Editorial: For an Open Discussion on Fundamental Questions of Philosophy

[p005] For an Open Discussion on Fundamental Questions of Philosophy REVOLUTIONARY Situations are marked above all by the entry of the great masses of working people on to the stage of history. At such times, age-old assumptions and accepted hierarchies are widely rejected, old scores are settled in ways which would ordinarily be considered imper- missible, and men and women summon up great energies for tasks which hitherto were not con- ceivably within their scope. In bourgeois revolutions, the popular masses were destined to find themselves subjected to yet another form of exploitation and oppression, once they had been mobilized behind the bour- geoisie to break the feudal and monarchical power. The plebian forerunners of communism —Levellers and Diggers in Britain, Babeuf and his followers in France—were stamped out by bourgeois reaction. Their ideas could only be reborn, at a qualitatively different level, on the basis of capitalism’s future development of the productive forces and the creation of the modern proletariat. Marx and Engels, however, were not in any way whatsoever protagonists of the idea that revolutionary consciousness could develop spon- taneously out of the working class, its role in production, and its struggle against the bour- geoisie. Historical materialism developed out of all the great conquests of thought of the bour- geois epoch, particularly in political economy, philosophy, and history. Marx’s theory of history shows that the development of classes proceeds Editorial on the basis of social relations of production . but in the total socio-economic formation raised on this basis. Men become conscious of their relations, fight out their struggles in the terms of the political, legai, developing superstructure dominated by the ruling class. The building of revolutionary leadership in the working class can take place only through a struggle to com- prehend and grapple with the class enemy on all these fronts. This struggle cannot be carried out except through a conflict between the scientific theory of Marxism, expressed in the revolu- tionary party, and the spontaneous consciousness of the proletariat itself. It is for this conception of leadership, this conception of the necessary conflict between theory and practice, that the International Com- mittee of the Fourth International has fought. Now that the post second world war capitalist system plunges into economic slump and into mass revolutionary struggles, the responsibility of Marxists to carry forward this theoretical struggle reaches its highest point. Without ques- tion the proletariat will fight. It will throw into the fight all the great qualities which we described in the opening of this editorial. It will push aside with contempt all those who try to restrict it to petty reforms and unprincipled compromises. New leaders will be thrown up in hundreds of different struggles. But none of these things by themselves, no combination of them, can achieve the successful winning of 151

[p006] EDITORIAL For an Open Discussion on Fundamental Questions of Philosophy REVOLUTIONARY situations are marked above all by the entry of the great masses of working people on to the stage of history. At such times, age-old assumptions and accepted hierarchies are widely rejected, old scores are settled in ways which would ordinarily be considered imper- missible, and men and women summon up great energies for tasks which hitherto were not con- ceivably within their scope. In bourgeois revolutions, the popular masses were destined to find themselves subjected to yet another form of exploitation and oppression, once they had been mobilized behind the bour- geoisie to break the feudal and monarchical power. The plebian forerunners of communism —Levellers and Diggers in Britain, Babeuf and his followers in France—were stamped out by bourgeois reaction. Their ideas could only be reborn, at a qualitatively different level, on the basis of capitalism’s future development of the productive forces and the creation of the modern proletariat. Marx and Engels, however, were not in any way whatsoever protagonists of the idea that revolutionary consciousness could develop spon- taneously out of the working class, its role in production, and its struggle against the bour- geoisie. Historical materialism devéloped out of all the great conquests of thought of the bour- geois epoch, particularly in political economy, philosophy, and history. Marx’s theory of history shows that the development of classes proceeds on the basis of social relations of production but in the total socio-economic formation raised on this basis. Men become conscious of their relations, fight out their struggles in the terms of the political, legai, developing superstructure dominated by the ruling class. The building of revolutionary leadership in the working class can take place only through a struggle to com- prehend and grapple with the class enemy on all these fronts. This struggle cannot be carried out except through a conflict between the scientific theory of Marxism, expressed in the revolu- tionary party, and the spontaneous consciousness of the proletariat itself. It is for this conception of leadership, this conception of the necessary conflict between theory and practice, that the International Com- mittee of the Fourth International has fought. Now that the post second world war capitalist system plunges into economic slump and into mass revolutionary struggles, the responsibility of Marxists to carry forward this theoretical struggle reaches its highest point. Without ques- tion the proletariat will fight. It will throw into the fight all the great qualities which we described in the opening of this editorial. It will push aside with contempt all those who try to restrict it to petty reforms and unprincipled compromises. New leaders will be thrown up in hundreds of different struggles. But none of these things by themselves, no combination of them, can achieve the successful winning of 151

[p007] workers’ power unless they are unified by a revolutionary party built on Marxist theory and rooted in the masses through its struggle for Marxism. It is the maturing of the revolutionary crisis of capitalism which brings about the new stage in this fight for theory, of which the documents published in this issue of Fourth International provide the opening statements. There is a con- ception of Marxism, manifested in the revision- ism of the French OCI (Organisation Com- muniste Internationaliste), which sees. the revolutionary party as a carrier of a finished programme which sums up all the theories and experience of the proletarian revolution. Capi- talism’s development pushes the working class towards acceptance of this programme in an ‘organic’ development. With this approach the OCI has found itself fundamentally in the same position as the American Socialist Workers Party. Although formally adopting many different political positions, these two organiza- tions have been brought into the open as opponents of the International Committee on the basic question of Marxist philosophy, of dialec- tical materialism. Their target is above all the IC’s insistence that the unity af theory and practice is a unity consisting of the conflict between them. The Marxist party is part of the working class as the force struggling against capi- talism, but it is the conscious role of that class in conflict against the dominance of bourgeois ideology which is constantly being reformed and re-established after every advance by the working class. ‘The working class spontaneously gravitates toward socialism: nonetheless, the most wide- spread (and continuously and diversely revived) bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree. ‘Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy (i.e. of Marxism) is to combat spontaneity, tc divert the working class movement from this spontaneous, trade unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of the revolutionary social- democracy.’ (Lenin: What is to be Done?) It was this conception, against the notion of a simple and mechanical ‘relation’ between theory and practice, which lay behind the split at the Essen youth rally in 1971. Similarly today, when George Novack, ‘philosophy’ spokesman of the Socialist Workers Party, accuses the Socialist 152 Labour League of ‘dogmatic sectarianism’ in philosophy and politics (Intercontinental Press, 15 June, 1972), he is hitting at exactly the same target. Appealing to the petty-bourgeois radicals at every stage, he paints a picture of the Socialist Labour League as a regime of unbear- able pressure on individuals to accept philo- _ sophical dogma. He presents dialectical material- ism as ‘a voluntary, not a mandatory, aspect of party activity and personal development’. The SLL, according to him, ‘makes a fetish out of the dialectical method’. Novack is concerned to do one thing before anything else: that is, to preserve a position where Marxist theory is not brought into conflict with the practice of proletarian struggle and proletarian subjection to bourgeois ideology. The result of this philosophical position has long been apparent in the SWP itself. It amounts to opening the doors, within the party itself, to all the bourgeois ideological pressures abroad in the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. Along with the anti-Marxism of Novack and Hansen in philospohy has gone the SWP’s adaptation to middle-class radicalism and pro- test politics in the United States. Similarly the OCI’s attack on the IC for ‘reducing dialectical materialism to a philosophy’ was inseparable from the political position their delegation adopted at Essen: a centrist alliance with enemies of the Fourth International. As is said in several of the documents published here by the International Committee and its sections, there is a great pain from the split with the OCI. It has brought about a situation which the IC has sought to create ever since 1954, and particu- larly since 1961: an open discussion involving all sections of the Trotskyist movement, on the disputed fundamental questions, questions of philosophy. We do not believe the revolutionary cadre of the Fourth International can be trained to accomplish the tasks of leadership which con- front them in the immediate future without a determined struggle to drive the revisionists out of the Fourth International. Now that the SWP and the OCI have been forced into the open on the basic question of dialectical materialism and the conflict between theory and practice, the fundamental conditions for achieving that task have been created. Following the documents in this issue, we shall publish in future issues the development of these struggles on Marxist philosophy. Fourth International Summer 1972

[p008] 2 ATT TAREOTTT TP EES MNPETT ST PI HATES agape Statement by the Workers Vanguard (Trotskyist) of Greece