Empiricism and the British Labour Movement

[p034] Empiricism and the British Labour Movement by lan A. McCalman: THE PRESENT CRISIS of the Labour Party is expressed in one form by the controversy which was conducted in 1965 and early 1966 within the ranks of its most sophisticated spokesman, that group known as the ‘New Left’. In a series of articles by Tom Nairn, Perry Anderson and E. P. Thompson, there have emerged what may at first sight appear to be fundamental disagree- ments as to the nature of the Labour Party. However, all three agree that in order to under- stand the nature of the Labour Party’s crisis, it is necessary to examine the assumptions, or philosophy of the party, and to investigate the historical roots of that philosophy. In order to find a guiding line through the confus- ing welter of arguments, we shall take as our start- ing-point the article by Perry Anderson, entitled ‘Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism’.! To simplify, the argument of Anderson (and of Nairn) is that the basic fault of the Labour Party has been its tendency to ‘muddle through’, to grope blindly from one problem to the next, without a clear understanding of its role and the difficulties facing it. Edward Thompson, Anderson claims, is an inheritor of this tradition. His method, we are told, is rhetorical, moralizing and populist, ‘lacking in any ordinary empiricism’. Whence arises this ‘pseudo-empiricism’? It is an inheritance from the English bourgeoisie; to quote Nairn, ‘acute ideal consciousness is a neces- sary condition of “real” empiricism, of the vital capacity to respond directly to and learn swiftly from practical experiences. The British ruling class has avoided this necessity: it had been able to adopt a kind of fetishistic pseudo-empiricism as its ideological banner, because it had never been forced to undertake any great, conscious practical reformation of society. What is British “empiricism” and British faith in practical “instinct” except systematized indifference to ideas? And how did this anti-ideology come into existence? Because hard facts, the demands of practical experience, had never coerced the bourgeoisie into looking for something better—its good fortune had pre- served that basic stupor of outlook which a popular expression calls “muddling through”. Piously accepting this stupor as the last word in realism, British socialists had shrunk socialism to fit it.’2 A weak bourgeoisie produced a weak ideology, a pseudo-empiricism. According to Anderson and Nairn, a timid middle class crept on to the stage of history, and remained until the present century in permanent subjection to the landed aristocracy, socially and culturally, its outlook permeated by the aristocracy’s ritualism and traditionalism. Thompson has, quite rightly, taken Anderson and Nairn to task for this interpretation of English history, but unfortunately with more flippancy than scholarship. Anderson’s argument appears to suggest that no qualitative changes take place in history, it being all one long process of gradual change, the bourgeoisie taking over imperceptibly from the landed aristocracy. Seen in this light, the English Revolution of the seventeenth century assumes a rather pedestrian character. Anderson assures us 1 New Left Review, No. 35, January-February 1966. 2 Tom Nairn, ‘The Nature of the Labour Party’, in Towards Socialism, p. 197.

[p035] EMPIRICISM AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT that ‘It was not a pure bourgeois revolution in any sense’. Perhaps, but it is doubtful whether any revolution has ever attained the status of this Platonic category. Naturally Anderson emphasises the role of the gentry in the Civil War.. Valid as this may be, an undue preoccupation with the gentry tends to obscure the basic nature of the revolution. A study of its course reveals that the appeals for support by Parliament were mainly made to the ‘middling people’, the artisans and tradesmen, the citizenry, (dare we say it) the bourgeoisie. Contemporary opinion was moreover overwhelmingly on the side of Clarendon, when he wrote that on the side of Parliament ‘some gleanings of the gentry, the yeo- men, farmers, clothiers and the whole middle rank of the people were the only active men’, Although there have been many direct attacks upon and revisions of the Marxist interpretation of the Revolution in the last decade these have failed to substitute any coherent explanation of the social upheaval].3 Anderson’s failure to see in the Revolution a fundamental social conflict distorts his examina- tion of empiricism. The Revolution was not only a conflict of classes, but also of values, of ideas. It is through social conflict that important ideas are articulated and developed. The participants in this controversy in the New Left approach the problem of the origins of empiricism in a mechanistic manner. In their view, empiricism, and ideas in general, appear to arise out of society in an auto- matic ‘passive’ fashion. It is true that the inductive approach which is central to empiricism was extended in use in the first half of the seventeenth century in accordance with the needs of a rising ‘wave’ of bourgeoisie. But it was only in the course of the social revolu- tion of the 1640’s that Baconian ideas of inductive science become clearly articulated and widely disseminated, in the works of lesser known scientists and popularisers.4 The clash of the philosophies of ‘Order’ and empiricism in the field of political theory was the expression of a con- flict between two modes of society. Empiricism, far from being a weak, vague philosophy was the clearly expressed, powerful ideology of a dynamic social class. Anderson and Nairn’s efforts to depict the sub- sequent history of the bourgeoisie as that of play- ing permanent second fiddle to the landed aris- tocracy is unconvincing. Recent researches (such as those of Mingay, F. M. L. Thompson and Kitson- Clark), have tended to emphasise the continuous over-riding power of the landed aristocracy right 33 into the twentieth century. But this emphasis is misleading. As Marx pointed out, we should dis- tinguish between a governing and a ruling class. Successive waves of the English bourgeoisie have been so powerful that they have been content to allow the gentry to govern, so to speak, controlling, the State by proxy. The continuous governing role of the gentry is a testimony to the power of the English capitalist class. This excursion into English history is necessary for an understanding of the distortions of Ander- son and Nairn. Their argument is roughly as follows: the English bourgeoisie has _ been traditionally weak, hence its ideology has been a ‘fetishistic pseudo-empiricism’; therefore what is now needed is a new empiricism, ‘real empiricism’. On the contrary, it is our argument that the empiricism which has pervaded the Labour move- ment has been, in a sense, powerful and clearly delineated, and that the way out of the present crisis in theory and practice is not through the formulation of a ‘new empiricism’, but through combatting empiricism, through the development of an alternative way of looking at society, through the development of dialectical materialism. What all three writers fail to see is that so powerful is empiricism, so pervasive and eclectic, that it permeates almost the entire Labour move- ment, including the New Left, and obscures and distorts their own understanding of society in general, and of the Labour bureaucracy in par- ticular. The eclecticism of empiricism is clear from its birth. The common assumption that empiricism and rationalism are naturally two sides of the same coin is based upon a misconception. Before the Lockean marriage of empiricism and rational- ism in the later seventeenth century those people called ‘Empiricks’ were in the main mystics and not rationalists.6 The Empiricks, the ‘chemical physitians’ of the seventeenth century, held views which were a curious amalgam of empirical and 3 Verification of this statement requires a lengthy discussion, which cannot be adequately dealt with in an article of this nature. We hope to produce shortly critiques of different interpretations, e.g., the ‘Namierite’ method (e.g., see Members of the Long Parliament, by Messrs. Branton & Penning- ton); and the ‘mechanical’ approach of many Stalinists and ex-Stalinists. 4 CC. Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolu- tion, Oxford 1965, chapt. III. 5. W. Greenleaf, Order, Empiricism and Politics, London 1964. 6 See Pr Needham’s essay in Science and History, vol. II.

[p036] 34 mystical ideas. This eclectic nature of empiricism, as Lenin pointed out, has allowed it to coexist with the most curious forms of idealism,’ especially within the British labour movement. Secondly the longevity and pervasiveness of empiricism is seen in that it has been the central tradition of British philosophy through Berkeley, Hume, Russell, Ryle and Ayer, and has been the core of thinking within the greater part of the Labour movement. The Fabians, whose thought has so greatly in- fluenced the Labour Party, were steeped in empiricism. Their ideology, strongly influenced by Benthamite Utilitarianism and positivist sociology, was expressed in their belief in the arithmetic of reformism. Believing in the ‘unpretentious methods of empiricism’ (Sydney Oliver), they rejected all abstract economics and theories of class struggle. They clung to the faith that by cautiously adding one reform on top of another, they would some- how, some day, arrive at socialism. The central question of class power did not enter into their calculations. Despite recent efforts by some his- torians to minimise the effects of the Fabians in the early growth of the Labour Party, it is un- deniable that their influence has been strong, and since 1945 almost overwhelming.® Edward Thompson, despite his rejection of Anderson’s thesis of pseudo-empiricism, has argued that the influence of any kind of empiricism upon the Labour movement has been exaggerated. He informs us that ‘an examination of the actual record would show our authors (i.e. Anderson and Nairn) have greatly exaggerated the influence of the Fabians, and if we leave aside the direct influence of Communism, most of the intellectuals who had an important influence upon the British labour movement between 1920 and 1945 were either social reformers within a Liberal tradition (J. A. Hobson, Beveridge, Boyd Orr), or “‘marxisant’’ in- dependents (Brailsford, Laski, Strachey, Cole), or ethical socialists (Tawney, Orwell) whose contribu- tions were somewhat more than “sentimental moralizing”’.? Agreed, but does this make them any less empiricist in their methods.? As for the ethical socialists, it is curious per- haps to find Tawney and Orwell in the same brackets—Orwell, with his profound contempt for all theories, and Tawney who usually begins with a call for ‘theory’ (which theory he never tells us) and ends with a prayer. Similarly the Liberals in the labour movement have never developed any alternative method to empiricism. The close con- nection between empiricism, Liberalism and social democracy was made clear by Bertrand Russell in a diatribe against Stalinism in 1946, ‘I conclude FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, APRIL 1967 that, in our day as in the time of Locke, empiricist Liberalism (which is not incompatible with ‘democratic’ socialism) is the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who, on the one hand, demands some scientific evidence for his beliefs, and, on the other hand, desires human happiness more than the prevalence of this or that party or creed.’!0 Thompson’s misconception of the theoretical in- fluence of the British Communist Party is of a more serious nature. We have stressed already that combating empiricism demands developing an alternative method.- What theoretical develop- ments have the British Stalinists attained? It is granted that many intellectuals in their ranks have shown great ingenuity and scholarship in applying certain Marxist concepts to the interpretation of phenomena, but that is a very different thing from the development of Marxist theory. Marxism means a development of revolutionary theory in a living relationship with revolutionary practice. But the Stalinists have never tried to build a rev- olutionary party. Hence their theoretical stagna- tion, revealed in the pages of ‘Marxism Today’ and their other publications. This theoretical bankruptcy is seen clearly in the New Left group itself. Despite their eternal calls for ‘theory’, Anderson and Nairn never clearly state what theory it is they are demanding. Unable to develop any alternative, they fall back upon good old empiricism. But it is empiricism with a differ- ence, they claim. Anderson tells us, ‘We have tried to move beyond this (i.e. pseudo—empiricism) ... by looking at actual empirical reality’. Nairn calls for ‘real empiricism’. They demand that we should closely examine ‘the facts, hard facts’. Thompson goes one better, and appeals to the ‘Grand Fact’. We are back with Locke. The confusion of these three writers is shown in their failure to define ‘empiricism’. This may be described as ‘the doctrine that all our knowledge (with the possible exception of logic and mathematics) is derived from experience’. Know- ledge is primarily the product of observation and experiment. Whilst not disregarding the need for hypotheses, it stresses the importance of the in- ductive methods. The empiricist invariably claims that ‘he approaches the facts in an unbiased way 7 Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. 8 Lenin on the influence of Fabians on the growth of the Labour Party see Fabian Socialism and English Politics (1884-1918), A. M. McBrior. 9 ‘The Peculiarities of the English’, in The Socialist RegiSter, 1965, p. 339. 10 Philosophy and Politics, 1946.

[p037] EMPIRICISM AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT without preconceptions, without theory, and in this, is superior to the “dogmatic” Marxist, with his fixed theories. But no one starts without theories. The very selection of certain facts as the ones to add up (or to be impressed by) indicates the allocation of a certain significance to these as against the countless other “facts” or “sides” of reality. Those who claim to be objective, avoid- ing theory in the first place, in fact only use a muddled and less explicit theory: such a theory is, in fact, shaped by the dominant ideology of the society in which they live. Its everyday prejudices may go bythe name of “sound common sense”, but they are the definite prejudices of a deflinite class society’! Marxists, on the contrary, see the facts in rela- tion to a continuous process of social development. In order to grasp the significance of the ‘facts’, they see the need to understand that changing process, the general nature of such change. In a class-divided society, there is a continuous con- flict between the relations of production and the forces of production, expressed in a conflict be- tween the ruling class and the working class, in modern capitalist, society, between the capitalist class with its agents and the industrial proletariat. It is in relation to this general process of con- flict, that Marxists try to assess the significance of the ‘facts’. Equipped with this conscious theory of social change, they come to an examina- tion of the particular aspects. ‘The facts’ are therefore not fixed, self-contained entities, but are fluid, and ever-changing, part of a general process of social change. The motive force of such change is the continuous conflict of opposites within each concept, a dialectical con- flict. Dialectics does not mean the imposition upon reality of some mechanically learned ‘laws’ or ‘rules’ of dialectics, such as ‘thesis-antithesis- synthesis’. ‘Dialectics attempts to probe to the essential self-movement of the phenomenon itself; the relation between its different aspects can then be shown as parts of a unified process, not just separate determinations whose only interrelation is one imposed by the demands of consistency in thought.’!* Dialectical thinking therefore tran- scends empiricism and traditional logic. Trotsky graphically explained this difference. ‘Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. Motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our under- 35 standing closer to the ever-changing reality.’!3 If this is so, why then do the empiricists of the ‘New Left’ not adopt this way of thinking? How- ever, the question posed is not simply that of adopt- ing an alternative mode of thought, irrespective of their political standpoint. In order to look at the world dialectically, they must accept a distinct theory of social change, a theory which posits that in our society there is a deepening conflict between the working class and the ruling class, and that the resolution of this conflict can only come about through the taking of power by the working class and the establishment of socialism. This can only be achieved through the building of a revolutionary party of the working class. Neither Thompson nor Anderson nor Nairn looks at society in this way; they do not see the work- ing class as an independent social force which can burst the integument of capitalist society. They do not base themselves upon the needs and potentialities of the working class. Unwilling to ground themselves upon this independent social force, they become subject to the dominant class and its ideology. They accept the limitations imposed by this class and ideology, viewing many of its distinctive features as fixed ‘facts’, which can be re-arranged in different patterns, but not fundamentally changed. They accept that the working class is a heterogeneous mass to be manipulated and controlled. They accept the continued existence of the Labour bureaucracy, and think in terms of applying pressure to it rather than destroying it. There is a close connection between empiricism and the belief that socialism can be achieved by exerting pressure upon the established bureau- cracies. The views of Anderson and Nairn are very close to those of Joseph Hansen of the American S.W.P. and the other revisionists of that ilk. Hansen, defending the idea that the bureaucracies of Algeria, Cuba and elsewhere could be pushed to the left, denounced those in Britain who argued against this as ‘dogmatists’. He demanded acceptance of the ‘given fact’, of the presence of the bureaucracies, and, in language remarkably similar to that of the gentlemen on the New Left, called for ‘empiricism systematically carried out’. However, once more the bankruptcy of empiricism has been revealed. The bureaucracies show a stubborn refusal to be ‘pushed to the left’ and are in fact careering rapidly in a rightward direction. It was no coincidence that in the same 11 C. Slaughter, Lenin on Dialectics, 1965, pp. 40-41. 12. Ibid., p. ??. 13. In Defence of Marxism, pp. 50-51.

[p038] 36 month as Harold Wilson introduced laws against right to strike, Castro denounced Trotskyists as agents of American imperialism. This close connection between methods of logical analysis and political orientation must be emphasised. We have a striking recent illustra- tion of this connection. These centrists of the New Left group are little more than sophisticated spokesmen for their less articulate comrades on the Left-wing of the Labour Party. They share the same empirical approach to political questions. During 1966 those ‘Lefts’ had ample opportunity to mobilise the working class against the Prices and Incomes Bill. But they consistently refused to do so, revealing their contempt for any theoretical understanding of the role of the Labour govern- ment and its legislation in relation to the class struggle. Empirically they concentrated all their energies upon futile maneouvres to amend the Bill. There could be few clearer examples of the disastrous results of ‘real empiricism’, of ‘empiri- cism systematically carried out’. On the other hand the connection between dialectics and _ revolutionary politics is not fortuitous. Only those who thhave worked for the construction of a revolutionary party of the work- ing class have shown themselves capable of the finest dialectical thought. Lenin considered FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, APRIL 1967 dialectics the hall-mark of the revolutionary. Trot- sky spent the last years of his life fighting that group led by James Burnham and Max Schachtman in the S.W.P., who denied the relevance of dialectical materialism to ‘concrete political questions’. Burnham argued that logic was a highly specialized subject, that it was virtually useless in politics, that it was more important to get to grips with the immediate questions of fascism, unemployment and war (this was in 1940). Trotsky argued in reply that these ‘concrete political questions’, these ‘hard facts’ were merely abstrac- tions from a process of continuous change, and that it was necessary to understand that change in its totality, before assessing their significance. Empiricism has therefore resulted in very con- fused political thinking. Yet Anderson, Nairn and Thompson, despite their apparent disagreements, remain adamant empiricists. They justify this by arguing that the English working class is tradition- ally reformist. They single cut the conservative influence of the trade unions upon the growth of the Labour Party. What begins as an explana- tion of empiricism becomes a justification of it. The conditions of the evolution of British capital- ism have been such as to encourage empiricism in the Labour movement, therefore we must accept it. Such is the logic of ‘real empiricism’!

[p039] LIMITED PUBLICATIONS PARK NEW MACaulay S.W.4 Street, High Clapham 186A 7029 London, List Book Free Write for The New Course By Leon Trotsky A collection of articles written in 1923 during the lull before the great storm of persecution which was later to overwhelm Russian Bolshevism. Here Trotsky, analyses the incipient stages of the degeneration of the Communist Party, uncovers its causes and proposes measures for combating its further decline. He here analyses the party in a historical, that is dialectical way, the relationships between generations, social strata, groups, factional forma- tions, tradition and the multitude of factors that go to make a revolutionary party. 111 pages, 3/6 This document is a landmark in the development of 20th century Marxism. It sums up the experience of an entire period of struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy. This Platform also represents the highest point in the fortunes of the Joint Opposition (Trotskyist-Zinovievite) to Stalin. It is the programme of the last of the Bolshevik-Leninists who insisted that they remained communists despite all the per- secution, jailings, violence and slander inflicted on them. But this document also represents a watershed—the end of one phase and the beginning of another—in the evolution of Trotskyist politics. 112 pages, 5/- The Draft Programme of the Communist International by Leon Trotsky This is part of the author’s criticism of the draft programme submitted by the Executive Committee of the Third (Communist) International to the 6th Congress of the Comintern which was held in July 1928. The manuscript of that criticism was written by Trotsky during his exile in Alma-Ata (Central Asia). It was sent to the Congress in Moscow together with an appeal for reinstatement into the party from which he had been expelled a few months before by the Stalinist faction in 1927. Stalin and his supporters had invented the theory of ‘Socialism in one country’, which was made party policy in 1925 and converted into an article of faith to be defended by the world institutions of Stalinism. It is this theory which Trotsky criticises in these pages. 64 pages, 1/- This is a polemic against Radek in 1928. Trotsky examines the arguments against his pre-war theory of the permanent revolution (as expounded in Results and Prospects) and takes up the history of his differences with Lenin before 1917, of which Stalin and his henchmen made so much. Trotsky shows that it was Lenin’s criticisms of his attitude to the centralised Marxist party, which he afterwards understood and accepted, that kept them apart, and not their differences on the permanent revolution. 254 pages, 15/- soft cover, 25/- hard cover This is the basic programmatic document of the world movement founded by Leon Trotsky and his comrades. By The death agony of 1938 the revolutionary Marxists had found it necessary to capitalism : lay the foundations of the Fourth International in order to restore working-class leadership after the defeats prepared by and the ™ the Stalinist bureaucracy in control of the Third (Communist) We International. The defeat of the German Revolution in tasks of the 1923, of the British General Strike in 1926, and of the Chinese Revolution in 1927, followed by Hitler’s victory over the German working class in 1933, finally ruled out the 4th Interpational eee perspective of transforming the Communist International by internal opposition. - 60 pages, 1/- Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r/o 180 Clapham High Street. London, S.W.4

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