Essay Nine Part Two: Dialectics -- The Opiate Of Petty-Bourgeois Revolutionaries
This Essay was written long before the recent crisis in UK-Respect blew up, as well as that which seems to have been building inside the UK-SWP since. On that, see for example, here, here, here, here, here and particularly here. Indeed, the author of the book that prompted me to write these Essays (John Rees) is now no longer in the UK-SWP!
However, both crises were predictable given the things you will read below -- as are the many more we will witness on the left in the coming years (the even more recent split in the IMT being perhaps the latest example, but there are many more) unless its lessons are learnt.
Anyone who cannot be bothered to plough through all the material I have gathered can use the Quick Links below, or go to the summaries of key points I have posted here and here. A very basic summary of my overall objections to 'Materialist Dialectics' can be found here; the reasons why I embarked on this project can be accessed here. Those concerned about the unremittingly hostile tone I have adopted toward this theory should read this first.
Even so, readers should make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final views on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.
This particular Essay has suffered more than most for being published before it was finished. As I noted on the opening page of this site:
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 here is less than half complete. Many of my ideas are still in the 'infancy' stage, as it were, and need much work and time devoted to them to mature.
However, anything I allege here will either be backed-up with evidence, or it will be withdrawn.
This Essay was written from within the Trotskyist tradition, but because I have found that my work is being read by other Marxists, I have had to incorporate an analysis of the negative influence dialectics has had on Communism and Maoism, too. Since I am far less familiar with those two political currents, much of my comments in this regard are much more tentative. I will add more material as my researches deepen.
A word of warning: this Essay should be read in conjunction with Essay Nine Part One -- where many of the things I appear to take for granted here are discussed in detail --, and Essay Ten Part One --, where this part of the story is concluded.
It is important to underline what I am not doing here: I am not arguing that 'Materialist Dialectics' has helped ruin Marxism and therefore it is an incorrect theory. The reason this Essay is well down the list of those I have so far published is that my argument is in fact the reverse: because 'Materialist Dialectics' makes not one ounce of sense, it's no wonder it has helped cripple our movement. Nor am I blaming all our woes on this theory (note the italicised word "helped" in the previous sentence!) -- anyway, that is the topic of Essay Ten Part One.
[Earlier Essays posted here (i.e., Essays Two through Eight Part Three) were aimed at showing why I think 'Materialist Dialectics' makes no sense at all.]
This Essay is just under 93,000 words long; a summary of its main ideas can be found here.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections. [If your Firewall has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!]
(1) Cut To The Chase
(a) Are Leading Marxists In Effect Class Traitors?
(2) Alienation And Its Dialectical Discontents
(a) The Dialectics Of Consolation
(c) The UK-SWP 'Discovers' Dialectical Materialism
(f) Reality 'Contradicts' Appearances
(b) Fragmentation And The Petty-Bourgeois Personality
(d) Trotsky's Quasi-Religious Fervour
(e) Stalin Gets His Priorities 'Right'
(f) Bukharin, Too
(a) Dialectical Druggies Snort The Correct 'Line'
(b) The Road To Dialectical Damascus
(c) Defeat And Dialectical Druggies
(d) Disaster Central
(f) Social Psychology Does Not Apply To Dialecticians
(5) Dialectics And De-Classé Marxists
(a) High Versus Low Church Dialectics
(b) In The Lurch
(a) Dialectics And Revolutionary Practice
(d) The Dialectics Of Mystification
(e) Installing The New Program
(7) Case Studies
(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism
(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism
(c) Dialectics Traduces Trotskyism
(8) Refuted In Practice
(a) Dialectics: The Rotten Fruit Of A Diseased Tree
(b) It's Official: Dialectical Marxism Has No Cult Of The Saints
(9) Notes
(10) Appendix A -- The Finances And Compromises Of The WRP
(11) References
Abbreviations Used At This Site
This Essay deals with some of the background reasons underlying the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism. This explanation is a continuation of the argument developed in Essay Nine Part One, and is further elaborated upon in Essay Ten Part One, where the usual replies given by dialecticians to my criticisms are neutralised and more general theoretical issues are aired. In that Essay, among other things, I also try to show why the claim that Dialectical Marxism has been such long-term and abject failure is no exaggeration.
[DM = Dialectical Materialism; HM = Historical Materialism.]
This Part of Essay Nine follows on from the conclusion of Part One and aims to show (1) How and why DM has been detrimental to Marxism, (2) How it has assisted in the fragmentation of our movement, (3) How this has contributed to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism, and (4) How dialectics helps convince comrades that there is in fact no problem, and that even if there were, dialectics (the core theory!) has nothing whatsoever to do with it. In addition, (5) I also demonstrate how the class origin of the leaders and leading members of every Dialectical-Marxist party is the main cause of the sectarianism and fragmentation the revolutionary left has experienced over the last 150 years. The use of dialectics simply aggravates this condition, making a bad situation worse.
Part One of this Essay demonstrated that DM not only does not, it cannot represent a generalisation of working class experience, nor can it express their "world-view", whoever tries to sell it to them. Worse still, it cannot even be a generalisation of the experience of the revolutionary party.3
In addition, it was shown in Part One that DM cannot be "brought" to workers "from the outside" (as Lenin seemed to indicate), because this theory has yet to be brought to a sufficient level of clarity so that its own theorists can even begin to understand it themselves, before they think to proselytise unfortunate workers.
In that sense, therefore, dialecticians are still waiting for their own theory to be "brought" to them -- from the "inside"!
Are Leading Marxists In Effect Class Traitors?
It was alleged in Essay Twelve Part One (and in other Essays posted here, here and here) that DM is a form of Linguistic Idealism (LIE) and as such, reflects key features of ruling-class ideology.
However, what has not been established yet is how it is even conceivable that generations of leading revolutionaries with impeccable socialist credentials could have imported into the workers' movement ideas derived from the class enemy --, or at least from Philosophers who gave theoretical voice to the interests of that class. Surely, this alone shows that the allegations made in these Essays are completely misguided.
Or so it could be argued.
Of course, even its own most loyal and avid supporters cannot deny that dialectics had to be introduced into the socialist tradition from the outside; neither Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, or Trotsky were proletarians. Moreover, there is no evidence that workers in the 19th century were all that interested in Hegel's Logic.
[The claim that Dietzgen, for example, is an exception to this rule was batted out of the park here.]
As is well-known, Hegel's system is the most absolute form of Idealism ever invented, and it is one that is situated right at the heart of an ancient ruling-class tradition (aspects of which are examined in detail in Essay Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here)).
Lenin admitted as much, perhaps without 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.]
Despite this, the importation of Hegel's ideas into Marxism is often justified by comrades along the lines that he lived at a time when the bourgeoisie were the revolutionary class, and so his ideas were not as ideologically-tainted -- so to speak -- as those of later thinkers.
Now this excuse might work with theorists like Smith and Ricardo, but it cannot work with Hegel. Not only did he live in politically backward Germany, where there was no such revolutionary bourgeois class, his ideas represented both a continuation of ruling-class thought and a throwback to earlier mystical ideas about nature and society. [On this, see Essay Twelve Part Five and Essay Fourteen Part One (links above).]
Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination were his ideas scientific, unlike those of Smith and Ricardo.
Nor can it be argued that Marx derived HM from Hegel; in fact (as Lenin himself half admits) both were influenced by the Scottish Historical Materialists, Ferguson, Millar, Hume, Steuart, Robertson, Anderson, and Smith.01 If anything, Hegel's work helped slow down the formation of Marx's scientific ideas, by mystifying everything.
It could be argued that Marx derived other important concepts from Hegel (such as alienation, and species being), but these (or ones like them) can be found in Rousseau, Fichte and Schelling (far clearer thinkers). Moreover, these concepts are easy to replace with materialist analogues -- which explains why Marx subsequently dropped these terms, but adopted others. [On this, see White (1996).]
Finally, no dialectician, as far as I know, would argue the same for other figures who were writing at this time, and who were much closer to the 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 of Shaftesbury and Mandeville? Slap bang in the middle these two. And it's little use pointing out that this pair wrote shortly after the reaction to the English Revolution, since Hegel did so 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 may be news to some, but Hegel was not a coal miner!
Indeed, the only reason Hegel is chosen for special treatment 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 think we'd now be bothering with dialectics? It's no surprise then to find Marx himself moved away from Hegel all his life. [These controversial claims were substantiated in Part One of this Essay.]
In that case, and contrary to what Lenin said, we might want to exclude Marx himself from the above seriously compromised ruling-class pedigree.
Independently of this, it could be objected that this allegedly class-compromised background is not sufficient reason to condemn DM/Materialist Dialectics. After all, it could be argued that the advancement of humanity has always been dependent on practices, concepts and theories developed by individuals freed from the need to toil each day to stay alive -- for example, the work and ideas of scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, technologists, and the like. Surely, this does not automatically impugn every idea drawn from outside the workers' movement. Neither does it mean that such philosophical notions are in general of no use to revolutionaries. Indeed, denouncing certain beliefs just because they are alien to the working-class is inconsistent with key ideas found in HM itself. In that case, the fact that Materialist Dialectics is based on Hegel's system does not automatically malign it, especially if the latter has been given a materialist make-over (as Marx himself argued), and has subsequently been tested in practice.
Furthermore, the origins of Materialist Dialectics goes back many centuries, and these are related in complex ways to the development of class society and thus humanity in general. Admittedly, this implicates this process in the formation of ideas representing the theoretical interests of former and current ruling-classes. But, even granting that, such ideas have also featured in the overall development of human knowledge -- indeed, many of these have been integral to the advancement of science itself. Considerations like these do not compromise Materialist Dialectics in any way; on the contrary, as Lenin noted, this complex set of connections (with the very best of human endeavour) constitutes one of its strengths. Dialectical thought is thus not only part of the theoretical maturing process of humanity, it is a vital component in its future development.
Or so it could be maintained, once more.1
However, dialectics is not quite so easily exonerated.
First, DM-theses make no sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise is invited to say clearly (and for the first time ever in well over a hundred and forty years of its adherents' not trying all that hard) what sense they do make. As the Essays posted at this site show, anyone who attempts this modern-day labour of Sisyphus will face an impossible task.
Second, DM-ideas hinder the development revolutionary theory and practice. We saw this in more detail in Essay Ten Part One -- for example, in connection with Lenin's advice relating to a certain glass tumbler. [Other examples will be given below.]
Third, DM is locked into a tradition of thought that has an impeccable ruling-class pedigree. No wonder then that it hangs like an albatross around our necks, to say nothing of the negative effect it has had on generations of comrades (these are detailed below, too).
Fourth, although many claim that science is intimately connected with earlier philosophical and religious/mystical forms-of-thought, this is in fact less than half the truth. Indeed, materialist and technological aspects of science have not been as heavily dependent on such ruling-class ideas as many believe. [That bold claim will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Fifth, DM-concepts undermine ordinary language and common understanding; this means that workers have to have its alien ideas inserted into their heads against the materialist grain, as it were. As such, DM fosters passivity, rationalises substitutionist ideology, and exacerbates sectarianism.1a [More on these below and in Part One.]
Sixth, the materialist flip allegedly performed on Hegel's system, so that its 'rational core' may be appropriated by revolutionaries, has been shown in these Essays not to have been an 180 degree rotation, as claimed, but the full 360. [On this, see especially Essay Twelve Part One.]
Finally, and more importantly, DM has played its own considerable part in not only rendering Dialectical Marxism the long-term failure we see before us today, but also in exacerbating the serious personal and political problems that generations of petty-bourgeois party leaders have brought in their train.
These are serious allegations; those that have not already been substantiated (in other Essays) will be expanded upon and defended in what follows.
In spite of all this, it could be argued that the above counter-response ignores the fact that some of the best class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it into the fabric of each and every classic Marxist text. Without this there would be no Marxist theory.
How could this be even remotely possible if the above accusations are correct? And what alternative theory and/or literature (that has been tested in the 'heat of battle', as it were) can Ms Lichtenstein point to, that recommend her ideas as superior to those found in this proven tradition, one stretching back now over 150 years?
Most of the above volunteered response is demonstrably wrong; the link between 'Materialist Dialectics' and (successful) practice is severed in Essay Ten Part One, and will be undermined further below.
Furthermore, very few of the classic Marxist texts (that is, outside the DM-cannon) mention this 'theory' (except in passing). Indeed, as Part One of Essay Nine shows (here and here), Das Kapital itself is largely a 'Materialist Dialectics'-free zone. But, even if this were not the case, the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such a long-term failure ought raise serious questions about the malign influence that 'Materialist Dialectics' has had on HM.
Indeed, if Newton's theory had been as spectacularly unsuccessful as Dialectical Marxism has been, his ideas would have been rejected from the get-go.
In addition, a continuing commitment to dialectics just because it was good enough for the 'ancient worthies' of our movement (and for no other reason) is itself based on the sort of dogmatic and conservative faith one finds in most religions.1b
There is, indeed, something decidedly unsavoury in witnessing erstwhile radicals appealing to tradition alone as their only reason for maintaining support such class-compromised ideas -- especially since this doctrine has not served us too well for over a century and which remains unexplained to this day.
Which brings us to the next point.
Alienation And Its Dialectical Discontents
As it turns out, the reason why the majority of revolutionaries not only accept the alien-class ideas encapsulated in 'Materialist Dialectics', but cling onto them like terminally-insecure limpets, is connected with the following considerations:
(1) Marx's own analysis of the nature and origin of religious alienation.
(2) Lenin's warning that revolutionaries may sometimes respond to defeat and disappointment by turning to Idealism and Mysticism.
(3) The personal biographies and class origin of all leading Marxists and/or dialecticians.
(4) The fact that this theory helps mask the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism itself, and provides consolation for unrealised expectations and dashed hopes.
[The other counter-claims recorded in the previous section will be tackled as this Essay proceeds.]
Dialectics
And Consolation: The Irrational Kernel Beneath A Mystical Shell
Item One (from above): Concerning religion, Marx famously argued as follows:
"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. Bold emphasis alone added.]
Of course, no one is suggesting that Dialectical Marxism is a religion -- but it functions in ways analogous to one. That serious allegation, and the materialist background to it, will now be explained.
Plainly, revolutionaries are human beings with ideas in their heads, and every single one of them has a class origin. The overwhelming majority of those who have led our movement, or who have influenced its ideas, have not come from the working class. Even worker-revolutionaries, if they are full-time or 'professional revolutionaries', have thereby become de-classé, or even petty-bourgeois Marxists. Since the social being of these comrades can be traced back to their class origins and current class position, it is no great mystery that such comrades have allowed "ruling ideas" to dominate their thought.
However, the allegation that these comrades have adopted ruling-class ideas -- for the same sorts of reasons that the religious hold onto their beliefs --, and that this is partly because of their class origin and/or current class position, is regarded by dialecticians as so obviously wrong it is treated with contempt, and is thus rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism".
Nevertheless, and no less revealing: as far as I am aware, no Marxist Dialectician has subjected the origin of DM, or the reasons for its acceptance by the vast majority of comrades, to a class analysis.
This suggests that dialecticians see themselves as exempt from a Marxist analysis of the origin of their own ideas, and that they thus think they are somehow immune from the material constraints that affect the rest of humanity.
Nevertheless, it will be maintained here that the above comrades do indeed hold on to ruling-class ideas -- even if they are unaware of this fact -- and they do so for at least two reasons:
First: Because of their petty-bourgeois or non-working class origins, and as a result of the superior education they generally receive in bourgeois society, the vast majority of Marxists have had "ruling ideas", or ruling-class forms-of-thought, forced down their throats almost from day one. [More on this below. See also Essay Two, and in Essay Three Parts One and Two.]
Second: Because Dialectical Marxism is so unbelievably unsuccessful, revolutionaries have had to convince themselves that (a) this is not so, that the opposite is indeed the case, or (b) that this is only a temporary state of affairs --, otherwise they'd just give up. Because dialectics teaches that appearances are "contradicted" by underlying "essences", it fulfils a unique role in this regard since it is able to supply comrades with much needed consolation in the face of such long-term failure, convincing them that everything is fine, or that things will change for the better -- one day. This '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 set-backs, defeats and disasters, when confronted with this, revolutionaries almost invariably respond with a "Well that does not prove dialectics wrong!".
So, just like the religious, who can look at all the evil in the world and still see it as an expression of the 'Love of God', who will make all things well in the future, dialecticians can look at the last 150 years and still see the 'Logic of History' moving their way, and that all will be well in the end, too. This means that the theory that prevents them from looking at reality objectively is also the theory that helps guarantee they won't examine that theory prompting yet another generation of failure by masking it. [This theme is developed below, and in Essay Ten Part One (where the usual objections to the above are neutralised).]1c
Despite this, it might still be wondered how this relates to anything that is even remotely relevant to the ideas entertained by hard-headed revolutionary atheists. Surely, it could be argued, any attempt to retrace a commitment to Materialist Dialectics to its alleged origin in alienated fantasy is both a reductionist and an idealist error.
Fortunately, Lenin himself supplied a materialist answer to this apparent conundrum, and John Rees kindly outlined it for us when he depicted the period following 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. Bold emphases added. (However, I can find no reference to "dialectics" in Cliff's book.)]
As Cliff goes on to argue:
"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 added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
It is quite clear from this that the experience of defeat (and the lack of materialist input from a mass working-class movement) directed the attention of certain revolutionaries toward Idealism and toward the search for a mystical explanation for the serious set-backs Russian Marxists had witnessed after 1905. Plainly, that search provided these comrades with some form of consolation -- just as Marx alleged of religion pure and simple.
But, there is another outcome that Rees and others have clearly failed to notice: this major set-back also turned Lenin toward Philosophy and dialectics. These were subjects which he had largely ignored up until then. While it is true that Bogdanov and the rest turned to Mach, Berkeley, Subjective Idealism, and other assorted irrationalisms, is equally clear that Lenin too looked to Hegel and 'objective' Mysticism.2
Nevertheless, Lenin's warning shows that revolutionaries themselves are not immune to the pressures that lead human beings in general to seek consolation in order to counteract disappointment, demoralisation and alienation. As we have seen, Lenin was well aware that alien-class ideas which 'satisfied' such needs could enter the workers' movement from the "outside" at certain times.
Is it possible then that revolutionaries of the calibre of Engels, Lenin, Plekhanov and Trotsky were thus tempted to seek metaphysical consolation of some sort? Is it conceivable that they opened themselves up to the alien-class ideas that later found expression in 'Materialist Dialectics', and for these reasons?
As we have seen in other Essays posted at this site (especially Essay Three Parts One and Two, Twelve Part One, the rest of Essay Twelve, and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here)), and as Lenin himself admitted, dialectics is shot-through with ideas, concepts and thought-forms borrowed from traditional Philosophy (which ideas, concepts and thought-forms were in turn invented by theorists who, undeniably, had material interests in rationalising the status quo). Indeed, in many places it is hard to tell the difference between DM and open mysticism (as Essay Fourteen Part One will show).
All this strongly suggests that the above accusations are not completely wide-of-the-mark. On the contrary, as we will see, they hit bull's eye every time.
But, is there anything in the class origin and background of leading comrades that pre-disposed them toward such an unwitting adoption of this rarefied form of ruling-class ideology? Does defeat automatically lead to DM?
Does DM in fact stand for Demoralised Marxists?
The first of these questions can be answered quite easily by focussing on item Four above, and then on the periods in which revolutionaries invented, sought out, or reverted in a big way to using and/or appealing to the classical concepts found in DM. Upon examination, a reasonably clear correlation can be seen between periods of downturn in the struggle and subsequent 're-discoveries' of Hegel and DM by avid dialecticians -- with the opposite tendency occurring in more successful times.3
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 commentaries (including his Notebooks and his wrangles with Burnham) date largely from the 1930s, after the major reverses that took place in the post 1917-1923 period in Europe (and internationally in China), and later in Spain, and following upon his own isolation and political quarantine in the 1930s.5
Stalin himself only became obsessed with dialectics after the defeat of the Deborinites post-1929, and after the failure of the Chinese and German revolutions. Likewise, Mao himself discovered a fondness for this Hermetic creed after the crushing defeats of the 1920s.6
More recently, the obsessive devotion shown by certain OTs toward the minutiae of DM follows a similar pattern. Because (1) OTs invariably adopt a catastrophist view of everything that happens (or is ever likely to happen) in capitalist society, and (2) OTs are constantly splitting, they face continual disappointment and demoralisation. Naturally, such levels of semi-permanent disillusionment require regular and massive doses of highly potent DM-opiates. To take one example: even an OT of the stature of Ted Grant only succeeded in 're-discovering' hardcore DM (alongside Alan Woods, which took shape in the form of RIRE) after his own party booted him out, which itself followed upon the catastrophic collapse of the Militant Tendency.7
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; NOT = Non-Orthodox Trotskyist; RIRE = Reason In Revolt, i.e., Woods and Grant (1995).]
This regressive doctrine does not just afflict the minds of OTs, NOTs show similar, but less chronic signs of dialectical-debilitation.
For example, the overt use of DM-concepts in the SWP-UK (a NOT-style party) only began in earnest after the downturn in the class struggle in the late 1970s, and more specifically following upon 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 leading figures in the SWP-UK. The fact that this newfound interest in DM has nothing to do with theoretical innovation (and everything to do with repetition, consolation and reassurance) can be seen from the additional fact that TAR adds nothing new to the debate (on DM), it merely repeats significant parts of it, albeit from a different perspective -- for the gazillionth time.8
Given the overwhelming experience of defeat and set-back that has been faced by the international labour movement and the revolutionary tradition over the last 150 years, these correlations are quite striking (even if they are not the least bit surprising) -- for all that no one seems to have noticed them before!9
If our movement has known little other than defeat (as Essay Ten Part One shows), then it becomes vitally important for revolutionaries to account for and re-interpret this depressing state-of-affairs.
[IO = Identity of Opposites; NON = Negation of the Negation.]
Among Maoists, Stalinists and Trotskyists (OTs and NOTs alike) this tactic has often assumed a thoroughly dishonest form, one that 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 these will be given below). Clearly, this has allowed factors other than the subjective failings of the parties involved to be blamed for any of the setbacks our side has faced.
As should seem obvious, a movement cannot learn from its mistakes if it 'never' makes any (or never admits to making any)! Amazingly, it looks like DM-theorists are the only life-form that not only does not, but cannot learn from recalcitrant reality. As we will see, the NON and the belief that appearances contradict underlying "essences" stand in the way of most dialecticians emulating the rest of sentient life: learning from past mistakes.9a
Even Amoebae seem to learn quicker than dialecticians!
Figure One: A Non-Dialectical Fast Learner
Despite frequent claims to the contrary, the aforementioned dialectical-dodges have meant that significant parts of our movement have engaged in a 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 to a set of doctrinaire ideas held about it.
Hard-headed Marxists have thus spun reality through 180 degrees, stuck their own theoretical feet in the air, inserted their heads in the sand, and -- 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 reality that the vast majority of workers ignore 'Materialist Dialectics' -- proclaimed that Dialectical Marxism has been tested successfully in practice and now represents the objective "world view" of the proletariat!10
Marx once claimed that Philosophy stands in relation to the sciences as masturbation does to sexual love. Clearly, overindulgence in Dialectical Masturbation has not just made revolutionaries short-sighted, it has rendered them theoretically blind.
Theoretical Onanism of this level of intensity has unsurprisingly encouraged a headlong retreat into fantasy (of the sort noted above, and worse). Such flights-of-fancy have been amply reinforced by the profound narcolepsy induced in comrades by the constant repetition of the same old formulae and hackneyed phrases. A simple but effective Dialectical Mantra, internalised and regurgitated by all serious adepts (containing hardy perennials such as the dogma that Capitalism is riven by 'contradictions', even though not one of those who intone this shibboleth seems able to say why these are indeed contradictions -- on that, see here), have helped insulate militant minds from material reality for generations. In such a tradition-dominated and Ideally-constructed world, annoying facts are simply ignored -- or turned upside down.
Anyone who doubts this should try the following experiment: chose any randomly-selected, dialectically-distracted comrade and attempt to persuade her/him to acknowledge the long-term failure of their own brand of Marxism. Unless you are extremely lucky, you will soon discover how deep this particular head has been inserted in that particular sand dune.
[On the excuses usually given for the failure of Dialectical Marxism (that is, where failure is even acknowledged!), see Essay Ten Part One.]
To that end, stock phrases will be dusted-off and given another airing, almost as if they are still in mint condition. Even a cursory glance at the debates that have taken place over the last five revolutionary generations or so will reveal the spectacle of theorists mouthing slogans at one another as if the ones on the receiving end had not heard them a thousand times already, and the one chanting them had not intoned them even more often.11
This helps explain why we still encounter constant rehearsals of the same tired old examples in DM-texts, including these season ticket holders: boiling water, balding heads, John and his manhood, Mendeleyev's Table, wave/particle duality, contradictory motion, "A is equal to A", a character from Molière who has spoken "prose all his life without knowing it", "Yea, Yea" and "Nay Nay", seeds that 'negate' plants, living/dying cells, Mamelukes who have a somewhat ambiguous fighting record against the French, and so on -- despite it having been pointed out many times (and not just in these Essays) that none of these specially-selected examples work to begin with.
Reality 'Contradicts' Appearances
Alongside this there is a correspondingly robust refusal by dialecticians to face up to reality. In my experience, this ostrich-like characteristic is found most glaringly among OTs, but it is also represented to varying degrees throughout the rest of the revolutionary/communist movement (with MISTs probably winning the Silver Medal in this event).12
As already noted, a good example of this is the knee-jerk quotation of the phrase "tested in practice" in support of the supposed (but imaginary) universal validity of 'Materialist Dialectics'. Even though reality tells different story, we regularly encounter this sort of '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.]
[More of this sort of stuff here.]
However, the fact that Dialectical Marxism (never mind Dialectical Trotskyism) has never actually "seized the masses" -- except perhaps briefly in Germany, Italy and France, it has never even got close to lightly hugging them (and not even in Russia in 1917!) -- that fact is not allowed to spoil the fun or interrupt the daydream. So, this inconvenient aspect of reality is simply inverted and the opposite idea is left standing on its feet (or it is simply ignored).
Failing that, of course, the happy day when 'Materialist Dialectics' finally manages to captivate the masses is projected way 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 Maoists), 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 is this collective, Hegelianised brain now wedged.
Since 'Materialist Dialectics' is regarded as the very epitome of scientific knowledge (an "Algebra of Revolution", if you will), the fault cannot lie with the theory, so it must be located elsewhere. The 'solution' is no less difficult to find: the masses are to blame! They are gripped by "false consciousness", trapped in a world dominated by inadequate, everyday "formal thinking". "Static" language and "fixed categories" dominate their lives, this sorry state of affairs 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. A vanishingly small fraction of humanity has seen the light, the vast majority of working people are lost in outer darkness --, this peremptory judgement itself justified by a theory that not one of its acolytes can explain!
Such are the deleterious effects on Dialectical Marxists of a diet rich in Silicates.
Figure Two: The DM-Guide
To Clarity-Of-Thought
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 consistent "not".]
But the conclusion is never drawn (it doesn't even make the bottom of the reserve list) that workers will never accept a theory that clashes with their materially-grounded language, and which runs counter to their understanding and experience -- and which, because of this, is not even a materialist theory!
To be sure, it could be argued that in a revolutionary situation, daily experience and commonsense aren't sure and safe guides to action. Hence, a revolutionary party needs a theory, one that transcends the immediate.
And yet, HM itself 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 depends on both!
On the other hand, with respect to concepts drawn from DM, the rejoinder in the last but one paragraph is as misguided as it can be. As Part One of this Essay has shown, not one single thesis drawn from DM relates to anything a human being, let alone a worker, could experience. In that case, it cannot express the experience of the party. Moreover, as Essays Twelve Part One (and subsequent Parts (summary here)) and Fourteen Part One (summary here) show, DM is based on concepts derived from centuries of ruling-class thought.
Small wonder then that DM fails to mesh with material reality, and hence that it can't be used to help change it.
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 the latter's respect for Marxists, whose parties are now widely regarded as little other than a joke, comprised of nothing but warring sects dominated by obscure and irrelevant ideas.
Still less thought has gone into the extent to which DM (with its egregious logic) has undermined Marxism's claim to be regarded 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 and respect the opinions anyone who accepts the theoretical equivalent of flat-earth theory?
However, as noted in the Introduction, revolutionaries are unlikely to abandon DM in spite of the noxious effect it has had on their thought, or the steady blows that yours truly rains down upon it.
Whether or not DM spells the Death of Marxism is obviously of no concern for those held in its thrall. This is hardly surprising: it is difficult to see clearly with your head stuck in the metaphorical equivalent of the Gobi Desert.
The Opiate Of The Party
It is maintained here that DM satisfies the contingent psychological needs of certain sections of the revolutionary movement: those comrades who, because of their class origin/position, and because of the constant failure of Dialectical Marxism, cling to DM in ways that make a drowning man look positively indifferent toward any straws that might randomly drift his way.
[Any who doubt this should try arguing with comrades who are in thrall to this theory. On that, see here.]
As noted earlier, this is because dialectics provides consolation in a way that is analogous to the comfort and reassurance that religious dogma supplies believers: that is, DM provides solace for unrealised hopes, supplies both a psychological defence against disillusion and a handy way of re-configuring defeat as its exact opposite. This is again similar to the way that theists manage to persuade themselves that despite appearances to the contrary, death, disease and suffering is not only beneficial, it confirms the goodness of 'God'! Each system provides its acolytes with a convenient excuse for denying the facts.13
In other words, DM is the "opiate" of the Party, the heart of a seemingly hopeless cause.
For those Dialectical Marxists who live in a world that is divorced from the day-to-day life and struggle of ordinary workers -- i.e., for professional revolutionaries who are not involved in the material world of toil --, HM is clearly not fundamental enough. In fact, such individuals, who (for whatever reason) are cut-off from the world of labour, clearly require their own distinctive world-view, one that has itself been abstracted (cut-off) from the world of 'appearances', and thus from material reality, too.
This world-view must be a theory that adequately represents the (now) alienated experience of these erstwhile 'radicals': it must not only be divorced from ordinary language and common experience, it must be distinguished from working class and/or materialist forms-of-thought. In addition, it must rationalise and confirm the pre-eminent position such individuals arrogate to themselves -- that is, it must ratify their status as leaders of the class.
To that end, it must be a theory that they alone "understand".
Even then, they use this theory to 'prove' that the leaders of other Marxist groups either (1) do not "understand" dialectics or (2) they misuse it. [On that, see below.]
What better option, then, to fit the bill than the incomprehensible 'theory' Hegel concocted (upside down or 'the right way up)?
DM is thus beyond workers' experience -- not by accident --, but because it's 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 indeed an ideal tool for keeping 'reality' Ideal. Moreover, this 'theory' helps insulate militant minds from the setbacks revolutionaries constantly face.
DM is thus not just the opiate of the party, it expresses the soul of the professional revolutionary. Abstracted not just from the class, but also from humanity itself, this faction within the labour movement naturally finds abstraction conducive to the way it sees the material world, and to the way it regards the working class: as an abstract object of theory, not the subject of history.
That explains, at least, the motivation underlying the belief that DM is the "world-view" of the proletariat -- plainly these 'workers' are now members of an abstract class of proletarians (most of whom, in the concrete world, have never of this theory, and never will)!
Of course, this accounts for its long-term lack of impact on workers.
Fragmentation And The Petty-Bourgeois Personality
The above frame of mind is connected with the way that such individuals find their way into the revolutionary movement.
Unlike most worker-revolutionaries, 'professional' revolutionaries have joined, or have been recruited into the socialist movement (by-and-large) as an expression of their rebellious personality, as a result of their own personal commitment, because of individual alienation from the system, from reading books, or for some other contingent psychological or biographical reason --, but not as a direct result of the class war. That is, they become revolutionaries through their own individual efforts, or those of some other individual (such as a parent, partner or friend) and not (in general) through participation in collective action, or in strikes (etc.) at their own places of work -- if they work.
This means that from the beginning (again, by-and-large), because of their class position and non-working class upbringing, such comrades act and think like individuals. This (1) affects the ideas they form, (2) colours their attitude toward such ideas, (3) affects their activity inside the movement/party, and (4) slants the relationships they form with other revolutionaries.
Indeed, no less an authority than Lenin quotes Kautsky to this effect:
"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 inexpedient tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak of 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.
"This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. 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 is himself often enough exploited and humiliated 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.
"...Quite different 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 (1947), pp.121-23. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
To be sure, Lenin is describing hostile intellectuals, but much of what he says applies to those who become revolutionaries; indeed, this class analysis also applies to Lenin himself and other petty-bourgeois Dialectical Marxists. [More on this later.]
Such comrades thus enter the movement committed to the revolution as an idea, as an expression of their own personal integrity, idiosyncratic alienation and individual goals in life. They are not revolutionaries for proletarian/materialist reasons --, that is, as a result of their direct experience of collective action, or as a direct consequence of working class response to exploitation --, but for individualist (albeit, often very noble) reasons.
This is not to malign them, but to remind readers that this is a class issue.
So, when these comrades encounter DM, it is quite 'natural' for them to latch on to its a priori theses. This is because, as Lenin noted, their class position has already delivered them up as atomised, isolated individuals with no collective identity. This non-negotiable fact is further compounded by the additional fact that these individuals have had their heads filled with "ruling ideas" -- which is plainly the result of the 'superior education' they receive because of their class origin:
"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. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here.]
As we will see in Essay Twelve Part One, and the rest of Essay Twelve (summary here), a common thread that runs through the diverse world-views that are conducive to, and patronised by the various ruling-classes that have parasitized humanity over the last five or six thousand years, is the idea that there is an invisible world anterior to experience, underlying 'appearances', which is more real that the world we see around us, and which is accessible to thought alone. Because of this, such ideas have had to be imposed on reality in a dogmatic and a priori manner ever since (plainly because they cannot be read from reality, not least because the world is not a book).
In which case, when these individuals -- who have already been educated to see the world this way before they've even heard of Marxism -- encounter DM, they appropriate its dogmatic a priori theses with ease. The thought-forms this theory encapsulates appear to them to be at once both philosophical and certain (i.e., a priori, and thus self-certifying), in the traditional manner. Moreover, because DM-theses originate from within what seems to them to be a radical philosophical/political tradition they also seem radical -- alas, here they are quite happy to accept appearances at face value!
Manifestly, dialectical concepts could only have arisen from traditional sources (workers do not dream up such nostrums), which sources had already been tainted by countless centuries of ruling-class thought-forms (as Marx noted). This is plainly because traditional thought the only source of developed 'high theory', and these individuals are attracted to this way of seeing things since it promotes the sort of ideas to which these erstwhile radicals are most susceptible. The class background and education such individuals receive mean that ruling-class ideas have already been inserted into their heads, "from the outside", even before they reach their late teens. In that case, this new, Dialectical/Hermetic batch hardly raises an eyebrow. Indeed, it alights on ready soil.13a1
Initially, very little specialist knowledge is needed to 'comprehend' this theory; indeed, no expensive equipment or time-consuming experiments are required. And yet, within hours this superscientific 'world-view' can be grasped by most eager novices (since it relies on thought alone, and thus appears to be 'self-evident'). Literally, in an afternoon, an initiate can study and learn 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!
One only has to look at most revolutionary internet sites, for example, to see how they claim to be able to reveal nature's deepest secrets (which are true for all of reality, for all of time) in page or two of homespun 'logic', loose phraseology, and Mickey Mouse Science --, for example, here, and here.
Contrast that with the many months, or even years of hard work it takes to grasp the genuine science of Marxist economics, for example. Contrast it too with the detailed knowledge one requires in order to understand, say, the class structure and development of the ancient world, or medieval society. No 'self-evident' truths here!
Moreover, because this 'theory' is connected with wider historic, or even romantic aims (explored briefly below), such comrades soon become wedded (nay, super-glued) to this doctrine. They become converts.
This subjective response to such an easily accessible 'door of perception' now connects dialectics with the revolutionary ego, for it is this theory which guarantees for each of these individuals that their anger at injustice and all the hard work they devote to the cause are not in vain.
On the contrary, this theory guarantees that the life of each of its adepts is capable of assuming cosmic significance. Dialectics places the militant mind at the very centre of the meaning universe -- for it seems to give such social atoms universal meaning, with a set of eternal 'truths'/'laws' to prove it. We might even call this the "Ptolemisation of The Militant Mind" [PTMM], since around this 'theory' all of reality now revolves, put into neat logical order by a few trite a priori theses.
The heady romance of being both a revolutionary and an active participant in the cosmic drift of the entire universe now takes over. Indeed, for all the world, these comrades seem to fall in love with this 'theory'! [This surfaces in the irrational and emotional way they all defend it, when it's attacked -- see below, and here.]
But, the revolutionary ego can only ascend to the next blessed level if it becomes a willing vehicle for the tide of history, a slave to 'the dialectic'.
The dialectic now expresses in its earthly incarnation cosmic forces that have governed material reality from the beginning of time and which are thus written into the fabric of nature, like the word of 'God'.
A Dialectical Logos, if you will.
Or, at least, that's how the DM-Faithful picture it to themselves (on that, see here).
Indeed, the dialectic governs the nature of everything in existence, including even the thoughts of these, the 'least' of its servants -- a process otherwise known as "subjective dialectics".
By becoming slaves to the mysterious 'mediations' that emanate forth from the "Totality" (which, like 'God', cannot be defined, and which works in mysterious ways), through revolutionary 'good works' ("activity") and pure thoughts ("non-Revisionism"), by joining a movement that cannot fail to alter fundamentally the course of human history, the petty-bourgeois ego is 'born again' to a higher purpose, and with a cosmic mandate.
The dialectical novitiate now emerges as a professional revolutionary --, sometimes even with a shiny new name to prove it. But, certainly with a new persona.
The scales now drop from its eyes.
The Hermetic virus has found another victim.
There is now no way back...
As Max Eastman noted:
"Hegelism is like a mental disease -- you cannot know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it."
This now provides such comrades with well-known social psychological motivations, inducements and reinforcements. These, in turn, help convince these Hermetic victims that:
(1) They as individuals can become key figures in history -- actually helping to determine the next direction social evolution will take.
(2) Their personal existence is, after all, not meaningless or for nought.
(3) Whatever it was that caused their alienation from bourgeois society can be rectified, reversed or redeemed through the right sort of acts, thoughts and deeds -- reminiscent of the way that Pelagian forms of 'muscular Christianity' taught that salvation might be had through pure thoughts, good works, and severe treatment of the body.
Dialectics now takes on a role analogous to that which religion assumes in the minds of the masses, giving cosmic significance and consolation to these, its very own petty-bourgeois victims. Same social cause, similar palliative drug.
However, because they have not been recruited from the working class, these social atoms need an internally-generated unifying force -- one provided by a set of self-certifying ideas -- to bind them to the international workers' movement, and the Party. As such, they need a Cosmic Whole to make sense of their social fragmentation. This is where the mysterious "Totality" comes into its own -- but, just like 'God', so mysterious is this "Totality" that not a single one of its slaves can tell us of its nature, even though they all gladly bend the knee to its Contradictory Will.
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 do not persuade them to unite as a result of some theory or other. Workers are thus forced to combine out of material necessity, with unity externally-imposed upon them, since this unifying force is a material, not an Ideal force.13a
In contrast, once more, while history shows that the class war forces workers to unite, it also reveals that it drives these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries apart. In that case, dialectical theory has to replace material struggle as their sole unifying principle; petty-bourgeois/de-classé Marxists are thus supposedly united by a set of ideas. The forces that operate on them are thus quintessentially individualistic, unquestionably ideal and dangerously centrifugal (as Lenin noted earlier, and as we will soon see). But, without this 'theory', the rationale underlying the romantic idea that these comrades stand right at the philosophical centre of the dialectical universe [PTMM] would disappear.
Moreover, because dialectics provides such comrades with an apparently coherent, but paradigmatically traditional picture of reality (i.e., as an a priori theory, dogmatically imposed on reality), it supplies each one with a unique set of motivating factors. Indeed, because this theory is represented individualistically inside each brain, it helps further divide each 'dialectical disciple', one from the next (for reasons explored below).
Militant Martinets
Dialectics, the theory of universal opposites, goes to work on militant minds and helps turn each into a dedicated sectarian and fanatical faction fiend.
Collective discipline is paramount inside Bolshevik-style parties. But, the strong-willed, petty-bourgeois militant that this style of politics attracts is not used to this form of externally-imposed regimentation (since, as Lenin noted, these comrades are attracted by internally-processed and self-certifying ideas), and so fights soon break out, often over minor, even personal issues.14
Since childhood, these comrades have been socialised think like social atoms, but in a revolutionary party they have to act like social molecules (which is a psychological feat that lies way beyond their class position). Hence, personal disputes quickly break out and are soon re-configured as political differences -- once more, these are differences over ideas --, which require, and are soon given, theoretical 'justification'.
Unfortunately, these individuals are socially-conditioned egocentrics who, in their own eyes, have a hot-line to dialectical truth (hard-wired into each brain by those self-certifying Hegelian ideas, once more) -- and they cannot help exploiting that fact since this is what defines them as a revolutionary.
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 points out, ruling-class theorists, 'intellectuals', have always made a name for themselves by criticising the ideas of other, rival theorists. This is, after all, part of establishing a reputation for themselves, and is an essential component in promoting their careers -- or, indeed, for defending a patron or some other beneficent section of the ruling-class. Petty-bourgeois capitalists have to rely on their individual skills in order to survive in the face of Big Capital. In like manner, these unfortunate characters have to ply their trade as individual theorists, armed only with ideas. Petty-bourgeois dialecticians thus trade in similarly soiled goods.
So, it was that the dialectical classicists, when they joined the revolutionary movement brought with them this divisive, individualist ruling-class trait. In the market for 'Marxist' ideas, those with the best critical and inventive skills often float to the top.
The fact that such individuals have very strong characters (otherwise they'd not survive) merely compounds the problem. In order to make their name, and advance their 'revolutionary careers', it becomes important for them to disagree with every other theorist, which they then almost invariably proceed to do. Sectarianism is thus caused by such petty-bourgeois 'atoms'.
But the situation is aggravated by dialectics. What better theory is there then (other than Zen Buddhism, perhaps) that is capable of initiating endless disputation than one that is as contradictory and incomprehensible all in one go, as is the case with 'Materialist Dialectics'? Or, indeed, one that informs all who fall under its hypnotic spell that progress (even in ideas) may only be had through "internal contradiction"?
For Dialectical Marxists, the drive to impose one's views on others becomes irresistible, too. Doctrinal control (i.e., the control of all those inner, privatised ideas lodged in every other atomised party skull) now acts as a surrogate for external control by material forces. Indeed, this desire to control has even been given the grandiloquent name: "democratic centralism" -- a nice 'contradiction-in-terms' for you to ponder.16
But, just as genuine religionists soon discovered, mind-control is much easier to secure if appeal is made to impenetrably mysterious doctrines that no one understands, which all must accept and which all must repeat constantly to dull the critical faculties.
Hence, because the party cannot reproduce the class struggle inside itself, and thus force materialist unity on its cadres externally, it can only control political thought internally (in each head) by turning it into a mind-numbing mantra, insisting on doctrinal purity, and then accusing all those who do not conform to such ideal standards of not "understanding" dialectics.
In this milieu, an Authoritarian Personality type soon emerges in the revolutionary movement to enforce ideological orthodoxy (disguised as part of an endeavour to keep faith with "tradition", which is, un-coincidentally, a noxious trait shared by all known religions). "Tradition" now becomes a watch-word to test the doctrinal purity of party cadres -- especially those who might stray too far from the narrow path which alone leads the select few toward revolutionary salvation.17
This naturally leads to more disputes and thus more splits.
[History has indeed shown that the inter-atomic forces of fragmentation that operate between dialectically-distracted comrades far out-weigh their frequent calls for unity.]
All this explains why, to each DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so personal, and so intimately their own possession, and why you can almost feel their hurt when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at this site.
Hence, any attack on this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself, and must be resisted with all the bile at its command.
And that explains, too, all the abuse you will get if you think to challenge the dialectical doctrines of a single one of these Hermetic Head Cases.
Trotsky Gets His Priorities 'Right'
In addition to the many recent examples logged here, the above allegations about the highly emotional and irrational responses elicited from dialecticians (when their theory is attacked) find ready confirmation in the case of at least one leading Marxist. George Novack records the following meeting he had with Trotsky 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….'
"I was somewhat surprised at the vehemence of his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the principal defendant in absentia in the Moscow trials, and because of the dramatic circumstances of his voyage in exile, Trotsky then stood in the centre of international attention. He was fighting for his reputation, liberty, and life against the powerful government of Stalin, bent on his defamation and death. After having been imprisoned and gagged for months by the Norwegian authorities, he had been kept incommunicado for weeks aboard their tanker.
"Yet on the first day after reunion with his cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was for a Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend dialectical materialism against its opponents!" [Novack (1978), pp.169-70. Bold emphases added. Spelling changed to conform to UK English.]18
Given the content of this Essay -- and Marx's own words --, Trotsky's semi-religious fervour, his emotional attachment to the dialectic, and his irrational response become much easier to understand.
Stalin Gets His Priorities 'Right', Too!
For all their other major differences, Trotsky and Stalin were both devoted Disciples of the Dialectic.
Ethan Pollock records a revealing incident 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 added.]
Pollock then outlines the problems Aleksandrov faced 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 the fight against Fascism (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 at 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 could devote time to discussing it. In this, of course, Stalin was in total agreement with Trotsky and other leading Marxists.
Once more, Marx's comments above make abundantly clear why this is so.
Bukharin Makes His Peace With The Dialectical Deity
We can see something similar occurring in the case of 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 serious predicament, this is hardly surprising. But it is nonetheless revealing, since it confirms much of the above: this theory holds the dialectical personality together even in the face of death.
The old saying, "There are no atheists in a foxhole", may be incorrect, but it looks like there might not have been many anti-dialecticians in the Lubyanka waiting on Stalin's mercy. There, it seems that even hard-nosed dialecticians needed some form of consolation.
As Helena Sheehan notes in her introduction:
"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 future that 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.]
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 emphasis added.]
The fact that this doomed comrade chose to spend his last weeks and days expounding and defending this Hermetic theory (albeit, one that had been given a bogus materialist flip) -- pleading with Stalin not to destroy this work --, just about says it all.
Dialectical Druggies Snort The Correct 'Line'
Lord Acton was wrong when he said:
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This gets things completely upside down. As Tony Cliff remarked (in a talk), it's 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, thus corrupting them in return.
Similarly, a passive working class allows revolutionaries (or, rather, their 'leaders') to get up to all kinds of dialectical mischief. So the latter become corrupted, too.
Among the many different forms this corruption takes is the general lack of any sort of democratic control (on both Central Committees and these 'leaders').
To this end, and despite the regular calls to "build the party", small now becomes beautiful, if not highly desirable. This is because it allows for maximum thought-control. Plainly, in small parties, the 'purity' of the 'revolutionary tradition' is easier to enforce.
Sectarianism is thus an intrinsic feature of the political and organisational practice of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries such as these.
Indeed, this is what Hal Draper had to say about the situation in America alone, thirty odd 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.]
Of course, this is not just an American experience, it is international, and, as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, the situation has worsened considerably since the above words were written.
The aforementioned Authoritarian Personality ensures that democratic accountability is at best merely formal, which soon becomes an early casualty in this backwater of the class war. Democracy is, after all, an external constraint, favoured by the majority for obvious reasons -- but, equally feared by this petty-bourgeois minority, and for the same reasons. In such dialectically-dominated micro-parties, democracy threatens the internally-enforced control that the professional revolutionary invariably prefers.18a
This is, after all, why Capitalists themselves need the state to impose their rule on otherwise democratic workers -- and it's why they also need to call upon various idealist and reactionary nostrums to convince the recalcitrant that all this is 'for their benefit'. It is also why Dialectical Marxists need the "centralist", but not the "democratic", part of democratic centralism, and why the latter of the two is dispensed with so readily and so often.
Naturally, these distortions do not arise independently of external forces. As noted above, the malignant features of Dialectical Dementia tend to dominate when the materialist counter-weight provided by the working class is much more attenuated, or when it is totally absent (that is, before the working class had emerged an effective social force, or in periods of defeat or "downturn"). This is, of course, exactly when Dialectical Druggies tend to 're-discover' this 'theory', and when all of them attempt to snort along the same correct party line.19
Small wonder then that these petty-bourgeois victims cling on to 'Materialist Dialectics' like drunks do to lampposts -- and just like religionists cling to their opiates.
'Materialist Dialectics' now dominates and then shapes 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 one of them together, but on the cement that holds the party and the whole Marxist "tradition" together.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, they must keep the faith. Commitment to the revolution on these terms now creates militants who, for all the world, appear to suffer from a dialectical personality disorder -- chief among which is the Leader Complex.
All this helps explain why, among dialecticians, disagreements quickly become so personal, and why factionalism is so rife -- and why strong characters, like Ted Grant, Gerry Healy, Michael Pablo, Tony Cliff, Ernest Mandel, Pierre Lambert, and host of others, began to form splits and divisions almost from the get-go.
As noted above, fragmentation is now virtually synonymous with Dialectical Marxism itself (witness the well-aimed jokes in Monty Python's Life of Brian about the Judean People's Front, etc.).
Dialectical Marxists thus soon become Militant Martinets, ostracising and expelling anyone who fails to tow the 'correct line'. Often these Dialectical Despots have very powerful personalities, something they can 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 control.
The petty-bourgeois revolutionary ego thus helps keeps our movement fragmented, small, insular and thus ineffectual --, in preference to its being democratic, outward-looking and effective.
Another ironic 'dialectical inversion' for you to ponder.
The Road To Dialectical Damascus
Each dialectical ego imagines that it alone has direct access to the exact meaning of the dialectic (here is an excellent recent example), mirroring the sort of individualism that underpins petty-bourgeois Protestantism, where believers are required to find their own way to salvation via the Bible, and endless disputation. This accounts for the intense and interminable dialectical debates over vacuous Hegelian concepts (again, rather like those that exercised the medieval schoolmen), whether this or that thesis is "abstract", "positivist", or "one-sided", or something else.20
This, of course, also helps explain why each supplicant thinks that no one else "understands" the dialectic.
[Since no one does understand this mystical theory (on that, see Essay Nine Part One), that is a very easy claim to make, and one which is equally impossible to refute.]
Thus, every opponent is branded in the same way (on this see below, and Note 19a): all fail to "understand" the dialectic -- that is, all except the blessed soul that made that claim!
It's almost as if such comrades have received a personal visit from the Self-Developing Idea itself. Indeed, the Road to Damascus and the Road to Dialectics have more in common than just a capital "D".
Defeat And Dialectical Druggies
As noted above, in defeat such comrades turn once more to Dialectical Methadone to insulate their minds from reality and constant failure. And by all accounts this opiate does an excellent job. Hence, anyone attempting to argue with any of these Dialectical Druggies would be far better occupied head-butting a Billy-goat for all the good it will do. [That allegation is easily confirmed; check this out.]
However, narcoleptic stupor of this level of intensity -- and the lack of clarity required to maintain it -- only helps engineer yet more splits, and thus set-backs and defeats, thereby creating the need for another sizeable hit.
And so this Dialectical Merry-go-round lumbers on into this new millennium.
No wonder Marxism is to success what religion is to peace on earth.
DM has thus infected our movement at every level, exacerbating sectarianism, factionalism, exclusivism, unreasonableness, dismissive haughtiness (this endearing quality displayed most notably by the High Church Faction), extreme dogmatism (bordering, it seems, on clinical paranoia in some cases), all topped with layers of abuse, (peppered with delightful phrases like "rant", "diatribe", "screed", "sh*t", "cr*p", and worse), which dialectical vices 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 to question this sacred creed.
If faults such as these were to afflict an individual, they would provide sufficient grounds for sectioning under various mental health acts. Unsurprisingly, the result of all this is that the ruling-class do not need to divide us in order to help consolidate their rule; we are quite capable of making a first-rate job ourselves.
Everyone in the movement is painfully aware of this predicament (some even joke about it -- again, along Monty Python lines!); others excuse it or explain it away with yet more 'dialectics'.21
But, no one confronts it at its poisonous source in the class origins of the petty-bourgeois personality with its fondness the divisive doctrines of latter-day Hermeticism.
If Doctrinaire Marxism is the final outcome of this mystical creed, it needs a Guru or two to interpret it, rationalise constant failure, and justify the regular splits -- and, of course, to create yet more of the same.
Enter the cult of the personality with its petty, nit-picking, small-minded, little pond megalomania. Enter the "Leader" who knows all, reveals all, expels all (and, in notorious cases, kills all): the Dialectical Magus.
As observers of religious cults have noted, even the most mundane and banal of statements put out by such leaders are treated with inordinate respect and a level of deference that would shame orthodox Roman Catholics -- almost as if they had been carried down from off the mountain itself and were thus possessed of profound mystical significance.
Witness then the inordinate respect and semi-religious awe shown for the dialectical meanderings of Mao or Stalin. Here is Lin Biao on Mao, 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.]
Here 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 Hitler ever receive such praise?
And few need to be reminded of the cult of Kim-II-sung, Kim-Jong-iI and Enver Hoxha. Note, too, the adulation of comrade Healy (by prominent members of the old WRP). In fact, Healy was well-known for fomenting strife among comrades (with added violence, so we are told) to accentuate the 'contradictions' in his 'Party' --, along 'sound' dialectical lines. Witness also the wholly un-merited and on-going worship of that towering mediocrity, Bob Avakian.22
Compare this with Marx's own stated attitude:
"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.]
This phenomenon also helps account for the personal and organisation corruption revolutionary politics has witnessed over the years (ranging from Mao's use of female comrades to the same with respect to Healy (on that, see Appendix A) -- but there are many other examples), which is partly the result of the noxious effect this doctrine has had on otherwise radical minds.
How else could one internally rationalise the pragmatic contradiction between the 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 Marxism replicate much of the abuse -- and most of sectarianism -- which is found in all forms of religion. [Again, see for example, 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, further aggravated by a divisive Hermetic 'theory' that is capable of rationalising anything!
Social Psychology Does Not Apply To Dialecticians
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. This is because they refuse to accept that any of the pressures that bear down on the rest of ordinary humanity can possibly have an effect them, the DM-elect. In that case, social psychology does not apply to such demi-gods!
In stark contrast, dialecticians are quite happy to reduce their opponents' ideas to their class origins/position; indeed they do this all the time. However, any attempt to do the same with respect to their own philosophical ideas --, which trace the fondness leading dialecticians have for Philosophy back to their class origin/position of these individuals --, is rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism"!
Indeed, Lenin was quite happy to 'reduce' his opponents' politics to their class position:
"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. In words, Martov's formulation 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). 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 intimately bound up with its customary mode of life, its mode of earning a livelihood, which in a great many respects approximates to the petty-bourgeois mode of existence (working in isolation or in very small groups, etc.). Nor is it fortuitous, lastly, that the defenders of Comrade Martov's formulation were the ones who had to cite the example of professors and high school students! It was not champions of a broad proletarian struggle who, in the controversy over Paragraph 1, took the field against 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 (1947), pp.66-67. Bold emphasis added.]
And later on, quoting Kautsky on the social psychology of his opponents, Lenin argued:
"One cannot 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 very, very 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 inexpedient tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes, not to individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may identify himself with the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak of 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.
'This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. 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 is himself often enough exploited and humiliated 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.
'...Quite different 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...'.
"Just such feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find themselves in the minority, and nothing more, was the refusal of Martov and his friends to be named for office merely because the old circle had not been endorsed, as were their complaints of a state of siege and emergency laws 'against particular groups', which Martov cared nothing about when Yuzhny Rabochy and Rabocheye Dyelo were dissolved, but only came to care about when his group was dissolved.
"Just such feeble whining of intellectuals who happened to find 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 which poured out in such a flood at our Party Congress (and even more so after).
"The minority bitterly complained of the 'false accusation of opportunism'. Well, it had to do something to conceal the unpleasant fact that it was opportunists, who in most cases had followed the anti-Iskra-ists -- and partly these anti-Iskra-ists themselves -- that made up the compact minority, seizing with both hands on the championship of the circle spirit in Party institutions, opportunism in arguments, philistinism in Party affairs, and the instability and wishy-washiness of the intellectual." [Ibid., pp.121-24. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
In that case, for dialecticians like Lenin, it seems legitimate to 'reduce' one's enemies' and opponents' ideas to their class position, but not one's own.
Now, such theorists 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 effect on their ideas and attitudes (for instance, toward strikes), and yet they will resist the same conclusion when it is applied to them and their material circumstances.
The only conclusion possible here 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 god-botherers among us -- even down to their reliance on an obscure book about an invisible 'Being' (i.e., Hegel's Logic).
So, while all these faults and foibles have well-known material causes when they descend upon the superstitious, they apparently have no cause whatsoever when they similarly grace the sanctified lives of our very own Dialectical Saints. Hence, faults and foibles like these can safely be ignored, never spoken about in polite company.
Until, that is, such comrades are caught with their dialectical pants down -- and even then this can be brushed aside as "bourgeois propaganda".
Unsurprisingly, this just means that the Dialectical Merry-go-round takes another spin across the flatlands of failure, its participants ever more convinced of their semi-divine infallibility.
In order to boost further its hypnotic power, DM must claim to be able to explain everything (which is indeed precisely what the DM-classicists avow; on this, see Essay Two) -- even if it never actually delivers a single comprehensible thesis, predicts not one novel fact and has no discernible practical implications/applications (except, perhaps, negative).23a
To that end, we have an insistence on "Totality" (which is left conveniently undefined), on "Infinities" and on various assorted "Absolutes" (both of which are left theologically obscure).
'Materialist Dialectics' must not only be capable of weathering defeat, it must be able to 'foresee' future victories in each set-back. To that end, we have UOs everywhere (for a particularly good example of this phenomenon, see below), all operating under the watchful eye of the NON. That 'Law' tells us that everything inevitably turns into its opposite; if so, failure (that is, if it is ever acknowledged) cannot help but turn into success -- one day.24
[UO = Unity of Opposites; NON = Negation of the Negation.]
'Materialist Dialectics' must therefore allow 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", meaning that the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism can be ignored (since it is not really real), or it can be blamed on anything and everything but the theory that has delivered this comforting message to the faithful.
DM must therefore transcend the limitations of ordinary, 'formal thinking', which is one reason why the attainment of 'absolute truth' has to be projected into the future, to the end of an infinite asymptotic meander, insulating it from easy disconfirmation in the here-and-now. This also helps explains why DM-fans ignore awkward facts that do not fit the Ideal Picture the dialectical classics have painted for them.
[On all the above, see Essays Two through Eleven Part Two. On the lengths to which dialecticians will go to ignore things they cannot explain, or have never even thought about, see the links indexed here. As readers will see there, Creationists are rank amateurs in comparison!]
In addition, 'Materialist Dialectics' must encourage/facilitate a level of tactical flexibility that places it way beyond the normal canons of reason, and of reasonableness, enabling its more skilled adepts to change direction (anti-democratically, opportunistically, and/or inconsistently) at the drop of a negative particle. To that end, regular appeals are made to the contradictions integral to this this theory, and which can be found everywhere --, and that includes applied dialectics, too! [Exactly how dialecticians put the word "contradiction" to misuse, see below.]
Moreover, this theory must lie way beyond all possible doubt, so that if anyone attempts to question it they can be ignored on the grounds that they do not "understand" dialectics --, which is, once more, a pretty safe accusation to make since no one understands dialectics! [On this, see Part One of this Essay.]
If there is no settled view of DM (or if it is couched in sufficiently vague and equivocal terms, and left in that state for generations, frozen in a nineteenth century bubble), anyone who disagrees with the latest dialectical line can be accused of "deviation" or "revisionism" -- and hence of betraying Marxism. Naturally, this approach is the non-existent deity's gift to the opportunist and the sectarian.
Even better, this theory must be impossible to refute. This is a neat, but convenient implication of the Hegelian dialectic which we have already encountered, wherein every attempt to oppose it, reveal its contradictions or challenge it is viewed as further proof of its correctness, as yet more grist to the Hermetic mill. Hence, any putative 'refutation' merely doubles up and paradoxically returns as confirmation of a system that glories in just such contradictions! The more heads cut off this Hydra, the more it grows.25
Dialectics thus cannot disappoint, nor can it fail its acolytes since, according to another of its tenets, humanity will never actually possess the complete picture of anything (not even of a common-or-garden glass tumbler!), let alone everything. So, like the will of 'God', the DM-Absolute (the "Totality") moves ever onward in mysterious ways, its twists and turns capable of being fully 'comprehended' only by our "glorious" leaders (who, up to now, have found themselves incapable of explaining this 'theory' to anyone else).
Consequently, what might at first sight appear to be an engagingly modest admission (i.e., that no one knows the final truth about anything, or that all theories are "partially true", etc., etc.) soon becomes its opposite. This is now transformed into a stick with which to beat the opposition: if no one knows 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 aright -- by appealing, like the Roman Catholic Church, to "tradition" and authority.25a
Thus is created the cult of the Central Committee, and on this is built the aforementioned Leader Cult, the Dialectical Guru. As noted above, alongside this arrives the doctrine that only a few (oracular) individuals (or committees) are fountains of dialectical truth, and can be quoted as such -- and are quoted as such --, over and over again to confound unbelievers.25b
In such a topsy-turvy world of silicate-loving, 'dialectical ostriches', the one with their heads buried deepest in the sand are deemed leadership material.26
However, the spurious superiority of 'Materialist Dialectics' over 'ordinary consciousness' is secured by means of several exclusivising tricks: (1) The use of unintelligible jargon that no one understands, or seems able to explain (without the employment of even more jargon, of equal obscurity); (2) An appeal to authority (sometimes called the "real Marxist tradition");27 (3) Regular appeals to the sacred DM-texts, linked to an 'orthodox' interpretative tradition, now ossified in constantly recycled and highly repetitive commentaries -- the aforementioned Dialectical Mantra.28
To that end, 'Materialist Dialectics' must harmonise with other alien-class systems of thought, since it has to emphasise the continuity and progress of human knowledge -- "through contradiction". In that case, there must be an IED between 'Materialist Dialectics' and traditional Metaphysics, or there'd be no such continuity. This helps explain why erstwhile radicals are so slavishly conservative when it comes to philosophy.
[IED = Identity in Difference (i.e., 'Improvised Explanatory Device').]
In that case, the dialectical faithful refuse to admit that the provable link that exists between 'Materialist Dialectics' and the mystical theories of previous generations counts against it -- as one would imagine ought to be the case with any theory that proudly proclaims its materialist/scientific credentials. Hence, the fact that virtually every DM-thesis finds echo in most forms of mystical thought is paradoxically regarded as one of its strengths, not one of its weaknesses.29
This theory must also insist that in spite of a formal acceptance of the Heraclitean Flux, its core ideas should remain hermetically sealed against change. And so they are. In that case, over the last century there has been virtually no innovation in DM. [This allegation will be substantiated in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]
Indeed, those with their heads buried in it cannot boast a theory that shifts with the Heraclitean sands.
Furthermore, this theory must be the source of boundless optimism so that despite the way things appear to be (to those lost in the mists of "commonsense" and "formal thinking", of course), the NON guarantees that the underlying tendencies at work in the universe favour the dialectical cause -- even if things sometimes need hurrying along (with human intervention).29a
Dialectical Militants will inherit the earth one day -- but only if they believe in The Power of Negativity with all their might.30
Dialectics provides all of the faithful with some of the above, and some of the faithful with all of the above. This helps explain its almost universal acceptance by revolutionary socialists, its longevity, the semi-religious loyalty it engenders in those held in its thrall -- and why it will never be abandoned.
DM-fans would rather die with their heads buried in these Parmenidean Sands than face material reality in all its complexity with even a hint of courage -- or honesty.
However, this also helps explain a rather curious anomaly: as the working-class grows larger the influence Dialectical Marxism has on it dwindles.
Parallel to this -- but not unrelated to it -- our movement continues to splinter, thus 'enjoying' steadily decreasing influence on the class struggle. Moreover, the fact that workers ignore our movement en masse means that the materialist counter-weight they bring with them into Marxism has no influence precisely where it might count: on our ideas.
The dearth of active socialist workers thus means that the unifying force of the class struggle by-passes the revolutionary movement, which, because it is dominated by petty-bourgeois individuals, continues to fragment.
So Marxist Idealism lumbers on while its theorists think of new ways to make these awkward facts disappear.
DM And De-Classé Marxists
The class origin of the majority of professional revolutionaries (who for all or most of their lives do not share the lives and struggles of ordinary workers) means that this ruling-class theory -- dialectics -- strengthens their sense of exclusivity. Indeed, that is why this theory appeals to petty-bourgeois and de-classé revolutionaries -- most of whom occupy the higher echelons of our movement and thus control its ideas.
Only if Marxists become aware of this is there any hope that the movement can extricate itself from this ideological morass.
Unfortunately, as is the case with other forms of drug addiction, clarity of vision is the last thing one can expect of those with a serious dialectical-opiate dependency problem. As these Essays have shown, and as experience confirms, this is indeed what we find.
There are in fact two main types of dialectician (which groups, of course, overlap at the edges):
(1) Low Church Dialecticians [LCDs]: Comrades in this category cleave to the original, unvarnished truth laid down in the sacred DM-texts (written by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, or Mao). These simple souls are highly proficient at quoting 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.
They may be naive, but they are at least consistently so.
[FL = Formal Logic.]
In general, LCDs are blithely ignorant of FL. Now, on its own this is no hanging matter. However, such self-inflicted and woeful ignorance does not stop them from pontificating about FL, or from regaling us with its alleged limitations -- charges based on ideas they unwisely copied from Hegel, surely the George W Bush of Logic.
Figure Three: Advanced Logic
Class At Camp Hegel
LCDs are by-and-large active revolutionaries, committed to 'building the party'. Alas, they have unwisely conspired to do the exact opposite, helping keep the parties to which they belong small because of the countless splits and expulsions they help engineer. This is a rather fitting pragmatic contradiction that the 'Dialectical Deity' has visited upon these the least of its slaves. Of course, these individuals cannot see the irony in all this (even when it is pointed out to them -- I know, I have lost count of the number of times I have tried!), since they too have not taken the lens caps off.
This means that despite the fact that every last one of these sad individuals continually strives to "build the party" few revolutionary groups boast membership roles that rise much above the risible. In fact, all we have witnessed since WW2 is the creation of yet more fragmented sects -- but still no mass movement. [Anyone who doubts this should look here, here, here and here. Or now, here.]
Has a single one of these individuals made this connection?
Are you kidding!?
The long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory (i.e., 'Materialist Dialectics') are the only two things in the entire universe that are not interconnected, it seems...
(2) High Church Dialecticians [HCDs]: These Marxists are in general openly contemptuous of the 'sophomoric ideas' found in most of the DM-classics (even though many of them seem to have a fondness for Engels's first 'Law').
More often than not, HCDs reject the idea that the dialectic operates in nature, sometimes inconsistently using Engels's first 'Law' to justify this 'leap' (which tactic allows them to claim that human history and development are unique), just as they are equally dismissive of these simple LCD souls for their adherence to every last word in the classics.31
[Anyone who knows about High Church Anglicanism will know exactly of what I speak.]
HCDs are mercifully above such crudities; they prefer the mother lode -- direct from Hegel, Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks and/or the writings of assorted latter day Hermeticists like Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Tony Smith, Tom Sekine, Robert Albritton, Chris Arthur, Bertell Ollman, or Slavoj Zizek --, sometimes cut with a few kilos of hardcore jargon drawn straight from that intellectual cocaine-den otherwise known as French Philosophy, or, perhaps, from that hot-bed of systematic confusion: the Frankfurt School.
Or, even worse, that haven of intellectual heroin: the work of Heidegger.31a
HCDs are generally, but not exclusively, academic. Tortured prose is their forte, and pointless existence is their punishment.
Figure Four: The Sisyphus College Recruitment Poster --
Aimed At HCDs Seeking A More Useful Existence
At least LCDs try to pretend that their ideas are relevant to the class struggle.
In contrast, High Church Dialectics is just good for the CV.
[Plainly, the latter sort of dialectics is not an "abomination" to that section of the bourgeoisie that administers Colleges and Universities.]
Both factions are, however, well-stocked with conservative-minded comrades happy to copy the a priori thought-forms of two-and-a-half millennia of boss-class theory, seldom pausing to give any thought to the implications of such easily won knowledge. If knowledge of the world is a priori, and based solely on armchair speculation, reality must indeed be Ideal.
[It is worth pointing out that there are noted exceptions to these sweeping generalisations -- some academic Marxists do actively engage with the class struggle; the point is that their 'high theory' is irrelevant in this regard. Indeed, I can't think of a single example of the work of an academic Marxist which has had an impact on the class war -- except perhaps negatively. Any who disagree are invited to e-mail me with the details.]
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-sounding alternative to mainstream traditional philosophical theory -- as we saw happened after 1905 in Russia.
Dialectics (especially those parts that have been infected with the deadly HCD-strain) thus taps into thought-forms that have dominated intellectual life for 2500 years -- i.e., those that define the boundaries of philosophical 'acceptability', and thus those which are based upon a priori thesis-mongering and the invention of increasingly baroque, dogmatic theories.
Hence, 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 mountain of long-term failure.
Substitutionism Once More
Another question left unanswered: How is it even conceivable that the vast majority of revolutionary socialists have adopted this allegedly alien-class ideology? At first sight it seems impossible to believe that leading socialists like Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky -- comrades with impeccable Marxist credentials -- could have maintained a consistent socialist stance if the account of the origin and nature of 'Materialist Dialectics' given in these Essays is correct. An ideological compromise of this order of magnitude would surely have had major, if not disastrous effects on revolutionary practice; indeed, it would have rendered it totally ineffectual. In fact, and contrary to the ideas advanced at this site, it could be argued that 'Materialist Dialectics' has actually been successfully tested in practice for well over a hundred and forty years. These considerations alone seem to make the claims advanced at this site impossible to accept.
Or so it could be maintained.
DM And Revolutionary Practice
Even so, and in spite of constant claims to the contrary, DM in fact has no practical consequences (other than the negative ones outlined above, and again below).
This doesn't mean that revolutionaries haven't continually toyed with DM-phraseology in some of their tactical deliberations. Certainly, DM-theorists can talk the talk; they are indeed experts jargonisers.
But, as we will see, it's impossible for them to walk the walk.
Admittedly, books outlining revolutionary theory are packed with claims that purport to show that dialectics has played a central role Marxist politics since its inception. However, what revolutionaries might want to claim they have put into practice and what they are actually capable of doing, thinking or acting upon is an entirely different matter.
The Essays posted at this site 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 a chocolate condom is to contraception. [Details in Essay Ten Part One.] This means that while dialecticians may write -- or, indeed, constantly repeat DM-phrases --, it's not possible for them to form a single coherent thought on that basis, and thus for them to act upon it.
Of course, that places dialecticians in no worse a position than other metaphysicians (whose theories are similarly bereft of material import); no worse perhaps, but certainly no better.32
If a sentence that purports to express something is itself non-sensical, then no one uttering or writing it can mean anything by it (over and above perhaps certain contingent consequential effects; for example they might mean to confuse or startle their interlocutors). [More on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
Words used in such sentences cannot 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
To be sure, dialectical phrases can be, and have been wheeled out to 'justify' or 'rationalise' political decisions which have been taken for other reasons (which tactic is rather similar to the non-sensical phrases that assorted priests, Bishops and 'holy men' have used over the centuries to 'justify' such things as war, royal privilege and gross inequality). [Indeed, we will see many 'dialectical' examples of this sort of thing, below. Incidentally, the word "non-sense" has been hyphenated here since I am using it in a special sense explained in Essay Twelve Part One.]
However, as noted in Essay Twelve Part One, because DM-theses are non-sensical, they cannot reflect anything in the material world, or indeed anything or any processes underlying it. In that case, they cannot help change it.
These might appear to be rather dogmatic claims (since it seems plain that if something can be uttered, or perhaps written down, it is capable of being thought, and hence acted upon). The rest of this section is therefore devoted to defending them.
We encountered a similar problem earlier (again in Essay Twelve Part One), connected with Lenin's attempt to specify what could or could not be thought concerning matter and motion.
M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318.]
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 it. In the end, it turned out that he could not actually think what he claimed he thought he could since M1 fell apart in the very act of 'thinking' whatever it was he imagined he wanted to claim by means of it. So, in 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..."). This implied that there was in fact nothing that Lenin intended to say, nor was there anything in his words that he could have communicated to anyone so that it was capable of being put into practice -- or which could have had any implications for practice (other than negative, that is).
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 proposition (such as "George W Bush is taller than his wife"), then clearly the sense that that proposition already has will enable it to become the content of a thought that NN could entertain. However, if the sentence substitutable for "p" makes no sense, then not only would the words it contains not express a proposition, it would not be possible for NN to think a thought by means of them (once more, as we saw was the case with Lenin and M1):
M2: Lenin thought that motion without matter is unthinkable.
Howsoever M2 is repackaged, it is incapable of making any sort of sense.
It is worth reminding ourselves that it is not an 'act of thinking' that gives a sentence its sense. If this were so, then anything could mean anything, and the phrase "act of thinking" would itself become problematic.34
Consider the following illegitimate substitution instance of "p" in S1:
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 on before, if grinder.
S2a: The speed mice inconsiderable sunset the colour red was twice acidic, but not Tarquin on between three o'clock recidivist it squared on before, if grinder.
S2a makes no sense, and so while NN might attempt to mouth this set of words he would not be able to form (in S2) a coherent thought by means of it (assuming, of course, that S2a isn't a code of some sort).35
The problem with S2a is not connected with a lack of imagination. It's not that 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 7, twice, but only (Tarquin?) on (?) "between three o'clock…". There is no such 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's because S2/S2a represents a radical misuse of language, as should seem plain.
While S2a is a clear case of arrant non-sense, DM-doctrines require a little more encouragement before they self-destruct (as we saw with M1 and M2).
M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318.]
M2: Lenin thought that motion without matter is unthinkable.
As argued in Essay Twelve Part One, this is because DM-theorists (like other metaphysicians), at the very least, misconstrue the rules we have for the use of words as if they picture substantive features of the world. On top of that, dialecticians compound this error by the adoption of ideas they have lifted from mystical theology, burying the results under several layers of impenetrable Hegelian jargon. And, as if that were not enough, they further aggravate the situation by the disdain they show for the material language of ordinary life --, certain principles of which are partially codified in 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).]
However, the disguised nature of the sort of non-sense condensed into a typical DM-sentence does not affect the present point. Disguised or not, if it's not possible to explain the sense of a single DM-thesis (as the Essays posted here have shown, and as DM-theorists themselves have confirmed by their failure to do just that over the last 140 years, or so), it's not possible to think its content either -- since DM theses have none.
In that case, trivial examples excepted, it is not possible to act upon a single dialectical thesis.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. [This is based on the observation that language is a social phenomenon, the significance of which idea will be explored at length Essay Thirteen Part Three, and briefly in Essay Twelve.]
Hence, S2a (or whatever finally replaces "p") does not acquire a sense just because it is prefixed with the sentential operator: "NN thought that…."36
Consider these examples:
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 on before, if grinder.
S3: NN thought that Being was at the same time identical with but different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved in Becoming.
S3 does not report a coherent thought that NN could form since the phrase "NN thought..." cannot turn gibberish into sense.
So, despite claims to the contrary, metaphysicians and religious mystics cannot think the truth (or falsehood) of anything they say (in these areas), either. [As we will see in Essay Twelve Part One, sentences like S3 cannot be made sense of, no matter what is done with them.]
Naturally, this partly accounts for the total uselessness of such doctrines, and thus for the appeal they have for those in power -- or at least the appeal they have for their ideologues. This is plainly because a 'profound-looking' metaphysical thesis is more likely to convince a wealthy patron (and/or assorted toadying on-lookers) that the one who concocted it has hit on something 'deep', especially if no one appears to understand it.
Clearly, this is the philosophical equivalent of the apocryphal story of the Emperor's New Clothes.37
This serious drawback applies equally well to the sorts of things DM-theorists often try to assert, which naturally means that if what they say cannot be thought (in the sense indicated above), then it can have no practical consequences, nor can it form the basis for a course of action. That is, it cannot do so any more than would be the case if someone uttered the following sentences and imagined they meant something by them, or 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 the strike.
S5: Don't forget that the speed mice inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic, so we must organise the march for tomorrow.
S6: The fact that the speed mice inconsiderable sunset of the colour red is twice acidic means that we shall have to form a larger picket.
S7: Being is at the same time identical with but 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.
Of course, S4-S6 are obviously malformed, but they were quoted to make this point clear. No one supposes that dialectically-induced propositions are quite so syntactically-challenged (on that see, for example, here), but they fall apart alarmingly quickly for other reasons (as these Essays have shown).
However, as S7-S9 also demonstrate, DM-theses form no coherent basis for action. [Sceptical readers can insert their own favoured DM-thesis (but not HM-thesis!) into any one of S7-S9, the result, I predict, will not be any different.]37a
Non-sense And Practice
So, when it is claimed that ideas specific to DM have actually formed the basis of revolutionary practice it is reasonable to expect some sort of explanation of how this is possible -- and one that advances beyond the usual hand waving and bluster --, especially when no one seems to be able to say what the said DM-doctrines actually mean.
Indeed, and because of this, it is equally reasonable to suppose that DM-ideas could only ever have succeeded in clouding the issues -- hindering revolutionaries in their attempt to develop clarity --, and further that they could only have led to serious tactical blunders and pointless time-wasting arguments, just as they should help foster sectarian in-fighting and sanction the post hoc rationalisation of regressive/reactionary political opportunism, which would be impossible to justify otherwise (as we will soon see).38
Of course, this is not the only secret behind Dialectical Marxism's spectacular record of failure over the last 150 years -- a record un-matched by any other major political creed in human history. But, it is one of the reasons.
Without doubt, this truly appalling record has much more to do with the general nature of capitalist society, the fragmented condition of the working-class -- when this is set against a relatively better organised, and ideologically more coherent ruling-class --, among other things. Indeed, the opposite idea -- that dialectics (allegedly the core theory of Marxism) has had nothing whatsoever to do with this long-term failure -- is bizarre in the extreme. [More on this in Essay Ten Part One.] In fact, we can only absolve this Hermetic 'theory' of all blame if we acknowledge it has had no subjective impact whatsoever on previous generations of revolutionaries, and has never been used by them at any time in the entire history of Marxism.39
Pull the other one!
But, What About 1917?
When confronted with the above unwelcome facts, DM-fans sometimes respond with a "Well if dialectics is so dire, how come the Bolsheviks were able to win power in 1917?"
[Non-Leninist DM-fans, of course, do not have even this to point to as a 'success'!]
Oddly enough, as a Leninist myself, I find this 'objection' remarkably easy to answer: the Bolsheviks were successful because they could not and did not use dialectics (either in its DM- or in its 'Materialist Dialectics'-form). To be sure, this claim is controversial, but only because no one has thought to question the role of dialectics before.
In fact, the material counterweight provided by working class soviets prevented the Bolsheviks from employing this useless theory. Had they tried to propagandise/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...", or "Matter without motion is unthinkable" (and the like), they'd have been regarded as complete lunatics, and rightly so.
On the other hand, they could and did use ideas drawn from HM to help organise the soviets. [All this was covered in detail Part One of this Essay.]
And it is no use arguing that dialectical concepts were used 'implicitly' (or that they 'informed' the tactics that Lenin and his party adopted, somehow operating 'behind the scenes'). As we will see below, since dialectical concepts can be employed to justify anything and everything (being inherently and proudly contradictory), had they been employed, they could only have been used subjectively since there is no objective way to tell these incompatible applications apart.
Anyone who takes exception to the above will need to show precisely how Lenin and the Bolsheviks explicitly used dialectical-concepts --, as opposed to their actual employment of HM-concepts (the latter based on a concrete class analysis of events in 1917, and on years of experience relating to the working class) -- in 1917. They will thus need to produce documented evidence of the Bolshevik's use of dialectical ideas/theses, and then show how they could possibly have been of any practical benefit to workers in revolutionary struggle --, or even how they could have helped the Bolsheviks comprehend what was going on and know how to intervene successfully.
Now, 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 'Materialist Dialectics' -- put to any use, or even referred to abstractly! [Bone (1974).] To be sure, it is always possible I have missed something, but even if I have, this Hermetic creed hardly forms a prominent part of the day-to-day discussions of active revolutionaries.
Added later: I have now gone though the available documents line by line twice -- still no sign of this Hermetic virus!
In fact, it is conspicuous by its absence.
Hence, the available evidence suggests that active revolutionaries made no use of this 'theory'.
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 sign of dialectics is a couple of dozen occurrences of the word "contradiction" in relation to capitalism (etc.) in over 400 pages. No other examples of dialectical jargon appear in the entire volume, and even then this word is not used to explain anything, nor does it seem to do any work. Furthermore, most of the uses of this word were made by Zinoviev; as far as I can tell, Lenin does not 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. This theory does no work here either.
And it is even less use someone requiring of me to produce proof that Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not use dialectical ideas, since there is no written evidence that he/they did, as the above indicates. Hence, the contrary case goes by default. Of course, all this is quite independent of the proof offered in these Essays that not one single dialectical concept is useable. After all, as we saw earlier, even Lenin got into a serious muddle when he tried to play around with such ideas, let alone when he attempted to apply them.
As we will soon find out, when some attempt is made to apply dialectical ideas, they can be made to justify anything whatsoever (no matter how contradictory that "anything whatsoever" might otherwise appear to be; in fact the more contradictory it is, the more 'dialectical' it seems!), and it can be, and has been used to rationalise any course of action, and its opposite -- including policies that are both counter-revolutionary and anti-Marxist.
In fact, shortly after the revolution, many younger comrades and Russian scientists began to argue at length that all of Philosophy (and not just dialectics) is part of ruling-class ideology (which is in fact a crude version of my own thesis!). It was not until the Deborinites won a factional battle in 1925/26 that this trend was defeated (and this was clearly engineered to help pave the way for the further destruction of the gains of October). More about this later.
[On this, see Bakhurst (1991), Joravsky (1961), Graham (1971), Wetter (1958).]
So, 1917 cannot be chalked-up as a success for this strain of Hermetic Mysticism.
However, we will see that the disintegration of the results of 1917 can partly be put down to dialectics.
Naturally, this leaves out of the account the influence DM has had on substitutionist ideas at work in the revolutionary tradition, which brings us to our next topic.
I will be devoting a whole Essay to this topic later on, but for present purposes we need merely sum up the results so far:
In Part One it was shown that ideas exclusive to DM cannot be used to educate, propagandise or agitate the working-class. Moreover, dialectics cannot even represent a generalisation of the experience of the Revolutionary Party, since not one single DM-fan understands it (or if they do, they have kept that fact well hidden for over one hundred and forty years) --, and neither does the target audience: workers. Worse, there's no evidence that revolutionaries have used this 'theory' in their practical interface with the working-class, either.
On the contrary, the history of this theory clearly reveals from where DM-concepts have originated: not from the experience of the party, nor from that of the class, but from a tradition possessed of excellent ruling-class 'bona fides', a tradition that prefers to peddle an Ideal view of reality, of a hidden world that supposedly underlies material appearances, 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. Not only do they fail relate to workers' experience, they fail to relate to anyone's experience,. Because of this they have to be imposed on workers' thinking, 'against the materialist grain', as it were. In contrast to this, HM can and does have practical import; it represents the generalisation and systematisation of workers' (and humanity's) collective experience and understanding -- as well as that of the party.
However, in the analysis above, the connection between DM and substitutionism was left somewhat unclear.
Substitutionist ideas in general (in this context) originate from the belief that workers are incapable of organising themselves (that is, over and above developing merely a 'trade union form of consciousness', or the like), or are too few/weak to do so -- and thus of bringing about a revolutionary change in a particular society.
Of course, substitutionism is not based on free-floating ideas, nor is it monolithic. It springs from various class ideologies and material interests, but it only becomes problematic at certain historical junctures. It largely maintains its grip (when it does) because of the fragmented and uneven nature of the working-class --, which conditions it helps prolong and/or exacerbate. Nevertheless, as is well-known, substitutionist ideas manifest themselves in the general belief that workers actually need someone, or some group, to lead them (both theoretically and practically), and that they are incapable (for whatever reason) of leading themselves and transforming society through their own activity, etc., etc. [More on this in Essay Nine Part One.]
To be sure, this is not the whole story, and it is possible to link substitutionist ideas to other reactionary beliefs and theories, not just these. That will not be attempted here.40
Among revolutionaries (at such times), the ideological justification for substitutionism can assume many forms, nurturing perhaps the belief that 'objective' factors prevent workers themselves from creating a classless society, or from prosecuting the struggle to attain it. It also motivates the belief that workers are incapable of comprehending their own interests, or they have been "bought off" by imperialist "super-profits".
However, in connection with the theme of this Essay, dialectics plainly encourages the idea that workers cannot grasp the fundamental 'scientific' and/or 'philosophical' principles that underlie human history and the rest of the universe. If so, they will, of course, need someone else to do this, or to understand that, for them.
This belief now transforms Marxists who are inclined in the above directions into latter-day prophets, superior human beings -- which frame-of-mind also helps explain the personality cults and the negative comments one hears about "workerism" and "economism" from such individuals.41
Nevertheless, this does not exhaust the possibilities. As it turns out, these other considerations are connected with the familiar claim found in traditional Philosophy (echoed in DM) that there is a fundamental distinction to be drawn between "appearance" and "reality".
It is no accident then that the above view has traditionally been associated with a haughty disdain for ordinary language and common experience. Thus, if reality is different from the way it seems, then workers -- who, according to this view, view nature and society superficially -- clearly require someone not only to uncover nature's secrets for them, but lead their thinking and act as their brains. Indeed, if the vernacular is inadequate in this regard (that is, if it can't be trusted "beyond certain limits"), then it needs to be replaced with a language that can. Or, at the very least, it requires supplementation with Hegelian jargon. Since 'commonsense' and ordinary language are inter-linked (on this view), and both are connected with communal life, this 'replacement language' must be based on philosophically- and scientifically-sound representational principles -- but not on the vernacular, which is governed by 'unreliable' and 'crude' communicational or communitarian principles.42
Moreover, and because of this, the jargon that litters this new 'revolutionary' language/theory must assist in the initiation of each acolyte into its inner mysteries, which will in the end reveal (to those not lost in the mists of 'commonsense') nature's underlying "essences", uncovering secrets that lie way beyond the reach of vulgar/formal "consciousness".
Figure Five: Dialectician Looking For
'Underlying Essences'
Hence, according to this way of seeing things, workers require teachers who are prepared to substitute into their heads a new set of ideas in place of the socially- and materially-grounded beliefs they already have -- a new set of ideas which, incidentally and undeniably, has been lifted from the class enemy, and which contains concepts drawn from the very worst forms of mystical Idealism.
Workers' thought must therefore be up-ended, and their materialist ideas replaced with these inverted Idealist concepts. The erstwhile subjects of history (i.e., revolutionary workers) must therefore become the passive objects of theory. They must be intellectually pacified by being theoretically knocked off their feet.
At this point, it is worth stressing that it is not being maintained here that revolutionaries should adopt a romantic or naïve view of workers or their ideas --, i.e., that their thoughts aren't fragmentary and inconsistent, that racist or sexist notions do not enter into their heads, that they always and infallibly know how best to further their own interests, that they have the requisite organisational structures adequate to that end -- or even that they understand the nature and source of their own oppression and exploitation, and so on. [None of these are cast in stone, anyway! How workers transform themselves in struggle with the aid of the party will be examined in a later Essay. Even so, any who still think ordinary language is inadequate in some way are encouraged to read this, and this, and then think again.]
Neither is it part of the argument here that workers do not need a revolutionary party drawn from their own ranks, which has established deep links with the class (forged in struggle), and which has thus learnt from them.43
On the other hand, because HM represents a generalisation of workers' experience, when it is introduced to them it augments what they already know; in that case, it does not need to be substituted in place of their own ideas -- even though it might change many of the latter for the better. As, noted in Essay Nine Part One, because HM meshes with workers' own experience, and speaks to their exploitation and oppression, it is introduced to them from the 'inside', as it were.
Nevertheless, the only issue of immediate concern here is the influence that DM-ideas have had on the attitude revolutionaries have adopted toward workers. Indeed, the issue concerns the connection between 'Materialist Dialectics' and the petty-bourgeois, substitutionist mentality that is endemic in professional revolutionaries, because of their class position.
Hence, in relation to tactics, and with regard to the theoretical understanding of the relationship between party and class, the question posed in this section is whether ideas drawn from what are demonstrably ruling-class sources, which reflect the priorities of the boss-class (e.g., mystification, esotericism, fragmentation, control, arrogance, disdain), when adopted by revolutionaries may have unsuspected, but inevitable substitutionist consequences.
In short, it is alleged that dialectical concepts will be used to try to legitimate substitutionism.
[Indeed, in Essay Nine Part One, it was concluded that 'Materialist Dialectics' is the ideology of substitutionist elements in Marxism.]
[As noted at the beginning of this Essay, the next three sub-sections form the most incomplete part of this Essay. More supporting evidence and argument will be added as my researches continue, and as I regain full access to my books and papers.]
Many of the remarks aired in the first half of this Part of Essay Nine are largely theoretical/abstract. What is needed now are concrete examples of the deleterious effects on Marxists of the use dialectical concepts.43a
Fortunately, because of the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism, these are not too hard to find -- in fact, it's rather surprising that no one has noticed them before (which in itself confirms the narcoleptic effect Hegelian concepts have had on the minds of the vast majority of revolutionaries, and on those comrades who have written about the history of our movement).
In that case, what follows is, I think, the first study of its kind.
Three preliminary points however need making:
(1) The following section will need far more attention devoting to it before its conclusions can be regarded as in any way definitive. I will, however, add more detail and evidence as the months and years unfold.
(2) The search for evidence has been hampered by the fact that every single Marxist history I have read of the periods I am about to analyse (indeed, about any period in our history) omits all mention of 'Materialist Dialectics'/DM as in any way to blame (partially or otherwise) for the defeats and set-backs our side has suffered since the 1860s. As far as I can determine, this 'theory' does not even get so much a mention in this regard!
Of course, that in itself is quite revealing given the centrality of dialectics to all that revolutionaries are alleged to have said, done and thought.
Why then this selective blindness?
The answer is pretty clear; as Marx suggested: to blame this theory in any way at all, directly or indirectly, for the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism would be to undermine the only source of consolation available to dialectically-distracted comrades. And this is why this theory has never been tested in practice (in the sense that practice has been allowed to deliver its unambiguous verdict).
(3) Any Stalinists and/or Maoists who disagree with my assessment of their respective traditions (below) are encouraged to shelve knee-jerk reactions (to what I have to say) until the end of this main section, by which time they will see the point of it all.
[Fellow Trotskyists will already have switched off anyway; experience has taught me that they are among the most closed-minded of comrades, often warning others not to read these Essays for fear the pristine purity of their ideas might be 'tainted' as a result. Many examples of this can be found at RevLeft; on that see here.]
In the details posted below, I have included lengthy passages from dialecticians in order to show how deep Hegelian concepts have seeped into our movement, exposing the pernicious effect they have had on every aspect of revolutionary theory and practice.
Apologies must be offered in advance for this, but there is no way these objectives could have been attained otherwise.
Long experience has taught me that dialecticians tend to deny certain allegations unless they are backed-up by chapter and verse. Even then, with passages from Engels, Lenin or Mao staring them in the face, many comrades remain locked in 'deny-everything-mode'! [An excellent recent example of this can be found here.]
I propose therefore to consider three 'case studies': the effect DM has had on (1) The increasingly Stalinised Bolshevik Party post-1925; (2) Dialectical Maoists from the early 1930s onward; and (3) the Trotskyist movement post-1929.
There are other examples that I could have chosen (indeed, I might consider including them here at a later date, perhaps in an Appendix to this Essay), but given the fact that these three cover periods when workers (and others) were entering upon arguably the biggest wave of revolutionary agitation in human history, and given the further fact that all this energy was squandered by the activities of dialecticians, these should be enough to prove to all but the most rabidly partisan, or the most heavily dialectically-doped of comrades, that 'Materialist Dialectics' is among the very worst doctrines ever to have colonised the human brain.
When the working class was ready to move, Dialectical Marxists seriously screwed up.
We will be lucky if they ever trust us again.
[1] Stalinism
DM/'Materialist Dialectics' was used by the Stalinised Bolshevik Party (after Lenin's death) to 'justify' the imposition of an undemocratic (if not an openly anti-democratic and terror-based) structure on both the Communist Party and the population of the former USSR (and later, elsewhere).
The catastrophic effects of these moves hardly need underlining.
This new and vicious form of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was justified by Stalin on the grounds that since Marxist theory holds that everything is 'contradictory', increasingly centralised control by the party was compatible with greater democratic freedom. The "withering-away of the state" was in fact confirmed by moves in the opposite direction: the ever-growing concentration of power at the centre. So, and paradoxically: less democracy was in fact more democracy!
Indeed, that very contradiction illustrated the truth of dialectics!
As Stalin himself put it:
"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27, 1930. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
And, he went on to add this rather ominous note:
"Anyone who fails to understand this peculiar feature and 'contradiction' of our transition period, anyone who fails to understand these dialectics of the historical processes, is dead as far as Marxism is concerned.
"The misfortune of our deviators is that they do not understand, and do not wish to understand, Marx's dialectics." [Ibid. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
As many leading Bolsheviks were later to find out, Stalin was not joking when he said this.
Indeed, this theory formed part of Stalin's 'justification' for his line on the National Question, specifically linking these two issues in the previous quotation:
"Lenin sometimes depicted the thesis on national self-determination in the guise of the simple formula: "disunion for union". Think of it -- disunion for union. It even sounds like a paradox. And yet, this 'contradictory' formula reflects that living truth of Marx's dialectics which enables the Bolsheviks to capture the most impregnable fortresses in the sphere of the national question." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
This allowed Stalin to claim that the merging of all national cultures (in the former USSR) into one was at the same time to show respect for, and to preserve their differences! We can be sure the Chechens and the Cossacks appreciated this 'dialectical' solution to the national question.
Earlier, Stalin had argued against Trotsky's demand for "inner party democracy" as follows:
"Consequently, we have here recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the Party right up to permitting political parties in the land of the dictatorship of the proletariat, disguised by phrases about 'inner party democracy', about 'improving the regime' in the Party. That freedom for factional squabbling of groups of intellectuals is not inner-party democracy, that the widely-developed self-criticism conducted by the Party and the colossal activity of the mass of the Party membership is real and genuine inner-party democracy -- Trotskyism cannot understand." [Ibid. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Greater democracy from less democracy; all eminently contradictory, all quintessentially 'dialectical'.
Moreover, it became possible to 'justify' the idea that socialism could be built in one country by, among other things, the dubious invention of "internal" versus "external" contradictions, later bolstered by the concoction of "principal" and "secondary" contradictions, along with the highly convenient idea that some contradictions were, and some were not, "antagonistic". Hence, the obvious class differences that remained, or which soon emerged in the former USSR were either non-existent or were in fact "harmonious". The real enemies (i.e., the source of all those nasty, "principal" (or perhaps even the "antagonistic") contradictions) were the external, imperialist powers.
This 'analysis' allowed STD's to argue that socialism could be built in one country because the intrinsic nature of the USSR could be defined by its internal relations, not the relations it held with the rest of the Capitalist world. This then 'allowed' them to claim that the actions of the imperialist powers, for example, constituted just such a set of 'external contradictions', in relation to the former USSR, and hence to argue that the real nature of their state could be defined internally based on its own internal, but 'non-antagonistic' contradictions. This in turn 'enabled' them to conclude (or, rather, it allowed them to rationalise a conclusion already arrived at for other reasons) that socialism could be built in one country. Clearly, this hyper-plastic theory can be bent into any required shape that is found to be convenient or expedient.
As Stalin argued:
"If the possibility of victory of socialism in a single country means the possibility of solving the internal contradictions which can be completely overcome in a single country (we are of course thinking about our own country), the possibility of the definitive victory of socialism means the possibility to overcome the external contradictions between the country of socialism and the countries of capitalism, and these contradictions can only be overcome thanks to the victory of the proletarian revolution in a certain number of countries". [XVth conference of the CPSU. Quoted from here.]43a1
[How 'contradictions' can be "overcome" is, of course, a deep mystery which we will have to pass over in silence.]
Nevertheless, as Tom Weston has shown in a recent article in Science & Society [Weston (2008)], the distinction between "antagonistic" and "non-antagonistic contradictions" [henceforth, AC and NAC, respectively] cannot be traced back to Lenin, as many suppose:
"Antagonism and contradiction are not at all the same thing. In socialism, the first will disappear, but the latter will remain" [Lenin, quoted in Weston (2008), p.433. This was in fact a marginal note Lenin wrote in his copy of a book by Bukharin!]
Weston goes on to say:
"This note has often been treated as evidence that Lenin accepted or even invented the NAC concept (e.g., Mitin and Mao), but it surely does not show this. Like Marx, Lenin distinguished contradiction from antagonism, and this raises a philosophical question about the relation between the two. Lenin did not answer this question, however, and he did not claim that antagonism is a special kind of contradiction." [Weston (2008), p.433.]
[Incidentally, Weston, who knows his logic (after all, he teaches the subject!), is remarkably accommodating here. For example, he nowhere asks why 'dialectical contradictions' are indeed contradictions to begin with. As we have seen (in Essay Five, Eight Part One, Eight Part Two (here, here and here), Essay Eight Part Three, and Essay Eleven Part One), little sense can be made of the term "dialectical contradiction". Nor does Weston ask how Lenin could possibly have known that "antagonism" and "contradiction" either are or aren't the same, or that one will disappear under socialism while the other won't. (The answer is, of course, that Lenin couldn't possibly have known this -- unless he was imposing these views on nature and society, contrary to what dialecticians tell us they never do.)]
Weston goes on to point out that the idea that there are NACs and ACs in nature and society began to take shape in the work of Bukharin and Deborin, but the first explicit appearance of either notion was in 1930, in an article that appeared in the Party's theoretical journal Bol'shevik written by Nicolai Karev (who was later to play a role in Boris Hessen's demise):
"The theme of this article was a critique of Bukharin's and Alexandr Bogdanov's conceptions of contradiction and equilibrium. As part of his argument that antagonism of classes is not analogous to antagonism of physical forces acting in different directions, Karev gave the following definition: 'Antagonism is in general that type of contradiction in which the opposite sides have become completely isolated from one another and externally confront one another'". [Ibid., p.440. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
However, it is quite clear from what Weston says that these two forms of 'contradiction' were introduced in order to rationalise the CPSU's claim that there was no class war in the former USSR, and that workers and peasants were neither oppressed nor exploited -- even if they had conflicting interests -- and to 'justify' the murderous collectivisation of the land and subsequent purges:
"From the 1930s, the most important application of the NAC concept was the soviet policy toward the peasantry...." [Ibid., p.436.]
Production by peasants was based on privately owned small-holdings, and there would naturally arise conflict between the peasantry and the urban working class over the prices they charged for their produce. However:
"The Bolsheviks...considered the poor and middle peasants and agricultural workers to be allies of the urban working class, forming a 'bond' which was the official basis of the soviet state." [Ibid., p.437.]
This was not so with respect to the "kulaks" and the urban traders (the so-called "NEPmen"), who were regarded as enemies -- whose ACs were soon 'resolved' (i.e., these groups were eradicated -- "No man, no problem" -- yes, I know Stalin probably didn't say this!):
"The...official view was that the contradiction of the labouring classes versus the kulaks tend to become more intense, while the contradictions inside the 'bond' tend to die out. Stalin wrote that inside the 'bond', there existed 'a struggle whose importance is out-weighed by...the community of interests, and which should disappear in the future...when they become working people of a classless society'.... Similar claims were made for the contradictions between manual workers and the soviet 'intelligentsia'...." [Ibid., p.437. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]43b
[STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
Nevertheless, a couple of generations later and STDs were still arguing the same line. Here is Cornforth (also misusing Lenin!):
"In general, social contradictions are antagonistic when they involve conflicts of economic interest. In such cases one group imposes its own interests on another, and one group suppresses another by forcible methods. But when conflicts of economic interest are not involved, there is no antagonism and therefore no need for the forcible suppression of any group by any other. Once class antagonisms are done away with in socialist society, all social questions can be settled by discussion and argument, by criticism and self-criticism, by persuasion, conviction and agreement....
"So Lenin remarked that 'antagonism and contradiction are utterly different. Under socialism antagonism disappears, but contradiction remains' (Critical Notes on Bukharin's 'Economics of the Transition Period')." [Cornforth (1974), pp.105-06.]
In which case, under 'socialism' strikes are 'unnecessary' (or they 'do not happen'); hence, they should not happen, and when they do they must be suppressed --, and so they were, with a level of violence rarely seen anywhere else outside of openly fascist states. [On this, see Haynes (2002) and Kozlov (2002).]
Any attempts made by workers to rebel (e.g., Hungary 1956) were blamed on "external forces", or agents outside the working class (a familiar excuse used by ruling classes the world over to account for, and thus ignore the significance of strikes and riots -- all caused, of course, by the ubiquitous "external agitator"), i.e., in this case, "imperialist powers", "fascists", or even Tito (but not ordinary workers fighting for and on behalf of their own interests), once more.44
We will merely note, alongside Cornforth, the calm way that the NACs in Hungary (in 1956) were resolved by Russian tanks (i.e., using "discussion and argument...persuasion, conviction and agreement").
To be sure, howsoever hard one tries, it is difficult not to be "persuaded" by an armoured column.
Figure Six: Hungary 1956 -- How To Resolve
'Contradictions', The STD Way
Cornforth also tried to defend the idea that socialism could be created in one country -- referring his readers to Trotsky's counter-claim, allegedly based on "abstract" and fixed categories:
"After the proletarian revolution was successful another scheme was propounded -- this time by Trotsky. 'You can't build socialism in one country. Unless the revolution takes place in the advanced capitalist countries, socialism cannot come in Russia.' Lenin and Stalin showed that this scheme, too, was false....
"In all these examples it will be seen that the acceptance of some ready-made scheme, some abstract formula, means passivity, support for capitalism, betrayal of the working class and of socialism. But the dialectical approach which understands things in their concrete interconnections and movement shows us how to forge ahead -- how to fight, what allies to draw in. That is the inestimable value of the Marxist dialectical method to the working class movement." [Ibid., pp.79-80. Bold emphasis added.]
Since the USSR is no more, and with the benefit of hindsight, one should rightly conclude that Cornforth ought to have remained loyal to Lenin's own 'fixed' and 'abstract' scheme that the revolution would have to spread or die:
"The facts of history have proved to those Russian patriots who will hear of nothing but the immediate interests of their country conceived in the old style, that the transformation of our Russian revolution into a socialist revolution, was not an adventure but a necessity since there was no other choice; Anglo-French and American imperialism will inevitably strangle the independence and freedom of Russia unless the world-wide socialist revolution, world-wide Bolshevism, triumphs." [Lenin, quoted from here. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"We always staked our play on an international revolution and this was unconditionally right... we always emphasised...the fact that in one country it is impossible to accomplish such a work as a socialist revolution." [Lenin, Sochineniia, 25, pp.473-74; quoted from Cliff (1991), p.90. Bold emphasis added.]45
Anyone who thinks these comments are prejudicial to Stalinism should reflect on the fact that the contrary idea -- that socialism could be built in one country -- has been refuted by history.
The additional fact that not a single proletarian hand was raised in defence of the 'workers' states' (in the former USSR and Eastern Europe) between 1989 and 1991, as they were toppled, merely confirms Lenin's assessment. Indeed, many workers actually helped overthrow these 'People's Democracies'. Compare this with the way that workers in many countries have fought (sometimes to the death) to defend or promote even limited forms of bourgeois democracy since. Indeed, contrast it with the way workers and others have fought in Nepal in 2006, in Lebanon, Serbia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia recently -- and now in Burma (1988 and 2007), Kyrgyzstan (April 2010) and Bangkok (April 2010) -- to name but a few.
Furthermore, the dire political consequences of the idea that socialism could be built in one country can be seen in the subsequent use to which dialectics was put to defend and rationalise this counter-revolutionary idea, and to try to limit (or deny) the catastrophic damage it inevitably inflicted on the international workers' movement and on Marxism in general.
And this is where DM comes into its own: short-term, opportunistic policies sold to party cadres (world-wide) by the use of this theory -- a 'method' that 'permits' the justification of anything whatsoever and its opposite, sometimes in the same breath. Similar ideas are still being peddled to us on the same basis. Trotskyists, of course, argue for the exact opposite conclusion using equally sound 'dialectical' arguments to show how and why the revolution decayed, and how the former USSR was still a workers' state (albeit, 'degenerated'). [On this, see below.]
Dialectics can thus be used to defend and rationalise anything the party chooses as the political circumstances require.
Indeed, Stalinism and Trotskyism (rightly or wrongly) parted company largely over of their differing views on internationalism and party democracy. Of course, this rift wasn't just about ideas! Hard-headed decisions were taken for political reasons, but in order to rationalise these, and sell them to the international communist movement, they were liberally coated with dialectical jargon.
Those who know the history of Bolshevism will also know of the incalculable damage this deep rift has inflicted on Marxism world-wide ever since.
Later on, 'Materialist Dialectics' was used to justify/rationalise the catastrophic and reckless class-collaborationist tactics imposed on both the Chinese and Spanish revolutions, just as it was employed to rationalise/justify the ultra-left, "social fascist" post-1929 about-turn (by the communist movement). This helped cripple the fight against the Nazis by suicidally splitting the left in Germany, pitting communist against socialist, while Hitler laughed all the way to the Reichstag.45a
This 'theory' then helped 'excuse' the rotation of the Communist Party through another 180 degrees in its next, class-collaborationist phase, the "Popular Front" --, and then through another 180 (in order to 'justify' the unforgivable Hitler-Stalin pact) as part of the newly re-discovered 'revolutionary defeatist' stage --, and through yet another 180 two years later in the shape of 'The Great Patriotic War', following upon Hitler's predictable invasion of the "Mother Land" -- "Holy Russia".46
In attempting to justify these overnight about-turns, and specifically the criminal Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, all that Ragani Palme Dutt, for example, could say was:
"We are told that the Soviet-German pact has also strengthened Nazi Germany. The process is of course dialectical, but fundamentally Nazi Germany has been weakened by the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and is more weakened every day as this [dialectical -- RL] process is continuing and is beginning to become clearer to more and more people." [King and Mathews (1990), p.75. Bold emphasis added.]
Once more, it seems that to strengthen the Nazis dialectically is to weaken them! We can see how accurate that analysis was by the fact that the dialectically "weakened" Wehremacht was able to conquer most of Europe within two years, and large sections of the former USSR in six months! It was only Hitler's incompetent generalship that saved the USSR from annihilation.
More 'dialectical contradictions' --, more dead workers.
Post-1945, one more dialectical flip saw the invention of "peace-loving" nations versus the evil US Empire. History was now the struggle of "progressive, peace-loving" peoples against reactionary regimes, the class war lost in all the dust kicked up by so much dialectical spinning.
[Indeed, and by now, Marx would be doing much more than 180 degree flips in his grave!]
Every single one of these 'somersaults' had a catastrophic impact on the international workers' movement. Collectively, they have cast a long shadow across the Communist Party worldwide, reducing it to the sad, reformist excuse that we see among us today.
However, but far, far worse: these 'contradictory' about-turns helped pave the way for fascist aggression and the Third Reich. In that case, this 'theory' has played its own small, shameful, but indirect part in the deaths of millions of workers and countless millions of Jews, Gypsies, Russians and Slavs -- alongside the many hundreds of thousands of mentally-ill and handicapped victims surrendered to the Nazi death machine.46a0
Because of their continual, dialectically-inspired twists and turns, STDs in effect all but invited the Nazi tiger to rip European humanity to shreds.
And, it was only too happy to oblige.
The negative effect of all this on the reputation of Marxism among the great mass of workers cannot be over-estimated, howsoever hard one tries.
Talk to anyone about Marxism (and not just Communism), and you will be regaled with much of the above. Thus, these days, everyone 'knows' it "does not work", and stands for heartless oppression.
We can only put all this down to "capitalist propaganda" if we want to see yet more of the same.
Of course, none of this is the sole fault of this mystical theory; but it is undeniable that it was a major factor in helping to rationalise the above political gyrations (for whatever other political reasons they were in fact taken), and in helping to sell them to party cadres. Over the years, this has had an inevitable and seriously demoralising effect.
Moreover, no other theory (save perhaps Zen Buddhism!) so easily excused the continual, and almost overnight, changes in strategy and tactics --, or rationalised so effectively the pathetic reasons that were given for the criminally unacceptable political about-turns imposed on the Communist Party internationally by post-1925 Stalinism.
Nor, indeed, could any other theory have so effortlessly licensed the grinding to dust of the core and periphery of the old Bolshevik Party in the 1930s, as scores of leading (and thousands of ordinary) comrades were put on 'trail' on trumped-up charges, and then executed -- or just summarily shot.
And you will still find communists defending the execution of these "wreckers" and "fascist" spies (the core of the party leadership!), along equally crazy, dialectical lines!
Millions dead, Bolshevism in tatters and Marxism a foul stench in the nostrils of workers everywhere.
'Materialist Dialectics', tested in practice? A resounding success?
Indeed, yes -- but only for the ruling-class!
[2] Maoism
Anyone who knows anything about Maoism will also know that MISTs are serious Materialist Dialectic-oholics, and will brook no compromise. [An excellent recent example of this can be found here and here.]
[This might have something to do with the fact that Daoism shares much with Maoism. More on this in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]
Nevertheless, deep dialectical devotion like this has meant that the anti-democratic and class collaborationist tactics adopted by the CPSU were copied by the CCP under Mao (even if for locally different reasons). For example, the use of "principal" and "secondary" contradictions to justify the suicidal alliances with the Guomindang, the use of UOs to rationalise one-party, autocratic rule, and the reference to "leaps" to excuse the lunatic and murderous "Great Leap Forward".
Maoists are among the most fanatical anti-Revisionists, but have they given Mao a hard time for revising Hegel, Marx, Engels and Lenin (who knew nothing of such 'contradictions')?
Once more: are you kidding?
Consider the first two of these: class collaboration and centralisation. Dialectical arguments favouring class-collaboration and the centralisation ("concentration") of power were not confined to CPSU theorists. In the mid-1930s, the abrupt change from out-right opposition to the Guomindang, to a policy of forming a united front with them was justified by, among other things, yet another dose of contradictory DM-concepts.
The whole sorry affair is well documented in Werner Meissner's detailed study; the reader is directed there for more details. However, a few choice examples will illustrate the influence of dialectical mayhem on the minds of CCP theorists. Consider the argument of CCP-theorist Ai Ssu-ch'i (whose work was highly influential on Mao):46a
"The law of identity is a rule of the abstract, absolute unity; it sees in identical things only the aspect of absolute identity, recognising this aspect alone and disregarding its own contradictory and antagonistic aspects. Since an object can only be absolutely identical to itself, it therefore cannot be identical to another aspect. One expresses this with the formula: A is not Not-A, or A is B (sic) and simultaneously it cannot be Not-B.... For example, 'retreat is not attack' (A is Not-A (sic)), concentration is limitation of democracy (A is B), one cannot in this case develop democracy (simultaneously 'not is Not-B' (sic)). In this definition, an object (concept, thing, etc.) is confronted absolutely with another object, which lies beyond the actual object, a consequence of which is that an object (A) and the others (Not-A) have no relations at all with each other.... The law of identity thus only recognises abstract identity, and the law of contradiction only recognises an absolute opposite." [Ai Ssu-ch'i, 'Formal Logic And Dialectic', quoted in Meissner (1990), p.107. Bold emphasis added.]
We have already had occasion to note the sloppy syntax found throughout the writings of these 'superior' dialectical logicians, but here is yet another example. For instance, the "A" above at one point is "retreat" while "Not-A" is "not attack"!
[In addition, it has already been shown that the above 'conclusions' only seem to follow because everything has been turned into an object of some sort.]
Despite this, Ai Ssu-ch'i continues in the same fantastical vein:
"The law of the excluded third specifies: either there is an absolute identity (A is B) or an absolute opposition (A is not B); an object cannot be simultaneously identical and at the same time be antagonistic. For example 'concentration' is either limited democracy or unlimited democracy; it cannot at the same time be limited and a developed democracy. A government in which the people participate is either a democratic organ or it is not a democratic organ. It cannot be simultaneously democratic and insufficiently democratic. Therefore the law of the excluded third only recognises opposition or unity, and struggles against the 'unity of opposites'. This meant that it ['formal logic'] and the dialectic are diametrically opposed." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
Meissner summarises Ai Ssu-ch'i main points as follows:
"1. What is the meaning of 'Retreat is not attack'? As we will see in more detail below, this formulation referred to the strategic principles of the long-protracted war....
"For Mao Tse-Tung...the defence of Wuhan had no special meaning. Instead he advocated surrendering the city and building up the resistance in the countryside. Ai Ssu-ch'i thus defended Mao's tactics, in that he dismissed the phrase 'Retreat is not attack' as 'formal logically'. To consider the 'retreat' from Wuhan solely as a retreat or non-attack corresponded, according to Ai, to the first law of 'formal logic' and was in no way seen as 'dialectical'. On the other hand, Ai wanted to show that the retreat was at one and the same time both a retreat and not a retreat.... The retreat thus contained an attack.
"2. The explanations of 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were also a criticism of Wang Ming's concepts of setting back 'democratisation' in favour of the 'concentration' of all political and military forces, and of attempting to commit the CCP exclusively to the support of the national government. Behind this was hidden the consideration that a possible 'democratisation' of Kuomintang control could lead to an impairment of the military effectiveness of the United Front. Ai criticised this view a 'formal logically', because 'democratisation' and 'concentration' were seen as mutually exclusive contradictions....
"3. However, Ai Ssu-ch'i' made a further observation concerning the relationship between the CCP and the Kuomintang by speaking of the 'unification of several objects identical to themselves' and by characterising them as a 'formal-logical' combination of independent, mutually unrelated objects, which thus represented a state of rest. The 'formal-logical identity' served him as an example of how the relationship between the two parties should not be constituted....
"Through the example of the 'law of identity', Ai also grappled with the question of how far the CCP should acquiesce in the Kuomintang's demand to base itself on the 'Three principles of the people', without endangering the independence of the CCP....
'Since the law of identity only recognises the absolute aspect of identity, one can maintain in the United Front that all parties and factions have now already given up their independence and have only one goal; consequently, many people say that the CP has given up Marxism. Since, on the other hand, the law of contradiction only recognises the absolute opposite, some people advocate the view that every party and faction must retain its own independent programme and organisation'. [Ibid.]
"Ai characterised the adherents of the first view as 'right deviationists' and those of the second as 'left deviationists'.... Both groups...are, according to Ai, 'formal-logical' in their thought; they consider one aspect of the whole and make it absolute.... 'Formal logic' recognises only attack and/or retreat, only concentration and/or democracy, only the 'three principles of the people' and/or communism. However, it is not capable of comprehending the existing relationships between those respective pairs of objects....
"Thus, in concrete terms, 'dialectical logic' can be explained thus: the United Front is accepted and at the same time rejected, in that the struggle against the Kuomintang is to be continued within the United Front." [Meissner (1990), pp.107-110. Bold emphases added.]
Anyone interested in this sort of material can read page after page of this lame-brained 'logic' (and not all of it from the writings of Ai Ssu-ch'i), summarised for us in Meissner's book. In these writings alone we can see how dialectics 'allowed' its acolytes to see the world any which way they liked, and how it insulated their thought from material reality at the same time.
Consider next the second of these examples: the 'contradiction' between centralised state power and greater social and democratic accountability. Dialectical dodges similar to those employed by Stalin were used by Mao and his acolytes to rationalise this "paradox" by an appeal to the alleged 'contradictory' nature of 'socialist' democracy. [Indeed, we saw some of this 'logic' in Ai Ssu-ch'i's 'reasoning' above.]
Mao himself tried to justify class-collaboration as well as the contradictory combination of autocracy with proletarian democracy (the latter along the same lines as Stalin):
"The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)
"That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.
"This being so, there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?
"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below'.... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.
"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.
"Why is there identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?
"The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party's policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity....
"To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites are at the same time complementary....
"All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed 'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another'." [Mao (1961), pp.337-40. Bold emphases added.]47
Hence, for Mao, as it was for Stalin, less democracy meant more democracy!
[As we have seen, the idea in the passage above that things "struggle" with and then turn into their opposites can't work. This means that dialectics cannot in fact account for change! On this, see here, too.]
Now, such wacky ideas have been shown up for what they are in other Essays posted at this site, but those recorded above were included to demonstrate how Maoist versions of 'Materialist Dialectics' helped corrupt not only Mao's thought processes, but also the strategy and tactics of the CCP.
DM: tested in practice?
Once again: indeed so! And we can see the results today in that model 'socialist state': China.
Of course, at the very least, this means that approximately 20% of the population of this planet cannot now (and might not in the foreseeable future ever) be won over to any credible form of Marxism, since the vast majority have been inured to it, having seen the dire consequences of this contradictory theory, which preaches 'proletarian democracy', but won't actually trust them with any of it, alongside the "mass-line", while practicing mass oppression --, these dialectical 'contradictions' rationalised along sound Stalinist lines.
Chinese workers and peasants do not need anyone to inform them of the results of "practice"; the vast majority can see for themselves the political and social consequences of this 'theory'.
And now 'Materialist Dialectics' is being used to justify the existence of 'socialist' billionaires!
But, it's no use you complaining that this is a contradiction in terms. You clearly do not "understand" dialectics!
Once more, anyone who thinks the above is prejudicial to Mao, need only reflect on the fact that, since Maoism has been ditched, China has turned into one of the most successful economies on earth. A rather fitting unity of opposites...
[Recall an earlier assertion: Anyone can justify any conclusion they like, and its opposite, using 'Materialist Dialectics'. So, if the above looks contradictory or misguided to you, dear reader, you just do not "understand" anti-dialectics...]
[3] Trotskyism
Trotskyism has similarly been cursed by the Dialectical Deity; its founder succeeded in super-gluing his followers to the crazy dialectical doctrine that the 'socialist' regime in the former USSR was contradictory. In that case, it made perfectly good dialectical-sense to suppose that the ruling-class (i.e., the proletariat) exercised no power at all, and were systematically oppressed for their pains, even while they were still the ruling class! [This is the Trotskyist equivalent of the "Retreat is attack" claim of Ai Ssu-ch'i, we met earlier.]
"The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the growth of material power, ought to serve socialist aims -- but only in the last analysis. The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom. Such a ictory characterization may horrify the dogmatists and scholastics; we can only offer them our condolences." [Trotsky (1977), p.54. Bold emphasis added.]
Hence, because 'Materialist Dialectics' appeared to demand it, all good Trotskyists were required to defend the USSR as a workers' state --, albeit "degenerated". As Trotsky argued at length [in Trotsky (1971)], only those who failed to "understand" dialectics would disagree:
"Is it possible after the conclusion of the German-Soviet pact to consider the USSR a workers' state? The future of the Soviet state has again and again aroused discussion in our midst. Small wonder; we have before us the first experiment in the workers' state in history. Never before and nowhere else has this phenomenon been available for analysis. In the question of the social character of the USSR, mistakes commonly flow, as we have previously stated, from replacing the historical fact with the programmatic norm. Concrete fact departs from the norm. This does not signify, however, that it has overthrown the norm; on the contrary, it has reaffirmed it, from the negative side. The degeneration of the first workers' state, ascertained and explained by us, has only the more graphically shown what the workers' state should be, what it could and would be under certain historical conditions. The contradiction between the concrete fact and the norm constrains us not to reject the norm but, on the contrary, to fight for it by means of the revolutionary road.... (p.3)
"The events did not catch us unawares. It is necessary only to interpret them correctly. It is necessary to understand clearly that sharp contradictions are contained in the character of the USSR and in her international position. It is impossible to free oneself from those contradictions with the help of terminological sleight-of-hand ('workers' state' -- 'not workers' state'). We must take the facts as they are. We must build our policy by taking as our starting point the real relations and contradictions.... (p.24)
"The present political discussion in the party has confirmed my apprehensions and warning in an incomparably sharper form than I could have expected, or, more correctly, feared.... The attitude of [Shachtman and Burnham] toward the nature of the Soviet state reproduces point for point their attitude toward the dialectic.... (pp.60-61)
"...Burnham and Shachtman themselves demonstrated that their attitude toward such an 'abstraction' as dialectical materialism found its precise manifestation in their attitude toward the Soviet state.... (pp.61-62)
"Last year I was visited by a young British professor of political economy, a sympathizer of the Fourth International. During our conversation on the ways and means of realizing socialism, he suddenly expressed the tendencies of British utilitarianism in the spirit of Keynes and others: 'It is necessary to determine a clear economic end, to choose the most reasonable means for its realization,'. I remarked: 'I see that you are an adversary of dialectics.' He replied, somewhat astonished: 'Yes, I don't see any use in it.' 'However,' I replied to him, 'the dialectic enabled me on the basis of a few of your observations upon economic problems to determine what category of philosophical thought you belong to -- this alone shows that there is an appreciable value in the dialectic.' Although I have received no word about my visitor since then, I have no doubt that this anti-dialectic professor maintains the opinion that the USSR is not a workers' state, that unconditional defense of the USSR is an 'out-moded' opinion.... If it is possible to place a given person's general type of thought on the basis of his relation to concrete practical problems, it is also possible to predict approximately, knowing his general type of thought, how a given individual will approach one or another practical question. That is the incomparable educational value of the dialectical method of thought.... (pp.62-63)
"The definition of the USSR given by comrade Burnham, 'not a workers' and 'not a bourgeois state,' is purely negative, wrenched from the chain of historical development, left dangling in mid-air, void of a single particle of sociology and represents simply a theoretical capitulation of pragmatism before a contradictory historical phenomenon.
"If Burnham were a dialectical materialist, he would have probed the following three questions: (1) What is the historical origin of the USSR? (2) What changes has this state suffered during its existence? (3) Did these changes pass from the quantitative stage to the qualitative? That is, did they create a historically necessary domination by a new exploiting class? Answering these questions would have forced Burnham to draw the only possible conclusion -- the USSR is still a degenerated workers' state.... (p.68)
"It is not surprising that the theoreticians of the opposition who reject dialectic thought capitulate lamentably before the contradictory nature of the USSR. However the contradiction between the social basis laid down by the revolution, and the character of the caste which arose out of the degeneration of the revolution is not only an irrefutable historical fact but also a motor force. In our struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy we base ourselves on this contradiction.... (p.69)
"...Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities of 'common sense.'
"A vulgar petty-bourgeois radical is similar to a liberal 'progressive' in that he takes the USSR as a whole, failing to understand its internal contradictions and dynamics. When Stalin concluded an alliance with Hitler, invaded Poland, and now Finland, the vulgar radicals triumphed; the identity of the methods of Stalinism and fascism was proved. They found themselves in difficulties however when the new authorities invited the population to expropriate the landowners and capitalists-they had not foreseen this possibility at all! Meanwhile the social revolutionary measures, carried out via bureaucratic military means, not only did not disturb our, dialectic, definition of the USSR as a degenerated workers' state, but gave it the most incontrovertible corroboration. Instead of utilizing this triumph of Marxian analysis for persevering agitation, the petty-bourgeois oppositionists began to shout with criminal light-mindedness that the events have refuted our prognosis, that our old formulas are no longer applicable.... (pp.70-71)
"Tomorrow the Stalinists will strangle the Finnish workers. But now they are giving -- they are compelled to give -- a tremendous impulse to the class struggle in its sharpest form. The leaders of the opposition construct their policy not upon the 'concrete' process that is taking place in Finland, but upon democratic abstractions and noble sentiments.... (p.74)
"Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the camp of opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals consider the dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time they take advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to verify differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long known fact is backed by all the evidence of experience.... (p.94)
"The opposition circles consider it possible to assert that the question of dialectic materialism was introduced by me only because I lacked an answer to the 'concrete' questions of Finland, Latvia, India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and so on. This argument, void of all merit in itself, is of interest however in that it characterizes the level of certain individuals in the opposition, their attitude toward theory and toward elementary ideological loyalty. 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.... (p.142)
"This impulse in the direction of socialist revolution was possible only because the bureaucracy of the USSR straddles and has its roots in the economy of a workers' state. The revolutionary utilization of this 'impulse' by the Ukrainian Byelo-Russians was possible only through the class struggle in the occupied territories and through the power of the example of the October Revolution. Finally, the swift strangulation or semi-strangulation of this revolutionary mass movement was made possible through the isolation of this movement and the might of the Moscow bureaucracy. Whoever failed to understand the dialectic interaction of these three factors: the workers' state, the oppressed masses and the Bonapartist bureaucracy, had best restrain himself from idle talk about events in Poland.... (p.163) [Trotsky (1971). Bold emphases added.]47a
All this helped cripple the politics of the Fourth International in the run-up to WW2 (and this has remained so since) -- whose cadres, even while they were advocating a principled anti-imperialist stance, were quite happy to defend Stalinist imperialism.
And, as if to compound this monumental error, Trotsky used dialectics to justify the murderous Stalinist invasion of Finland!
All so contradictory, all so dialectical!48
Post-WW2, devotion to this 'theory' has prompted them to argue that red army tanks were capable of bringing socialism to Eastern Europe in the absence of a worker's revolution (a line that was in fact in agreement with the analysis concocted by the Stalinists!). Substitutionism justified by another dose of dialectical double-dealing.
More dialectically-'justified' practice, more dead workers, more ordure heaped on Marxism.
Do you begin to see a pattern here?
After Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist agent, the application of 'scientific dialectics' to the contradictory nature of the USSR (and its satellites in Eastern Europe) split the Fourth International into countless warring sects, who have continued to fragment to this day.
Indeed, this is the only aspect of practical dialectics that Trotskyists have managed to perfect as their movement continues to splinter under its own 'internal contradictions'.
Unfortunately, Trotsky's heirs could not quite agree which was the more important principle: loyalty to their founder's 'dialectical method', or to Marx's belief that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. However, if the latter is indeed the case, the emancipation of the working class cannot be an act of the Red Army (in Finland, Eastern Europe or even North Korea), of 'Third World' guerrillas (in China, Cuba, Nepal, Peru, etc.), of nationalist/'progressive' dictators, or even of radicalised students, to name but a few of the groups that have been 'dialectically substituted' for the working class by assorted Trotskyists over the last sixty years or so. Indeed, if it were possible to create workers' states in this way (deformed/degenerated or not), then Stalinism is indeed "progressive", and Pablo was right.
And it is little use complaining that this contradicts Trotsky's belief that Stalinism is inherently counter-revolutionary (as these comrades try to do, again on sound 'dialectical' lines), for, if everything is contradictory, then on equally sound 'dialectical' lines, so is Stalinism. On such a basis, the former USSR is both counter-revolutionary and 'progressive' all rolled into one -- as we saw yet again when its forces invaded Afghanistan. [This link leads to an article which is plainly the Spartacist equivalent of the "Retreat is attack" claim of Ai Ssu-ch'i, we met earlier.]
Dialectics has been used, and is still being used, to justify every conceivable form of substitutionism. To take one more example: dialectical dissembling allowed Ted Grant to invent yet another contradictory idea -- "Proletarian Bonapartism" -- in order to account for the fact that the Stalinist regime in the former USSR, and the Maoist clique in China, was actually oppressing the supposed ruling-class: i.e., workers! [The ghost of Ai Ssu-ch'i lives on!]
All this dialectical wavering has fatally wounded Trotskyism. It might never recover. At present the signs are not good. The difficulties recently experienced in UK-Respect are just another indication of this long-term malaise.
Here are two paragraphs taken from a recent letter written by the CC of the SWP in New Zealand to the UK-SWP:
"'The critics of the [UK] SWP's position have organised themselves under the slogan 'firm in principles, flexible in tactics'. But separating principles and tactics in this way is completely un-Marxist. Tactics derive from principles. Indeed the only way that principles can become effective is if they are embodied in day-to-day tactics.' [This is a quote from the UK-SWP.]
"In contrast, Socialist Worker -- New Zealand sees Respect -- and other 'broad left' formations, such as Die Linke in Germany, the Left Bloc in Portugal, the PSUV in Venezuela and RAM in New Zealand -- as transitional formations, in the sense that Trotsky would have understood. In programme and organization, they must 'meet the class half-way' -- to provide a dialectical unity between revolutionary principle and reformist mass consciousness. If they have an electoral orientation, we must face the fact that this cannot be avoided at this historical point. Lenin said in 'Left-Wing' Communism that parliamentary politics are not yet obsolete as far as the mass of the class are concerned -- this is not less true in 2007 than it was in 1921. The question is not whether Respect should go in a 'socialist' or 'electoralist' direction, but in how Respect's electoral programme and strategy can embody a set of transitional demands which intersect with the existing electoralist consciousness of the working class." [Quoted from here. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]
Tactics from principles, or flexible tactics from inflexible principles? WTF does this mean? From which stone tablets have these verities been lifted?
Internal Bulletins/Documents are full of empty, but radical-sounding rallying calls like this (one (ex-member of the UK-SWP, John Rees) recently sought to defend the "united front of special kind" entered into by the UK-SWP, as a "unity of opposites" -- on that basis, as we saw above with Mao, any sort of class-collaboration can be 'justified'!) which are then used to berate whoever has fallen foul of the CC member who has just invented them (or who has just dredged them up from the last faction fight) -- this frame of mind aggravated by far too many years of "dialectical training" than is good for any human being to have to endure. [Several more examples of this sort of thing are given in Essay Ten Part One.]
So, even in the Trotskyist 'tradition', dialectics is still rearing its ugly head. Clearly, comrades just do not learn.
Conclusion
If truth is tested in practice, the clear message of history is:
Please, comrades -- no more Dialectical practice!!
[This section should be read by NOTs like myself just as it was intended. However, any Maoist or Stalinist readers who have made it this far should perhaps read it as yet more proof of the extent to which dialectics can, and has been 'misused' by us 'trots' -- although, it might not be easy to provide an objective criterion that distinguishes its 'proper' use from its 'misuse'.
OTs should make of this what they can. They will have given up on these Essays long ago, anyway -- even if a single one of them has actually started reading them --; hence they are unlikely to get this far! Indeed, if the past is anything to go by, such 'scientifically'-minded souls will be busy warning the unwary to avoid casting their innocent eyes on these heathen pages lest they be led astray by my "elitism", "empiricism", and "formal thinking" (the OT equivalent of smallpox). [Those who do not believe me, check this or this out -- or several of the links posted here.]
[NOT = Non-Orthodox Trotskyist; OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; MIST = Maoist Theorist; STD = Stalinist Dialectician.]
Either way, this section will show that as far as dialectics is concerned, all four 'traditions' share a common liking for the same clutch of mystificatory jargon, rhetorical flourishes (mostly physically copied from Engels and Lenin), sub-Aristotelian 'logic', and Mickey Mouse Science, using this infinitely plastic theory to justify almost anything, and its opposite -- as we saw was the case in the previous section.
In fact, as far as the dialectics of nature is concerned there is little difference between the views of MISTs, STDs, OTs and NOTs. Why is this? Marx, once again, had the answer.]
At this point, it is pertinent to ask the following question: why did the ruling-classes of the former Stalinist states (particularly the USSR) find DM so conducive to their interests? Why were they such avid fans of 'traditional' Marxist Philosophy? A clear answer to this query is all the more pressing because of the way Marx himself described the dialectic:
"In its mystified form, the dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and glorify what exists. In its rational form it is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything (sic), being in its essence critical and revolutionary." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added.]
The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that: (1) The ruling-classes of the former Stalinist states were not part of the bourgeoisie, or (2) Marx was wrong.
It could be replied that in the hands of STD hacks the dialectical method had become wooden and formulaic; it was little more than the "cynical and self-serving creed of a new and brutal ruling class." [Rees (1998), p.196.]
While that description of the nature of the Stalinist ruling-classes will not be questioned here -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- the rest of what Rees says is highly questionable.
[TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
It is worth pointing out here that even avowedly Stalinist versions of DM emphasise change through contradiction (often in terms indistinguishable from those found in TAR and OT-texts -- anyone who doubts this should read, for example, Shirokov (1937)). This, of course, helps explain why, for example, UK-SWP outlets (such as "Bookmarks" in London) find they can sell copies of works on dialectics written by openly Stalinist and rabidly anti-Trotskyist writers like Cornforth (among others), and why some OTs openly appeal to the writings of STDs like Ilyenkov (for example). [The old WRP were, for instance, rather fond of his terminally obscure work.]
Indeed, up until a few years ago, OTs, STDs, NOTs and MISTs could one and all read and study classic texts published by Progress Publishers and Foreign Languages Press (Stalinist and Maoist publishing houses).
Why were such State Capitalist/Stalinist/'Socialist' regimes busy churning out classic works on dialectics by the container load? Surely that would be rather like Dracula running a garlic farm, or Superman a Kryptonite factory?!
Figure Seven: Kryptonite -- An Abomination To The Bourgeoisie?
This also helps account for the fact that books on 'Materialist Dialectics' are often published by capitalist publishers, too -- indeed, TAR was itself published by Routledge, Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic by the University of Illinois Press, and Raya Dunayevskaya's The Power of Negativity by Lexington Books, and so on. How can such capitalist concerns publish a theory which is such an " abomination" in their eyes?
Now, all of this becomes explicable if, as is argued here, DM is in fact part of an ancient and long-standing tradition of ruling-class thought. It is inexplicable otherwise.
It could be argued that such outlets also sell books on HM, too. However, since I am not committed to the truth of Marx's claim (I merely quoted it to embarrass NOTs, and HCDs, among others), I am not committed to the idea that DM or HM is an anathema to the ruling-class, or to any capitalist publishing house. Clearly they sell such books to make a profit, just as they sell books on mysticism. [What was that Lenin said about ropes?]
Nevertheless, the actual differences between these three strands of dialectics (Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskyist) are considerably more difficult to spot than are their similarities. Indeed, the veracity of that particular comment is itself easier to see if a handful of quotations (which have been lifted from a selection of STD and non-STD sources -- more will be added at a later date) are compared, the identification of which will be left until the end to assist in their non-biased appraisal:
[1] "Its conception of the inter-relation of Theory and Practice, is the vital essence of Marxism and is that one aspect of its many-faceted unity in which the significance of Dialectical Materialism is most clearly seen…. This unity is a unity of inter-relation: it is Materialist in that it is based on the primacy of practice, and Dialectical in its postulation of the indispensable precondition for both the practice and the unity….
"Its world-conception is Materialist alike in its Objectivity and in its Activity -- in that the world is conceived as a totality, and by means of its inseparably connected and never ceasing interacting movements.
"And it is Dialectical in that these inter-acting movements are recognised as begetting, of necessity, a perpetual self-transformation of the Universe as a whole -- a universally inter-connected series of processes in which old forms, formations, and inter-relations are constantly being destroyed and replaced by new forms…."
[2] "Materialist dialectics was born of the generalisation of scientific achievements and also of mankind's historical experience, which showed that social life and human consciousness, like nature itself, are in a state of constant change and development….
"Every system in the world is formed through interaction between its constituent elements. In exactly the same way all bodies acquire their properties through interaction and motion, through which their properties are manifested. Interaction is universal…."
[3] "Dialectics is the logic of movement, of evolution, of change. Reality is too full of contradictions, too elusive, too manifold, too mutable to be snared in any single formula…. Each particular phase of reality has its own laws and its own peculiar categories…. These laws and categories have to be discovered by direct investigation of the concrete whole; they cannot be excogitated by mind alone before the material reality is analysed. Moreover, all reality is constantly changing, disclosing ever new aspects of itself which have to be taken into account and which cannot be encompassed in the old formulas, because they are not only different from but often contradictory to them."
[4] "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as just an agglomeration of things, each existing independently of the others, but it considers things as 'connected with, dependent on and determined by each other'. Hence, it considers that nothing can be understood taken by itself, in isolation….
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics considers everything as in 'a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development….'
"The dialectical method demands, first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnection with other things."
[5] "The dialectical [method]…involves, first and foremost, three principles: totality, change and contradiction….
"Totality refers to the insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is composed are in fact related to one another….
"In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts….
"Totality alone is not, however, a sufficient definition of the dialectic….
"Change, development, instability…are the very conditions for which a dialectical approach is designed to account….
"A dialectical approach seeks to find the cause of change within the system…. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself."
[6] "Marxist dialectics…examines the world in constant motion, change and development….
"To gain knowledge of objects and phenomena, it is necessary first of all to study their constant change and development. To really know an object we must examine it in its development, 'self-motion', change.
"…Dialectics sees the sources of development in the contradictions inherent in objects and phenomena….
"The material world is not only a developing, but also a connected, integral whole. Its objects and phenomena do not develop of themselves, in isolation, but in inseverable [sic] connection or unity with other objects and phenomena….
"One of the most important aims of materialist dialectics is the study of the world as an integral connected whole, the examination of the universal connections of things."
[7] "Dialectics is also the totality of the forms of natural and socio-historical development it its universal form. For this reason the laws of dialectics are the laws of development of things themselves, the laws of development of the self-same world of natural and historical development. These laws are realised by mankind (in philosophy) and verified by the practice of transforming both nature and socio-economic relations."
[8] "Everything is not only part of the great world process but is essentially a process. Its 'nature' cannot be understood apart from the form of change it undergoes, that is, inherent in it….
"But this development is not something that proceeds in an automatic fashion, without cause…. Development is always the result of internal conflict as well as of external relations, themselves including conflict. It can only be explained and rationally grasped to the extent that the internal contradictions of the thing have been investigated."
[9] "[Dialectics] is a critique of static, fixed categories usually used in science -- categories valid within certain limits, which differ according to the case, but which prove inadequate to fully grasp the nature of reality….
"[A] further characteristic typical of processes of change is the 'negation of the negation' -- development through a new synthesis emerging which surpasses and transforms the elements of the 'contradiction'."
[10] "Dialectical thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change…. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions."
[11] "Dialectics is the logic of motion, development, evolution…. Engels, following Hegel, called those who think in absolute and unchanging categories, that is, who visualize the world as an aggregate of unchanging qualities, metaphysicians….
"In these abstract formulas we have the most general laws (forms) of motion, change, the transformation of the stars of the heaven, of the earth, nature, and human society….
"Dialectics is the logic of development. It examines the world -- completely without exception -- not as a result of creation, of a sudden beginning, the realization of a plan, but as a result of motion, of transformation. Everything that is became the way it is as a result of lawlike development….
"Thus, 'the materialist dialectic' (or 'dialectical materialism') is not an arbitrary combination of two independent terms, but is a differentiated unity -- a short formula for a whole and indivisible worldview, which rests exclusively on the entire development of scientific thought in all its branches, and which alone serves as a scientific support for human praxis."
[12] "Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard Nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole, in which things…are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other.
"The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in Nature can be understood if taken by itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena….
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that Nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development….
"The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being….
"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of Nature…."49
Admittedly, edited quotations taken out of context can be highly misleading, but the extent to which these sources agree it quite remarkable, whatever the context.
The number of virtually indistinguishable passages like these can be multiplied by several orders of magnitude -- with ease --, as any reader possessed of inordinate patience and plenty of Prozac may readily confirm, if they have access to the countless books and articles on DM that have been written over the last hundred and forty years or so. The extreme and mind-numbingly repetitive nature of the above quotations (along with the many thousands not posted -- the vast majority of which agree with each other down to the minutest of details, and which use almost exactly the same words and sentences (often these are just physically copied from Engels or Lenin)) confirms the claim made several times in this Essay: key DM-theses are about as changeable as protons.
In many ways, these passages not only resemble one another, they function like ritual and liturgical passages the god-botherers among us intone week in, week out: it's the repetition of set phrases like these that is more important than their content. Hence, in books and articles in dialectics (especially those in the LCD tradition), the actual words used more a sign of orthodoxy than they are a genuine contribution to socialist theory.
However, it is important to add here that it is not being suggested that Stalinism, Maoism and Trotskyism are at all similar in any other respect (indeed, in relation to their commitment to international revolution, the difference between the latter and the previous two could not be more marked). And yet, in relation to their adherence to DM-phraseology, it is hard to slip a party card between them.49a
Nevertheless, the question still remains: How was it possible for the Stalinist ruling-classes/bureaucrats of the former USSR, Eastern Europe, China and elsewhere to adopt and then advocate enthusiastically a supposedly revolutionary theory (i.e., DM), which is identical in almost every respect to that espoused by revolutionaries, if dialectics is such an "abomination" to all members of the ruling-class and their hangers on? Even an allegedly "wooden and lifeless" version of DM (with its emphasis on Totality and change through contradiction, etc., etc.) should be no less "abominable".
The standard explanation why DM is accepted by counter-revolutionaries (such as these Stalinists) and revolutionaries alike (i.e., that the Stalinist version is "wooden and lifeless", whereas the revolutionary strain is 'vibrant' and 'un-dogmatic') is highly implausible, especially since both versions seem to be equally wooden and lifeless, and practically indistinguishable from one another on the page/screen. It is not as if when OTTs (or even NOTs) write the very same words as STDs and MISTs their use is somehow less wooden and lifeless. Not, that is, unless Trotskyists use a special sort of ink, paper or computer screen.
[OTT = Orthodox Trotskyist Theorist.]
Even so, it could be objected that it's the use to which dialectics is put -- not the phraseology -- that distinguishes Stalinist/Maoist from Trotskyist versions of DM. Hence, when it forms part of a genuinely revolutionary movement (as opposed to being used cynically by a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy/'clique') the 'dialectic' is vibrant and alive. [The latter passage can be read the same way by supporters of each and every version of Dialectical Marxism.]
However, the above response still assumes that the 'dialectic' has a genuinely practical role to play in the revolutionary movement. This idea has been subjected to sustained criticism in this Essay and throughout this site. The onus therefore is on those claiming this 'theory' has some sort of use/role to play to show how the 'dialectic' has featured in a positive way anywhere and at any time in the entire history of Marxism.49b
But, even if this could be done, it would still be worth pointing out that in the hands of the STDs and MISTs (or, OTTs and NOTs, if you are a MIST or an STD yourself) the dialectic was and still is also put to use to derive conclusions that contradicted -- not without some irony -- those drawn by other revolutionaries from other wings of Marxism. As we have seen, STDs and MISTs (or OTs and NOTs) use dialectical concepts to justify everything from the denial of party democracy and the concentration of power, to the accusations made against the German SPD (that they were "social Fascists"), to the about-turn in the Popular Front, to the pact with Hitler and the subsequent war against the Nazis, to the fight against Trotsky, to the argument in favour of socialism in one country, to the repeated invasions of Eastern Europe -- and to the opposite conc