History of Poland, by Halecki

[p038] history of cognition in general a wt ° The whole field of knowledge : The history of the These are Greek Ph ilosop hy seperate sciences ) the fields The history of the of knowledge mental development these moments. from which : whic of the child the theory (The history of) of dialectics mental development should be of animals built.’5 - (The history of) Language NB: ] + psychology + physiology of the sense organs The dialectical materialist theory of knowledge, the science of human thought, is the scientific history of the material foundations, origins and development of the actual thinking of men, which goes on in the context of man’s practice, first of all in production. When Lenin, in the Notebooks, gives the bare outlines of a dialectical materialist theory of know- ledge, he is expanding the ideas of the young Marx on practice, social labour, as the ‘essence’ of humanity. What man contemplates in philosophy (his own thought) is the reflection of an objective world partly produced by his own labour. Man duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created’.6 Lenin could base himself not only upon the philosophical rejection of Hegel by the young Marx but more soundly upon the scientific economic and social study carried out by Marx in fulfilment of this turn to materialism. The ‘objective world created 5. V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, pp. 352-3. 6. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), p. 76.

[p039] ‘THE THEORETICAL FRONT’ by man’ amounted to a definite series of historically specific social-economic formations based on definite production-relations. These ‘economic structures’, the necessary relations into which men organized for the exploitation of the productive. forces, skills and techniques built up by the whole of human experience, were the objective foundations of all men’s activity and therefore of any scientific theory of that activity. With the end of speculative philosophy, the task of social science or historical materialism was to record the necessary con- nections and contradictions in social life, beginning from ‘the mode of production in material life’. To make the working-class conscious of these contradictions the better to organize its struggle against capitalism—this was the life work of Marx, devoted largely to the scientific analysis of capitalist society and its contradictions. Marxists today have the responsibility and the opportunity of producing a further enriched account of the relations between the decline of capitalist society, the struggle of the proletariat and the consciousness or theory of the proletariat, at its highest point in the revolutionary party. The major contributions in this direction have been made by Lenin between 1896 and _ his death, and by Trotsky in his struggle to prevent the Stalinist degeneration of the international Communist movement and then to build a Fourth International in the period of violent disintegration of imperialism between 1922 and 1940. MARXISM AND EMPIRICISM Lenin’s Notebooks on Hegel might appear obscure and a not very pressing pre-occupation, when big things are happening all over the world. However, it is exactly on the theoretical front that the sharpest and most uncompromising struggle must be waged. A mistaken conception here can mean a whole mistaken method, the relations between the facts becomes totally misunderstood, and _ disastrously wrong conclusions will be drawn. For example, some ‘ Marxists’ assume that Marxist method has the same starting-point as empiricism: that is to say, it starts with ‘the facts’. It is difficult to understand why Lenin and others should have spent so much time on Hegel and the dialectical method if this were true. Of course every science is based on facts. However, the definition and establishment of ‘the facts’ is crucial to any science. Part of the creation of a science is precisely its delimitation and definition as a field of study with its own laws: the ‘facts’ are shown in experience to be objectively and lawfully interconnected in such a way that a science of these fact is a meaningful and useful basis for practice. Our ‘empiricist’ Marxists in the field of society and 77 politics are far from this state of affairs. Their procedure is to say: we had a programme, based on the facts as they were in 1848, or 1921, or 1938; now the facts are obviously different, so we need a different programme. For example, the spurious ‘Fourth International’ of Pablo’s group decided some years ago that the Stalinist bureaucracy and its counterparts in various countries were forced to act differently because of changed objective circum- stances (‘facts’). New ‘revolutionary currents’ were abroad in the world, more recently particularly in the colonial revolution. The consequence of this ‘mass pressure’ would be to force the bureaucrats to act contrary to their wishes and to lead the workers to power. The great scope of the colonial revolution, the ‘liberalization’ of the Soviet régime, and the exposure of Stalin by Khrushchev, were taken as the ‘facts’ in this case. Then again, the revolution in Algeria, Guinea, and particularly Cuba are said to be yet a new kind of fact: socialist revolutions can follow ‘organically’ the democratic revolutions, even without the formation of revolutionary working-class parties. Here is a type of revisionism based on the empiricist’s ‘facts’ (other types, based on idealist methods of thought very close to this abstract empiricism, are analyzed in other articles in this issue of Lasour REVIEW by Tom Kemp and James Baker). Those who refuse to abandon the Marxist programme of Permanent Revolution, the dictator- ship of the proletariat, the decisive character of the victory of the workers in the advanced capitalist countries, the need to build revolutionary parties for the defeat of the false leaders of the working class in every country—these are said to be subjective and idealist in their method, refusing to accept the new facts or new reality which must form the basis of our politics. The Stalinist criticism of Trotskyism is similar: we are said to be dogmatic, failing to realise that permanent peace and parliamentary roads to Socialism are made possible by the ‘new reality’ of Soviet strength. It is a false and non-Marxist view of ‘the facts’ which leads to these revisionist ideas. What our ‘objectivists’ are saying, with their message ‘history is on our side’, is this: look at the big struggles taking place, add them together without analysing them, go on your impressions of their significance, and add all these together—and you have ‘the facts’. Colonial revolutions are successful here, and successful there, and in another place; then the success of the colonial revolution is a fact. Nationalist leaders like Nkrumah and Mboya and Nasser make ‘anti- imperialist’ speeches and even carry out nationali- zations; this suggests that history is tending irrevers- ibly and inexorably to force non-proletarian politicians in a socialist direction. But ‘objectivism’

[p040] 78 of this kind is a collection of impressions and not a rich dialectical analysis of the whole picture, with the parts related to one another. A truly objective analysis begins from the economic relations between classes on a world scale and within nations. It proceeds through an analysis of the relations between the needs of these classes and their consciousness and organization. On these it bases its programme for the working-class internationally and in each national sector. A list of the ‘progressive forces’ is not an objective analysis! It is the opposite, i.e., simply a collection of surface impressions, an acceptance of the existing unscientific consciousness of the con- temporary class struggle as held by the participants, primarily by petty-bourgeois politicians who lead the national movements and bureaucratized labour movements. To overlay this theoretical blunder by suggesting that Castro and others are ‘natural’ Marxists serves only to confirm that the ‘theorists’ concerned are little aware of how far they have gone. They seem to suggest that the periods of maximum revolutionary tension are those when the participants in mass struggle arrive easily and spontaneously at revolutionary concepts. On the contrary, it is precisely at such times that there is a premium on scientific consciousness, on the theory and strategy developed in struggle over a long period.’ The essence of the history of the proletarian revolutionary movement is the conscious effort to develop scientific theory and a strategy conforming to that science. All talk about ‘natural’ developments towards Marxism are an attack on the necessity to carry on this process. The empiricist believes that he can study the various parts of the social process as they present themselves from day to day. Adding these together will then give a ‘realistic’ or ‘objective’ total picture and international perspective. Such an approach is, of course, very closely related to the so-called ‘scientific’ method which was so strongly attacked by Hegel and by Lenin (see pre- ceding article to this one in Vol. 7, No. 1 LABourR Review). The task of the dialectical method is first. to understand the basic (economic and class) contradictions in their development, and then to study the political and ideological manifestations as parts of a developing whole on this basis. Time and again in the Notebooks, Lenin refers to what Engels had called ‘bad dialectics’, those artificial instructions which abstractly approach every phenomenon, trying to impose on it some ‘thesis, antithesis and synthesis’ or ‘two opposing sides’. As Engels said, a knowledge of the dialectical categories is no solution to any scientific problem. In every case it is a matter of systematic study of the actual subject-matter, 7. See ‘What is Revolutionary Leadership?’ in Labour Review, Vol. 5, No. 3. LABOUR REVIEW—Summer, 1962 analysis of the developing forces within it. To assume that ‘the dialectical method’ is a short cut which makes all this hard work unnecessary is the mistake of those who talk glibly about ‘applying’ dialectics. Lenin showed how thoroughly he had absorbed Marx’s method in his trenchant criticisms of Trotsky and particularly Bukharin in the ‘ Trade Union Debate’ of 1920. His remarks on dialectics in this controversy are necessary reading for anyone studying the Notebooks, for they are an expansion in clear terms of many of the points- tentatively sketched in the rough notes on Hegel.8 DIALECTICS AND ECLECTICISM In 1920, there took place in the Communist Party of the young Soviet Republic a vital controversy on the relations between the trade unions and the State. Lenin’s speeches on this subject are the first blows in the battle against the dangers of bureaucracy in Soviet Russia, but for the moment we are more concerned with the deliberate points he made on the use of the dialectical method in his disagreements with Trotsky and especially with Bukharin. Trotsky, with his insistence that the trade unions must subordinate their independence to the workers’ state, saying that only a ‘shake-up’ in the trade unions would shift the conservative and slow-moving union leaders, was proceeding, said Lenin, from abstrac- tions about the proper relations between the organized workers and ‘their’ state. But the special problems here were political ones: the Soviet state was necessarily weakened by bureaucratic distortions. This fact had a specific political effect on the attitude of the workers, who had a need of trade unions to defend themselves against ‘their’ state. It was a mistake in method for Trotsky to ‘start from the economic tasks’ and condemn Lenin for being too ‘political’; *.. . one must not approach a wide subject like this without pondering over the special features of the present situation from the political aspect . . . politics are the most concentrated expression of economics.’ Trotsky’s mistaken policy of ‘shaking- up’ the unions ‘flowed from this wrong method’, ‘and if this mistake is not admitted and corrected, it will lead to the fall of the dictatorship of the proletariat’, said Lenin. To be noted here is Lenin’s insistence on viewing each particular policy question from the point of view of the whole development of the revolution and the workers’ dictatorship. In his ‘Testament’ he starts in similar manner, from the need to preserve the worker-peasant alliance as the basis of Soviet power; the criticisms of bureaucracy and of Stalin’s personal characteristics are placed in this larger 8. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. IX, pp. 54-80,

[p041] ‘THE THEORETICAL FRONT’ context. Seeing particular questions as part of this developing whole is the most concrete way of looking at them, even if it seems at first to be going a long way round to get to the point. Only if we start from the specific stage of development reached by the state and society as a whole will we have in mind the most urgent and specific aspects of the problem under discussion. ‘ Truth is always concrete’. In dealing with Bukharin too, Lenin is very sharp. Bukharin went in for a very common species of ‘dialectics’ in his attempt to clear up the trade union controversy. He thought that Trotsky saw the unions too much from the point of view of the organization, the ‘apparatus’ aspect of trade unionism in the workers’ state; Zinovievy on the the other hand placed too much stress on the unions as a ‘school of Communism’. Said Bukharin, one must realize that both are partly right: the unions are ‘on the one hand’ a school, etc., ‘on the other hand’ an apparatus, etc. In this case, Bukharin arrives at an equally abstract approach to the question; as always Bukharin: criticized by Lenin, who recognized his undoubted theoretical talents, for a tendency to ‘scholas- ticism’ and ‘eclecticism’. he tended towards eclecticism rather than dialectics, Le., trying to get at the truth by sticking together various partial views instead of making an indepen- dent scientific study of the whole. Lenin’s characterization on this occasion is very clear: ‘Why is this argument of Bukharin’s lifeless and vapid eclecticism? Because Bukharin does not make the slightest attempt, independently, from his own point of view, to analyse the whole history of the present controversy (Marxism, i.e., dialectical logic, absolutely demands this) and the whole approach to the question, the whole presentation—or, if you will, the whole trend of the presentation—of the question at the present time, under the present concrete con- ditions. Bukharin does not make the slightest attempt to do this! He approaches the subject without the faintest attempt at a concrete study, with bare abstractions, and takes a little piece from 79 Zinoviev and a little piece from Trotsky. This is eclecticism.’9 Some ‘ Marxists’ think that a dialectical approach is simply to arbitrarily decide on two opposite forces in any phenomenon and to describe the development of the phenomenon in terms of these ‘opposites’. But which two ‘sides’ of the thing shall be taken? ‘On the one hand the trade unions are a school, on the other hand they are an apparatus, thirdly, they are organisations of the toilers, fourthly, they are almost exclusively organisations of the industrial workers, fifthly, they are organisations according to industry, etc., etc. Bukharin gives no grounds what- ever, he makes no independent analysis, does not produce a scrap of evidence to prove why the first two ‘aspects’ of the question, or subject, should be taken, and not the third, fourth, fifth, etc. That is why the theses of the Bukharin group are also just an eclectical squib: Bukharin puts the whole question of the relation between ‘school’ and ‘apparatus’ in a radically wrong, eclectic manner.’!0 The point to be made here is that concern with dialectical method is no idle preoccupation; without it, Marxists are in danger of descending into empiricism, a narrow ‘practicalism’, a deadly routine manner of handling vital political questions. In the ‘trade union controversy’ Lenin demonstrated prac- tically his mastery of the ideas which he had studied all his life, and particularly in the Philosophical Notebooks. To start from the all-sided, contra- dictory and developing whole, to understand its specific stage of development and the necessary expression of the inner contradictions at this stage, this is the essence of dialectical method. It is as opposed to empiricism as a method can possibly be. Bernstein, the German Social Democrat, was the first of the deliberate and wholesale ‘revisionists’ of Marxism. He rejected revolution and founded modern reformism on the grounds that ‘the facts’ had turned out differently from Marx’s predictions. The workers were not getting poorer and poorer and driven to revolt. Capitalism was not getting nearer and nearer to collapse, etc., etc., and therefore the best thing was to work within capitalism, gradually transforming it by partial changes. Rosa Luxemburg was Bernstein’s most able opponent in the German Social-Democratic press. Her attack is a model of the dialectical method.!!_ Bernstein’s basic mistake, she pointed out, was to take his ‘evidence’ as isolated and independent ‘facts’ which are supposed to disprove Marx’s theories. But these are only facts if you accept that they have independent and separate importance, and fail to see them as part of the capitalist system, of its general problems of develop- ment. Reforms, similarly, cannot be judged except historically. Only abstract comparison from the 9. Ibid, p. 67. 10. Ibid, pp. 67-8. 11. R. Luxemburg Reform or Revolution.

[p042] 80 outside can pose reform as an alternative to revolu- tion. If we start from the class struggle in its development, we see that specific reforms can only take place and have meaning on the basis of past revolutions, i.e., the two are not separate, alternative phenomena, but necessary sides of the same process Rosa Luxemburg: her ‘Reform or Revolution’ is a classical example of Marxist method against revisionism. of struggle. Structural changes, changes in power, demand revolution, and the significance of reforms today can only be appreciated from the point of view of the construction of a revolutionary movement for the victory of the working class tomorrow, as well as in the framework of past revolutions. We have seen that ‘the facts’ as they present themselves immediately are not sufficient for a Marxist analysis; more, the acceptance of the sum of these facts as reality can only bring about an opportunist adaptation to the existing society. The empiricist or ‘impressionistic’? observer thinks he approaches the facts in an unbiased way 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, avoiding 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 every-day prejudices may go by the name of ‘sound common sense’, but they are the definite prejudices of a definite class society. But Marxist theory and socialist politics are not fixed truths sent like manna from heaven. They are constantly developing like any science; born in struggle against bourgeois ideology, they have developed through the struggle of the working class and its organizations. For the proletariat to achieve consciousness of the full meaning of its international struggle against the power of capital, a vital and determined struggle for Marxist theory against every diversion is necessary. This is why the big strides LABOUR REVIEW—Summer, 1962 forward of the socialist movement have always been preceded by theoretical battles against revisionism as well as political class struggles. To base our socialist programme on the objective development of the class struggle, we must sharpen our theoretical weapons. Only scientific theory can penetrate to the essence of the international class struggle against imperialism. Our own ideas, ie., our own political and theoretical development, has itself to be under- stood dialectically. The conscious activity of revolu- tionaries and of the working class are material factors in the transformation of society. To be uncritical of our own history and theoretical development is to fall into idealism. When a revisionist trend appears and even becomes strong in the Marxist movement, the task is not just to ‘uphold Marxist principles’, demonstrate on what points the revisionists have departed from them, and continue as before. In this way nothing is learned in the long run. It is through the deepening of the criticism of revisionism, in showing its historical roots, in showing the way it reflects the pressure of other classes on the pro- letariat, that the revolutionaries develop their own theory. When we confront reality, we do not start with a clean sheet, but with weapons (theories, con- sciously built forms of organization, slogans, plans) forged over the years in action on changing reality. The history and development of these weapons, the understanding of their relations to the whole reality, the way they have become what they are and must take a higher and more developed form, in struggle against opposed ideas; this is what must be grasped in a fight against revisionism. In other words, our own theory, our own consciousness (which must take the form of ‘practical-revolutionary activity’), must be understood dialectically, just like anything else. The Philosophical Notebooks of Lenin provide the basic framework of an understanding of this problem, the dialectical nature of the devélopment of con- sciousness. It is a problem to which the Notebooks constantly return. Dialectics is the theory of know- ledge of Marxism, Lenin says many times, meaning that dialectics is a scientific theory of the emergence and development of human thinking. The reader himself will be able to follow Lenin’s thoughts on the general aspects of this problem in his notes on Hegel’s Science of Logic; all we have tried to indicate here is the continuity of Lenin’s writings with the whole Marxist tradition of revolutionary thought, and to show the connection between apparently obscure ‘philosophical’ questions and issues of political urgency, not only in Lenin’s day but our own.

[p043] The fundamental imperialism in re and The Russian Permanent Revolution Results and Prospects struggle against clalist revolution evolution of 1905 by L tsky In one volume, 254 pps. Hard cover 25/-, soft cover, 15/-. Order from: New Park Publications Ltd. 186A Clapham High St. London 5.W.4 Printed by PLOUGH PRESS LTD. (TU),ro. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4

[p044] The fundamental ork on the struggle against tion ngyete socialist revolution — imperialism in rela Hon volution of 1905 and The Russian Permanent Revolution and. Results and Prospects n one volume, 254 pps. Hard cover 25/-, soft cover, 15/-. Order from New Park Publications Ltd. 86h ome High St. London 5.W.4 Printed by PLOUGH PRESS LTD. (TU),.ro. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4