago
that there is no either-or, but as well as...." [Dietzgen
(1917a), p.248. Bold
emphasis added.]
This approach isn't confined to the
DM-classicists; it is universally acknowledged:
"Previous chapters have shown that
dialectics has a history which embraces many thousands of years and that it has
passed through various stages of development. Disregarding the beginnings of
dialectics in Indian and Chinese philosophy, the following main stages can
be distinguished: (1) the dialectics of the old Greek philosophers of nature,
Heraclitus; (2) the second and higher stage, the dialectics of Plato and
Aristotle; (3) Hegelian dialectics; and (4) materialistic dialectics. Dialectics
itself has undergone a dialectical development. Heraclitus, representing the
first stage, develops the dialectics of one-after-the-other; Plato and
Aristotle, representing the second stage, develop the dialectics of
one-beside-the-other. The latter is in opposition to the dialectics of the first
stage, being its negation. Hegel embraces both preceding stages of development
and raises them to a higher stage. He develops the dialectics of the
one-after-the-other and the one-beside-the-other, but in an idealistic form; in
other words, he develops an historico-idealistic dialectics." [Thalheimer
(1936), pp.157-58. Bold emphases added.]
"The integrity, the wholeness, the
irrefutable logic and consistency (sic!) of Marxism-Leninism, which are
acknowledged even by its opponents (sic!), have been achieved by the application
of the unified philosophical dialectical-materialist world outlook and method.
Marxism-Leninism cannot properly be understood without its philosophical basis. The philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is a
result and the highest stage of the development of world philosophical thought.
It has assimilated al that was best ad most progressive in the centuries of
development of philosophy...." [Konstantinov (1974), p.15. Bold emphasis
added; paragraphs merged.]
"As the philosophy of the working class,
Marxist-Leninist philosophy is the supreme form of materialism, a logical
result of the preceding development of philosophical thought through the
ages, and of the whole spiritual culture of mankind." [Kharin (1981), p.12.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The
history of Western philosophy, however, begins not with idealism but with
materialism. This asserts...that the material world, known to us and
explored by science, is real; that the only real world is the material one; that
thoughts, ideas and sensations are the product of matter organised in a certain
way (a nervous system and a brain); that thought cannot derive its categories
from itself, but only from the objective world which makes itself known to us
through our senses.
"The
earliest Greek philosophers were known as 'hylozoists'
(from the Greek, meaning 'those who believe that matter is alive'). Here we have
a long line of heroes who pioneered the development of thought.... What was
startlingly new about this way of looking at the world was that it was not
religious. In complete contrast to the Egyptians and Babylonians, from whom they
had learnt a lot, the Greek thinkers did not resort to gods and goddesses to
explain natural phenomena. For the first time, men and women sought to explain
the workings of nature purely in terms of nature. This was one of the greatest
turning-points in the entire history of human thought....
"Aristotle,
the greatest of the Ancient philosophers, can be considered a materialist,
although he was not so consistent as the early hylozoists. He made a series of
important scientific discoveries which laid the basis for the great achievements
of the Alexandrine period of Greek science....
"The predominant philosophical trend of the
Renaissance was materialism. In England, this took the form of
empiricism, the school of thought that states that all knowledge is derived
from the senses. The pioneers of this school were
Francis Bacon
(1561-1626),
Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704). The materialist school passed
from England to France where it acquired a revolutionary content. In the hands
of Diderot,
Rousseau,
Holbach
and Helvetius,
philosophy became an instrument for criticising all existing society. These
great thinkers prepared the way for the revolutionary overthrow of the feudal
monarchy in 1789-93....
"Under the impact of the French revolution, the German
idealist
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) subjected all previous philosophy to a thorough
criticism. Kant made important discoveries not only in philosophy and logic but
in science.... In the field of philosophy, Kant's masterpiece The Critique
of Pure Reason was the first work to analyse the forms of logic which had
remained virtually unchanged since they were first developed by Aristotle. Kant
showed the contradictions implicit in many of the most fundamental propositions
of philosophy....
"The
greatest breakthrough came in the first decades of the 19th century with George
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was a German idealist, a man of
towering intellect, who effectively summed up in his writings the whole history
of philosophy.
"Hegel
showed that the only way to overcome the
'Antinomies' of Kant was to accept that contradictions actually existed, not
only in thought, but in the real world. As an objective idealist, Hegel had no
time for the subjective idealist argument that the human mind cannot know the
real world. The forms of thought must reflect the objective world as closely as
possible. The process of knowledge consist of penetrating ever more deeply into
this reality, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, from the known to
the unknown, from the particular to the universal.
"The
dialectical method of thinking had played a great role in Antiquity,
particularly in the naïve but brilliant aphorisms of Heraclitus (c.500 B.C.),
but also in Aristotle and others. It was abandoned in the Middle Ages, when
the Church turned Aristotle's formal logic into a lifeless and rigid dogma, and
did not re-appear until Kant returned it to a place of honour. However, in Kant
the dialectic did not receive an adequate development. It fell to Hegel to
bring the science of dialectical thinking to its highest point of development.
"Hegel's
greatness is shown by the fact that he alone was prepared to challenge the
dominant philosophy of mechanism. The dialectical philosophy of Hegel deals with
processes, not isolated events. It deals with things in their life, not
their death, in their inter-relations, not isolated, one after the other. This
is a startlingly modern and scientific way of looking at the world. Indeed, in
many aspects Hegel was far in advance of his time. Yet, despite its many
brilliant insights, Hegel's philosophy was ultimately unsatisfactory. Its
principal defect was precisely Hegel's idealist standpoint, which prevented him
from applying the dialectical method to the real world in a consistently
scientific way. Instead of the material world we have the world of the Absolute
Idea, where real things, processes and people are replaced by insubstantial
shadows. In the words of Frederick Engels, the Hegelian dialectic was the most
colossal miscarriage in the whole history of philosophy. Correct ideas are here
seen standing on their head. In order to put dialectics on a sound foundation,
it was necessary to turn Hegel upside down, to transform idealist dialectics
into dialectical materialism. This was the great achievement of Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels...." [Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.40-42; pp.44-46 in the second edition. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added.
Italics in the original.]
"This world outlook of Marxism is called
dialectical materialism, a philosophy that is the direct descendent of the
great Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century but which revolutionized
their thinking by introducing a historical dimension. The achievement was
scientific materialism enriched with the theory of evolution propounded by G.W.F
Hegel. Materialism states that our ideas are a reflection of the material
universe that exists independently of any observer. It's dialectical in that it
is always in a state of movement, and change. One of the early dialectical
philosophers was the Greek Heraclitus, 'the obscure' (535-475 BCE)." [Brad
Forrest, quoted from
here. Accessed 22/12/2016. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Quotations like the above, taken from across the entire spectrum of Dialectical Marxism,
would be easy to multiply, something that can be readily confirmed by anyone who has
access to as many books and articles on DM as I have, or, indeed, who
trawls the Internet.]
Notice
that according to Lenin, DM is "a continuation of the
teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy". Plainly, a
"continuation of" isn't a "break from"! Plekhanov also
thought that DM represented the
"highest stage...whose
foundations were laid down in ancient Greece";
again, that isn't a "break from", either. The others I have quoted pointedly do
not
demur. In fact, I have yet to encounter a single DM-theorist who rejects this
age-old and well-established connection. [If anyone knows of one, please
let me know!]
As we will see
in Essay Twelve Part One and the
rest of Essay Twelve (summary
here), there is a
clearly identifiable thread running through the many and varied world-views that have been
imposed, encouraged, commissioned, or financed by the assorted ruling-classes history has inflicted
upon humanity: i.e., that there is a 'hidden world' underlying 'appearances', accessible to thought alone, the nature of which
can be derived or inferred from the supposed meaning of a handful of abstract words, or 'concepts',
and nothing more. Concerning the most immediate source of
'dialectical thought' in German Idealism we read the following:
"Already with
Fichte
the
idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding
a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based.
Thinkers from
Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the
laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996), p.29. Bold
emphasis added.]
Because
of this, Traditional
Philosophers were quite happy to impose their theories on the world in a
dogmatic and a priori
manner -- plainly because these theories relate not to the
material world but to that invisible world, a world that issupposedly more real than the
physical universe we see around us. That is because this 'hidden world'
expresses 'essence', not superficiality, which is reflected by 'appearances'.
Even though the content of such theories has altered with
each change in the Mode of Production, their form has remained largely
the same for two-and-a-half millennia: philosophical ideas derived from words/thought alone,
valid
for all of space and time, may
be imposed on nature and society dogmatically.
Some might object that
the above philosophical ideas can't have remained the
same for thousands of years, across different Modes of Production; that
supposition
runs counter to core HM-concepts.
But, we don't argue the same
for religious belief. Marx put no time stamp on the following, for
example:
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract
being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state,
society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted
consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.
Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation
and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence
since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle
against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world
whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious
suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering
and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory
happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call
on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to
give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion
is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which
religion is the halo." [Marx
(1975b),
p.244.
Italic emphases in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]
The above remarks applied back in Babylon and
the Egypt of the Pharaohs,
just as they did in Ancient China and the rest of Asia, The Americas, Greece,
Rome, and throughout Europe, Africa, Australasia --, as, indeed, they have done right across the planet ever since.Indeed, Marx even said this:
"[O]ne fact is
common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite
all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms,
or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most
radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its
development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." [Marx
and Engels (1848), p.52. Bold emphases added.]
The same is true of the core thought-forms found throughout Traditional
Philosophy: that there is an invisible world underlying 'appearances', accessible to thought
alone --, especially since Marx also argued that:
"...philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. Bold emphasis added.]
In which case, the
aforementioned individuals -- who, it is worth recalling, had been educated to view the world
precisely this way long
before they had ever heard of Marxism --, when they encountered Hegel and
DM, readily appropriated these dogmatic
ideas.
That is because they were looking for 'logical' principles in this hidden world that
guaranteed change was an integral part of the 'fabric of reality'. The thought-forms encapsulated
in Hegel's Ideas (or in DM) appeared to be at once both
philosophical and self-certifying (i.e., they were based on
thought and language alone, and hence were held true
a priori). Moreover,
because dialectical concepts formed part of what seemed to be a
radical philosophical and political tradition, they also struck them as revolutionary.
Manifestly,
dialectical concepts could only have arisen from Traditional Philosophy (workers
aren't known for dreaming them up),
which ideological source had already been coloured by centuries of ruling-class dogma,
as we have seen.
That in turn is because:
(a)
Traditional Philosophy was the only source of developed, 'High Theory'
available to these individuals at the time -- again,as
Lenin himself admitted:
"...[B]ourgeois ideology is far older
in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that
it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination. And the
younger the socialist movement in any given country, the more vigorously it must
struggle against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology...." [Lenin
(1947), pp.42-43. Bold emphases added.]
Of course, it doesn't help if
revolutionaries like Lenin bring this ruling-class ideology with them into the
movement.
(b) These
erstwhile radicals were predisposed to look for a 'world-view' that
told them change was inevitable, part of the cosmic and social order.
And,
(c) They searched for a set of ideas that could
and would becomeexclusively their own --
because, as they will tell anyone prepared to listen, "Everyone has to have a philosophy!"
-- which ideas, when they had finished shaping them, taught that the present
order was ripe for change.
John Molyneux and Woods and Grant, I think, speak for all DM-fans:
"It is very difficult to sustain much
ongoing political work for any length of time without a coherent alternative
worldview to the dominant ideology which we encounter every day in the media (at
work, at school, at college, etc.). A significant role in an alternative
worldview is played by questions of philosophy.
"[Added in a footnote: To attempt an
exact definition of philosophy at this point would be a difficult and lengthy
distraction. But what I mean by it in this book is, roughly, 'general' or
'abstract' thinking about human beings and their relations between society and
nature.]" [Molyneux (2012), p.5. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
"Before we start, you may be tempted
to ask, 'Well, what of it?' Is it really necessary for us to bother about
complicated questions of science and philosophy? To such a question, two replies
are possible. If what is meant is: do we need to know about such things in order
to go about our daily life, then the answer is evidently no. But if we wish to
gain a rational understanding of the world in which we live, and the fundamental
processes at work in nature, society and our own way of thinking, then matters
appear in quite a different light.
"Strangely enough, everyone has
a 'philosophy.' A philosophy is a way of looking at the world. We all believe we
know how to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad. These are, however,
very complicated issues which have occupied the attention of the greatest minds
in history. When confronted with the terrible fact of the existence of events
like the fratricidal war in the former Yugoslavia, the re-emergence of mass
unemployment, the slaughter in Rwanda, many people will confess that they do not
comprehend such things, and will frequently resort to vague references to 'human
nature.' But what is this mysterious human nature which is seen as the source of
all our ills and is alleged to be eternally unchangeable? This is a profoundly
philosophical question, to which not many would venture a reply, unless they
were of a religious cast of mind, in which case they would say that God, in His
wisdom, made us like that. Why anyone should worship a Being that played such
tricks on His creations is another matter.
"Those who stubbornly maintain that
they have no philosophy are mistaken. Nature abhors a vacuum. People who lack a
coherently worked-out philosophical standpoint will inevitably reflect the ideas
and prejudices of the society and the milieu in which they live. That means, in
the given context, that their heads will be full of the ideas they imbibe from
the newspapers, television, pulpit and schoolroom, which faithfully reflect the
interests and morality of existing society.
"Most people usually succeed in
muddling through life, until some great upheaval compels them to re-consider the
kind of ideas and values they grew up with. The crisis of society forces them to
question many things they took for granted. At such times, ideas which seemed
remote suddenly become strikingly relevant. Anyone who wishes to understand
life, not as a meaningless series of accidents or an unthinking routine, must
occupy themselves with philosophy, that is, with thought at a higher level than
the immediate problems of everyday existence. Only by this means do we raise
ourselves to a height where we begin to fulfil our potential as conscious human
beings, willing and able to take control of our own destinies." [Woods and Grant
(1995),
pp.29-30. Italic emphasis in the original; bold added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. (This passage appears on
pp.33-34 of the second edition.)]
The
above sentiments are echoed by a dusty old Stalinist textbook (whose line, oddly
enough, agrees with that of the two 'Trotskyite wreckers', above):
"A
philosophical world outlook is a system of highly generalised theoretical views
of the world, of nature, society and man. Philosophy seeks to substantiate a
definite orientation in social, political, scientific, moral, aesthetic, and
other spheres of life. Everybody forms his own particular view of the surrounding world, but this view
often consists of no more than fragments of various contradictory ideas without
any theoretical basis. The philosophical world outlook, on the other hand, is
not merely the sum total but a system of ideas, opinions and conceptions of
nature, society, man and his place in the world." [Konstantinov (1974), p.16.
Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged. Which is a bit rich given the fact that DM glories in contradiction!
(More-or-less the same comment (almost word-for-word identical) can be found in
Krapivin (1985), p.17.)]
However, the
everyday musings of an average Jane Doe or John Q Public are hardly to be compared with the
systematic thoughts of Plato, Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas or
Immanuel Kant, so the above
elision (i.e., between such amateurish musings and the
sophisticated theories of Traditional Philosophy) is clearly aimed at justifying
the importation of ideas from ruling-class sources, which are, according to
Marx, only "to be condemned":
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
added.]
Plainly,
the
attitude displayed by DM-fans toward Philosophy (somewhat fittingly) plainly contradicts
what
Marx himself concluded about this archetypical ruling-class discipline.
This ancient 'world-view' -- on steroids in Hegel's
work -- certainly appealed to the DM-classicists, those who later led the movement, and
those who shaped and still shape its ideas. It appealed to them since it encapsulated thought-forms to which they were
already highly susceptible by the time they hit adulthood. The
class background, socialisation and education to which they were,
and still are, subject under Capitalism meant that
ruling-class
ideas had already been installed in their brains long before they became
revolutionaries.
This thought-form, which has always promoted dogmatic, a priori
'knowledge', mesmerised these comrades from the get-go.
In fact,
this new batch of Dialectical
and Hermetic
nostrums
(upside down, or 'the right way up')
hardly raised an
eyebrow.
Initially, very little specialist knowledge
is needed to 'comprehend' DM; no expensive equipment or time-consuming experiments are required. And yet, within hours, this superscientific'world-view' can be internalised with ease by
most eager novitiates -- since,
once more, it relies onthought alone,
and hence appears to be 'self-evident'. Literally, in half an afternoon, or
even less, an
initiate can familiarise him/herself with a handful of theses that purport to explain
all of reality, for
all of time.
Just try learning Quantum
-- or even Newtonian -- Mechanics that
quickly!
Readers can test this for themselves: check out a random
sample of the 'theory' sections of Marxist revolutionary websites. It will soon
become apparent how each one confidently claims to be able to reveal nature's deepest secrets
(valid for all of space and time) in a paragraph or two, or page or two, of
homespun 'logic', obscure jargon, and a few
helpings of Mickey Mouse Science
--, for
instance,
here,
and
here.
[I have re-posted much of this Internet material in
Appendix A to Essay Two.]
Contrast that with the many months, or
even
years, of hard work and study it takes to grasp the genuine science of Marxist economics,
for example. Contrast it, too, with the detailed knowledge required in order
to
understand, say, the class structure and development of the Ancient World, or
even Medieval
Society. No 'self-evident', a priori truths, there!
Moreover, because
DM is connected
with wider historic, or even romanticaspirations (outlined below),
dialectically-distracted
comrades soon become wedded (nay, superglued) to this doctrine. They
become avid converts who act, talk and behave as if they have received a revelation
from 'On High'.
"It was from him that I first
learned, often with the force of revelation, many of the main ideas of
the Marxist tradition." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphasis added.]
"He was an orthodox Marxist from his conversion to its doctrines in 1898 to his
death in 1940." [Novack (1960), reprinted in Novack (1978),
p.271.
Bold emphasis added.]
[There is much more of the same sort of
material,
below.]
Novack's use of
quasi-religious language is, in the event, revealing in itself given what Marx
had to say:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
added.]
The
subjective and often
highly emotional response
elicited in such individuals after they have passed through these
dialectical 'doors of perception'
reveals how crucially important this Hermetic
Creed is to the
revolutionary ego: it helps guarantee that the
anger they feel toward the injustices of Capitalism -- perhaps
compounded by their alienation from the system, coupled with all the hard work they have devoted to
The
Cause --, won't be in vain.
For the DM-convert there now appears to be a point, not just to human history, but to the overall development of
reality itself, courtesy of the obscure ramblings of a Christian Mystic.
This adoption of DM isn't just an example of the
secularisation of Christianity, it also represents the re-enchantment of materialism.
Indeed, this theory now ensures that the life of each initiate assumes
truly cosmic significance. Dialectics places the militant mind at the very
centre of the philosophical universe, for it offers each of these
'social
atoms' a unifying purpose accompanied by a set of eternal 'truths' that
underwrite and then confirm theirexclusivity, linking their actions directly
with the further development of reality itself. Only they understand
'the dialectic' of nature and society -- the very Algebra of the Revolution -- only they
have their fingers on the 'pulse
of freedom',only they know how to further its development.
For the want of a better phrase, we might even call this
insidious process the "Ptolemisation
Of The Militant Mind", since around this 'theory', and their
interpretation of it, all of reality now
revolves -- the obverse of
Hegel's doctrine of the 'self-development' of 'Mind', which placed the
development of 'God's Mind' at the centre and the periphery of this
process, put into neat 'logical' order by a handful of trite,
but egregious, a priori theses.
The heady romance
of becoming a revolutionaryand an active participant in the cosmic drift of the entire
universe now takes over. As
Alan Wald (veteran US Marxist and editor of Against the
Current) noted in connection with the
US-SWP:
"To join the SWP was to
become a person with a mission, to become part of a special group of men and
women who, against all odds, wanted to change society for the better; one
felt a bit more in control of the universe." [Quoted from
here; bold emphasis added.]
Much the same can be said about those joining other far-left groups.
Indeed, even rank-and-file revolutionaries are often affected in this way. Speaking of
his time in the Militant Tendency, this is what Andy Troke had to say:
"It's
like somebody who has been through a religious period. You look to either
Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, Engels or
Ted Grant or
Peter Taaffe and you have got the
rationale for why people are reacting this way or that. And obviously, everyone
else is illogical, because you have the right view. I believe there was a great
deal of this type of thinking: we were the chosen few. We had the right
ideology. People like Tribune, who were at that time Militant's main
opponents didn't know where they were going.... We were the right ones." [Quoted
in Tourish and Wohlforth (2000), p.181. Bold emphases added. Links added.]
To be honest, I must admit to similar thoughts and feelings myself when I joined
the UK-SWP in 1987, pinned a red, clenched fist badge to my lapel, and started
selling Socialist Worker. I am sure I wasn't the only one who reacted this way. In
fact, I can recall a period in 1988 when a major dispute broke out in the
UK-SWP following a talk given by
Lindsey German. Lindsey
had advanced the
claim that, in her, there were "no
traces of bourgeois ideology". For some time after that it became a hot topic whether
or not revolutionaries were free from all such 'indecent thoughts' -- or, "traces", which was the buzz word used at the time. One could
almost hear an echo of the phrases "Born
again!" and "Cleansed
by the blood of the Lamb!"
Here
is what
Ian Birchall, longstanding ex-SWP activist, had to say about the origin of
the word, "traces" (in his review of
John Molyneux's recent book, The Dialectics of Art):
"John [was] particularly concerned with the question of ideology -- the complex
of ideas used to legitimate and preserve the existing oppressive order. He [was]
well aware of the pervasive power of ideology. Some years ago he wrote an
article in
Socialist Worker
in which he stated that 'as products of a society in which racism and sexism
(and many other reactionary ideas) are all pervasive, we all -- black or white,
male or female, Jew or gentile -- retain traces of them.' (Socialist
Worker
1052, September 1987) The party leadership was outraged at the suggestion that
they had not totally liberated themselves from the dominant ideology, and John
was reduced to silence." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 18/01/2021.]
For all the world, DM-fans
appear to fall in love with this 'theory'. That itself is evident from the irrational,
emotional, often extremely abusive, if not violently aggressive way they respond when it is attacked. [On that, see below,
as well as
here.]
The
vitriol, hostility, lies and smears
I have had to face now for many years suggests I wouldn't last long if DM-fans were ever to gain power
in the UK! Indeed, one
prominent Marxist Professor of Economics,
Andrew Kliman
no less, in an e-mail
exchange expressed the fervent hope I should "Eat sh*t and die!" (either that
or quaff some
Hemlock), simply because I had
the temerity to question the sacred dialectic. This comradely wish was repeated
here
(in the
comments section) in October 2013, but was deleted by the moderators soon after because of the violent and intemperate language the good
Professor thought to use! Another UK-SWP comrade (implicitly)
accused
me of being worse than the Nazis, and for the same reason!
Incidentally,
this comrade has now left the UK-SWP. Another
recently
compared me to the Coronavirus! [Check out the other emotive and abusive
comments in the same discussion thread.]
I hasten to
add that I am not complaining about this; given the analysis presented in
the Essay and that this site,
I expect it!
However, the
'dialectical ego' can only ascend to
the next 'level' if it becomes
a willing
vehicle for the tide of history, a veritable slave to the dialectic. DM now
expresses in its earthly incarnation
cosmic forces that have supposedly governed all of reality from the Big Bang forward,
and will continue so doing until the end of time. Its theses are woven into the very fabric
of the Universe -- just like the 'Word of God'.
Or, at least, judged by the way DM-acolytes speak about their theory and about those who promulgate it from the dialectical
pulpit, that is how the DM-Faithful clearly picture it
to themselves.
"It goes
without saying that my recapitulation of mathematics and the natural sciences
was undertaken in order to convince myself also in detail -- of what in general
I was not in doubt -- that in nature, amid the welter of innumerable
changes, the same dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those
which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same
laws which similarly form the thread running through the history of the
development of human thought and gradually rise to consciousness in thinking
man; the laws which Hegel first developed in all-embracing but mystic form, and
which we made it one of our aims to strip of this mystic form and to bring
clearly before the mind in their complete simplicity and universality."
[Engels (1976),
pp.11-12.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of
motion and development of nature, human society and thought." [Ibid.,
p.180.
Bold emphasis added.]
So, by becoming a
willing vehicle, ready to channel the
mysterious 'mediations' that
emanate from the "Totality" (which, like 'God',
can't be defined,
but which
works no less mysteriously), through
revolutionary 'good works' ("activity") and pure thoughts ("non-Revisionist" devotion
to "the tradition"),
by joining a movement that
can't fail to alter fundamentally the course of human history, the petty-bourgeois ego is 'born
again', to a higher purpose, with a cosmically-ordained mandate
to match.
The
dialectical novitiate thus emerges
as a professional revolutionary --
sometimes with a
shiny new name to prove it. But, certainly with a brand new persona.
"Hegelism is
like a mental disease--youcan't know what it is until
you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
In view of the general atrophy of their critical faculties
caused by their commitment to DM -- compounded by the nausea inducing sycophancy exhibited by many of
them (on that, see
below) -- who can doubt it?
(i) As individuals
they can become key figures in the further development of history -- helping determine the
direction that social evolution will next take.
(ii) Their
personal existence isn't meaningless, after all --, or for nought.
(iii) Whatever it was that motivated their personal alienation from
class society can be rectified, reversed
or even redeemed
(in whole or in part) through the
right sort of acts, thoughts, and deeds -- reminiscent of the way that
Pelagian
forms of 'muscular Christianity'
taught that salvation might be earned through pure thoughts, good works, and the severe
treatment of the body.
Dialectics now
occupies a role analogous to that which religious belief has always assumed in the
lives of the
credulous, giving cosmic significance and consolation to these, its very own,
petty-bourgeois victims.
Same cause -- alienation. Similar 'cure' -- a palliative drug.
However,because they haven't been recruited from the working class,these social atoms need an internally-generated unifying force --
a theory that supplies a set of self-certifying ideas -- to bind them to
The Party
and The Cause. Indeed, as Trotsky, Kautsky and Lenin pointed out:
"A worker comes to socialism
as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of
escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass,
which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to
socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality,
and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual.But just here he comes
up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At
the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined,
even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class
movement. Today every newcomer finds, in the Western European countries, the
colossal structure of working-class democracy already existing." [The
Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from
here. Bold
emphases added.]
"'...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for
his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter....'"
[Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a),
pp.161-62. Bold emphases
alone added. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be found
here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs
slightly from the on-line Russian/English version.]
As such, they require a Cosmic Whole allied to a
Holistic Theory to help repair their own social
fragmentation. That is where the mysterious
"Totality" (with its 'universal interconnections' and 'mediations' --
factors that are analogous to the
Omnipresence of 'God' and the 'mediations
of Christ') comes into its own. But, just like 'God', the DM-"Totality"
is so mysterious that, beyond a few vague gestures and much hand waving, none of its
devotees can tell you of its
nature, even though they all
gladly bend
the knee to its Contradictory
Will.
Given its origin in Hermetic Mysticism, that is
hardly surprising.
In
stark contrast, workers involved in collective labour have unity forced on them by
well-known, external, material forces. These compel workers to
combine; they don't persuade them to do so as a result of sometheory. Workers are thus compelled to associate, with unity
externally-imposed upon them. This is a material,
not an Ideal force.13a
In contrast,
once more, while the class war forces workers to unite, it drives apart these
petty-bourgeois individuals, these
professional revolutionaries,
depositing them in ever smaller, continually fragmenting sects. [How it does this will be explored in the
next few sub-sections.]
"It is precisely the factory, which
seems only a bogey to some, that represents that highest form of capitalist
co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to
organise, and placed it at the head of all the other sections of the toiling and
exploited population. And it is precisely Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained
by capitalism, that has taught and id teaching unstable intellectuals to distinguish
between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based on fear of
starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline
based on collective work united by the conditions of a technically highly
developed production). The discipline and organisation which come so
hard to the bourgeois intellectual are especially easily acquired by the proletariat
just because of this factory 'schooling'. Mortal fear of this school and utter
failure to understand its importance as an organising factor are characteristic
precisely of the ways of thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life and
which give rise to that species of anarchism that the German Social-Democrats
call Edelanarchismus, i.e., the anarchism of the 'noble' gentleman,
or aristocratic anarchism, as I would call it. This aristocratic anarchism is
particularly characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the Party
organisation as a monstrous 'factory'; he regards the subordination of the part
to the whole and of the minority to the majority as 'serfdom' (see Axelrod's
articles); division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a
tragicomical outcry against people being transformed into 'cogs and wheels' (to turn
editors into contributors being considered a particularly atrocious species of
such transformation); mention of the organisational rules of the Party calls
forth a contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark (intended for the
'formalists') that one could very well dispense with rules altogether." [Lenin (1976a),pp.248-49.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphases and links added. (The on-line Russian/English version is slightly different
from the published (Peking) edition I have used here.)]
Unfortunately,
Lenin failed to apply these
insights to himself, to his own class origin and
current class position. He was, however, quite happy to include Marx and Engels
among the "bourgeois intelligentsia":
"The theory of socialism,
however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories
elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by
intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific
socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois
intelligentsia." [Lenin (1947),
p.32. Bold emphases added.]
The same was the case concerning George
Novack's 'self-awareness':
"Many of
the most important political and intellectual leaders of the Marxist parties
have been middle-class intellectuals. This is true of Marx and Engels,
the founders of the movement.
Bebel and Dietzgen the elder were of
proletarian origin, but these two stand out as conspicuous exceptions in a
galaxy which includes
Lassalle,
DeLeon,
Plekhanov,
Liebknecht, Luxembourg, Lenin and Trotsky. [As we have seen,
this isn't in fact true of Dietzgen
-- RL.] All of these intellectuals, 'having grasped the historical movement as a
whole', broke with the class of their origin, and merged their lives with the
fate of the working class. Trotsky informs us that, of the 15 original
members of the Council of People's Commissary elected on the day following the
October insurrection, eleven were intellectuals and only four workers....
"Since
Marxism, the science of the proletarian revolution, is itself the supreme
creation of middle-class intellectuals, and every Marxist party has had its
quota of militants drawn from the radical intelligentsia, a Marxist party can,
least of all political organizations, ignore the role that intellectuals may
play in the struggle of the working class for emancipation. But the relationship
between the radical intellectuals and the revolutionary workers' party must be
correctly understood. Although individual intellectuals may take a place in the
leadership of the party by their talents, energy and devotion, intellectuals are
generally an auxiliary force of the party with their own special talents to
contribute to its work. There is a place for intellectuals inside the party, in
the mass organizations it supports, and in many party activities. But the main
body of the party must be recruited from, and rest squarely upon, the vanguard
of the working class. The party and its leadership must have a solidly
proletarian core." [Novack
(1935). Bold emphases and links added.]
The social forces that operate on
Marxist dialecticians are thus quintessentially individualistic, manifestly Ideal, and
notoriously
'centrifugal' (as, indeed, Lenin pointed out above and
earlier,
and as we will see again, below); indeed, as one participant
admitted
in the recent debate over
the crisis that engulfed the UK-SWP in January 2013:
"I don't know if you have
permanent factions within
ISO -- my experience of the movement is that they are
a disaster. I assume you have a constitution, rules for members to abide by and
a disciplinary procedure to deal with those who deliberately flout them. So do
we, and surely you respect our right to act accordingly." [Jeffrey Hurford,
quoted from
here;
accessed 07/02/2013.]
As the late Chris Harman also noted about
pre-capitalist working classes:
"Peasant
revolts would start with vast numbers of people rising up to divide the land of
the local feudal lords, but once the lord was defeated they would fall to
squabbling among themselves about how they would divide the land. As Marx put
it, peasants were like 'potatoes in a sack'; they could be forced together by
some outside power but were not capable of linking permanently to represent
their own interests. Capitalism
makes workers cooperate in production within the factory, and those cooperative
skills can easily be turned against the system, as when workers organise
themselves into unions. Because they are massed together in huge concentrations
it is much easier for workers to democratically control such bodies than it was
for previously oppressed classes." [Quoted from
here; bold added. Paragraphs merged.]
DM-theorists and leading members of
Dialectical Marxism aren't proletarians, so they, too, are like 'potatoes
in a sack', incapable of uniting unless forced to do so by a "power" of some
sort. As we will see, this "power" is 'intellectual' as well as bureaucratic, and
it has been
internalised. In response, each
revolutionary party has developed a set of anti-democratic and bureaucratic
rules in order to ensure (at least, temporary) internal cohesion, doctrinal 'purity', and
revolutionary integrity is maintained.
Without DM -- imported "from the outside", from Mystical
Christianity and Traditional Thought
--, the
rationale underlying the romantic revolutionary idea -- which, once more, situates
each DM-acolyte at
the centre of the dialectical universe
-- would lose both its impact
and its appeal.
Furthermore, because
'dialectics' provides each 'dialectical comrade' with an apparently coherent, but
paradigmaticallytraditional, picture of
reality, it
supplies each
of its victims with an internalised
set of motivating factors. Indeed, because this theory is represented individualisticallyinside each dialectical skull (via
Lenin's 'theory of knowledge' -- which convinces one and all that they alone
truly
'understand' this
esoteric theory -- they alone have the right 'images',
the right 'abstractions'), it
can't help but divide each 'dialectical disciple', one from
the next -- for reasons explored in the next sub-section, and throughout the rest of this
Essay.
As we
have seen (and will see in more detail in this and the next
sub-section), the sectarianism inherent in Dialectical Marxism is a consequence
of the class origin and current class position of its leading figures and most
important theorists. Dialectics,
the theory of universal opposites, soon goes to work on their minds and
turns each and every one of these serial sectarians into fanatical faction
fiends, on steroids.
Collective
discipline is paramount inside
Bolshevik-style parties. But, the strong-willed, petty-bourgeois militant this
style of politics attracts isn't used
to this form of externally-imposed regimentation (as
Lenin noted);
as we have seen, these
social atoms are in fact attracted by internally-processed, self-certifying ideas.
Their socialisation as head strong individuals and their commitment to a theory
of knowledge which is based on bourgeois individualism (on that see Essay
Three Part Two) means that fights
soon break out, often over
what seem minor, even petty personal gripes.14
Ever since childhood, these
comrades have been socialised think like social atoms, but in a
revolutionary party
they have to act like socialmolecules, which is a psychological
feat that lies way above their 'pay grade' (i.e., way beyond capacities that have
been created,
or motivated, by their class origin or their
current class
position). Because of this, as noted above, personal disputes soon
break out and are immediately
re-configured as political differences
(that is because, for these individuals, the personal is political).
Once again, since these are primarily disputes over ideas
they require, and are soon given, theoretical 'justification'. However,
because DM glories in contradiction and in splitting (see
below), it is ideally suited toward that end.
Unfortunately,
again as
Lenin and Trotsky intimated, these
individuals are socially-conditioned egocentrics who, in their own eyes, enjoy
direct access to the
dialectical motherlode (a hot wire installed in each DM-cranium by
those self-certifying Hegelian concepts, upside down or 'the right way up') --
and they can't resist exploiting this fact. That is because this 'dynamic', contradictory world-view defines them as
revolutionaries.
In such an
Ideal
environment, the
DM-classics
-- just like the Bible and other assorted Holy Books -- soon come
into their own.15
Again,
as Lenin and Trotsky pointed out, ruling-class theorists
and 'intellectuals' endeavour to make names for themselves by developing
'their own ideas', carving out a corner, an exclusive niche, in the market of
ideas, But, they can only do that by criticising the ideas of every
other rival theorist. This is, after all, an integral part of being able to establish
a reputation and standing among their intellectual peers,
which is an essential component in
furthering their career as a theorist worthy of attention -- or, indeed, an
essential component when defending and promoting the interests of a patron, or some other
beneficent member of the ruling-class. This was particularly true in earlier
centuries.
Lenin:
"'...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal
ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only
through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his
individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he
counts himself among the latter....'"
[Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a),
pp.161-62. Bold emphases
alone added. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be found
here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs slightly
from the on-line Russian version ]
Trotsky:
"The intellectual, however, comes to
socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality,
and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes
up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become." [The
Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from
here. Bold
emphasis added.]
Just as petty-bourgeois capitalists have to
rely on their individual knowledge, drive, effort and skill in order to survive in the face
of Big Capital
and the working class,
so these unfortunate dialecticians find they have to ply their trade in the
revolutionary movement as individual
theorists, armed only with a set of dogmatic ideas, fortified by an entire
Thesaurus
of obscure jargon, arcane terminology,
sub-Aristotelian 'logic' and
Mickey Mouse Science. Hence, these
hapless
comrades find that they, too, have to find their way in far more hostile
revolutionary waters.
[Anyone who doubts this only has to read the
writings churned out by these characters to see how little respect they have for the work of
the vast majority of other revolutionary theorists (sometimes whose opinions
differ from their own only in the minutest of theological details); their work always
appears to be
a "rant", a "re-hash", a "screed"; it is invariably "boring", "turgid",
even "hysterical"; the one writing it has "bloviated"
all over the place. In addition, we find a surfeit of
scatological epithets.
(Monty Python
lampooned this mind-set only too well:"The only people we hate more
than the Romans are the f*cking Judean People's Front"). Having said that,
it isn't
being suggested that every last one of
them adopts this stance cynically. Many have very noble intentions -- but, once again,
this is a class issue. I have posted some of this material in Essays
One and
Ten
Part One, as well as in several places below -- for example,
here and
Appendix B.]
So it is that these 'social atoms' have brought with them into the Workers'
Movement a divisive, petty-bourgeois trait. And, by all
accounts, they have perfected it with all the verve of
inveterate religious sectarians, whom they resemble.
In the market for 'Marxist' ideas, those
with the most sharply-honed critical skills soon claw their way to the top.
As one-time UK-SWP stalwart,
Andy Wilson, pointed out:
"Things get interesting when
you go a little deeper. If the correct, imputed class-consciousness resides in
the revolutionary party, and yet the members of the revolutionary party are in
fact pulled in different directions by their day-to-day experience, where
in the revolutionary party does it actually reside? Well, of course, if the
members at the 'periphery' of the party -- where it makes contact with the world
outside, so to say -- are being pulled by the class, then the correct
consciousness must lie at the point furthest away from this periphery -- it must
reside at the 'centre' of the party. That is why all the groups have their
'centre', and 'centralised' leaderships.
"However, in reality the
central committees are also torn apart by ideological differences; by outside
allegiances, prejudices, whims -- whatever it is that drives these people.
Therefore, ultimately possession of the correct consciousness comes down very,
very often to one person (though a member of the SWP central committee once
confided to me that, in her opinion, only two people in the SWP had the correct
revolutionary 'instincts' -- herself and Tony Cliff). The way that Gerry Healy
dominated the WRP, the way that Cliff dominated the SWP, and so on, is perhaps
not merely down to their talents or the force of their personalities, but has
been prepared by the logic of a particular mindset. So, while there is no
Führerprinzip involved, in practice these groups are nevertheless generally
dominated by powerful individuals, or powerful cliques." [Quoted from
here; italic emphasis in the original. Accessed 04/02/2013.]
Except, Wilson seems not to have applied any
sort of class analysis to this phenomenon, nor does he even so much as mention the theory that lies at its heart.
And that isn't surprising,
either,
since he is also a
dialectician.
As Wilson noted, the fact that such individuals have very
strong personalities (which they clearly require, otherwise they wouldn't survive long at the top of a revolutionary party,
let alone climb the greasy pole) merely compounds the problem. As noted
above, in order
to make a name for themselves, and advance their 'revolutionary careers', it becomes
important, if not necessary, for them to disagree with every other theorist, which they almost
invariably proceed to do.
In fact, the expectation is that every single
comrade should argue his/her corner, and do so with force, vigour and
conviction. And, in some parties, with
no little
added violence, verbal and/or physical.
While
sectarianism is
caused by petty-bourgeois social 'atoms' such as these, dialectics only
makes a bad situation worse.
The answer isn't hard to find: what better theory could
there be than one that is capable of initiating and encouraging endless
disputation, one as contradictory and incomprehensible as
DM? What
other theory informs all who fall under its hypnotic spell that
progress (even in ideas) may only be had through "internal contradiction",
and thus through controversy and splitting?
"The
splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts...is
the essence (one of the 'essentials,' one of the
principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics....
The struggle of mutually
exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute...."
[Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis alone added.]
There
it is:
"splitting" is an "essential", if not "the principle" aspect
of this theory, with "struggle" an "absolute". Plainly, this "essential" feature must also involve the relations between comrades.
This
was something Engels also emphasised and he, too, connected it with
'dialectics':
"It
would seem that any workers' party in a large country can develop only through
internal struggle,
as indeed has been generally established in the dialectical laws of development."
[Engels to Bernstein, October 20, 1882;
MECW Volume 46, p.342. Bold emphasis added.]
So, an emphasis on intra-party strife and splits sits right at the heart of
Dialectical Marxism!
In which case, dialecticians needn't wait for
the ruling-class to divide the movement, they are experts already!
More importantly,
as we will see, DM is almost unique
in its capacity to 'justify' anything at all and its opposite,
both alternatives often promoted or rationalised by the very same
dialectician in the
same book, article or
even speech! Hence, this theory is unique in its
capacity to rationalise any relevant point of view and its opposite at the
same time as it promotes splits!
And if you complain, well you
just don't 'understand' dialectics...
DM is therefore the equivalent of
throwing petrol on a raging fire.
For
Dialectical Marxists, the drive to impose one's views on others thus becomes
irresistible. Doctrinal control (i.e., the control of all those inner,
privatised ideas lodged in every
other socially-atomised party skull, which threaten the legitimacy
of the ideas of other dialecticians similarly so beleaguered) now acts as a surrogate for external
control by material forces.
Indeed,
this desire to control the thoughts of all the other 'social atoms' inside the Party has even been
given the grandiloquent name: "democratic centralism" -- a nice
'contradiction-in-terms' for you to
ponder.16
[Don't get me wrong; I am here referring to the
Zinoviev-Stalin aberration, not democratic decisions openly agreed upon and collectively
implemented, whatever we finally decide to call it.]
"The Bolshevik leadership of 1917 was elected individually.
There was no ban on factions. On the eve of the October Revolution,
Zinoviev
and
Kamenev
publicly opposed the insurrection in
Maxim Gorky's
newspaper...and resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee. They were not
expelled from the Party.
The model operated currently by the SWP is not that of the
Bolshevik revolution. It is a version of the Zinovievite model adopted during
the period of 'Bolshevisation' in the mid-1920s and then honed by ever smaller
and more marginal groups." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 29/01/2013. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Links added; paragraphs merged. On this, see also
Appendix D
and
this.
(The
background details can be found in Cliff (1985),
Chapter 19.) For an
alternative view, see the UK-SWP Special Pre-Conference Bulletin article 'You
Say Kamenev, I Say Bogdanov', written by 'Kevin',
pp.69-70. Bold emphasis added.]
But, just
as genuine religionists soon discovered, mind-control is much easier
to
secure if
an appeal is made to impenetrably obscure doctrines that no one
understands, no one can explain, but which all must accept and all must repeat constantly, almost
mindlessly, in order to dull the critical faculties.
Hence,
because the party can't reproduce the class struggle inside its four walls, and
thereby force unity on its cadres externally (contrary to what happens with the
working class),
it can
only control political thought internally (in each head) by turning it into a
repetitive, mind-numbing mantra,
insisting on doctrinal orthodoxy, and then accusing all those who don't
conform of
heresy, or -- even worse --of not "understanding" dialectics!
Despite regular calls to "build the party",
it now looks like small is beautiful, if not highly desirable. Clearly, that is because it allows for
maximum thought-control. In a small party the 'purity' of the
'revolutionary tradition' is easier to enforce and hence control.
Factionalism, splits and sectarianism are thus intrinsic, constant and
ubiquitous features of the political and organisational
practice of these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries. This keeps their parties
small just as it also helps distinguish them from all the rest.
This is what
Hal Draper
had to say about the situation in America alone, thirty
or forty years ago:
"American socialism today has hit a
new low in terms of sect fragmentation. There are more sects going through their
gyrations at this moment than have ever existed in all previous periods in this
country taken together. And the fragments are still fissioning, down to the
sub-microscopic level. Politically speaking, their average has dropped from the
comic-opera plane to the comic-book grade. Where the esoteric sects (mainly
Trotskyist splinters) of the 1930s tended toward a sort of super sophistication
in Marxism and futility in practice, there is a gaggle of grouplets now (mainly
Maoist-Castroite) characterized by amnesia regarding the Marxist tradition,
ignorance of the socialist experience, and extreme primitivism. The road to an
American socialist movement surely lies over the debris, or around the rotting
off-shoots of, this fetid jungle of sects." [Quoted from
here.]
This isn't
just an American phenomenon, either, it is international, and, as we will see in Essay
Ten Part One, the situation has
worsened considerably since the above words were committed to paper. [The
fragmentation of the UK-SWP is just the latest example of this trend.]
Inside the
Dialectical Matrix, anAuthoritarian Personality type soon emerges
to endorse, and then enforce, ideological purity
(disguised now as part of an endeavour to keep faith with "tradition"
-- which is,
not un-coincidentally, a noxious trait shared by all known religions).
"Tradition" now becomes a watch-word to test and maintain doctrinal purity
within party cadres -- especially among those who might stray too far
from the
narrow path which
alone leads the DM-electtoward revolutionary salvation.17
This naturally
helps inflame yet more disputes
and thus more splits.
[History has
indeed confirmed that the 'centrifugal forces' of fragmentation that operate between
dialectically-distracted
comrades far out-weigh their constant calls for unity. (I return to this theme
below.
See also
Appendix F.)]
We have already seen Marx nail his colours to
the anti-Philosophy mast with these woods:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphases
added.]
So, it is no surprise, therefore, to see
DM-fans -- who, incidentally, reject the above remarks and
Marx's advice that they should "leave philosophy" -- both act and express
themselves in a quasi-religious terms or behave in a manner reminiscent
of those who belong to a cult.
In addition to the
numerous examples listed
here, the above allegations concerning the
quasi-religious, or highly emotional and irrational responses elicited from dialecticians when
their theory is criticised find ready confirmation in the behaviour of at least one
leading Marxist, Trotsky.
George Novack
records the following meeting he and Max Shachtman
had with him in Mexico (in 1937):
"[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. Pragmatism, empiricism, is
the greatest curse of American thought. You must inoculate younger comrades
against its infection.'
"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!...
[Trotsky later wrote:] 'The question of correct
philosophical doctrine, that is, a correct method of thought, is of decisive
significance to a revolutionary party....'" [Novack (1960), reprinted
in Novack (1978),
pp.269-71. Italics in the original. Bold emphases and link added. Spelling altered to conform with UK English;
quotation marks adapted to agree with conventions adopted at this site. Several
paragraphs merged.]
The accuracy of Novack's memory is confirmed by the following remarks written
by Trotsky himself:
"...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 (sic) 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
and link added.]18
Given the content of this Essay -- and
Marx's words above
--, Trotsky's semi-religious
fervour, his emotional attachment to the dialectic compounded by his irrational
response to Max Eastman and
James Burnham
are now much easier to understand. Can you imagine anyone getting so
worked up over the minutiae underlying the demise of Feudalism? Or, the falling rate of
profit?
Finally, here are some of Trotsky's final words:
"For forty-three years of my
conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have
fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of
course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would
remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a
dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My
faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer
today, than it was in the days of my youth.... This faith in man and in his
future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any
religion." [An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of
Europe, pp.130-31, quoted from
here. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
Stronger than religious faith. But, from where did this 'faith' arise? What
was its source?
As we
can see from the above passages, it clearly arose out his commitment to DM,
a super-historical, cosmic theory that guarantees victory to true believers.
Despite their profound
political differences, Trotsky and Stalin were
both Dedicated Dialectical Devotees. Ethan Pollock reports on a revealing incident that took place in the Kremlin just
after the end of World War Two:
"In late December 1946 Joseph Stalin called a
meeting of high-level Communist Party personnel.... The opening salvos of the
Cold War
had already been launched. Earlier in the year
Winston Churchill
had
warned of an iron curtain dividing Europe. Disputes about the political future
of Germany, the presence of Soviet troops in Iran, and proposals to control
atomic weapons had all contributed to growing tensions between the United States
and the USSR. Inside the Soviet Union the devastating effects of the Second
World War were painfully obvious: cities remained bombed out and
unreconstructed; famine laid waste to the countryside, with millions dying of
starvation and many millions more malnourished. All this makes one of the agenda
items for the Kremlin meeting surprising: Stalin wanted to discuss the recent prizewinning book
History of Western European Philosophy[by
Georgii
Aleksandrov -- RL]." [Pollock (2006), p.15. Bold emphasis and links added.
Italic emphases in the original.]
Pollock explains that the problems Aleksandrov faced arose because of his interpretation of the foreign (i.e., German!) roots of
DM
in an earlier work, and how
he had
been criticised for not emphasising the "reactionary and bourgeois"
nature of the work of German Philosophers like
Kant,
Fichte
and Hegel --, in view of
their recent war against the invading fascists -- when, of course, during the
Hitler-Stalin pact a few
years earlier, the opposite line had been peddled by the Kremlin. Pollock also
describes the detailed and lengthy discussions the Central Committee devoted to
Aleksandrov's previous work years earlier, evenduring the height of the war against the Nazis!
It is revealing, therefore, to note that Stalin and his henchmen
considered DM to be so important that other more pressing matters could be shelved,
or delayed,
so that they might devote time to discussing...Philosophy! In this, of course, Stalin was
in total agreement with Trotsky and other leading Marxists.
Once more, Marx's comments (repeated
below) make
abundantly clear why that was so, and why these individuals were so.
We witness something similar in relation to
Nikolai Bukharin. Anyone
who reads Philosophical Arabesques [Bukharin (2005)] will be struck by
the semi-religious fervour with which he defends 'dialectics'. In view of
Bukharin's predicament, that is hardly surprising. But, it is also no less revealing
since it confirms much of the above: DM is responsible for holding the
fragile dialectical
ego together,even in the face of execution.
The old saying, "There are no atheists in foxholes", may
or may not be
correct, but it looks like there mightn't have been many non-dialecticians in the
Lubyanka
waiting on Stalin's 'mercy'. Behind those grim,
unforgiving walls it seems that even hard-nosed
Bolsheviks needed some form of consolation. As Helena Sheehan notes in her Introduction
(to Sheehan (2005)):
"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his text
is that it was written at all. Condemned not by an enemy but by his own
comrades, seeing what had been so magnificently created being so catastrophically destroyed, undergoing shattering interrogations, how was he not
totally debilitated by despair? Where did this author get the strength, the
composure, the faith in the futurethat was necessary to write this treatise
of Philosophy, this passionate defense of the intellectual tradition of Marxism
and the political project of socialist construction?
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a tragic true
believer...." [Sheehan (2005), pp.7-8. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
Once again, Marx, I think, had the answer:
"Religion
is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet
won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.... Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its
logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its
moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation
and justification.... Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions...." [Marx (1975b),
p.244. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
added.]
The fact that Bukharin, this doomed comrade,
chose to spend his last days and weeks expounding and
defending a Hermetic theory --
pleading with
Stalin not to destroy his book -- tells us all we need to know.
[Several more examples of the expression of DM-faith like this
have been posted here and
here.]
"Power tends to corrupt;
absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This gets things completely the wrong way
round. As Tony Cliff remarked in a talk, it is
lack of power that corrupts absolutely. It corrupts the working class, and that in turn
allows the members of the ruling-class to get away with whatever they feel
they can get away with, corrupting them in return.
Similarly, a
passive working class allows
revolutionaries -- or, rather, their supposed 'tribunes' -- to get up to all kinds of
dialectical and organisational mischief. Hence, the latter become corrupted, too.
As we
have seen, among the many different forms this corruption takes is
the general lack of any sort of
effective democratic control exercised on
Central Committees and Party 'Leaders'.
The
aforementioned Authoritarian Personality-type
-- in the shape of The Leader, The 'Great
Helmsman'/'Teacher', the Central Committee [CC] itself, or one or more of their
lackeys --
ensures that democratic accountability
is, at best, merely formal. Hence, genuine democratic control soon becomes an early casualty in this backwater of the class war. Democracy is, among other things, an external constraint exercised by the majority
on the individual, which, naturally, helps explain why it is favoured by the majority.
By way of contrast, democratic control is equally feared by the petty-bourgeois minority, and for the same reason.
In
such dialectically-dominated micro-parties, democracy threatens the internally-enforced
mind control this minority prefers. Which is, of course, why so many DM-parties have latched onto the slate system as the preferred
method of electing their CCs, and their preferred method for denying their
rank-and-file any sort of democratic control.18a
This, too, is one of the reasons why Capitalists
themselves need the state -- packed with individuals they can
trust, selected by
their very own version of the slate system (which is quite often no more sophisticated than
this: which bed you were born in or which bed you climbed into) -- to impose and then consolidate the rule
of the minority over otherwise democratically-inclined workers. And, it is also
why they need to call upon various Idealist and reactionary 'theories' to convince
the recalcitrant majority that this is "All for your benefit, you understand", since "We are all in it together"
and "It's in the national interest", yada, yada...
It is also why Dialectical Marxists
need the centralist, but not the democratic, part of democratic
centralism, and why democracy is ditched so readily
and so often.
Naturally, political degeneration like this doesn't
develop in a vacuum, independent of
social forces. As noted
here, the malignant
side-effects of Dialectical Dementia tend to dominate (i) When the
materialist counter-weight provided by the working class is totally absent
(i.e., before the proletariat had emerged as an effective political and social force), (ii) When
that counterweight is
much more attenuated, or (iii) In periods of
"downturn", retreat and defeat. This is, of course, also when
Dialectical Druggies tend to
're-discover' this 'theory' and when
they all attempt to snort along the
'correct' philosophical line.19
Small wonder then that these petty-bourgeois victims cling to DM like drunks
to lampposts -- and, alas, like the 'god'-botherers among us cling to their own
favoured source of opiates.
DM
now shapes and dominates the personal-, and party-identity of such comrades.
Any attack on this sacred doctrine is an attack not just on the glue that holds
each of these social atoms together, but also on the cement that holds together the party and the entire
Dialectical Marxist
"tradition".19a
In their own eyes, these professional, petty-bourgeois revolutionaries are special; they live --
no they embody -- the revolution. They have caught the tide of history,
the ineluctable drift of the universe; they must keep the faith.
Commitment to the revolution on these terms now
creates a layer of militants who, for all the world, appear to suffer from
some sort of dialectical personality disorder --
again,
one aspect of which is The Leader Complex.
As noted above,
once more, fragmentation
lies at the very heart of DM, and is now
synonymous with
Dialectical Marxism
itself -- witness the well-aimed joke in Monty Python's
Life of Brian (about the Judean People's Front,
etc.). The joke is memorable because everyone recognises its central core of truth.
So,
Dialectical Marxists
are soon transformed into Militant
Martinets, ostracising and expelling anyone who fails to tow the 'correct' line.
As we have seen, these
Dialectical Despots have very
powerful personalities, something they use to good effect in the small ponds
they invariably patrol --and
clearly prefer. Expulsions, splits and bans thus keep their
grouplets small,
and thus easier to manipulate.
The petty-bourgeois revolutionary ego helps keep our movement
fragmented,
small, insular and thus ineffectual --, clearly in preference to its being democratic,
outward-looking and effective. No wonder then that in such
circumstances, democracy goes out the window along with reasonableness --,
and, of course, along with any significant political impact.
In this way, ruling-ideas have come to rule Dialectical Marxism, which has in
turn helped ruin our movement -- by allowing those who divide, rule,
and those who rule, divide.
Another ironic 'dialectical inversion' for
readers to ponder.
Each Dialectical
Disciple now acts as if he/she alone has direct access to the exact
meaning of the dialectic (here
is an excellent recent example of this syndrome), uncannily mirroring the individualism
that underpins Protestantism, where believers are required to
work out their own
salvation in
'fear and trembling' by means of a thorough study of the Bible, allied with endless disputation.
This also helps account for the interminable
dialectical debates over vacuous
Hegelian concepts (rather like
those that exercised the
Medieval Schoolmen):
for example, whether this or that idea is "abstract", "positivist", "one-sided", or whether 'opposites' are
'united' or 'identical' --, or, indeed, whether "motion precedes matter"..., or is it the other way round?20
This also helps explain why each
DM-supplicant thinks that no one elsereally"understands" the dialectic like they do --, or even as well as they do.
[Since no one does in fact understand
DM (on that, see Essay Nine Part
One), this is a very easy claim to make, and one no less
difficult to discredit.]
Every opponent is
now tarred with the same brush (on
this, see below, as well as
here): all fail to
"understand" the dialectic -- that is, all except the blessed soul who
made
that rather bold claim!
Just like the
Old Testament Prophets, it is almost as if these
individuals have received
a personal visit from the 'Self-Developing Idea' Itself.
Indeed,
The Road
to Damascus and The Road to Dialectics have
much more in common than
just a capital
letter "D".
All this explains why, to each
DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so
personal, so intimately their own possession, andwhy you can
sense the personal hurt they feel when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at
this site. [For two excellent examples of this malady, check out
these two
incoherent videos.]
Hence, any attack on
this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself and will be
resisted with all the bile and venom at its command.
And that explains, too, all the
abuse you, dear reader,
will
receive
if you think to
challenge the Dialectical Doctrines of a single one of these
Hermetic Head Cases.
Again,
as noted above,
in defeat these individuals reach for what is in effect a comfort blanket
-- Dialectical
Methadone
-- in order to insulate their minds from reality and
constant failure. And, by all accounts this
ersatz
opiate has done an
excellent job. In fact, anyone who attempts to argue with a single one of these
Dialectical Dupes would be far better and more profitably occupied head-butting
a Billy-goat for all the good it will do. [That allegation is easily confirmed;
the reader should check this
out.]
However,
narcoleptic
stupor of such profundity -- compounded by the
constant lack of clarity required to maintain it -- only helps engineer more splits, thus more set-backs and defeats,
which in turn creates the need for another sizeable hit.
And so the Dialectical Monster lumbers on into this new millennium.
Small
wonder then that Dialectical Marxism is to success what religion is peace on
earth.
DM has thus infected our movement at every
level, exacerbating sectarianism,
factionalism,
exclusivism,
unreasonableness,
dismissive haughtiness
(this truly endearing
quality displayed most notably by the
High Church Faction),
pomposity, corruption, extreme dogmatism (bordering on
clinical paranoia
in some cases),
topped-off with a few generous layers of abuse,
all liberally peppered with delightful phrases like "rant", "diatribe", "screed", "sh*t",
"cr*p", and worse. Indeed, as noted earlier, a leading Marxist Professor of Economics,
(Andrew Kliman,
no less),
recently urged me (via e-mail) to "Eat sh*t and die!", simply because I
had the temerity to ask him
to explain what a 'dialectical contradiction' is, which he, like all the rest,
had signally failed to do.
[Again, I
hasten to add that I am not complaining about this; indeed, I expect it. Indeed, if I
received none, I would conclude I had made a mistake or taken a
wrong turn somewhere.]
Dialectical vices like these have introduced into each and every tiny sectlet an open and
implacable hatred of practically every other sectlet, and, in some cases,
every
other comrade
-- especially those who dare question The Sacred
Dialectical Mantra.
[On that, see Note
14 and
Appendix B.]
Unsurprisingly, the result of all this
dialectical infighting is that in order to consolidate their power the
ruling-class needn't even try to divide us; we're quite capable of making a
first-rate job of it ourselves, thank you very much.
Everyone in the movement is painfully aware
of this (some even joke about it
-- again, often along Monty Python
lines!); others excuse
it or explain it away with yet more 'dialectics' -- or even with
fruitless and empty calls for unity.21
But, no one confronts these fatal defects at their source
in (i) The class origin of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries
and (ii) Their fondness for the divisive
doctrines of that latter-day
Hermeticist
-- Hegel.
Doctrinaire Marxism is the final result
of this mystical creed, hence it needs a Guru or two to interpret it, rationalise
constant failure, and 'justify' regular splits -- and, of course, initiate
another round of the same.
Enter the cult of the
personality with its petty, nit-picking, small pond mentality. Enter the "Leader" who knows all,
reveals all, expels all -- and, in several notorious cases, executes or
imprisons all -- The Dialectical Magus.
As observers of religious cults have noted,
even the most
mundane
and
banal statements
uttered by such leaders
are
treated with undeserved awe, rapt attention and inordinate respect, compounded by a level of
sycophancy that would shame
a professional boot licker -- almost as if their words had been conveyed to
expectant humanity from off
the
mountain top itself, possessed of profound,
esoteric significance
and divine authority.
Witness the
inordinate
and quasi-religious reverence in which the
dialectical meanderings of
Mao
and
Stalin
were/are held.
Here, for example, is Lin Biao
on the former, in 1966:
"Chairman Mao is a genius,
everything the Chairman says is truly great; one of the Chairman's words will
override the meaning of ten thousands of ours." [Quoted from
here.]
This
is what Nikita Khrushchev had to say (in his 'secret speech' to the 20th
Congress of the CPSU):
"After
Stalin's death, the Central Committee began to implement a policy of explaining
concisely and consistently that it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of
Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman
possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man
supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do
anything, is infallible in his behaviour.
"Such a
belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for
many years. The objective of the present report is not a thorough evaluation of
Stalin's life and activity. Concerning Stalin's merits, an entirely sufficient
number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime.
Stalin's role in the preparation and execution of the Socialist Revolution, in
the Civil War, and in the fight for the construction of socialism in our
country, is universally known. Everyone knows it well.
"At
present, we are concerned with a question which has immense importance for the
Party now and for the future -- with how the cult of the person of Stalin has
been gradually growing, the cult which became at a certain specific stage the
source of a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party
principles, of Party democracy, of revolutionary legality. Because
not all as yet realize fully the practical consequences resulting from the cult
of the individual, [or] the great harm caused by violation of the principle of
collective Party direction and by the accumulation of immense and limitless
power in the hands of one person, the Central Committee considers it absolutely
necessary to make material pertaining to this matter available to the 20th
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
"Allow me
first of all to remind you how severely the classics of Marxism-Leninism
denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. In a letter to the
German political worker Wilhelm Bloss, [Karl] Marx stated: 'From my antipathy to
any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the
[1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which
recognized my merits and which annoyed me. I did not even reply to them, except
sometimes to rebuke their authors. [Friedrich] Engels and I first joined the
secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for
superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute.
[Ferdinand] Lassalle subsequently did quite the opposite.'" [Nikita Khrushchev,
Speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, 24-25/02/1956. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases
added; some paragraphs merged. Spelling modified
to agree with UK English. Typos corrected. (I have informed the editors over at
the Marxist Internet Archive.)]
Here,
too, Stalin is praised to the rafters, and beyond:
"Thank
you, Stalin. Thank you because I am joyful. Thank you because I am well. No
matter how old I become, I shall never forget how we received Stalin two days
ago. Centuries will pass, and the generations still to come will regard us as
the happiest of mortals, as the most fortunate of men, because we lived in the
century of centuries, because we were privileged to see Stalin, our inspired
leader. Yes, and we regard ourselves as the happiest of mortals because we are
the contemporaries of a man who never had an equal in world history.
"The men of all ages will call on thy name, which is
strong, beautiful, wise and marvellous. Thy name is engraven on every factory,
every machine, every place on the earth, and in the hearts of all men.
"Every time I have found myself in his presence I have
been subjugated by his strength, his charm, his grandeur. I have experienced a
great desire to sing, to cry out, to shout with joy and happiness. And now see
me -- me! -- on the same platform where the Great Stalin stood a year ago. In
what country, in what part of the world could such a thing happen.
"I write books. I am an author. All thanks to thee, O
great educator, Stalin. I love a young woman with a renewed love and shall
perpetuate myself in my children -- all thanks to thee, great educator, Stalin.
I shall be eternally happy and joyous, all thanks to thee, great educator,
Stalin. Everything belongs to thee, chief of our great country. And when the
woman I love presents me with a child the first word it shall utter will be:
Stalin.
"O great Stalin, O leader of
the peoples,
Thou who broughtest man to birth.
Thou who fructifies the earth,
Thou who restorest to centuries,
Thou who makest bloom the spring,
Thou who makest vibrate the musical chords...
Thou, splendour of my spring, O thou,
Sun reflected by millions of hearts."
Did even Hitler ever receive such praise
and adoration?
"According to his official biography, Kim Jong Il's birth atop a
sacred mountain saw a new star created and winter turn to spring. However,
records kept by the country's Soviet allies show he was born in a Siberian
village in 1941." [Quoted from
here.]
I have just seen a documentary on CNN (aired
14/09/2017 -- the original video is available
here, Chapter Six, The Sacred Mountain -- scroll down the latter page
to see a short clip from this chapter, although I have posted the full clip below as Video Two), in which the official North Korean guide (employed at
the site of Kim-Jong-il's
'miraculous' birthplace) confirms the above tale. She adds that this isn't a
legend -- itreally didhappen. Here is a transcript:
"So it was really cold and the weather was
not normal. But, somehow, the day the General was born the strong wind stopped
all of a sudden. The sun began shining through. Everything was bright and a
quiet calm took over. The flowers bloomed and in the sky was a particularly
bright star.... Yes, it actually happened. It's not a legend. Our general is
really a person who (sic) heaven sent to us. So, he changed the weather, too.
It's a true story.... Nature actually transformed itself to announce the birth
of our General to the whole world, blessing it. That's how it happened."
Video Two: The Miraculous
Birth Of Kim-Jong-il
Nor,
indeed, need we be reminded of the obsequious praise heaped on
Gerry Healy
--
Blessed Be His Name! -- by prominent
members
of the now defunct WRP, or even the nauseating adulation lavished on
Marlene Dixon of the DWP:
"Comrade Marlene and the Party are
inseparable; her contribution is the Party itself, is the
unity all of us join together to build upon. The Party is now the material
expression of that unity, of that theoretical world view. That world view is the
world view of the Party, its central leadership and all of its members. And
there will be no other world view…. This was the unity that founded the Party,
this was the unity that safeguarded the Party through purge and two-line
struggle, and this is the unity we will protect and defend at all costs. There
will be no other unity."
[Quoted from
here;
see also
here. This passage in fact appears in Lalich (2004), p.164.]
[I have posted many more examples of this nausea-inducing
sycophancy here and
here. You might need
a bucket.]
In fact, Healy was well-known for fomenting strife among
party members
(with added violence,
so we are told)
in order to heighten the 'contradictions' in his micro-sect --, along 'sound'
dialectical lines, of course.
In the recent crisis in the UK-SWP, Alex Callinicos even spoke of "lynch
mobs". Of late we have also witnessed the divisive political and
'philosophical' gyrations of
Chris Cutrone and the 'Platypus Affiliated Society'.
Compare the above hero worship with Marx's own stated attitude
(referenced above by Khrushchev himself):
"Neither of us cares a straw
for popularity. Let me cite one proof of this: such was my aversion to the
personality cult that at the time of the International, when plagued by numerous
moves -- originating from various countries -- to accord me public honour, I
never allowed one of these to enter the domain of publicity, nor did I ever
reply to them, save with an occasional snub. When Engels and I first joined the
secret communist society, we did so only on condition that anything conducive to
a superstitious belief in authority be eliminated from the Rules. (Lassalle
subsequently operated in the reverse direction.)" [MECW, 45, p.288,
Marx to Wilhem Blos, 10/11/1877. Link added.]
This phenomenon also helps account for much
of the
personal and organisation corruption
revolutionary politics has witnessed over
the last hundred years or more -- ranging from
Mao's
abuse of female comrades
to the same with respect
to
Healy
(on that, see
Appendix A),
down to the
scandal that engulfed the UK-SWP
a few years ago
--, but there are many more examples of this malaise.
All of these are
partly the
result of the noxious effect this doctrine has had on otherwise radical minds
-- i.e., convincing them that they are somehow 'special' and hence,
Raskolnikov-like,
are above the 'conventional' morality of the
'herd', or, in some cases,
even the laws of nature!
"Last week the 75-year old
Aravindan Balakrishnan (aka 'comrade Bala')
was sentenced to 23 years in jail for a string of offences, including rape,
sexual assault, child cruelty and false imprisonment -- the last two charges
relating to his daughter, Katy Morgan-Davies, who is now 33.
"The court heard how the
leader of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong
Thought -- such as it was -- operated a 'dehumanising and degrading'
domestic regime, terrifying his small coterie of female followers
(or subjects) into thinking he could read their minds and had
'god-like' powers. These powers involved mastery of 'Jackie'
(Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna, Immortal Easwaran), and an
'electronic satellite warfare machine' built by the Communist Party
of China/People's Liberation Army, which could strike them dead if
they ever stepped out of line. Balakrishnan also claimed that it was
a challenge to his leadership that had resulted in the 1986 space
shuttle disaster.
"All this is perhaps not
quite so surprising when we discover that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and
Saddam Hussein were -- in the words of Morgan-Davies -- his 'his
gods and his heroes' that he wished to 'emulate': therefore you
'couldn't criticise them'. Indeed, according to her, her father was
using the sect or collective as a 'pilot unit' to learn how to
control people before taking over the world -- presumably appointing
himself as global revolutionary dictator. But so great were his
delusions, revealed Morgan-Davies, that at times he worried that Mao
and the others might act as a 'rival to him' -- when instead they
should be 'secondary to him', as he wanted to be 'bigger than all of
them'. We are also informed that he wished three million had died in
the Tiananmen Square massacre.
"Balakrishnan raped two
women on the basis that he was 'purifying them' of the 'bourgeois
culture' in the outside world, the jurors were told. He began
sexually abusing his first victim when his wife, Chandra, was in a
diabetic-induced coma. She met him at a demonstration when she was
23, saying he 'had the air of an important man with authority' and
quickly became entranced by him. The other victim was a Malaysian
nurse who initially found Workers' Institute meetings 'welcoming and
friendly', but was repeatedly sexually assaulted over a 10-year
period....
"In 1974 Balakrishnan was
expelled from the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) for
'splittist activities' and 'opposition to dialectical materialism'.
In return, he scornfully called them the 'Communist Party of
Elizabeth (Most-Loyal)' and set-up the rival 'institute' -- also
launching his own publication, the South London Workers'
Bulletin, which never missed an opportunity to vehemently
denounce his former comrades of the CPE(M-L), and just about
everybody else, for being 'fascists', 'running dogs', 'agents of
imperialism' and so forth....
"The 'institute' started
to produce spectacular leaflets predicting the overthrow of the
'British fascist state' and the beginnings of the 'world revolution'
led by the CPC/PLA [Communist Party of China/People's Liberation
Army -- RL]. In fact, we learnt, the PLA would launch a
'revolutionary invasion' of Britain by 1980 -- the bridgehead being
the liberated zone of Brixton. This was the 'first stable base area
in the imperialist heartlands', where whole families were free from
'fascist rules and regulations' -- a fact, Balakrishnan assured his
followers, that has 'driven the British bourgeoisie up the wall'.
Developing the theme, a 'perspectives' document from 1977
confidently stated that the British population was moving in a clear
'revolutionary direction' -- primarily thanks to the Workers'
Institute 'successfully' conducting 'vigorous programmes to uphold
Chairman Mao's revolutionary line amidst the mass upsurge in
Britain'. And if you went to certain pubs in Brixton at this time,
occasionally someone might get on a table and wave the Little
Red Book about.
"Much to the mirth of the
left, and showing the final descent into complete lunacy,
Balakrishnan's group asserted that the 'international dictatorship
of the proletariat' had been 'established covertly' in 1977 by 'our
party' -- i.e., the CPC. You are actually living under socialism:
it's just that you don't know it yet. The fact that a diarist in
The Times reprinted some of the group's material that year for
the amusement of its readers only proved to Balakrishnan that the
'hired scribes of the bourgeoisie' and 'their masters' are 'well
aware of the danger of the rapid growth and development of the
Workers’ Institute in the past four years to their class interests'.
Maoists are, of course, renowned for their sense of humour....
"Then again...mad politics
drives you crazy, not the other way round. In certain respects, the
Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and its
devotion to dogma is a representative example of the British left --
albeit in an extreme or concentrated form. Take Gerry Healy's
Workers Revolutionary Party -- not as mad as the Workers' Institute,
true, but not far off it and arguably more destructive. You can see
obvious similarities not only with regards to sexual abuse and rape,
but also when it comes to promoting a world view which is
patently false. When the WRP first came out with its line that
we were living under a Bonapartist dictatorship and on the edge of a
military coup -- so sleep with your boots on as the revolution is
about to happen -- you might have conceded generously that, whilst
the comrades were wrong, it was worth having a discussion
about it. But to repeat the same thing 20 or 30 years later is just
madness. Healy and the then WRP leadership may not have been
clinically insane, but they were definitely socially
insane.
"Not entirely
dissimilarly, there is the Socialist Workers Party and its
frighteningly bureaucratic internal regime. It may not have had a
Gerry Healy or an Aravindan Balakrishnan, but it certainly had
comrade Delta -- and at first the apparatus automatically rallied
around him, attempting to protect him from accusations of sexual
abuse. Or how about when our SWP comrades told us that the miners'
Great Strike of 1984-85 was an 'extreme form of the downturn'? You
could hardly make it up. Dogma run amok." ['Devotion
to Dogma', Weekly Worker, 04/02/2016; accessed 29/03/2016.
Quotation marks altered to conform with conventions adopted at
this site. Italic emphases in the original. A BBC report
about this can
be accessed
here. I have corrected this author's mis-spelling of Gerry
Healy's name.]
Figure Three: Gerry Healy
Receives The Sacred Word --,
Er..., Or Is It Kim-Jong-il, Bob Avakian,
Aravindan
Balakrishnan Or Marlene Dixon?
Megalomania coupled with an inflated view of one's own
(surely cosmic) importance, a failure to face reality (courtesy of a theory that
teaches that 'appearances' are 'contradicted' by underlying 'essence') descend
like a cloud on the brains of such individuals
--, and, of course,
their acolytes. How else would it have been possible for them to rationalise so easily the
pragmatic contradiction between, say, the widespread abuse of female comrades and a formal
commitment to women's liberation, except by means of this contradictory theory:
DM?23
In this way, we have seen Dialectical Marxism replicate
much of the abuse -- and most of sectarianism --
found
in almost all known
religions. [Again, on this, see
Appendix A.]
And no wonder: both were spawned by similar alienated patterns of ruling-class
thought and social atomisation --, compounded, of course, by a cultic mentality,
a pathological mind-set further aggravated by a divisive, Hermetic
Creed
capable of rationalising anything whatsoever and its opposite!
As
even Marx (inadvertently) admitted:
"It's possible that I shall make an ass of
myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little
dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be
right either way." [Marx
to Engels, 15/08/1857, MECW 40, p.152.
Bold emphasis added.]
And this is one of the logical
consequences of all that dialectical-adulation, proudly exhibited by Gerry
Healy's supporters in the old WRP, but more recently by the UK-SWP in connection
with the 'comrade Delta'
debacle:
"Rape, however, is a most abusive violent power
relation and weapon used for oppression which echoes the exploitative rule of
capital itself. For such a form of abuse to emerge in any so-called socialist
organisation -- and to 'deal' with it in the way the SWP has -- reflects the
presence of the deepest forms of degeneration and corruption which, in turn,
replicates the most insidious and inhuman forms of alienation and oppression of
capitalist domination. If a so-called socialist organisation is not a safe place
for women to voluntarily participate in its activities, then it is not worthy of
the name 'socialist'....
"Historically, and speaking from my early
political experience, socialists have witnessed such behaviour before. The
dissolution of the Workers Revolutionary Party in 1985 was sparked by the
discovery that its leader -- Gerry Healy -- had regularly assaulted party
members, sexually abusing female comrades for many years and perpetrating
various libels and slanders against socialists in other organisations. Healy's
secretary -- who was instrumental in exposing his abuses -- listed more than 20
victims. Healy used his position of power in the party to sexually abuse female
comrades....
"When
Cliff
Slaughter
in opposition to Healy -- at a meeting in London -- quoted Lenin
on morality, Healy et al accused him of purveying bourgeois morality (such
accusations will ring a bell with those currently fighting the 'elect' in the
SWP) until he actually stated subsequently to the full meeting that he had just
quoted from Lenin. This exposed how far Healy & Co had actually moved away from
'their' Lenin on questions of morality. For Healy et al, Lenin was infallible,
indisputable gospel. Nobody critiqued Lenin. Volumes 14 and 38 of the Collected
Works were treated like divine revelation....
"Corin
Redgrave (the now dead brother of the still living actress
Vanessa)
caused uproar in a meeting in Scotland when he praised what he called Healy's
'achievements' and said that... 'If this is the work of a rapist, then let's
recruit more rapists'....
"This was the sort of obscene, anti-socialist,
inhuman morality which prevailed in the Workers Revolutionary Party prior to the
break-up in 1985. This was used to prop up and validate the bizarre sectarian
notions of vanguardism: 'we are the vanguard party', etc. Verbal and physical
abuse, coercion, bullying, intimidation, emotional blackmail, humiliation,
people re-mortgaging and even losing their houses to fund the party and working
all hours (18-hour days were normal for some comrades) were all part of being a
'professional revolutionary' in the WRP. The personal life was 'toast'....
"[All this] was 'complimented' by
the most abject
philosophical philistinism and theoretically dissolute publication of Healy's
very unremarkable 'Studies in Dialectical Materialism' which turned out to be an
incomprehensible dog's dinner of convoluted mumbojumbo phrasemongering and
terminological confusion. One comrade in Hull sarcastically recommended it as
'bedtime reading' when I told him I was having trouble sleeping. Because we
didn't grasp it, we thought it was 'too advanced' for us. We didn't possess the
'supreme dialectical mind of a Gerry Healy'. As things turned out, when we
looked at it as the fog started to lift, it was clear that we didn't understand
it because it was unadulterated gobbledegook. Here again, we see a
characteristic of cult-existence in which its leader was, momentarily at least,
attributed powers which he really didn't hold. None of us understood the
'Studies' and so we were told to 'theoretically discipline ourselves' like a
mental or intellectual form of self-flagellation or 'penance' found in physical
form in some religious cults or sects....
"Many people did actually have mental breakdowns
even after the break-up of the WRP. Homes broken. Divorces. Families destroyed.
'Building the party' was simultaneously the point of departure and the point of
return. Everything else was subservient to this manic 'party-building'....
"The 'leaders' of these sectarian groups -- these
minilenins and tinytrotskys -- tend to attract the same degree of reverence from
their rather uncritical membership as a charismatic neo-prophet does from the
enchanted congregation of his cult. The social psychology is fundamentally the
same. Until, of course, a profound crisis sets in which shakes everything to its
foundations. And sexual abuse in a so-called socialist organisation is such a
crisis....
"Meanwhile today, in March 2013, 28 years
post-Healy, the Socialist Workers Party remains open to the accusation that it
is harbouring rapists and sexual predators (sic) whilst two women socialists are
insisting that they have been sexually abused by the accused man who is still
free to prowl around the female membership. [The ex-comrade involved has since
resigned from the SWP
in order to avoid having to answer further accusations
of sexual harassment levelled at him by the second of the two female comrades
mentioned above -- RL.]" [Quoted from
here; accessed 09/10/2013. Quotation marks altered to conform with
conventions adopted at this site. Links added. (See also
here and
here -- warning: graphic detail!)]
As things stand, we are bound to witness yet
more Gerry Healys and Comrade Deltas on the revolutionary left (accompanied, of
course, by the regulation "It's all a fame-up by the capitalist state/media" defence). [On this, see Note 23.]
Update June 2019: As the above
was being written, the US International Socialist Organisation (ISO) leadership
was busy covering up yet another rape accusation. This latest debacle culminated
in the ISO voting to disband in April 2019. [On that see,
here.]
As far as the DM-'faithful' are concerned
all
this will fail to go even in one ear let alone straight out through the
other. That is because they refuse to accept that any of the pressures bearing
down on the rest of humanity could possibly have any
effect on them,
the DM-Elect.
Apparently, social psychology doesn't apply to these demi-gods!
Indeed, as far as The ChosenFew are concerned we can totally
ignore these famous words:
"In the social production of their existence,
men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their
will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of
material life conditions the general process of social, political and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."
[Marx
(1968), pp.181. Bold emphasis added.]
In response, it is often countered that
tracing the fondness dialecticians have for Philosophy
back to their class origin or current class position is just "crude reductionism!". In stark
contrast,
however, dialecticians are quite happy to reduce their opponents'
theories and beliefs to
their class origin or class position, while any
attempt to do likewise with respect to their philosophical ideas is
rejected out-of-hand -- with a...label.
"In a word, Comrade
Martov's
formula will either
remain a dead letter, an empty phrase, or it will be of benefit mainly and
almost exclusively to 'intellectuals who are thoroughly imbued with
bourgeois individualism' and do not wish to join an organisation. Martov's formulation
ostensively defends the interests of the broad strata of
the proletariat, but in fact it serves the interests of the
bourgeois intellectuals, who fight shy of proletarian discipline and
organisation. No one will venture to deny that the intelligentsia,
as a special stratum of modern capitalist society, is characterised, by and
large, precisely by individualism and incapacity for discipline and
organisation (cf., for example,
Kautsky's
well-known articles on the
intelligentsia (partially reproduced below -- RL)). This, incidentally, is a feature which unfavourably
distinguishes this social stratum from the proletariat;
it is one of the reasons for the flabbiness and instability of the intellectual,
which the proletariat so often feels; and this trait of the intelligentsia is
inseparably
bound up with its customary mode of life, and of earning a livelihood,
which in a great many respects approximate the conditions ofpetty-bourgeois existence (working in isolation or in very small groups, etc.).
Lastly, it is not
fortuitous that the defenders of Comrade Martov's formulation were the
ones who were obliged to cite the example of professors and high-school students! It was
not the champions of a broad proletarian struggle who, in the controversy over
Paragraph 1, took the field against the champions of a radically conspiratorial
organisation as Comrades
Martynov
and
Axelrod
thought, but the supporters of
bourgeois-intellectual individualism, who clashed with the supporters of
proletarian organisation and discipline." [Lenin (1976a),
pp.87-88. Bold emphasis and links added; italic emphases in
the original. I have used the Peking edition here, which differs slightly from
the on-line Moscow version.]
Quoting
Kautsky
on the social psychology of his opponents, Lenin further argued (in the previous
paragraph having ascribed the words quoted below to the "wishy-washiness of the
intellectual"):
"Onecannot help recalling in this connection the brilliant social and
psychological characterisation of this latter quality recently given by Karl
Kautsky. The Social Democratic parties of different countries suffer not
infrequently nowadays from similar maladies, and it would be extremely useful
for us to learn from more experienced comrades the correct diagnosis and the
correct cure. Karl Kautsky's characterisation of certain intellectuals will
therefore be only a seeming digression from our theme.
"The problem
'that again interests us
so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia and the
proletariat. My colleagues' (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and
editor) 'will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually
exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inept tactics to try
to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it
manifests itself in classes, not in individuals. The individual intellectual, like the
individual capitalist, may join wholly in the class struggle of the proletariat. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not
of this type
of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall
mainly speak in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the
word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the
stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the
intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain
antagonism to the proletariat.
'Thisantagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and
capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life
is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at
the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his
labour power, and he himself is often enough subjected to exploitation and
social humiliation by the
capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism
to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are
not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and
ideas.
'...Quitedifferent is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means
of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his
personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at
all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his
individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity.
It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a
whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the
need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course
he counts himself among the latter....
'...The typical intellectual à la
Stockmann regards a "compact majority" as a monster that must be
overthrown....'
"Justsuch flabby whining of intellectuals who found themselves in the
minority, and nothing more, was the refusal of Martov
and his colleagues to take up their posts only because the old circle had not
been endorsed, as were their complaints of a state of siege and emergency laws
'against particular groups,' which were not dear to Martov when the
Yuzhny
Rabochy
and the
Rabocheye Dyelo
were dissolved, but became dear to him when his
own group was dissolved.
"Justsuch flabby whining of intellectuals who found themselves in the
minority was that endless torrent of complaints, reproaches, hints, accusations,
slanders, and insinuations regarding the 'compact majority' which was
started by Martov and flowed so readily at our Party Congress
(and even more so after it)....
"There
were bitter complaints of the 'false accusation of opportunism'. Well,
they had to do something to conceal the unpleasant fact that it was
precisely the
opportunists -- who in most cases had followed the anti-Iskra-ists
-- and
partly these anti-Iskra-ists themselves that formed the compact
minority, and convulsively clung to the circle spirit in
Party institutions, opportunism in their argumentation, philistinism in Party
affairs
and the instability and wishy-washiness of the intellectual." [Ibid.,
pp.160-63.
Bold emphases and links added; italic
emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. I have corrected several typos in the on-line
version -- the editors have been informed of these glitches.
Again, I have used the Peking edition
here, which differs slightly from the on-line Moscow version.]
Trotsky was also happy to do
likewise (this time
applying the following analysis to those in his own
party who opposed him, but failing to do so with respect to those who
supported him, or, indeed, himself):
"[Y]ou
[James Burnham -- RL], likewise, seek an ideal party democracy which would
secure forever and for everybody the possibility of saying and doing whatever
popped into his head, and which would insure the party against bureaucratic
degeneration. You overlook a trifle, namely, that the party is not an arena for
the assertion of free individuality, but an instrument of the proletarian
revolution; that only a victorious revolution is capable of preventing the
degeneration not only of the party but of the proletariat itself and of modern
civilization as a whole. You do not see that our American section is not sick
from too much centralism -- it is laughable even to talk about it -- but from
a monstrous abuse and distortion of democracy on the part of petty-bourgeois
elements. This is at the root of the present crisis....
"Petty-bourgeois,
and especially declassed elements, divorced from the proletariat, vegetate in an
artificial and shut-in environment. They have ample time to dabble in politics
or its substitute. They pick out faults, exchange all sorts of tidbits and
gossip concerning happenings among the party 'tops.' They always locate a leader
who initiates them into all the 'secrets.' Discussion is their native element.
No amount of democracy is ever enough for them. For their war of words they seek
the fourth dimension. They become jittery, they revolve in a vicious circle, and
they quench their thirst with salt water. Do you want to know the organizational
program of the opposition? It consists of a mad hunt for the fourth dimension of
party democracy. In practice this means burying politics beneath discussion; and
burying centralism beneath the anarchy of the intellectual circles. When a few
thousand workers join the party, they will call the petty-bourgeois anarchists
severely to order. The sooner, the better." [Trotsky
(1971), pp.116-17. Bold emphases
and link added. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Needless to say, the "few thousand"
workers failed to show up. For Burnham's reply to Trotsky, see
here.]
"If we exclude that stratum of the
intelligentsia which directly serves the working masses, as workers' doctors,
lawyers, and so on (a stratum which, as a general rule, is composed of the less
talented representatives of these professions), then we see that the most
important and influential part of the intelligentsia owes its livelihood to
payments out of industrial profit, rent from land or the state budget, and thus
is directly or indirectly dependent on the capitalist classes or the capitalist
state.
"Abstractly considered, this material
dependence puts out of the question only militant political activity in the
anti-capitalist ranks, but not spiritual freedom in relation to the class which
provides employment. In actual fact, however, this is not so. Precisely the
'spiritual' nature of the work that the intelligentsia do inevitably forms a
spiritual tie between them and the possessing classes." [Trotsky,
The Intelligentsia And Socialism. Bold emphases added.]
Here is how Trotsky
analysed the clique around Stalin:
"The entire effort of Stalin,
with whom at that time
Zinoviev and
Kamenev were working hand in hand, was
thenceforth directed to freeing the party machine from the control of the
rank-and-file members of the party. In this struggle for 'stability' of the
Central Committee, Stalin proved the most consistent and reliable among his
colleagues. He had no need to tear himself away from international problems; he
had never been concerned with them. The petty bourgeois outlook of the new
ruling stratum was his own outlook. He profoundly believed that the task of
creating socialism was national and administrative in its nature. He looked upon
the Communist International as a necessary evil would should be used so far as
possible for the purposes of foreign policy. His own party kept a value in his
eyes merely as a submissive support for the machine." [Trotsky
(1977), p.97. Bold emphasis
and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"Since the theory of historical materialism,
which lies at the very heart of Marxism, is the crowning achievement of the
bourgeois intellectual, it is no more than an act of historical justice to
apply it to the intelligentsia itself.... But the intelligentsia as a highly
self-conscious and separate grouping with its own interests and institutions is
a peculiar product of bourgeois society and the highly developed division of
labour within it....
"Intellectuals are usually (though not
necessarily) professionals of one kind of another, teachers, writers,
scientists, artists, politicians, etc....
"But, along with the professionalisation of
technical training and the institutionalization of branches of learning which
reach their highest development in present-day society, there ensues a further
specialization. A deep division of labour springs up between the theorists and
practitioners of the arts and sciences. Thus we have theoreticians of
aesthetics, who have never produced a work of art, and painters who have never
given an abstract thought to their work; practical politicians and professors of
politics; field scientists and laboratory scientists; experimental physicists
and mathematical physicists. There have even been established 'schools of
business administration', like that at Harvard, where the art of exploitation is
taught in the grand manner, and the science of capitalist apologetics developed
to the same refined degree as the scholastics developed Catholic theology.
"Finally, out of the division of labour in
the academic domain have emerged entire departments of philosophy and the social
sciences, given over to the task of speculating upon the most profound
philosophical, historical, and social problems. The professional philosopher is
the most consummate expression of the modern intellectual, as the professional
theologian was the highest representative of the medieval learned caste.
"The native habitat of the professional
intellectual in modern as well as in medieval society is the university. The
growth of universities furnishes one of the best indices to the evolution of the
intelligentsia. It must be noted in this connection that the leading
institutions of learning are usually supported and controlled by the ruling
classes, as a centre for the dissemination of their ideas.
Plato's Academy
was for the sons of the Greek aristocracy, just as Plato's philosophy was the
reasoned expression of the world view of the Greek aristocrat. The medieval
universities were in the hands of the higher estates of the clergy and the
nobility. Oxford and Cambridge have been, since their inception, finishing
schools for the scions of the masters of England and training schools for their
auxiliaries the clergy and governmental bureaucracy. Today in the United States
the capitalist plutocracy controls the purse strings and the faculties of the
great privately endowed institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, and
Leland Stanford, while the upper strata of the middle classes set the prevailing
tone in the state universities.
"...Intellectuals are specialists in the
production and propagation of ideas. They constitute the sensorium of modern
society, the concentration points where ideologies emerge into consciousness;
take systematic shape; and are then diffused through the body politic. In
various professional capacities, as teachers, writers, politicians, etc., the
intelligentsia disseminates not only scientific knowledge but the ideas which
classes entertain about themselves and their aims....
"Because of their economic insecurity,
social rootlessness, and mixed composition, intellectuals constitute one of the
most unstable, mobile, and sensitive groups in modern society. The
mercurial character of their social and intellectual movements make them
excellent barometers of social pressures and revolutionary storms. Impending
social changes are often anticipated by restlessness among the intelligentsia.
The
French Encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century who frequented the salons
of the nobility and taunted them with the idea of revolution; the Northern
abolitionists and Southern fire-eaters; the Communist and Fascist intellectuals,
who are beginning to spring up on all sides in the United States today, fight on
an ideological plane the battles to be fought in grim reality between opposing
classes on the morrow.
"The intelligentsia therefore becomes a
microcosm of capitalist society, mirroring in a contracted compass and often in
a distorted manner the real conflicts in the world around them. This
peculiar character of the intellectuals endows their history with a significance
lacking in the development of other professional groups, just as the
articulateness (sic) of the intellectuals, and their function as the
spokesmen of party and class interests, give their intellectual expressions,
and even their political affiliations, an importance disproportionate to their
numbers and actual power....
"Whereas the members of real ruling classes
base their claim to supremacy upon social position or economic power, this
intellectual élite claim the right to rule by virtue of an ability to produce or
appreciate works of art, science, or philosophy. Arrogating a superior social
status to themselves, they further declare that, as creators, scientists, or
philosophers, they have been washed clean of the material motives and class
interests that stain their baser fellow citizens. They make a religion of
'art', torn up from its social roots and abstracted from its social milieu, like
Flaubert, or a religion of 'science' in the abstract, like
Renan,
in order to exalt themselves above the vulgar herd. The perennial
wish-fulfilment dream of the intellectual to be the monarch of mankind is best
embodied in Plato's mythical republic, where the philosopher is king -- and the
labouring masses are
helots....
"It is said that radical intellectuals are
unstable and unreliable allies of the working class. There is a certain element
of truth in this accusation. Since, socially speaking, intellectuals form a
parasitic group, even the most radical intellectuals may have stronger social
and ideological ties with the existing order than they consciously suspect.
Long after the umbilical cord is cut and the youth has declared his
independence, the mature man is not free from the subtle subconscious influence
of his parents. At crucial moments, deep-seated attachments, reinforced by
the exceptionally heavy pressure exerted by alien classes, may generate a mood
of vacillation in the intellectual, holding him back from decisive action and a
sharp break with the bourgeois world....
"The intellectual defenders of reaction
usually abandon the attempt to reason out their position in a straightforward
logical manner and rely instead upon some substitute for logical and scientific
method. Reaction in every sphere of experience, political, artistic and
cultural, disparages the intellect as an organ of objective knowledge and leans
upon some presumably more fundamental factor such as intuition, blood-sense,
tradition, revelation, emotion, etc. This can be seen in all the great
reactionary movements in philosophy and politics from the French Revolution to
the present lay.
Burke's
defense of tradition against the implacable logic of bourgeois revolutionists,
DeMaistre's brief on behalf of the Catholic Church and the guillotine as the
foundation of the state,
Carlyle's
exaltation of divine inspiration and the strong man, are instances which spring
readily to mind. The truth of this observation can best be seen in the Fascist
movements of our own time." [Novack
(1935). See also
Novack (1936). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added. Spelling modified to agree
with UK English.]
While
the above is a much more nuanced analysis, Novack nowhere applies the
following
comment to the DM-classicists or other Marxist intellectuals:
"Arrogating a superior social status to
themselves, they further declare that, as creators, scientists, or philosophers,
they have been washed clean of the material motives and class interests
that stain their baser fellow citizens." [Ibid., bold added.]
As
noted earlier, this can only that mean
DM-theorists themselves have indeed been
"washed clean of the material motives and class interests...", which,
alas, affect the
rest of humanity.
So,
Lenin and Trotsky saw nothing wrong with applying their analyses to the behaviour of,
or the ideas formed by, fellow Marxists. But, which
Leninist or which Trotskyist today is going to accuse either of those two of "crude reductionism"?
In which case, while it seems
quite legitimate for
dialecticians
to 'reduce' their enemies and opponents' --
and, indeed, some of their fellow
Marxists' --ideas, attitudes and behaviours to their class position, or class
origin, it is illegitimate for anyone to do the same to them!
On the other hand, Marxists are quite
right to point out that when, for example, union militants are drafted into the
trade union machine, becoming bureaucrats themselves, their new material
conditions have a predictable, perhaps even inevitable, effect on the attitudes they adopt and the ideas
they are capable of forming. However, the very same Marxists
will resist with no little vehemence the same conclusion when it is applied
to them, their material circumstances or their class position.
Or, as a
supporter of this site argued a while back:
"Put it
this way, the Marxist tradition (the SWP certainly included) has been able to
produce a class-based analysis that explains why trade-union bureaucrats tend so
strongly towards selling out their members. When a rank-and-file member of a
union gains a position in the bureaucracy and begins to ascend through its
ranks, s/he discovers that his/her material interests are not the same as those
of the rank-and-file members s/he left behind.
"It should
not be hard for people who have grasped such analyses to realise that if this is
the case for union bureaucrats with solid working-class backgrounds, then it can
also be the case (and still more so) for the leaders of revolutionary or other
far-left political organisations, where petty-bourgeois backgrounds often
predominate. And yet it is hard, because the leaderships of such
organisations are understandably reluctant to subject their own positions and
interests to the same kind of Marxist analysis they're keen to apply to others.
Rosa, I think, has made a brave start on this at her site, and I think her work
is worth reading for this (even for readers who don't need immunizing against
Dialectics).
"So
ensuring RR [Respect
Renewal] will not go down the same road as the pre-split Respect is not as
easy as shedding Rees and those who followed his orders. The same tendencies
will be present in the leadership, because they arise from material conditions
rather than from personal character quirks. To counteract this, it would take a
strong framework of democratic checks together -- most importantly -- with a
membership that habitually insists on exercising democratic control of the
organisation on a daily basis, and not just at conference time. It will not be
easy to sustain this in the conditions that prevail in this country: workers
need confidence to win and maintain democratic control, and a long period of
defeats for the class is not conducive to such confidence.
"This is
not to say that the open-ended RR project is fatally misconceived. But it is to
say that the avoidance of the mistakes made in its predecessor organisation will
require constant vigilance on the part of the membership, and in the longer run,
revived class struggle in this country to at least the levels France enjoys
today." [Quoted from
here. Link added.]23a0
If the class analysis promoted at this site is rejected for some reason, the
only other conclusion possible is that it must be a sheer coincidence that revolutionary parties
the world over have replicated, time and again, practically
every single fault and foible that afflicts the genuine god-botherers among us -- even down to their reliance on an obscure book about an
invisible 'Being' -- in this case, Hegel's Logic.
So, while all these faults and foibles have
well-known material and social causes when they descend upon the duplicitous, the alienated, the superstitious,
and the
gullible,
they apparently have no cause whatsoever when they similarly grace the
sanctified lives of our very own Immaculate Dialectical Saints. In which
case, faults and foibles
like these can safely be ignored, never spoken about in polite company.
Until,
that is, The Chosen Ones are caught with their dialectical pants down; even
then these "scurrilous accusations" can be brushed aside as "bourgeois
propaganda",
or
part of a heinous
"witch-hunt".
This
means that the Dialectical Merry-go-round can take another spin across the
Flatlands of Failure, its participants ever more convinced of their semi-divine
infallibility and ideological purity.
In order to
underline its hypnotic power, DM must be able to explain
absolutely
everything (which
is indeed precisely what the DM-classicists assure it is capable of doing; on this, see
Essay
Two) -- even if
it never actually delivers a single comprehensible explanation of
anything, predicts not one novel fact, has no mathematical structure, and
offers
no discernible practical
applications or implications -- except, perhaps, negative.23a
To that
end,
we are presented with an "insistence" on"Totality"
(which remains conveniently undefined),
an array of obscure "Infinities",
a declaration that "truth is the whole" [Hegel
(1977), p.11; Preface, paragraph 20] -- the reader might like to try and render that abstract declaration
consistent with Hegel and Lenin's other claim that "truth is never abstract" --,
alongside
a host of assorted
'relative this' and 'absolute
that'
assertions, all of which are left
theologically vague.
DM
must not only be able to weather any and all challenges, if not defeats and
debacles, it must be capable of 'foreseeing'
future victories in each such set-back.
To that end, we are told there are UOs everywhere -- a particularly good example of this
phenomenon is given below
--, all
of which are governed by the watchful eye of the NON. The latter Idealist
dogma informs us that everything "inevitably"
turns into its opposite;
if that is indeed so, failure (if it is ever even acknowledged) can't help but turn into
its opposite, success --
one day...24
[UO = Unity of Opposites;
NON = Negation of the Negation; DM = Dialectical Materialism/Materialist,
depending on context.]
This
theory must, therefore, enable its adepts to re-configure each defeat as a 'victory waiting in the
wings'.
To that end, we are told that appearances "contradict" underlying "essence",
and hence that the long-term failure of
Dialectical Marxism
can be ignored (since its seemingly disastrous record isn't, after all,
really real, it just looks that way to those who don't 'understand'
dialectics), or it can be blamed on anything but the theory that
has delivered this comforting message to the faithful.
DM must
also
transcend the limitations of ordinary, 'formal
thinking' -- which is one reason why the attainment of 'absolute truth' has to be
projected into the far distant future, to the end
of time via an infinite asymptotic
meander through epistemological space, insulating DM from easy disconfirmation in the here-and-now.
In this 'capitalist vale of tears', 'relative truth' is all
we can hope to achieve
--
except, of
course, for that absolute truth itself!
This also helps explain why DM-fans develop
selective blindness, ignoring awkward facts that fail to fit the Ideal Picture
bequeathed to them by generations of mystics via the Dialectical Classicists.
[On all of the
above, see Essays Two through Eleven Part Two.
Concerning the
lengths to
which dialecticians will go to ignore things they can't explain, have
never even thought about, or do not like, see the links
indexed here. As readers will soon
come to appreciate,
Creationists are rank amateurs in comparison!]
In addition, DM must encourage and facilitate a level of theoretical, and thus tactical, flexibility that places it outside, if
not way beyond, the normal canons of reason -- and, indeed, of reasonableness -- enabling its more skilled
adepts to change direction (anti-democratically, opportunistically, and
inconsistently) at the drop of a negative particle.
To that end, regular appeals
are made to the contradictions integral to DM. Since
the latter are found throughout the universe, so we are told, they must also
appear in'applied dialectics'
if it is to reflect the real world in order to help change it. In that case, 'applied
dialectics' is riddled
with contradictions, which, paradoxically, is regarded as one of its strengths,
not a
fatal defect, as would be the case with any other theory! This heady brew
now 'allows' skilled
dialecticians to argue for anything they like and its opposite. [Concerning how
they
manage to do that, see below.]
Moreover, this theory must lie way beyond any
conceivable doubt, so that if anyone attempts to
question its
apodictic certainties, they can be ignored on the grounds that they just
don't 'understand'
dialectics --, which is, once more, a pretty safe accusation to make since no
one understands it![On the accuracy of that allegation, see
Part One of this Essay.]
If there is no settled view of DM (or if it
is expressed in sufficiently vague and equivocal terms, and is left in that
condition for
generations, frozen in a nineteenth century time warp), anyone who disagrees
with the latest 'dialectical' line can be accused of "Deviationism!" or "Revisionism!"
-- and hence of betraying Marxism. Needless to say, this approach to theory is the non-existent
deity's gift to opportunists, sectarians, and control freaks of every stripe -- of whom Marxism has
had more than its fair share.
As one left-wing blogger pointed out with
respect to the WRP:
"To be sure, [the WRP] did
acquire a very bad reputation over the years for having a thuggish and violent
internal regime, sometimes spilling over into physical attacks on members of
other groups; for its habit of slandering anyone who disagreed with it as an
agent of the CIA, the KGB, or both; and for an impenetrable 'philosophy'
whose main function was to justify whatever Gerry wanted to do at any particular
moment." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/02/2013. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Even
better, this theory must be impossible to refute. This is a handy
by-product of the Hegelian dialectic itself -- which we
have already had occasion to
highlight --
whereby every attempt to
oppose it, expose its contradictions or challenge it is viewed as further proof of its correctness
-- since it is argued that to do so is, ipso facto, to use the dialectic itself, providing yet more grist to the Hermetic mill. Hence, any
attempted 'refutation' merely
doubles up and returns as confirmation of a system that glories in just such
contradictions! The more heads that are lopped off this
Hydra,
the more it grows in their place!25
[It is worth pointing out that at this site I haven't even attempted to 'refute' Hegel's
dialectic (i.e., show that it is false), or even its alleged 'rational core' appropriated by Marxist
dialecticians, DM. In order to refute this body of doctrine, it would have to
shown to be false. What I have argued is that both versions are far too
vague and confused for anyone to be able to determine whether they are true or
whether they are false,
they don't make it that far It is not possible to refute incoherent ideas.]
DM can't disappoint, nor can it fail its acolytes since,
according to another of its tenets, humanity will never actually possess
the
complete picture of anything whatsoever -- apparently not even
the truth about
an ordinary
glass tumbler! So,
rather like
the 'will of God', the DM-Absolute (the "Totality")
mysteriously trundles ever onward, its many twists and turns
alone capable of being fully 'comprehended'
by our "glorious" leaders -- who, up to now, have proved
totally
incapable of explaining this
'theory' to a living soul.
Consequently, what might at first sight appear to be an
engagingly modest admission (i.e., that no one knows the full or final truth
about anything, or that
all theories are
only ever "partially true", etc., etc.)
soon turns into its opposite. It is transformed into a stick with
which to beat the opposition: if no one knows the final truth, then neither
does an erstwhile
critic. Only the Party (with its Doctors of Dialectics) can be relied on to
interpret this infinitely plastic theory correctly -- by appealing,
rather like the Roman Catholic Church,
to "tradition" and authority.25a
In such a
topsy-turvy world of silicate-loving, 'dialectical ostriches', comrades with
their heads buried deepest in the sand
are promising leadership material!26
However, the spurious superiority
enjoyed by
DM
over 'ordinary consciousness' is secured by means of several exclusivising
tricks: (i) The use of unintelligible jargon that no one understands, or seems able to
explain (without employing even more jargon, of equal obscurity);
(ii) An
appeal to authority (sometimes called the "real Marxist tradition");27
(iii) Regular appeals to the sacred DM-canon, linked to an 'orthodox'
interpretative tradition of the same, now ossified in recycled and highly
repetitive commentaries -- the aforementioned Dialectical Mantra.28
To that end,
DM must
harmonise to some extent with other
ruling-class
systems-of-thought, since its theorists have to emphasise the
continuity and progress of human knowledge -- "through contradiction" --
of which their theory proudly forms the latest and highest phase. In that case, there must be an IED between DM
and Traditional Philosophy otherwise there would be no
such continuity. This helps explain why erstwhile radicals are
slavishly
conservative when it comes to Philosophy.
However, dialectically-distracted comrades refuse to admit that the demonstrablelink that
exists between DM and the ideas of previous generations of mystics and
ruling-class hacks in any way
compromises their theory --
as one would imagine ought to be the case with those who proudly and
openly proclaim their materialist and scientific
commitments. Ironically, the fact that virtually every DM-thesis
finds an echo in
most mystical
systems-of-thought is, paradoxically, regarded as one of its strengths,
not a
fatal defect!29
This theory must also insist that in
spite of a formal acceptance of the
Heraclitean Flux,
its core ideas should
remain permanently sealed against change. And so they are. In that case, over
the last hundred years or so there has been virtually no innovation of note in DM
-- just more
epicycles. [This
allegation will be substantiated in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]
Indeed, those with their
heads buried in the nearest dune can hardly promulgate a theory that shifts with the Heraclitean
sands.
Furthermore, this theory must be the source of
boundless optimism, so that despite the way things might appear -- to those lost in the mists of "commonsense" and
"formal thinking", of course --, the NON
guarantees that the underlying tendency
at work in every corner of the universe favours the dialectical cause -- even if things sometimes need hurrying along
a little with
human intervention.29a
Dialectics provides all of the faithful with some of the above, and some of the
faithful with all of the above. This helps explain (a) Its
acceptance by practically every shade of revolutionary socialism, (b) Its longevity,
(c) The
semi-religious
awe and
loyalty
it engenders in those held in its thrall and
(d) Why these True Believers will never abandon it.
DM-fans would rather die with their heads
buried in these Parmenidean
Sands than face material
reality in all its complexity with even a modicum
of courage
-- or, for that matter,
honesty.
However, this also helps explain a rather curious anomaly:
as the working-class
grows ever larger the influence that
Dialectical Marxism has upon it continues to dwindle.
Parallel to this -- but not unrelated to it -- our movement continues to
fragment and flounder, a degeneration plainly not unconnected with its everdwindling influence on the class
war. Moreover, the fact that workers ignore our
movement en masse means that the materialist counter-weight they could
have brought with them into Marxism now has almost zero impact where
it might otherwise have counted -- on our ideas.
The dearth of active socialist workers thus means that the unifying force of the
class struggle by-passes our movement, which, because it is
dominated by petty-bourgeois individuals, continues to splinter and
disintegrate.
So Dialectical Marxism lumbers on while its theorists think of new ways to
make these inconvenient facts disappear.
The class origin of the majority
of professional revolutionaries
-- who, for allor most of their
lives don't share in the lives and struggles of ordinary workers
analysed in the preceding sections --, means that this alien-class theory (DM)
confirms, consolidates and strengthens their sense of
exclusivity. Indeed, it is why this theory appeals to petty-bourgeois and de-classé revolutionaries --
most of whom populate the higher echelons of our movement and thus control its ideas.
The
growing crisis in the UK-SWP
is ample testimony to this (especially since such things
aren't unique to that Party):
"Members of the SWP must
understand what is at stake in the crisis rocking our organisation. Not only is
there already a steady outflow of members resigning in disgust at this farrago
and its handling by the leadership, but now other organizations of the left are
becominghesitant about working with us,
and in some cases are
openly boycotting and censuring us....
"Many of us have argued
strongly that catastrophic errors of principle and process on the part
of the leadership have taken us to this. But even those who -- I firmly
believe wrongly -- disagree about this must recognise the situation we
are in. This has rapidly also become a catastrophe for us strategically.
Our name is becoming toxic. Our credibility as a collective and as
individual activists is being grossly compromised, and is on the verge
of being permanently tainted. We all know the allegations that any
future potential recruit who takes two minutes to research us online
will read. The hoary accusations of the loyalists that those of us
expressing concerns are looking 'inward' to 'blogland' and are not in
the 'real world' have never looked so pitiful as they do now. This is a
real world, acute crisis, of the leaderships making.
"As we 'dissidents' have repeatedly stressed, the
fact that we are on the verge of permanently losing our credibility is
irrespective of the truth or otherwise of the allegations of rape and
sexual harassment. (These, of course, deserve sensitive and appropriate
examination in their own right.) This fact inheres in the grotesque and
sexist nature of the questions posed to the accusers; in the
'wagon-circling' attitude of the leadership and its loyalists; in the
failures and evasions of accountability that meant the processes
involved could ever have been thought appropriate; and now in the
belief-beggaringly inadequate and arrogant response of the CC to the
greatest crisis we have ever faced. These are all political failings of
astonishing proportions.
"We must not only deal with
this but be seen publicly to be dealing with it. A 'quiet revolution'
will be no revolution at all. There is one chance to save the SWP, and
to do so means reclaiming it. We must be the party whose membership saw
that there was a catastrophe unfolding, refused to heed our own failed
leadership's injunctions to fall into line, and reclaimed the party and
the best elements of our IS tradition. If we fail in this, the SWP is
finished as a serious force.... [It wasn't 'reclaimed' -- RL.]
"By far the lion's share of
blame for our parlous situation lies squarely with the CC and its
loyalists. However, none of us can avoid hard questions. What got us
here was not merely the failures of this particular CC, but of our
structures. These structures concealed from the members perfectly
legitimate debate within the party; pathologised dissent on the CC and
among the membership; and at worst legitimated whispering campaigns and
bullying against members considered 'troublemakers'. We could have
stopped this train wreck at an earlier stage if the membership had been
able and ready to call bullshit on the CC's bullshit.
"To overthrow these
problems requires, among other things, a huge shift in internal culture.
This, of course, is not possible in isolation from the structures that
we have worked under. These have enabled the CC's top-down and
dissent/discussion-phobic style and mistrust of the membership; and
among the membership itself have encouraged a damaging culture of
deferral to the leadership." [China
Mieville, quoted from
here, accessed 17/01/2013. Bold emphases and links added. China
resigned from the UK-SWP soon after.]
But, why does this sort of thing keep happening? Is the UK-SWP simply unlucky? And, why has this
malaise been endemic on the left for many generations?
"The CC now unfortunately
represents a conservative layer now firmly ingrained in the party and focused on
preserving its position. Many of its members have worked for the party for a
decade or more, they rely on the party as an income (sic) and have become career
bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs. Somewhere along the way the leadership
stopped being a group of leading revolutionaries and started to be a
self-serving political class in their own right. Now more than ever the party
needs effective and democratic leadership made up of the best people in the
class, not people who haven't set foot in a workplace for decades and who are in
my opinion totally divorced from the class." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/01/2013. Bold emphasis added. Minor typo corrected.]
"The SWP has a particular
understanding of the role of the bureaucracy within trades unions.
We view them as neither workers nor bosses, but rather as a
vacillating force between the two. The bureaucrat is insulated from
the day-to-day life of the worker -- of having the boss breathing
down their neck, and from the collective interest that workers have
within workplaces. They depend for their continued existence, this
insulation, and the level of prestige they hold, on the continuation
of the capitalist system -- if there were no longer any capitalist
class to negotiate with, there would no longer be any need for the
bureaucrats. Nothing terrifies a bureaucrat more than being chucked
back into the same world the rest of us, as workers, inhabit. There
is an old story of an
RMT NEC member
many years ago (before
Bob
Crow) who wished to support a strike ballot that the General
Secretary opposed. The General Secretary advised him that if he did
so, he'd be back working on the tracks within days. The NEC member
withdrew his support for the ballot.
"And it is this recognition
that the interests of the bureaucracy are not those of the working
class that leads us as revolutionary socialists to believe the only
truly effective way to organise inside trades unions is on a rank
and file basis. We are with the bureaucrats for as long as they
support our demands -- we fight without them when they don't. And we
recognise a bureaucratisation that takes place when workers are
removed from the shop floor -- which is why, for example, it is
officially only in exceptional circumstances that SWP members are
allowed to take elected trade union positions on 100% facility time.
Because we recognise that you cannot act in the interests of the
working class if you exist separately from it. I want to illustrate
that a failure to apply this analysis to the SWP itself is at the
root of many of the problems we now face.
"While very limited steps
have been taken in recent years to address this, the Central
Committee is made up almost entirely of full-time party workers (and
it is notable that of the two CC members removed from the preferred
slate 48 hours before conference, one is a respected trade unionist
and the other is centrally involved in arguably the broadest united
front the party is engaged in). This is a separation from the
outside world, and the experiences of the membership. Worse, the
slate system as currently constituted is designed to prevent any
alternative leadership from emerging -- as we are told to correct any
error we must replace the CC wholesale; very difficult if they are
also the party workers who run the apparatus. As pretty much the
only way to be elected to the CC is to be nominated by the existing
CC, this means CC members owe their positions to the other CC
members, not to the party membership. And this means that, despite
the party's Democracy Commission passing policy in favour of it,
disagreements on the CC are not aired in front of the party
membership, but rather are usually dealt with privately, with the
first most members know of it being when a CC member mysteriously
disappears off the slate. I would argue the loyalty to each other
this creates amongst CC members leads to many situations, such as
those around Comrade Delta and the expulsions of the
Facebook Four, being dealt with bureaucratically and behind
closed doors and then presented to the party as a fait accompli.
Party policies and 'turns' are decided in similar fashion, with a
National Committee or Party Council presented with a CC document
that is discussed and then invariably approved, usually without any
discussion in the wider party, let alone the class.
"This also has the effect of
encouraging sycophancy, Comrades who wish to develop their standing
in the party, be selected for slates in trade union elections, be
added to the CC themselves, or be touted as a public speaker, do so
by developing a position of ultra-loyalty to the CC (these are the
party members who some refer to as 'hacks'). Party workers are all
appointed by the CC, not by the membership, and are threatened with
the sack if they dare venture their own political ideas that run
contrary to those of the CC. All of this has more in common with the
organisation of Stalinist Parties than with the libertarian roots of
the IS tradition. The party actually starts to become the caricature
painted of it by sectarians and red-baiters.
"At its most extreme, the
sycophancy appears cult-like. A number of CC members are big fans of
jazz music. Under their leadership over the past few years,
the party has organised a number of (mostly loss-making) jazz gigs
as fundraising events. Regardless of their own musical tastes,
comrades were told they were disloyal if they didn't purchase
tickets. This elevates the cultural tastes of the official
leadership to a point of political principle; and clearly is not in
any way a healthy state of affairs." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases and links added. Minor typo corrected.]
The above comments echo Trotsky's analysis of
substitutionism (covered in
Part One of this
Essay), but they omit (i) Any mention of the wider
structural problems our movement faces (i.e., the fact that the situation
described by the above comrade has been an integral feature of Marxist parties for
well over a hundred
years and doesn't just afflict the UK-SWP), just as they completely ignore (ii) The historical and ideological
roots of this malaise -- nor do they even consider (iii) Why this keeps happening,
not just to the UK-SWP, but right
across the Marxist left. Finally, they fail to consider (iv) How and why DM
makes a bad situation worse.
Only if Marxists in general become aware of
the serious structural, class, and ideological problems we face is there any hope that the movement can extricate itself from this
toxic morass -- a poisonous and lethal version of
Groundhog Day.
Unfortunately, as is the case with other
forms of drug addiction, clarity
of vision is the last thing one can expect of the 'leadership' -- those who control the production and dissemination of ideas --, who have
a serious dialectical-opiate
dependency problem themselves. More-or-less the same applied to anyone in
the movement who has caught a nasty dose of 'dialectics'.
As these Essays have shown, and as experience
amply confirms, this is indeed
what we find.
There are in fact two
main currents in Dialectical Marxism:
'Low
Church'
and 'High
Church'. This distinction roughly corresponds with that between active
revolutionaries and Academic Marxists -- of course, there is some
overlap between these two currents at the margin. Some academic Marxists are
also activists.
However, the members of neither faction are seekers after truth,
since, like Hegel, they have already found it -- as Glenn Magee pointed out:
"Hegel is not a philosopher.
He is no lover or seeker of wisdom -- he believes he has found it. Hegel writes
in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, 'To help bring philosophy
closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title of "love
of knowing" and be actual knowledge -- that is what I have set before me'
(Miller, 3; PC, 3). By the end of the
Phenomenology, Hegel claims to have
arrived at Absolute Knowledge, which he identifies with wisdom.
"Hegel's claim to have
attained wisdom is completely contrary to the original Greek conception of
philosophy as the love of wisdom, that is, the ongoing pursuit rather than the
final possession of wisdom. His claim is, however, fully consistent with the
ambitions of the
Hermetic
tradition, a current of thought that derives its name
from the so-called
Hermetica
(or
Corpus Hermeticum), a collection
of Greek and Latin treatises and dialogues written in the first or second
centuries A.D. and probably containing ideas that are far older. The legendary
author of these works is
Hermes Trismegistus ('Thrice-Greatest Hermes').
'Hermeticism' denotes a broad tradition of thought that grew out of the
'writings of Hermes' and was expanded and developed through the infusion of
various other traditions. Thus,
alchemy,
Kabbalism,
Lullism, and the mysticism
of
Eckhart
and
Cusa
-- to name just a few examples
-- became intertwined with the
Hermetic doctrines. (Indeed, Hermeticism is used by some authors simply to mean
alchemy.) Hermeticism is also sometimes called
theosophy, or
esotericism; less
precisely, it is often characterized as mysticism, or
occultism."
[Magee (2008), p.1. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links and bold
emphasis alone added.]
Much the same can be said about Marxist Dialecticians who hail from either of
the above two denominations (whether they realise it or not).
Comrades from this
persuasion, The 'Evangelical Wing of Dialectical Marxism,
cleave to the original, unvarnished truth laid down in the sacred DM-texts
(i.e., those written by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, or Mao).
Many of these simple souls are highly proficient at quoting, or paraphrasing, endless passages from the
Holy Books in answer to everything and anything, just like the faithful who bow to the East or who fill the
Gospel
Halls around the world. Their unquestioning faith is as impressive as it is
un-Marxist.30a
[An excellent recent
example of this affliction, which was in fact prompted by the current crisis in the UK-SWP,
can be found
here. In January 2013, I posted a
mini-refutation of a DM-article of Trotsky's that had been republished at the latter site; my
post was based on some of the points made in
Essay Six), but, as of
March 2020 it is still 'waiting moderation'!]
[FL = Formal Logic.]
In general, LCDs are
sublimely ignorant of
FL. Now, on its own that is no hanging matter.
However, such self-inflicted and woeful ignorance of FL doesn't prevent them from pontificating about
it,
nor regaling us with
its alleged limitations
at every
turn -- accusations
based on ideas they unwisely copied off
Hegel, surely the
George W Bush of Logic.
Figure Four: Advanced
Logic Class At Camp Hegel
LCDs are by-and-large active
revolutionaries,
committed to 'building the party'. Ironically, however, they have
unwisely
conspired to do the exact opposite, which suicidal policy has helped keep their parties
just a few notches above microscopic because of the continual splits and expulsions they skilfully engineer. This is a rather fitting
pragmatic contradiction that the 'Dialectical Deity' has visited upon these, the
least of its slaves.
Of course, LCDs
fail to see the irony in
any of this (even
after it has been pointed out to them -- I know, I have lost count of the number of
times I have tried!), since they, too,
haven't taken the lens caps off.
So, despite the fact that every last one of these
myopic individuals
continually strives to "build the party", after 140 years of
such impressive 'building', few revolutionary groups
can boast membership rolls
that rise much above the
risible. In fact, all we have witnessed since WW2,
for example,
is yet more fragmentation, but still no mass movement.
[Anyone who doubts this should look
here,
here,
here and
here
-- or, now,
here -- and then, perhaps, think again.
Here, too, is a diagram of the main branches of, and links between, the leading US
Trotskyist parties/tendencies.]
Has a
single one of these individuals made this connection?
Are
you kidding!?
You clearly don't 'understand' dialectics.
It seems that the
long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory, DM,
are the only two things in the entire universe that aren't
'interconnected'.
HCD Marxists are in
general openly contemptuous
of the 'sophomoric ideas' found in most of the DM-classics --, let alone books
and articles published by their lowly
LCD-brethren (even though many of
them seem to have a fondness for
Engels's First 'Law')
--
except, perhaps, Lenin's
PN, since it is
largely comprised of quotes from the Über-Guru Himself, Hegel.
[DM = Dialectical
Materialism/Materialist, depending on the context.]
[An excellent recent example of this elitist
attitude can be found in Anderson (2007).
Another two,
here and here.]
More often than
not, HCDs reject the idea that 'the dialectic' applies to nature,
sometimes inconsistently using the aforementioned First 'Law' to account for the
evolutionary 'leap' that underpinned our development from ape-like ancestors, which tactic allows them to
claim that human history and development are therefore unique. Just as they are
equally dismissive of simple
LCD souls for their adherence to every last
word found in the DM-classics.
Apparently, the latter do not contain enough philosophical gobbledygook, sufficient Hegel,
or a surfeit of post-Hegelian 'Continental Philosophy' for their liking.31
[Chomsky's penetrating thoughts on many of the above 'thinkers' can be accessed
via Note 31a (link above), along with several other sharp
criticisms of this depressing detour into darkness.]
HCDs are generally but not exclusively academics, or
they are itinerant 'intellectuals' and 'bloggers'.
In common with many of those listed above, tortured prose
is their
forteand pointless existence is their punishment.
Almost any randomly-selected issue of, say, Radical Philosophy
or Historical
Materialism will provide ample confirmation of the baleful
affect
the ideas and prose of many of the above theorists have had on
left-wing 'intellectuals'.
[This
is yet another example to add to the roll-call of The Hallowed
Society for the Production
of Gobbledygook. (Also, see my comments,
here.)]
Figure Five:
Sisyphus
College Recruitment Poster --
Aimed At HCDs
Seeking A More Useful Existence
At least LCDs like to
think their ideas are somehow relevant to the class
struggle. In
contrast, High Church Dialectics
is only good for the CV/Résumé.
The
late Chris
Harman expressed the above sentiments rather concisely a few years ago:
"There is a widespread myth that Marxism is
difficult. It is a myth propagated by the enemies of socialism -- former Labour
leader
Harold Wilson boasted that he was never able to get beyond the first page of
Marx's Capital. It is a myth also encouraged by a peculiar breed of academics
who declare themselves to be 'Marxists': they deliberately cultivate obscure
phrases and mystical expressions in order to give the impression that they
possess a special knowledge denied to others." [Chris Harman, How Marxism
Works, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis and link added.]
Lenin concurred:
"The flaunting of high-sounding phrases
is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals." ["Left-Wing"
Childishness. Bold emphasis added. Unfortunately, Lenin didn't apply that
valuable insight to what he found in Hegel's work.]
Plainly,
the sanitised
version of
dialectics that HCDs inflict on their readers (purged of
all those Engelsian 'crudities') isn't
an "abomination"
in the eyes of those sections of the
bourgeoisie that administer Colleges and Universities --, or, indeed,
those who publish
academic books and journals.
Some
might object that the above is a caricature of 'dialectical thought'. They
might even be tempted to argue that dialectics is based
as much on evidence as it is on the practice and experience not just of the party,
but humanity
in general. Alas, that
naive belief
was put to the sword in Essays Two,
Seven Part One, Ten
Part One, as well as
Part One of this Essay.
It is
worth adding that there are notable exceptions to the above sweeping generalisations.
Some academic
Marxists do actively engage with the class struggle. The point, however, is that the
'High Theory' they crank out is irrelevant in this regard. Indeed, I can't think of
a single
example of the work of an academic Marxist that has had any impact on the class
war, except perhaps negatively. [Any who disagree with that severe indictment are invited to
e-mail me with the details of any
counter-examples they think I might have missed.]
To be
sure, one or two
comrades have tried to come up with a few examples of the (positive) practical applications of
'the dialectic'. Unfortunately for them, I have shown that they all fail -- on
that, see here,
here, and here.
This has meant that the baleful influence of
Hegelian Hermeticism
becomes important at key historical junctures (i.e., those involving defeat
or major set-back), since it acts as a materialist-soundingalternative
to mainstream, Traditional Thought -- indeed, as we saw was the case with Lenin
after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution in Russia,
and again after the Second International caved in to Imperial warmongering at the beginning of
WW1.
Dialectics (especially those parts that have been infected
with the lethal HCD-strain) thus taps into thought-forms that have dominated
intellectual life for over two thousand years, i.e., those that define the
'legitimate' boundaries of 'genuine' philosophy -- those that
amount to little more than dogmatic thesis-mongering.
So, because of its
thoroughly traditional nature, DM is able to appeal to the closet "god-builders"
and dialectical mystics that revolutionary politics seems to attract -- and
who, in general, appear to congregate at the top of this ever-growing pile of
dialectical disasters.
One question has so far remained unanswered: How is it even remotely possible for the vast majority of revolutionary socialists
to have
imported into Marxism what are here alleged to be classic examples of ruling-class ideology? At first sight it seems
inconceivable that leading socialists -- like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxembourg,
and Trotsky, individuals possessed of impeccable socialist and
anti-ruling-class credentials -- could have maintained a consistent,
life-long
revolutionary stance if the account of the origin and nature of
DM given in these Essays
were correct. An ideological
compromise of such an order of magnitude would surely have had major, if not disastrous, effects
on revolutionary practice. Indeed, it would have rendered Marxism totally ineffective.
In fact, and contrary to the ideas advanced at this site, it could be argued that
DM has
actually been successfully tested in practice for well over a
hundred and fifty years.
These considerations alone seem to make
the abstract accusations advanced at this site impossible to accept.
In spite of constant claims to the contrary, DM has no
positive -- only negative --, practical applications, outlined earlier and again, below.
This doesn't mean that
revolutionaries haven't continually toyed with dialectical phraseology in
some of their
deliberations connected with practice. Certainly, DM-theorists can talk the talk, but, as we will
soon see, it is impossible for
them to
walk the walk.
Undeniably, books and articles outlining
revolutionary theory often contain plenty of words the presence of which seems to contradict the above
accusations,
and which might appear to confirm the counter-claim that dialectics has played
a central role in Marxist politics since its inception. However, what revolutionaries
mightwant to claim about the relation between theory and practice and what they are capable
of putting into practice are two entirely different
things.
These Essays have shown,
time and again, that DM-theses make no sense at all, just as they have shown that
Dialectical Marxism is to success what
Donald Trump is to truth-telling. This means that while dialecticians may
write, or,
indeed, constantly intone DM-phraseology, it isn't possible for
them to form a single coherentthought based on it. That also has
the further implication that it is impossible for them to put any of it into
practice, either.
Of course, this places dialecticians in no worse a position than other
metaphysicians
(whose theories are
similarly bereft of practical import); no worse perhaps,
but certainly no better.32
If a sentence purporting to express
a thought is itself incoherent, then no one uttering or writing it can mean
anything by it (over and above, perhaps, certain contingent or consequential
side effects;
for example they might intend to amuse, impress, confuse, bamboozle, con, distract, or startle their
audience). [There is more on
this in Essay Thirteen
Part
Three.]
The words employed in such sentences can't
represent anything that could become the content of a coherent thought, and
hence motivate a corresponding set of actions (trivial examples excepted, of
course).33
Admittedly, dialectical phrases can be and have been wheeled out to 'justify'
or 'rationalise' decisions that had already
been taken for
hard-headed political reasons, which means that they function rather like the
empty rituals
and incantations that assorted Priests, Bishops and Imams have uttered for many centuries to 'justify'
war,
royal privilege, exploitation, oppression and gross inequality -- or they work
like the
'magical words' stage conjurors intone to impress the unwary.
This means, of course, that DM is
the Abracadabra, not the Algebra, of Revolution.
Figure Six: A More
Effective Form Of Magic?
Furthermore, as noted in Essay Twelve
Part One, because DM-theories are both
non-sensicalandincoherent, they are
totally incapable of 'reflecting'
anything in the natural or social world, and,
a fortiori, any processes underlying
either.
In that case, they can't possibly be
used to help
change society.
These allegations might at first sight appear to be
rather dogmatic, if not downright impertinent, since it seems plain that if something can be uttered,
or perhaps committed to paper, it must be capable of being thought, and hence
acted upon.
The
rest of this section will be devoted to defending the above apparently
controversial claims, partly by responding to the above pro-DM objection.
We encountered similar problems in Essay Twelve
Part One
connected with Lenin's attempt to specify what could or couldn't be thought
concerning
matter and motion:
M1: "[M]otion without matter is
unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318.
Italic emphasis in the original.]
It turned out that what Lenin wanted to 'say' vitiated the
content (or, rather, the lack of 'content') of what he appeared to mean
by saying the above words. In the end, it
emerged that he couldn't actually think what he imagined he
could since M1 fell apart in the very act of 'thinking' whatever it
was he thought he wanted to say by means of it! So, by asserting that motion
without matter is "unthinkable" he had to do what he said could not be done; i.e., he had to think the offending words "motion without matter...",
or their presumed content. For M1 to be true, Lenin would have to know
what was being ruled out (as forever false) -- i.e., by the sentential use of
the phrase "motion without matter", as in: "It isn't possible to think the
proposition 'Motion without matter is unthinkable.'" But, he had just declared
that that
was "unthinkable".
So, in
order to know what was being excluded in the above sense he would have had to be
able to declare that the following sentence, for example, could only ever be
false, never true:
M2: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.
But, if such a sentence can
only be false, and never true, it turns out that it can't actually be false. That is
because if a sentence is false, it is untrue. And yet, if we can't say under what circumstances such a sentence is true,
we certainly can't say in what way it falls short of that so that it
could be untrue, and hence false. For Lenin to be able to declare M2
untrue, he would have to know what situation made it true, so that he
knew what he was in fact ruling out, or in what way M1 fell short of
being true. But, he was in no position to do that, for
the truth of M2 he had already declared "unthinkable".
Conversely, if a proposition can only ever be true, the conditions that would make it
false are likewise excluded. In that case, if we can't say under what circumstances such a
sentence is
false then we certainly can't say in what way it falls short of those conditions so that it
could be true, and hence not false. In which case, its
truth (or non-falsehood) similarly falls by the wayside. Hence, Lenin was in no
position to declare M1 true because he was in no position to declare it false
or, indeed, vice versa.
[A much more
comprehensive explanation of the above argument can be found
here; I have also dealt with several obvious, and a few
less obvious, objections to
it in Essay Twelve Part
One.]
So, not even Lenin could say what it was he
was trying to rule in or rule out.
If we ignore the remote possibility that Lenin either wanted merely to utter
complete nonsense or simply puzzle his readers, the above
argument implies that there wasn't in fact anything that Lenin intended to say, nor was there anything in his words that he
could have communicated to anyone that was capable of being put into
practice, or which could form part of a theory that could be put into practice -- or, indeed, which could have had any practical implications whatsoever (other than negative). If we are in no position to think the truth or the falsehood
of M1, we are certainly in no position to say what the world would have to look
like for M1 to form part of revolutionary practice and hence is capable of being 'acted upon'.
The problem here, of course, is that it isn't easy to
think of a single DM-theory that could plausibly be put into practice, so
if the last sentence above looks rather odd, that is the fault of that theory,
not the present author! The only point being made is that if it is logically
impossible to decide whether or not a certain theory or sentence is true, then it is also
logically impossible to decide if it has ever been implemented correctly, or
could be implemented in any way at all!Hence, it is no
great mystery why DM itself
hasn't
ever actually been put into practice by dialecticians!
[On that, see
here. In over 25 years of
searching and asking, I have only been able to find two examples where comrades have
tried to argue that DM itself has had some sort of practical application. I have
neutralised both of them here and
here.]
To see more clearly how this relates in
general to the
issues raised in this Essay,
consider the following sentence schema:
S1: NN thought that p.
If p is taken to be a schematic letter
replaceable by an empirical or factual proposition (such as "The Nile is
longer than the Thames"), then clearly the
sense
that that
proposition already has will enable it to become the content of a thought
that NN could entertain, truly or falsely. However, if the sentence
substitutable for p makes no sense, then not only would the words it contains
fail to express a proposition (since it would then be unclear what was being
proposed or put forward for consideration), it would be impossible for
NN to think a thought by means of it. That is because a sentence lacking
a sense can't express a true or false thought -- once more, as we saw was the case with Lenin
and M1, or, indeed, as would be the case with M3:
M3: Lenin thought that motion
without matter is unthinkable.
M3a: I think that motion
without matter is unthinkable.
M3b: Motion
without matter is unthinkable.
M3c:
It possible to think the truth of the
proposition "Motion without matter is unthinkable."
[Of course, it is certainly possible for anyone to
write/type M3 (as I have just done!), or even utter it and run its words 'through the
mind' (or, indeed,
do likewise with its first person equivalent, M3a), as Lenin himself might have done. But as we have just seen,
the supposed content of M3b would mean that M3 itself would immediately self-destruct. (There is more on
this in Note 35a.)]
Howsoever M3, M3a, M3b and M3c are repackaged, they are incapable of
making any sort of sense.
It is worth reminding ourselves that it isn't an 'act of thinking' that gives a sentence its sense. If that were so, then
anything could make sense, and the clause "This is an act of thinking" would itself
become problematic.34
In
fact, the opposite of this is the case. The
sense a proposition already has is what enables us to think it.
[What the word "sense" means as it is being used
in this way is explained
here.]
The contrary supposition only gains credence from
the Cartesian
idea that an 'act of thought' is a private, internal episodic act that takes place
in 'the mind', or in 'consciousness', divorced from, or anterior to, social
convention or interaction, and which gives both meaning to our words and sense to our
indicative
sentences.
[Again, I have covered this topic in detail in Essays Twelve
Part One and Thirteen
Part Three, so the reader is
directed
there for a more comprehensive explanation.]
Consider the following
illegitimate substitution instance of p, in S1:
S1: NN thought that p.
S2: NN thought that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before if telescope (sic).
S2a: The speed mice inconsiderable
sunset the colour red was twice acidic but not Tarquin on between three o'clock
recidivist it squared less before if telescope (sic).
S2a makes no sense, and so while
NN might
attempt to mouth this set of words (or read them silently to himself) he wouldn't be able to form from them a coherent thought (assuming,
of course, that S2a isn't a coded
message of some sort).35
The problem with S2a isn't connected with any
lack of imagination on the part of the one who might utter it, or even their audience. It isn't that
howsoever hard we try we can form no idea of a primary colour
that is connected to a "speed mice inconsiderable sunset", which has a
pH value
close to
seven, twice, but only (Tarquin?) on (?) "between three o'clock…", etc. There is no such
coherent thought to form. In turn, this is not because of the facts of chemistry,
chromatology,
or rodent biology -- or even because of the rules we have for telling the time
of day. It is because both S2/S2a represent a radical misuse of
language, as should seem obvious. Anyone who regularly uttered sentences like S2a would
probably be diagnosed as an
aphasic, or
maybe suffering from some other neurological or psychiatric condition.
While S2a is a clear case of
extreme incoherence, DM-sentences require a little more 'encouragement' before they
self-destruct (as we saw was the case with M3 and M3b).
M3: Lenin thought that motion
without matter is unthinkable.
M3b: Motion
without matter is unthinkable.
As I have argued more fully in Essay Twelve
Part One, that is because
(just like other metaphysicians) DM-theorists misconstrue the
rules we have for the use of certain words as if they reflected substantive features of
the world. They confuse rules with empirical propositions.
Dialecticians
compound this error by importing concepts found
almost
exclusively in Mystical Theology, burying the result under several layers of
impenetrable Hegelian jargon (upside down or the 'right way up'). This they then aggravate
further by the
open disdain they have for ordinary language -- when they try to 'do a little 'philosophy' -- certain principles of which are partially expressed in
and by
FL.
[These allegations have been substantiated in other Essays published at this site, and will be given a more
comprehensive analysis in Essay Twelve Parts
One to Seven (summary
here).
It is important to point out that the word "non-sense" used below is
being employed in a
special way, explanation for which can be accessed here.]
However, the
disguisednon-sense 'conveyed' by typical DM-sentences doesn't affect the present
point. Disguised or not, if it isn't possible to explain the sense of a single
one of them (as these Essays have shown, and as DM-theorists themselves
have (implicitly) confirmed by their failure to do just that over the last 140+ years), it isn't possible to
think
their content either -- since they have none.
In that case -- trivial examples aside again -- it isn't possible to
put a single DM-sentenceinto practice.35a
This means that any sentence
token
substitutable for p in S1 has to make sense
independently of the immediate context of utterance if it is to form the
content of a legitimate thought (coded messages and sentences employing
indexicals
excepted).
S1: NN thought that p.
Hence, S2a (or whatever finally replaces
p)
doesn't acquire a sense just
because it is prefixed with the sentential operator: "NN thought that…."36
S2a: The speed mice inconsiderable
sunset the colour red was twice acidic but not Tarquin on between three o'clock
recidivist it squared less before if telescope.
On the contrary, the use of "NN thought
that...." is only legitimate if what follows it makes sense
independently of that prefix.
Consider these examples:
S1: NM thought that p.
S2: NM thought that the speed
mice inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic but not Tarquin on
between three o'clock recidivist it squared less before if telescope.
S3: NM thought that Being is identical with but
at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction
resolved in Becoming.
S3a: Being is identical with but
at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction
resolved in Becoming.
S3a
doesn't
express a coherent thought that NM
could form by her use of it (or, indeed, our attribution of it to her), hence the phrase "NM
thought that..." is illicit
in S3.
So, despite claims to the contrary,
metaphysicians and religious mystics can't think the truth -- nor
can they even think the falsehood -- of anything they assert in this area.
Naturally, this helps account for
the total uselessness of doctrines like S3a, and hence why they appeal to those in power
-- or, at least, why they appeal to their ideologues. Plainly, that is because a
'profound-looking' metaphysical theory is more likely to convince a wealthy
patron -- or their assorted toadying/uncritical audience -- that the one who concocted
it has hit on
something 'profound', especially if
no one appears to understand it.
Clearly, this is the philosophical equivalent
of the Parable of the
Emperor's New
Clothes.37
As
one commentator noted:
"Sociologist
C.
Wright Mills, in critically
examining 'grand theorists' in his field who used verbosity to cover for a
lack of profundity, pointed out that people respond positively to this kind of
writing because they see it as 'a wondrous maze, fascinating precisely because
of its often splendid lack of intelligibility.' But, Mills said, such writers
are 'so rigidly confined to such high levels of abstraction that the
"typologies" they make up -- and the work they do to make them up -- seem more
often an arid game of Concepts than an effort to define systematically -- which
is to say, in a clear and orderly way, the problems at hand, and to guide our
efforts to solve them.'
"Obscurantism is more than a desperate attempt to feign novelty, though. It's
also a tactic for badgering readers into deference to the writer's authority.
Nobody can be sure they are comprehending the author's meaning, which has the
effect of making the reader feel deeply inferior and in awe of the writer's
towering knowledge, knowledge that must exist on a level so much higher than
that of ordinary mortals that we are incapable of even beginning to appreciate
it.... The harder people have to work to figure out what you're saying, the more
accomplished they'll feel when they figure it out, and the more sophisticated
you will appear. Everybody wins." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. One link added; paragraphs merged.]
This defect applies equally well to the
ideas promoted by DM-theorists, which naturally means that if what they say
can't be thought (in the sense indicated above), then it can have no
practical consequences (other than negative), nor can it form the basis of a sane course of
action. That is, no more than it would be the case if someone uttered the following sentences and
imagined they meant anything by them (other than, perhaps, an intention to
confuse or startle, etc.), or, indeed, expected others to act upon them:
S4: Make sure that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic, or the scabs will break
through the picket line.
S5: Don't forget that the
speed mice inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic, so we have
to
organise a march next week.
S6: The fact that the speed mice
inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic means that we should widen this dispute.
S7: Being is
identical with but at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved by
Becoming, so the latest pay offer is unacceptable.
S8: Motion without matter is
unthinkable, so you'd better print more strike leaflets.
S9: Change is the result of
internal contradictions, so don't forget to turn up on time for the paper sale.
S10:
A is never equal to A, it is equal to non-A, so we must
oppose this hospital closure!
Of course, S4-S6 are obviously malformed and/or ridiculous, but
they have only been quoted to make this point abundantly clear. No one supposes that
dialectical propositions or instructions are quite so syntactically-, or
semantically-challenged
as these are -- on that see, for example,
here --, but
they all fall apart alarmingly quickly for other reasons (as these Essays have
shown). [Another excellent
example can be found
here.]
However, as S7-S10 also clearly demonstrate,
DM-sentences can't form a coherent basis for action.
[Sceptical readers can insert their
own favoured DM-thesis (but not HM-thesis!) into any of S7-S10; the result, I predict,
won't be
much
different. If anyone thinks otherwise, please
email me your best shot!]37a
It could be objected that this completely
distorts and misrepresents dialectical thinking. Marxists most definitely do not reason along the above lines,
nor on anything remotely like them.
Or, so it could be objected...
Perhaps not, but until we are given a clear
example of the practical use of a single DM-sentence, they will have to do.37b
So, when it is claimed that ideas specific
to DM have actually formed a basis for revolutionary practice it is
reasonable to expect some sort of explanation how that iseven possible --
which explanation must advance beyond the usual hand waving, diversionary
tactics, prevarication and bluster, especially
when no one seems to be able to say with any clarity what a
single DM-doctrine actually amounts
to.
Indeed, and because of this, it is equally reasonable to suppose that DM could
only ever have succeeded in clouding the issues, hindering
revolutionaries in their attempt to develop or refine perspectives, strategies
and tactics. In addition, a commitment to this theory/method
could only have helped engineer a series of
tactical blunders alongside pointless, seemingly endless time-wasting
'theoretical' arguments, just as
it
should be expected to aggravate sectarian in-fighting and petty inter-party point-scoring.
On top of all that, DM should be expected to help 'excuse' post hoc
rationalisations of regressive or opportunistic moves, which would be impossible to justify otherwise (indeed,
as we will
soon discover).38
Of course, these aren't the only reasons for
Dialectical Marxism's spectacular record offailure over the last 140+ years -- a
record un-rivalled by any other majorpolitical creed in recent history
(other than perhaps fascism).
But, they are certainlymajor contributory factors.
Without doubt, the
trulyappallingrecord Dialectical Marxism has registered
has much more to do with the general nature of capitalist society, the
fragmented and uneven state of the working-class, when the latter is set against a comparatively
far better organised,
ideologically much more coherent and focused ruling-class, among other
considerations.
Having said that, the opposite idea that dialectics
-- which supposedly constitutes the theoretical bedrock, if not the very core, of Marxism
-- has had absolutely nothing to do with this long and sorry record isbizarre in the
extreme. [There is much more on this in Essay Ten
Part One.]
In
fact, we may
only succeed in absolving this
Mystical Quasi-Hermetic Creed
of all blame in this regard if we
concede that it has had no subjective impact whatsoever
on the ideas held by all previous generations of revolutionaries, and has never been
invoked by them at
any time in the entire history of Marxism.39
To any of my readers who do so think: I have a nice
bridge in Brooklyn to sell you!
When confronted with
unwelcome
facts like those aired above, DM-fans often respond with a knee-jerk reply: "Well if dialectics is so dire, how come the Bolsheviks
were able to win power in 1917?"
[Non-Leninist
DM-fans, of course, don't even have that to point to as a 'success'!]
Oddly enough, as a Leninist
I find this 'objection' remarkably easy to
neutralise:
the Bolsheviks were successful because
they could not, and pointedly did not, use dialectics
(either in its DM-, or in its MD-form)
in their interface with the Russian masses -- or, indeed, the Soviets -- in
1917. Admittedly, that
is a highly controversial claim,
but only because no one has thought to advance it before.
In fact, the material counterweight provided by working class prevented
the Bolsheviks from employing
this useless, Idealist theory. Had they tried
to propagandise or organise Russian workers with slogans such as: "Being is
identical with but at the same time different from Nothing...", "The
whole is greater than the sum of the parts...", "A is not equal to
A, it is equal to non-A...", or "Matter without motion is
unthinkable" (and the
like),
they would have been viewed as complete lunatics, and rightly so.
On the other hand, they not only could,
they actually succeeded inemploying ideas and concepts drawn from
HM
to help organise the
revolution.
[This topic was covered in much more detail
Part One
of this Essay. The difference between HM and DM was explained
here.]
And it is little use arguing that dialectical concepts
were somehow used 'implicitly', or that they 'informed' the strategy and tactics Lenin
and his party adopted, somehow operating 'behind the scenes'. As we will see
below, since dialectical concepts can
be used to justify anything at all and its 'dialectical' opposite (being inherently and proudly
contradictory), had they been employed they could only have been used
subjectively, since there is no objective way to tell such incompatible
applications apart, other than the fact that they contradict one another.
Anyone who
takes exception to the above allegations will need to show precisely where
and how Lenin and
the Bolsheviks explicitly used dialectical-concepts, as opposed to their
actual employment of HM-concepts -- the latter having been based on (i) a concrete class analysis of events
as they unfolded in that fateful year, and (ii) decades of experience relating to the working class -- in 1917.
They will thus need to produce documentary evidence
of the Bolshevik's actual use of dialectical ideas and then show how they could possibly
have been of any practical benefit or use to workers in revolutionary struggle --, or
even how they could have helped the Bolsheviks comprehend what was going on and
how to intervene successfully, 'on the ground'.
"The
gist of [Bukharin's] 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....
"The reader will see that Bukharin's example was meant to
give me a popular explanation of the harm of one-track thinking. I
accept it with gratitude, and in the one-good
turn-deserves-another spirit offer a popular explanation of the
difference between dialectics and eclecticism.
"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. A tumbler is a heavy object which can be used
as a missile; it can serve as a paper weight, a receptacle for a
captive butterfly, or a valuable object with an artistic engraving
or design, and this has nothing at all to do with whether or not
it can be used for drinking, is made of glass, is cylindrical or
not quite, and so on and so forth.
"Moreover, if I needed a tumbler just now for drinking, it would
not in the least matter how cylindrical it was, and whether it was
actually made of glass; what would matter though would be whether
it had any holes in the bottom, or anything that would cut my lips
when I drank, etc. But if I did not need a tumbler for drinking
but for a purpose that could be served by any glass cylinder, a
tumbler with a cracked bottom or without one at all would do just
as well, etc.
"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....
"I have not, of course, run through the whole notion of
dialectical logic, but what I have said will do for the present. I
think we can return from the tumbler to the trade unions and
Trotsky's platform....
"Why is Bukharin's reasoning no more than inert and empty
eclecticism? It is because he does not even try to make an
independent analysis, from his own standpoint, either of the whole
course of the current controversy (as Marxism, that is,
dialectical logic, unconditionally demands) or of the whole
approach to the question, the whole presentation -- the whole
trend of the presentation, if you will -- of the question at
the present time and in these concrete circumstances. You do not
see Bukharin doing that at all! His approach is one of pure
abstraction: he makes no attempt at concrete study, and takes bits
and pieces from Zinoviev and Trotsky. That is eclecticism." [Lenin
(1921), pp.90-93. Italic emphases in the original. Quotations marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
It could be argued that
this is a classic example of dialectical thought in action, and one which not
only allowed Lenin to transcend the peremptory and one-sided conclusions drawn by Bukharin and Trotsky
(on the above issue), but
also form a clear, concrete political analysis of events as they arose -- and
then decide how to move the revolution forward.
However, as we have seen in
Essay Ten Part One, it is
in fact quite impossible to put the above strategy of Lenin's into practise, just as there is
no evidence that he ever did so himself (in 1917, or even in 1921 when the
above was written). [The reader is directed to the aforementioned Essay for more
details.]
I have trawled through
the available minutes and decrees of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party (from August 1917 to February 1918), and have failed to find a
single DM-thesis -- let alone one drawn from
or based even upon an attenuated form of
DM --
put to any practical use, or even so much as alluded to in passing!
[Bone (1974).] Of course, it is always possible
I might have missed something, but even if I have, this
Quasi-Hermetic Creed hardly forms
a prominent part of the day-to-day discussions held between active revolutionaries.
Added on edit:
I have now gone though the above source carefully,
line by line twice, and there is still no sign of this
'crucially important' theory!
In fact, it is
conspicuous by its absence.
Hence, the available
evidence confirms the claims made above: active revolutionaries made no use
of this 'theory' --, plainly because it is impossible to put a single DM-concept into practice.
Added later still: I have now checked
the Theses, Resolutions And Manifestos Of The First Four Congresses Of The
Third International [Holt and Holland (1983)], and the only visible sign of
'dialectics' amounts to a couple of dozen occurrences of the word "contradiction"
(employed in
relation to the unfolding crises in capitalism (etc.)) in over 400 pages. No other examples of
dialectical jargon (or 'thought') appear in the entire volume. Even then,
"contradiction" isn't used to explain anything, nor does it
seem to do any theoretical or practical work (indeed, as noted elsewhere, that word is used by dialecticians simply because it is part of a
well-established DM-tradition,
and for no other discernible
reason).
Furthermore, most of the occurrences of this word are down to
Zinoviev;
as far as I can determine, Lenin doesn't use the term anywhere in the book.
Moreover, in Trotsky's The
Third International After Lenin [Trotsky (1974)], dialectics is mentioned
only fourteen times in nearly 300 pages, and then only in passing. The theory does no
work there either.
Update February 2017: I have just received a copy of Riddell (2015)
-- an amazing book that reproduces The Proceedings of the Third Congress of
the Communist International, 1921 -- which I am now going though
line-by-line to see how prominently DM features in these proceedings. However,
an initial examination of the Index reveals the unsurprising fact that neither
'dialectics', DM, nor 'philosophy' -- and not even phrases like "contradiction", "unity
of opposites", "totality", "mediation", or "negation of the negation"
-- merit so
much as a single entry. Of course, on its own, that isn't conclusive, but
it does show that this theory failed to make a significant (or any?)
contribution to these proceedings. When I have finished working my way through
its 1200 pages, I will record the results here. Clearly, that will take some
time because of the size of the book. [Added in September 2019: I am still checking!]
And it is even less use someone requiring of me to produce proof that Lenin and
the Bolsheviks didn't use dialectical ideas at that time,
since there is no written
evidence that he or they did -- indeed, as the above indicates. In which case, the contrary
conclusion (that DM wasn't actually used) stands by default.
That is in addition to the fact that it has
been
shown (above, and in Essay
Nine Part One)
that it isn't possible to apply DM-concepts -- they have no practical
applications, other than negative (as we will see in the
next sub-section). After all, even Lenin got into a serious
muddle when he tried to
play around with such ideas, let alone when he attempted to
apply them. His "all round" consideration of the facts ("mediacies"),
in the passage quoted above, would have
locked him into a permanent
state of indecision. So, it is
little wonder he avoided using this impractical -- nay, crazy -- theory at such
an important juncture: i.e., all through 1917!
As we will soon also find out: dialectical concepts
can be employed to 'justify' almost anything you like (no matter how contradictory that
"anything you like" might otherwise appear to be; in fact the more
contradictory it is, the more 'dialectical' it looks!). Indeed, it can be, and has been used to rationalise any
given course of actionand its
opposite (often this rhetorical trick is pulled off by the very same dialectician, in the same
article, or even in the same speech!), including those that are counter-revolutionary and
anti-Marxist.
[Some have argued
in response to the above claim that other theories can be, and have been used in this way.
Hence, one
individual might use a theory to derive one conclusion and then another theorist
might use it
to derive its
opposite. Maybe so, but only DM (or maybe
perhaps also, Zen Buddhism) can
be and has been
usedby the very same individual to
rationalise one course of action or theory, and its opposite on the same
page, or even in the same paragraph, sentence, or speech! But that happens
regularly in Dialectical Marxism (as the
evidence presented below amply demonstrates). Moreover, no other
theory is acceptable to
revolutionary cadres, and so no other theory is so well placed to 'win' them to
whatever their 'leaders'
consider expedient or opportune.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Update, July 2021: Here is a recent example of the use of
'dialectics' to argue
out of both sides of the same mouth at the same time (to add to the more weighty
examples of the use of this tactic quoted
below):
"Now...the fetishisation of Marx by many on
the radical left has meant that the most fundamental law of dialectical logic
is forgotten, when it comes to Marxism, which is viewed as a doctrine
containing no contradictions. But Marxism, like everything, does contain
contradictions -- a positive side and negative side. At the political level,
the positive side of Marxism serves the interest of the working class, while the
negative side can serve the interest of bureaucracy. This fetishisation means
that most leftists focus on the positive, while being unaware of the negative
side -- which finds expression in the elevation of the dictatorship of the
proletariat into a principle, rather than a tactic, and the abolition of the
separation of powers, which Engels called for, which opens the door to political
tyranny.
"The
point is that socialism, like the trade unions, is part of the working class
movement and both can lead to the domination of a bureaucracy to one degree or
another. Without democracy, the socialist revolution inevitably leads to the
rule of the bureaucracy, just like in the trade unions. In fact, socialism can
be described as a general trade union, which has come to power. So why wouldn’t
a bureaucracy take control, as they do in the actual trade unions?
The main contradiction on the left is between bureaucratic and democratic
socialism.
Bureaucracy is not the result of backwardness, as the Trotskyist narrative would
have us believe.
"[Any] reference to Cromwell in England and the Committee of Public Safety in
the French revolution is a red herring, because I am not opposed to
dictatorship. I am simply pointing out that it should not be turned into
principle.
The contradiction between bureaucratic and democratic socialism ensures the
defeat of the latter, when dictatorship is made a principle.
Lenin's fetishisation of Marx meant he was unable to see where turning
dictatorship into a principle would lead to, underpinned by the abolition of the
separation of powers. Like most of the left,
Lenin saw only the positive side of Marxism, while being unaware of the negative
side.
Marx must have known that he would become a fetish and once said, 'All I know is
that I am no Marxist.'...
"Trotsky
failed to think dialectically on socialism in one country,
leading him to the mistaken view that world revolution was an immediate absolute
necessity for the victory of socialism in individual countries.
Casting aside dialectics, like Downing, he demanded the communist movement
choose between socialism in one country and world revolution, but it wasn’t an
either-or issue."
[Tony Clark, letter to the editor of Weekly Worker, 22/07/2021,
Number 1357, quoted from
here;
accessed 30/07/2021. Some paragraphs merged; bold emphases added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. We will have
occasion to meet Tony Clark again,
later, making the same ridiculous
claims about Trotsky -- that he abandoned 'the dialectic'! If only!! Tony Clark
is a 'leftist UFO' advocate and believer in 'extra-terrestrials', a promoter
of the 'theory' that human beings were the result of genetic engineering
performed by aliens, so we were intended to be their slaves. (Shape-shifting Lizards next, Tony?)
In that case, he is a sort of
Erich
von Däniken of 'the left'. On that, see his letter to the editor of
Weekly Worker, 17/06/2021, Issue 1352.
Here is just part of it (the entire letter
has been re-posted in Appendix
B):
"Sightings of UFOs happen all over the world and I am far from convinced that
those behind the phenomenon are all benign. It goes back thousands of years into
prehistory...and was the source of all the main religions, like Christianity --
with its 'god making man in his own image' narrative, and so on -- that plague
the human mind, while religious people continue to be unaware of who these
'gods' really were."]
So,
it seems that DL-fans can now both support and oppose the dictatorship of
the proletariat -- because of the obscure ramblings of a Christian
Mystic!
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In fact, shortly after the revolution
many younger comrades and scientists began to argue that all of Philosophy
(and not just dialectics) is a key component of ruling-class ideology -- which is
in fact a crude version of my analysis! It
wasn't until the
Deborinites
won a factional battle in 1925/26 that this trend was defeated and then reversed, and that was
clearly engineered to help pave the way for the further destruction of the gains
of October 1917. [More about that later. On this, see Bakhurst (1991),
Graham (1971), Joravsky (1961), Kolakowski (1981), and Wetter (1958).]
It is also worth noting that Lenin's use of
'dialectical logic' (again, in the passage
quoted above) took
place in 1921, when the revolution was
already beginning
to
retreat. That is in line with what was claimed earlier:
DM is only of real use in times of defeat and set-back. This also conforms
with other things that have been asserted in this Essay: that dialectics is an
ideal weapon to deploy in a faction fight, since its nebulous concepts can be marshalled in
support of practically anything and its opposite.
But
what about Lenin's open violation/repudiationof core DM-principles when confronted
with a real life choice -- for example, in May 1918, in the middle of the civil
war as the country faced a serious famine? [Details
below.] Did he appeal to, apply, or take
into account the following DM-principles?
"Instead of speaking by the
maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we
should rather say: Everything is opposite.Neither in heaven nor in
Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an
abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is
concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will
then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what
they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the
same time the base: in other words, its only being consists in its relation to
its other. Hence also the acid is not something that persists quietly in the
contrast: it is always in effort to realise what it potentially is." [Hegel
(1975), p.174;
Essence as Ground of Existence,
§119.
Bold emphasis added. The serious problems this dogmatic and a priori
diktat creates for Hegel, which he nowhere tries to justify, are detailed
here.]
"To the
metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be
considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of
investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely
irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is "yea, yea; nay, nay"; for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' For him a thing either exists or
does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else.
Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in
a rigid antithesis one to the other.
"At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is
that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable
fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful
adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the
metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a
number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular
object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it
becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In
the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them;
in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of
that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood
for the trees." [Engels
(1976), p.26. Bold emphasis added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"For a stage in the outlook
on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all
opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical
method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no
hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which
bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises
also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is
the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage.
Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical
categories retain their validity." [Engels
(1954), pp.212-13.
Bold emphasis added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
If DM is quite as useful as we have been led to believe, then when Lenin argued as
follows:
"Either the advanced and class-conscious
workers triumph and unite the poor peasant masses around themselves, establish
rigorous order, a mercilessly severe rule, a genuine dictatorship of the
proletariat -- either they compel the kulak to submit, and institute a proper
distribution of food and fuel on a national scale; or the bourgeoisie, with the
help of the kulaks, and with the indirect support of the spineless and
muddle-headed (the anarchists and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries), will
overthrow Soviet power and set up a Russo-German or a Russo-Japanese Kornilov,
who will present the people with a sixteen-hour working day, an ounce of bread
per week, mass shooting of workers and torture in dungeons, as has been the case
in Finland and the Ukraine," [Lenin (1918), quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added.]
we
should expect him to have concluded:
"There is a middle way, comrades; according to Marxist dialectics we should do
both."
Did
he argue that way? Did he take into consideration the fact that, according to
Hegel, thereexistsnowhere in the entire universe an
either-or? Did he argue that there are, according to Marxist dialectics, "no
hard and fast lines -- there is no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or'"?
Not a bit of it; he concluded:
"Either -- or.
"There is no middle course. The situation of the country is desperate
in the extreme. Anyone
who reflects upon political life cannot fail to see that the
Constitutional-Democrats, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries, and the
Mensheviks are coming to an understanding about who would be 'pleasanter', a
Russo-German or a Russo-Japanese Kornilov, about who would crush the revolution
more effectively and reliably, a crowned or a republican Kornilov.
"It is
time all class-conscious and advanced workers came to an understanding.
It is time they bestirred themselves and realised that every minute's delay may
spell ruin to the country and ruin to the revolution. Half-measures
will be of no avail. Complaining will lead us nowhere. Attempts to secure
bread or fuel 'in retail fashion', 'each man for himself', i.e., for 'our'
factory, 'our' workshop, are only increasing the disorganisation and
facilitating for the profiteers their selfish, filthy, and blackguardly work.
"That is
why, comrades, workers of Petrograd, I have taken the liberty of
addressing this letter to you. Petrograd is not Russia. The Petrograd workers
are only a small part of the workers of Russia. But they are one of the best,
the advanced, most class-conscious, most revolutionary, most steadfast
detachments of the working class and of all the working people of Russia,
and one of the least liable to succumb to empty phrases, to spineless
despair and to the intimidation of the bourgeoisie. And it has frequently
happened at critical moments in the life of nations that even small advanced
detachments of advanced classes have carried the rest with them, have fired the
masses with revolutionary enthusiasm, and have accomplished tremendous
historical feats....
"That is
the sort of vanguard of the revolution -- in Petrograd and throughout the
country -- that must sound the call, must rise together, must understand that
the salvation of the country is in their hands, that from them is demanded a
heroism no less than that which they displayed in January and October 1905 and
in February paid October 1917, that a great 'crusade' must be organised
against the grain profiteers, the kulaks, the parasites, the disorganisers and
bribetakers, a great 'crusade' against the violators of strictest state order in
the collection, transportation, and distribution of bread for the people and
bread for the machines.
"The
country and the revolution can be saved only by the mass effort of the advanced
workers. We need tens of thousands of advanced and steeled proletarians,
class-conscious enough to explain matters to the millions of poor peasants all
over the country and to assume the leadership of these millions, resolute enough
to ruthlessly cast out of their midst and shoot all who allow themselves to
be 'tempted' as indeed happens -- by the temptations of profiteering and
turn from fighters for the cause of the people into robbers; we need
proletarians steadfast enough and devoted enough to the revolution to bear in an
organised way all the hardships of the crusade and take it to every corner of
the country for the establishment of order, for the consolidation of the local
organs of Soviet power, and for the exercise of control in the localities over
every pood of grain and every pood of fuel....
"Such and
only such is the state of affairs in Russia today. Single-handed and disunited,
we shall not be able to cope with famine and unemployment. We need a mass
'crusade' of advanced workers to every corner of this vast country. We need
ten times more iron detachments of the proletariat, class-conscious and
boundlessly devoted to communism. Then we shall triumph over famine and
unemployment. Then we shall make the revolution the real prelude to
socialism, and then, too, we shall be in a position to conduct a victorious war
of defense against the imperialist vultures." [Lenin
(1918). Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
So,
out of the window went the supposed 'world-view of the
proletariat', and especially when Lenin had to address Russian workers. The dogmatic
musings of that Christian Mystic, Hegel, as well as Engels's a priori
pontifications, were of no use to Lenin when he was faced with the material reality of the
Civil
War and the choices facing what were left of the advanced sections of the class:
"Instead of speaking by the
maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we
should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in
Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an
abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains." [Hegel (1975), op
cit. Bold added.]
"For a stage in the outlook
on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all
opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical
method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no
hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which
bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises
also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is
the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage.
Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical
categories retain their validity." [Engels
(1954), op cit. Bold added.]
It
could be argued that Engels also added this rider:
"Of course, for everyday use, for the
small change of science, the metaphysical categories retain their validity".
But
in 1918 this wasn't an "every day use" of language, it was the application of
life-or-death tactics in the face of a brutal Civil War. If DM wasn't applicable
there, or
then, it
wasn't applicable anywhere or anywhen in the revolution or the Civil
War. Moreover,
Lenin was addressing thevanguard of the class, its advanced
sections in Petrograd, who would be the first to accept 'dialectical
reasoning' had they been 'schooled' in it, and had they been presented with it
(if we accept the usual DM-picture of workers -- that they are all either
"conscious" or "unconscious" dialecticians!).
His acceptance of dialectics should have prompted Lenin into arguing as follows:
"The advanced and class-conscious workers and
the bourgeoisie, with the help of the kulaks, and with the indirect support of
the anarchists and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, will win Soviet
power." [Edited mis-quotation of Lenin.]
As
should now seem plain, such an application of 'dialectics' would have helped kill the revolution stone
dead.
So, 1917 -- and what followed over the
next few years -- can't be chalked-up as a success for this mutant strain of
Quasi-Hermetic
Mysticism.
However,
as we are about to find out,the
disintegration and destruction of the results of 1917-1921 can and
will be (partly) attributed to
this regressive theory.
Naturally, the above comments leave out of the account the
influence DM has had on
substitutionist ideas at work in the revolutionary tradition.
This brings us to our next topic.
I will be devoting an entire Essay to this
specific issue, but for present purposes we need merely sum up the results so far:
In
Part One it was
shown that ideas exclusive to DM can't be used to educate, propagandise or
agitate the working-class. Moreover, dialectics can't even represent a
generalisation of the experience of the Revolutionary Party. That is because
not one single DM-supporter understands this theory -- or if they do, they have kept
that fact well hidden for over one hundred and forty years. Worse still, there
is no evidence that revolutionaries have used DM in
their practical interface with the working-class. Indeed, because of its
incoherence, it can't be so used.
On the contrary, the
shadowy history
of this theory reveals that DM-concepts originated, not from the experience of the
party nor from that of the class, but from a tradition possessed of an
impeccable
ruling-class
pedigree, a tradition that promoted an Ideal view of 'reality' across at least
two-and-a-half millennia, one that related to hidden world supposedly underlying
appearances,
anterior to experience and accessible to
thought alone.
In this Part of Essay Nine, it has been argued
that ideas unique to DM can have no practical impact (other than negative),
since they are devoid of sense and are based on divisive concepts imported
from the work of ruling-class ideologues. Not only does DM fail to connect with workers' experience,
it fails even to relate to anyone's experience -- or, indeed, the experience anyone could
conceivably have. Because of that it has had to be imposed
on workers
'against the materialist grain', as it
were, and hence 'from the outside'.
In stark contrast, not only can
HM have practical
applications, it does (and countless times).
HM represents the generalisation and systematisation of workers' (indeed,
humanity's) collective experience and understanding, as well as that of the Party.
[Readers are referred back to Part One (link above) for
argument and evidence in support of these controversial, sweeping and seemingly
dogmatic claims.]
Nevertheless, in the analysis
given so far, the connection between DM and substitutionism has been left somewhat
vague and unclear.
Substitutionist ideas in general
(in this context) grow from a belief that workers are
incapable of organising themselves (i.e., over and above a development of what merely
amounts to a 'trade union/economistic
form of consciousness'), or they are far too weak and divided, which means they are incapable of bringing about successful revolutionary
change solely out of their own efforts.
[It is now clear from Lars Lih's work that
Lenin himself didn't accept this view of workers, but the vast majority of those subsequently
claiming to be Leninists do (Lih (2005, 2010)). I have also challenged
the received view of this aspect of Lenin's ideas in Part One,
here.]
Of course, substitutionism isn't itself an
expression of 'free-floating ideas' that are divorced from background social or
political contexts, nor is it monolithic. It springs from
various class ideologies and material interests, but it only becomes problematic
at specific historical junctures. It largely gains and maintains its grip (when it does)
because of the fragmented and uneven nature of the working-class --, which condition
it parasitises, manipulates and exacerbates.
Nevertheless, as is well-known, substitutionist ideas manifest themselves in the
general belief that:
(i) Workers in the end need someone else, or some other group,
to lead them theoretically and practically; and that,
(ii) Not only are they incapable of leading their own political struggles,
and hence of transforming
society through their own activity (etc., etc.),
it is in fact 'anti-socialist' to suppose otherwise.
In that case, they require non-working class social forces to bring socialism
to them and create if for them. To that end, these other forces will use workers as a battering ram
or as election fodder. Certainly workers might very well end up being used
that way
given this regressive view of the proletariat (indeed, this has happened many
times over the last century-and-a-half), while
these 'other forces' take the lead and benefit from
this. [There is more on this in
Essay Nine Part One.]40
Naturally, this far from the whole story;
there is far more to Substitutionism than these few words might seem to suggest.
It is also possible to link substitutionist ideas to reactionary ideas and
concepts. That won't be attempted here.
Having said that, the above comments
were included in order to help motivate much of the rest of this Essay. Because
of that these remarks didn't need to be any more detailed, complicated or
involved than was absolutely necessary.
