British Empiricism and Natural Science

[p025] British Empiricism and Natural Science John Marshall Tue peculiar traits of British empiricism, and especially its pronounced dualities, cannot be explained wtihout examining its affinities with the natural science of the seventeenth century. CLASSICAL EMPIRICISM AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE The empirical and mechanical trends in natural science, initiated in England by Gilbert (1544-1603) and Harvey (1578-1657) and more fully cultivated by Hooke (1635-1703), Boyle (1627-91), Newton (1642- 1727) and other members of the Royal Society, exerted direct and powerful influence upon the formation of empirical philosophy. Locke (1632-1704) was a friend of Boyle and Newton and regarded his theory of know- ledge as a philosophical counterpart to the work of these master-builders of natural science. Mechanics was the central science of Locke’s time, as electronics is today; the conceptions derived from that branch of natural science dominated the philo- sophizing of the age. Mechanics took this command- ing position because the most vital concerns of bourgeois society were tied up with the requirements of water-transport, mining and metallurgy, and military engineering. These decisive branches of social-economic activity put major technical and theoretical prob- lems before the scientific investigators of the early capitalist epoch. Their inquiries concentrated on the analysis of the displacement of physical masses in space and time. From their researches in physics and astronomy, these pioneer scientists arrived at a particular mechanical- mathematical conception of nature, which was first sketched out by Descartes (1596-1650). According to this conception the world consisted of matter in motion. Matter was divided into tiny particles (cor- puscles, atoms) and was essentially inert. Motion was impressed upon bodies by some external force and was exclusively local in character. The different bodies in nature and their diverse properties were generated by variations in the local motions of material substances striking against one another. ‘I look upon the phenomena of nature to be caused by the local motion of one part of matter hitting against another,’ wrote Boyle. Neither magnetism, discovered by Hooke, nor gravitation, investigated by Newton, fitted into this mechanical scheme since they appeared to depend upon action at a distance. But these anomalous modes of motion were left to shift for themselves. The simple mechanical action of large and small masses impinging from without upon one another was conceived as the fundamental form of material motion. Despite the central role played by gravitation, ' Newton gave a tremendous boost to the mechanical view of nature when he united celestial with terrestrial mechanics. His universal laws of motion sought to explain ‘all material movements from the orbits of the whirling planets to the fall of a stone on earth. These movements were analysed in mechanical terms, quanti- tativity expressed in mathematical formulas. The various schools of bourgeois philosophy in England prepared, promoted and shared this mechanical outlook. The materialists, Bacon (1561-1626) and Hobbes (1588-1679), most consistently formulated these theoretical tendencies of natural science. Bacon. re- marked that ‘nature knows only mechanical causation, to the investigation of which all our efforts should be directed’. Hobbes went much further. He tried to squeeze all types of movement, from the operations of nature to social and political actions and the pro- cesses of the human mind, into the framework of purely mechanical categories. . The empiricists did not draw such sweeping con- clusions from the premises of the mechanical doctrine as the materialists, but they proceeded, up to a point, along similar lines. Locke accepted the mechanical view of nature as the foundation of his theory of know- ledge. This entangled him in a knot of theoretical diffi- culties. THE LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE The first problem the mechanical philosophy presented to Locke was whether true knowledge of the material world was possible and how much of it was available to mankind. It was certainly paradoxical that the capa- cities of the human mind should have become questioned at a time when men were expanding their positive knowledge of the world at an unprecedented rate. But the theoretical dilemmas arising from the advances of admitted that he had been in contact with a sinister foreigner, a politician, a member of the British Labour Party, a certain Mr A. V. Alexander, who had encouraged him in his fell designs. No wonder that he had put ground _glass, in the. butter. And nails! What a warning, too, to ‘have nothing to do with foreigners, even though they mas- *queraded as socialists.” Doubtless taking his cue from the inclusion of A. V. Alexander in the dramatis personae of the ‘Bukharin’ trial, Arnot went even further in attacking fellow-socialists in his Labour Monthly article of May 1938 than he had ventured to do previously: he now wrote of ‘H. N. Brailsford and ILP leaders, whose position as dupes of Trotsky or agents of Trotsky is still to be examined.’ 53

[p026] 54 LABOUR REVIEW the natural sciences and the new mechanical world view were among the compelling reasons why Locke under- took his inquiry into the origins, nature and extent of human knowledge. Boyle and Newton doubted whether the natural reason of man, shut up in a small portion of the brain, could attain true knowledge of the inner nature of things. Newton, for example, ascribed no cause to gravitation; he was content to accept this cosmic force as a given fact. Thus the most fundamental force then known remained an unexplained property of matter, the effect of some unknown cause. Newton had sound scientific reasons for refusing to speculate on the cause of gravitation. Gravitation is observed as a property of huge aggregations of matter, the earth, the sun and other celestial bodies. The effects of gravitation could be observed, described and formu- lated but because of their colossal scale could -not readily be harnessed, experimented with or produced by laboratory means. Chemistry, not to speak of other sciences, was still in its infancy, as were capitalist industry and its ex- perimental techniques. Natural processes for the most part could be observed but not reproduced in labora- tories. Under such conditions it appeared plausible that no more could be known about things than certain of their outward manifestations, while their innermost ‘essence must remain inaccessible. What was still un- reachable and unproducible in the social practice of the period appeared forever incomprehensible in the empirical theory of knowledge. How Locke’s theory of knowledge reflected the im- mature development of science is graphically shown in the following quotations: Another great cause of ignorance is the want of ideas we are capable of . . . Bulk, figure, and motion, we have ideas of. But though we are not without ideas of these primary qualities of bodies in-general, yet not knowing what is the particular bulk, figure, and motion, of the greatest part of the bodies of the universe, we are ignorant of the several powers, efficacies, and ways of operation, whereby the effects which we daily see are produced. These are hid from us, in some things by being too remote; and, in others, by being too minute. When we consider the vast distance of the known and visible parts of the world, and the reasons we have to think that what lies within our ken is but a small part of the universe, we shall then discover a huge abyss of ignorance. What are the particular fabrics of the great - masses of matter which make up the whole stupendous frame of corporeal beings; how far they are extended; what is their motion, and how continued or communicated; and what in- fluence they have one upon another, are contemplations that, at first glimpse, our thoughts lose themselves in. If we narrow our contemplations, and confine our thoughts to this little canton—I mean this system of our sun, and the grosser masses of matter that visibly move about it, What several sorts of vegetables, animals and intellectual corporeal beings, infinitely different from those of our little spot of earth, may there probably be in the other planets, to the knowledge of which, even of their outward figures and parts, we can no way attain whilst we are confined to this earth; there being no natural means, either by sensation or reflection, to convey their certain ideas into our minds? They are out of the reach of those inlets of all our knowledge; and what sorts of furniture and inhabitants those mansions contain in them, Wwe cannot so much as guess, much less have clear and dis- tinct ideas of them. March-April 1958 Locke’s pessimism over the possibility of ever attain- ing scientific knowledge of the universe or even the planetary system was a concomitant of the technologi- cal backwardness of his society. Astronomical photo- graphy and spectrum analysis were music of the future. His pessimism extended equally to the atomic world: If a great, nay far the greatest part of the several ranks of bodies in the universe escape our notice by their remote- ness, there are others that are no less concealed from us by their minuteness. These insensible corpuscles being the active parts of matter, and the great instruments of nature, on which depend not only all their secondary qualities, but also most of their natural operations, our want of precise distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in an incurable ignor- ance of what we desire to know about them. I doubt not but if we could discover the figure, size, texture, and motion of the minute constituent parts of any two bodies, we should know without trial several of their operations one upon an- other, as we do now the properties of a square or a triangle. Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium, and a man, as a watchmaker does those of a watch, whereby it performs its operations; and of a file, which by rubbing on them will alter the figure of any of the wheels; we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep; as well as a watchmaker can, that a little piece of paper laid on the balance will keep the watch from going till it be removed; or that some small part of it being rubbed by a file, the machine would quite lose its motion, and the watch go no more. The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, and gold in aqua regia, and not vice versa, would be then perhaps no more difficult to know, than it is to a smith to understand why the turning of one key will open a lock, and not the turning of another. But whilst we are destitute of _ Sense acute enough to discover the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their mechanical affections, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and ways of operation; nor can we be assured about them any farther than some few trials we make are able to reach. But whether they will succeed again another time, we cannot be certain. This hinders our certain knowledge of universal truths con- cerning natural bodies: and our reason carries us herein very little beyond particular matter of fact. We may imagine Locke’s surprise, and possibly the adjustments he would have made in his theory of knowledge, could he have witnessed, two centuries later, Mendeleyev’s successful predictions of both the physical and chemical properties of three elements mankind had not yet discovered. But in Locke’s time the ‘clearest and most enlarged understandings of think- ing men find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter’. Accepting the transitory limitations upon scientific development at that given stage as forever fixed and in- superable, the empiricists made them into the corner- stone of their theory of knowledge (or rather of the limitations upon knowledge). They treated effects as though they gave no clues to the character of their causes and could be considered independently of them. They regarded summaries of observable facts as ade- quate explanations for phenomena. In such a view it became unnecessary to get at the causal origins and essential constitution of the forces of nature: it was enough to trace out the coordination of their manifesta- tions. This habit of thought subsequently, in the nineteenth century, became a cardinal doctrine of empiricism under the name of positivism. Positivism substituted descrip-

[p027] EMPIRICISM AND SCIENCE tions of the observed sequences of phenomena for the discovery of their inner causes and organic connexions. Locke shared the belief of Boyle and Newton that the intrinsic nature of material reality is cut off from direct human observations and thereby shut off from human knowledge. He pictured the world as composed of independent, self-determining, unchangeable sub- stances. But then he stated that the mind of men could not penetrate to the ‘real constitution’ of substance. We cannot form any idea of ‘the secret abstract nature of substance in general’, he said; it was a supposed ‘we Know not what’. The presumed unknowability of substance played a key role in Locke’s theory; his doctrine of the inescap- able imperfections of our knowledge is based upon it. “We may be convinced,’ he wrote, ‘that the ideas we attain to by our faculties are very disproportionate to things themselves, when a positive, clear distinct one of substance itself, which is the foundation of all the rest, is concealed from us.’ If we cannot have any idea of substance, then it is equally impossible, concluded Locke, for us to know the real constitution of the two great divisions of substance: bodies, which are material substances, or minds, which are spiritual substances. Locke’s theory of substance contains the germ of the Scepticism and subjectivism which were lodged like a latent’ infection within empiricism and _ ultimately ravaged it. The theoretical source of his error lay in his absolute separation of material substantiality from the qualities of things. Locke could not find any sub- stance in the world, or any clear idea of it in his mind, because he totally detached the ‘substratum’ of things from the qualities they exhibited. However, substance does not have any concrete existence or determinate content apart from its qualities; without these it is noth- ing but an empty abstraction. Fruit does not exist except in the specific material forms of apples, pears, peaches etc. Locke’s quest for ‘a pure substance’ in general, which is ‘the same everywhere’, was bound to be as vain and illusory as the search for fruit without any definite characteristics of any species. But Locke’s difficulties did not end with the contra- dictory conception of substances which existed but whose real constitution was inaccessible and un- knowable. The mechanical doctrine landed Locke into similar difficulties in respect to the qualities of things as a reliable source of knowledge about the world around us. Like Galileo, Descartes, Boyle and Newton, Locke divided qualities into two opposing groups: primary ones like ‘solidity, extension, motion and _rest and number’ and secondary ones like colours, smells, tastes, sounds. The first actually inhered in bodies; they were objec- tive and permanent aspects of things which provided the basis for a dependable knowledge of nature. The secondary qualities were the effects of the powers of the primary ones upon ourselves. They were subjective, fluctuating, confusing ideas which hung like a deceitful shimmering curtain between our minds and the external world. Locke did not have valid empirical grounds for assorting the properties of things and the contents of Sensation into two such opposing groups, one with objective existence and the other essentially subjective. Taken strictly from the standpoint of sensory exper- ience, which is the supreme standard for empiricism, both kinds of qualities stood upon the same level. Solidity, for example, which Locke classified as a primary quality, is as much an aspect of things which depends upon the impression of the senses as are colour and sound, which he regarded as secondary and sub- jective. The solidity of metals is relative; under certain conditions their constitution is porous and penetrable. X-rays will pass through so solid an object as a crystal, showing in the process the lattice structure of crystals. As a matter of fact, Locke was impelled to draw so sharp a distinction between the two types of qualities, not for empirical reasons, but because the mechanical system, which was the model of scientific knowledge for him, demanded it. Mechanics had singled out these particular features of the world.for special status, not because they were primary in sense-experience, but rather because they were foremost in the solution of the problems of mechanics and were susceptible of being handled mathematically and formulated in purely mechanical terms. The physical qualities of length, mass and time that could be measured by a rule, weighed on a scale and timed with a watch were the key factors in the mechanical conception of nature upon which the science and industry of that age hinged. The entire weight of the empirical theory of natural knowledge rested upon the primary qualities. These were like suspension cables which were anchored at one end in an unknowable substratum of substance and connected at the other end with purely subjective secondary qualities. These provided extremely insecure support for a theory of knowledge. If the primary qualities alone give authentic inform- ation about objective existences, but these cannot divulge their inner nature to us, then how much can we actually know about the world around us? The rigid and untenable distinctions which Locke maintained between known qualities and unknowable substances, and between objectively existing primary qualities and purely subjective secondary ones, considerably cut down the extent of human knowledge. Locke declared that our knowledge of the world was mediocre, enough for our everyday affairs but not very comprehensive or profound. Mankind was condemned to ‘incurable ignor- ance’. _ With the sturdy common sense of the complacent bourgeois, Locke urged his fellow-men to be satisfied with enough knowledge to get along in the ordinary business of life. 7 . All our business lies, at home. Why should we think our- selves hardly dealt with that we are not furnished with compass and plummet to sail and fathom that restless, un- navigable ocean of the universal matter, motion and space? There are no commodities to be brought from thence service- ~ able to our use, nor that will better our condition. > SUPERFICIAL APPEARANCE AND MATERIAL . REALITY Mechanical science was an immense step forward for human thought. All further advances in natural science have had to build upon this achievement of bourgeois Society in its rise. But the view of nature it presented was not an unconditional triumph for empiricism. 55

[p028] LABOUR REVIEW Unlike the science of ancient and medieval times, the new science of nature was based upon the verification of facts by experiments. Salvirati, a character speaking for Galileo himself (1564-1642) in the Dialogues Con- cerning the. Two Principal Systems of the World, says ‘that one sole experiment, or concludent demonstration, produced on the contrary part, sufficeth to batter to the ground . .. a thousand .. . probable arguments’. This demand that theoretical conclusions submit to the test of observation and experiment, this appeal to the given facts as the court of last resort in science was empiri- cism’s great source of strength. On the other hand, the methods and conclusions of the new science conflicted with familiar facts of every- day experience. According to Copernicus the daily rotation of the celestial sphere about the earth was only an appearance; the earth, like the other planets, really revolved around the sun in a circular orbit. The appar- ent movement of the earth, which contradicted this causal relation, was explained by the complete rotation of the earth about its axis every twenty-four hours. Mechanics as well as astronomy developed in defiance of the direct testimony of the senses and demonstrated that phenomenal appearances often invert the essential reality. Aristotelian physics taught that all heavy bodies had a ‘natural’ tendency to fall toward the centre of the universe, which was identified by medieval thinkers with the centre of the earth. All other motion was ‘un- natural’ because it required a constant counter-force to produce and sustain it. Galileo, however, asserted that a body remains at rest or continues to move in a straight line unless some outside force intervenes to change its course. This prin- ciple of inertia was not so close to familiar experience as Aristotle’s theory of motion; we have no experience of bodies moving with absolutely constant speed or of things being permanently at rest or of any process going on forever. But experiment proved that Galileo’s prin- ciple was far more in accord with the real movements of things and could explain them far better. It is not obvious to direct inspection that the blood flows in a continuous one-way circuit of the body. Vesalius (1514-64) and earlier anatomists supposed that the blood ebbed and flowed forwards and back- wards in the veins and arteries. Harvey discovered the real action of the human blood system by assuming that it functioned like a hydraulic system. He regarded the heart as a pump, the veins and arteries as pipes, the valves as mechanical values and the blood itself as a fluid like any other. In these fields of science superficial phenomena were set aside as misleading and reinterpreted as contradic- tory manifestations of a hidden network of causal relations which produced them. The machinery of nature operated behind the scenes to generate the effects we observe, just as clockwork moves the hands on the face of the clock. The task of science was to probe through the outward expressions which first impressed themselves upon our senses to the more remote and hidden materially active causes in the background. The significant rational kernel in the distinction be- tween the primary and secondary qualities adopted by Locke was the recognition that some properties and relations of things are more decisive in determining 56 March-April 1958 their natures than others, that reality consists of end- less aspects of existences, and that science progresses by uncovering ever deeper layers of determining factors. The new mechanical method did provide a deeper insight into the operations of nature and a greater control over them. But this extension of the knowledge of nature also produced new problems for the theory of know- ledge. What were the relations between these under- lying realities revealed by mechanics and formulated in mathematical terms and our subjective impressions of them? Which was the reality and which the appearance, the world of scientific objects and relations or the world of sights, sounds, colours, of our sense-experience? Neither the mechanical scientists nor the empirical philosophers succeeded in finding a satisfactory solution to this perplexing problem of reconciling the outward show of events with the driving forces behind them. Their answers swung from one extreme to the other. The more rationalist-minded tended to exalt the prin- ciples and laws of science as the expression of a super- sensible reality while the concrete sensory impressions were discounted as mere appearances. The empirically inclined viewed the generalized concepts as mere abstractions compared to the given evidence of the senses. The first thinkers who undertook to examine the functioning of the capitalist economy encountered parallel difficulties in explaining the connexions between appearance and reality. In England these were some- times one and the same people since Locke, Berkeley (1685-1753) and Hume (1711-76) concerned themselves. with analysing money, commodities and prices as well as qualities, ideas and knowledge. The apparent movements and relations of capitalism are very different from their real nature. To the super- ficial observer it looks as though the worker receives payment in full for his work from the employer. If this were really so, if there were an equal exchange of wages for labour and its products, then what would be the incentive for capitalist production and where would the profits of the capitalist come from? The monetary transaction between the employer and the wage-worker disguises the real relation between them. What appears on the surface as a relation of equality (the worker sells his ‘labour’ for a price which he agrees with the employer—if he does not like the price the employer offers, he need not work for that employer) is in reality a relation of inequality. The task of scientific investigation is to go from the phenomenal, superficial forms in which the relations directly present themselves, to the hidden causes which constitute their inner reality. To those who stick to the semblances of economic relations, these internal workings of the capitalist system, discovered by political economy, seem grey, un- substantial and irrelevant mere abstractions. They are indeed abstractions for the very reason that they dis- regard the accidental, accessory circumstances and select what is essential in determining the phenomena under investigation. But abstractions are the tools for unlocking the workings of the real, ‘practical’ world. Abstractions are generalized formulations of the more profound realities which lurk in. the background and

[p029] EMPIRICISM AND SCIENCE produce the immediately experienced but contradictory appearances of things. The peculiar nature of capitalist social relations in- fluenced the conceptions of the world evolved by the mechanical empiricists. Both mechanical science and bourgeois economics approached the respective spheres of existence they studied in order to penetrate beneath their phenomenal aspects and expose the concealed causal forces which generated them. Mechanical science disclosed certain important mainsprings of material movement in the solar system, in the actions of masses on earth, in the physiology of the human body. Classical political economy discovered some of the secrets of money as the depository of value and ultimately found the substance of value itself in labour. But their con- ceptions of the world of nature, and of the world of commodities, were inescapably narrow. They could not pass beyond the historical limitations of the society in which they lived. HOW BOURGEOIS THOUGHT VIEWS OBJECTIVE REALITY Capitalism in its rise fostered a special type of men- tality which had contrary characteristics. On the one hand, the creative bourgeois thinkers proved far more capable than their medieval and ancient predecessors of developing and employing abstract thought to probe through the phenomenal world to its underlying general structure. On the other hand, their thinking was domin- ated by the fetishistic worship of abstract quantity as the primordial feature and cardinal category of material reality. These two characteristics are conspicuous in Locke’s analysis of the external world into three aspects: un- knowable material substances, objectively existing primary qualities which are exclusively quantitative in character, and subjective secondary qualities. How could the empiricist Locke have adopted a view of the world in which the realities of things were so utterly divorced from their everyday appearances? Locke lived in the atmosphere of a thriving mercan- tile capitalism. The merchant capitalist had to look behind the use-value of commodities to what was essen- tial in them—their exchange value. He saw the latter first of all as quantitative. Commodities do not appear on the market in their natural state as things with diverse specific and useful qualities. They are appraised, bought and sold only as so many distinct amounts of homogeneous and abstract value. This social property of value is exclusively quantitative; it embodies so much expended labour time. Value is made palpable through money, which functions as the means by which its quantity can be measured and compared. This type of relation not only dominates the economic calculations of the capitalist system but also the higher intellectual activities of its philosophical representatives. The whole world comes to be conceived in similar terms of abstract quantities. Just as the objects of social exis- tence acquire reality in the market only in their quality of abstract value expressed in definite sums of money, so the objects of nature seem to have reality only in their purely mechanical properties expressed as definite mag- nitudes in mathematical formulas. To make this point clearer, imagine a department store stocked with goods from all over the world. This display of material wealth, however, exists as such only for the consumer. All these articles of use and enjoy- ment have a very different meaning to the owner of the establishment. To his capitalist eyes their aesthetic and useful characteristics are negligible. The objects count only as so many amounts of money-capital. Their value, expressed by their price tags, is their sole reality. In a similar way all the rich variety of material forms, forces, properties and relations impress the mechanist, not in their immediate natural guises, but as so many quantities of identical units of such primary qualities as mass, motion, weight etc. In this conception of the world. homogeneous quantity rules like an absolute monarch at the expense of the manifold diverse qualities of things. The real things which exist in both nature and society are stripped of all those concrete qualities which do not fit into the fundamental relations and categories of the mechanical or the capitalist systems. These residual qualities are set aside as secondary, superfluous, merely subjective. Nature is deprived of its infinite abundance and diversity of real determinations, just as society is robbed of its concrete wealth. This emphasis upon the quantitative aspect of things was necessary for the advancement of science. Today it is a commonplace that the progress of scientific know- ledge depends upon increasing accuracy of measurement. But in Locke’s time this procedure was a revolutionary novelty with immense untapped consequences for theory and practice. The social sciences as well as the main branches of physical science received a powerful impe- tus from the application of precise measurement by quantitative methods. This same period witnessed the compilation of the first indices in political economy and the first essays in the tabulation of vital statistics. Thus science, bourgeois economy and the empirical philosophy shared a common preoccupation with the measurable properties of things. The coldness and grey- ness of bourgeois science has often been unfavourably contrasted with the warm, multi-coloured world of medieval religion. This inhumanity is not inherent in science but was a reflection of its bourgeois form of development and of the emotional attitude that capital- ism inspired in its adherents. At the same time it must be recognized that a certain ruthlessness and callous- ness were required for the violent break they had to make from feudalism and scholasticism. The same tools of thought which the early bourgeois scientists devised to probe into nature were used to in- quire into the operations of capitalism. Although the early economists undertook their investigations the better to build a wealthy society, that is, to enrich the bour- geosie, the social sciences benefited. What we now call ‘classical’ political economy arose. It discovered that value is not only quantitative but qualitative—and that its peculiar quality comes from labour. This discovery coincided with a higher stage in capitalist development: the organization of workshops by the merchant capitalists and their conversion into industrial capitalists. Locke was the spokesman and herald of this develop- ment in England. As Marx noted, John Locke ‘was an 57

[p030] LABOUR REVIEW advocate of the new bourgeoisie in all forms, the manu- facturers against the working class and paupers, the commercial class against the old-fashioned usurers, the financial aristocracy against the state debtors, and .. . went so far as to prove in his own work that the bour- geois reason is the normal human reason’.! The bourgeois bent of Locke’s mentality accounted 1K. Marx, A Contsibution to the Critique of Political Economy (1904), p. 93. Dogmatism and Revisionism IN a recent issue (no. 18, December 1957) Kommunist, the theoretical journal of the Soviet Communist Party, publishes an article by D. Shevlyagin under the title: ‘The Struggle of the Fraternal Communist Parties against Modern Opportun- ism.’ The author says the Communist Parties have had to fight on two fronts—against dogmatism and against revisionism. Dogmatism is dismissed in one paragraph. The author says it ‘fetters the creative activity of the party, dooms it to isolation from the masses’. Together with sectarianism it ‘impedes the political activity of the party, leads to its political impotence’. Shevlyagin then gets down to the real purpose of his article, which turns out to be to unmask ‘revisionism’ wherever it rears its ugly head. He begins with a quotation from Mae Tse-tung: ‘Revisionism or Right opportunism is a bourgeois ideological tendency; it is much more dangerous than dogmat- ism.’ We are treated to a review of ‘revisionism’ on a world- wide scale: Berens in East Germany, the Petéfi circle in Hungary, the Po Prostu writers in Poland, Pinto in Brazil, the ‘Right-wing minority’ of the British Communist Party’s commission on inner-party democracy (Peter Cadogan, Chris- topher Hill, Malcolm MacEwen) and so on. It appears that the characteristic features of revisionism are: (1) opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (2) support for the theory of a peaceful transition to socialism; (3) opposition to democratic centralism. The revisionists, we are told, want to re-examine the basic concepts of Marixsm-Leninism. It is hardly necessary to dwell on the typical muddle- headedness of the Moscow theoreticians, who regard reduc- tion to ‘political impotence’ by dogmatism as less serious than disruption by revisionism. Dogmatism, it appears, is a harmful communist tendency, but revisionism is a bourgeois tendency and consequently more dangerous! However, it is clear from the article that the author has no understanding of what is meant by the term ‘revisionism’, which for the Stalinists has degenerated into a term of abuse to be hurled against those who do not whole-heartedly accept Moscow’s views. It is therefore useful to attempt to define this term more exactly from a Marxist point of view. Marxism is characterized by a scientific outlook and approach. A Marxist examines objectively the social situation 58 Communications March-April 1958 not only for the fundamental features of his inquiries but also for their limitations. In both the philosophical system of empiricism and the economic system of capital- ism the inner essence of things remained enigmatic to the bourgeois mind. Substance in the mechanical system was as mysterious as the essence of value and the secrets of its monetary form were to the capitalist theoreticians. However much Locke strove to introduce rationality into his conceptions of nature and society, his inquiring mind, great as it was, had to retire baffled before these im- penetrable sanctuaries of the bourgeois epoch . in which he finds himself, with prejudice as to the outcome of his investigations, and from the results he builds up a theory to explain the behaviour of that society at a par- ticular stage of its development. In this he follows cosely the method of the scientist who is seeking a theory to explain processes observed in the physical world. From this scientific standpoint, however, the Marxist can regard a theory as valid only so long as it correctly predicts the behaviour of -a given social system. If it ceases to do this, the theory has to be modified or even discarded. Lenin, for example, took such a step when he modified and developed Marxist theory to account for the phenomena of imperialism. It follows that it is not necessarily revisionist to question Marxist theory, as the Soviet theorists would have us believe. On the contrary it is only by constantly questioning and scru- tinizing our theories that they develop and give a more and more accurate representation of reality. In Marxism there is no room for ‘eternal truths’ any more than in any other science. The feature which is, however, basic to Marxism and inseparable from it is its scientific method. Anyone who rejects the scientific method and refuses to recognize exper- ience as the final arbiter of the validity of a given theory is of necessity a revisionist. A necessary corollary of this is that dogmatism is itself a revisionist tendency since it places certain theories above the test of reality. Theory is of course the guide to practice. Consequently no tactic is above scrutiny any more than any theory is. Regardless of whether or not we accept the charges levelled by the Soviet theorists against certain individuals and groups as just, guilt in relation to any of them is not proof of re- visionist tendencies. They do not prove whether an individual accepts or rejects the scientific method. To advance such charges is yet another result of the dogmatist tendencies of the Soviet leaders. Chandlers Ford (Hants)