The dialectic and Lenin’s politics

[p009] he Dialectic and Lenin's Politics Philosophical Notebooks Article 3 By Cliff Slaughter This relation cannot be understood ‘in general’ and ‘once and for all’: Marxism is not a philosophical system but a scientific guide to action; only the process of struggle to defeat incorrect conceptions in the real movement can teach the Marxist method, can direct the Marxist to the real meaning of the works he must study. In the course of doing this, the Marxists, organised in a revolutionary party, develop the theory itself, providing a link to the struggles of those who follow. In his studies of the dialectic, Lenin re-armed himself, the Bolshevik Party and the international working class by his insistence on a return to funda- mental questions of philosophy and the dialectical method, right in the middle of the First World War and the preparation of the Communist International. This was to prove of enormous value in his ability to grapple with the strategic and tactical problems of the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the accept- ance and repetition of earlier programmatic slogans (including Lenin’s own slogan of 1905-6) by the ‘old Bolsheviks’ almost prevented the Bolshevik Party

[p010] THE DIALECTIC AND LENIN’S POLITICS and the working class from grasping the revolution- ary opportunity of that year. In his book State and Revolution Lenin gave a masterly theoretical underpinning to his campaign to mobilise the working class and its peasant allies ‘to overthrow the Provisional Government. Of course, State and Revolution is well known as the classic exposition of the Marxist revolutionary posi- tion on the conquest of power by the working class. But the book is worth very careful study from the point of view of the dialectical method. In order to present the Marxist theory of the state as a guide to action, as a scientific theory, Lenin does not simply give a list of abstract prin- ciples, fixed for all time, and counterpose these to ‘incorrect’ theories. On the contrary he shows that the Marxist theory of the state has developed as a scientific reflection of the needs and experience of the working class in the struggle. ‘Marxism is the conscious reflection of an unconscious process.’ A Marxist position on the state must reflect the experience of the class. And so Lenin shows first how Marx and Engels began in 1847-48 with a general view of the character of the state as an organ of oppression by one class over another. They were able with their materialist theory of history to show that even those features of the state thought to be ‘natural’ and inevitable were in fact conse- quences of the division into exploiters and exploited. Even in 1847-8, the opportunist thinkers in the Labour movement opposed these conceptions. Lenin points out that since Marx’s day, the repressive and militaristic features of the state have everywhere been concentrated and strengthened to preserve the power of finance-capital and the monopolies in their drive to discipline the working class and to conquer the markets of the world through imperialist war. (A work on the state today, urgently required, would be able to document the further development of this process in the period of ‘peaceful co-existence’ and nuclear power). Alongside this process, Lenin points out, the opportunist and middle-class tendencies in the Labour movement have gone away from Marxist ideas on the state, finally capitulating in 1914 by supporting their ‘own’ national State in war against others. The resulting situation made it necessary, Lenin showed, to consider the question of the State in an all-round, dialectical way, if a decisive struggle for power and against the opportunists was to be waged. This entailed therefore: (1) The exposition of Marx’ and Engels’ position in relation to their general theory of historical materialism. (2) The analysis of the experience of the working class in revolutionary struggles, particularly in 1848, 1871 (the Paris Commune) and 1905 and 1917 (the 127 Russian Revolutions), and the demonstration that Marxism learned from these, developed by reflecting this experience. Thus it was only after 1871 that Marx and Engels concretised the ideas: (a) that the old state machine must be smashed, not taken over, and (b) that the new workers’ power would be a ‘commune’, drawing the whole working class into government, and preparing for its own disappearance: i.e., the earlier, more ‘general’, abstract conception took on more concrete form by becoming part of the practical struggle of the working class against the capitalist state. (3) Last but not least, the explanation that Marxism develops and can be further developed as a guide to working-class action, only in struggle against false ideas representing alien tendencies in the movement. This parallels what Lenin called ‘yet another new aspect to Hegel’s logic’-—the history of the theory itself in development through conflict. Thus Marx’s own ideas were clarified only in bitter struggle against the opportunists on the one Karl Marx His ideas were clarified only in bitter struggle against the opportunists on the one hand and the anarchists on the other

[p011] 128. hand and the anarchists on the other. Lenin explains these conflicts and proceeds to continue the struggle against the traitors of his own day. In this way, he works out concretely the ideas on the dialectical method derived from his study of Hegel. Ideas and theories in the working-class movement are practical weapons; they have to be consciously pre- pared and sharpened; every ounce of value must be gleaned from the experience of the class by hard theoretical work. If this experience is simply gone through in a routine way the working class is abandoned to the domination of capitalist ideas. The role of opportunist ‘theories’ is to try to ensure that this happens. Lenin realised that to develop and understand his own ideas of the state and revolution he would have to understand them as the latest in line of developing Marxist ideas, which were part of a struggling objective force, the working class, striving to achieve true consciousness of the meaning of its struggle against the capitalist class, One essential part of this was the struggle to defeat the opportunist leaders, whose. role was to contain this struggle within reformist or national limits. This is not the place to go into further detail, and every student of Marxism should study Lenin’s book to see how he flays the distorters of Marxism. As opportunists, the latter are forced to depart from this dialectical method, breaking Marx’s writings up into separate parts in order to suit a particular argument, selecting what they want from past writings in order to cloak their present practice of betrayal. Similarly, Kautsky and those like him did not carry out a thorough historical study of the state or of Marx’s theory of the state, preferring instead to quote examples and precedents torn from their historical context. All this has to be seen in the context of the international betrayals of Socialism after 1914 and of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin’s book was part of his necessary separation from the ‘socialist traitors’ of the Second Inter- national. There could be no finer example of the unity of theory and practice in Marxism. The practice of the opportunists demands a particular kind of theory, or rather denial of theory. Their ideas are ideas imposed on the working class by a bureaucracy whose interests tie it to the enemy class (such as the preservation of the capitalist nation- state, within which they hope to preserve their economic and parliamentary privileges). These ideas are hostile to dialectics, a theory which enables the working class to see the interconnections between all its struggles on every front and in every country, scientifically and consciously reflecting its real material interests as a class. With such a dialectical theory of the state, developed by tracing the evolu- tion of the theory in response to the needs of the class and in conflict with those who hold back the class, Lenin was able to lead the Bolshevik Party LABOUR REVIEW—Winter 1963 and the Russian proletariat into action in 1917. Important to note here is the enrichment and sharpening of the political conclusions permitted by the many-sidedness of the dialectical approach. Because Lenin had grasped in his study of Hegel the importance of understanding the development of ideas in the course of practice, he was able to give a sharp edge to the political as well as the theoretical struggle in 1917, whereas the majority of the Bolsheviks found themselves resigned to a victory of the bourgeoisie in the first months. Lenin and the Party Above all, Lenin contributed to Marxism and to the working class the theory and method of building a revolutionary party to lead the struggle for power. His life is a massive concentration on the problems of this construction, bringing to the purpose a scientific examination of all the history and social structure of Russia and the experience of the international class struggle, right through to the intimate details of the internal history of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and its factions. He is able therefore to see the various individuals and groupings, their ideas and manoeuvres, not just in their immediate, superficial appearance, but as the clash of the vital social forces in the Russian Revolution. Lenin was often criticised by his opponents for his sharpness and bitterness in Party disputes. But Lenin’s in- sistence on personal breaks and often violent con- flicts over what appeared to be minor issues was simply the consistent working out of revolutionary centralism, the principle that the practice of party organisation and individual responsibilities must reflect the objective needs of the class. Trotsky and others have explained how they were often horrified by Lenin’s ‘ruthlessness’, only realising much later that this was not a personal characteristic but the result of the most profound political con- victions. In his autobiography, Trotsky says: ‘Revolutionary centralism is a harsh, imperative and exacting principle. It often takes the guise of ab- solute ruthlessness in its relation to individual members, to whole groups of former associates. It is not without significance that the words “irreconcil- able” and “relentless” are among Lenin’s favourites. It is only the most impassioned, revolutionary striving for a definite end—a striving that is utterly free from anything base or personal—that can justify such a personal ruthlessness. In 1903, the whole point at issue was nothing more than Lenin’s desire to get Azelrod and Zasulich off the editorial board. My attitude towards them was full of respect, and there was an element of personal affection as well. Lenin also thought highly of them for what they had done in the past. But he believed that they were becoming an impediment for the future. This led him to conclude that they must be removed from their position of leadership. I could not agree. My

[p012] THE DIALECTIC AND LENIN’S whole being seemed to protest against this merciless cutting off of the older ones when they were at last on the threshold of an organised party. It was my indignation at his attitude that really led to my parting with him at the second congress. His be- haviour seemed unpardonable to me, both horrible and outrageous. And yet, politically, it was right and necessary, from the point of view of organisa- tion. The break with the older ones, who remained in the preparatory stages, was inevitable in any case. Lenin understood this before anyone else did.’2 This intensity of concentration led Lenin to see more clearly than anyone else the relation between Marxist theory and revolutionary organisation. From _ the very start, in his controversies with the Narod- niks, the ‘legal Marxists’ and the Economists, he understood and stressed that revolutionary theory was the essential defining characteristic of the revolutionary party. But once again, we must appreciate that this means that every facet of the ideas in the history of the Party must be under- stood. The internal life of the political tendencies in the Party, their response to particular problems and crises in the development of the class and the Party, must all be understood in order to know exactly where we are going. Let us take an example. In 1913 there was a ‘unity offensive’ on the part of some of the Mensheviks, trying to re-unify with the Bolsheviks. They argued, and Trotsky supported them in this for a time in the August bloc, that the urgency of the current practical political tasks made it necessary to unify, since agreement could be found on many of these. The fault with this approach was that it departed from the Marxist view of theory and political programme. We must begin, not from the ‘facts’ as they immediately appear from the current political tasks, but from a theoretical analysis of the process of class struggle of which these urgent tasks are a part. As we saw in the theory of the State, we arrive at this correct theoretical analysis only if we include an examination of the way one-sided and false views of the situation have arisen and been perpetuated in the working- class movement. In rejecting the August bloc, Lenin explained this very clearly, and Trotsky later summarised his attitude: ‘Most of the documents were written by me and through avoiding principled differences had as their aim the creation of a semblance of unanimity upon “concrete political questions”. Not a word about the past! Lenin subjected the August bloc to merciless criticism and the harshest blows fell to my lot. Lenin proved that inasmuch as I did not agree politically with either the Mensheviks or the Vperyodists my policy was adventurism. This was severe but it was true.’3_ (My emphasis, C.S.) 2. L. D. Trotsky, My Life, Universal Library, N.Y. 1960, pp. 161-2. 3. L. D. Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, p. 141. POLITICS 129 Lenin insisted all through the controversy on the fundamental lines of programme as historically laid down in the splits of the past. Only later did Trotsky recognise this essential feature of the dialectical approach. Opportunism and Dialectics Lenin noted already in 19084 that as the bour- geoisie itself became more ideologically bankrupt, it came increasingly to rely on revisers of Marxism and renegades from Marxism to represent its interests in preventing the working class from achieving consciousness of its role. Ex-communists and ex-Marxists of all kinds are now, over half a century later, playing this role in a much more systematic and organised way than they were then. Gigantic research foundation and publishing com- panies, financed by big business and capitalist governments, offer lucrative careers to ‘experts’ on Communism with ‘inside’ knowledge; the ‘ex-com- munist’s conscience’ becomes a highly saleable commodity. Within the revolutionary movement itself, too, tendencies arise which accommodate themselves to capitalism through this stratum of the intelli- gentsia, often through literary and academic circles like those of Sartre in France or Wright Mills in the U.S.A. Some of these latter intellectuals build themselves fine reputations as radicals and outspoken critics of the most reactionary features of modern Sartre Wright Mills stratum of the intelligentsia acting as a medium for accommodation to capitalism government and business, but all of their criticisms are tolerable within capitalism, for they stop short at the vital role of the working class, exploring ‘theories’ that perhaps this vital role was only a nineteenth century superstition (Wright Mills calls this insistence on the role of the working class the ‘labour metaphysic’).. Interestingly, they also find it necessary to attack the dialectic with all the tradi- 4. V.I. Lenin, ‘Marxism and Revisionism’, reprinted in Marx-Engels-Marxism and On Revisionism.

[p013] 130 tional weapons: Sartre has recently produced a long critique of dialectical materialism5 and Mills made his hostility very clear in his last work. For example, he writes that Marx’s method ‘is a signal and lasting contribution to the best sociological ways of reflection and inquiry available’, But the footnote to which the reader is referred by that sentence begins: ‘¥ do not refer ‘to the mysterious “laws of dialectics” which Marx never explains clearly but which his disciples claim to use.’ He goes on to criticise each ‘law’ in turn, and concludes: ‘As a guide to thinking “dialectics” can be more burdensome than helpful, for if everything is con- nected, dialectically, with everything else, then you must know “everything” in order to know anything, and causal sequences become difficult to trace.’6 It is no accident that opportunist political trends can co-exist with these rejections of the methodo- logical foundations of Marxism. Opportunism is an adaptation to the existing social system; where opportunists use Marxist phrases it is only to find a justification for leaving things to take their course in the interests of some ‘inevitable’ objective develop- ment. Opportunism and theoretical advance cannot go together in the socialist movement. Dialectics, demanding that each problem, each struggle, be dealt with from the point of view of the basic struggle of classes in the whole system, is anathema to the opportunist, whose aim is precisely to confine himself and those who follow him to the ‘solution’ of particular and partial tasks on behalf of special segments of the working class. If Marxist theory fails to constantly enrich itseif and develop in the struggle, then it becomes only a cover for such opportunism. An example is the theory of Pablo and his followers that the objective forces for socialism are so strong that the existing organisations and leaders of the masses, even in- cluding petty-bourgeois leaders, can become re- volutionary and Marxist. Practically speaking, such a theory has the consequence of holding back the concentration of effort on the construction of an independent working-class leadership. Theoretically, it substitutes objectivism for Marxism. Trotsky would have had some hard words for such “‘Trotskyists’. ‘Purely “historical”, reformist, Menshevik, passive conservative thinking busies itself with justifying, as Marx expressed it, today’s swinishness by yesterday’s swinishness. Representatives of this kind enter into mass organisations and dissolve themselves there.’7 Of course the Pablo group have tried to use 5S. J. P. Sartre, Critique de la Raison Dialectique, Paris 1961. 6. C. Wright Mills, The Marxists, pp. 129-30. LABOUR REVIEW—Winter 1963 certain quotations from other writings of Trotsky to justify their abdication of revolutionary duty. However, they consistently select and present these extracts in a one-sided and distorted way. The following quotation from the same article by Trotsky shows clearly in what context he spoke about existing organisations responding to the pressure of the masses: ‘In the meantime the existing opportunist unions under the pressure of capitalist disintegration can and under the conditions of our correct policies within the unions, must approach our programmatic norms and play a progressive historical role. This, of course, presupposes a complete change in leader- ship.’8 This should serve as a model in such questions. If ‘theory’ is simply a contemplative verdict on the ‘irreversibility’ or ‘inevitability’ of certain trends, it degenerates into apologetics. Marxist theory exists as a guide to action, to correct policies leading to a complete change of leadership. With this method, all political problems are posed with the factor of revolutionary activity as their centre. Lenin was seeking to deepen this method when he insisted on the understanding on our idea of a thing, derived from practice, as an essential part of our grasping of the thing correctly now. Marx as a very young man had seen that the impasse reached by philosophy could only be eliminated by basing theory on the real motive force of history; he wrote in 1844: “Theory becomes a material force as soon as it grips the masses.’ Pabloism and theories like it are only an example, this time under particular conditions which deserve careful analysis, of how this unity of theory and practice is time and again lost in the history of the movement, under the pressure of alien class forces. Only a constant struggle for revolutionary theory and methods of work can restore it, re-arming the working class for its revolutionary tasks. It is for this reason that the understanding of the dialectical method is of vital political importance. Without it there will be no reconstruction of the Fourth International, the essence of which is to lead the working class to action based on an under- standing of its own past and present experience in struggle against capitalism. Development of Dialectics Lenin’s work on the dialectical method, then, must be studied by revolutionary Marxists as a contribution to the understanding of how we make 7, L. D. Trotsky, Not a Workers’ and Not a Bour- geois State?, reproduced in Fourth International, July-August 1951. 8. Ibid.

[p014] THE our ideas more effective, by clarifying the way in which ideas in their development reflect the objective world and its changes. In_ earlier articles we stressed Lenin’s grasp of the subtlety and many-sidedness of this process of reflection, of the concepts which arise from it, his reworking of Hegel’s great discoveries about the interrelations of these concepts, discoveries which transcend all previous theories of knowledge. In addition we recalled Lenin’s insistence, so often forgotten, that the very richness and power of human knowledge about nature and society results from the fact that it reflects a material, objective world, existing independently of our knowledge of it. Dialectical thinking is itself the highest and one of the latest developments of this material world: the way in which human consciousness reflects its environ- ment is part of the behaviour of matter in its most highly developed forms. To understand the development of thought we must understand biological evolution and the material foundation of the origins of humanity, and laws of development of the modes of production and socio-economic systems developed by man in controlling nature. Dialectics as a theory of knowledge whose basic concept is development through internal contradic- tion, makes possible the understanding of real relations in the world; this is because the pro- cesses we observe have arrived at their present relations with one another (and to our practice and knowledge) historically, through a process of contradictory development. A logic which assumes fixed and formal relations between phenomena is useful for handling only simple, limited, everyday tasks, in spheres where for practical purposes relations are relatively static or repeated without significant changes for the matter in hand. But once natural science probed beyond these surface, everyday relations, and when the complex pheno- mena of social development had to be grasped by a class which required to understand class society and overthrow it, not just adapt it to its needs, then a new development was forced upon philo- sophy. Modern natural science itself was and is part of the opening up of the world by capitalist industry and commerce, whose transformations of the natural world and of social relations necessi- tate an understanding of the real relations between class society and nature through production. Lenin brilliantly draws attention to the paradoxical succession of phases as conscious dialectical theory fights its way through, first in abstract philosophy (Hegel) and only later in the sciences: ‘The idea of universal movement and change (1813 Logic) was conjectured before its application to life in society. In regard to society it was proclaimed earlier (1847 [Poverty of Philosophy. The Com- munist Manifesto]) than it was demonstrated in DIALECTIC AND LENIN’S POLITICS 131 application to man (1859 [Darwin—Origin of Species]).’ (My emphasis, C.S.)? There could be no better example of the richness and unevenness of the development of the world, and of the flexibility of the concepts required for an understanding of it, than this example of the development of the idea of development itself. Historical materialism, the theory of development of society and the ideas which grew up within societies, has the task of explaining this unevenness from the material conditions of bourgeois society, the special class structure and retarded development of the German bourgeoisie which conditioned the rise of classical German philosophy, etc. At earlier phases in the history of knowledge, thinkers had worked out the elements of a dialectical approach, but until science was a socially organised, rapidly developing system of thought and action, and until there developed in history a class which required such a scientific theory for the solution of its special historical tasks, these elements of a dialectical theory could only remain one-sided, speculative and ‘philo- sophical’ instead of scientific and practical, When Marx ‘stood Hegel on his head, or rather, on his feet’, elaborating the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, he recognised that hence- forth the development of the theory depended not on philosophy but on science, and above all on conscious revolutionary action by the working class: ‘The philosophers have interpreted the world. The problem is to change it.’ Natural science and industry carry this out at the basic level of con- trolling nature. But the system of capitalism, the framework within which those conquests of nature have been made, has a decisive effect on science and technique itself: at a certain point, capitalist relations of production prevent the development of the productive forces. In this, as in all such periods of social revolution, man stands in peril of all his conquests, all the results of his controlling (humanising) his own existence, being turned into their opposite, into forces of destruction and corruption of human life. Revolution is therefore the only humanism, the only way in which man’s nature can be historically affirmed and developed. The most vital of the sciences is the science of this revolution, of human action, the science of history, of which Marx showed political economy to be the secret. Every science develops; it builds up knowledge and theory about its particular sphere of investiga- tion. New discoveries, new insights, are systema- tically incorporated into the body of existing know- ledge and theory. Earlier concepts which prove too 9. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38 Philoso- phical Notebooks), p. 141.

[p015] 132 rigid and narrow for this new experience have to be enriched or rejected, or rather transcended by a more nearly complete and many-sided view. It is by learning more in practice about the infinite variety, richness and interconnnectedness of the material world that our knowledge arrives at more sensitive, refined and effective ways of thought. Marx, in calling upon the working class to solve the problems of society by its own conscious action, was calling for the working class to replace speculation with science and practice in the social and political sphere just as the natural sciences had done in the conquest of nature. These were not separate tasks: the solution of the contradiction in the development of the highest sphere of the development of nature, human society and con- sciousness, will lay the basis for a qualitatively new epoch of the free development of the sciences. The age of ‘prehistory’ comes to an end. Conclusions Great stress has been laid in these articles on the need to understand thought itself, our own theory, in its development as a reflection of the objective world. It has also been pointed out that it was in the most abstract sphere of logic and philosophy that the dialectic was first elaborated, and only later worked out for human society and for nature. What happened, then, was that abstract thought— an abstraction from experience at one level—en- riched itself by taking on more and more of the concrete, objective world with which thought grappled. It was Marx who turned dialectics in this direction through his concept of human activity not just as ‘critical thought’ but as ‘revolutionary practice’. All thinking goes through similar phases, proceeding from an abstract, partial appreciation to a richer and more nearly complete reflection of the real phenomena in all their tran- sitions, transformations and interrelations. Further examination of the transition from ‘philosophy’ to Marxism may bring out more clearly the character of dialectical method. In the most advanced idealist philosophy (Hegel) we find an elaboration of the laws of thought. In describing these laws of the movement of thought from appearance to essence and to the concrete understanding of development in ‘the notion’, Hegel tries to take into his logical system all earlier elaborations of the problem. He aims to transcend (.e., to go beyond, but at the same time incor- porate) these earlier philosophies by showing them to be only one-sided, exaggerated, abstracted parts or aspects of an infinitely rich, developing whole of which the parts are only phases, which can be LABOUR REVIEW-—Winter 1963 truly grasped only in their developing and contra- dictory relations to one another and to the whole. What is this thought, whose evolution and anatomy Hegel so brilliantly describes, tracing the course of its work in all the sectors of human scholarship and creation? It is the thought of living, active men, existing in concrete social relations; it is part of their practice in these sur- roundings; it reflects their growing control over nature and the contradictions in the social relations within which this control is organised. In the course of conquering nature men are forced to strive for a more thorough, a deeper and more concrete understanding of it. Their ideas of nature begin as the crudest and most ‘subjective’ abstrac- tions, based first on fleeting impressions and on the immediate and pressing needs of subsistence. Those aspects of the environment which are organised in this early type of thought are ‘selected’ from the environment, ‘significance’ allotted to them, and the relations between them conceived, not scientifically but subjectively. This is borne out by investigations of the ideas of primitive societies and of early child development. As the organisation of men in society advances in its handling of the problems of production, knowledge grows, is refined in order to conform with the actual structure and development of the external world, through a process of checking in hundreds of generations of experience. Concepts are broad- ened, or broken down into more limited and strictly defined concepts in order to take into account new or newly encountered phenomena, distinctions are made which more accurately reflect the essential relations in nature. The history of science is thus a central component of dialectics as a theory of knowledge. But all knowledge is organised in concepts or ideas; it is worked through the mental activities of men, and this is, of course, recognised by dialectical materialism but without going to the idealist notion that the essential reality is thought itself. Engels showed long ago that this conceptual character of all knowledge must not in any way lead to a separation of thought and the objective world which it reflects. The ability to work with con- cepts, as already pointed out, is itself something which has developed in material relations with the world, and must itself be understood dialectically.1° ‘In any case natural science has now advanced so far that it can no longer escape the dialectical synthesis. But it will make this process. easier for itself if it does not lose sight of the fact that the results in which its experiences are summarised are concepts; but that the art of working with concepts is not inborn and also is not given with ordinary 10. F. Engels, Anti-Diihring, Preface to 2nd Edition.

[p016] THE DIALECTIC AND LENIN’S everyday consciousness, but requires real thought, and that this thought similarly has a long empirical history, not more and not less than empirical natural science. Only by learning to assimilate the results of the development of philosophy during the past two and a half thousand years will it be able to rid itself on the one hand of any isolated natural philo- sophy standing apart from it, outside it and above it, and on the other hand also of its own limited method of thought, which was its inheritance from English empiricism.’ This passage brings out very clearly the implica- tions of a dialectical approach to method not only in natural science but also in politics. As in the natural sciences, a failure to understand the Marxist movement’s own development of ideas, to criticise and develop these through struggle, will result in imprisonment within bourgeois philosophical methods, with all their political consequences. Human thought, then, can never grasp the whole of concrete reality. Its concepts develop by learning ways of reflecting the real movement of the world. Only the infinite (i.e., never completed) sum of all abstractions would give the concrete in all its completeness. The dialectical method is a development from formal and everyday logical thinking in such a way as to comprehend the chang- ing and contradictory, infinitely-sided character of natural and social processes: ‘Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The 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 [of formal logic], but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form, inter- ruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary tasks.’1! The history of philosophy is one aspect of the development of human social practice. But it is an aspect which sums up the most general laws of thought. Hegel’s dialectical picture of thought claimed to be more than this. It claimed to be a picture of the essential reality, the reality of the Absolute Idea of which the material world of nature is but the outward show. Surveying and analysing the history of thought, Hegel took the laws of its development, taking into itself more and more of the concrete as it developed, to be the laws of development of Reality. This illusion of completeness and correctness of the idealist 11. 51. L. D. Trotsky. In Defence of Marxism, pp. 50- POLITICS 133 dialectical theory of knowledge is strengthened precisely because correct thought does develop by reflecting the material world! The more man investigates and controls nature, the richer and more subtle becomes his knowledge, the more flexible and all-sided become his concepts. Hegel thought that all this was the discovery of the flowering of the Absolute Idea, independently generating all of these things. The role of human thought was to understand the inevitability and the lawfulness of this product of the Absolute Idea in the vulgar material world, which should be under- stood as the Appearance through which thought must penetrate to the ideal reality behind it. Once all the material of thought was conquered in this way, grasped as a manifestation of the Absolute Idea, ‘criticism’ would have done its work and given to man his ‘freedom’, the consciousness of necessity. But the ‘proof’ of the correctness of Hegel’s idealist dialectic only became possible through the results of hundreds of millions of practical actions carried out by human beings in their social re- lations acting on nature and, in the course of this, changing their social relations and thereby them- selves. The reason for the development of human knowledge, including philosophy, to the scientific theory of dialectics, is that man’s practice on the objective world brings his concepts closer to the real behaviour of that world. There is thus a materialist explanation of the completeness and correctness of Hegel’s dialectical logic, as well as of its limitations. Once this dialectical logic is consciously developed, as with Hegel, it is forced to the consideration of the vital role of practice. The development of philosophy itself, since its stock-in-trade is ‘ideas’ and ‘explanations’, inevit- ably goes forward to dialectical materialism, to the recognition of itself as only one ‘moment’ in the conquest of the objective world by socially organised man. Then philosophy can be seen as the role played by abstract thought during the period of the separation of mental from manual labour, the period of class society. In order to advance, philosophy must become the theoretical weapon of the class which goes beyond the limits of this period, just as the proletariat requires the most advanced logic in order to grasp its own role. Henceforth the _ scientifically-based struggle to transform nature and society, and the investigation of the conditions and theories of this transforma- tion, constitute the material of the central intel- lectual activity of man. In all these spheres ‘revolutionising practice’ is the central concept. In this sense, Marx when ‘standing Hegel on his feet’, represents the qualitative stage in the development of philosophy prepared by all the quantitative advances of the Classical German school within the idealist framework, filled out above all by

[p017] 134 Hegel. But this theoretical advance was only part, and had to be consciously grasped, as part of a qualitative stage in the development of society, of the class struggle: of the revolutionisation of society by the proletariat in preparation for that stage of history when the role of human activity is con- sciously grasped and rationally planned, freed from social illusions, based on an understanding of the necessary relations between men and their en- vironment. What is now required in the Marxist movement is a critical historical and political estimate of the. way in which this consciousness has in fact developed. It is in the advanced theory of the labour movement and in the practical construction LABOUR REVIEW—Winter 1963 of revolutionary Marxist parties that this process of conscious development reaches its highest point. The corruption of the Marxist movement by alien class tendencies and bureaucracies must be thoroughly examined. The movement must critic- ally examine the development of the revolutionary Party and of the theory of the Party in relation to every phase of the class struggle, just as Lenin examined the struggle against the State and the theory of the State. In this way, by scientifically rejecting false ideas and transcending earlier, more abstract notions, we shall follow the path of Lenin in using theory as a guide to action, not as a system.

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