A Chapter on Dialectical Materialism - Part 2 (1936)

Book Review from the March 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Scientific Method of Thinking", by Edward Conze, Ph.D. 5/-. Chapman & Hall, Ltd., publishers.

Link to Part 1

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence," says Marx, “but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness." Of course Marx did not mean that human existence and consciousness are entirely unrelated phenomena, since consciousness is obviously a part of existence. The meaning intended is that as men are grouped together either in tribal or civic societies, so does their social means of getting a living give rise to a general outlook or common ideology. In other words, a causal relationship exists between man's ideas and his material conditions of living. We mention this to indicate that Marxism is not a philosophy which emphasises the influence of environment at the expense of all human action. The same thesis is stated by Marx in another, and perhaps more definite, form, when he says, “Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth, he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand."

From which it follows that in the Marxian sense man is the active agent in historical happenings, even though the conditions in which human beings find themselves form some sort of guiding background to their activities. Marxism is not fatalism any more than it is “ idealism." To the fatalist the course of human history lies outside the pale of human effort—we are but puppets hovering and hobbling through life in accordance with some pre-determined force, ambiguously styled fate. To the idealist, history is the outcome of the machinations of men's “minds": we will things, so to speak, and lo and behold history is made for good or for bad. But both these forms of thought are incapable of explaining the varied and manifold phases assumed by human society at different times and places. In contradistinction to this, the Marxian concept may be given as an example of its own validity. It sees in the class structure of modern society the condition of its own birth and the means of its own fulfilment in the conscious social transformation of existing economic and political conditions—the active element in this process being the working class. But why this class alone, and not society as a whole, is a question which necessitates an understanding of a scientific method of thinking, such as we are now considering. It may, of course, be said that scientific method is essential, apart from the matter of working-class emancipation, to which we would readily assent. But there's the rub. Ours is a special task called forth by the peculiar nature of the problem to be analysed and solved. The composition of class society involves conflicting interests which produce rival interpretations of social phenomena. A capitalist defender of capitalism can hardly view working-class problems in the same way and with similar results as the workers.

The ever-pressing economic needs arising from social status are bound to influence and determine judgment. Old Ludwig Feuerbach stressed this fact from another angle of view when he declared that, "One thinks differently in a palace than in a hut." To remove the conditions of the hut is the need of the working class alone; the capitalists have no such need and can be relied upon to retain possession of the “palace” so long as the working class permit.

It is upon this point that the dialectic of Marx, if rightly interpreted, will serve as a method of our unravelling the complex nature of capitalist society, and as a means toward Socialism.

It should be clearly understood, however, that dialectical materialism in its widest sense embraces a terminology, the subject matter of which needs special study. We have such phrases as "The Unity of Opposites,” “The Negation of Negation,” and “The Transformation of Quantity into Quality,” all of which would necessitate lengthy explanations of their meaning. We suggest that the ablest account yet written is Engels’ classic “Anti-Duehring.” Here Engels presents us with examples of the actual working out of dialectical laws in nature, human history, and thought. In geology, chemistry, agriculture, mathematics and economics Engels gives an account of the way in which the dialectic operates, facts which impelled Engels to remark that “Men thought dialectically a long time before they knew what the dialectic really was, just as they spoke prose a long time before the term 'prose' was used.”

In the immediate sense it is on the subject of social development and change that the knowledge of the dialectic is needed. The principle works as follows : The capitalist system makes the productive forces social in the sense that giant means of wealth production are brought into being requiring the combined operation of masses of workers. The workers in consequence are rendered more and more a subject class. The wealth is socially produced, but individually appropriated. The capitalist class who own the wealth the workers have produced see to it that only such portion of the wealth is allowed the workers as will permit them to maintain themselves as a dependent class. This causes a number of other anomalies to arise. Apart from the effect of the workers being compelled to endure poverty amidst plenty, there is the fact of the capitalists’ failure to keep the productive forces continually operating. Further, they even stultify the otherwise expansion of the means of producing wealth, as their economic interests determine from time to time. The blows from all this fall heaviest upon the working class, which class is compelled sooner or later to seek a way out through taking over the means of living in their own interest by establishing Socialism. The forces making for Socialism are, therefore, historically and socially conditioned by capitalism, as in a somewhat similar manner capitalism was conditioned by the social forces, of feudalism. This historical process is described by Marx and Engels as “the negation of negation.” Capitalism is negated by its own internal contradictions, just as it had negated feudal society through like causes. In their statement of this; principle, both Marx and Engels used fairly clear-cut language to describe their point of view. We wish we could say the same of many who have set out to explain the meaning of dialectical, materialism in general. The great danger hovering around the subject of dialectics seems to be with, those who misuse it to justify every twist and turn of policy. We may be able to reconcile the irreconcilable as a form of thought, but our task chiefly consists of sifting the essential from the non- essential in our purpose. But let us now resume company with Dr. Conze. He postulates what he considers to be the four laws of scientific method; they are as follows:—

1. "Think concretely, for everything is. concrete.”
2. "Everything must be studied in its movement and development, for everything changes continually.”
3. "Wherever we may find opposites we must look for their unity. Opposites are always in unity.”
4. "We must seek the contradictions in the processes of nature and society, for everything is put into motion by contradictions.”

Regarding the latter, he rightly warns us to distinguish between contradictions of the mind and those of objective reality. Contradictions of the mind may "put” us into awkward "motion” —into the safe custody of a lunatic asylum. In discussing why dialectical materialism is so little understood, Dr. Conze seems to think the Russian Bolsheviks to be among the chief causes. He says that "in casting out religion the Bolsheviks have elevated the fundamentals of Marxism, to the level of a substitute religion,” and further complains that the study of philosophical works is discouraged in Russia "on the ground that since Marxism is the philosophy of the proletariat, all other philosophies are bourgeois (which is partly true) and, therefore, deadly mental poison (which is ridiculous).” But be this as it may, we suggest that the main reason for the non-understanding of Marxism rests upon the fact of the pre-occupation on the part of the workers with the many phases of capitalist thought. On the subject of mind and economics in society, Dr. Conze easily dismisses those "social psychologists” who are all mind and no economics, their failure to recognise the interaction of ideas and economic conditions being well noted. In the case of mass psychology, these people are always apt to regard the “crowd” as "incapable both of reflection and reasoning.” But' Dr. Conze falls into error when he attempts the same charge against Socialists. He asserts that “Socialists are also inclined to despise the masses when they see them desert to the enemy; they suddenly assume that demagogues can swing the masses round and so deprive them of their critical faculties that they will support their own enemies." But Socialists really know better than this. The workers swing from one political position to another because their minds are mainly on the capitalist roundabout. They have not yet realised that capitalism is their real enemy and the way to end it.

Regarding “Great men and history," Dr. Conze contrasts two conflicting lines of thought— one which, à la Thomas Carlyle, regards history mainly as a “biography of great men," the other which denies the influence of great men totally, and counts the masses as everything.

In reply to this, Plekanov is well cited as saying that “If history is made by human beings, it must obviously be made by 'great men' among the rest.” To this, but under proper qualification, all Socialists will agree. Against those who concentrate on the destructive side of Socialist activity, whoever they may be, Dr. Conze thinks with Blanqui that these people are “invaluable before a revolution, but should be shot the day after its victory."

However, in general, we think the author of “The Scientific Method of Thinking" has done well in bringing this volume to life despite the many things we could continue to discuss in disagreement. In the main, we agree with his statement of the dialectical standpoint, and commend his book to students, but in so doing we should like to refer those who are about to take their first plunges into materialist thought to one more statement of Marx. In his celebrated thesis on Feuerbach Marx says: “The life of society is essentially practical. All the mysteries which seduce speculative thought into mysticism find their solution in human practice and in concepts of this practice."

Robert Reynolds

(Concluded)

Marx and Materialism (2012)

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Marx had a philosophy it could be best described in his own words as critical materialism as opposed to mechanistic materialism. He believed with Feuerbach that critical materialism would mean the end of metaphysics and religion. Again, Marx regarded materialism as the only valid expression of scientific method. Thus, in a footnote on Page 368, Vol. I of Capital, he refers to a particular method as the only materialistic and, therefore, the only scientific method.

Marx took the world that is man and his relations with nature as they are. Marx then embraced a thoroughgoing naturalism as opposed to the super-naturalism of Hegel and other religious thinkers. He believed that facts are not more real than they are found to be, and do not express some deeper underlying truth. It was because Marx collected his facts and organised the knowledge gained from them on the presupposition that he was dealing with a material world, that his theory can be empirically demonstrated. Because Hegel began with metaphysical as opposed to materialistic assumptions he could offer no empirical guide as to the course of history. He could only assure us that a cosmic self-consciousness would come to pass, but how it would do so he is silent. Even in a brief and sketchy analysis of Marx and Hegel, it can be shown that in outlook and method they were worlds apart.

On the question of religion itself, Marx denied that there was some religious essence in man. Religion itself is a product of social life and it only arises when society has reached a certain stage of development in the division of labour. Like all other forms of culture, it can be critically analysed in a specific social situation, and like all other forms of activity it can be shown to change under the impact of changing conditions. While religion had historic justification in the productive rituals of the past, it serves no useful social purpose today.

Marx also denied that man was endowed with a natural religious sentiment, any more than he is naturally endowed with any other aspect of culture. A religious sense is not the outcome of a timeless abstraction, but the product of social consciousness and bound up with a certain stage of social development. To suppose then that any element of supernaturalism could find a place in Marxism is to invalidate the most basic assumptions of historical materialism. For that reason a belief in super-naturalism is incompatible with Marxism.

From the Socialist Standard, July 1957

Marxism — The Philosophy of Action (1936)

Book Review from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Dialectics, The Logic of Marxism,” by T. A. Jackson (Lawrence & Wishart) 10/6

Marx in his early days was a profound student of philosophy, and proclaimed himself a follower of “that mighty thinker" Hegel, whose system of philosophy had as its central principle the dialectal conception of the universe. This conception is that everything, including human thought, reveals itself as in a process of being and becoming. But, to cut a long story short, how the being and becoming was effected in human thought and social relationships was a question upon which Marx took leave of Hegel, turning the latter's “dialectic right side up.” Where Hegel thought the motion of all things to work through the unfolding of an “Idea,” being and becoming from God-knows-where, Marx saw the movements of human society to arise from the action and interaction of man and external nature. There is, therefore, no “Idea” in the Hegelian sense, there are only ideas, and common, human ones at that. Marx applied the criterion of practice to philosophical speculation —“the question whether objective truth can be attributed to (attained by) human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. In practice, man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the 'this sidedness' of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.” (Marx.)

Reducing this to common phraseology, it means: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

Now we of the Socialist Party of Great Britain have always insisted that the teachings of Marx and Engels provide an indispensable foundation for working-class Socialist activity. The theories of Marx have been stated and re-stated by us almost ad nauseam, as well as ad infinitum. We have battled for the recognition of Marxism amidst abuse and misrepresentation, not to mention the boycott of silence concerning our existence maintained by the pseudo-Socialist, Communist “revolutionist,” and everything “elsist” Press. But as Marx so aptly observed: “Time is the room of human development.” The theories for which we have worked are now being studied and discussed with increasing vitality.

The causes leading to this need not detain us here to discuss. Suffice it to mention that it is a remarkable tribute to Marx and Engels that their theories are interpreted in the light of, not only the age in which they were written, but more forcibly in connection with the happenings of to-day. The volume before us is a “weighty” addition to the various works on Marxism which have appeared in the last few years. In this case it is by one who claims to be an "out and out Marxist,” who tells us his work is “an attempt to clear the ground for a better and fuller appreciation of that which gives Marxism its living unity, namely, the Dialectal Materialist Method.” But for whose benefit, may we enquire, is this attempt made to unravel the method of Marx?

The worker-student who comes fresh into the field of Marxian thought will find in this volume a veritable maze of terminology to drive him into bewilderment. In about 650 pages there are literally hundreds of quotations from the flower of the world's intellects. Besides this there are innumerable phrases appearing in inverted commas and brackets, whilst the exclamation marks are as pronounced as tombstones in a graveyard. From this aspect alone any would-be student might easily be persuaded to adopt the advice which Mr. Jackson cites from Heine: "If you who read become tired of the stupid stuff herein, just think what a dreary time I must have had in writing it. I would recommend you, on the whole, once in a while to skip half a dozen leaves, for in that way you will arrive much sooner at the end.”

Of course all this is what Mr, Jackson would call "swank.” He wants people to read his book and for that reason alone should have concentrated upon making it "readable.” Obviously, if Marxism is to become a weapon in the struggle for working-class emancipation, it should be stated in a way that is within the grasp of those who have need of it. But one easily gathers from this book that Mr. Jackson has been little animated by the need of the enlightenment of "untutored workers.” Rather does he seem to have contrived his effort in the spirit of the ever so clever boy who is ever so eager "to tell the class all about it.”

His habitual use of long-winded, involved and even flashy statements, together with his readiness to knock lumps (spots seem not to be big enough) off all and sundry, will hamper any student who may mistake this book for an easy guide to Marxism.

Much of what Mr. Jackson has written here is comprehensible only to those who have had the opportunity of years and years of study, and into the bargain have been free from necessity of earning their daily bread under capitalist supervision in the workshop.

We cannot hesitate to offer the following example from among many which could be given of what we have said above. Mr. Jackson is explaining Hegel's phrase “Negation of negation,” and this is what we get : "The Hegelian method was 'pelmanised' for its followers in the 'sacramental formula' (as Marx called it): 'Negation of negation.' Both Marx and Engels used the phrase—it was an instance of their ‘coquetting with Hegelian terminology'—with telling effect. Since the phrase is a scandal and abomination to all bourgeoisdom to this day, and is made a chief count in the indictment against Marx by several of his recent critics, we may profitably give it a little attention.

  "Terrifying though this phrase may sound, mystifying to the last degree as it becomes in the hands of an idealist, this formula is none the less capable of a simple and, what is more, an illuminating explanation. Light begins to break through the mystery as soon as it is seen (a) that it summarises the conclusion of a logical operation; (b) that it is preceded by a process whose formula is in turn that of Spinoza, ‘All determination is Negation.'
  "What does this phrase mean? What it says: that all distinguishing of things in thought is a de-term-ination, a setting of limits to that which, the thing is. Or, otherwise stated, all distinguishing of things is an act of mentally separating a thing from that which it is not. Thus all 'determination,' which is particularisation, consists in 'negating’ or breaking up an undifferentiated generalisation. Furthermore, the process of discriminating one particular thing from a general mass is simultaneously a process of distinguishing the counter-particularity of that from which it is distinguished. Hence (and it is here that Hegel’s real contribution begins, all the foregoing being common to him and his predecessors)—hence a full comprehension of the thing involves comprehending it simultaneously in two opposite ways, namely, as distinct from and, at the same time, as one with that from which it is distinguished. Hence all logic consists in the performance with due circumspection of this operation of negating unity by resolving it into multiplicity (analysis) and re-creating it by distinguishing the unity persisting in the multiplicity (synthesis)."

One may gather from this why it was suggested that the study of philosophy is like looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The writings of Marx and Engels are in every way as clear as crystal compared with the above abracadabra.

However, having had our say so far, let us take Mr. Jackson as he is, as Cromwell preferred it, "Warts and all.” In tracing the rise and development of Marxism he well takes as his starting point an examination of Marx's theses on the philosophy of Feuerbach, which we have reproduced from time to time in these columns. All students of Marx should avail themselves of a study of these theses, since they indicate and illuminate the passage through which Marx passed from Hegelianism on to the philosophy of Feuerbach and thence to Marx. Mr. Jackson illuminates the fundamental distinctions between the older materialism of Hobbes and Locke, etc., the idealisms of Berkeley and Kant, which culminated in Hegel, and the materialism of the Marxian school of thought. If we allow for the drawbacks referred to previously, Mr. Jackson does this part of his work exceedingly well, and particularly so where he deals with the “ Objective Roots of Religion." Marx laid it down that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism," but as Mr. Jackson ably points out, although the “beginning,” it was by no means the end. In turn the criticism of religion involves a criticism of the legal-political-moral superstructure of human society as this arises from society’s economic foundations. Many passages from the writings of Marx and Engels are given in support of this thesis. But even here, Mr. Jackson cannot restrain his kink for “scalping,” and thus mars an otherwise excellent chapter by a piece of deliberate distortion. He quotes from Casey’s booklet, “Method in Thinking," the following: 

  “If we separate from men and things all thoughts of goodness, power, intelligence, perfection, life and such like, and add them together to form one thought of complete superiority in all matters, this thought is God. When we realise that thought is real and just as objective as anything else we have here!! the explanation!!! of why God is a real and very powerful influence!!! . . . If understanding were more general we should not have the silly quarrel between theists who take God on faith and the atheists who deny God also on faith!!! and agnostics who say they do not know one way or the other. . . .
   “The idea of God is built up just like any other idea, and therefore we can understand God! ! ! and consequently we are able to explain Him. . . . ”

The italics and exclamation marks are all Mr. Jackson’s, who describes Casey’s statement as an attitude of “facing-both-ways-at-once.” But Casey’s meaning is obvious, whatever one may think of his method of presentation. He does not mean what Mr. Jackson would have us believe, as the statement which follows on from where Mr. Jackson left him “ high and dry,” shows.

Says Casey: 

  "If after that any man wants to worship such a God it will be his own fault. Merely to deny God gets us no further, but to explain him is the best way, so far as serious argument is concerned, of clearing up all the nonsense associated with Him. We say nonsense, but it is not nonsense to those who trade on the faith in God, and in the name of God force their authority on their fellow-men, sometimes in sincere belief and sometimes with the utmost hypocrisy.” 

We cannot think that Jackson is unaware of the fact that Casey is dealing with "God” as a concept, and not as an objective reality, independently existing outside the human mind. We suggest Mr. Jackson should hesitate next time he thinks of the "facing-both-ways” charge. When Mr. Jackson was speaking recently at a Church Hall at Hornsey on the subject of ” Communism and Christianity,” he stated that “it was surely criminal to emphasise the disagreements of Communists and Christians when people all over the world clamoured for goodwill.” "The common enemy is Fascism.” (Hornsey Journal, February 21st, 1936.) Is this not facing-both-ways, or is it a variation of Low’s two-headed ass?

However, when dealing with "The Dialectic of Revolution,” Mr. Jackson exposes himself as being no more than an idolator of the Russian Bolshevik regime. He likewise exposes the fact that the mere possession of the dialectal concept is no guarantee that the correct standpoint is taken by the dialectarian. Whatever the Bolsheviks have done, or are doing, or are likely to do in the future, Mr. Jackson perceives in their activity the working out of the Dialectal Materialism of Marx. But he flattens himself out in the task of substantiation. He says, “That which was victorious in Russia in November, 1917, was neither a local nor a national force—but the revolutionary force of the world proletariat, which broke through the bourgeois defences just exactly at that point, because in that section the defences of the world-bourgeoisie were weakest.” (Page 397.)

The revolutionary force of the world proletariat! As Jackson must realise, unless he, like most "Communists,” sees the revolution everywhere, here and now in 1936 the revolutionary force of the world’s working-class is practically negligible. How much more so was it in 1917? Those who bitterly remember the wartime days will recall the almost complete absence of any serious sign of activity to stop the war, let alone commence the social revolution. In Russia alone was there any serious indication to call a halt to the slaughter, and mixed up in that movement to end the war were the Bolsheviks. The “Revolution” came, the Bolsheviks came, but no Socialism. Not even the intense longing and hoping of Lenin for the revolt of the world’s proletariat had any effect. The forces making for “Socialism” were actually subdued in Russia, firstly by the economic backwardness of that country and next by the capture of power by the very people who had been screaming "Socialism.” The Bolshevik Government from its inception, and in order to maintain its dictatorship throughout, had to toe the line to capitalism. Stalin in one of his recent utterances flatly repudiated the notion of the Bolshevik interest in world revolution after 19 years of his party’s rule.

The essential moves for Socialist revolution, which is totally different from a mere uprising to end a war, or dethrone a government, or what not, will take place when the workers understand and desire Socialism. And this Mr. Jackson evidently realises. He contends against the notion that it was Marx’s theory that the idea of Socialism would arise “automatically in the heads of each and every individual proletarian," and says further that "for the idea to arise in the first place, and to become general in the second place, an objective social reality must exist from which the idea has arisen. There must exist, and be felt to exist, a social problem for which a solution must be found—and it is under the promptings of the urgency of the problem as well as their cogency and applicability to the needs viewed in the light of practical everyday reality, that ideas spread and develop into 'forms of public opinion.' " Exactly, Mr. Jackson; but no such form of public opinion existed to any serious degree in the vast expanse of Russia in 1917 with Socialism as its objective. There are many other points made by Mr. Jackson about Russia, which we have refuted over and over again.

In concluding this review we repeat that, with those who are immersed in dialectics, and mistake the Marxian Dialectic for a sort of logic-chopping apparatus for the “use of smart men only," there lies a source of danger to Socialist activity. The concepts of the unity of theory and practice and the unity of opposites might pass muster anywhere and in anything, but to square with the realisation of Socialism it will not do to take one step forward in Socialist theory and two steps backward, not to mention a whole flight, into capitalist practice as Lenin and the Bolsheviks have done. There are numerous other points we should like to have dealt with arising from this provocative, entertaining, polemical, philosophical, historical and generally sociological essay, but we must drop our pen for the present. To all students of Marx we suggest that they sample this.work, but only after they have first studied Marx and Engels.

Robert Reynolds

P.S.—As I concluded this article, the news was broadcast that Russia desires a naval pact with Great Britain. The dialectic scores again.

Joseph Dietzgen - The Workers Philosopher (1975)

Josef Dietzgen (1828 – 1888)

From the Spring 1975 issue of Radical Philosophy magazine

"April the 15th 1888 Joseph Dietzgen died . In memory,  I post this article written by Adam Buick for the journal Radical Philosophy 10. Spring 1975 ." (Via Mailstrom blog.)

Josef Dietzgen is indeed a neglected philosopher. How many people know that he was the man Marx introduced to the 1872 Congress of the First International as ‘our philosopher’? Or that it was Dietzgen, not Plekhanov, who first coined the phrase ‘dialectical materialism’? Or that for the first thirty or so years of this century Dietzgen’s Philosophical Essays were to he found on the bookshelves of any working class militant with Marxist pretensions?

Who, then, was Dietzgen? What were his views? And, indeed, why has he been neglected?

Joseph Dietzgen was born in December 1828 near Cologne. His father was a master tanner and it was in this trade that Dietzgen was trained and worked. He was neither a capitalist nor a propertyless worker but an artisan owning and working his own instruments of production. What distinguished him from other pioneer scientific socialists like Marx and Engels was that he never went to university; he was a self-educated man. Dietzgen was involved in the 1848 rising and after its failure left for America returning, however, after a couple of years. He spent another two years in America after 1859 and went there again in 1884, never to return. He died in 1888 and is buried in Chicago.

Dietzgen was not just interested in philosophy, though this was his main interest. He was also a writer on economic and political matters for the German Social Democratic press, especially in the l870s. Marx commented favourably on Dietzgen’s review of Capital in his Afterward to the Second German Edition.1 The two men were personal acquaintances.

Dietzgen wrote in German, but a number of his writings, including the most important, were translated into English in the early years of this century and published as two books 2 by the Charles H. Kerr Co. of Chicago. The book bearing the title The Positive Outcome of Philosophy contains not only this, his last work originally published in 1887, but also his first work, The Nature of Human Brainwork (1869), and also his Letters on Logic. The other book, Philosophical Essays, contains translations of some of the propagandist articles Dietzgen wrote in the 1970s and also his pamphlet Excursions of a Socialist into the Domain of Epistemology. This pamphlet, especially Chapter 3, ‘Materialism versus Materialism’, is perhaps the best outline of Dietzgen’s views in his own words. For, frankly, Dietzgen’s works are not easy to read, partly because of the subject matter, but partly also because Dietzgen tended to express himself somewhat philosophically and to needlessly repeat himself.

In his introduction, written in 1902, to the English edition of The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, the Dutch Marxist, Anton Pannekoek, described Dietzgen’s philosophical writings as ‘an important and indispensable auxiliary for the understanding of the fundamental works of Marx and Engels.’3 Ernst Untermann, another German Social Democrat who had emigrated to America, expressed a similar view: ‘Dietzgen rounded out the work of Marx and Engels by a consistent monist conception of the universe' 4 Are these opinions justified? In this writer's opinion, yes. Marx’s historical materialism is a materialist theory of history and society; it is not, and was not meant to be, a materialist philosophy. Of course, being an atheist, Marx must have had a materialist conception of the universe but he never wrote much about it. Nor was there any reason why he should have. His specialities were history, sociology and economics, not philosophy or epistemology. Engels made an attempt to back up the materialist conception of history with a materialist philosophy but, in many respects failed to do this satisfactorily. It was Dietzgen who succeeded and in this sense can justly be said to have filled a 'gap' in socialist theory.

Dialectical Materialism

Dietzgen was a thoroughgoing empiricist and materialist. For him all knowledge was derived from sense-perception and what human beings perceived had a real existence independent of their perception of it.

The Nature of Human Brainwork (1869) presents an empiricist theory of knowledge derived from a rejection of Kantian dualism. Kant had claimed that Reason (=science, knowledge) could only deal with the world of experience, but the world of experience, according to him, was only a world of appearances or, to use a word derived from Greek meaning the same, a world of ‘phenomena’. Thus science could never come to understand the world as it really was, the world of what Kant called ‘things-in-themselves’ of which he supposed the world of phenomena to be but appearances. For Kant. there were two worlds: a world of phenomena, which was all the human mind could come to understand, and a world of things-in-themselves beyond human experience and understanding.

For Dietzgen, to posit the existence of a second world beyond the world of experience was simply metaphysical nonsense. ‘Phenomena or appearances appear - voilà tout.’5 The world of phenomena was the only world; phenomena were themselves real, the substance of the real world. Phenomena, however, says Dietzgen, do not exist as independent entities; they exist only as parts or the entire single world of phenomena. The world of reality is a single entity embracing all observable phenomena, past, present and future. Reality is thus infinite, having no beginning nor end. It is constantly changing. The universe and all things in it consist of transformations of matter, which take place simultaneously and consecutively in space and time.

The universe is in every place and at any time itself new or present for the first time. It arises and passes away, passes and arises under our very hands. Nothing remains the same, only the infinite change is constant, and even the change varies. Every part of time and space brings new changes.6

The world of reality is a never-ending, everchanging stream of observable phenomena, and it exists only as a whole. That Reality, Existence, the Universe, Nature – call it what you will (and Dietzgen called it many things drawn from philosophy, e.g., the Absolute, the Good, Truth, even God) – is a united whole a single unit, is the basis of Dietzgen’s theories and is endlessly repeated in the Letters on Logic, written over the period 1880-3 to Eugene, one of his sons.

As can be seen, this conception of the universe is both materialist (since it posits the existence of a world of reality independent of men’s perception of it) and dialectical (since it sees the world of reality as a changing, differentiated unity). It was for this reason that Dietzgen called his philosophy ‘dialectical materialism’, a phrase he first used in his 1870s articles in the German Social Democratic press.7 This was some years before Plekhanov, who is generally said to have originated this phrase (which is not to be found in the writings of Marx or Engels), even claimed to be a Marxist. Plekhanov, it should be noted, meant something rather different by it than did Dietzgen; he was the father of the undialectical state philosophy of present-day Russia which also, unfortunately, goes under the name of ‘dialectical materialism’ and with which Dietzgen’s quite different theories are not to be confused.

What is Knowledge?

The human mind The human mind is not the metaphysical mystery that idealist philosophers try to make it. As something that can be observed and studied, it too is part the world of phenomena. Once this is recognised, as Dietzgen insists it should be, then it is possible to give a materialist explanation of the nature of thinking. Dietzgen’s philosophy is in fact essentially such a materialist epistemology. Human brainwork consists, says Dietzgen, in generalising from experience, in constructing abstract general concepts on the basis of perceptions supplied by the senses. The senses perceive a continuous stream of different phenomena; the role of the mind is to make sense of this stream by distinguishing and naming parts of it. The mind, as the organ of human understanding, understands the world by classifying it:

Knowledge, thinking, understanding, explaining, has not, and cannot have, any other function than that of describing the processes of experience by (division or classification.8

Phenomena are classified by the mind into different categories on the basis of common characteristics. But the categories, or concepts, are abstractions from reality, mental constructs. A table, for instance, does not have a separate, independent existence; it is the name given by the human mind to a certain group of recurring phenomena perceived by the senses. A table (and indeed all other things) is an abstraction, a mental construct. In reality all things are interdependent Darts of the whole which is the entire world of phenomena:

The world is not made up of fixed classes, but is a fluid unity, the Absolute incarnate, which develops eternally, and is only classified by the human mind for purposes of forming intelligent conceptions.9

This dialectical view contrasts with the everyday – and undialectical – view that the world consists of a collection of separate, fixed objects. Dietzgen does not challenge the usefulness of this latter view. On the contrary, he recognises that men must form such a view of the world if they are to orient themselves and survive in it. It is this ability to generalise, to, as it were, stop this continuous stream of phenomena (so that parts of it can become subjects for abstract thought), that distinguishes men from other animals and has enables them to intervene in and control the external world. But, says Dietzgen, we ought to know that stopping the stream of phenomena and classifying it into separate, fixed objects is only a mental operation, however vital to the survival of the human species:

The logical household use of rigid conceptions extends, and should and must extend, to all science. The consideration of things as ‘the same’, is indispensable, and yet it is very salutary to know and remember that the things are not only the same and congealed, but at the same time variable and fluid.10

To state that things are mental constructs can give rise to the misunderstanding that you are saying that they are only mental constructs and that you are therefore an idealist who sees the external world as the creation of the mind. Rut Dietzgen was not saying that things were simply mental constructs: things were mental constructs out of the real world of phenomena as perceived by the senses; things were abstractions, yes, but abstractions from an objectively-existing external reality. Although a thing as such, as a separate independent object, did not exist, there was certainly something in the real world of phenomena which corresponded to it that existed. The mind was not so much constructing the external world as reconstructing an image of it.

Science altogether does not want and cannot want to accomplish more than the classification of perceptible things according to species and varieties; its entire desire and ability is confined to the mental reconstruction of the different parts of a differential unity. [emphasis added] It is the substantial force of the Universe, in which they participate, which has brought about the things that are, and all that the human mind can do is to form a picture of its gradual, consistent and rational working.11

These passages make it quite clear that for Dietzgen the external world existed independently of the human mind. Unfortunately, as we shall see, this did not prevent him from being misunderstood on this point.

A further aspect of Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism is that knowledge can never be absolute or complete, all knowledge is relative; our classification or description of the world must always be regarded as a tentative approximation liable to revision in the light of further experience. Dietzgen’s last work, The Positive Outcome of Philosophy (1887), ends with the following rule for scientific investigation which remains valid to this day:

Thou shalt sharply divide and subdivide and farther subdivide to the utmost, the universal concept, the concept of the universe, but thou shalt be backed up by the consciousness that this mental classification is a formality, by which man seeks to register and Systematize his experience; thou shalt furthermore remain conscious of thy human liberty to progressively clarify thy experience, which is constantly enriched in the course of time, through modified classification.12

Mind and Matter

Dietzgen, as we saw, called himself a materialist. There are however various kinds of materialism and Dietzgen was careful to differentiate his dialectical materialism from what he called ‘onesided,’ ‘narrow’ and ‘mechanical’ materialism. This was the view (indeed the traditional materialist view going back to the philosophers of Ancient Greece) that the world is composed of tiny particles of tangible ‘matter’ and that the mind and thinking are simply the effects of the movement of these atoms. Writes Dietzgen:

The distinguishing mark between the mechanical materialists of the 18th century and the Social-Democratic materialists trained in German idealism consists in that that the latter have extended the former’s narrow conception of matter as consisting exclusively of the Tangible to all phenomena that occur in the world.13

Every phenomenon, everything that occurs, exists, as part of the entire world of phenomena. Since non-tangible phenomena, e.g. ideas, thoughts etc., also occur, they are just as real or, if you like, just as ‘material’ as tangible phenomena:

In the endless Universe matter in the sense of old and antiquated materialists, that is, of tangible matter, does not possess the slightest preferential right to be more substantial, i.e. more immediate, more distinct and more certain than any other phenomena of nature.14

Dietzgen had no objection to the classification of the world of phenomena into two general categories, one consisting of tangible phenomena and called ‘matter’ and the other consisting of mental phenomena and called ‘mind.’ He had no objection either to explanations of mental phenomena in terms of tangible phenomena. What he was concerned to point out was that, in this sense, both ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ were abstractions, even if very general ones, from the real world of phenomena. The rigid distinction between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ was a mental distinction that did not exist in the world of phenomena which, despite this mental operation, remained an undivided whole:

The mind is a collective name for the mental phenomena, as matter is a collective name for the material phenomena, and the two together figure under the idea and name of the phenomena of Nature.15

This was the basis of Dietzgen’s statement, which, as we shall see, so upset Lenin, that ‘our materialism is distinguished by its special knowledge of the common nature of mind and matter’.16 By this he simply meant that both mind and matter were parts of the world of observable phenomena.

Those Dietzgen called the ‘narrow’ materialists made the mistake of not thinking dialectically, that is, of not realising that the parts of the world of phenomena do not exist independently but only as interconnected parts of that world. In taking one part of the world of phenomena and making it the basis of all the other parts, they were falsely ascribing a real, independent existence to what was in fact only an abstraction:

This materialism is so enamoured of mechanics, that it, as it were, idolizes it, does not regard it as part of the world, but as the sole substance of which the universe is made up.17

This was the same mistake as regarding the objects of everyday use as having an independent, separate existence. ‘Matter’ just as much as ‘table’ was a mental abstraction from the real world of phenomena; in reality tangible phenomena do not exist separately from other phenomena, they exist only as an integral part of the entire single world of all phenomena.

It is worth emphasising again that this equal epistemological status of tangible and mental phenomena does not at all rule out scientific explanations of mental phenomena in terms of tangible phenomena, e.g., in terms of the physiological functioning of the brain and nervous system, or indeed of the explanation of all phenomena in terms of the movement of atoms. The fact that ‘matter’ and ‘atoms’ were metal abstractions from the world of phenomena did not in the least detract from their possible usefulness as concepts for understanding the world. As Dietzgen said of atoms:

Atoms are groups. As smallest parts they exist only in our thoughts and thus give excellent service in chemistry. The consciousness that they are not plastic but only mental things, does not detract from their usefulness, but heightens it still more.18

To understand the world was to divide it into necessarily abstract concepts. It was not Dietzgen’s aim to decide which was the best way to classify, describe and explain the world but to show what we were doing when we did do this. To ascribe reality to any of these mental constructs, even so general a one as (tangible) matter was a confusion, was to think undialectically; the only thing that had a separate, independent existence was the entire world of phenomena itself. Dietzgen’s criticism of one-sided, narrow materialism was a criticism of its confusion on this point, and not at all a criticism of the basic principles of materialism.

Dietzgen was essentially a philosopher of science. We would not want to claim that he always expressed himself clearly or adequately (his ontological proof of the universe and his virtual pantheism will make some readers wince – or smile), but despite his shortcomings he must be given the credit for first formulating a theory of the nature of science – as basically a description of the world for purposes of prediction and control – which is now largely accepted even if it does not call itself ‘dialectical materialism’ or indeed refer to itself as ‘materialist’ at all (mainly for fear of confusion with the narrow, one-sided materialism of the past – and present-day Russia).

Dietzgen’s works, besides being difficult to obtain, make difficult reading. However, his best interpreter, the Dutch Marxist Anton Pannekoek, expressed himself very clearly. Pannekoek was himself a scientist, a professor of astronomy of world renown in fact, and wrote not only the introduction to the Kerr editions of The Positive Outcome of Philosophy but also, later, two short brilliant books applying Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism: Lenin as Philosopher (1938)19 and Anthropogenesis (1944). Unfortunately these are just as difficult to obtain as the works of Dietzgen himself.

Lenin versus Dietzgen

At about the same time as Dietzgen was writing, two other German-speakers, Ernst Mach in Austria and Richard Avenarius in Switzerland, were working out a theory of science which was in a number of ways similar to Dietzgen’s. One of Avenarius’ followers called this theory ‘empirio-criticism.’ We can’t go into this theory here except to say that it too saw knowledge as essentially the classification of experience. However, while Dietzgen never doubted the independent existence of the world of phenomena or experience, empirio-criticism was ambiguous on this point. It wished to construct the world from ‘experience’ (sense-data, etc.) but since experience is the experience of human beings it came very near to saying, and some of its exponents did say, that the human mind (or minds) was as vital to the existence of the external world as external phenomena themselves.

Empirio-criticism, partly because of its similarity with Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism, enjoyed a certain vogue in Social Democratic circles in the early years of the twentieth century. A number of Social Democrats, including Dietzgen’s son Eugene, misinterpreted Dietzgen in an empirio-criticist direction. Included in the Kerr edition of Dietzgen’s Philosophical Essays is an essay on Max Stirner by Eugene wherein we read that ‘whatever does not partake of the psychophysical nature of the universe, cannot exist for us’ and that ‘phenomena outside of us . . . exist independently of individual man, although they cannot exist for mankind independently of human consciousness.20

Eugene Dietzgen would seem to be suggesting here that the external world is not an objective world but only an inter-subjective world, i.e., a sort of collective creation of all human minds which would not exist in their absence. Similar views were expounded also by a number of members of the Russian Bolshevik Party. Lenin was scandalised by this departure from materialism (as indeed it was) and set out to refute this deviation once and for all. In 1908 was published Plekhanov’s Fundamental Problems of Marxism and in 1909 Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Both contain a denial of the view we quoted earlier that Dietzgen had added something to the work of Marx and Engels. We won’t deal with Plekhanov’s criticism here except to say that he preferred Feuerbach’s materialism to Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism (though he retained the phrase ‘dialectical materialism’).

Lenin devotes a section of Materialism and Empirio-Criticism to Dietzgen entitled ‘How could J. Dietzgen Have Found Favour with the Reactionary Philosophers?’ in which he criticises in particular Dietzgen’s view that the real, or material, world includes the intangible (thoughts, etc.) as well as the tangible:

To say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards confusing materialism and idealism.

That the conception of ‘matter’ must also include thoughts, as Dietzgen repeats in the Excursions, is a muddle, for if such an inclusion is made, the epistemological contrast between mind and matter, idealism and materialism, a contrast upon which Dietzgen himself insists, loses all meaning.21

Lenin regards this as a ‘deviation’ by Dietzgen from materialism, without seeming to realise that this view is the basis of Dietzgen’s whole materialist epistemology. It is not a question of Dietzgen expressing himself badly but of there being a fundamental difference between Dietzgen’s materialism and Lenin’s. Lenin was clearly one of those Dietzgen described as a narrow, one-sided, mechanical materialist.

Lenin’s claim about the epistemological contrast between idealism and materialism being blurred if thoughts are regarded as part of the world of phenomena (= the material world) is not true. As we have seen, Dietzgen was quite able to make this the basis of his epistemology and to remain a thoroughgoing materialist who never for one moment doubted the objective existence of the external world. Lenin was quite right, on the other hand, to attack people like Eugene Dietzgen who only gave the external world an inter-subjective existence. This was indeed a departure from materialism in the direction of idealism, but Lenin’s criticism of it was made from the point of view of what Pannekoek in his Lenin as Philosopher called ‘bourgeois materialism’ not that of dialectical materialism.

Pannekoek, in this work (which is a reply to Lenin following the publication of German, English and French translations in 1927 and 1928), attempted to give an explanation of why the Russian Bolshevik Party should have adopted ‘bourgeois materialism’ as its theory. By ‘bourgeois’ materialism Pannekoek meant a materialism which seeks to explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. When the bourgeoisie had to fight to achieve and retain power, said Pannekoek, they believed in the power of the physical sciences to change the world, practically by developing modern industry, and theoretically by exposing the religious views of their class opponents as superstitious nonsense. That Lenin and the Bolsheviks 22 should have adopted a similar ideology to that of the rising bourgeoisie of Western Europe at an earlier period was to be explained, said Pannekoek, by the essentially similar task that confronted them: to carry out the equivalent of a bourgeois revolution in Russia which would sweep away the obstacles, institutional and ideological, to the development of modern industry there. Pannekoek saw Leninism as the ideology of a new ruling class whose historical task was to industrialise Russia on the basis of state capitalism, with militant physical-science materialism as its ideology. This materialism, though falsely called ‘dialectical,’ is still the dominant ideology in Russia today.

Dietzgen Today

Whatever the explanation as to why Lenin rejected Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism, the fact that he did contributed in large measure to Dietzgen becoming a neglected philosopher.23 Dietzgen’s ideas had been introduced into Britain before the first World War by the English-language translations of his works published by Kerr of Chicago, and had been propagated here by such organisations as the Labour College movement and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Both of these continued to exist after the War and Russian revolution and both of them proclaimed a Marxism independent of Moscow. A textbook on Dietzgen’s philosophy by an NCLC lecturer, Fred Casey, called Thinking (1922) was widely read in militant working-class circles. Then in 1927 was published the first English translation of Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.24 From then on, as in the 1930s, the Communist Party’s false claim to be genuine Marxists came to be widely accepted, Dietzgen receded into the background. In 1936 T.A. Jackson, a professional Communist Party writer, included a vituperative attack, in true Leninist style, on the unfortunate Casey in his book Dialectics; to be a ‘Caseyite,’ i.e., to accept Dietzgen’s philosophy without Lenin’s ‘correction,’ became a heresy in Communist Party circles.

We would not want to claim that the sole reason for Dietzgen becoming neglected was the fact that his materialism differed from that proclaimed by the State philosophers of Russia. Other factors entered into it too, including the difficult reading that his writings make. Also, with the decline of religion as a social force, working class militants have felt less need to arm themselves with a militant materialism such as Dietzgen provided. Nor is it now really necessary to ‘revive’ Dietzgen. For, as we have said, his basic views have been absorbed into modern science which in practice is both dialectical and materialist. For the historical record, though, it is worth paying a tribute to the working tanner and socialist militant who pioneered these views. Dietzgen, radical philosophers of today should be aware, was the man who first formulated the theory of dialectical materialism as an essential complement to Marx’s materialist conception of history.

Adam Buick

Notes

1 Capital, Vol. I, p.16, FLPH, Moscow, 1961.

2 The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 1906. A second revised edition was published in 1928, from which the quotes for this article are taken. Philosophical Essays, Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 1906 and 1917.

3 Positive Outcome p.63.

4 Science and Revolution p.161, Kerr, 1905.

5 ‘The Nature of Human Brainwork,’ Positive Outcome, p.102.

6 Ibid, p.101.

7 Essays, pp.139, 159, 208, 216 (231, 293, 294, 306, 307, 361).

8 ‘The Positive Outcome of Philosophy,’ Positive Outcome, p.425.

9 ‘Excursions,’ Essays, p.322.

10 ‘The Positive Outcome of Philosophy,’ Positive Outcome, pp.374-5.

11 ‘Excursions,’ Essays, pp.361-2 and p.310 respectively.

12 ‘The Positive Outcome of Philosophy,’ Positive Outcome, p.428.

13 ‘Excursions,’ Essays p.298.

14 ‘Excursions,’ Essays p.307.

15 ‘Excursions,’ Essays pp.311-12

16 ‘Excursions,’ Essays p.308.

17 ‘The Positive Outcome of Philosophy,’ Positive Outcome, p.368.

18 Ibid, p.418.

19 Lenin as Philosopher, New Essays, New York, 1948. A French translation was recently published by Spartacus, 5 rue Ste-Croix-de-la- Bretonnerie, Paris IVe. See also Pannekoek’s article ‘Society and Mind in Marxian Philosophy,’ Science and Society, 1, 4, 1937.

20 ‘The Proletarian Method,’ Essays, p.65 and p.61 respectively.

21 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p.290 and p.292 respectively, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972.

22 Trotsky too was a mechanical materialist who believed that, in principle, it was possible to explain everything, from the movement of the planets to thinking and consciousness, in terms of the movement and properties of the tangible atomic particles he supposed the world to be made up of. See the extracts from two speeches made in 1925 and 1926, reproduced in The Age of Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky Anthology, edited and introduced by Isaac Deutscher, Dell, New York, 1964, pp.342-55.

23 Dietzgen was not entirely forgotten. See, for instance, ‘Empiricism and Ethics in Dietzgen’ by Loyd D. Easton, Journal of the History of Ideas, January 1958. Also the SPGB, and the World Socialist Party of the United States (from which this writer first learnt of the ideas of Dietzgen and Pannekoek), continued, and continue, to propagate his ideas.

24 There exist two English translations of Lenin’s work. The first, the one published in 1927, evidently had various inaccuracies. For instance, it has a passage ‘all materialists regard Dietzgen as an inconsistent philosopher’ which the second translates ‘materialists . . . regard Dietzgen as a philosopher who is not entirely consistent’!

Lenin . . . Reviewed (1976)

Book Review from the Fall 1976 issue of the Western Socialist

Lenin as Philosopher by Anton Pannekoek, Merlin Press, 11 Fitzroy Square, London, W.l.

The Russian State proclaims as its official ideology “dialectical materialism.” Their views, however, have nothing in common with those of the man who first used the term, Joseph Dietzgen. The basic text of Russian State philosophy is Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a diatribe written in 1908. Thirty years later Anton Pannekoek, a Dutch Marxist and astronomer of world renown, wrote a criticism of Lenin’s work under the title Lenin as Philosopher, his own 1948 English translation of which has now been re-published by Merlin Press.

There are, argues Pannekoek, two types of materialism: middle-class materialism and historical materialism. Middle-class materialism was the view embraced by the rising bourgeoisie when they were fighting the landed aristocracy for control of political power. Religion was an important ideological support for their opponents and the bourgeoisie used the findings of the natural science of the time to undermine religious superstitions. Nineteenth Century natural science had a mechanical materialist view of the world: reality was seen as being composed of tiny particles of physical matter, whose movement was governed by natural laws to discover which was the task of science; consciousness was seen as a purely biological phenomenon, for which a physical-chemical explanation would ultimately be found.

Historical materialism, on the other hand, says Pannekoek, is based on the study of society and social change. Consciousness clearly has a biological aspect, but in origin and content it is a social product. For Marx and Engels, ideas arose from society. Dietzgen dealt with a different aspect: how the experiences of our senses were translated into ideas. Dietzgen's materialism was dialectical: the material world was the ever-changing world of observed phenomena, whether tangible or not, considered as a single whole. Human beings, alone amongst animals, are capable of abstract thought, i.e, of delaying and planning their response to the stimuli of their external environment.

Abstract thought is done with mental concepts, which the mind constructs out of the real world of phenomena as experienced by the senses by distinguishing and naming parts of it. Everything that is the subject of abstract thought is a mental construction, including what we regard as physical objects. This is because reality is ever-changing and exists only as a whole. A table, as the group of phenomena given that name, does not exist separately on its own; it exists only as a part of the whole world of phenomena.

This dialectical view is well explained by Pannekoek.

Of course for our everyday life we need to assume that the things we use have a separate existence, but dialectical materialism teaches that what will do for everyday life will not do as an adequate scientific understanding.

Not only are tables and chairs abstractions from the world of reality, but so are atoms and physical matter. The world of phenomena is not really composed of tiny particles of physical matters; this is just one possible way of describing various physical phenomena experienced by the senses. This does not invalidate materialism at all since “matter” for dialectical materialism is something different:

  "If . . . matter is taken as the name for the philosophical concept denoting objective reality, it embraces far more than physical matter. Then we come to the view repeatedly expressed in former chapters, where the material world was spoken of as the name for the entire observed reality. This is the meaning of the word materia, matter in Historical Materialism, the designation of all that is really existing in the world, ‘including mind and fancies’ as Dietzgen said” (p. 83).

Mach and Avenarius, who Lenin attacked in his book, also held that physical matter was an abstraction, but they regarded this as a refutation of materialism. Their views were shared by a number of German Social Democrat Revisionists and even by some of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. In order to preserve the ideological unity of his party, Lenin set out to refute these ideas, but — and this is the burden of Pannekoek’s criticism of him — from the point of view of bourgeois rather than dialectical materialism. In Materialism and Empirio-Criticism Lenin defends the view that the world is composed of particles of physical matter and claims that any departure from this position opens the door to religious ideas. In fact, as Pannekoek points out, just like the rising bourgeoisie in its early days Lenin insisted on a militant atheism, even suggesting that the main battle in the field of ideas is between materialism and religion (rather than between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas).

Pannekoek explains that it was no coincidence that Lenin should have been a proponent of bourgeois materialism. For the anti-Tsarist revolutionaries of Russia were faced with the same task as Western bourgeois revolutionaries a century earlier: to overthrow a reactionary landed ruling class, propped up by Church and religion, so as to pave the way for industrialisation. In Russia the bourgeoisie was very weak so that the task of carrying out Russia’s bourgeois revolution fell to another group, the intelligentsia. Organized in a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries and armed with the ideology of militant atheism, a section of the Intelligentsia did seize power in Russia in 1917, eventually evolving into a new ruling class on the basis of state capitalism:

  “The Russian economic system is state capitalism, there called state socialism or even communism, with production directed by a state bureaucracy under the leadership of the Communist Party. The State officials, forming the new ruling class, have the disposal over the product, hence over the surplus value, whereas the workers receive wages only, thus forming an exploited class” (p. 102).

Pannekoek goes further: “The 
alleged Marxism of Lenin and the bolshevlst party,” he writes, “is nothing but a legend.” Leninism, he says further, is “a theory of middle-class revolution, Installing a new ruling class.”

Pannekoek, incidentally, knew of the world socialist movement and was, despite important disagreements, sympathetically disposed towards us. The Western Socialist recounts, in their obituary of him in 1960, how in 1938 when he was in Boston to receive an honorary degree in connection with the tercentenary of Harvard University, Pannekoek found some time to address a party meeting and talk to Socialists. He also contributed two articles to The Western Socialist after the war (“Public Ownership and Common Ownership” in November 1947 and “Strikes” in January 1948). From these it can be seen where his views differed from ours.

Although both Pannekoek and Socialists insist on the need for the working class to organize democratically, without leaders, in order to establish Socialism, Pannekoek was a lifelong anti- parliamentarlst and said the workers should do this through “workers councils.” We, on the other hand, have always urged that the workers should organize democratically into a socialist political party using the vote to gain political power (see Socialist Standard, May 1942 for a criticism of Pannekoek’s views on this).

Pannekoek’s Lenin as Philosopher has a place on the bookshelf of every Socialist, not just for its criticism of Leninism but also for its clear account of dialectical materialism.

Adam Buick

Dialectical Materialism (1947)

From the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent has asked us to define our attitude to Dialectical Materialism. This phrase has become the stock-in-trade of those who try to defend the tortuous policy of that clay-footed giant of the East—Russia—and it has had wished upon it the mystical characteristics of a solvent of all points of view, even the most glaringly contradictory, such as a “socialist’’ country in which wages exist and a privileged few enjoy luxury at the expense of the great majority.

Dialectical Materialism made its appearance in socialist propaganda when Marx borrowed from Hegel the dialectical (evolutionary) method of examining man's history and works, but he reversed Hegel's method of approach to the world. To Hegel the world was a reflection of the thought process in man's head, he was an idealist; to Marx the thought process was a reflection of an actual world process, he was a materialist. Hegel was building his philosophical system at a time when the old static world of Feudalism was being rent by the birth of Capitalism, and accepted ways and ideas were being hurled into a tormented melting pot. The old world was passing, the new world was problematical and struggling into shape; nothing was settled, all was change. Hegel, a product of the times, was impregnated with this idea of universal change and his philosophy expressed it—even though upside down. The confused, contradictory and changing policy of Soviet Russia bewilders its adherents and drives them back to a bastardised Hegelianism with leadership as the absolute concept. Is there a contradiction between principles and policy? No matter, an understanding of dialectics will show that everything is all right in this best of all possible Russian worlds. If the Russian workers are free to control their own destiny but must obey the dictates of the Stalin oligarchy, if the capitalist class is the enemy and yet Russia concludes alliances of love with them, if imperialism is a capitalist method of fleecing and yet the “workers’ republic” fights for world markets and spheres of influence, don’t worry, dialectics explains and solves these contradictions. The more incomprehensible dialectics appears to the ordinary worker the firmer the bonds of leadership are riveted upon them and the higher its self-appointed interpreters climb.

At the time when Marx was preparing and writing his analyses of history and Capitalism the word evolution was not current as an expression covering the process of world development, because, although many thinkers recognised that certain changes occurred in nature and history they had not yet grasped the fact that the process was universal, complementary, and unified. They used the expression “development hypothesis” to describe the growth of one form into another within one particular species; the change from one species into another had not yet been recognised, and was to become part of a larger outlook—the evolutionary one. It is significant from this point of view that the word evolution does not appear anywhere in the Communist Manifesto, the outlook of which is now recognised as evolutionary. Evolution as the expression covering the comprehensive developmental point of view became current with the appearance of Darwin’s “Origin of Species," in which was proclaimed the theory of organic evolution. This book appeared in 1859, the same year in which Marx’s “Critique of Political Economy" appeared, and by that time Marx had written most of the manuscript that eventually appeared under the title "Capital." In fact, as far as the writer can remember at the moment, the word evolution does not appear in "Capital,” which was published in 1867, apart from a reference in the preface. Thus most of Marx's important works were already either published or in manuscript form before the word evolution had become current as the expression of all that is bound up with the process of universal, progressive, and unending change, including the mechanism that accomplishes the changes.

To the advanced thinkers of Marx’s day "dialectical’’ signified the science of the process by which change occurred. Since then "dialectical'’ has been replaced by "evolutionary," and the older word is largely forgotten by all expect the out-of-date philosophers living among cobwebs, and the advocates of that modern monstrosity, "Russian Communism." An adroit use of dialectics enables the latter to clothe their conflicting policies with a semblance of conformity to Marxism, which is not even the Lenin brand. Under their influence we have witnessed an attempt, that has become stronger as Bolshevik claims and practice have become more contradictory and confusing, to define dialectical materialism as something more comprehensive than evolution.

Attention must be drawn to the fact that each scientist is, and must be, an evolutionist in his own field of research, and is therefore, to that extent, a materialist. It is only when he leaves this field, particularly when he looks at society and religion, that he is likely to abandon science and enter the realms of phantasy. The reason for this is that in these particular directions the weight of society and tradition is heavier than in others because here a scientific outlook is a danger to the persistence of the existing social arrangements.

What Marx and Engels meant by dialectics was made clear in the latter’s book, "Anti-Duhring,’’ written with the assistance of Marx. In this book Engels says, towards the end of the chapter on dialectics, when referring to the negation of the negation: —

   "If I say that all these processes [growth of a grain of barley to a crop-bearing plant, etc.] constitute negation of the negation, I embrace them all under this one law of progress, and leave the distinctive features of each special process without particular notice. The dialectic is, as a matter of fact, nothing but the science of the universal laws of motion, and evolution in nature, human society and thought."

He further says of modem materialism:

   "It is in a special sense no philosophy but a single concept of the universe which has to prove and realise itself not in a science of sciences apart, but in actual science.’’

To understand the process of change in any particular department of knowledge you must discover the laws, the uniformity in the apparently haphazard, and this is just what scientists do; they discover the laws in that particular department by applying the evolutionary concept. Evolution does not merely signify that there is perpetual change; that was an old view dating back to antiquity; but that the changes are an unfolding and further development of forces within that which is changing, the direction of the change being determined by the alignment of internal constituents and the impact of external.

Everything is part of an unending world process, no section of which can be isolated except in thought; and even when isolating anything in thought it must still be studied in its connection with other things. World change consists of a combination, dissolution and re-combination of elements in an ascending series; that is to say, an ever, more complicated arrangement of elements. Existence is only a temporary equilibrium of opposing elements, always in motion, that at a certain stage bursts apart and forms a new combination when one element becomes present in greater abundance than another, or the relation between internal quantities changes. In analysing these progressive combinations scientists discover the numerous laws that govern such progressive movement enabling them to foretell, with varying degrees of accuracy, future developments. Absolute accuracy is impossible because the knowledge to foretell is limited by the fact that all the items that go to make up the changing world process are so vast that they are outside the capacity of any individual, group, class or nation. Absolute accuracy would demand the sum of the experience of the human race, past and present, as well as the knowledge of things that have not yet swum into the human orbit But the limited accuracy is sufficient to enable humanity to build ships, aeroplanes, factories, rockets and atom bombs, and the rest.

Now let us glance at two or three interpretations of the laws of Dialectical Materialism by two writers who published short books on the subject—David Guest and Edward Conze.

Guest (“Dialectical Materialism," Lawrence & Wishart, 1941; edited by T. A. Jackson) quotes the second law of dialectics as follows, and later quotes Lenin's blessing of the same wording: “The law of unity (interpenetration, identity) of opposites." Note the word “identity." Opposites cannot be identical as long as they are opposites, and to say that one cannot exist without the other is not very illuminating because a thing cannot be opposite to nothing; it must be opposite to something that is opposite to it! Marx did not mix unity with identity. Writing of the two poles of the expression of value in the first chapter of “Capital" he says :—

    “The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes—i.e., poles of the same expression."

That is the essence of the matter; mutually dependent, inseparable, but mutually exclusive. Identity of opposites is just nonsense.

Referring to the inner contradictions and opposite sides in society, Guest makes the following remarks :— 

    “Marx found the basis of the class struggle to lie in a contradiction between the methods of production . . . and the existing social relationships. It is this contradiction which during a certain historic period gets expressed in an external antagonism of classes. When this is so . . . one class . . . represents the forces of production seeking to expand, and another class . . . represents those social relations which are hemming in the productive forces.
    “But the basic contradiction will continue to exist in classless society, and will cause the progressive development of social relationships as the productive forces themselves develop." (Page 54.) 

The reader may perhaps glimpse in the last few lines the creeping paralysis of Russia! The basic contradiction is the contradiction between the method of production and the existing social relationships and, according to Guest, it will continue to exist under Communism. In his breathless pursuit of contradictions he makes the mistake of thinking that they must always be of the same kind and he has missed the basic contradiction which will be solved for good and all; the contradiction between social production and private ownership which originated in primitive society, developed during succeeding centuries and will be finally solved by Socialism. We will consider this at greater length later and in the meantime see what Engels has to say upon Guest’s point; we quote from “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific":—

    “But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature . . .      “Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of to-day." (Page 78.)
    "The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. . . .  It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom." (Page 82.)

Thus, according to Engels, the basic contradiction will not have the indefinite life attributed to it by Guest.

Now let us take two examples of Conze’s interpretation of Dialectical Materialism (“An Introduction to Dialectical Materialism," Edward Conze, N.C.L.C., 1936). He is also in a jam over the question of opposites and we refer back to what we have already said on the subject Here is his gem:

   “I know no general reason why opposites always must be united. The study of scientific method is not yet advanced enough to give us proof of this kind." (Page 35.)

Conze has evidently walked up the wrong street. The human race, in its wisdom, has decided that when two things turn up in a certain relationship to each other they will be called opposites. As long as the human race sticks to this then we can’t have one opposite on its own. Conze is apparently prepared to concede that all the black door handles that have so far turned up have been black, but he does not rule out the possibility that some day a black door handle may appear that is not black!

On another page Conze, with the backing of Freud, gives us this information:—

   “Freud has shown that we can have no feeling of love towards anyone without simultaneously having a more or lees feeling of hatred of the same person, and vice versa. . . . No hatred can exist without containing some love. Love is the regular companion of hatred, even if the quantity of love is sometimes microscopic." (Page 38.)

This is a peculiar way of looking at the unity of opposites, on the basis of which we can prove anything and get nowhere. Let us see if we can translate it into something more obvious. A wooden stick has two ends; they are the names we give to two opposite parts of the stick, and while the stick exists as a stick the ends exist as separate, antagonistic, mutually dependent parts of it. As long as we remain outside a lunatic asylum the ends will appear to us as two different parts of this piece of wood, and we can’t have even a microscopic bit of one end existing alongside, let alone inside, the other. Of course we can throw the stick in the fire and put the same end to both, but then this is a different end altogether! Let us use language reasonably and for its purpose. Love and hate are two opposite expressions of a common human emotion; they cannot both exist at the same time for the same object but they can alternate, or they can both dwindle down with the dwindling of emotion. Now let us look at love and hatred from the point of view of the development of these two poles of the expression of emotion, and not their temporary equilibrium in an individual who both loves and hates. Human emotion develops until it becomes differentiated into what we call love and hatred; in its early development the distinction is blurred but in the course of time it becomes clearly defined, and it is love and hatred as such and as opposites that Conze is writing about. Love is love and not hate, and in a given situation they are mutually exclusive. Mixing interpenetration with identity seems to be the cause of the confusion. If we pass our finger along the stick we come to a point where it is neither one end nor the other but we never have our finger on a little bit of one end and a large part of the other. What happens is that one end passes into the other.

There is much dross in both of the books to which we have referred but we have not space to discuss them further.

There is a progressive change in nature and thought; an evolution. What does this mean? It means nothing more than a movement from the simple to the complex; an ever more complicated mixture of a comparatively few elements. An example may make this clearer. A modern piece of highly developed mechanism, such as an aeroplane engine, is a mystifying sight to the uninitiated, and yet it is made up of a multitude of simple movements that, taken by themselves, would mystify nobody. The human mind thrives by learning and contriving and thus craves for an ever more complicated life; it is more satisfying, and therefore progressive, to the majority in the long run.

Let us now complete the picture by an illustration of the operation of the laws Marx borrowed from Hegel and applied in his investigations. We will take an example from the evolution of society, as that is our particular concern.

In prehistoric times man lived in small communities, beset by forces of nature he was not yet able to control or adjust himself to, but the simple means of production were commonly owned. These means of production were barely sufficient to enable each member of the community to sustain life and reproduce his kind. In the course of time man multiplied but the means of production multiplied at a greater rate until what was produced was more than sufficient to supply each with the necessaries of life. When this expansion had reached a certain point the idea was born into the mind of men that it was possible for some to live without working if they could persuade or force others to work for them. In order to accomplish this a portion of the means of production that belonged to the community had to be converted into the private possession of some members of the community. An internal struggle then began that ended in the establishment of private ownership in the means of production. Since then a constant struggle has been carried on during which the whole of the earth has become populated and private property has run a course from the ownership of a few acres of land, a small herd of animals, and a few tools until it has reached dimensions that can no longer he controlled by one individual or a family. Property ownership has undergone a development and transformation until private property in the means of production has reached a point where it has become uncontrollable and threatens society with disaster. But the development of this private ownership also engendered the development of those who used the means of production; this development has now reached a point where the producers monopolise all the positions in the production and distribution of the means of living to the exclusion of the owners; the latter have been relegated to the position of simple consumers of wealth in the production of which they, as a class, take no part. The result of this development is that the idea has grown in the minds of the producers that the owners are no longer a necessary evil; the revolt against the owners has also grown in volume and will soon reach a point where the producers will set about abolishing the private ownership of the means of production and substituting for it common ownership. But this common ownership will not be the small community ownership of primitive society; it will be a common ownership that welds the whole of mankind into one universal society, and each member will be able to live a secure and full life as a consequence of the achievements accomplished since the advent of private property.

Let us apply the dialectical materialism of Marx to the development we have described. First the statement that an increase in quantity beyond a certain point results in a change in quality. The increase in the means of production and the product changed the social form from communist society to private property society and will change the latter into a higher form of communist society. Communist society was negated by private property society and this will in turn be negated by a higher form of communist society—-the negation of the negation. The entire process is accomplished by the growth of antagonism and the solving of antagonism; the elements that have changed the form of society were contained within the original communal communities. The unity in the whole progress is social man; the contradictions are the contrary outlooks arising out of the growth of the means of production; the solution is the reduction of these outlooks to one common outlook.

What we have described is the evolution of society, but only in a broad sweep. Social science describes this process in detail, but only a few of the social scientists are free from the influence of private property ideas upon thought, and consequently the nearer they come to the present the less scientific are their conclusions. It is one thing to learn the laws of scientific thinking but quite another to apply those laws to social life. One of these fundamental laws is that there is nothing absolute, static; all is relative, changing. But in the course of these changes the relation of one thing to another is a state of temporary equilibrium. The capitalist and the worker are a unity as portions of mankind and portions of human society; they are in contradiction as opposing elements in the capitalist system of wealth production. This contradiction will only be solved by the abolition of capitalist society. But this abolition can only lead to harmony by the substitution of a higher form of society for capitalism. This in turn can only be achieved by the working class waging the class struggle single-mindedly and relentlessly until they obtain the victory. In other words, the international capitalist class is always the enemy until Socialism has been achieved.

Thus the answer to the question we have been asked is that as the dialectical materialism of Marx is simply “the science of the universal laws of motion, and evolution in nature, human society and thought,” we accept it, but we do not accept the distortion of this view by supporters of Russian “Communism” or others who misuse the means to serve their particular ends.

Gilmac.