EASTMAN
MARX
AND
LENIN
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1927
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MARX AND LENIN
The Science of Revolution
MARX AND LENIN:
The SCIENCE of REVOLUTION
BY
MAX EASTMAN
二
​$
1927
ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI
NEW YORK
(All rights reserved)
#B
501
هيد سمتو میں
192
002 182 593
Printed in Great Britain by
Unwin Brothers, Ltd., Woking
H
ple
PREFACE
THIS book is the principal fruit of a visit to Soviet Russia.
It is also the completion of a task which I began ten
years ago in a series of articles in "The Masses " called
"Towards Liberty, The Method of Progress
I was
deterred from finishing those articles by many things, but
chiefly by my ignorance of the international literature of
Marxism. During my visit to Russia I succeeded in
reducing the proportions of this ignorance. I also became
convinced that nothing I could do is more important
than to finish that task. It now entails a criticism of
certain phases of the revolutionary dictatorship in
Russia, but I trust it will be obvious that this criticism
is sympathetic, and in no sense a political attack.
MAX EASTMAN.
""
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
V.
PREFACE
CONTENTS
PART I
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARXISM
THE FUNCTION OF THINKING
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
IV. THE MARXIAN INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
XI.
THE BELIEF IN DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
THE THEORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE
VI. MARX AND DARWIN .
VII. THE DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
VIII. MARXISM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FREUD
IX. IDEOLOGY AND THE ART OF REVOLUTION
X. MARXIAN ECONOMICS
..
IDEOLOGY IN DAS KAPITAL
XII. THE DIALECTIC METHOD
>>
•
PAGE
7
13
19
32
47
65
67
70
79
86
89
97
106
IO 10
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
CHAPTER
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
THE SCIENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY
ENGINEERING
XII.
MARXISM AS A SCIENCE
VI. LENIN'S PHILOSOPHY
PART II
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM.
BOLSHEVISM
LENIN AS AN ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
ADVANTAGES OF A SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE.
THE ATTITUDE TO RELIGION, ART AND MORAL IDEALS
REVISIONISM AND THE FABIANS
MENSHEVIKS
XI. BUREAUCRATISM AND REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION.
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
NOTES AND REFERENCES
INDEX .
PAGE
121
127
136
141
150
169
175
182
189
195
201
207
219
263
PART I
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MARXISM
CHAPTER I
THE FUNCTION OF THINKING
It seems evident that conscious thought developed in
the course of evolution only when it became needful as
a means of survival. Desire in its simple nature is
undefined and unconscious, and the lower forms of life
satisfy their desires by continuing in a state of random
activity, until they come by chance into bodily contact
with a satisfaction. Higher forms of life develop feelers
with specialized sensitivity, which enable them to explore
the environment without submitting their whole body
to danger. They develop organs of smell and sight and
hearing which enable them to detect a satisfaction, or
apprehend a danger, at a considerable distance in space
and time. And it is in connection with these organs
that the value of a conscious act of perception begins to
be apparent. For the essence of such perception is the
interpretation of a present fragment of sensation upon
the basis of past experience.] The smell of food is not
food, and the sight of danger is not dangerous. But if
by virtue of memory and imagination, the smell of food
means food, and the sight of danger means danger, then
the organism can satisfy itself or escape, without making
in each case a complete experiment.
17
But even here it cannot learn anything new except
by the method of random experimentation-by the
method, that is, of trying out in action every meaning
that is suggested. And thought, in so far as it is dis-
tinguished from the mere act of perception, is distin-
A
14 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
guished by a moment of suspense during which the
suggested meaning, or more than one suggested meaning,
is tried out inside the head. Thought is tentative action;
it is action in the process of formation. It is adjustment,
delayed in order that it may perfect itself and relate
itself with safety to a larger and more complex environ-
ment.¹
Some such conception of the origin and nature of
thought, is forced upon the genetic psychologist, not
only by the central tendency of biological science, but
by an experimental study of the intelligence of infants
and animals. Indeed the very employment of experiment
in these fields, implies an instrumental conception of
intelligence. For it is only by setting before the infant
or the animal a goal of desire, and observing his efforts
to attain it, that any experiment can be made.
Moreover, if we study in our own minds any simple ex-
ample of thinking, we are led to a similar conception. We
button our clothes unconsciously so long as all is in order
and the process goes smoothly to its end; but if a
button is missing, we become conscious of the process,
and we think. And our thinking takes a form corre-
sponding to the situation in which it arose.
It is an
interpretation of the factual difficulty in the light of the
desired end, a trying out in imagination of plans which
Ce
¹ It is the method of some psychologists to regard all intelli-
gent functions as completely fulfilled by the higher nerve-
centres, and conscious thought as a mere accidental by-product
of the proceeding or even to deny conscious thought any
scientific existence at all. This is one of those over-sim-
plifications of fact, usually advertised as the highest blossom
of the scientific spirit, but which are in reality the survival
of a metaphysical taste for unity and the absolute. The fact
underlying this metaphysic is that conscious thought performs
a far smaller function in the process of nervous adjustment,
and performs it less frequently, than men have been in the
habit of believing.
V
در
THE FUNCTION OF THINKING
15
spontaneously suggest themselves for arriving at the end
on the basis of the existing facts.
What complicates this process, and gives rise to so
many problems about thinking, is a certain disposition
men have to exercise this function for its own sake-
their pleasure in meditation, and their instinctive curi-
osity, which make the mere definition of facts itself a
desired end. The people who first studied thought, and
advanced theories about it, were themselves very strong
in this disposition and instinct. They were great
meditators, great investigators. And so naturally they
imagined that thought in its original and most general
form is pure meditation, or a perfectively disinterested
attempt to define facts. It is so far from this, that we
may even ask the question whether pure meditation is
very different from pure day-dreaming, and whether it
is possible to define a fact of any complexity, and prove
that the definition is valid, except in relation to some
purposive activity. At least it is with an organ formed
to function as an integral part of purposive activities that
we meditate; it is with an instrument of interest that
we seek to satisfy our disinterested curiosity. Working
hypotheses are the original form of its knowledge, and
experimental verification is originally its only “truth
A recognition of this fact involves one of the pro-
foundest changes that has ever occurred in the history
of science; and it would be absurd to pretend that the
change is already accomplished, or that half the diffi-
culties arising out of the genetic view of human thinking
have been met and overcome. A scientific Logic-an
account of the technique of all science, which shall itself
be but a practical application of the science of psychology,
in accord with a developed physiology of the nervous
system-is still only a reasonable dream. But it is one
M ANTA
در
16 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
pizjustice
US.
interest
↓
}}
of the most reasonable dreams that science ever dreamed.
And no one in touch with the facts, and free from the
prejudices arising from religion or idealistic metaphysics,
can deny that it is in process of development, and that
certain of its outlines are already visible.
The simplest perception contains an element of
immediate sense experience, and an element of mental
interpretation that is purposive. The highest scientific
thinking seems merely to delay the union of these two.
On its inductive side it examines the existing experience;
on its deductive side it develops the implications of the
interpretive idea; it tests the applicability of the one to
the other; and it ceases, normally, when [an adequate
general human adjustment is reached.
This instrumental interpretation of consciousness, the
fruit of that biological psychology founded by Charles
Darwin, has received corroboration of late years from a
science which developed in almost complete independence
of it-the psychology of the clinic. The therapeutic
importance of becoming conscious is the essence of the
discovery made by Sigmund Freud in the sphere of
functional nervous and mental disease. Such disease is,
according to Freud, the result of conflicts between
different powerful motives in our nature-sexual motives
for the most part, and motives of primitive egoism, con-
flicting with motives arising out of our social self-
consciousness. These conflicts may never have been
conscious, or they may have been conscious at one time,
and been resolved by suppressing into unconsciousness
the socially unacceptable motive. That motive does not
perish by thus returning to the original condition of all
life, but continues there in the organism, self-active and
dynamic, and it finds expression in spite of the more
acceptable motive which occupies the field of conscious-
It finds expression through rationalization and
ness.
.
THE FUNCTION OF THINKING
17
substitution "in the first place-falsifying our conscious
thoughts in such a way that we can pursue its ends under
the guise of a more respectable motive. It finds expression
in dreams, in little slips and errors of everyday life, in
wit and humour, in poetry and myth. And with unstable
or wounded natures, it finds expression in all the in-
numerable symptoms of hysteria, and functional nervous
and mental disease.
(C
That is the Freudian theory, expressed in a not too
narrowly Freudian way. And the Freudian treatment,
psycho-analysis, consists of a varied and prolonged, but
yet very simple and natural effort to make the patient
conscious of his own real desires. When he has become
conscious of them, the ordinary process of thought and
its education, is the only cure that is offered. The cure
is occasionally almost instantaneous, because the sup-
pressed motive is infantile, and its irrelevance to the
present situation is immediately recognized. At other
times it is very slow, and often it is unattainable. But
in any case it involves nothing more mysterious than
the original natural function of all conscious thought—
the adjustment of a dynamic organism to a complex√
environment.
In treating this organism as dynamic-as a thing
seeking stimuli, instead of merely responding to them—
Freud made a considerable departure from the traditional
psychology. In the traditional psychology, thought
appears as an instrument for guiding "reactions". In
the Freudian way of talking, it is an instrument for
defining desires", or resolving the conflicts between
them. In both cases, however, it remains an instrument;
and Freud's way of talking is only closer to the evolution-
ary view of organic functions in general. His influence
upon the development of a scientific logic will be but a
further extension of the influence of Darwin.
66
B
18 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Darwin's influence destroyed for all matter-of-fact
✔ scientific minds the metaphysical pretensions of human
thought. If thought in its origin and biological develop-
ment consists in the purposive interpretation of one part
of the experienced world in terms of others, the proba-
bility that it can, in the brains of the professional philo-
sophers, fly entirely free of its original nature and essence,
and give us a non-interpretive account or picture of
Being-at-Large, and its ways and meanings independent
of our life purposes, is exceedingly small. And even if
that gymnastic is possible, it can be achieved only by
recognizing the purposive element in all cases of thinking
where it can possibly be detected or imagined, and con-
fining those professional philosophers to the dryest, and
most unbeautiful, and unmoral, and unpolitical, and
unpaid-for manipulation of algebraic formula. In the
meantime, which is likely to be forever, the highest kind
of thinking and the most "scientific ", is not that which
makes the most grandiose pretence to universality, but
that which most carefully and candidly acknowledges the
specific problem out of which it arose, and the purpose
which made that specific thing a problem. That is the
intellectual outcome of Darwin's application of the idea
of evolution to organic life. It is the establishment of
a new kind of [humble scientific candour-an attitude
which may be described as affirmative scientific sceptic-
ism. And Freud reinforces it, by showing that this state
of candour cannot be achieved by acknowledging merely
those motives of which our social dignity permits us to
become conscious, but that we must assume, in the
absence of any express effort to the contrary, that our
thoughts are a disguised instrument for the attainment
of ends we have no knowledge of.
کند.
CHAPTER II
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
4
THERE were many anticipators of the functional view of
intelligence, and among them Karl Marx deserves a
distinguished place. In his "Theses on Feuerbach "
Marx made several statements which sound like the
foundation of an instrumental logic.
"The chief fault of all materialism heretofore," he said,
" including Feuerbach's, is that the object, reality, the sensible,
is understood only under the form of object, or of contem-
plation; not as human sensory activity, practice, not sub-
jectively. Hence it has come about that the active side has
been developed in opposition to materialism by idealism . . .'
""
<< Feuerbach ... does not understand the sensible as
practical human-sensory activity.”
"Feuerbach considers only the theoretical attitude as the
truly human, while practice is grasped and defined merely
in the dirty-Jew aspect of phenomenon. Feuerbach therefore
does not understand the significance of the 'revolutionary',
of practical-critical action.”
<<
In practice man must prove the truth-that is, the reality
and power, the this-worldliness, of his thoughts."
"Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various
ways; the thing is to change it."
It seems in these fragments as though Marx were
rejecting entirely the "spectator theory" of knowledge,
and adopting the attitude of genetic psychology, with
all its distrust of the pretences of metaphysics. If
sensation itself is "practical ", and if thought at its best
20 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
is“ practical-critical action ", and if even philosophy is
not rightly an interpretation of the world, but an opera-
tion upon it-there is certainly little to add, in order to
arrive at the attitude which I have called affirmative
scepticism.
In spite of these wise sayings, however, Marx did not
arrive at that scientific attitude. He did not escape from
the "spectator theory" of knowledge, nor abandon any
of the essential pretences of metaphysics. And the exact
reason is that these wise sayings were not with him simple
observations of fact. They were not the foundation of
an enquiry. Marx's recognition of the practical in
sensation, and of the instrumental function of thinking,
was an inference which he thought it possible to make
from a philosophy of the universe in which he already
believed. And that philosophy of the universe was
founded-although Marx never happened to notice it—
upon an exactly opposite view of the nature of sensation,
and of the function of thinking.
Marx believed, as a young man, in the philosophy of
Hegel. And Hegel's philosophy depends upon the
assumption that the practical element in our conscious-
ness is merely accidental or apparent, a thing to be dis-
missed entirely if we wish really to understand the mind.
"If the activities of mind," he says,
CC are treated as mere
manifestations, forces, perhaps in terms stating their utility
or suitability for some other interest of head or heart, there
is no indication of the true final aim of the whole business.
That can only be the intelligible unity of mind, and its
activity can only have itself as aim; i.e. its aim can only be
to ... reach and get hold of itself, and to liberate itself
to itself. . . . This is the only rational mode of studying the
mind and its various activities."
"Thought is the universal in all the acts of conception and
recollection; in short, in every mental activity, in willing,
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
21
wishing and the like. All these faculties are only further
specializations of thought."
"If in pursuance of the foregoing remarks we consider
Logic to be the system of the pure types of thought, we find
that the... Philosophy of Mind takes the place, as it were,
of an Applied Logic... Its problem is only to recognize
the logical forms under the shapes they assume in . . . Mind
-shapes which are only a particular mode of expression for
the forms of pure thought.
در
That is the psychology of Hegel. He believed that
the real nature of intelligence and the explanation of all
consciousness, is to be discovered by examining the
relation between the categories of pure logic. It is to
be discovered by examining those concepts which are
the most remote in point of generality and abstraction
from the experience of concrete things-being, becoming,
quantity, number, and so forth. The instinctive move-
ment of the mind-and particularly of the Hegelian mind,
which has a strong taste for paradox-among these remote
abstractions is, according to Hegel, "the principle and
very unadulterated self of mind ". That is, you see, as
far away as you can possibly get from a real science of
the mind-from studying mind in its origin and develop-
ment. Hegel begins at formal Logic, at the very top.
And fest there should be a danger of somebody else
going up higher, he allows you to know that it is not
even logic really that he is talking about, but a kind of
special Hegelian Super-Logic, a semi-intelligible esoteric
craft of the metaphysical high-priest, which can alone
give you the true science of thought, and the true
explanation of what consciousness is, and what it is for.
The essence of this esoteric craft, as it developed in
the hands of that master magician, was first to convince
you that these remote abstractions are not necessarily
abstract. They all may seem to be abstract in mere
psychology, or even in logic, but as they reappear in the
22 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
re
inner shrine of the Hegelian Higher Logic, the most
general terms are concrete. And moreover they are
alive and moving. The motion of your mind among
them is really a participation in their self-active motion.
And it is a motion of a very peculiar kind, to which
Hegel gave the name of " Dialectic". It is an assertion
of something, and then a passing over into its opposite,
or a negation of that something by itself, and then a
negation of the negation ", or reconciliation of these
two opposites in a higher unity which includes them
both. And all the motion in the world, both in nature
and human history, is-if you will examine it with a
sufficiently casuistical determination to believe so, and
particularly if you will refrain from defining exactly
what you mean by opposite a motion of this same
kind. It is an evolution by contradiction and the recon-
ciliation of "opposites ". In fact the very existence of
the world is such a performance. For the world is really
composed of a process of thought, but this process of
thought-the Idea, which is another name for God-
negates itself in the world of matter, and then “ negates
the negation" by evolving the human mind out of that
((
ving
"scient hu
matter.
CRET MERE VE
Fo
J
That is the Hegelian philosophy-or at least that is
the Hegelian philosophy as it appears to me. I do not
imagine that anybody else will agree with me, and I
must add that it is one of the most indubitable virtues
of this philosophy that nobody can find out exactly what
it is. Hegelism is like a mental disease-you cannot
know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know
because you've got it. Suffice it to say that Marx
believed throughout his young manhood in some such
philosophy as I have described. And he was awakened
out of this mystical condition by Ludwig Feuerbach,
who having been a Hegelian, became a man of simple
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
23
<<
good sense, (and said that the world is not really com-
posed of a process of thought, but it is composed of
things, and the process of thought is something which
goes on only inside a man's head. Engels describes the
rapture "with which Marx and he greeted Feuerbach.
He says that no one who had not lived through it, could
possibly imagine the "liberating effect" that his writings
had upon them. And from that you can imagine their
previous state of hypnosis, the degree of their captivity
to the thought-conjurings of the High-Priest of the Idea.
↓*
(C
Their captivity had indeed been so complete that
neither Marx nor Engels [felt entirely at ease in the new
universe to which Feuerbach introduced them. They'
felt the lack of something in this universe-the lack of
a dynamic principle ", as Marx's biographer describes
it. They wanted to know that this material world is a
going thing, just like the ideal world in which they had
been brought up, and they wanted to know how it is
going. Feuerbach could not tell them that. And so,
instead of simply observing as a matter of evident fact
that it is going, and taking up the long experimental-
scientific labour of finding out how it is going in various
specific parts, they went back to Hegel and got a piece of
philosophy that would tell them how it is going abstractly,
and universally, in advance of investigation, and without
genuine verification. They went back and got the
"Dialectic". They declared that this mystical idea of
progress by contradiction and the reconciliation of
opposites, is still a true and universal law of motion both
in human thought and in the material universe. Hegel's
only mistake had been to imagine that the dialectic pro-
cess belongs originally to mind-to an Absolute and
Divine mind--and that the motions of the material world
are an alien reflection of it. On the contrary, they said,
it belongs originally to matter, which is the fundamental
IA
MCIL
ple-Berwis
aj for
Usinien
24 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
reality, and it reappears in our human minds, because
our brains are nothing but an apparatus for making
mental reflections of this world of matter. . . That is
the philosophy of "dialectic materialism", the intellec-
tual background of scientific socialism, and since the
proletarian revolution in Russia, the official state philo-
sophy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It is clear that this philosophy does not, and cannot,
✔alter in the slightest degree the psychology of Hegel-his
fundamental general account of what the mind is, and
how it should be studied. Dialectic Materialism declares
that the world is essentially material, and that mind
evolved out of matter in connection with the complex
organization of the central nervous system in animals
and men. But it does not, and dare not, go on and say
that the motions of this mind are a continuation of the
motion of matter in that central nervous system, adaptive
and practical motions, to be studied from the standpoint
of Biology and Physiology rather than Logic. For,
studied from this standpoint and in their actuality in
concrete cases, these motions will be found to be not
essentially logical-much less "dialectic "--and the
whole vast mystic-intellectual legend of Hegel will fall
to the ground altogether. As Hegel himself said, "To
see that thought in its very nature is dialectical" is a
"lesson of logic". And the moment logic is cast down
from its position as a factual account of what thought in
its inner essence really is, and recognized to be a
set of rules which men have made for the better employ-
ment of their thoughts, that moment this "lesson of
logic" will lose its validity.
(C
It will not lose its validity, for it never had any. But
it will lose the possibility of obscuring and confusing the
boldest political minds of five generations of mankind
į
در
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
25
with an unintelligible mixture of emotional mysticism
and psychological half-truth. Certainly nobody will
contend that a dialectic philosophy of the universe could
survive without Hegel's Logic, upon the sole basis of his
Philosophy of Nature and History, and of such desultory
empirical observations as he and his disciples occasionally
bring to the support of it. A dialectic philosophy of the
universe-whether it is materialistic or idealistic-stands
or falls with Hegel's fundamental science of the mind.
It stands or falls with the belief that "the principle and
very unadulterated self of the mind" is to be found,
not by examining its simple and practical beginnings,
but by winding oneself all up in its most complicated
and hypercultivated manifestation, where it has become
an end in itself, and where its end is "to reach and get
hold of itself and liberate itself to itself "—whatever in
honest fact that may mean. Marx's philosophy of
"Dialectic Materialism" is inextricably bound up with
this old-fashioned way of studying the mind.
ง
A databām s
ఇగనా
Item
Marx himself used to describe his philosophy by
saying that he had merely turned the philosophy of
Hegel ** right side up "retaining the idea of dialectic
evolution, that is, but putting matter instead of mind
at the basis of it. He declared that he had thus got rid
of the "mystical", and retained the "ratio
rational" in the
Hegelian system. But in order to get rid of the mystical
in the Hegelian system, it would be necessary to turn
Hegel's conception of thought right side up-to recognize
that not Higher-Logic, and not logic, and not even pure
psychology, but biological and physiological psychology ✔
will ultimately tell us what we can know about thought.
And when you have done that, you will have none of
Hegel's philosophy left; you will be entirely purged of
mysticism. And then, if you state that sensation is not
contemplation but "human sensory activity ", and that
M
26 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
***/?
dunt.
thought at its best is "practical-critical action", and
that the business of philosophy is not to interpret the
world but to change it, these statements will have an
entirely different meaning from what they had in Marx's
"Theses on Feuerbach". They will mean the impossi-
bility, or at least the entire improbability, of your thought's
doing anything fleaving out art and poetry-but adjust-
✔ing you to specific parts of the world, and adjusting them
to you. It will mean that the way to think clearly is to
acknowledge the practical—that is, specifically purposive
-element in your own thinking.
✓
Marx's very wise and modern sayings in the " Theses
on Feuerbach " were an expression of his tempera-
ment, which was more that of [a practical engineer than
a metaphysician. Marx himself did not want to go to
the school where he received his Hegelian education.
His first taste of Hegel repelled him. His youthful
instincts were against it, and his whole scientific life
shows the struggle of those [practical and realistic in-
stincts against that education. Only thus can you
explain his endless inability to finish what he began to
write, and the vague obscurity of what he did write when
it was theoretical. He struggled against his education,
but his education triumphed. His philosophy, as it was
finally formulated, leaves no place for the assertion that
thought is a practical activity. It depends absolutely
upon the Hegelian assumption that thought in its essence
is not practical but pure", and that all the other
activities of the mind-even " willing, wishing and the
like "are but "modes of expression of the forms
of pure thought ".
(C
ike Freed
N
It is not impossible that if Marx had devoted his
mature mind to a re-statement of Hegel's logic, as he
once contemplated doing, he might have confronted this
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
27
inconsistency. He might have arrived at a real science
of human intelligence, which would have swept the last
vestiges of Hegelism out of him. He devoted himself to
economics instead, and he left to Engels the task of
formulating their common philosophy. Engels had
neither the inventive genius nor the depth of intellectual
conscience that Marx had, and his writings show no
sense of the challenge to Hegelian psychology contained
in the "Theses on Feuerbach ". All the forms of
consciousness are for Engels mere [automatic portraits
of material reality, and their practicality is not a quality
in them—it is merely an evidence that they are pictorially
accurate. The motion of consciousness is to him not
a dynamic, but a rational motion, factually described by
the rules of the Hegelian logic; and this motion also is
but a "reflection" of the motion of nature.
That is the extent of the Marxian psychology as it
appears in the writings of Engels. And up to the time
of the Russian revolution this psychology took no single
step forward. The greatest theorists of Marxism seem
to have been as unaware of the development of a genetic
and experimental science of the mind, as though it had
taken place on another planet. Lafargue in an essay on
"The Origin of the Ideas of Justice and the Good",
draws his authority from no psychologist later than
Hobbes and Locke. Plekhanov, four years after the
publication of James's Psychology, dismissed with a
derisive phrase the idea of a science of human nature.
Kautsky, assigning to Marx his position among the
sciences, mentions the existence of a natural science of
psychology, but only in order to run away from it and
forget it. Lenin, although he was the incarnation of
purposive thinking, was satisfied to describe all the
dynamic activities of his mind as an automatic "repro-
duction", "copy", "reflection "--and in one place he
Aid
28 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
ง
even says "photograph "-of the self-active motions of
the material world. Never was the "spectator theory
of knowledge reduced to a more perfect absurdity than
on the lips of Lenin. Never was it expressed in a
nakeder form. "Consciousness in general reflects exist-
ence ... social consciousness reflects social existence
-that is the extent of Lenin's psychology. It must be
said to his credit that he felt a certain weakness or want
of specification in this formula, but his way of supplying
the want was no better than that of Marx himself. He
recommended-but never began-a "systematic study
of the Hegelian dialectic from the materialist point of
view".
در
>>
The Russian revolution set free a great body of Marxian
theorists, and theorists willing to become Marxian, if
only from the pure love of theory. It supplied them
with publishing facilities, and encouraged them to take
possession of the whole field of science in the name of
Dialectic Materialism. Naturally the science of psycho-
logy did not escape this invasion. It was approached—
with somewhat the same mixture of caution and con-
tempt with which one approaches a poisonous reptile-
and a certain preliminary investigation was begun.
Enough progress has been made to indicate what an
orthodox "Marxian Psychology" will be, when it is
fully developed. It will be exactly what psychology
was, what it had to be, with Hegel-a pious search
among concrete states of consciousness, and in the books
of real science which describe them, for that mystic
abstract" essence" of the motion of pure thought called
"Dialectic".
A series of articles by a communist professor, K.
Kornilov, described as "A First Reconnoitre in the
Field of Psychology from the Marxian View-Point",
may serve as an example. Kornilov takes his start from
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
29
the statement of Engels that "dialectic is the universal
law of motion in thought", as well as in the external
world. He seeks out various instances of motion
described by contemporary psychology, which can be
made to appear as examples of this "law". He shows
that the reflex arc has a natural kinship with the “triads"
of Hegel, and that Freud's psycho-analytic release of
a suppressed desire is an instance of the "reconciliation
of opposites "—the desire and the motive suppressing
it-in a "higher unity ".
higher unity". He describes how in sensa-
tion, according to Fechner's law, "quantity turns into
quality "—and reminds us that this is one of the forms
of the "Negation of the Negation". There is nothing
more fruitful in his articles than this desultory search
for chance illustrations of that Hegelian formula. And
there is nothing more fruitful in any of the articles which
have followed this "first reconnoitre ".
There is, however, one point of hope in the work of
these Soviet psychologists. For owing to the fact that
Marx took the first step away from Hegel, declaring the
primary thing in the world to be moving matter, they
are necessarily opposed to the "subjectivist " attitude.
They instinctively adhere to the attitude of Pavlov and
Bechterev, who both consider the study of "reflexes ", or
"reactions", and the creation of a physiology of the
higher nerve-centres, to be a primary task of psychology.
And from the study of reflexes as the primary task of
psychology to the conception of thought as a delayed
reflex, and thus essentially an instrument of adjustment
to particular realities, and not an irrelevant picture of
reality at large, is a short step. It seems inevitable that
the Marxian psychologists will take this step in due
course of time.
The impossibility of remaining in the present position
is well illustrated in that same series of articles by
30 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Kornilov. After finishing his reconnoitre in various
bypaths, Kornilov takes up what he calls the funda-
mental problem of the Stream of Consciousness. He
says that the theory of the Association of Ideas has been
inadequate to explain the motion of this stream, and that
this problem remains to be solved by the "dialectic
method". "The fundamental principle of the move-
ment of psychic life may yet be discovered ", he says,
"and just by way of applying the dialectic method in
the sphere of psychic life ".
<<
Forgetting that the dialectic is the fundamental prin-
ciple of the movement of psychic life-forgetting that
Hegel has already discovered and decreed that all mental
activities are only "a mode of expression of the forms
of pure thought ", and that "we have but to let the
thought-forms follow the impulse of their own organic
life", in order to see that every one naturally veers
round into its opposite "-forgetting that this complete
analysis and revelation by Hegel of the fundamental
principle of the movement of psychic life is the sole
ground and reason-for-being of the "dialectic method,"
this Marxian psychology will now proceed to employ the
"dialectic method" in order to investigate the unsolved
problem of how the psychic life moves! The impossi-
bility of this position must come home to somebody
sometime—but it may not be soon, for a State Philosophy
is almost as heavy and paralysing a thing as a State
Religion.
↓
Among the extremer devotees of dialectic materialism
in Russia, the very word psychology is denounced as
bourgeois and counter-revolutionary. And these devotees
imagine that what they are defending so fanatically is the
materialism of Marx, and that they want to put physio-
logy in the place of psychology. What they are defending
is the dialectic of Marx, which stands or falls with our
THE MARXIAN PSYCHOLOGY
31
willingness to put logic in the place of psychology.
And to put logic in the place of psychology is the funda-
mental trick of the idealist philosophers. You will
find if you read him, that Hegel himself had the same
phobia of an empirical, and especially a genetic, science
of psychology. He insisted with continual anxiety upon
the vast abyss between the rational faculties of man and
the intelligence of " brutes". It was as though he knew
that this universal evolution, the child of his logic, would
finally prove capable of devouring its mother.
Not only the prior thing in the world is matter and
not mind, but the prior thing in mind is impulse and
not reason. Those are the two steps away from "philo-
sophy ", of which Marx took one. He might, if he had
turned his mature mind to philosophic problems, have
taken the other. But he did not do so. And it is
necessary for those who want to develop the revolution-
ary science, and not merely defend it, to complete this
movement of liberation.
web.j
CHAPTER III
THE BELIEF IN DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
ALFUNCTIONAL Science of the mind not only makes us
sceptical of philosophical pretenses, but it enables us to
begin to understand this peculiar process called "philo-
sophy ", and explain what it really is. And since
Marxism is a philosophy, that is obviously a first step
towards understanding Marxism.
In primitive culture it is possible to distinguish_two •
quite different kinds of thinking animistic thinking, in
which one tries to adjust oneself to the external world as
to a person, and the ordinary[practical thinking by which
the daily arts of life are carried on. Animistić thinking
consists essentially in trying by some sort of hocus-pocus
to transfer your own wishes into the external world, and
so get them realized. It is emotional and ceremonial
and soon becomes institutionalized in the religious
festivals, the Mysteries, the Priests, the Church. And
because of its emotional hold upon men, it is taken in
charge by the ruling and exploiting classes, and becomes
the guardian of custom and "good morals", and the
chief cultural instrument for the maintenance of the
status quo. It is aristocratic thinking, and makes up in
elaboration and social standing for what it lacks in
convincing force.
But the practical arts of life develop alongside of it,
and indeed within its very temple, and the actual control
of man over his environment begins to be almost as
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
33
exciting as this rather monotonous conjuring of the world-
spirit. Moreover these arts develop a technology which
rests upon theoretic assumptions, and these theoretic
assumptions begin to be formulated by creative minds.
in contact with the artisan class. Men appear who dare
to say that the world really is what the artisan assumes
it to be in his daily work. And they come into conflict
-whether as materialists, sceptics, Sophists, Socratic exas-
perating questioners, or what not-with the ceremonial,
soulful, socially-authoritarian world-view. They are not
philosophers, except in a very negative sense of the
word. They are people who are satisfied with the
assumptions of science and the arts. And they are
satisfied because their interest is in doing things with
the world, rather than in establishing a comfortable
relation with its spirit.
It is obvious that these people are dangerous to the
ruling powers, and it is in their ranks that we find the
first great martyrs of science-Anaxagoras banished,
Protagoras persecuted and tried for his life, Socrates put
to death protesting that true piety is obedience to the
laws of the state. The crime of Socrates was deeper
than disobedience to the laws of the state. It was dis-
obedience to the laws of animistic thinking. It was
asking irreverent questions about the soul of man, and
the definite meaning of those large emotional ideas
which have the support of custom and the priests.
Indeed I can think of no more revolutionary or dangerous
idea than this one of Socrates, that piety is nothing but
obedience to the laws of the state. Give us an equally
irreverent definition of the state, and where are we, if
not in the heart of Bolshevism? It is obvious that such √
matter-of-fact people must be done away with. It is 7
obvious, moreover, since those arts and sciences from
which they derive their authority are going right on
C
34 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
developing and attracting interest, that putting them to
death is not going to be enough. They must be met
on their own field and refuted. And for this a new and
specially honourable and arduous kind of "speculative
thinking "is required.
That, it seems to me, is the principal origin of " philo-
sophy ", in the sense in which we are using the word.
As the practical work of the mind advances, religion
weakens, the priest loses his authority. Then the meta-
physician steps forward and builds a home for the soul
out of the very instruments of that practical work of the
mind. Those instruments are, in the main, the logical
categories-being, becoming, quantity, number, and so
forth. The task of the metaphysician, speaking very
broadly, is to transplant into these empty abstractions
that personal moral spirit, the defender of custom and
established right, which is being driven out of the con-
crete world by the development of the scientific view.
His task is to preserve animism at all costs, and to show
that the "highest" function of the mind after all, and
no matter what science may achieve, is still to reconcile
us with the world, rather than to help us change it.
it.}
The history of philosophy shows, of course, a con-
fusing interplay of the two attitudes, the attempt to
✔generalize science, and the metaphysician's art of implant-
ing animism within the assumptions of science. But
there is one place in the history of philosophy where the
metaphysician's art prevailed absolutely, and became
like the Church a national institution, dominating the
entire culture of a people, from the public schools to
the very laboratories of science. That is modern Ger-
many. German philosophy is the ultimate grandiose
convulsion of animistic thought, expiring under the
encroachments of the scientific point of view. And
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
35
the philosophy of Hegel is the ultimate flower of German
philosophy, the most adequately bold and all-compre-
hending and all-obscuring, the most sublimely animistic
and the most beautiful. Moreover it is the most
dexterous. Declaring that the specific motion of your
mind, guided by Hegel, among the logical categories, is
the universal self-active motion of those categories, and
that this motion is the spirit of God in a process of
self-contradiction and development, Hegel succeeded in
converting logic itself, the very technique of science, into
theology. And having put living movement into the
divine abstractions contemplated by this logic-theology,
he was able to declare that the material world and all
the science which investigates it, are a mere manifesta-
tion of these divine abstractions, and yet at the same
time assert that this material world is a perpetual process
of change and development. This was just what the
natural scientists of his time were beginning to believe
about the world, and for that reason Hegel's philosophy
had an enormous vogue. It entrenched animism in the
very heart and centre of the advance that was made by
science in the nineteenth century. It made of that
science itself and of the mechanically evolving world
which it revealed, a church in which God lived, and in
which, in spite of its hard-seeming and cruel ways, God
was but realizing Himself by His characteristic process
of conflicting with Himself, and then resolving the
conflict in a higher unity. In short, it declared the
essence of reality to be akin to the aspirations of pious
men, and hard at work upon the task of realizing them.
It preached a gallant and obedient participation in the
process.
"The true reason-world, so far from being the exclusive
property of philosophy, is the right of every human being
on whatever grade of culture or mental growth he may stand.
36 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
✓
Man above all things becomes aware of the reason-
able order, when he knows of God, and knows Him to be
the completely self-determined. Similarly the consciousness
a citizen has of his country and its laws is a perception of
the reason-world, so long as he looks up to them as uncon-
ditioned and likewise universal powers, to which he must
subject his individual will. And in the same sense, the
knowledge and will of the child is rational when he knows
his parents will, and wills it."
•
•
That was the moral, and the essential meaning, of the
Hegelian "Speculative Logic ".
<<
To people of revolutionary temperament, however, this
wholesale doctrine of change offered an equally fine
opportunity to rationalize their aspirations.] There was
no inherent reason, it seemed, why this divine Thinking-
Process should be so pious and tiresome. If it really
likes conflict and change, why won't It give Its sanction
to the rebels, to whose who really want conflict right now,
and would like to see one more "higher unity" before
they die? That was the mood of the "Young Hegeli-
ans", and among them Marx and Engels. Marx's
childhood was less churchly-religious than that of Engels,
but their educations were similar, and they approached
the world in young manhood with the same mystic
emotion. At the age of twenty-three, in dedicating a
"Doctor's Thesis " to his future father-in-law, Marx
wrote as follows:
Would that all who doubt of the Idea might be as fortunate
as I, to admire an ever-young old man, who greets each advance
of time with the enthusiasm and poise of the Truth, and with
that conviction-deep, sun-clear Idealism, which alone knows
the right word to call up all the spirits of the world, who
never recoils before the shadows of reactionary spectres,
before the oft-overclouded sky of the times, but with godlike
energy and manly sure glance pierces always through all
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
37
metamorphoses to the empyrean which burns in the heart of
the world. You, my fatherly friend, have always been to
me a living argumentum ad oculos, that Idealism is not a fancy,
but a truth.
"Upon you I need not call down a bodily blessing. Spirit
is the great magical physician in whom you have put your
trust."
""
And at the age of twenty-two Engels wrote as follows :
"And that faith in the omnipotence of the Idea, in the
victory of eternal truth, that firm certainty that it will never
waver, never depart from its path, although the whole world
turn against it-there you have the foundation of the real
positive philosophy, the philosophy of universal history.
Just that is the supreme revelation, the revelation of man to
man, in which every negation of the critic becomes an affir-
mation. That everlasting struggle and movement of peoples
and heroes, above which in the eternal world soars the Idea,
only to swoop down into the thick of the fight and become
the actual, self-conscious soul-there you have the source
of every salvation and redemption, there the kingdom in
which everyone of us ought to struggle and be active at his
post...
In this perfectly animistic attitude Marx and Engels
developed their intellectual powers, and formed their
[habits of thought.) Their thinking consisted, up to the
age of about twenty-five and twenty-three respectively,
in imputing their aspirations to the Ultimate Spirit of
the world, and then proceeding fervently to co-operate
with that Spirit. And this animistic habit-so native
to all human minds-became too strong upon them ever
to be overcome. Marx was beginning to sense the harsh
character of the contemporary struggle, when Ludwig
Feuerbach's writings came into his hands; he must
have felt already the unfitness of the Hegelian “ Idea
to preside in such a struggle. And that is doubtless a
reason why he welcomed Feuerbach's writings with such
""
38 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
<<
no
enthusiasm. Declaring joyfully that there is no Idea,
empyrean which burns in the heart of the world "
-that the ultimate reality is not spirit, but matter-he
went forward from that point without sentimental or
confused emotion, and in what seemed an entirely
matter-of-fact temper to write the science of proletarian
revolution.
*
But in spite of the great emotional change that had
taken place in him, his writings were still metaphysical,
still in essence animistic. He did not examine this
material world, as an artisan examines the materials of
his trade, in order to determine by what means he could
make something else out of it. He examined it as the
priest examines the ideal world, in order to see if he
could not find in it, or failing that, transplant into it
his own creative aspiration. Marxism in its intellectual
form was not a step from utopian to scientific socialism-
from impractical evangelical talk about a better society,
to a practical plan, based upon a study of the existing
society, for producing a better one. Marxism was a
step from utopian socialism to a socialist religion-a
scheme for convincing the believer that the universe
itself is producing a better society, and that he has only
to fall in properly with the general movement of this
universe.
“We explained," says Marx, in describing his own inno-
vation, "that it is not a question of putting through some
utopian system, but of taking a conscious part in the process
of social transformation which is going on before our very
eyes.
">
That was Marx's conception of a scientific under-
taking. And that explains his dissatisfaction with
Feuerbach's philosophy, his going back to Hegel to get
the "dynamic principle" which he missed in the new
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
39
✓
(C
material world. It was not merely motion that he
missed, nor a particular kind of motion, but motion in
a congenial direction. He wanted a world which con-
tained his desires and would co-operate with him—a
world in which "by means of all seeming accidents,
and in spite of all momentary set-backs, there is carried
out in the end a progressive development ", an endless
ascending from the lower to the higher ". It was not
because of emotional dependence, I believe, but because
of his intellectual habits. Marx had the "dynamic
principle" in his own will, but being a German philo-
sopher, he had not the least idea that true science, like
simple practical thought, might consist of defining a pur-
pose and compelling the external world into its service.
Thus when Marx said in his "Theses on Feuerbach "
that sensation is a practical activity, he did not mean
that sensation is an instrument for solving the problems
of the sentient being. He meant that it is an instrument
for solving problems common to the sentient being and
the world that produced him. His fundamental state-
ment in that first thesis was not that sensation is a prac-
tical activity, but that the sensible object is to be
understood subjectively. And his fundamental statement
in the whole of those comments on Feuerbach was this:
"The simultaneous occurrence of a change of circum-
stances and of human activity or self-change, can only
be comprehended and rationally understood as revolu-
tionary practice." That shows what Marx meant by
the word "Praxis ", and it shows the direction in which
his mind was travelling. He was not advancing from
Feuerbach's philosophy toward the modern science of
thought as an instrument for getting along in a material
and social world. He was shrinking back from Feuer-
bach into the more familiar Hegelian position, in which
true thought and the material world are doing the same
g
40 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
thing, and doing it together. That statement about the
simultaneous occurrence of a change of circumstances
and "self-change", fulfils much the same function in
the animism of Marx, that is fulfilled in Christian animism
by the statement, God helps them who help them-
selves ".
""
Plekhanov has a passage in which he describes the
mental process by which Marx became a "scientific
socialist". And it is valuable, not only as stating the
animistic attitude of Marx, but as indicating how per-
fectly that attitude was preserved in Plekhanov himself,
the founder of Russian Marxism.
Game
"A disciple of Hegel," he says, "remaining true to the
method of his teacher, could become a socialist only in case
a scientific investigation of the contemporary economic
structure brought him to the conclusion that its inner lawful
development leads to the birth of the socialist order."
✓
In other words, if you wish to create a socialist order,
there is only one way to go about it, and that is to per-
suade yourself that the inner law of the objective world
is creating it for you. If this attitude is remote from
prayer, it is remote in the direction of its primitive
origins. Dialectic Materialism rests its hope in the very
sticks and stones, instead of in a spirit that is supposed
to reside behind them. Otherwise it is not different
from any other animistic philosophy. And whatever
may have been the case with Marx, it is certain that
many of his followers derive from this philosophy a
support not unlike that derived by the pious from their
God.
▸
"If in spite of all the violence of its enemies," writes
Rosa Luxemburg, "the contemporary workers' movement
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
41
€
marches triumphantly forward with its head high, that is
due above all to its tranquil understanding of the ordered
objective historic development, its understanding of the fact
that capitalist production creates with the necessity of a
natural process its own negation-namely, the expropriation
of the expropriators, the socialist revolution'. In this under-
standing the workers' movement sees the firm guarantee of
its ultimate victory, and from this source it derives not only
its zeal, but its patience, not only strength for action, but
also courageous restraint and endurance."
It is not difficult to recognize in those lines the essential
features of a religious psychology.
In answering those who asked the Marxians why, if
socialism is the necessary product of economic evolution,
they struggle to attain it, Plekhanov cited the struggle
of the Puritans, the Mahometans, Calvin's Moses
labouring to achieve what was predetermined by God,
and the great Cromwell who always named his acts the
fruit of the Divine Will.
"Here all depends," said Plekhanov, "on the question
whether my own activity constitutes a necessary link in the
chain of necessary events. If yes-then so much the less
do I waver, so much the more decisively I act."
Plekhanov was perfectly right in relating the animistic
materialism of Marx to the faith of the prophets. And
he was right also in asserting that animistic faith does
not put a stop to practical efforts. History would read
very differently if it did. But he was wrong in thinking
that it makes any difference to "me" whether I conceive
my practical activity as a necessary link in the necessary
process or not. That makes a difference only to the
philosopher who talks about me. And it makes a
difference to him, because his job is to reconcile animism
with the theoretic assumptions of my practical activity.]
42 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
And fatalism, or the idea that the result of these activities
is going to be regulated externally, is too obviously in
conflict with those assumptions. Therefore he must
take the idea of causal determination, which is one of
those assumptions, and by some sort of intellectual
hocus-pocus he must give it the upper hand over the
idea of a genuine alternative in thought and action, which
is another. And thus he may preserve animism for a
while as a philosophy, even after it has ceased as a
religion to impose upon my practical mind.
The definition of freedom as necessity become conscious,
was invented by German philosophers for this express
purpose. It was invented by Schelling, but greatly
improved in the way of unintelligibility by Hegel, who
mixed it up with his myth about everything becoming
its opposite, and contrived to make his reader feel at
times as though a person does really become creative
when he becomes conscious. In the end, however, it
appears that it is only because the cause which determines
him, is also him, that he ceases, or seems to cease, to be
determined when he becomes aware of the truth. Free-
dom is "the truth of necessity", according to Hegel.
And the real significance of this statement is revealed
in his philosophy of religion, when he says that a man
is free when he "wants nothing but himself". He is
free, that is, when he wants nothing which would involve
change in the conditions which produced him.
Calm 1
su nektar
Marx accepted this dictum of Hegel's uncritically, and
Plekhanov declared the original statement of Schelling
to be "
one of the most brilliant discoveries ever made
by philosophic thought ". Here again Plekhanov is
entirely right, but it is necessary to remember just what
philosophic thought is, and what its purpose is. The
conception of the entire evolving variety of the world as
held in the frame of an iron necessity, is not an essential
Lapuanzhongka
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
43
↓
part of the attempt to generalize science.] The laws of
science are an abstraction from the variety of nature,
and that variety itself bears witness that these laws are
not, and cannot be, an adequate or absolute statement
of nature. The law of causation is not different from
any other of these scientific laws. Moreover the very
existence of science and its development, can be explained
only upon the assumption that thought has a function
other than the mere reflection or transmission of an
already defined impulse. It has the function of defining
impulse. That the future is in some degree undeter-
mined is therefore the ineradicable assumption of all
thinking. And this is nowhere more evident than in
the thinking of Plekhanov about the doctrine of necessity.
For his whole argument is this: if I should cease to make
efforts, because I believe in that doctrine, I would be
unreasonable. And that hypothetical proposition, if I
should, implies a genuine alternative. It is only our
acceptance of the genuineness of that alternative, that
gives intelligibility to those long pages of Plekhanov and
makes it possible to read or think them. And that
hypothetical proposition if I should, is moreover the
original, and in a sense also the universal, form of all
thinking.
When Engels says that "Freedom does not consist
in a fancied independence of the laws of nature, but in
the knowledge of those laws and the possibility thereby
created of deliberately making them function toward
defined ends ", he shows either a naïve innocence of the
problem he is talking about, or that Hegelian sophisti-
cation which is a mockery of innocence. For the fact
that my thinking which assumes to define ends in the
future, operates with [causal laws which assume that
the future is already defined, is exactly the essence of the
problem. The most advanced science, like the most
Diway on
James
44 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
simple practical sagacity, insists upon the validity of
both those assumptions. It insists that there are, on
the one hand, an adequate number of general and reliable
uniformities in nature, and that there is, on the other
hand, a genuine alternative in thought and action-a
possibility that "I may ", or "may not ". These two
assumptions are not absolutely contradictory, and if
there is a profound mental difficulty in reconciling them,
it is in the spirit of science—and especially of science as
humbled by the understanding of its own origin—to
leave that difficulty standing until a real solution is
found. The demand that one should take his stand with
Absolute Determinism and the impossibility of explaining
what thought is and how it arose, or with Absolute
Caprice and the impossibility of effective thinking, is a
demand that comes, like other "absolute " demands,
from the metaphysical and not the scientific mind. Its
purpose is just the purpose of all metaphysics-to preserve
the sovereignty of the Divine Spirit in spite of the advance
of the practical arts.
Marx not only failed to escape from philosophy with
his dialectic materialism, but he failed to escape, in the
essence of the matter, from idealistic philosophy. For
if your material world has the faculty of willing the
social revolution, and aspiring toward all those good
things grouped by a revolutionary mind under the
concept of “higher ", and if it has the faculty of going
after those things by a procedure that is in its essence
logical, what is there left of mind that you have not
surreptitiously attributed to this material world? There
is left feeling only-if the attributes of mind are "will
and thought and feeling "—and it was exactly and only
a feeling that Marx got rid of, when he turned from
Hegelian idealism to a materialism that was also Hegelian.
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM
45
He got rid of the ethico-deific feeling which idealistic
philosophers attribute to the ultimate reality, and which
makes their sense of co-operation with it sentimental and
humble and conservative. Marx's ultimate reality is
ascending" from the lower to the higher " cold-bloodedly
and without caring anything about it. And that leaves
him free, while co-operating with that reality, to have
irreverent emotions, and be as hard-headed and ruthless
as it is necessary for a practical revolutionist to be.
That is the extent of the "materialism" of Marx.
And that explains why Marx and Engels repudiated with
such violence "the materialism of natural science ".
"the materialism which exists to-day in the minds of
naturalists and physicians ", calling it "
calling it "abstract", and
mechanical" and even "shallow and vulgar ". Why
should one kind of materialism describe another kind as
shallow and vulgar? Whence indeed this word vulgar
on the lips of a revolutionist? It is the Marxian way of
saying profane. Marx and Engels were defending against-
scientific materialism—against that attitude which con-
stitutes the simple common-sense starting-point of
science a materialistic religion.
!
And that explains, too, another thing which has
troubled many critical minds attempting to enter into
the Marxian system. It explains why Marx and Engels
thought they could call their economic explanation of
history a "materialistic " explanation. There is not the
slightest logical connection between materialistic philo-
sophy and the economic interpretation of history.] One
could believe that the course of history is entirely deter-
mined by wagging tongues, and still be a materialistic
philosopher. And one could believe that it is all a
matter of the instruments of production, and still believe
that those instruments, like everything else, are in their
ultimate reality ideas. Marx drove out of the study of
(6
46 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
1.
history the same feeling that he drove out of Hegel's
philosophy. That is the only connection between
dialectic materialism and the economic interpretation
of history. It was a matter-of-fact interpretation of
history, and it is a matter-of-fact philosophy-so far as
one can be matter-of-fact, and still retain that animistic
attitude which is the essence of philosophy.
The purposive thought which explains Marx's intel-
lectual position, is contained in these sentences written
in his early youth :
"The abolition of religion, the illusory happiness of the
people, is a demand for their real happiness. The demand
that one reject illusions about one's situation, is a demand
that one reject a situation which has need of illusions."
↓
That rejection of illusions-religious, moralistic, legal,
political, æsthetic-is the immortal essence of Marx's
contribution to the science of history, and to history
itself. And if he did not succeed in rejecting also the
illusions of philosophy, those who really esteem his life
and his genius ought to carry out the process. Marx
himself declared that philosophy, like law and politics
and religion, and art, is subject to an economic inter-
pretation at the hands of science. But he also declared
-and within a year of the same date--that Hegel wrote
the true history of philosophy. Since Hegel's history
of philosophy is a history of" the self-developing reason ",
a history of thought finding itself ", these two state-
ments are directly contradictory, and we have to choose
between them. We have to choose between Marxism as
a Hegelian philosophy, and Marxism as a science which
is capable of explaining such philosophy.
<<
CHAPTER IV
THE MARXIAN INTERPRETATION OF
HISTORY
HEGEL regarded history as the logical evolution of the
Eternal Thinking Process in a disguised form. It was
a process of advance by contradiction and the negation
of the negation. And his philosophy of history consisted
in seeking out in the "everlasting struggle of peoples
and heroes" this necessary dialectic development, which
was the one real cause and explanation of the course
of that struggle, no matter what those who took part
in it might be thinking or intending. Marx retained
the principal assumptions of this philosophy: namely,
that history is some one thing or process, irrespective
of the interests of a given historian; that this process
has some one cause, other than the conscious pur-
poses of men, which explains it all; and that this cause
has the property of being logical in its development,
and of advancing by contradiction, and the negation of
the negation. He retained this much of the Hegelian
philosophy of history, but he turned that philosophy
other side up. He found the ultimate one cause, not
in the evolving Idea, which "soars above history in the
eternal world", but in the evolving forces of pro-
duction which lie underneath the soaring eloquence of
history as it is usually written.
"In the social production of their subsistence men enter
into determined and necessary relations with each other
48 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
which are independent of their wills-production-relations
which correspond to a definite stage of development of their
material productive forces. The sum of these production-
relations forms the economic structure of society, the freal
basis upon which a juridical and political superstructure
arises, and to which definite social forms of consciousness
correspond. The mode of production of the material subsis-
tence, conditions the social, political and spiritual life-process
in general. It is not the consciousness of men which deter-
mines their existence, but on the contrary it is their social
existence which determines their consciousness. At a certain
stage of their development the material productive forces of
society come into contradiction with the existing production-
relations, or what is merely a juridical expression for the
same thing, the property relations within which they have
operated before. From being forms of development of the
productive forces, these relations turn into fetters upon their
development. Then comes an epoch of social revolution.
With the change in the economic foundation the whole
immense superstructure is slowly or rapidly transformed.
In studying such a transformation one must always distinguish
between the material transformation in the economic conditions
essential to production-which can be established with the
exactitude of natural science—and the juridical, political,
religious, artistic, or philosophic, in short ideological forms,
in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it
out. As little as one judges what an individual is by what he
thinks of himself, so little can one judge such an epoch of
transformation by its consciousness; one must rather explain
this consciousness by the contradictions in the material life,
the conflict at hand between the social forces of production
and the relations in which production is carried on. No
social formation ever disappears before all the productive
forces are developed for which it has room, and new higher
relations of production never appear before the material
conditions of their existence are matured in the womb of the
old society."
C
In those sentences you can see all three of the Hegelian
presuppositions I spoke of. You see that the whole
historic life of society, and humanity in it, is regarded
as one single thing or movement; that it has one general
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
49
<<
""
cause of which men are not conscious; and that this
cause operates by a process of logical contradiction.
The "productive forces come into contradiction with
the production-relations ", and this contradiction,
resolving itself in a higher unity, constitutes the under-
lying cause of the whole movement. Tola concrete or
very realistic mind, the idea of a contradiction
between forces and relations, is so abstract and un-
dynamic as to be incapable of explaining any motion
whatever. And such minds usually pass this over as
merely an example of Marx's peculiar way of talking.
This peculiar way of talking belongs to the essence of
Marx's thought. He is not trying to explain history
[dynamically, but logically or rather, with a mixture of
dynamics and logic in which logic will invariably have
the last word. He is seeking, not only underneath the
ideologies of men for their class-struggles, but also
underneath their class-struggles for an antithesis between
two "concrete universals ", whose resolution according
to the principles of the Hegelian logic will necessitate
the victory of the lower class. That is why he describes
a social revolution as a "contradiction" between two
generalities. And that is why he forgets sometimes
this key-word contradiction and speaks of it as a
conflict, or even a "rebellion" of one generality against
another. "The forces of production rebell against
the mode of production which they have outgrown."
And the mystic perfection with which this state of
affairs arises and moves to its conclusion may be seen
in the dictum that "No social formation ever disappears
until all the productive forces are developed for which
it has room ". Obviously the mere dynamics of a
concrete conflict could never give us this admirable
assurance. What we have to do with here is not
dynamics, but " Speculative Logic ".
✓
CC
>>
(6
در
D
vs. "growth"
50 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
*
There is really no foundation in fact for any of the
three assumptions which Marx borrowed from Hegel.
History is no one thing or process, except as it is made
so by the interests of the historian,; it has no one cause,
either within or without the consciousness of men,
which explains it all; it does not advance by a process
of dialectic contradiction and the negation of the nega-
tion. Hence it has been necessary for Marxians to
qualify this concise and brilliant metaphysical statement
in various practical ways. One of these ways was indi-
cated by Marx himself in the third and fourth sentences,
where he interchanges the verbs condition and determine
as though they were approximately equivalent. It is
obvious that if the material basis positively determined
the superstructure, we should not have to disregard
the superstructure and examine the basis, for the one
could be directly inferred from the other. Thus the
control exercised by the economic factor turns out to
be in the nature of the case merely negative. And the
followers of Marx, without exactly noticing this, have
been content if they could show in the case of any par-
ticular historic development that economic factors had
something essential to do with it. Lafargue, for instance,
points out that if there had not been systematic,
rational stock-breeding in England, Darwin could not
have invented his theory of evolution. This is far, of
course, from saying that economic forces caused, or
determined, or "in the last analysis explain" the theory
of evolution. And it is something that might be more
easily proven by pointing out that if Darwin had not
had anything to eat, he could not have invented the
theory of evolution. Marxians defend their philosophy
of history by darting back and forth between a truism
and a quite fantastic assertion, and never getting caught
in either the one position or the other. It is a familiar
CC
+
..
ܕ
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
51
method in metaphysics, but it has nothing to do with
science. A theory which ignores the difference between
the verbs condition and determine cannot be called ✔
scientific, because it has not sufficient exactitude to be
verified.
↓
There are two other ideas which Marxians interchange-
without noticing it. At one time they present the
political and cultural superstructure as a result of eco-
nomic causes, at another time as a reflection of economic
conditions. The Marxian explanation of law and the
state, for example, may be and usually is expressed in
a causal form. The development of the forces of pro-
duction brings classes into conflict, and the exploiting
class in order to preserve its supremacy, creates or appro-
priates the state, and codifies those customs and those
moral ideas and tendencies which are favourable to its
supremacy. This state and these ideas and tendencies
are not reflections of the economic process; they
are nothing like it. They are results of it, and the process
of their creation can be analysed causally and scien-
tifically understood. But when you pass into spheres
which are farther away from the economic basis-
religion, for instance, [or art, which is half play, and
therefore least of all subject to a business explanation
-Marxians abandon all pretence at causal analysis, and
merely assert that these things are an automatic symbolic
picture of the economic conditions.
""
66
و
P
Marx dismisses the whole problem of the psychology
of religion with the statement that "the religious world
is merely a reflection of the real world". And Engels
furnishes an example: Calvin's doctrine of predestina-
tion, was the "religious expression of the fact that in
the commercial world of competition success or failure
does not depend upon a man's activity or cleverness,
52 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
✓
but upon circumstances uncontrolled by him". That
is an interesting remark, but if you approach the doctrine
of Calvin from the point of view of real causation as
Engels does, indeed, in another book-you get an oppo-
site result. Religion is within the control of the ruling
classes, and their one concern in a commercial world
of competition is to keep the people convinced that
their success or failure does depend upon their activity
and cleverness. If Marxism were a science of history,
it would long ago have cleared up this elementary con-
fusion. As a philosophy of history it is vitally concerned
to preserve it.
Trotsky explains futurism as a "reflection in art" of
the "unheard-of industrial boom" of the last twenty
years, "which overthrew old ideas of wealth and power,
worked out new scales, new criteria of the possible and
the impossible". That also is an interesting literary
remark, but it is not a scientific explanation. How far
it is from science, may be seen in the observation with
which Trotsky is compelled to supplement it:
"We have observed the following phenomenon, repeated
more than once in history: that backward countries, which
nevertheless possess a certain level of spiritual culture, reflect
more clearly and more strongly in their ideology the attain-
ments of advanced countries. Thus German thought in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reflected the economic
achievements of the English. . . . Futurism received its
clearest expression, not in America, not in Germany, but
in Italy and Russia."
No mind trained in the investigation of concrete
causes, trained in their accurate definition and verifica-
tion, could possibly rest in this statement. [By what
material connection does the economic development
of England produce its strongest reflection in Germany,
and that of America, in Russia? And how does it
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
53
happen that this reflection does not arise in Australia,
or for that matter in the Polar Sea ?
(C
In order really to explain futurist art upon the basis
of an economic boom, you would have to show that
actual artists, or the artist class, were in a position where
in order to get a good share of the benefits of that boom,
they were led to make pictures and write poems that
were a "reflection" of it. And you would find it more
easy to prove the opposite thesis. What artists are
best paid for during an industrial boom, is keeping the
idle thoughts of the public occupied with Eternal Beauty,
holding fast to the old ideas of wealth and power, and
giving no unnecessary impetus to new criteria of the
possible and the impossible". Nevertheless, because
of the mystic emotion attached by Marxists to the word✓
economic,) and because of [the complete absence in
Marxism of the mere conception of a psychological
science, this remark of Trotsky's is accepted by his
followers as precisely what it is not, an analytical dis-
cussion of the causes of futurist art. And artists who
read it, instead of seeing their unconscious motives
explained, and profiting to the extent of their intelligence
by the explanation, see themselves abstractly and mys- √
tically dominated by a strange new Deity with a scientific
name. And they learn that whatever their self-know-
ledge may be, and whatever their effort, the work they
produce can turn out nothing in the long run but an
automatic image of the face of this Deity, the Economic
Basis of the society in which they live. That is poison
to art, but it is one of the essential ways in which Hegelian
Marxians preserve their metaphysical dogma in face of
[the irreducible variety of the world.
Another way, and a far more promising one, if they
could be held to it, is to declare that Economic Deter-
54 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
*
minism is only a "principle of investigation". It is
difficult to understand how anybody could make this
statement, as orthodox Marxians very often do, and
at the same time assert that economic determinism is
an ultimate and irrefutable philosophy of history. The
explanation lies in a fact already mentioned, and which
the reader of this book must bear continually in mind
-namely, that Marxism is not pure and natural meta-
physics. Marxism is a seventy-five years' struggle
between metaphysics and an
an instinctive practical-
scientific realism, in which metaphysics carried the day.
A critic is compelled to do some violence to the practically
realistic side of this struggle. He is compelled to set
Marxism back clearly and definitely into that meta-
physical frame from which it did not in the long run
escape. The idea that economic determinism is merely
a“ principle of investigation ", was one of the momentary
victories of practical science.
Another slight but highly important exception to
economic determinism has to be made by all orthodox
Marxians. They all have to assert that although Germany
in the period of her "classical philosophy was in a
very backward economic phase, and although her poli-
tical state corresponded accurately to her economic
development-being, in the words of Engels, a " feudal
and bureaucratic despotism "—and although her classical
philosophers were "instructors of youth appointed by
the state"-nevertheless the speculations of these
√ classical philosophers were the most advanced achieve-
ment of the scientific mind up to that date, and " behind
their pedantically obscure utterances, and in their heavy
wearisome periods . . . the revolution lay concealed ".
The fact is that these classical German philosophers
were just as backward as the state which employed
>>
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
55
them, and they were backward in the same way. The
German state patronized modern capitalism, perverting
it to the support of feudal political institutions; and
the German philosophers patronized modern science,
perverting it to the support of animistic superstition.
The revolution, far from "lying concealed" in the
alien and astutely reactionary speculations of these
philosophers, and issuing legitimately from them, lay
concealed in ideas and impulses quite apart from anything
known by these philosophers. But in the process of
its birth it got tangled up in their speculations, and well-
nigh buried and choked to death there, and it has never
completely issued from them at all, but carries along on
its back a burden of "pedantically obscure utterances
and heavy wearisome periods " that bear witness to its
origin in a country which had not reached an advanced ✓
stage of economic development. If Marxians would
apply their principle of economic determinism to the
German classical philosophy, they would be relieved of
the necessity of applying it to everything else under
the sun. For they would see that as a principle of uni-
versal application, it is nothing but a relic of the attempt
of "instructors of youth appointed by the state" in an
ceonomically backward country, to prevent the youth of
that country from falling into the scepticism of modern
science.
Another small loop-hole in economic determinism
was discovered by Plekhanov, who pointed out, somewhat
timidly, that a man who understands Marxism may by
that very fact be enabled to exercise a little special
influence upon history.
"If I know," says Plekhanov, "in what direction the
social relations are changing, thanks to given changes in the
social process of production, then I know also in what direction
56 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
the social mind is going to change. Consequently I have a
chance to influence it. To influence the social mind means
to influence the historic event. Thus in a certain sense,
I may even make history, and not just wait for it to make itself."
It did not occur to Plekhanov that a man who under-
stands economic determinism might change history by
attacking the economic basis directly, [as Lenin did
when he undertook to communize Russia by means of
electrification. Plekhanov approached those evolving
social relations" created by the forces of production
as one approaches a living God. "The character of a
personality," he exclaimed, " is a factor in social develop-
ment only where, only when, and only in so far as, social
relations permit it!" An exclamation which means
nothing at all, unless "social relations" are personified,
and the word permit taken to mean " give permission ".
Otherwise it is equally true that social relations can be
a factor in development only when, only where, and only
in so far as, the character of personalities permits it.
And indeed they both can be factors, only in so far
as cabbages or cows permit it.
((
In addition to these unrecognized or unofficial ways of
modifying the rigour of economic determinism,] there
is the official Hegelian way indicated by Marx himself—
the appeal to the principle of Accident.
World history would indeed be easy to make," said
Marx, "if the struggle were always engaged only on condi-
tion of indubitably favourable chances. Nature moreover
would be very mystical if' accidents' played no rôle. These
accidents fall quite naturally into the general course of the
development, and are compensated for by other accidents.
But acceleration and retardation are very dependent upon
such 'accidents' among which figures such an 'accident'
as the characters of the people who stand first at the head of
a movement,"
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
57
The reader will notice that Marx sometimes puts the
word "accident" in quotation marks, but sometimes
not. And this is an accurate indication of his state of
mind about the problem involved. The same state of
mind is indicated in Engels' use of the phrase "accidents
or seeming accidents ". It is a correctly Hegelian state
of mind. Hegel conceived of chance, [not as a mere
name for our ignorance of causes, but as a genuine
objective element in nature's evolution. It was only
underneath, and through, and in spite of, chance events-
events which " may or may not be "-that Hegel's
divine necessity was to be found working its way to
the inevitable goal. And yet at the same time Hegel
believed that most apparent accidents can be proven to
have been inevitable, and should be so proven by the
philosophic mind.
"The problem of science," he said, "and especially of
philosophy, undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity
concealed under the semblance of contingency. That however
is far from meaning that the contingent belongs to our subjec-
tive conception alone, and must therefore be simply set aside,
if we wish to get at the truth. All scientific researches which
pursue this course exclusively, lay themselves fairly open to
the charge of mere jugglery and an over-strained precisianism."
It is this opinion of Hegel which reappears in Marx's
statement that accidents fall " quite naturally" into
the general course of development, but are quite super-
naturally, we cannot refrain from saying-compensated
for by other accidents of an opposite kind. Not
only the “materialism" of Marx is not materialistic,
but his determinism is not the determinism of mechanical /
science. The ultimate historic event is necessary,
according to Marx, [not because all events are bound
togetheger by perfect chain of causes, but because
through a whole sea of chance happenings-some really
58 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
accidental, and some only seeming so to our ignorance
-the "inner laws" of history are working to their
inevitable ends. The essential [animism of this con-
ception is clearly apparent in the writings of Engels,
who always speaks of history as being "governed "
by these mysterious laws.
"Historical events appear to be wholly controlled by
chance. But even where on the surface accident plays its
part, it is always governed by inner, hidden laws."
That this whole doctrine is animistic metaphysics,
becomes most obvious when Marxians discuss the rôle
of their own heroes in history. This is one of the
problems which trouble them the most, for having a
really great hero-and two, indeed, since Lenin lived and
died-they are naturally great hero-worshippers. And
yet their philosophy seems to deny the essential value
of heroes. Engels says that "If there had been no
Napoleon, another would have taken his place ", and he
makes almost the same assertion about Karl Marx. He
makes it a little less glibly, however, and most Marxians
have sought to avoid the extreme stoicism of such a
statement. They have sought to avoid also, I suppose,
its extreme foolishness. For if there exists any point
in all the egregious intellectual chatter of Simian man
when it behooves him to say "I do not know", it is
when such questions arise as "What would have hap-
pened if there had been no Napoleon ?" "What would
have happened if there had been no Marx ? "
The orthodox way to reconcile the historic importance
of Marx with the tenets of his own philosophy, is that
indicated in the passage which I quoted about "acci-
dents". The leaders of a movement cannot alter the
direction or outcome of the historical process, but they
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
59
can alter its speed. Trotsky tries always to be orthodox,
although he is a little impatient of his orthodoxy, and
here is what Trotsky says:
“Of course, of course, of course, we know that the working
class will triumph. We sing 'No man will deliver us' and
we add 'No hero'. And that is true, but only in the last
historical account. That is, in the last account of history
the working class would have conquered if there had never
been a Marx in the world, if there had never been a Lenin.
The working class would work out those ideas which are
needful to it, those methods which are needful to it, but more
slowly. The circumstance that the working class on the two
crests of its flood has raised up two such figures as Marx
and Lenin, is a gigantic advantage to the revolution."
That is the fundamental Marxian position. But it is
subject to a further slight modification in the direction
of common sense and human sentiment. For upon
reflection it appears that if these rather rambunctious
accidents, such as Marx and Lenin, can alter the speed
of the historic process, they do really play an enormous
rôle in determining the character of history. In a world
in which "everything flows ", to hasten or to delay an
event is to alter it. Thus it must be assumed that when
Trotsky says "in the last historical account "—and
this phrase he brings directly from Engels-he means that,
although the ultimate result considered abstractly is
economically determined, these non-economically deter-
mined accidents can alter the concrete details of the
procedure by which we get to it. They can not only
make the path longer or shorter, but they can make it
more or less thorny ", as Kautsky says. Or as he
formulates it more precisely: Although they cannot
influence "the direction of the development", they
can influence "its course, and the road by which it
arrives at the inevitable result". Is it not obvious,
66
60 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
however, that if the historic road is different, then the
result also, taken concretely, will be different?
Indeed, in that very word "result", the animistic per-
sonification of "history", which lies at the bottom of this
whole theory, is unmistakably revealed. History con-
sidered concretely and objectively and without project-
ing into it the emotional interests of the historian, con-
tains no "results". History is just a series or congeries
of events, or at the best a process", and the road
""
✓
travelled is all there is of it. If the economic factor
merely determines certain points on this road-whether
a given historian chooses to call those points "results
or not, the objective question remains, just which points
they are, and how many. And that is exactly the manner
in which the question is posed by those who reject
economic determinism in its orthodox form, but yet
recognize the value of the idea "-Bernstein, Jaurès,
Benedetto Croce, Simkhovitch, Professor Seligman—
US: those whom [orthodox Marxians despise with a kind of
fear, because they insist on[introducing degree into the
economic determination,) and asking the scientific ques-
tion How much?" The orthodox Marxians really
differ from them, not in refusing to admit that history
is only in some degree determined economically, but in
personifying history, and imputing to it a goal, or a
result", or a series of "results", and declaring that
these are determined economically. They are defending
an abstract animistic philosophy of history against a
concrete scientific study of historic events.
<<
This is nowhere more apparent than in the famous
letters about economic determinism written by Engels
long after the death of Marx. In these letters Engels
introduced such sweeping concrete qualifications and
exceptions in detail to the control exercised by the
economic factor in history, that it seemed possible to
(C
CC
>>
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
61
Bernstein to declare that Engels had surrendered the
essence of the Marxian theory. But at the same time
Engels re-asserted the ultimate and abstract control
exercised by the economic factor in its most Hegelian
purity, and thus enabled Kautsky to reply that he had
surrendered nothing at all.
"The economic situation is the basis," wrote Engels,
"but the various elements of the superstructure, the political
forms of the class-struggle and its results, the system of
government established by the victorious class after the
battle, etc., legal forms, even the reflection of all these real
conflicts in the brain of the participants, political, juridical,
and philosophic theories, religious outlooks and their further
development into dogmatic systems, exercise their influence
upon the course of the historic struggle, and in many cases
predominantly determine its forms. .
>>
And again :
"The low economic development of the prehistoric period
had as its compliment, and at times even as its condition and
even as its cause, false representations of nature. . . . It
would be pedantry to seek economic causes for all these ele-
mentary stupidities. The history of science is the history of
the gradual elimination of this nonsense, or its replacement
by other nonsense a little less absurd. The people who do
this belong to a special sphere of the division of labour, and
it seems that they are developing an independent realm.
And in so far as they form a self-dependent group within the
social division of labour, so far their productions, including
their mistakes, exercise a retro-active influence upon the
whole social development, even the economic.
Thus Engels went out of his way to explain that a
body of ideas for whose origin it would be "absurd "
to seek economic causes, and which may indeed have
been itself the cause of economic processes, does never-
theless in the course of its career influence the whole
·
62 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
[Bown..}
social development. This seems far away, indeed,
from the original drastic statement of the Marxian
philosophy of history. And yet Engels has sacrificed
nothing of the essence of that philosophy. Its whole
heart and purpose is satisfied when he declares, in strictly
Hegelian language:
The historic process "is a reciprocal action of all these
factors upon each other, wherein ultimately through all the
infinite number of accidents (things and events, the inner
connections of which are so remote and undemonstrable,
that we may count them as non-existent and ignore them),
the economic movement in the form of necessity is carried
through."
1
✓
Economic determinism was in its origin just as mystical
and mysterious, and disposed to ignore an infinite
number of things which it could not explain, as it is
in this final formulation. It was simply the pious
metaphysical assertion of Hegel that " Spirit is the only
moving principle in history ", turned into the impious,
but equally metaphysical assertion that the forces of
production are the only moving principle in history-the
only "changing element ", as Kautsky explicitly puts
it. Neither of these absolute statements has any basis
in fact or probability. And the whole half-century's
discussion, so exasperating to reason, so fruitless, so
destructive of all naïvely-clear thinking, has value simply
as a picture of the highest revolutionary intelligence
trying unsuccessfully to escape from the bonds of
German metaphysics.
There is only one way to escape from those bonds.
That is to take the revolutionary motive back out of
"history" where Marx and Engels surreptitiously
projected it, and locate it in the human breast where it
belongs. It was Marx and not History, that was deter-
>
INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY
63
mined to produce a social revolution, and his investigation
of history was an attempt to find out the method by
which it could be done. When that simple truth as
obvious to a child as it is inaccessible to a Marxian
has once been acknowledged, the whole discussion loses
its mystifying character at once. History is relieved
of the strait-jacket of a statement wholly inadequate
to express its variety, and the Marxian is relieved of the
necessity of proving something that, even if it were
true, is beyond the capacity of human science to prove.
He has no longer any fear offa quantitative statement of
the control exercised by the economic factor upon social
evolution, because he is able to state clearly what quantity
of control he believes to be exercised by that factor. It
is a control sufficient to render impractical and ineffectual
any attempt to revolutionize society, in the direction
contemplated by socialists or anarchists or early Christians,
by means of operations directed against, or conducted
within, the political and ideological superstructure. It
is [a negative control; economic determinism is like the
demon of Socrates, it tells you only what you cannot
do. But at the same time it is a dynamic control, whose
operation can be analysed and demonstrated in detail,
and not a kind of mystic correspondence entirely in-
capable of verification. Its recognition is not a "philo-
sophy of history ", and it requires no patching up with
special appeals to the principle of accident; no ex-
plaining away and explaining back again of the greatness
of great men; no imputation to history of a personal
interest in results; no concealing under mountains of
pretentiously disinterested and abstract talk the particular
results in which Marxians are interested. It does not
modestly profess to be a principle of investigation, and
at the same time dogmatically declare itself both a
metaphysical presupposition and a final result of investi-
THE OTHER
64 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
gations already accomplished. And finally it does not
timidly concede that a person who understands it may
"in a certain sense ", and in some instances, be enabled
by that very fact to "influence an historic event ". It
clearly states that the whole cause and purpose of its
existence, like that of any other practical science, is to
enable the person who understands it to control history
to the fullest possible extent.
ง
CHAPTER V
THE THEORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE
FOR Marx as a philosopher, a class struggle in its " inner "
essence was not a concrete fight between people, but an
abstract contradiction between generalities-between
forces of production" and production-relations "
And since all past history was but the dialectic life-
story of such contradictions, Marx was able to assert
that " All past history, with the exception of its primitive
stages, was the history of class-struggles". What is
the truth under this obviously preposterous assertion?
The word history involves a generalization of the
most loose and inclusive sort. It is a name for the whole
heterogeneous agglomeration of events and developments
which have caught the interest and stuck in the memories
of men. The mere fact that history contains a record
of the development of every explanation, proves that
there can be no single explanation of history. For as
soon as you have explained an explanation on the basis
of facts other than those contemplated in it, you have
destroyed its validity. If the Copernican astronomy is
subject to explanation as a result of economic motions.
on earth, it is not a true science of motion in the heavens.
This is but one way of proving that any philosophy of
history" penetrated with unity "-any single statement
of the essence and essential explanation of the whole
past of humanity-belongs itself to that past, which is
among other things, let us hope, the grave of metaphysics.
B
"C
'
[bute}
66 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
VS.
And anyone who proposes such a statement and explana-
tion has already singled out in that past of humanity
the particular development which interests him, and it
is this which he designates when he uses the word
history.
66
(C
The thing that most interested Marx was the effort
to create a true human society. The predominating
purpose of his life was to find out how to produce, and
help to produce, out of the existing social materials, an
association which will exclude classes and their antagon-
isms, and in which there will no longer be political
power properly so called "-a society which can
inscribe on its banner: From each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs!"" Looking
over the pages of history, he observed that ever since
the time of primitive communism human society has
been in a state of class struggle, open or veiled, and that
human relations have never been fundamentally changed
in any way except by the victory of a new class in that
struggle. Upon the basis of this historic observation,
backed up by economics and a hard-headed knowledge
of human nature, he was able to assert that the only
method by which our existing society can be revolu-
tionized, is the organization of the working-class struggle,
and the perfection of its technique. In so far as he was
[a scientific engineer, and not [an animistic philosopher,
that is what he did assert. And that is all the truth
that any person possessing the mentality of true science,
will ever find in the statement, that "the history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles
">
CHAPTER VI
MARX AND DARWIN
MARX greeted Darwin's theory of evolution as a "support
from natural science". And the general Marxian
opinion, expressed in numberless articles and pamphlets,
is that Darwin's discovery was "a glorious corrobora-
tion and completion of the Marxian theory". Engels
said, a little more temperately, that Marx's theory was
"destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has
done for biology ".
It seems as though Engels' prediction might prove
true—although not in the manner he anticipated. For
if any one thing is conceded by all biologists to-day,
it is that Darwin's theory is not an adequate explanation
of the process of organic evolution. Darwin's achieve-
ment was to banish the ethico-deific out of biology,
establish the fact of evolution upon a scientific basis,
and point out a dominating principle of investigation
and matter-of-fact explanation. And Marx made almost
exactly the same contribution to the general science of
history. He put in the place of moralistic and religious
and poetic and patriotic eloquences, a matter-of-fact
principle of explanation, which has become the dominating
one for all freely inquiring minds, and he established
-or at least first adequately emphasized-the fact that
there has been an evolution, not only in the political
forms of society, but in its economic structure.
The differences between Marx and Darwin are just
↓
68 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
as significant, however, as their similarities. And the
failure of Marxians to notice them is the chief cause of
the weakness of their present scientific position. Darwin
approached the problem of explaining evolution without
any political purpose or passion. He made no pretence
to foretell the future of the process. His books are a
model of [the pure art of inquiry, so far as that art
can be attained by a mind the very forms of whose
thinking are practical. And therefore they have an
objective validity which Marx could have attained only
if he had recognized the rôle played by his purpose,
and separated that part of his thought which consisted
of analysing facts, from that which consisted of planning
for the realization of an idea.
Darwin also approached his problem of evolution
without any metaphysical presupposition as to the
manner in which evolution proceeds. He was not
afflicted with any "universal law of motion in thought
and in the external world". Therefore he was entirely
free to let the facts teach him. And they taught him
something quite contrary to that view of thought and
the external world which lies at the bottom of the
Hegelian-Marxian conception of evolution. To Darwin
-or to those who have developed the implications of
his discovery-thinking is not a function belonging
to Nature at large, and evolving mirror-like in friendly
and harmonious parallel with her universal evolution.
Thinking is a function developed by particular organisms
in mortal conflict with other organisms, and with the
inclemency and indifference of Nature at large, and
its character is determined by the requirements of
success in that conflict. Its essence is not to make
pictures of the general´environment in the edifying
forms of the philosopher's logic, but to [interpret the
important parts of that environment in the practical
MARX AND DARWIN
69
forms of nervous and muscular attitude and adaptive
action.]
Instead of acclaiming Darwin as a mere support and
glory of metaphysical Marxism, the thing is to put this
ultimate outcome of Darwin's discovery at the bottom
of Marxism, in the place of metaphysics.
CHAPTER VII
THE DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
ONE further exception to the law of economic deter-
minism, more significant than any of those I mentioned,
is implied in Marx's own classical statement of it.
In studying revolutions, he says, one must always
distinguish between the material transformation in the
economic conditions essential to production-which can be
established with the exactitude of natural science-and the
juridical, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short
ideological, forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict and fight it out."
CC
In this statement it appears that natural science is
not determined by those material changes in the condi-
tions of production which determine the ideological
forms of thinking. Natural science is "determined "
by those material changes in nature which constitute
the object of its study, and by no others. And it appears
also that Marxism itself partakes of the independent
validity of natural science. In so far as Marxism is a
definition of those changes in the conditions of produc-
tion which are contemporary with it, you may say that
it is determined by them, and so differs from an ideology
only in being conscious of its nature. But in so far as
Marxism is "the law of development of human history ",
it obviously cannot be regarded as merely the form in
which men became conscious of a transitory conflict,
and are going to fight it out. Marx takes this for granted
THE DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
71
'
here, and there are other passages in which he speaks
of his doctrine as a carrying-over into regions formerly
dominated by economically-determined ideologies, of
the independent and objective methods of natural science.
In practice the essence of Marxian wisdom consists,
not in asserting that the "social, political and spiritual
life-process in general" is determined by changes in
the conditions of production, but in knowing how to
distinguish those parts of it which are so determined,
from those which are not. It consists in knowing the
difference between science and ideology.
Although Marx took this difference for granted, how-
ever, he did not clearly define it, and he did not see that
it involves an exception to his theory of history. It
never seems to have occurred to Marx's mind that history *
is a generalization which includes the development
of the natural sciences.] He thought of history as a
separate process, which only needed to have its own
'inner law" of material motion explained, in order
to become itself a natural science beside the others.
Hence the fact that the development of natural science
stood outside his explanation of history, never troubled
him. And that Marxism also stood outside it, although
it is clearly implied in this sentence I have quoted, he
would unquestionably have denied. It was Marx's
opinion that Marxism-which explains all history, and
knows both its early beginning and its remote destina-
tion, and knows moreover the relation between itself
and the contemporary historic process-is nevertheless
nothing but a "reflection" of that process. It differs
from ideological socialism in being "conscious" of
the economic movement of which it is a necessary
reflection ".
CC
(6
This was made perfectly clear by Engels, who did
undertake some time after Marx's death, to define the
72 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
}
word ideology and determine its relation to science. He
defined it, in effect, as follows: An ideology is a distorted
/reflection, which is unconscious of the fact that it is a
reflection, of economic conditions. In this definition
there is no trace left of the contrast between ideologies
as economic reflections] and [natural science as inde-
pendent truth, which was implied in Marx's classical
statement. With Engels all ideas are economic reflec-
tions, and scientific ideas can differ from ideologies
only in knowing that they are economic reflections, and
being approximately correct ones. The science of
astronomy, for instance, instead of being, or somehow
or other besides being, an accurate reflection of the
motion of the stars, must be also-provided it is not
mere ideology-a reflection of economic motions on
earth. This proposition seems absurd enough when
it is applied to astronomy, and that goes to show that
Engels, like Marx, never thought of such sciences as
having a place within history. Their place was beside
history! But Engels did think of the science of Marxism
as having a place within history, and he applied that
absurd proposition to the Marxism science repeatedly
and explicitly. He said that Marxism is nothing but a
reflection in thought of the conflict in fact" between
the existing productive forces and the capitalist relations
of production.
(C
This statement, if it is taken seriously, does not
merely mean that Marx reflected this conflict at those
times when he was specifically talking about it. It
means that the whole general Marxian science of history,
is a reflection of this particular historic fact. It means
that when Marx gives us an account of the primitive
accumulation of capital, for instance, it is not really, or
not "in the last analysis", certain material facts of
past history that his thoughts are reflecting, but it is his
THE ✓
73
DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
own position, or that of the proletariat, in the society
in which he lives. And when Engels writes of the
Origin of the Family, it is not a reflection of the actual
origin of the family, but a reflection in the form of a
painstaking and classical book about the origin of the
family, of the origin of a revolution in the current mode
of production. And in general Marxism is not at every
point a reflection of just those facts which it purports
to reflect-much less a definition of them "with the
exactitude of natural science "--but it is at all points
a mystic and scientifically irresponsible/reflection of the
position of the working class in modern society, à mere
general expression" of the existing class struggle.
Moreover when the class struggle is over, Marxism
must lose its essential validity and give place to an
entirely different science, for it is obvious that a system
of ideas which merely reflects the struggles of a class,
can play no vital part in reflecting the evolution of a
class-free society. That is the real meaning of Engels'
statement about Marxism. And it is adopted with
admirable boldness by Rosa Luxemburg, who says
that "Marxism pretends only to temporary truth;
dialectic through and through, it contains within itself
the seeds of its own destruction.”
(6
Now everybody who is familiar with scientific method
knows that the one thing which can verify Marxism as a
science, and establish it among the indubitable and
immortal conquests of human knowledge, is the triumph
of the proletariat and the establishment of a class-free
society. Everybody who is not familiar with scientific
method, but is also innocent of metaphysics, knows the
same thing. In Russia the first preliminary victory of
the proletariat has resulted, not only in a recognition
of the verified truths of Marxism, but in a codification
and dogmatization and universal systemized adoration
74 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
doc.scienïz ES
cbj.sto.dps.nk
✓
of every last letter of Marx's writing, such that, if Marx
had imagined it, he would never have dared put pen
to paper. It is pure myth-making to say that Marxism
will be destroyed by the triumph of the revolution, and
it is arrant metaphysical nonsense to pretend that Marxism
contains no other truth than the correct reflection of a
contemporary change in the conditions of production.
This not only contradicts the most important part of
Marx's own statement-the part in which he tells us
how to study revolutions-but it contradicts the
simple and universal facts of human psychology.] Just
as [everyone who thinks practically] assumes that the
future is in some degree undetermined, so everyone
who thinks theoretically assumes that his thoughts are
not ultimately determined by any facts other than those
contemplated in his theory. He assumes that his
thoughts are not ideology bút science. They are not
the forms in which men have become conscious of a
material change, and are going to "fight it out", but
they are the forms in which men have defined a material
change and understood it.
The reason why Marxists have blurred the distinction
between science and ideology, which is inextricably
involved in Marx's classical statement of his theory of
history, is that this distinction is inconsistent with Marx's
own philosophy of Dialectic Materialism. If thought is
merely a reflection of the dialectic motions of matter,
there can only be right and wrong reflections, conscious
and unconscious reflections. And any given thought
at any given time must be, somehow or other, a reflection
of dialectic motions that are contemporary with it.
Science has to be an ideology, according to this system,
and the very best it can do is to be a conscious and
correct one. This is so obvious that Plekhanov, the
THE DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
75
✓
unmitigated metaphysician who laid the foundations of
Russian Marxism, simply dropped out the distinction
between science and ideology altogether, and forgot it.
In Russia to-day the word ideology retains not the slightest
tincture of the meaning it had for Marx and Engels.
For them it was the ultimate form of intellectual abuse.
For Russian Marxists it is simply the name for any body
of ideas held together by some common bond.
Lenin
speaks of "the scientific ideology as opposed to the
religious ". He defines Marxism as "the ideology of
the proletariat instructed by capitalism". Trotsky
says that "in the socialist movement ideology plays its
essential and enormous rôle ". And the Russian Bol-
sheviks in general regard the distinction between com-
munism, for instance, and the principles of democracy,
not as a distinction between science and ideological
talk, but as a distinction between the "bourgeois " and
proletarian "ideologies.
(c
Plekhanov carried his philosophic rectification of Marx's
natural opinion about ideology and science, to the point
of asserting that " Das Kapital" itself is not fundamen-
tally more scientific than the bourgeois economics.
The fundamental difference between them is that the
bourgeois economics reflects an earlier, and the Marxian
a later stage in the historic process:
Human society in its development passes through certain
phases to which correspond certain phases of development
of social science. That which we call, for example, bourgeois
economics is one phase of development of economic science.
That which we call socialist economics is another phase of
its development immediately following.
""
"The bourgeois economics, in so far as it corresponds to
a definite phase of social evolution, possesses scientific truth.
But that truth is relative, exactly because it corresponds
only to a certain phase of social development. The bourgeois
theoreticians, imagining that society must always remain in
76 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Ecstaron,
later....
its bourgeois phase, attribute absolute significance to that
relative truth. In that consists their fundamental mistake,
corrected by scientific socialism, the appearance of which
testifies that the bourgeois epoch of social development is
nearing its end.”
This statement is perhaps plausible, so long as you
do not remember that Plekhanov's statements them-
selves are scientific socialism. When you remember
that, you cannot fail to ask: How does it happen that
scientific socialism, which is merely the reflection of
another transitory phase of social development, knows
all about the whole process of social development,
and all about its relation to the bourgeois phase,
and in fact all about the ways and phases of the universe
in general? (A bourgeois ideologist} could reply to
Plekhanov: Your science, which declares that everything
changes and progresses, is but a reflection of the posi-
tion of the proletariat in capitalist society; it is a relative
truth; but my science reflects the eternal relations of
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as they really are!
In simple honesty there would be no answer to this.
And just this difficulty lies at the bottom of the whole
structure of Russian Marxism. How can a mere pro-
letarian ideology be a scientific account of the develop-
ment of the universe and of human history? Bukharin
begins a text-book which is supposed to teach the young
Russian how to think, with an argument in a circle which
may be summed up as follows: Everything changes;
we, the proletariat, are interested in change; therefore
our philosophy, which asserts that everything changes, is
entitled to general belief. That is only a naïve exposure
of the fallacy that Plekhanov dressed up so plausibly.
And the same fallacy constitutes the deep flaw in Lenin's
philosophic writings. Lenin declares that Marx and
Engels were "from first to last partisan in philosophy";
THE DOCTRINE OF IDEOLOGIES
77
that philosophy is nothing but a "partisan struggle
between idealism and materialism; that dialectic materia-
lism is the ideological fortress of the working class,
which "would never let petit-bourgeois philistinism
step over its threshold"; he declares that "in a society
torn by class contradictions there can be no extra-class
or super-class ideology"; and he illustrates this state-
ment with a book which is the most embattled and violent
polemic ever produced in the name of philosophy. And
yet in that book he asserts that "the theory of Marx is
objective truth ", meaning thereby that "going by way
of the Marxian theory we shall draw nearer and nearer
to objective truth (never exhausting it) and going by
any other road we can arrive at nothing but confusion
and lies". To identify objective truth with the fighting
ideology of one camp in a pitched battle between classes,
and to call this truth philosophy-that is the fundamental
fallacy of Russian Marxism.
✓
But Russian Marxism is merely Marxism in its purest
Hegelian-metaphysical form. And the reader must
not think that this fallacy presents a difficulty which
the Hegelian dialectic is unable to squirm out of. On
the contrary the Hegelian dialectic was invented for the
express purpose of squirming out of such difficulties.
It was invented in order to protect the right of a priest-
hood to identify their emotional interests and those of
the class they represent, with objective and absolute
truth. And if it is able-by the simple device of standing
on its head-to protect an anti-priesthood, and the class
they represent, in a similar right, that is but one more.
tribute to the expert metaphysical genius of its inventor.
When you have laid it down that everything which
exists is a process of self-contradiction, you are not
going to be disturbed by the discovery that your own
science is at the same time objectively true and relative to
V
››
78 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
I
**-* 29 ****
L
your particular position in history. That contradiction
merely shows that it exists! And if you have also laid
it down that every such self-contradictory process is
destined to have its opposing elements reconciled in
a "higher "unity-and if you have refrained from lay-
ing it down just when, or where, or under what cir-
cumstances, any particular part of this business takes
place then you are in a position to assert that the
reconciliation between the objective and the relative
in scientific truth will take place only after human
experience and investigation have been extended to
infinity. That infinitely distant reconciliation is Absolute
Truth. But since that Absolute Truth is, by definition,
a "higher " unity, and since you, who reflect the break-
down of capitalism, are farther along the road to it, than
your class opponent who represents capitalism rampant,
it is obvious that your ideology is already absolutely
true in comparison with his. In fact your ideology is
able to denounce and trounce all previous ideologies,
because it contains them as surmounted opposites in
its own bosom, and is on its way with them to the glory
goal of an Absolute that lies at the end of infinity.
That is the kind of semi-theological jargon by which
Hegel's dialectic enables you to identify a working-class
ideology with objective truth, and get along without the
practical distinction which Marx drew between science
and ideology. More important that is the kind of
semi-theological jargon for the sake of which Marx's
practical distinction between science and ideology has
been thrown away.
:
CHAPTER VIII
MARXISM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
FREUD
You have only to abandon mysteries and the relics of
mysteries, and introduce into Marxism the simple
beginnings of a true science of thought, in order to
define ideology accurately, and distinguish it from science, ✔
and see that this distinction is the essence of Marx's
historical wisdom. It is one of the deepest and wisest
intuitions in all the history of genius.? Life is impulsive, √
and thought is a definition of impulse and of the means
to its satisfaction. But in human society life's strongest
and most universal impulses are suppressed by a standard
of ideality and respectable virtue, that is an automatic
product of social intercourse and self-consciousness.
These strong universal impulses disappear out of men's
thoughts, but they do not die. They continue to func-
tion unconsciously, and the result is a falsification of the
conscious thoughts, wherever they touch a matter in
which these suppressed impulses are concerned. Men
think they are defending and pursuing such goals as
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, when in reality their
concern is, as Marx put it, with Infantry, Cavalry, and
Artillery. Their concern is to defend their own privi-
leged position in a class which, in its unconscious but
ultimately reliable motivation, knows nothing and cares
nothing about liberty, or equality, or fraternity. That is
what an ideology is. It is a thinking process which is
80 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
unaware of the motive which instigated it, and toward
the satisfaction of which it is directed. That the great
part of written history, and of political and socio-
logical theorizing, up to the time of Marx, was distorted
with such ideological thinking, indulged in by people
controlled by their own [unconscious class interests, is
fairly obvious. It is also obvious that this process has
not ceased merely because it has been discovered. But
it is certainly the ideal and the essence of scientific
thinking to escape from it. Practical scientific think-
ing defines its [real motives, because it seeks a clear
knowledge of the means to their satisfaction. And
pure" scientific thinking defines its motives, because
it wishes to abstract from them, and get a picture of the
facts which will be as objective and general as the nature
of the human brain permits. Both these kinds of
thinking are sharply and unmistakably distinguished,
exactly as Marx originally said they are, from economic-
ally-determined ideologies.
In short, just as Marx anticipated in his "Theses on
Feuerbach" the functional theory of knowledge, so
in his doctrine of ideologies he anticipated the psycho-
logy of Sigmund Freud. The psycho-analyst, because
he is trying to cure individual disorders, emphasizes
those distortions of consciousness which arise from
suppressed motives of sex. The Marxist, who wishes
to cure the disorders of society, emphasizes those which
arise from motives of hunger and fighting egoism. It
✔is such motives which unconsciously dominate the majority
↓
"
of men in those broad social and political relations which
constitute so large a part of their lives. It is such motives
which align them in antagonistic classes, with the result
that loyalty to class takes the place of that loyalty to
society as a whole, upon which it might be possible to
establish the framework of a reasonable world. Marx's
MARXISM AND FREUD'S PSYCHOLOGY 81
word ideology is simply a name for the distortions of
social and political thinking which are created by these
suppressed motives. It is a general term for all that
Freudians mean when they say rationalization, substitu-
tion, transference, displacement, sublimation. The eco-
nomic interpretation of history is nothing but a generalized
psycho-analysis of the social and political mind. One
might infer this from the spasmodic and unreasonable
resistance it meets on the part of its patient. The Marxian
diagnosis is regarded as an outrage rather than a science.
It is met, not with comprehension and critical analysis,
but with rationalizations and "defence-reactions of
the most wild and infantile kind.
>>
One of the most notable of these defence-reactions
has been contributed by the Freudians themselves.
They have invented the device of explaining away all
revolutionary intelligence as a manifestation of the
Oedipus complex ". Freud seems to have remained
wisely silent upon this theme, but it is quite a fashion
among his followers to dismiss any man who wants to
cut under the plausibilities of existing law and govern-
ment, as a neurotic driven on by an unconscious fixation
of infantile emotion against his father. It is a case, they
say, of substitution, or transference of the libido. The
answer from the Marxian point of view is obvious:
Doctors are in the economic nature of things bourgeois,
or petit-bourgeois, and these Freudian doctors are driven
on, in their attempt to explain away revolution, by un-
conscious motives of class-loyalty and pecuniary self- 11
defence. It is a case of ideological thinking. In this
exchange of amenities, the Marxian may have the satis-
faction of remembering that Marx got there first. And
he has this satisfaction also, that his position does not
involve a snap-diagnosis of some of the healthiest and
most stable personalities in the world as neurotic, and it
F
<<
82 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
√
does not pretend to an expert opinion on the intimate
family history of several millions of people who have
never been examined. It attributes to these Freudian
doctors no condition more peculiar than the most general
underlying motives of all humanity and all organic life.
↓
When I say that the doctrine of ideologies is an anti-
cipation of the Freudian psychology, I mean it literally and
exactly. It can be nothing else, once you have put in
the place of metaphysical fairy-stories, a science of human
thought and behaviour. This can be seen clearly in
any of Engels' attempts to state what an ideology is.
"An ideology," he says in one place," is a process which
is carried out, to be sure, with the consciousness of the
so-called thinker, but with a false consciousness. The
real motive-powers which move him remain unknown
to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process.'
You need only recognize that the motive-powers which
move people to think are organic impulses, or " desires",
and you have here all the essentials of a Freudian defini-
tion. And there are passages, indeed, where both Marx
and Engels do seem to recognize this fact. In his book
about the "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte ",
where Marx applies his theory to a piece of concrete
historic action, he continally talks of the "interests "
of the classes and parties concerned. He interprets
their political ideas, not as an unconscious reflection of
their economic position, but as an unconscious scheme
for getting their economic wishes satisfied.
در
CC
As in private life we distinguish between what a man
thinks and says about himself, and what he really is and
does, still more in historical struggles we must distinguish
the phrases and imaginations of parties from their real organ-
ism and their real interests. Thus the Tories in England
long imagined that they were raving about the Kingdom, the
MARXISM AND FREUD'S PSYCHOLOGY 83
Church, and the Beauty of the Old-English dispensation,
until the day of danger snatched from them the confession
that they were only raving about Ground Rent."
✓
That this is Freudian psychology at its most brilliant,
needs no demonstration. Engels in his speech at the
grave of Marx described the whole Marxian theory of
history as a discovery of "the simple fact, heretofore
concealed under ideological overgrowths, that men have
first of all to eat and drink and live and clothe themselves,
and only after that can they occupy themselves with
politics and science and art and religion. . . ." Here
again it is simply [the underlying animal motivation
that explains history Marx's theory appears as a study
of human behaviour, and not a searching among human
“accidents " for the mysterious march of an animated
generality called Forces of Production. And ideologies
in consequence play exactly the part that is played by
rationalizations in a Freudian psychology. They serve
as concealments in consciousness, for those crude un-
conscious motives which on the broad average and in
the long run determine the conduct of men.
!
For Marx and Engels, however, these occasional state-
ments of human motivation were not the true, the eso-
teric, science of history. The true science demands
that human motives should be seen as merely a specific
part of that more general motor process, the Evolution
of the Forces of Production, which takes the place of
Hegel's "Spirit". Engels describes in the following
passage the relation of human motives to the historic
process:
History proceeds in such a way that the end-result
always issues from the conflict of many individual wills.
We have thus innumerable conflicting forces, an endless
group of parallelograms of forces, giving a resultant-the
historic event-which may itself again be regarded as the
"C
ek'.
84 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
product of a force acting as a whole without consciousness.
and without will. For that which each individual desires,
meets an opposition from every other, and the result is some-
thing which nobody desired."
That is the inscrutable way in which history operates,
according to metaphysical Marxism.] And it is obvious
that a psychological analysis would be an awkward
intrusion here. For that "result" which "nobody
desired ", is exactly the heart's desire of the Marxian
metaphysician. And it is the essence of his "materialist
metaphysics to assert that the objective world is going
after it and getting it for him without thought and
without will-albeit by a process that is "logical ",
and with a "determinism" that is hard to distinguish
from the most wilful determination.
>>
Thus when Marx and Engels employ the language
of human motivation in their explanation of history, it
must be regarded as a temporary condescension from
the abstract perfection of the pure theory. The “inner
laws" of history are not to be discovered by talking in
this way. And when Engels says that the ideologist is
unconscious of the forces that set his thoughts going, it
must not be imagined that he means to psycho-analyse
that ideologist, or say that he is not conscious of his own
motives. All he means to say is that the ideologist is
not conscious of a motion in the " economic conditions",
which are a result of the evolution of the "productive-
forces ", and of which his thoughts are a mere passive
reflection.
"The reflection of economic relations in the form of legal
principles is accomplished in such a way that this process
does not reach the consciousness of the agent. The law-
maker imagines that he is acting from a priori principles,
when in reality it is all a matter of economic reflection
and that distortion, when it is not conscious, we call the
ideological outlook.'
MARXISM AND FREUD'S PSYCHOLOGY 85
That is the way Engels defines ideology in a more
painstaking moment. And again :
'That the material conditions of life of the men in whose
heads this thinking process takes place, ultimately determine
the course of the process, necessarily remains unknown to
these men, otherwise there would be an end of the whole
ideology."
>>
It seems a very slight and obvious correction to say
material interests here, instead of "material conditions
of life", but it is all the difference between science and
mystical metaphysics. And it was nothing but mystical
metaphysics which prevented Engels from saying it.
Nothing but mystical metaphysics will prevent any
Marxian from abandoning this " Philosophy of History
and going forward to that more analytical scientific
attitude which it anticipated. It will be objected, of
course, that "psychology is in its infancy ", that nobody
can put his trust in these vague beginnings of a science
of the mind. It is true that psychology is in its infancy;
it is true that we have only the first loose principles of a
science of the mind. But the philosophy of Dialectic
Materialism rests upon the assumption that a hundred
years ago Hegel knew all about mind, and substantially
finished the science of it. The philosophy of Dialectic
Materialism lives or dies with that assumption. There-
fore if the real science of the mind is in its infancy, the
philosophy of Dialectic Materialism may best be des-
cribed as dead. Better an infant science that is alive,
than a dead metaphysics.
CHAPTER IX
IDEOLOGY AND THE ART OF REVOLUTION
THE Concept of ideology not only contains the essence
of Marx's contribution to the general science of history,
but it reveals most exactly his innovation in the particular
science and art of revolution. Marx's word "ideology"
was invented by Napoleon Bonaparte for the express
purpose of deriding revolutionary idealism. "It was
a nickname," to quote an early biographer," which the
French ruler used to distinguish every species of theory,
which resting in no respect upon the basis of self-interest,
could, he thought, prevail with none save hot-brained
boys and crazed enthusiasts." That is to say, it was
an epitome of the counter-revolutionary propaganda.
It was a summing up in one word of what all hard-headed
practical men of the world have said about social idealists
from the beginning of time. They have said that they
are mere emotional enthusiasts who "don't know any-
thing about human nature". And up to the time of
Marx these statements had been in a broad sense correct.
Marx took the hard-headed practical realistic sagacity
of these "men of the world", and introduced it into
the ranks of the revolution. Marxism is hard-headed
idealism. It is idealism taking account of the facts.
It is Napoleonic ruthlessness on the other side of the
barricade. And that is why Marx instinctively adopted
Napoleon's term of derision for all thinking which is
detached from the facts, and which ignores those egoisti-
IDEOLOGY AND REVOLUTION
87
cal-economic motives that constitute the main driving
force in history.] He wanted to get the same foolish
and utopian nonsense out of his way that Napoleon did,
but for an opposite purpose.
""
an
Marx achieved this hard-headed condition, as we have
seen, by projecting his own emotional idealism into the
external world. He had been taught in a German uni-
versity to regard the universe as an idealistic development,
endless passing from the lower to the higher ".
He scrutinized and rejected much of what he learned
in that university, but he never scrutinized this word
"higher ", nor endangered his entire intellectual equi-
librium by asking himself what it really meant. It meant,
so far as concerns human history at least, nearer to his
own emotional ideals. Marx was able to treat these ideals
with Napoleonic scorn, at the same time that he conse-
crated his life to them, because he regarded their
appearance in his mind as merely a symptom" of
what an accommodating universe was about to do in
regard to them.
<<
"The appeal to morality and justice does not bring us
forward a finger's breadth scientifically; economic science
can see no proof in moral indignation, be it never so justified,
but only a symptom. The task of this science is rather to
explain the newly arising social evils as necessary consequences
of the existing mode of production, but also at the same time
as signs of its approaching dissolution, and to discover within
the economic movement-form which is dissolving, the elements
of the future new organization of production and exchange,
which will abolish those evils."
It is easy to scorn your own ideals, treating them as
mere signs of a crisis in the evolution of material forces,
when you have already confided the attainment of your
ideals to those material forces. That was the hard-headed-
ness of Marx and Engels. It was only in a world which
88 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
was evolving "by its own inevitable dialectic toward
something "higher ", toward something "more mag-
nificent", that they knew how to be Napoleonic and
dismiss ideologies altogether. To be hard-headed in
this real world, which cares nothing at all about what
you consider higher, and yet at the same time be idealistic
and fight to make something higher out of it, is a little
more difficult. But it is the task ultimately laid on us
by that course of scientific reasoning which Marx began.
It is impossible, once you understand the psychology of
the process, to continue this grandiose pretence at a
dispassionate reflection of mere economic necessities,
which is so often repeated in the writings of Marx
and Engels, and so often betrayed. It is impossible,
once you have defined ideology as thinking which
is unconscious of its motive, to let Marxism continue to
hide its motive in an animistic philosophy of the universe.
Marxism as a system of dialectic metaphysics is ideological,
just as all metaphysics is, but it is certainly the tendency
and the true end of Marxism to become a science.
>>
CHAPTER X
MARXIAN ECONOMICS
It is difficult to draw a line between the ideological and
the scientific element in economic theory. The subject-
matter here is the very essence of the egoistic struggle
of men, a preoccupation of their unconscious natures.
And the science is of necessity abstract and indefinite. It
is a matter of formulating large groups of facts, rather
than accurately defining particulars, and in this act of
formulation the hidden purpose of the scientist has
a very free hand. However, if an economist who
acknowledged a revolutionary purpose, and one who
acknowledged a conservative purpose, sat down to
formulate the laws upon which they could agree, we
should still have something of an objective science of
economics. And it is only by conceiving this science
J
a thing apart from the expressions of class-interest
which have been bound up in it, that we can adequately
describe the economic contributions of Karl Marx.
He contributed certain fundamental and enduring ideas
or attitudes to the science of economics, and he replaced
the business man's ideology that is usually bound up in
that science with a proletarian ideology.
Perhaps the most indubitable contribution of Marx
to economic theory, was the idea implied in our current
use of the word "capitalism". Marx was the first to
realize the full extent of the evolution that has taken
place in human industry. He realized that many of the
most fundamental of those " Laws of Political Economy
90 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
which so startled the intellectual world in the eighteenth
century, were but laws of that capitalistic system of
economy which had begun its existence about two hundred
years before. He conceived of economics as a genuinely
historical science, and traced the development of modern
capitalistic business out of the previous systems of
production and exchange. Viewing it in this evolutionary
way, Marx was able to describe clearly certain features
of "capitalism" that were not adequately perceived by
previous economists. That the productive process had
become co-operative, or "social", and was becoming
more and more so, as a result of the factory system and
the invention of modern machinery, was a thing which
Marx first clearly realized. And he realized the full
extent to which this social process would come to be
concentrated in vast organizations under the control of
a few men. He "predicted the trusts", as Marxians
are accustomed to say. If there is in academic circles
a reluctance to acknowledge these contributions, or the
source of them, that reluctance may properly be described
as ideological. The contributions were scientific. They
were contributions to the definition of [objective facts,
and they belong neither to the capitalists nor to the
proletariat. They are among the common assumptions
of all real political intelligence.
J
✓
But Marx not only perceived more clearly than others
how profoundly the economic process has changed in
the last three or four hundred years. He also perceived
the essential feature in which it has not changed-the
continued exploitation of the labouring masses by a
possessing class. He perceived that the wage-worker
in our capitalist system of industry works a part of the
time for himself and a part of the time for his master,
just as truly as the villein did under the feudal system.
Our system of "free competition" and cash payment
·
MARXIAN ECONOMICS
91
for labour, conceals this fact, and all our laws and political
principles, and our most honoured thoughts about the
matter, are concerned to disguise it. But the fact remains.
And it was a characteristic achievement of Marx's genius
to lay it bare. It was an application of that distinction
between science and ideology which I have described as
the essence of his contribution to the study of history.
Marx himself felt that this was the most original and most
important thing in his system of economics. In a letter
written to Engels soon after the publication of the first
volume of "Capital", he stated what were the new
things of fundamental importance in it. Here is what
he said:
(C
First, that in contrast to all former economists, who from
the beginning treat the separate fragments of surplus value
with their fixed forms of rent, profit, interest as something
given, I treat first of all the general form of surplus value,
wherein all the as yet undistinguished forms find themselves,
so to speak, in solution. Second, that economists without
exception ignore the simple fact that if commodities have a
two-fold value, then also the labour embodied in commodities
must possess a two-fold character; the mere analysis into
labour sans phrase as with Smith, Ricardo, etc., landing us
on the whole in the inexplicable. This is in fact the whole
secret of the critical view. Third, that for the first time
the labour-wage is expounded as the irrational phenomenal
form of a relation concealed behind it."
Translated into the language of concrete intelligence,
these three points all mean that the worker in our capitalist
society works part of the time for himself and part of the
time for the owners of the instruments with which he
works, and that all of the income of the possessing classes,
whether directly received in the form of rent, profit or
interest, comes ultimately, just as the wealth of the feudal
nobility did, from the work which the worker does, not
92
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
for himself, but for his master, and not for a product but
for a profit. This statement is not true in the absolute
form in which Marx's philosophy compelled him to make
it. But the facts upon which it is based are sufficiently
general, and have been sufficiently ignored by other
economists, to warrant the assertion that Marx introduced
into the objective science of economics-supposing that
one could find such a thing—an adequate recognition
of the state of affairs designated by the term wage
slavery".
CC
That Marx should have to write a letter to his best
friend, telling what the essential proposition is, which he
had just finished expounding in a volume of eight hundred
pages, and that this letter in turn should require interpre-
tation in order to make it in the least degree intelligible
to a man of ordinary education, may suggest to the reader
that the intellectual method adopted in the Marxian
economics is not of the best. And I advise him to give
free scope to the suggestion. Marx's" Capital " combines
the principal vices of the classical German philosophy
with the principal vices of the classical British Economy.
In that sense it is indeed a classic, and has inevitably
found its way, along with so many other classics, to the
top shelves of a great many libraries. It contains a
wealth of interesting ideas, and much invaluable empirical
material--a study of the development of modern industry
in England that ought to be dissected out and published
as one of the most significant chapters of human history.
But as a "System of Economics" it must inevitably
retire, along with the rest of that classical economy and
that classical philosophy to whose tradition it belongs, into
the position of an intellectual" object of art ", an ingenious
and fertile historic curiosity. For it is not in its funda-
mental form and theoretic substance a scientific book.
✓
J
MARXIAN ECONOMICS
93
✓
It is not, except incidentally, an exposition and empirical
demonstration of that concrete fact about the exploitation
of labour under capitalism which Marx saw so clearly.
It is a flying upward from that concrete fact into the world
of unreal abstractions contemplated by the classical
economy, and an attempt to make it reappear there with
an emotional glamour and a metaphysical significance
greater than any simple statement of concrete facts
could have.
The classical economy had settled, in Marx's day,
upon a conception of the "value" of commodities
-the rate at which they exchange on the market-as
ultimately determined by the labour necessary to their
production. It had also arrived at a problem of explaining
according to this conception the value of labour itself,
which seems to sell on the market just like any of these
commodities whose value it determines. The value of
labour ought also to be determined by the amount of
labour necessary to produce it. But that is a useless, if
not indeed a meaningless proposition, which merely
reduces the given conception of value to absurdity.
Marx invented a way out of this difficulty. He thought
up the idea of saying that the thing which is for sale on
the market is not labour, but "labour-power". The
capitalist may be said to buy this commodity at a rate
determined, as much as that of any other commodities,
by the amount of labour necessary to produce it. But this
commodity has the peculiar property of creating value,
and if put into contact with machinery and raw materials,
it will create a value very much greater than its own.
And that "surplus value" created by the labourer for
the capitalist who has bought his labour power as a
commodity, will explain, with all the neatness of the
classical economy, how people get rich in our society
by merely producing and exchanging "commodities"
94 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
whose value is by definition equivalent. In this way
Marx succeeded in fixing up the abstract formulation
of the process of capitalistic production attempted
by Smith and Ricardo upon the basis of a labour explana-
tion of value, in such a way as to make an emphasis
upon the exploitation of labour just as abstract, and
just as classical", as any of their more conservative
"C
constructions.
There is no denying the ingenuity and interestingness
of the idea. But it is absurd to attribute to this ingenious
manipulation of abstractions a weight and significance
comparable to that possessed by [the simple concrete
fact which made it possible-the fact that the earth and
the instruments of production belong to a few people,
and they get rich, on the whole, by compelling other
people to work for them at approximately a living wage.
The classical economy has fallen out of scientific repute,
not because it was wholly at variance with the facts, but
because it was not sufficiently interested in them. The
principal object of its study was the relations between a
set of abstract ideas.] And Marx's economic system shares
the fate of the classical economy, because it shares the
same fault. Indeed, it carries that fault to an unheard of
extreme. Marx makes it clear in his very first chapter
that a <<
commodity" is an abstraction, that "value ”
in the sense in which he uses the term is an abstraction,
and that the "labour" which constitutes this value is
something that never existed on land or sea. It is “ab-
stract human labour " of the " average degree of skill and
intensity prevalent at the time ". And nevertheless his
mind is satisfied to describe commodities as the " material
depositories of exchange value ", to describe this value as
"abstract human labour . . . in a congealed state",
as in fact "crystals of this social substance", a homo-
geneous jelly" composed of something which by defini-
(C
در
MARXIAN ECONOMICS
95
<<
✓
tion does not exist. He treats abstract and concrete
labour as two "different kinds" of labour, and declares
that in a commodity which is regarded as the equivalent
of another in an act of exchange, concrete labour
becomes the form under which its opposite, abstract
labour, manifests itself". It would be difficult to find
in the whole history of science a more mystical and
unreal construction. Marx himself confessed that he
"coquetted" with a Hegelian phraseology in this chapter.
The fact is that only a man trained from childhood not
only in this phraseology, but in the sincere conviction
that the real world is composed of abstract and general
ideas alienated from themselves in material objects, and
who had never essentially recovered from that training,
could possibly have conceived or written such a chapter,
or regarded the propositions which he deduced from it,
or professed in whole or in part to deduce from it, as
having the character of empirical science.
d
That Marx's disquisitions about value and surplus
value-in spite of the indubitable concrete fact out of
which they are fabricated-are not scientific generaliza-
tions, is practically conceded by Marx himself in the third
volume of his "Capital ". At least that is my opinion—
which I ought to warn the reader is amateur and inexpert
in matters of economic theory-about this famous subject
of dispute. In this third volume Marx comes down to
the question of the rates at which concrete and visible
objects actually sell upon the market, and of the profits
actually made by concrete and visible capitalists who
employ labour. And he is compelled to concede that
his laws of value and surplus value are not a definition
or explanation of these actual things. They are not
generalizations of fact capable of experimental verifica-
tion. They are a "penetration ", as he says, of the
"outward disguise constituted by these concrete
""
96 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
facts, "into the internal essence and inner form of the
capitalist process of production". To an empirically
and really scientific mind these words "internal" and
"inner "-which come to the rescue not only here, but
at every moment of critical danger in the Marxian meta-
physics-mean nothing in the world but abstract. To
such a mind, therefore, this statement is an abandonment
by Marx of his own pretence to have formulated the
laws of the concrete process of capitalist production.
It is a confession that he is not talking about these concrete
facts. The boast of Engels that "the classical economy
had got lost in a blind alley-the man to find the way out
was Karl Marx", is perhaps true. But Marx found
his way out, as was inevitable to anyone adopting the
same methods, into another blind alley. The only way
to escape from these blind alleys, is to abandon the
deductive and rationalistic methods common to Marx
and the classical economists, cease to delude ourselves
that when in the process of abstraction we draw farther
away from the variety of the concrete facts, we are " pene-
trating" into the "inward essence" of those facts, and
come back to an attitude of experimental humility before
the facts themselves.
CHAPTER XI
IDEOLOGY IN "DAS KAPITAL "
THE reason why Marxists, who are so devoted in other
matters to the maxim that "The truth is always
concrete ", are just the last ones to give up overvaluing
the abstractions of pure economics, is that there is bound
up for them in that science a proletarian ideology. They
do not approach "Das Kapital" as [social engineers,
desirous to find out the real structure and movement of
the world they are working with. If they did, they
would be as intolerant of its indirectness, its lumbersome,
long-winded intellectualism and perfectly unnecessary
obscurity, as anybody else. They come to it as adherents
of a faith, desirous to be convinced that the "inner
hidden laws" of this world are working with them.
Obviously then, the more "inner" these laws are, the
more "hidden" they are, the better, the more convinc-
ing, the more easily defended against those who are
deceived by the " visible external movement" of things.
✓
The classical political economy had also contained
an ideological element. In order to formulate its laws
of production and exchange, it had made the assumption
that every man acts in all business relations upon a motive
of reasoned self-interest. And the neatness and convinc-
ingness of the structure which it built upon this assump-
tion were so astonishing, that it did not seem absurd to
tack on to it the assertion that this "reasonable self-
interest" of every individual is a very fine thing, which
if only left to itself would automatically produce the
G
98 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
welfare of society as a whole. This assertion was obvi-
ously not a part of the science of economics; it was the
ideology of a thriving business class. As there is not any
welfare of society as a whole, nor even any enduring
welfare of the business class, this ideology did not last
very long in its pure form. Various measures of social
and political reform began to seem more satisfactory
in its place. But the general assumption that those
"laws” of capitalistic business describe what must be
and ought to be, as well as what is, continues to charac-
terize the academic science of economics even to-day.
It is on the one hand an attempt at a scientific generaliza-
tion, and on the other an ideological justification of the
fundamental structure of capitalist society.
✓
Marx put his proletarian ideology exactly in the place
of that original ideology of the business class. In place
of the assertion that the instinctive economic activities
of men automatically produce social welfare, he put
the assertion that these same activities (automatically
produce a social revolution. His dialectic philosophy
of history had perfectly prepared him for this. His
conception that when men enter into social relations,
an ordered development arises which is wholly inde-
pendent of their consciousness and their wills, was far
more dependable for this purpose than the concept of
the "Economic Man ". It left Marx free from that
criticism from the standpoint of realism in psychology,
which has spoiled the beauty, and practically broken the
authority, of the classical Economics. Marx himself
abandoned the "Economic Man ", as his defenders are
careful to explain. But Marx abandoned the Economic
Man, not because he wished to make a closer analysis of
the concrete facts, but because he wished to stay farther
away from them. He abandoned the Economic Man,
because he had an Economic God-the self-active Dia-
IDEOLOGY IN "DAS KAPITAL "
99
lectic Development of the Forces of Production-who
was far more reliable for ideological purposes than any-
thing so specific and dubious as a formula for human
nature. The Marxian ideology consists of fitting the
abstractions of the Classical Political Economy, as
amended but not transcended by Marx, into Hegel's
philosophy of the universe as a dialectic evolution of
abstractions—this also amended, but not transcended
by Marx-and thus arriving at a mystical conviction of
the “iron necessity" of the revolution that he desired.
Perhaps the easiest way to see how this was accom-
plished, is to study the thing in its origin. In the “ Holy
Family ", a book completed by Marx and Engels four
years before they formulated their opinions in the Com-
munist Manifesto, Marx has the following passage:
"Proletariat and wealth are opposites. As such they form
a whole. They are both phases of the world of private
property. It is a question of the definite position which they
both occupy in the antithesis. It is not enough to declare
them two sides of a whole.
Private property as private property, as wealth, is com-
pelled to preserve itself, and therewith its opposite, the prole-
tariat. It is the positive side of the antithesis, private property
satisfied with itself.
"The proletariat, on the contrary, as proletariat is compelled
to annihilate itself, and therewith its conditioning opposite
which makes it a proletariat, private property. It is the nega-
tive side of the antithesis, its dissatisfaction with itself, private
property dissolved and dissolving itself
"Thus within the antithesis the private property-owner
is the conservative, the proletarian the destructive part.
From the former comes the motion to preserve the antithesis,
from the latter the motion to destroy it.
“Private property, to be sure, impels itself in its national
economic movement to its own dissolution, but only through
a development independent of itself, unconscious, and taking
place against its will, a development involved in the nature
of the case-only through the fact that it creates the prole-
Upa
100 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
tariat as proletariat, misery conscious of its spiritual and
physical misery, inhumanity conscious of its inhumanity
and therefore annihilating itself. The proletariat fulfills the
sentence pronounced upon itself by wage-labour in creating
another's wealth and its own misery. When the proletariat
triumphs, it then by no means becomes the absolute side of
society, since it triumphs only in that it annihilates itself
and its opposite. The proletariat itself disappears no less
than its conditioning opposite, private property.'
It is quite obvious in this most perfect of "dialectic
constructions" that the only dynamic force-the only
thing which prevents it all from standing still right
where it is—is the Hegelian Logic. All existing things
or subjects of discourse, are self-contradictions, and all
self-contradictions are bound by a logical necessity to
resolve themselves in a higher unity. Therefore when
you have shown the given subject of discourse, capitalist
society, to be a self-contradiction, you are under no
necessity to prove that it will be resolved in a higher
unity. You may show how it will be resolved, but that
is merely a matter of logical deduction, and not a problem
in dynamics.
Of course Marx outgrew this naïve and ludicrously
metaphysical way of expressing himself. He learned,
as all good classical philosophers do, to mix the facts
and the animistic presuppositions so intricately that it
takes a lifetime to divide them. But just the same he
did not move one step from his original position, so far
as concerns empirically proving the dynamics of his
inevitable revolution. His theorizing about the abstract
idea of surplus value helped him in the conviction that
class-conflict, which he saw to be from the standpoint
of his practical effort the most important feature of capitalist
society, was also from the standpoint of pure knowledge
the inward essence of it. But it was the Hegelian philo-
sophy, with its assertion that the inward essence of “ every-
IDEOLOGY IN "DAS KAPITAL " 101
(C
thing" is conflict, and that all conflicts are bound to be
resolved in higher unities ", which assured him that
his practical effort would succeed. In "Das Kapital ",
as in the "Holy Family ", the force which guarantees
the evolution of capitalism to the point of rupture and
the creation of the communist state, is that same logical
necessity of ascending from the lower to the higher, which
Hegel laid on the whole universe in the name of God.
"Self-earned private property," we read, "based on a
fusion, so to speak, of the separate independent working
individual with the conditions essential to his work, was
supplanted by capitalist private property which rests upon
the exploitation of the formally free labour of others.
(C
As soon as this process of transformation has adequately
disintegrated the old society from top to bottom, as soon as
the workers are changed into proletarians, and the conditions
essential to their labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist
mode of production stands upon its own feet, then the further
socialization of labour, and the further transformation of the
earth and other means of production into socially exploited
and therefore communal means of production, hence the
further expropriation of the private property-owner, takes
a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no
longer the self-managing worker, but the capitalist exploiting
many workers.
"This expropriation is accomplished by the play of the
immanent laws of capitalist production itself, by the central-
ization of capital. One capitalist kills many. Hand in hand
with this centralization, or the expropriation of many capi-
talists by a few, there develops the co-operative form of the
labour-process upon an ever-growing scale, the conscious
technical application of science, the systematic exploitation
of the soil, the transformation of the means of labour into a
means only to be employed in common, the economizing of
the means of production through their use as a means of
combined social labour, the entanglement of all people in
the net of the world-market, and therewith the international
character of the capitalist regime. With the continually
diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp
102 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transfor-
mation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation,
exploitation increases, but there increases also the revolt
of the working class, perpetually swelling, and schooled,
united, organized, by the very mechanism of the capitalist
process of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a
fetter upon the mode of production which came to its bloom
with it and under it. The centralization of the means of
production and the socialization of labour reach the point
where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell.
The shell bursts. The hour of capitalist private property
strikes. The expropriators are expropriated.
<<
The capitalist mode of appropriation, growing out of the
capitalist mode of production, and hence capitalist private
property, is the first negation of individual private property
founded upon the individual's labour. But capitalist produc-
tion begets with the necessity of a natural process its own
negation. It is the negation of the negation. This does not
reinstate private property, but just individual ownership
on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era:
operation and the common possession of the earth and
the means of production which are themselves produced
by labour."
CO-
Disregarding the empirical analysis of capitalism in
this passage the formulation of historic and contem-
porary facts-ask only where is located, or whence
derived, the dynamic force which gives certainty of the
motion into the future of this self-contradictory insti-
tution. That dynamic force is simply not to be found.
Unless you have already the habit of assuming that all
that group of facts denoted by the general term "mode
of production are destined by a mystical necessity
to evolve upward, you find no reason here why the shell
of capitalism should inevitably burst. Unless you know
through some avenue that is above the empirical deter-
mination of facts, that all contradictions are bound to
resolve themselves in a higher unity, there is no proof
in these facts that capitalist production creates with
(6
در
IDEOLOGY IN "DAS KAPITAL " 103
the necessity of a natural process the negation of itself ".
There is no proof here, and contrary to a common belief,
there is no proof anywhere in Marx's "Capital ". In
this book as elsewhere, it is by conceiving the class struggle
as a contradiction between two generalizations--the
capitalist forces of production and the capitalist produc-
tion-relations—and inferring the victory of the prole-
tariat as a logical conclusion according to the Hegelian
system, that Marx arrives at that "iron necessity of
socialism, which is supposed to rest upon the over-
whelming assemblage and analysis of facts in "Das
Kapital". It rests upon the relics of religious meta-
physics; it has no other foundation.
""
The Hegelian philosophy, which professed to portray
an eternally fluid and evolving universe, nevertheless
managed to bring that universe to a stationary goal in
the knowledge of this very Hegel's philosophy, and the
tempered blessings of the limited monarchy so generously
and so long promised by his gracious sovereign, Frederick
William the Third. And Marx's equally fluid although
material universe, boasting an equally perfect and eternal
evolution, comes to a dead stop when the dictatorship
of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie has been resolved
by the formation of "an association which excludes
classes and their antagonisms ". Is it a mere coincidence
that Marx's economic and inward knowledge of the
laws of history cannot extend a little forward towards
another contradiction, or that it does not fall a little short, or
lose a trifle of its iron certainty, before that perfect point
is reached? Is it not quite obvious that it is not Marx's
knowledge, but his purpose, that is being expressed ?
-
Newton's Law of Gravitation, which can be stated
in one simple sentence, and upon the verification of
which the whole scientific mind of man may be said to
have been working, disinterestedly and without ulterior
104 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"
purpose, for two hundred and fifty years, is now called
into question in the light of newly discovered facts.
And yet the Hegelian Marxist asks us, in the name of
natural science", to believe that this ponderous philo-
sophico-economical construction, comprised in three
enormous volumes, in no one of which is anything so
clear as the political passion of its authors, is a sure and
accurate statement of the exact law of development of
all human history, whose "iron necessity
iron necessity" can be
depended on up to and including that “ leap from the
kingdom of necessity into the kingdom of freedom",
which is a perfect utopian name for the communist
society. It is a stultification of the mind to believe it.
Marx's "Capital" has been called "The working-
man's Bible ", and no more true and fundamental criticism
of it can be made than that. It is a book in which the
working class can find not only the "most adequate
expression of its conditions and its aspirations "—to
quote the phrase of Engels-but also the assurance that
these have their due place in a universal scheme of evolu-
tion toward something better, and that in the due course
of history, with a necessity that is absolute if not divine,
they are to be satisfied and fulfilled. They are to be
satisfied on this earth, and not in heaven. The God
who is to satisfy them is not a Loving Father, but a
Passionless Process. The mystery which surrounds
him is not emotional, but intellectual. And the mode of
communion with him is not prayer, but terribly confusing
hard work with the brain. These are the principal
distinctions between Marx's Capital and other
kinds of Bibles, and they are not fundamental. They
are not comparable to the distinction between a Bible
and [a text-book in Mechanical Engineering. That
book tells you how to do something, it does not tell you
what is going to be done.
""
""
IDEOLOGY IN "DAS KAPITAL " 105
If Marx had understood [the art of practical thinking,]
Das Kapital" might have been as great a book as
the Hegelian Marxians think it is. And one aspect
of its greatness would have been its brevity. It takes a
long time to get your passionate purposes thoroughly
wound up and lost in a mental reflection" of the
material world. But it does not take so long to set forth
the features of that world which are relevant to the
(C
attainment of your purposes. "Das Kapital" contains
the material necessary to prove that our system of produc-
tion for profit through the exploitation of labour is
inexpedient and uncivilized, and undesirable to anyone
who takes the view-point of a true and free human
society. And it also contains the material necessary
to prove that this system is unstable, and will with
[practical certainty give rise to imperialistic wars and other
crises of a potentially revolutionary character. Indirectly
it justifies the revolutionary purpose of Marx, and warrants
his belief in the practical possibilities of the class struggle.
Taken just as it is, however, the merit of " Das Kapital
lies chiefly in a certain honorific intellectual decoration
that it has bestowed upon the workers' movement. It
has shown that a professor of revolution can be just as
erudite and irrelevant as any other professor. To offset
this, it has put upon the revolutionary propagandist the
task of defending a thesis absolutely unessential to his
task, and wholly beyond the power of the human mind to
prove.
""
CHAPTER XII
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
ACCOMPLISHED Marxists, besides knowing the universe
to be a dialectic process, are supposed to possess a
dialectic method of thinking, which is appropriate to
such a universe, and which constitutes the essence of
revolutionary wisdom. Let us examine this " method of
thinking" in its origin and development.
The dialectic philosophy as we have seen was a bold
manœuvre in the defence of animism against science.
Science has always occupied itself with changes, and
animism has survived for the most part as an assertion
of the Changeless which lies behind and beyond them.
As science more and more invades and occupies the mind,
however, this Changeless becomes more and more
dubious. It becomes less and less interesting. It is a
dying God. Hegel revived it by saying that it is Change
-the one immortal, absolute, unchanging Principle-
and that it does not dwell behind, or beyond, but in the
subject-matter of science. If he had left the matter there,
however, his manœuvre would not have been successful,
for he would merely have transferred into the laboratories
of science all the consecrated enthusiasm which he was
trying to save for the Church. He had to have some
mode of communion with this God, which is the subject-
matter of science, besides science itself, which is a matter-
of-fact investigation of His various parts and modes of
procedure, and a rather irreverent attempt to control
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
107
them. He had to have a religious ceremony. And that
was the original function of what is called "dialectic √
thinking".
ฟ
1
It is obvious that real thinking, whose function is to
adjust us to the particular parts of a changing world and
enable us to "manage" them, is not very well adapted
to the task of reproducing in our minds the exact nature
of this world as a whole. The only way to manage a world
of change is to discover reliable uniformities, and estab-✓
lish fixed points, within it. And that is what real thinking
does. It forms concepts with fixed meanings and fixed
logical relations to each other, and it applies these fixed
concepts to a world which is not fixed. They do some
violence to the world-they falsify it to some extent-
but they enable us to get along with it. And their fixity
in contrast with its flux, is exactly what gives these con-
cepts their value. Intellectual people, however, who live
among ideas as though they were things, and may be
likened in that respect to insane people, usually forget
this fact. They get to imagining that logical concepts
can be strung together in such a form that they will
actually somehow reproduce reality, or to use the phrase
of Engels," represent the exact nature of the universe ".
And having devised this neat fancy, they are seriously
disturbed when something reminds them that it is not
so. They are disturbed when you point out, for instance,
that the very fact of motion is a little illogical. A body
logically must be ", you say, at any given moment
either in one place or another, and therefore it logically
cannot be at any given moment on its way from one to
the other. An unintellectual, and as you may say, natural
person, is not bothered by this observation, because he
knows that motion is a fact, and the business of thinking
is to deal with facts, and not lay down laws for them.
When reality slips out of the grip of logic, that is to the
((
108 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
natural mind a joke, and not a difficulty. But to the
learned intellectual who seeks to contain the universe
in his thoughts, or at least put it away on the shelves of
his library, the accident is serious. And so he is prepared
for the assertion of some deep-voiced and obscure Philo-
sopher of History, that his very method of thinking is
inadequate and elementary, and that in order to receive
into his mind the exact reality of a world of change, he
must have a new kind of Liquefied Logic, called Hegelian.
. . . Or he is prepared for some more limpid but equally
sonorous Philosopher of Biology, who tells him that logic
must be transcended entirely, and a new kind of Vital
Intuition, called Bergsonian, put in its place. It makes
no difference. He is prepared to be led out of the
laboratory and into the temple.
Hegel availed himself of the fact that thought is not
a mere reproduction of the flux of reality, in order to
establish in good scientific repute, and yet over and above
science, his religious ceremony of "dialectic thinking ",
which pretends that it is a reproduction of the flux of
reality. He was thus able to save the essence of animism
-its peculiar mode of communion with an external world
-and yet concede that the subject-matter of science really
is the substance of this world. He was able to combine
the comforts of rationalistic religion with a hard empirical
realism. He attacked the mystics, he attacked all forms
of the idea of transcendent being, as harshly as any
merchant-chemist would. But in proportion as he
attacked the idea of transcendent being, he emphasized
the idea of transcendent thinking—the ineffable logic,
the mystery of the philosopher's disciplined meditation,
which gives us the pure essence of that evolving God
of whom science itself is but an inherent part. And he
declared with noble sincerity for all who wish to know,
that this speculative logic-this peculiar disciplined
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
109
mystery of thinking, called philosophy-" is itself a
Divine Service, is a religion ".
""
It seems strange that Marx and Engels, who were so
fond of the saying of Feuerbach that "the metaphysician
is but a priest in disguise ", should have been completely
hookwinked by a metaphysician who frankly abandoned
the disguise. But it is a fact which can be established
by examining any one of the official expositions of the
Marxian dialectic method". It is not a method of
thinking; you could not learn one definite thing about the
practical art of thinking by reading these expositions.
It is the relic of a religious-intellectual ceremony which
has been preserved, over and above the practical business
of thinking, and for a different purpose. Engels, in his
chapter on the dialectic, calls the Negation of the Nega-
tion an extremely far-reaching and important law
of development of Nature. . . ." But he speaks with
high scorn of the idea that Marx used this law in order
to prove anything.
"
"It shows a complete lack of insight into the nature of the
dialectic when Herr Dühring takes it for an instrument of
mere proof. . . . The dialectic, besides transcending the
narrow horizon of formal logic, contains the germ of a more
comprehensive view of the world."
And again :
"With the mere knowledge that the stalk of barley and
infinitesimal calculation fall under the law of the Negation
of the Negation, I can neither successfully raise barley, nor
differentiate and integrate. . . ."
Is it not rather naïve, in expounding an important and
far-reaching law of nature, to confess, first, that your
law of nature does not enable you to prove anything, and
second, that it does not enable you to do or produce
110 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
anything and this, too, in a philosophy which declares
that "in practice man must prove the truth-the reality,
power, this-worldliness, of his thoughts"? A law of
nature is a statement that under such and such circum-
stances such a thing will happen, or that if I do a certain
thing, I shall get a certain result. Could Engels make
it clearer that the Negation of the Negation is not a law
of nature? It is a loose and not even poetically interesting
analogy between certain curiosities of abstract thinking,
and a way of viewing certain natural processes-a thing
completely inconsequential to any person not in need
upon emotional grounds of a super-scientific mode of
knowing" the perfect Reality.
<<
(C
In another passage Engels plainly declares that ordinary
practical thinking is all right for "everyday purposes ",
but it is inadequate to the task of giving an exact
representation of the universe. . . ." It is inadequate
because it draws a sharp distinction between such things,
for instance, as plant and animal, alive and dead, cause
and effect. Every jurist knows that you cannot determine
an exact moment at which a man ceases to be alive
and becomes dead. Every biologist knows that the
distinction between plant and animal breaks down among
the elementary forms of life. And everybody in the
world knows that what is regarded in one connection as
an effect, has to be regarded in another connection as
a cause. Nature slips out of our fixed concepts; nothing
is more certain than this fact. But the thought which
recognizes this fact, is just the same kind of thought as
any other. The inferences to be drawn from it, must be
drawn in the same way as other inferences. And the
inference of Engels that we must try to introduce into
those fixed concepts themselves the fluidity and logical
unreliability of nature, has no warrant whatever in the
fact. Our idea of alive, he says, in effect, should also
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
III
be an idea of dead, our idea of plant should include
that of animal, and our antithesis between cause and effect,
which "only holds good in its application to individual
cases should be abandoned in favour of a fluid concep-
tion of cause and effect as two things which are at the
same time themselves and each other. Even if it were
advisable, it is obviously impossible to think with such
concepts, and nobody ever did so think, from Heraclitus
to Lenin. But because Hegel called real thinking
metaphysical ", and adopted this clever name of dia-
lectic for his perfectly metaphysical emotional communion
with Absolute Change-which is related to real thinking
just as a rotten spot is related to an apple-Marx and
Engels, and every orthodox disciple of their science,
including Lenin himself, has been induced to believe
that he thinks with concepts each of which logically
includes its opposite.
(C
<<
The real inference to be drawn from the fact that our
thoughts do not give us an exact representation of
the universe", is that we should cease putting up the
pretence that they do. We should frankly acknowledge
the instrumental character of all concepts, and face the
fact that whatever generality and durability certain
ones may attain, the only thing they can ultimately be
relied upon to do is to solve specific problems. Know-
ledge is a thing to be found in practical good sense, and
in the various sciences, and nowhere else. Not only is
there no such thing as dialectic thinking, but there is
no such super-intellectual knowledge of "the exact
nature of the universe" as that to which an alleged dia-
lectic thinking pretends to give access. You can discover
realities, and experience them, and convey these experi-
ences enriched and vivified in poetry, and you can define
realities and interpret them for purposes of adjustment
in practical language. You can mix poetry with practical
در
112 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
language to make it lovable or persuasive. Beyond this
you have the super-logical self-deception and nobly
arduous nonsense of the metaphysicians, which makes
you work harder, but has no other motive and no other
practical significance than the sub-logical and simple
nonsense of the professors of occultism. Neither of them
has any place in a science of revolution.
People who are the most realistic in all other spheres,
are just the ones most easily led away by myths in the
sphere of psychology. It is because they are not intro-
spective, and do not take any psychological statements
as real statements of fact. It never occurs to them that
a description of the process of thought is, or ought to
be, just as specific and definite and subject to concrete
verification as a description of the process of digestion.
It would never occur to Lenin, for instance, that a good
way to find out how a Marxian thinks, is to set a Marxian
down at a table and let him honestly describe the process
by which he reached some simple conclusion. And a
way to verify what you learn by that experiment, is to
set another Marxian down at another table, and let him
describe the process by which he reached another con-
clusion. After about two hours expended in that merely
preliminary scientific fashion, the whole myth about
negating negations, and seeking in everything for its
opposite, and never resting in an affirmative statement,
and studying everything in its logical self-movement,
its inner hostility against itself, and remembering that
things can be both themselves and their opposites, and
that cause and effect merge into each other, and that
quantity becomes quality, and that nature makes jumps—
this whole mixture of scientific commonplace with Hege-
lian higher-logical buncombe, which is being poured
out by the centres of communist education in Russia
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
113
under the guise of instruction in the art of thinking—
would go up in the air and be forgotten forever. If
quantities become qualities, or if nature makes jumps,
that is a statement of fact, and it has no more bearing
upon the art of thinking than any other statement of fact.
The task of thinking is to determine, if possible, just
when and just where these specific events and others are
likely to occur, and how they can be made to occur.
And there is not a word of indication in all the literature
that has been spread abroad on this subject of dialectic
method, as to how that task can be fulfilled. Psychology is
indeed an infant science, but it has enough power of fact
in it to destroy this overgrown and fantastic mythology,
and it ought to be made a compulsory subject of study
for every Marxian.
The fact that Lenin did believe in " dialectic thinking
will seem to many readers to disprove everything that
I say. Lenin was perhaps the most effective political
thinker in history, and he was one of the most adroit.
And Lenin believed that his thinking was "dialectic ";
he cultivated his mind in the shadow of this belief. There
must be some value in dialectic thinking, then, besides
ceremonial communion with a God of change. And
indeed there is a value-not in dialectic thinking, for
that does not exist-but in believing that you think dia-
lectically. And this value, instead of being in conflict
with what I have said, is exactly the proof of it. Believing
in dialectic thinking is a method by which having made
false intellectualistic assumptions about the nature of
thought, you can escape from them, and win back your
freedom to use thought as it was meant to be used.
If you know in the first place that thought is purposive,
and that logical concepts and all fixed principles are but
the instruments of action, then you are free to think
H
در
114 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
¿
practically in a changing situation. You are free from
the domination of fixed ideas. You know that purpose
alone should dominate, and that ideas must always give
way before facts, you know that you must continually
recur to the facts, and be ready to remodel your ideas
to meet any unanticipated factual development. You
know that the more "theoretical " your ideas are the
farther removed, that is, from mere statements of concrete
fact-the more purely their truth consists in the success.
of their practical application. And since practical appli-
cation must always be concrete and specific, you know
that truth is concrete and specific. All general statements,
and statements of what is true "in the abstract ", are
subject to suspicion. In short there are no fixed points
in thought, besides the beginning and the end of thinking,
and there is no possibility that thought, conceived as an
instrument of specific purposes, can ever arrive at any-
thing more" absolute " than the statement of concrete facts.
All these things you will understand and assume,
without the aid of any mythology, if you know that thought
is a purposive function. But if you imagine that thought
is a purely intellectual reflection of reality, and that
logical ideas are automatic pictures of fact, then there
is only one way to get free from the domination of the
fixed meaning of those ideas. There is only one way
to justify yourself in changing them, and subordinating
them to your purpose and to the facts in a changing
situation. And that is to declare that it is the logical
nature of those ideas themselves to change. That is
what Lenin did. The "dialectic method" with Lenin
was simply a declaration of independence from the
domination of fixed concepts. It was a metaphysical
contraption by which he managed to defend his right
to use thoughts naturally, in spite of an unnatural con-
ception of what thoughts are.
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
115
This may be proven, not only by examining the actual
manner in which Lenin used thoughts, but by examining
what he said about the dialectic itself. It is obvious that
if dialectic thinking is what it pretends to be-a thinking
with the self-contradictory concepts of the Hegelian
speculative logic-then the first point to emphasize
in teaching somebody to do it, is universal self-contra-
diction and the negation of the negation. And it is
noticeable that Lenin, in the one passage in which he
really undertook to explain what the dialectic is, not only
did not mention this obviously preliminary point first,
but he did not mention it at all. There is just one single
idea in Lenin's statement of what "dialectic logic de-
mands ", which distinctly and exclusively recalls Hegel's
logic. Lenin says first, that we must not imagine that
any one definition of an object exhausts its nature. A
tumbler, for instance, may be defined as a glass cylinder,
a thing to drink from, a prison for butterflies, and in
many other ways. It is the same way with a labour
union. We must study "all sides " of a thing, and “all
its connections". Second, we must study a thing in its
change and development-and here he adds in quotation
marks the word "self-movement ", which is Hegelian-
metaphysical. Third, “all human practice must enter
into our full definition of a thing, both as criterion of
truth, and as practical determiner of its connection with
what is needful to mankind". And fourth, "dialectic
logic teaches that there is no abstract truth, truth is
always concrete"".
(
That is the whole of Lenin's explicit instruction to his
followers in the art of dialectic thinking. It was given
at a moment when the question which of two groups
was thinking dialectically, and which "scholastically
had been raised in connection with a critical problem in
Soviet politics. And although Lenin added that "he
""
116 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
did not of course exhaust the concept of dialectic logic ",
it is certain that he stated what its essential practical
meaning was to him. And if you wish to see that meaning
summed up in one word, you have it here, in one of his
last attacks upon the leaders of the Second International :
They call themselves Marxists, but understand Marxism
to an impossible degree pedantically. The decisive thing in
Marxism they completely fail to understand, namely, its
revolutionary dialectic. Even the direct statement of Marx
that revolutionary moments demand a maximum of flexi-
bility, is unintelligible to them. . . .
""
<<
That is what "dialectic thinking meant to Lenin.
It meant flexibility—a maximum of flexibility, as opposed
to the " pedantry" of ordinary intellectualism. It meant
that ideas should be handled as instruments of action,
and not actions mechanically deduced from ideas. Every
one of the four demands of " dialectic logic
dialectic logic ", according
to Lenin, is a simple application of the essence of the
functional view of intelligence. And not one of them
gives a hint of the essence of the Hegelian logic.
↓
As we have seen, Marxism has been a perpetual struggle
between metaphysical presuppositions and practical
revolutionary realism. Lenin's wisdom was simply
the highest development of that practical realism. And
his forgetting about the law of self-contradiction was
an indispensable part of his wisdom. For that "law"
is not only superfluous, but it is hostile, to the achievement
of flexibility. It is a perfect example of one of those
pretended abstract truths, which make impossible the
concrete adjustment of ideas to the moving variety of
facts. Marx did not succeed in forgetting this "abstract
truth" as well as Lenin did, but even he managed to
keep it usually out of the way of his practical thinking.
And when it came to summarizing the dialectic in a
در
THE DIALECTIC METHOD
117
"C
"
it as a
word, he said the same thing that Lenin did. He described
free movement " of the mind in the empirical
material". Engels too declared that "the kernel of
the dialectic view" is a knowledge that nature is fluid,
and that "fixity and absoluteness are the products of our
own minds". Plekhanov said that "the search for
concrete truth constitutes the distinguishing feature of
dialectic thinking "-which is but another way of saying
flexibility, and freedom of movement in the empirical
material, for it is only “abstract truths" which deprive
us of this freedom.
All these statements by great Marxists of what seems
to them the essential factor in the dialectic method, ignore
what must obviously be the essential factor of thinking
based upon Hegel's logic. They all point directly to
the essential factor in thinking which understands its
origin, and is consciously purposive. Practical Marxists
have merely used the idea of this mysterious logic, in
order to gain the freedom to think purposively in spite
of their education. It has been a way out of intellectualis-
tic presuppositions into the world of practical action.
With Hegel it was a way out of these same presuppositions
into a world of metaphysical emotion. Abandon those
intellectualistic presuppositions, and you destroy both
of these "ways out". But you find yourself in the world
of practical action, for that is the real world in which the
function of thinking actually developed.
PART II
THE SCIENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY
ENGINEERING
CHAPTER I
MARXISM AS A SCIENCE
THE motion of thought, in its origin and main develop-
ment, is a motion back and forth and round about among
given facts, desired ends, and plans of action for achieving
the ends upon the basis of the facts. When thinking
becomes very abstract and is cultivated for its own sake,
or when an attempt is made to state the nature of certain
facts independently of their relation to any specific
end, this natural process is considerably changed, and a
number of difficult problems about it arise. But these
problems do not arise in connection with any thinking,
no matter how "theoretical ", which is concerned with
the concrete practical problems of human life. Such
thinking always conforms, whether consciously and with
exactitude or not, to the instrumental pattern. The
emphasis in any given case may be upon an accurate
definition of the factual situation-but even here the
end will show its influence in the facts selected and the
manner of their formulation. Or the emphasis may be
upon a delineation of the end, or ideal-though here
still more obviously the existing facts will appear. And
if the emphasis is upon a precision of the hypothesis, or
plan of action, still the situation must be designated in
which it is to be applied, and the end must be defined
in order to put it to the test of action. These three
elements are all united compactly in perception, and
practical thought only separates them tentatively and
imperfectly, and for the purpose of uniting them again.
j
122 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
*↓
Marxism, liberated from the metaphysical frame in
which Marx tried to confine it, can be very easily restated
in the form of a practical science. It was created by
combining three intellectual disciplines: that of the
classical economists, who had occupied themselves with
a definition of the existing mechanism of human society;
that of the utopian socialists who had put their emphasis
upon the delineation of an ideal society; and that of the
young Hegelians who were absorbed in the idea of historic
process. Marxism as a practical science redefines the
existing mechanism of society from the standpoint of
the ends proposed by the utopian socialists; it redefines
those ends from the standpoint of the facts of economics;
and it points out the method of procedure by which it
will be possible to take a real step from the existing
situation in the direction of the desired ends.
Marx saw, to begin with, that economics does define the
essential mechanism of human society. This society is
predominantly neither a political nor a "civil" gathering,
but a business association; and the major forces
which control its operation are economic class-interests.
Anyone who wants to change any human society funda-
mentally must attack its economic structure, and he
must work with these economic forces. Approaching
with this wisdom the society of our own day, Marx
identified the two facts of essential importance for those
who want to change it in the direction suggested by the
utopians-the fact that the production of wealth is
becoming more and more co-operative, and the fact that
the control of this process is becoming more and more
centralized, and concentrated in the hands of a small
class. He saw that both these tendencies would increase
with the further invention of machinery. He concluded
that the only practical revolutionary plan for our day,
is to transfer this centralized control of the co-operative
MARXISM AS A SCIENCE
123
process of production into the hands of the producers
collectively organized. And he saw further that the
only force capable of accomplishing this change is the
revolutionary self-interest of the producers themselves,
the wage-working class. The Marxian method is to
accentuate the class struggle between workers and capi-
talists, organize it both nationally and internationally,
and carry it forward,fundeceived by political forms and
ideologies, and in full consciousness of the ruthlessness
of the forces in play, to the goal of a revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat. Such a dictatorship could
actually expropriate the owners of the land and the
instruments of labour, and reduce them to the position
of equal participators in the social process of produc-
tion. That fundamental step having been taken, human
society could begin to move in the direction of[freedom,
and political sincerity, and international peace, and an
opportunity of life for every member of it. ... That
is what Marxism is, in outline, in so far as it is a
concrete science of revolution, and not an abstract
philosophy of the universe.
Having been formulated as a system of historic meta-
physics, this practical science is naturally imperfect and
incomplete. It particularly needs supplementing with
an investigation and formulation, from the point of
view of the revolutionary purpose, off the facts of human
nature. It needs verification and guidance from the
science of psychology. And that is the same thing as
saying that it needs to become more concrete. For
there is no other opposition between Marxism as a science
and the science of psychology, except that the one is a
broad generalization and the other a detailed investi-
gation. They contemplate [the same facts, and their
view of these facts is in profound harmony. Not only
does the psychology of Freud bear out in a startling
ل.
124
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
*
way Marx's generalization about past history, but the
conception of the hereditary nature of man which prevails
among biological and experimental psychologists confirms
unconditionally Marx's rejection of utopian-evangelical
methods for producing in the future an industrially
democratic commonwealth. It is possible for a psycholo-
gist who is scientific to deny the possibility of producing
such a commonwealth, but it would be hard for him
to deny that the method of class struggle and proletarian
dictatorship is the only method yet proposed which takes
into consideration the facts of human nature. Instead
of being afraid of psychology, as the Marxian philosophers
are, a Marxian scientist would embrace it with enthusiasm
as offering a final and more cogent, because more factually
analytical, confirmation of his general plan of work.
It is not the present business to outline the science of
human behaviour as it relates to the revolutionary purpose.
But one thing at least may be stated, because it flows
from the very terms in which the problem arises. Such a
science will make a clear and vital distinction between the
general mass of mankind in society, and those indi-
viduals who have risen above their own social position
in order to understand society as a whole, and devote
themselves to an effort to improve it. It will put a new
emphasis upon the separate identity and unusual motiva-
tion of the revolutionary scientist himself. It will make
no effort to conceal the peculiar relation in which he stands
to the human material with which he works. Marx
himself recognized this distinction in the early days
before the dialectic metaphysics had crystallized in his
mind.
"The materialistic teaching," he wrote, " that men are a pro-
duct of environment and education-changed men, therefore,
the product of other environment and changed education-
forgets that the environment is changed by men, and that the
MARXISM AS A SCIENCE
125
educator himself has to be educated. It becomes necessary,
therefore, to divide society into two parts of which the one
is elevated above society." And to this, in order to make
the meaning unmistakable, Engels added in parenthesis
the words "Robert Owen ”.
If this "division of society" had been kept in mind.
by Marx and Engels, and made as much of as the division
of society into proletariat and bourgeoisie, scientific
socialism would have a very different aspect from what
it has. Instead of being described as " a union of science
with the proletariat ", it would be described as a union
of scientists, or of scientific idealists-who may or may
not be of proletarian origin—with the proletariat. Such
a description is true to the human facts, or will be true
to them, at least, when socialism really becomes a science.
And it will inevitably come to the front as soon as a
chapter on human nature is embodied in a practical
text-book of revolution.
In order to teach the science of revolution to a mind
uncorrupted by metaphysics, one should begin, it seems
to me, with an outline of the idea of a true society, as it
has been developed by the great utopians all the way
from Plato to Kropotkin. Everyone who is alive enough
to be educated will have a certain interest in that idea.
And then one should explain that these utopians, although
their idea was not unreasonable, were impractical in
their attitude toward it. For, proposing the most gigantic
undertaking conceivable on this earth, they devoted the
main part of their thoughts to describing what an improve-
ment the result would be, and how reasonable and beau-
tiful it was. A gigantic practical undertaking demands
first an examination of the existing materials and forces,
and the formation upon the basis of this examination of
a plan for achieving it. It is this examination and defini-
tion of fact, with a view to achieving an otherwise utopian
1
126 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
idea, which constitutes the essential scientific work of
Karl Marx. His plan can be shown to grow inevitably
out of an adequate comprehension and bold facing of
the facts. It is the only plan yet proposed which these
facts do not clearly prove to be impractical. . .
In this way Marxism could be taught without mysticism,
and without pretending that human thought is something
else besides what it is. The teaching would have a
different emphasis according as the student himself
were a member of the working class, or of the propertied
intelligentsia, but it would not differ in its essential
simple character of pointing the way out of a situation
that is unsatisfactory.
CHAPTER II
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
SCIENTIFIC procedure has to be distinguished, not only
from religious ceremony, but also from magic, from all
the relics of the profane practice of the Medicine Man—
alchemy, astrology, and so forth. The distinction here
is not one of emotional motive or general mental attitude,
for both the magician and the scientist attempt to change,
or adjust themselves to, a world which they conceive as
impersonal. The distinction lies in their attitude to the
unchangeable or uncontrollable element in that world.
The magician ignores this element, or reduces it in his
imagination to a negligible minimum. The desired end
plays the predominant part in his thinking, the given
facts play almost no part at all. The scientist not only
pays attention to those given facts, but he spends the
best of his time ascertaining their exact character and
defining them. His effort to change and control the
world is based upon and guided by a definition of what
is unchangeable or uncontrollable about it. Thus, for
example, the alchemists of the Middle Ages attempted
by every sort of random device to convert various sub-
stances into gold, but they did not examine the interior
structure of these substances or the laws of their behaviour.
The science of chemistry was born when Robert Boyle
turned his attention exclusively to determining that
interior structure and those laws. But the original
purpose was in principle only postponed; the science
of chemistry may yet succeed, it seems, in converting
other substances into gold.
128 A
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
(C
Now Marxism-in so far as it is a science, and not a
philosophy-bears substantially the same relation to the
efforts of utopian-evangelical reformers, that chemistry
does to the efforts of alchemists. It defines the structure
of human society and determines the forces which control
it, and upon the basis of those given facts which are not
changeable, it proposes a method by which human
society can be changed. Revolutionary anarchism, on
the contrary, clings to the attitude of the alchemists,
and the utopians. It merely adds the mystic act of
insurrection against government to the spells of reasonable
eloquence, that were supposed to "call up" the ideal
society. The relation of anarchists to a real science of
revolution is the same as that of amateur healers
the survivors of wizardry-to the science of medicine.
They survive by refusing to acknowledge, or concentrate
their attention upon, the unchangeable or uncontrollable
elements in the given facts, to formulate these elements
in "laws ", and thus arrive at a systematic procedure
by which the given facts can be actually and not only
imaginatively changed or controlled. The procedure of
the revolutionary anarchist, generally speaking, is to
dwell upon the idea of a true society, and assist at
moments of crisis in destroying the existing order, in the
faith that this idea will be realized. That this is not the
procedure of practical science is obvious, and it could
be explained very simply and convincingly by Marxists,
if Marxism itself were a practical science.
✓
But since the practical science in Marxism was misborn
and crippled to fit the forms of a metaphysical religion,
its relation to anarchism is by no means so simple. There
are certain respects in which Marxism is the less scientific
of the two. It is less scientific in its attitude toward the
goal of revolutionary effort. Just as the anarchists, in
their preoccupation with the goal, fail to consider the
""
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
129
facts and the method of procedure, so the Marxists in
their apotheosis of the facts and the method, fail to con-
sider the goal. It was possible for Marx, under the guise
of a "philosophy of history", to define the relevant
facts; and in the dress of "historic necessity "it was
possible to present a plan of action. But Marx's religion
offered no device by which he could adequately investi-
gate the third problem essential to a scientific procedure,
the problem of the possibility and appropriateness of
the ideal, or objective end, of the undertaking. Instead
of examining and redefining this ideal in the light of his
definition of the facts, Marx merely ceased to talk about
it. His dialectic religion assured him that the "contra-
dictions" in capitalism must inevitably be "resolved "
by an expropriation of the capitalists, and a collective
ownership of the means of production. It also declared
that the state, which had arisen out of these contradic-
tions, would "die away" after they were resolved. This
was sufficient for a preliminary definition of his purpose-
a determination of the general direction of activities at
least up to the conquest of power. And any remaining
questions Marx answered by tacking on to these two
conceptions, in a very undialectic and irresponsible
manner, the most utopian of all the formulæ for the
millennium: "From each according to his abilities,
to each according to his needs." That is the extent of
the Marxian science, so far as concerns drawing up a
prospectus, or ground plan, of the thing to be achieved.
It was quite inevitable that Marx, imagining his own
plan of action to be a description of what history was
about to do, should thus leave to "history" the lion's
share of the worry about the end to be arrived at. And
it was inevitable that his followers, imagining Marx's
metaphysical personification of history to be a materialistic
science, should resist as unscientific " every impulse
tr
I
130 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
of simple and sensible-minded people to make some
inquiries about it.
"What is the value henceforth," says Plekhanov, "of
those more or less laborious and more or less ingenious
researches as to the best possible form of social organization?
None, literally none! They can only testify to the lack of
scientific instruction of those who enter upon them. Their
day is past forever."
If Plekhanov had been a practical man, he could not
have failed to see that if there is no need of defining
the goal of your efforts, there is no need of guiding them.
If the economic God is taking care of the remote future,
must He not take care of to-morrow? And if not, then
at what point in the unbroken flow of events, does your
jurisdiction end, and that of the economic God begin?
A practical engineer could not fail to ask this question,
for the simple reason that until it was answered he could
not complete his plans-which reveals again the incom-
patibility of all philosophies of absolute determinism with
all practical science.
The fact is that a definition of the goal of revolutionary
effort, while it must remain, during the early stages of
the undertaking, abstract and free and subject to radical
redefinition, is nevertheless indispensable to scientific
procedure. Without investigating at least the abstract
possibility of the society aimed at, its compatibility with
✔ the hereditary instincts of man, and thus the probability
of its enduring if it were once established, no maturely
scientific person would devote himself to the effort. The
utopian socialists had begun such an investigation, and
in abandoning it Marxism took a step backward from
utopian socialism. The anarchists have continued this
✔investigation, and that constitutes their chief contribution
to the science of revolution.
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
131
The question put by anarchism," says Kropotkin," might
be expressed in the following way: Which social forms
best guarantee in such and such societies, and in humanity
at large, the greatest sum of happiness and therefore the
greatest sum of vitality? Which forms of society are most
likely to allow this sum of happiness to increase and develop
in quantity and quality—that is to say, will enable this happi-
ness to become more complete and more varied ? ' ”
"(
Kropotkin brought a vast body of biological and histori-
cal data to bear upon this important-and in a proper
scientific procedure, preliminary-question. His book
"Mutual Aid” is of the highest revolutionary-scientific
importance. He neglected, or refused to see, the relevance
to his problem of the data supplied by Marx in his study
of modern capitalism. And like all modern revolutionary
writers he ignored the contributions of psychology. For
these reasons his writings are inadequate and in need of
revision. But they remain, both in their attitude and
their information upon the question of the goal of revolu-
tionary effort, a long stride in advance of Marxism.
<<
Another matter in which the anarchists are in advance
of the Marxists, is their conscious renunciation of meta-
physics, their unfulfilled, but real aspiration toward a√
practical scientific attitude. Bakunin's early protest
against the everlasting theoretical insanity" of Karl
Marx, runs through all the great anarchist literature, and
it is essentially wise and just. It is the protest of all
simple minds, with a healthy love for clarity and
directness, against tangling up the real act of revolution
in the unreal and awful ponderosities of German
metaphysics.
Bakunin himself did not entirely escape from that
theoretical insanity which he despised; he wrote his
share of Hegelian higher nonsense. And Proudhon,
the other founder of modern anarchism, was only saved
from it by his ignorance. Nevertheless they both repre-
132
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
sent in their conflict with Marx, the tendency toward a
more direct and natural use of the practical function of
intelligence. Marx's famous attack upon the philosophic
pretences of Proudhon is a pitiless exposure of the
philosophic infirmities of Marx.
(C
Let us see now," he says, the modification to which
Herr Proudhon subjects the dialectic of Hegel in applying
it to political economy. For Herr Proudhon, every economic
category has two sides, a good and a bad
"The good side and the bad side, the advantage and the
disadvantage taken together, constitute for Herr Proudhon
the contradiction in each economic category.
"The problem to solve: to conserve the good side, and
eliminate the bad. ...
<<
•
Hegel has no problems to put. He knows only the dia-
lectic. Herr Proudhon has of the Hegelian dialectic nothing
but the phraseology. His own dialectic method consists in
the dogmatic distinction of good and evil.
CC
Let us for an instant take Herr Proudhon himself as a
category. Let us examine his good and his bad side, his
advantages and his disadvantages
•
ور
Marx is amusing in this polemic, and he successfully
convicts Herr Proudhon of bombastic pretentiousness
and a complete ignorance of philosophy. But ignorance
of philosophy is a kind of wisdom. And it is certain that
in the above passage Proudhon's naïveté is both wiser
and more scientific than Marx's sophistication. Marx
gave his life to an attempt to solve the problem, how " to
preserve the good side while eliminating the bad side"
of modern capitalism. That is the simple fact. And a
person who understands psychological facts can only
smile at the sophomoric assurance with which Marx
asserts what he had learned at school to the contrary.
Marx was not defending science here against the senti-
mentality of Herr Proudhon. He was defending a meta-
physical rationalization of his motives, against that simple
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
133
recognition and definition of them, which might have
been the foundation of a concrete science.
Thus Proudhon's ignorance played the same part as
Bakunin's impatience. It gave to anarchism a tendency
away from metaphysics, and made it seem more practical
and more convincing to many clear and scientific minds,
than Marxism. And Peter Kropotkin, himself a man of
science, raised this wise tendency in his predecessors to
a conscious article of faith. He rejected both the aca-
demic and the Marxian economics on the ground that
they were deductive and metaphysical and ignorant of
the methods of applied science. There is nothing wiser in
revolutionary literature than what he wrote on this subject.
"It is possible," he concluded, "that we are wrong, and
they [the Marxists] are right. But the question which of us
is right, and which wrong, cannot be settled by means of
Byzantine commentaries as to what such and such a writer
intended to say, or by talking about what agrees with the
'trilogy' of Hegel; most certainly not by continuing to use
the dialectic method.
"It can be done only by studying the facts of economics in
the same way and by the same methods as we study the natural
sciences
<<
There is one point upon which without doubt anarchism
is absolutely in the right. It is when it . . . parts forever
with metaphysics."
In spite of this admirable and unanswerable declara-
tion, Kropotkin did not employ the methods of applied
science upon the problem of producing an anarchist-
communist society. Having investigated the question,
What social forms would guarantee to humanity the greatest
sum of happiness and vitality? he did not turn round and
examine the existing social forms with a view to answering
the question, What social procedure will actually move
us from the one situation in the direction of the other?
134 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Having asked, and to the best of his ability answered,
that preliminary question, he abandoned the methods of
applied science altogether, and adopted in its place two
contrary attitudes, between which he shifted back and
forth in a way that serves only the purposes of intellectual
confusion.
One of his attitudes was an ineffectual pretence at
pure" science. That is to say, he objectively predicted
the anarchist-communist society on the basis of "ten-
dencies" which he professed to discover in biology and
human history. It is needless to say that in proving the
predominance of these "tendencies ", he did not employ
those methods of accurate definition, and real verification,
which he advocated so eloquently in his attack upon
Marxism. Kropotkin's assertion on “inductive "grounds
of the inevitability of the communist society, has no more
scientific validity, than the Marxian assertion of the same
thing on the ground of Hegelian Logic.
His other attitude was in the broad sense "practical ",
but it was no less utopian than that of his predecessors.
It consisted of advocating evangelical miracles, and
relying upon a magic supposed to reside in the mere act
of revolution, to accomplish the transformation which
he desired.
66
"For the triumph of the revolution, men must first get
rid of their faith in Law, Authority, Unity, Order, Property,
and other institutions inherited from past times when our
forefathers were slaves.
66
"Without such [insurrectionary] risings, the social mind
was never able to get rid of its deep-rooted prejudices. . . .
The lessons of history tell us that a new form of economic
life always calls forth a new form of political organization
Consequently the chief aim of anarchism is to awaken those
constructive powers of the labouring masses of the people
which at all great moments of history come forward to accom-
plish the necessary changes.
"}
•
THE ANARCHIST CONTRIBUTION
135
These quotations are sufficient to show that Kropotkin
did not succeed, any more than the other anarchists, in
substituting the methods of applied science for Marx's
metaphysical approach to the social problem. The
method of revolutionary anarchism, speaking broadly and
yet with technical accuracy, is to conjure up the communist
society by the magical act of revolution.
This does not prevent a certain co-operation between
anarchists and scientific revolutionists in times of propa-
ganda or preparation. But in a revolutionary crisis,
the scientific procedure by which alone the forces in
revolt can be made to produce a preliminary result in the
desired direction-the proletarian dictatorship-seems to
the anarchist to be the very obstacle preventing the com-
plete magical transformation which he had anticipated.
The more naïvely sincere is his faith in that magical trans-
formation, the more surely will he put himself in oppo-
sition to the scientific movement. He will become a
counter-revolutionary force, and to the extent practically
necessary must be unhesitatingly so dealt with by those
who are trying to do something in real fact, and not only
in emotional imagination.
CHAPTER III
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM
REVOLUTIONARY syndicalism contributed to the attempt
to define an ideal society a conception of the dominating
✔ rôle which might be played by the labour unions—a
conception which will certainly not be passed over by
a mature science of revolution. It also contributed
to revolutionary method a sense of the danger involved
✓ in political activities, the necessity of unusual honesty
in leaders, and the necessity of emphasizing the class
character of the revolution. But syndicalism did not
escape from the utopian mode of thought of the anar-
chists to whom it owes its origin. Like them it solved
the problem presented by the enormous complexity
and inevitable centralization of modern production, by
refusing to face it-by "believing in" decentralization.
It solved the problem of the existing state by wishing
it away. It solved the problem of the future state by
attributing to the labour unions some mysterious pro-
perty which will enable them to rule without being a
government. And to the idea of a General Strike it
attributed occult powers of an altogether unimagined
potency. The General Strike, according to some of
the syndicalist writers, will not only conjure away the
existing state, and the centralization of modern industry,
and transfer the direction of society to the individual
labour unions, but it will regenerate man in a moral
sense, and fill him with a permanent enthusiasm like
that possessed by the soldiers of the French Revolution.
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM
137
It is impossible not to see in this total want of proportion
between cause and effect a survival of the conjuror's
faith in a ritual performance.
Revolutionary syndicalism made utopian thinking
seem more plausible to practical minds by associating
it with references to actually existing working-class
organizations, and by emphasizing the principal action
which these organizations will naturally take in a revo-
tionary crisis. But as a practical method for revolu-
tionizing society, it did not take one solid step away from
that belief in magic, which characterizes the attitude of
the anarchists.I
On the other hand, the syndicalists took a great step
backward from the anarchist position by producing a
metaphysician and adding to their utopian beginnings
of science all the essential faults of animistic thinking.
In the writings of George Sorel every point in which
anarchism was genuinely in advance of Marxism, is
explicitly relinquished. The sane determination of the
anarchists to discuss the possibility of a more ideal
society, and the form which it ought to take, is renounced
in favour of a mystic abandonment to the élan of the
present moment.
J
"One must not hope," says Sorel," that the revolutionary
movement can ever follow a direction conveniently deter-
I The Industrial Workers of the World have a more business-
like way of talking than some of the European syndicalists,
but the motto which they substitute for the Marxian plan of
political dictatorship-" Build the new society within the
shell of the old "-shows a similar disregard of the practical
terms of the problem. It shows the same reliance upon magical
transformations-reliance indeed upon a metaphor-to solve
the essential problem of the transference of power.
CC
>>
The Syndicalist-Communist group now surrounding
Pierre Monatte in France occupies a peculiar position, not yet
clearly formulated, it seems to me, and expressly omitted from
this discussion.
...
138 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
mined in advance, that it can be conducted according to a
learned plan like the conquest of a country, that it can be
studied scientifically otherwise than in its present. Every-
thing in it is unpredictable."
>>
The determination of the anarchists to be simple and
intelligible, to have done with learned obscurities and
the solemn casuistries of the "short-coated priests
of philosophy, is likewise abandoned by Sorel. For him
the inextricable tangle of animism and science which
makes Marxism fundamentally unintelligible to clear-
✔ minded people who are honest enough to say so, is the
primary virtue of Marxism.
us,
Socialism is necessarily a very obscure matter," he tells
since it treats of production, that is to say of that which
is most mysterious in human activity, and since it proposes
to bring a radical transformation into this region which it is
impossible to describe with the clarity which one finds in
superficial regions of the world. No effort of thought, no
progress of knowledge, no reasonable induction can ever
dispel the mystery which envelops socialism; and it is
because Marxism has well recognized this character that it
has won the right to serve as the point of departure for socialist
studies."
"C
Co
The manner in which Sorel managed to introduce
into an anarchist movement all the essential faults of
Marxism was comparatively simple. The anarchists
had got rid of Hegel; they had freed their minds of
the father-fixation upon a conservative professor of
religious and patriotic metaphysics. Sorel could not
go back to Hegel; that would have been obviously
reactionary. But he discovered in his own times another
conservative professor of patriotism and religious
metaphysics, Henri Bergson. He attached the
anarcho-syndicalist proposal to the animism of this new
philosopher, and thus gave a progressive appearance
REVOLUTIONARY SYNDICALISM 139
to the longest [backward step yet taken by any genuinely
revolutionary theorist.
In place of the dialectic evolution of a determined
universe in the direction of our heart's desire, Sorel
gives us the "creative evolution" of a free universe
in the same general direction. In place of the historic
necessity of the social revolution, he gives us the indis-
pensability to evolution of the social myth of the revolu-
tion. In place of the worship of dialectic, the scorn
of "scientism". In place of the Hegelian-Marxian
higher logic, in which "the life-process of the material
receives its mental reflection ", he gives us the Berg-
sonian vital intuition, another superior kind of intelli-
gence in which "reason, hopes, and the perception of
the particular facts seem to make but one indivisible
unity". In short he gets his own purpose transplanted
into the facts, and substitutes emotional co-operation
with the objective world, for the attempt to make some-
thing out of it. To preserve this religious attitude in
spite of the advance of science, is the dominating motive
of Bergson's philosophy, just as it was the dominating
motive of Hegel's. That is why Sorel could substitute
Bergson for Hegel, and yet arrive at a position not
radically contrasted with metaphysical Marxism.
小
​It is highly desirable to reconcile anarcho-syndicalism
with Marxism—or rather to reconcile anarchists and
syndicalists to the practical science that is concealed
in Marxism. But it will not be accomplished by aban-
doning all the virtues of anarchism and embracing all
the faults of Marxism. It will be accomplished by
recognizing that each has over-emphasized one part of a
complete act of practical intelligence to the neglect of √
the other part. The anarchists have neglected to define
[the unalterable element in the facts, and formulate the
method of procedure compatible with its continued
140 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
existence. The Marxists have neglected to define the
ideal, and bring it into working relation with their
definition of fact and their method of procedure. The
fault in Marxism is far less serious, at least in the early
stages of the undertaking, because the general direction
of revolutionary effort, the outline of its ideal, is com-
monly agreed upon and can be taken for granted. More-
over, in recognizing and resolutely facing [an unalterable
element in the facts, Marxism took that one step on the
road to scientific méthod which is the most difficult for
idealistic minds to take. And under cover of its legend
of dialectic thinking, Marxism unconsciously anticipated
a more advanced conception of intelligence, and a more
scientific employment of it, than was known to those
anarchists who attacked this legend in the name of
science. For these reasons, in spite of its surreptitious
preservation of the animistic attitude, Marxism and not
anarchism laid the foundation for a practical science of
revolution.
CHAPTER IV
BOLSHEVISM
If you wanted to build a bridge across a stream, it
would be absurd to make your calculations upon the
assumption that the properties of steel and iron are
such that they are going across the stream, and that you
are lending consciousness to the process. It would
not require a book to demonstrate that this was a relic
of animism. In creating a dictatorship of the prole-
tariat, as a bridge toward a real human society, the
absurdity of this way of calculating is less obvious, but
it is equally great. The only difference here is that the
material you work with is moving, and it is human,
and you are a part of it. This does not alter the nature
of thought and purposive action, or justify you in regard-
ing yourself as a reflecting apparatus, instead of an
engineer. It merely gives rise to a large and altogether
peculiar set of engineering problems. And it was exactly
these problems which Lenin solved, and whose solu-
tion created the "Bolshevik" departure in Marxism.
Lenin's fundamental contribution to the Marxian science
was a determination of the way in which engineers who
use it, must relate themselves to the moving human
material of which they are a part.
✓
✓
Bolshevism, like so many other things, can be best
understood by studying it at the point of origin. It
was born in Lenin's attack upon a school of compromising
Marxists who called themselves "Economists". Their
142 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
idea was that the Marxian intellectuals in Russia ought
not to alienate the workers by stressing the political
aspect of the revolution, the necessity of overthrowing
the czar's government, but ought simply to enter into
the economic struggle with the bosses, leaving these
political changes to follow in the natural course of events.
They ought to subordinate themselves to the spontaneous,
or as they called it "elemental ", movement of the
workers. Lenin destroyed this humble-casuistical ten-
dency completely in his journal “Iskra” and his book
"What to Do?" He put in its place the idea of an
"organization of professional revolutionists", who,
while welding themselves into a dynamic identity with
the elemental movement of the workers, should never-
theless retain their own organizational identity, and
their own intellectual identity-their unqualified and
undissembled loyalty to the whole programme of political
and economic revolution. He maintained that such
an organization was not only advisable, but indispensable
to victory. "I assert," he said, " that no revolutionary
movement can be durable without a solid organization
of leaders capable of maintaining their succession."
In his further development and the development of
his party, Lenin ceased to employ the concept of "pro-
fessional revolutionist ". It was a peculiarly Russian
concept-the essential fruit, indeed, of that consecrated
movement of revolt which had preceded Bolshevism in
Russia. And Lenin apparently knew that it was Russian.
He knew that it was out of accord with the Marxian
manner of thinking as it had developed in western.
Europe. He always resisted the proposal to translate into
other languages the book in which he had laid down the
foundations of Bolshevism. But he never yielded to
those in Russia who accused him of having exaggerated
in that book the rôle of these professional revolu-
(C
BOLSHEVISM
143
tionists". He replied that their rôle had been indis-
pensable, and he explained the disappearance of this
concept from his writings of a later date, by saying
that the "professional revolutionist has done his work
in the history of Russian proletarian socialism". He
has succeeded, that is, in welding himself into a dynamic
unity with the elemental struggle of the workers, so
that the organization ultimately formed can be treated
as a single unit, the "vanguard" of the revolutionary
proletariat. By an adroit use of this word vanguard",
Lenin reconciled his language in later years with that of
western European Marxism. But I believe no Bolshevik
would deny that the professional revolutionist continued,
during the growth and triumph of Lenin's party, to
play the same indispensable rôle that was ascribed to
him at its foundation. In the official "History of the
Russian Communist Party," published during Lenin's
life, we read:
“If you inquire, from the standpoint of the personal staff
of leaders, what our party lives by at the present time, and
even our state, it will become clear that to a significant degree
even now after twenty years, the party so to speak, nourishes
itself upon that group of professional revolutionists, the
foundations of which were laid at the beginning of the
century.'
""
The concept of professional revolutionist belongs,
then, not only to the origin, but to the essence of Bol-
shevism. And if you will reflect how directly a person's
"class
depends upon his "profession ", you will see
that to make revolution itself a "profession was a
very real departure in a philosophy which regards
revolution as an automatic outcome of the struggle of
classes. To declare that the people of that " profession "
are indispensable to the victory of the working class,
""
591
144 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
V
has the appearance of heresy. And this appearance
becomes more pronounced when you learn that, in
describing his professional revolutionists, Lenin re-
peatedly declared that “it makes no difference " whether
they belong to the working class or not.
"The organization of revolutionists," he said, “ought
to embrace first of all and chiefly people whose profession
consists of revolutionary activity. And before this
general title of member of the organization, all distinction
between workers and intelligentsia should be obliterated, to
say nothing of distinctions between this and that separate
profession.
""
Thus Lenin founded his Bolshevik organization upon
a recognition of the indispensable historic function of a
group of people who were not defined according to the
economic class to which they belonged, but were defined.
according to their purposive activity and their state of
mind. They were` people committed and consecrated
to a certain social purpose-but with this difference,
from the "Narodniki ", that they possessed the Marxian
science and the Marxian technique for the achievement
of that purpose. In short, they were scientific revolu-
tionary engineers.
ESP
Lenin was accused by other Marxists of " Jacobinism
and “Blanquism on the ground of this heresy, and
I think the accusation should have been accepted. Lenin
was amazingly contented, or rather determined, to
attribute all of his wisdom to Karl Marx. It seemed
to fulfill some need of his emotional nature to do so.
But a mature history of his policies would neglect neither
his own contributions nor those of the great French
revolutionists. Lenin corrected the error of Marx,
✓ which was a mystic faith in the proletariat as such; and
he corrected the error of Blanqui, which was to trust all
در
در
BOLSHEVISM
145
to the organization of revolutionists. He saw that the
organization of revolutionists must be actually rooted
in, and welded together with, the proletariat by a whole
series of personal and organizational bonds, so that they
not only assume to represent the proletariat, but also,
when a revolutionary period arrives, actually do repre-
sent it. But he saw also that they must be a distinct
body of men who "stand above society ", and are thus
able to understand it. And his arrant insistence upon
centralized authority and military discipline in that body
of men, smacks more of the tactics of Blanqui than of
the philosophy of Marx.
Moreover, in discussing the part to be played by
this organization of revolutionists, Lenin contradicted
the Marxian metaphysics and abandoned it absolutely.
He abandoned all the confused ideological dodges of
the priest of economic metaphysics, who is "bringing
to the working class a consciousness of its destiny
and adopted the attitude of a practical artisan who is
doing work, and doing it scientifically, and not seriously
deceiving himself either about the historic destiny of
his material, or the essentially decorative function of his
own brain and volition. It is not easy to find a formula
that will flatly and absolutely contradict an animistic
construction as subtle as that invented by Hegel and
stood on its head by Marx. But in this book "What to
Do?" Lenin succeeded in finding one. He denied
both its assertion that the material elements of the world
are automatically evolving towards socialism, and its
assertion that the thoughts of socialists are a mere reflec-
tion of the process.
>>
The elemental development of the workers' movement,"
he said, " goes straight toward subjection to the bourgeois
ideology . . . for the elemental workers' movement is trade-
unionism and trade-unionism means just exactly the in-
K
146 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
tellectual enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. For
that reason our task, the task of the social-democracy consists in
a struggle with elementalness, it consists in dragging the workers'
movement away from its instinctive trade-union aspiration
under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and attracting it under
the wing of the social-democracy. The statement of the
Economists, that no efforts even of the most inspired ideo-
logists can distract the workers' movement from the path
determined by the interaction of the material forces with
the material means of production is equivalent to a renuncia-
tion of socialism.
66
•
There cannot develop among the workers a consciousness
of the irreconcilable opposition of their interests to the whole
contemporary political and social structure-that is, a socialist
consciousness. That can only be brought in from the
outside. The history of all countries testifies that all by itself
the working class is able to develop only a trade-union con-
sciousness-a conviction of the necessity of combining in
unions to carry on the struggle with the bosses, to extract
from the Government this or that law indispensable to the
workers, etc. . . . The science of socialism grew out of
those philosophical, historical, and economic theories, which
were developed by cultivated representatives of the possessing
class. . . . This does not mean, of course, that working-men
do not participate in the working out of those theories. But
they participate not in the capacity of working-men, but in
the capacity of socialist theorists, . . . participate, in short,
only when and in so far as they have succeeded to a greater
or less extent in mastering the science of their age and
advancing it. . .
•
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolu-
tionary movement. . . . The Economists accuse‘Iskra' of
'setting its programme over against the workers' movement
like a spirit soaring above formless chaos'. In what consists
the rôle of the social-democracy, if not in being the 'spirit',
not only soaring above the elemental movement, but raising
the latter up to its programme? It certainly does not consist
in dragging oneself along in the tail of the movement.
One must indeed confess that people firmly determined always
to follow a movement in the capacity of the tail, are once and
for all absolutely guaranteed against 'minimizing the ele-
mental factor'.
""
BOLSHEVISM
147
It is obvious that this is not Hegelian Marxism. This √
is a series of violent and magnificent denials of the whole
thing. For the substance of Hegelian Marxism is the
assertion that the proletariat as such, and by virtue of
a dialectic necessity inherent in its elemental and material
nature, is bound to fight the bourgeoisie and achieve
the revolution, and that ideas and theories in the minds
of socialists can be nothing but a reflection of the process.
This fact was pointed out in the Party Congress of 1903
by one of the "Economists ", Martinov, who arrayed
against Lenin a whole series of contrary quotations from
Marx and Engels, and from socialist programmes of
other countries. But Lenin had then the support
of Plekhanov. He had the majority of the Congress.
He dismissed Martinov's theoretical attack with the
remark that "the Economists had bent the stick in one
direction, and in order to straighten the stick it was
necessary to bend it in the other". This was no answer
at all, for there was no element of degree in Lenin's
heresy. He had given to his super-class professional
revolutionists, defined and identified by their purposive
ideas and idealistic activities, an indispensable dynamic
function in the historic process which Marx's Hegelian
philosophy absolutely denies to them.
Plekhanov was aware of this fact, and he said so as
soon as he had decided to abandon Lenin politically.
He said that he had told Lenin his book was theoretically
wrong when he saw it in manuscript. He said that he
had "never regarded Lenin as an able theorist, and
always considered him organically incapable of dialectic
thinking". He said that Lenin's popularity was due
departure from Marxism which made his ideas
accessible to those practicals' who are unprepared
to understand Marxism". He proved this with a
quotation from Marx:
<<
to a
148 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
CC
It is not a question of what goal this or that proletarian
sets himself at a given time, or even the whole proletariat.
It is a question of what the class is in itself, and of what, in
view of this its being, it is historically bound to accomplish."
He reminded his readers that according to the philo-
sophy of historic materialism, "Economic necessity
gives birth to and carries to its logical end-that is, to
the social revolution-that movement of the working
class of which scientific socialism serves as a theoretic
expression." And he excommunicated Lenin from the
true church of this philosophy in these words:
(C
'The disputed question consists in this: Does there exist
an economic necessity which calls forth in the proletariat a
demand for socialism, makes it instinctively socialistic, and
impels it even if left to its own resources-on the road to
social revolution, notwithstanding the stubborn and continual
effort of the bourgeoisie to subject it to its own ideological
influence? Lenin denies this, in face of the clearly expressed
opinions of all the theorists of scientific socialism. And in
that consists his enormous mistake, his theoretical fall into
sin."
In order to appreciate the authority of this excom-
munication, you must know that Lenin himself has
described Plekhanov's philosophical writings as "the
best in the whole international literature of Marxism ".
Nevertheless Lenin never answered Plekhanov's attack.
He said four years later that it " had the obvious character
of empty cavil, founded on phrases torn from their
connections, and upon separate phrases not entirely
happy, or not accurately formulated by me, ignoring
at the same time the general content and whole spirit
of the book". But this also was no answer. The
general spirit of the book is exactly what is heretical,
and what makes it a turning point in the whole history
of Marxism. From the first page to the last, it is the
✓
BOLSHEVISM
149
practical science of Marxism, with the metaphysics
stamped under foot and ignored. Lenin's statement
about the bourgeois character of the elemental movement
of labour may or may not be true; it is a statement
that could not be proven. But a person thinking accord-
ing to the metaphysical system of Karl Marx could not
possibly conceive it as true. No matter what the passing
situation may be, a dialectic materialist is bound to
conceive the revolution as automatically produced by
the contradictions in capitalism, and the Marxian scien-
tist as "bringing consciousness" to the process, or
CC
serving as its theoretical expression". At the most
he may permit this Marxian scientist to accidentally-
accelerate the movement. There is not a word in
Lenin's book which is even a concession to this meta-
physical ideology. The book tells you "what to do ",
if you want to produce with the material at hand a
socialist revolution. It is a text book of practical
engineering on the basis of the Marxian mechanics of
history. Lenin was indeed "organically incapable of
dialectic thinking ", in so far as dialectic thinking means
attributing your own purposes to the external world.
He was incapable of animistic thinking. He was in-
capable of distorting facts to fit a metaphysics. He was
a practical thinker to the depth of his mind, a scientist
and not a priest, an engineer and not a "midwife" of
revolution.
171.09
LENIN AS AN ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
You will notice in all the eulogies of Lenin written by
Marxists, a contrast between their extravagant praise
of his genius, and the small creative contribution to
Marxism with which they credit him. They feel a
thing which, within the limits of the economic meta-
physics, they cannot define. Only after recognizing
that Lenin abandoned that metaphysics, is it possible
to appraise his genius, or define the details of his achieve-
ment. For this fundamental thing reappears in every
one of the great innovations which he introduced into
the theory and practice of Marxism.
CHAPTER V
"(
Lenin had no sooner formed his party round a nucleus
of "professional revolutionists "defined and selected
according to the purposive ideas in their minds than
he proceeded to split it upon the question whether people
of a certain type should be allowed to consider themselves
members. And these people again were not defined
according to their economic class. They were defined
according to their attitude to these purposive ideas.
They were the people who talk revolution, and like to
think about it, but do not mean business". They
were the soft" as opposed to the "hard", the
reasoners "as opposed to the " fighters", the " talkers
as opposed to the "workers". Lenin proposed to
eliminate them by demanding that every party member
should work under the orders of the conspirative organi-
<<
""
J
"C
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
151
zation, accepting the full risk and discipline involved.
Martov proposed a "more elastic" definition of a party
member. Upon this issue the party split into "Bol-
sheviks" and "Mensheviks". Martov and his fol-
lowers turned out to be themselves people of just the
type Lenin wanted to exclude-people who talked
revolution but did not intend to produce it. And there-
fore the very meaning of these words "Bolshevik" and
"Menshevik ", is to be found in that sharp psychological
distinction made by Lenin at the beginning of his
career.
"Better that ten workers should not call themselves
members of the party (real workers are not so eager for
position) than that one talker should have the right and the
opportunity to be a party member. There is the principle
which seems to me irrefutable, and which compels me to fight
against Martov."
Lenin subsequently fought these Mensheviks upon
a great variety of questions, and he attempted to define
them in ways more in accord with the economic meta-
physics. But the one element in their position which
never changed, and which alone makes it possible to
define them, is this psychological one. They were
always seeking a formula which would enable them to
talk revolution without incurring the danger of realizing it.
Thus Lenin's first innovation was to recognize the
indispensable function of the man of ideas, his second
innovation was to divide men of ideas into two camps,
and expel without mercy those in whom ideas do not
mean action. It is plain, then, that Lenin did not
regard revolutionary ideas as a mere reflection of the
evolution of the forces of production. A talker is
just as good a reflecting apparatus as a worker. Indeed,
the very use of the word "work" in order to make this
Let M
152 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
all-important distinction, is a denial of the philosophy
according to which revolution is an automatic product
of nature's development. For work, according to the
definition of Marx himself, is a process between man
and nature, in which man through his own act adjusts,
regulates and controls his material intercourse with
nature. He opposes himself to nature as one of her
own forces.
A Bolshevik, then, according to
the distinction originally made by Lenin himself, is a
man of Marxian ideas who opposes himself to nature
with a view to regulation and control. And is there
any better definition of a Menshevik than a man of
Marxian ideas who is willing to let nature regulate and
control him, so long as he is allowed to express and
cherish these ideas?
""
In forming his revolutionary party, Lenin identified
and excluded another type of revolutionist whose atti-
tude he described as the "Infantile Disease of Leftism ".
This distinction was also fundamentally a psychological
one, as the name implies. But, unlike the distinction
between Menshevik and Bolshevik, it was originally
formulated by Lenin in terms of economic class, and
only received this more concrete definition in later
years. At the time when Lenin formed his party,
practically all the "Infantile Leftists" in Russia were
opposed to Marxism itself. They found their natural
place in the terrorist wing of the Narodniki, and the
Narodniki denied, along with the entire Marxian system,
the importance of the industrial proletariat. They
believed in "the people "; and the people, numerically
speaking, were quite obviously the small peasant pro-
prietors. For this reason it was possible at that time
to identify and define the "infantile leftist " in orthodox
Marxian fashion as a petit bourgeois revolutionist ".
"C
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION 153
Later on, when this same psychological phenomenon
appeared in Lenin's own proletarian party, the economic
designation gave place more and more to the psycho-
logical. The name revolutionists of the phrase
became a very important one with Lenin. And in 1908
a whole group was expelled from his party for the merely
tactical crime of refusing to sit in a bourgeois parlia-
ment. They were described at that time as Leftists ".
And in 1920, when as a result of the successful revolu-
tion in Russia this same phenomenon made its appear-
ance throughout the whole Bolshevik International,
and became a serious menace to the tactics of the pro-
letarian struggle, Lenin wrote his famous pamphlet
defining it as "The Infantile Disease of Leftism".
and denouncing it almost exclusively in psychological
terms.
I say
“almost exclusively ", because Lenin began his
pamphlet with a recollection of the origin of the dis-
tinction in Russia, and an orthodox Marxian definition
of it.
"C
""
"It is not sufficiently known abroad," he wrote, “that
Bolshevism grew up, formed and hardened itself in long years
of struggle against petit bourgeois revolutionism, which
resembles or borrows something from anarchism.
For Marxians it is well established theoretically .. that
the small owner who under capitalism is constantly
oppressed and suffering, and whose conditions of life often
take a sharp and rapid turn for the worse, moves easily when
faced with ruin to extreme revolutionism, but is incapable
of displaying consistency, organization, discipline and firmness.
The petit bourgeois
gone mad
from the horrors of
capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism,
is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The weakness
of such revolutionism, its futility, its liability suddenly to
transform itself into obedience, apathy, phantasy, and even
into a ‘mad' infatuation with some bourgeois' fashionable'
tendency-all this is a matter of common knowledge.
""
154 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
✓
Thus Lenin states at the beginning of his pamphlet
the orthodox Marxian philosophy of "Leftism". Then
he departs from that philosophy, which he describes
as an abstract theoretical recognition of the truth "
into the concrete psychological investigation and definition
of what Leftism in a proletarian party really is, and he
never comes back to the orthodox position at all. From
that point on to the last word in the last sentence-
"childishness "his pamphlet is a demonstration, not
that Leftism is petit bourgeois, but that Leftism is
infantile.
He shows these Leftists that, while they may be
emotionally sincere, they are intellectually immature.
They do not know how to think practically. He describes
them at various points as "abstract ", "sectarian ", as
substituting "purity of principle" for practicality of
tactics, as following a "tactic of mere negation ", of
opposition on principle", satisfying themselves with
mere words ", with "revolutionary moods and dis-
positions". He demonstrates the impracticality of
their characteristic policies, no compromise, down with
leaders, abstention from bourgeois parliaments and reac-
tionary trade unions, individual terrorism, illegality-for-its-
own-sake, and the like. In short he explains to them, not
as a representative of the proletariat talking to repre-
sentatives of the petit bourgeoisie, but as a teacher
talking to his pupils, what practical thinking is, and how
to do it. The real definition of " Infantile Leftism ", as
it is implied throughout the body of Lenin's pamphlet,
seems to me to be this: It is an attitude of immature
revolutionary minds, who judge ideas and policies as
an expression of the revolutionary motive and emotion,
rather than as a means of achieving the revolution.
After Leftism has been defined in this way, the infer-
ence is obvious that it will appear more often and more
""
"
Co
STO
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION 155
characteristically among small owners "faced with
ruin and temporarily" driven mad " by the horrors
of capitalism, than among proletarians systematically
exploited by capitalism. To proletarians the very
problem of everyday existence takes the form of a class 1
struggle which is potentially revolutionary. And toward
the problem of daily existence all healthy minds are
practical, and they are capable of displaying "consis-
tency, organization, discipline. . . I believe that
anyone who reads Lenin's pamphlet without metaphysical
predispositions, will concede that such a statement of the
relation between Leftism and the economic classes, is
more true to his mental attitude-as it is certainly more
true to the facts-than the orthodox Marxian statement.
""
در
>>
After the formation of his organization, the next
distinctive feature of Lenin's policy was the manner in
which he determined its relation to the working class.
And the essence of his policy here, as it seems to me,
was that instead of attempting to enlighten or “ convert
the working class as a whole to communism, permitting
communism to lose in this process a certain amount of
its scientific clarity and revolutionary extremism, he
stressed the necessity of staying with the working class
personally no matter how far they wandered from the
path of communism, and yet remaining intellectually
distinct from them, and loyal at all times to the extreme
programme of scientific revolution. This principle is
best illustrated in Lenin's policy toward the trade
unions. It seems a natural inference from the Marxian
theory of socialism as an automatic result of the class
struggle between labour and capital, that these organiza-
tions of labour should be or become socialistic. It seemed
the natural business of Marxian agitators to " express "or
"accelerate" this process. Lenin took the opposite view.
156 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"Every socialist," he said, "ought so far as possible to
co-operate with and actively work in these organizations.
That is true, but it is not at all in our interest to demand that
only socialists should be members of the 'trade
trade' unions.
That would narrow the extent of our influence upon the mass.
The broader these organizations, the broader will be
our influence, an influence manifested, not only through the
elemental development of the economic struggle, but through
the direct conscious action of the socialist members of the
union upon their companions."
<<
This is merely the common sense of a man who is
completely free from the intellectualistic view of the
relation of social ideas to the movement of labour.
When Lenin says "our interest ", our influence upon
the mass ", he refers to an organization of people with
a purposive idea, people who are trying to do something
in company with the working class, and by means of
it, and not merely bringing the working class a conscious-
ness of what it is doing. Other Marxians had frequently
adopted this attitude of Lenin; no active person can
be perfectly loyal to an animistic philosophy. But Lenin
adopted it completely and continually, and carried it
to its ultimate conclusion. His language seemed so
different at first from that of the accredited priests
of Marxism, that he was seriously attacked on the ground
that “he never used the word proletariat in the nomina-
tive case ". Lenin had a more perfect feeling of identity
with the proletariat than those who attacked him, but he
could not pretend that the proletariat was doing what he
was doing. A proletarian revolutionary party is not
worthy of the name, he said, until it has "united leaders,
class masses into one single uninterrupted whole". But
he never lost sight of the fact that this uniting is a con-
scious act to be performed by men of revolutionary ideas.
The same thing appears in Lenin's determination
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
of the policy of his party toward the general mass of
the population. He demanded that socialists should go
among the masses of the people, and give expression
to all their natural protests and discontent. He demanded
that they should become "veritable tribunes of the
people", organizing an all-popular indictment" of
the existing regime. And when he was reproached
with anti-Marxism, and asked wherein, then, will
consist the class character of the movement, he replied:
"Just in this, that we who organize this all-popular
indictment, are socialists; that the explanation of all
the agitational questions raised will be given in an
inflexibly socialist spirit, without any conscious or
unconscious distortions of Marxism.
Another
emphatic assertion of the separate identity of the Marxian
engineer, and the dynamic function of his ideas.
(C
CC
Lenin is alleged to have profoundly modified Marxism
as a theory by recognizing the peasants and the oppressed
colonial peoples as "allies" of the working class in its
struggle. And yet this assertion always has to be accom-
panied by the remark that Marx also recognized the
peasants and the colonial peoples as allies of the working
class in its struggle. What then is the modification
introduced by Lenin? Simply this, that being pro-
foundly indifferent to the metaphysical picture of the
revolution as automatically produced by a resolution of
"contradictions " involved in the development of indus-
trial capitalism, Lenin was able to see the industrial
proletariat, the peasants, and the colonial peoples, in
their true practical proportions. Marx saw them in
the proportions determined by a dialectic construction
of which the peasants and the colonial peoples are not
a perfectly integral part. Therefore his recognition
of them as 'allies was incidental and inadequate
>>
"
48 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
in comparison with Lenin's. Marx was a metaphysician
accommodating his metaphysics in a parenthesis to the
demands of practical science; Lenin was a practical
scientist, ignoring altogether the metaphysics in which
he believed. That is the essential difference between
Lenin and Marx, so far as concerns the peasants and the
colonial peoples.
The most striking feature of Lenin's political tactics
was the "policy of sharp turns". Lenin would adopt
a programme, or a slogan, sufficiently fundamental
to serve among ordinary politicians as the corner-stone of
a republic, or the motto of a " Grand Old Party " through
several generations, and then he would appear some
morning a short while later and say: "The situation
has changed, our programme has no further value, the
slogan for the present period is as follows. . . ." Nothing
like this had ever been seen before. It makes most of
the great liberators appear a little wooden, a little out
of gear with reality, in comparison with Lenin. It
contributed more than anything else to make his political
power seem occult and almost magical. And yet it was
the opposite of magic; it was the essence of scientific
engineering introduced into the sphere of politics. I
have shown that the distinction between scientific engi-
neering and the practice of magic, whether in the matter
of producing gold or in the matter of producing a true
society, lies in the scientists' recognition and definition
of an unchangeable or uncontrollable element in the given
facts. There is, however, this great difference between an
engineer of human history, applying the principles of
Marxism, and a chemical or physical engineer—the engi-
neer of history works with a material which is itself spon-
taneously changing, and he with it, in ways not irrelevant
to his purpose.
He cannot define once for all, except in
↓
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
159
the most general terms, the factual conditions limiting
and prescribing his action. He cannot keep these condi-
tions constant. He must therefore continually revert to
the conditions, and continually redefine them, amending
his procedure according to the new elements which
are beyond his control. That is the significance of the
policy of sharp turns". It is a proof that Lenin was
in the full sense of the term a scientific engineer. The
conjurer survived in him no more than the priest.
<<
Lenin's Marxian eulogists usually point to the soviet
form of government as the essential expression of his
creative genius. The superficiality of this judgment
becomes apparent when you know that during the
months preceding the October revolution, pursuing
his essential policy of sharp turns, Lenin was once on
the point of abandoning altogether the slogan "All
power to the soviets!" The essential expression of
Lenin's genius was the creation of an organization of
purposive revolutionists capable of standing above and
outside all such specific forms and formulations, using
them or discarding them according to their transitory
relation to a more general social purpose. Lenin left
to "history" the decision whether the revolution should
flow in the channel of the soviets or not. But he did
not leave to history the decision whether the revolution
should be led by the Bolshevik party. He did not leave
to history the creation of that party, nor the maintenance
of its entirely extraordinary character and policy. If
he had, there would have been no Bolshevik revolution,
as Trotsky in his "Lessons of October " has very effec-
tively shown. I believe that no organization of men
ever before exercised so profound an influence upon
history in exactly the direction planned by it as the
Russian Communist Party. It is an organization of a
160 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
kind which never existed before. It combines certain
essential features of a political party, a professional
association, a consecrated order, an army, a scientific
society and yet is in no sense a sect. Instead of
cherishing in its membership a sectarian psychology,
it cherishes a certain relation to the predominant class-
forces of society as Marx defined them. And this rela-
tion was determined by Lenin, and progressively
readjusted by him, with a subtlety of which Marx never
dreamed.
HRE 10 JÄLL
IA MA
It seems obvious that this unique organization, with
its scientifically determined equilibrium in the society
surrounding it, and that unique " policy of sharp turns
successfully applied by it through a quarter of a century,
is the essential expression of Lenin's creative genius.
And yet the very members and heads of the party, pausing"
to write a tribute to Lenin, and enumerate his creative
contributions to Marxism and to human history, relegate
the party to a secondary position. They rarely mention
its delicately adjusted relation to society, and almost
never that peculiar policy which it applied with triumphant
success. The reason for this is that the nature of the
party, its position, and its policy of sharp turns, are all
alike inconsistent with the philosophy of historic deter-
minism. The whole situation, the whole history of
the Russian revolution as it was actually lived by the
members of the Bolshevik party, involved at every point
a distinction between what was historically determined,
and what might be done with history by this purposive
organization. All practical scientific efforts involve
this same distinction between what is determined and
what is not. And for that reason, again, all philosophies
of absolute determinism can do nothing but get in the
way of practical science. The inability of Russian
Marxists to state the reality about Lenin, and about
""
-
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION 161
their own lives, is but a further example of the obstructive
foolishness of such philosophies.
It is not only the essential genius of Lenin which is
distorted to meet the demands of Marxian metaphysics,
but also the essential nature of the government which
he founded. It is called a soviet government, and the
soviets do indeed play a vital part in it. This part may
increase, and the importance of the soviets in human
history be very great. But it is mere academic formalism
to pretend that" soviet rule " is the essence of the govern-
mental institution established by Lenin in Russia. Its
essence is the rule, within and through a soviet structure,
of a disciplined and centralized organization of several
hundred thousand people sworn to the purpose and
trained in the science of communism, and so placed
in society in relation to the dominant forces of class
interest as Marx defined them, that their sovereignty is
unshakable. The most significant administrative change
in Russia since the October revolution, has been a
gradual shifting of the centre where decisions are really
made, from the "Soviet of People's Commissars "
the highest organ of the soviet structure, to the "Polit-
buro", the highest organ of the Communist party.
And this change is nothing but the actual reality of the
situation gradually breaking through the forms in which,
out of loyalty to the Marxian philosophy, Lenin attempted
to confine it. Until this actual reality is clearly con-
ceived, and its significance acknowledged, I do not
believe it will be possible to solve in a revolutionary
manner the problems of the future development of the
Bolshevik state.
"The dictatorship of the proletariat is a relentless struggle,
bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and
L
i
!
162 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
industrial, pedagogical and administrative, against the forces
and traditions of the old society. The force of habit of
millions and tens of millions is a most formidable force.
Without a party of iron, tempered in struggle, without a party
possessing the confidence of all that is honest in the class
in question, without a party able to detect the moods of the
mass and influence it, it is impossible to wage such a struggle
with success.
"Not one important political or organizational question
is decided by any state institution in our republic without the
governing instruction of the central committee of the party."
In those sentences you have the essence of the new
kind of sovereignty established by Lenin in Russia.
And you have the measure of his distance from the
Marxian metaphysics. Marx declared the dictatorship of
the proletariat to be an inevitable result of the material
nature and economic situation of the proletariat. Lenin
declared that without a party whose characteristics are
✔defined in psychological and social terms, the dictator-
ship of the proletariat is impossible. And he was not
deterred by considerations of metaphysical propriety
any more than by considerations of democratic ideology,
from giving into the hands of the party so defined, and
so constituted, a position in the new state not unlike
that occupied by the personal sovereign in the old.
ld.
Lenin's crowning heresy was to create this prole-
tarian republic in a country in which capitalism is
relatively undeveloped. Because of the monumental
practicality of his methods, and the fundamental truth
of the Marxian science, he succeeded in producing that
change which is metaphysically supposed to result from
ripening" of the
"of the "contradictions" in capitalism,
in a society in which those contradictions are entirely
unripe. The October revolution was a violation of
√ Hegelian Marxism, and every success in the effort of
Co
a
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
165
the Bolsheviks since the October revolution has been
a disproof of it. For their effort has been, on the one
hand to make fast in Russia a political superstructure
and a way of thinking which are in advance of her eco-
nomic development, and on the other hand to make her
catch up in economic development to this way of thinking
and this political superstructure. No person who means
what he says seriously, and concretely, could possibly
declare that the political forms existing in Russia, and
the ideas propagated by the Communist party, are a
reflection of existing economic conditions. Never did
a reflection put forth such gigantic efforts to produce
its likeness in the object reflected.
This fact was too flagrant to escape the attention of
Lenin's Marxian critics, and he therefore found himself
engaged at the end of his career, just as he had been
at the beginning, in a polemic which compelled him to
give expression to his fundamental intellectual attitude.
He found himself compelled to choose between meta-
physical Marxism and the thoughts of a practical mind.
And he chose, as always, the thoughts of a practical
mind.
Accusing his critics of " slavish imitation of the past ",
he wrote:
"How utterly mechanical is that idea which they learned
by heart during the development of western European
social democracy, that we in Russia have not yet grown up
to socialism, that we lack-as various learned gentlemen
among them express it-the objective economic premises for
socialism. And it does not come into anybody's head to ask
himself: Might not a people, encountering a revolutionary
situation such as was created during the imperialist war,
under the influence of the hopelessness of its situation, throw
itself into such a struggle as opened to it even the barest
chance of some slightly unusual conditions for the further
growth of civilization ?.
64 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
<<
'If the creation of socialism demands a definite level of
culture (although nobody can say just exactly what that
definite level is) then why can we not begin by winning
with a revolution the premises for that definite level of culture,
and then afterward, on the basis of the workers and peasants'
power and the soviet structure, set out to catch up to the
other peoples?
""
There is not a word here to which a practical man,
desiring to create a socialist civilization, could object.
But for a Marxian metaphysician, taught to believe
that the world process is logical, and that its moving
force is a dialectic necessity of self-resolution of the
contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of industry
when they have reached their full development, there is
not a syllable of satisfaction.
<<
No social formation ever disappears," says Marx,
"before all the productive forces are developed for which
it has room, and new higher relations of production never
appear before the material conditions of their existence are
matured in the womb of the old society."
"The organization of the revolutionary elements as a class
presupposes the finished existence of all the productive
forces which can be developed in the bosom of the old
society."
"Law can never be on a higher level than the economic
conditions and the degree of social civilization corresponding
to it."
"The industrially more developed country reveals to the
less developed the image of its own future."
That is dialectic materialism. That is history pro-
ceeding according to the logic of the metaphysician.
Why can we not "begin" by organizing the revolu-
tionary elements as a class,.says Lenin, and not only
that, but winning the revolution, and establishing higher
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
165
relations of production, and passing laws that are on a
level above our economic state, and showing the indus-
trially more advanced nations an image of their own
future, and then "afterward set out to catch up to the
other peoples" in the matter of developing the productive
forces ?
That is Bolshevism. That is history as it was made
in a certain concrete situation by an organization of men
who took the ideas of Karl Marx as instrumental science,
and not as animistic philosophy.
A further quotation from the same article will reveal
the precise method by which Lenin managed to “believe
in'
"this philosophy, while completely ignoring it in
his practical thoughts and actions. He managed this
by making its meaning more abstract and general in
proportion as, taken concretely and specifically, it got
in his way.
I
<<
I It is important to note that Trotsky does not fall far behind
Lenin in his ability to ignore the Marxian philosophy of history.
He says in a recent discussion (Pravda, Feb. 2, 1926): The
social form of our industry is immeasurably higher than that
of the United States. There a mad capitalist exploitation
and the most terrible inequality of classes; here a form of
industry such as opens the road to full equality of living condi-
tions for the whole people. But in America in the frame of
the capitalist form, there exists the highest technique. With
us in the frame of the socialist or transitional form, an extremely
backward technique. And the extent of that backwardness
we ought to keep constantly before our eyes: not in order to
drop our hands in despair, but in order to double our efforts
in the struggle for technique and culture . . . The technique
of America combined with the soviet social regime would give
us not only socialism-it would give us communism, or at least
it would bring very close those conditions of life in which each
would work according to his abilities and receive according to
his needs."
"C
A more perfect contradiction of the Marxian philosophy
of history, according to which social forms are determined
by the evolving technique of industry, could hardly be imagined
-nor a more sensible attitude to the actual problem.
">
166 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"What if the complete hopelessness of their situation,
multiplying ten-fold the strength of the workers and peasants,
opened to them the possibility of a different transition to the
creation of the basic premises of civilization from that of all
western European nations? . . . Would that change the
general line of development of world history?"
In other words, what if the events in Russia directly
contradict the dogmas of dialectic materialism? Can
we not interpret those dogmas in a more general sense,
a sense general enough, indeed, and loose enough, and
inconsequential enough, so that they will include the
events in Russia, and thus enable us to retain our meta-
physical belief over and above our real thoughts and
actions ?
This is the way in which every believer in animistic
religion reconciles his belief with the concrete realities
which contradict it. Cardinal Manning lays down the
following dogma : Ask in faith and perfect confidence
and God will give us what we ask." And when the
crude facts fall out to the contrary he says:
"God has said that He will give you whatsoever you ask ;
but the form in which it will come, and the time in which
He will give it, He keeps in His own power.
Sometimes
it may be a chastisement, or a loss, or a visitation against
which our hearts rise, and we seem to see that God has not
only forgotten us, but has begun to deal with us in severity.
Those very things are the answer to our prayers."
The purpose is different, but the mental process here
is the same. Cardinal Manning generalizes the idea
of an answer to prayer in order to cover all possible
contingencies. Lenin generalizes the idea of history
as determined by the development of the forces of
production, in order to cover the Russian revolution.
And there is not the slightest doubt that if Lenin hap-
pened to be able to produce a Communist revolution all
LENIN AS ENGINEER OF REVOLUTION
167
over Europe and Asia and Africa and America and in
the islands of the South Sea-a revolution which con-
tradicted in no matter what fashion this Hegelian philo-
sophy-he would push the philosophy still farther up
into the sky, and perhaps end by forgetting it altogether.
For he had no real interest in it. He was interested
only in the freedom it gave him to use his mind instru-
mentally in a perpetually changing situation. He was
interested in the one wisdom which Hegelism did con-
tribute to a real science of thinking, the maxim that
"truth is always concrete". And it is just that maxim
that he violates when he tries to maintain that Marxism,
although not applicable to the concrete "transition "
effected in Russia, remains true of the "general line
of development of world history ".
To me the fundamental difference between Marx
and Lenin is visible on almost every page they wrote.
It is not a contradiction, but a difference of mental
attitude. And it is not a complete difference, because
Marx had in him the practical scientist, and Lenin
never consciously got rid of the metaphysician. But it
is a difference of all the more importance to Marxians.
It may be summed up in the following two quotations
about the dictatorship of the proletariat :
Marx says:
The new thing that I did consisted in demon-
strating that the class struggle inevitably leads to the
dictatorship of the proletariat.”
•
Lenin says:
"Marx's teaching about the class struggle
leads inevitably to a recognition .. [that] the overthrow
of the bourgeoisie is attainable only through the transforma-
tion of the proletariat into a ruling class."
•
Marx states that such a thing will happen in such a
way. Lenin states that such is the only way to make it
168 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
happen. Marx attributes his purpose to the external
world, and tries to convert the facts and methods of
action which make its realization possible, into a proof
of its certainty. Lenin assumes that the revolutionary
purpose exists in revolutionary people, and shows them
those facts in the external world, and those methods of
action, which make its realization possible. In Marx
the Hegelian metaphysician was dominant over the
practical scientific thinker; in Lenin the scientific
thinker gained the victory. And that victory is the
theoretical foundation of Bolshevism. Bolshevism is
an unconscious, and therefore incomplete, substitution
of a practical science of revolution for that revolutionary
philosophy of the universe which Marx created.
**
CHAPTER V1
LENIN'S PHILOSOPHY
LENIN compensated for his practical betrayals of the
Marxian philosophy, by asserting it theoretically with
extreme and violent dogmatism. He is far more rigid in
his "belief" in Dialectic Materialism than Marx and
Engels were. "How young is all human history," says
Engels, and how ridiculous it would be to wish to
ascribe any absolute validity to our present views. .
Lenin says:
"From that philosophy of Marxism,
poured from a single chunk of steel, you cannot withdraw
one fundamental premise or one essential piece, without
departing from objective truth, and falling into the arms
of the bourgeois-reactionary lie?"
In this extreme spirit Lenin defended in philosophy
exactly the opposite proposition from that which rests
at the bottom of his politics. His politics is founded upon
a belief in the dynamic function of revolutionary ideas,
and of the men who make it a profession to realize them.
·
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolu-
tionary movement. The statement that no efforts
even of the most inspired ideologist can distract the workers'
movement from the path determined by . . . material
forces, is equivalent to a renunciation of socialism. . . . In
what consists the rôle of the social-democracy, if not in
being the spirit raising the elemental movement
در
"
up to its programme ?
That is the foundation of Lenin's politics. And here
is his philosophy :
170 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"The world is an ordered movement of matter, and our
knowledge, being the highest product of nature, is able
only to reflect that movement . . . Social consciousness
reflects social existence, there is the substance of Marx's
teaching."
✓
Doubtless many volumes of Hegelian higher nonsense
may be written in the effort to reconcile these statements,
but in the end the statements will remain contradictory.
Lenin defended in philosophy a position inconsistent
with his fundamental attitude in politics. And although
his attention was called to it, he never attempted to
resolve this inconsistency. He instinctively ignored it,
or chose to leave it standing. Why? Because for a
revolutionist lacking the conception of a genetic science
of the mind, that was the most practical thing to do.
Lenin defended the assertion that ideas are the mere
automatic reflection of things, not because he had thought
about ideas, and examined them, and decided that that
is what they are. He would have been the last man to
be deluded by so unreal an account of anything he had
examined. He defended that assertion because he saw
no alternative except to say that ideas are the reality,
and that material things are secondary and a delusion.
He regarded the question "How can mind know
matter? " as a real question, which has but two answers:
Either mind is the reality, and matter a kind of illusory
product or predicate of it; or matter is the reality and
mind an automatic reflection of it. And he knew that
of these two answers the latter is more akin to the scien-
tific view, the view of anybody who seriously intends to
change the world. The former leads directly into
religion and the disposition to get into a [comfortable]
relation with the world as it is. He chose the more
hard-headed, practical, and scientific of those two answers
to the question, "How can mind know matter?"
LENIN'S PHILOSOPHY
171
But if you adopt the scientific point of view thoroughly,
and as it really exists in the minds of scientists at work,
the question “How can mind know matter?" is simply
a meaningless question. It is a question that was asked
for the sole purpose of giving the idealistic answer.
It has the same significance for a science of psychology
that the question, " How can a hen lay an egg?" has for
a science of physiology-namely, none at all. In per-
mitting themselves to be led into the discussion of a
meaningless question, the dialectic materialists deserted
the scientific point of view, and they never got back to
it. They never got back to the real question "How
does a mind know matter-and why?" And hence Lenin,
educated as a dialectic materialist, remained unaware of
the existence of a natural science which would have
supported his assertion of the dynamic function of ideas.
✓
The conception of conscious thought as an instrument
of adaptation produced by material nature in the evolu-
tion of living organisms, just as other organic functions
are produced, is a product and a continuation of that
hard-headed confrontation of scientific facts, which
Lenin tried to defend in his philosophy. And it is the
very thing that he asserted in his politics. With this
conception Lenin could have escaped from the incon-
sistency between his philosophy and his politics. He
could have got rid of the Marxian metaphysics which
tended to impede him as an engineer, without falling
into the idealistic metaphysics which would impede him
as a revolutionist. He could have got rid of all meta-
physics, and become consciously and theoretically,
what he was in actual fact, a revolutionary engineer.
"C
If there is a philosophy" involved in recognizing
the origin and biological function of human intelligence,
it consists in dismissing as meaningless a number of
172 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
questions which are meaningless, and learning to say
"I do not know ", in response to all those questions of
which you do not know the answer. It is a method
rather than a philosophy, a method which I have des-
cribed as affirmatively sceptical, because it is sceptical
of philosophy, and of the attempts of philosophy to
prescribe forms or limits to science, but it affirms the
validity and believes in the development of science. In
my opinion this philosophy that is a method, would have
been far more grateful to Lenin's temperament, than
that surreptitiously animistic materialism in which he
[felt compelled to believe. One thing is certain, and
that is that Lenin did not depend for the strength of
his purpose upon a metaphysical conviction that the
material world was co-operating with him. "The ele-
mental workers' movement goes straight toward sub-
jection to the bourgeoisie ", he said. "Our task is to
drag it away." Intellectually you may insist that this
was but a temporary lapse from the Marxian ideology ;
but a person emotionally dependent upon that ideology
could not possibly have committed this lapse. The idea
so much reiterated by our literati who have visited Lenin,
that he derived his heroic force from a metaphysical
conviction of the certainty of the future communist
state, is in my opinion pure romantic nonsense. Certainty
of success is the natural accompaniment of a gigantic
will, but metaphysics was merely a weapon in Lenin's
hand.
"C
The most original thing about his book of philosophy,
is the startling way in which he asserts this very fact.
He asserts that all philosophy is a weapon of party
struggle ", and Marx's philosophy no exception. "From
first to last Marx and Engels were partisan in philosophy",
he says, and they made no pretence to the contrary, and
that is their merit. For such a thing as a non-partisan
(6
LENIN'S PHILOSOPHY
173
philosophy" does not exist. "The newest philosophy
is just as partisan as the philosophy of two thousand
years ago.'
>>
I have already discussed the semi-theological tricks
by which Hegel enabled Lenin to assert that his philosophy
is an instrument for winning a temporary struggle, and
at the same time assert that it is objectively true. In
that he was merely orthodox. And yet in the abandon
with which he asserts that the whole thing is "partisan
-the Russian word is " party" rather than partisan, and
actually belongs to the political arena-he is to my
feeling very unlike Marx and Engels. And he is unlike
them in the manner in which he lives up to this state-
ment. He blends together all through his book the
question whether dialectic materialism is true, and the ✓
question whether it is revolutionary. He shows, or
attempts to, that it is the unconscious assumption of
the "immense majority of natural scientists", and he
shows at the same time that it is an instrument delicately
and most adroitly adjusted for winning the victory of
the working class. He does these two things in the
same breath, in the same sentence, and without any
apparent sense of the difference. Marx and Engels
envisaged these two questions separately. They believed
that the objective truth is revolutionary, but they inferred
this from a system of philosophy which they attempted
to establish, as other philosophies are established, on
objective grounds. I cannot imagine Marx and Engels
contrasting objective truth with bourgeois-reactionary
falsity, as Lenin does in that sentence I quoted: “ You
cannot withdraw one fundamental premise without
departing from objective truth and falling into the arms
of the bourgeois-reactionary lie." Marx and Engels were
too well schooled in the ways of philosophy to write a
sentence like that. The difference is doubtless one of
""
174 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
degree. You may say that Lenin was more enthusiastic
about being partisan, and less concerned about being
philosophic, than Marx and Engels were.
✓
↓
And that is an extremely significant difference. For
if you dismiss Hegelian theological tricks altogether,
and come back to your own natural intelligence, what
does it mean to say that all philosophy is partisan, and
your own no exception? Does it not mean that you
do not believe in philosophy? It is obvious to anybody
but a Super-Logician that in order to have an authentic
existence, and be capable of definition, philosophy must
be non-partisan. It must rise above the interests of
either side in a temporary struggle. If Lenin never
made a statement which was non-partisan and did rise
above the interests of his side in the class struggle, we
might perhaps accept this partisan thing called dialectic
materialism as his nearest approach to philosophy.
But when he says that this thing is an instrument of
temporary struggle, when he says that all philosophy
is partisan, he has uttered a non-partisan opinion. That
opinion is his real philosophy. And it is not a philosophy
of dialectic materialism. It is a philosophy of affirma-
tive scepticism-an intellectual attitude which denies
the validity of philosophy, while affirming the validity
of the science which understands it. It is exactly the
attitude which is forced upon a man who knows the bio-
logical origin and function of his own intelligence, the
attitude of a scientist who includes genetic psychology
in his equipment. That is why I think this attitude
would have been more grateful to Lenin's mind than the
animistic metaphysics which he felt compelled to assert,
and which he asserted with excessive and unnatural
dogmatism.
CHAPTER VII
ADVANTAGES OF A SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE
THE Conscious substitution of a Marxian science of
revolution for the Hegelian philosophy of Marx, will
increase some of the difficulties of the revolutionary
movement. It will increase for the intelligentsia the
difficulty of [organizing their emotions to meet the
demands of a class struggle. The motives which bring
various people of ideas into the revolutionary struggle
are widely different, and yet in order to function there
with force and permanence, they must all acquire a
feeling of their identity with the struggling class. A
philosophy which represents the entire recorded history
of humanity as consisting of this struggle, and the uni-
verse itself as concerned in its resolution through the
dictatorship of the proletariat, is no doubt a help in this
process. It is significant, however, that Lenin who was
so careless of that philosophy, identified himself with
the struggling masses more directly, and with less blab
and protestation, than many of the more Hegelian
Marxists. It is possible that a study of the real psycho-
logical problems involved, would be as helpful in the
end as this ideological self-deception.
J
Another loss will be that religious certainty of success,
which Hegelian Marxism gives to some of the soldiers of
the revolution. "Trust God and keep your powder
dry ", is the slogan with which soldiers have always
been led into battle. "Trust Economic Determinism
and keep your powder dry", fits the same way into the
176
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
mind.
"Keep your powder dry ", is more heroic. It
is easy to exaggerate the emotional importance of mental
attitudes, however. When Rosa Luxemburg said that
the workers' movement derives its strength and courage
"above all " from a conviction of the objective necessity
of the social revolution, she undoubtedly expressed a
genuine emotion. And the emotion is not uncommon
among philosophic Marxians. But that does not prove
that her statement is true. Nothing could be more
improbable than that the workers' movement, or she
herself, or any other great revolutionist, derives his
strength and courage essentially from a philosophic
conviction.
A)
Whatever may be lost in getting rid of the relics of
animism, will be more than compensated by the advan-
tages of a consciously practical and scientific attitude.
Aside from the general advantage of basing oneself upon
fact, and living in the real world, unloading a mountain
of cant and conscientious sophistry, and becoming
clear-minded and capable of unlimited growth, there are
certain specific revolutionary advantages in abandoning
[metaphysical habits of thought. It is, for one thing,
the only way to achieve that "maximum of flexibility
toward which Lenin aspired. Anyone who feels com-
pelled to reconcile his practical efforts to change the
world, with a theoretical conception of the world as
changing itself, can never achieve that maximum, no
matter how bold or how skilful he may be at slipping
out of the clutches of his own theory. All the thinking
of the Third International since the Russian revolution
has been confined within the limits of the formula:
This is the period of the break-down of capitalism.'
That formula belongs to the metaphysics of Marxism.
It imputes to history a systematic procedure towards
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ADVANTAGES OF SCIENCE
177
communism of which there is no scientific evidence, and
it imputes to the leaders of the Third International a
knowledge in advance of this procedure, which they
could not possibly possess. A completely practical
mind would have no disposition to confine itself in such
a formula. It might, if the evidence were convincing,
declare that" capitalism is breaking down". But in
the circumstances that actually existed at the time when
this formula was adopted, the simple and scientific state-
ment would have been: "We can break capitalism down
now." That was the actual attitude of Lenin's mind,
and of his nerves and muscles, when he adopted the
intellectual formula: "This is the period of the break-
down of capitalism.
در
Sh
The example is timely, because just at the present
moment it is apparently not possible to break capitalism
down. And all the brains of the Third International
must be employed in deciding the inconsequential
question, whether to revise the original formula" This
is the period of the break-down of capitalism", or to
adhere to the formula, but extend the duration of the
conceived "period". History knows nothing about
periods, and the simple fact is that the Third International
is waiting and preparing for another chance to do what it
wants to do. Until that fact is theoretically conceived,
as well as practically acted upon, the "maximum of
flexibility" will not be achieved.
Another advantage in getting rid of the relics of
animism, is that it will relieve Marxists of a fear of the
developments of science. It will enable them to meet
the attacks of scientists on their own ground. It is
not impossible that the achievements of psychology in
this century, basing itself upon the physiology of the
nervous system, will compare in their interest with those
M
178 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
of the physical sciences in the nineteenth. It is certain
that they will attract increasing attention. Being genetic
in its fundamental character, this science will have nothing
but ridicule for Hegel's antiquated theory of the mind.
Marxists will thus find themselves, not "in the fore-
front of the science of their day ", as they have always
boasted of being, but in the backwash clinging to an
abandoned piece of intellectual baggage. An exchange
of arguments between the Bolshevik editor, Bukharin,
and the Russian physiologist, Pavlov, illustrated this
weakness of the Marxian position. Bukharin, con-
ceding that Pavlov is scientific in his own field, accused
him of approaching sociology, not scientifically, but
with a bourgeois class-prejudice. As Bukharin's own
sociology is nothing but a metaphysical apotheosis of
proletarian class-prejudice, the argument carried no
conviction whatever. It had no clarity, and it had no
weight. If Marxism were a science, Bukharin could
answer Pavlov in the manner he attempted to, and with
overwhelming force. For Pavlov himself desires
drastic reconstruction of social relations, and looks to
science to lay the foundation for it.
a
Only the final science," he says in one of his books,
"the exact science of man himself . . . will lead him out of
the present darkness, and purify him of the present disgrace
in the sphere of human relations.'
""
CC
To this the reply is obvious: It is exactly that science
of man himself the very biological foundation of it—
which proves the necessity of a proletarian dictatorship
as the first step out of the present darkness. In your
laboratory you know that man is first of all an animal
engaged in the struggle for life. Know this same fact
outside your laboratory, and your efforts to escape
from "the present disgrace in the sphere of human
ADVANTAGES OF SCIENCE
179
relations "
by Marx.
(6
[inevitably take the course outlined
It is not only psychology that Marxians fear, but they
fear any [perfectly objective investigation into the nature
of anything whatever. Having projected their purpose
into a description of things in general, they are com- ✓
pelled, in order to defend that purpose, to defend this
description. In a preface to his "Anti-Dühring'
Engels recounts his enormous labour of seven year
defending this description-translating all modern
science, that is, into the terms of the Marxian dialectic.
He concludes somewhat pathetically that the task has
become too great for one man. In Soviet Russia a whole
coterie of men, constituting almost a professional revolu-
tionary-philosophic priesthood, are devoting themselves
to it. A continual stream of abstruse volumes and a
monthly magazine of the highest philosophic technicality
bear witness to their labours. It would be difficult
to imagine a more futile employment of the human
mind than this "going over" of the whole body of
organized knowledge, restating every finding that cannot
be doubted or otherwise disposed of, in the form of an
analogy to the proletarian revolution. For that is what
this process amounts to, once you have dispensed with
Hegel's original and rather more practical purpose of
rising to God out of the empirical view of the world ".
Instead of issuing the command to contemporary science,
"Give all you've got in the name of the working class!"
the Russian Communists issue the command, "Give
nothing but the Negation of the Negation or we fire!"
All this incredible professorial hocus-pocus, asso-
ciated so incongruously with the enterprise of revolu-
tion, is the result of fear. The fear was expressed by
Lenin himself in an article which he wrote for that
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180 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
monthly magazine of philosophy when it was founded.
Its task should be, he said, to find the answers to " those
philosophic questions which are created by the transforma-
tion of natural science, and by way of which the intelli-
gentsia, prone to worship bourgeois fashions, slips into
the reaction". For this purpose he advised the editors
to "organize a systematic study of the dialectic of Hegel
from the materialist point of view ". Is it not surprising,
that, in order to defend his revolution against modern
bourgeois fashions, arising out of the latest developments
of science, Lenin should call in the help of a bourgeois
professor whose reactionary disquisitions, based on the
developments of science, were fashionable a hundred
years ago? Lenin's opinion of bourgeois professors in
general is this: "Not one of them . . . is to be trusted
to the extent of one word, once the question of philosophy
arises. Professors of philosophy are the learned
errand-boys of the theologians." And yet because he
cannot simply posit the existence of his own revolutionary
purpose, Lenin has to fall back on one of the most
obedient of these errand-boys of theology to defend the
science of revolution. Lenin's revolutionary [will had
no need of help from Hegel. It had no reason to fear
science, nor the philosophic questions arising out of an
attempt to generalize science. Once that revolutionary
will is understood to reside in revolutionists, and not in
the universe, the free and unlimited efforts of scientists
to understand the universe can only be a help to it.
These real efforts, moreover, can be distinguished
directly, and without the aid of any study of the Hegelian
dialectic, from the attempts of metaphysical professors
to implant animistic purposes in the universe. Instead
of fighting one form of animism with another, you can
fight animism with science, and all the metaphysical
professors-Hegel and the soviet priesthood with the
•
**
ADVANTAGES OF SCIENCE
181
rest-can be dismissed as a superfluity and a nuisance.
In their place a corps of real teachers can dedicate them-
selves to the immortal revolutionary ideal of Bakunin—
that science should become "one in fact with the imme-
diate and real life of all individuals ".
CHAPTER VIII
THE ATTITUDE TO RELIGION,
ART AND MORAL IDEALS
AN abandonment of materialistic animism will enable
the revolutionary science to defend itself in a true way
against religious belief. The present way is to root
out all warm and personal religions, and at the same
✓ time destroy wonder and a sense of the world's mystery,
by putting a cold and impersonal religion in their place.
No human being not specifically and professionally
occupied with the revolutionary struggle will accept
such a religion as this of dialectic materialism. It
has therefore no value whatever as an antidote to the
<<
opium of the people". But a great many human
beings-we do not know how many-will accept in-
struction in the distinction between animism and science,
and will agree to adopt the scientific view-point, if you
can show them what it really is. You leave them their
freedom of feeling which they will retain in any case-
but you convince them that science and practical wit
are the only forms of knowledge, and that the only way
to get anything done is to do it.
Abandoning the Marxian philosophy will also put
the revolution in a true attitude towards art and poetry.
The present attitude is to declare that, since the essential
general reality of life and history is the economic class
struggle, there can be no real art or poetry which is
irrelevant to it.
RELIGION, ART AND MORAL IDEALS 183
"In the great struggle of classes which is developing
throughout the entire world," says a recent manifesto from
Moscow, "there are and there can be no neutrals. Art,
which has always served and still serves as a powerful instru-
ment forſeducating the sentiments of the masses, in harmony
with the problems and the situation of this or that class, can
not escape from participation in this great battle of world
history." Upon this basis the literary artists of all countries
are summoned to organize an "International of Proletarian
World Literature ".
✓
In other words art and poetry, having with difficulty
escaped from their bondage to religion, must now enter
into bondage to politics. They must be regarded as
subordinate to a single practical enterprise. No great
or consecrated poet or artist in the world could sincerely
subscribe to such a manifesto. Poetry and art may
contribute vitally to purposive effort, but they are in
their essence and definition distinct from it and inde-
pendent of it. Their interest is in experience and not
purpose, in being and not becoming. The only ultimate ✔
distinction which can be made between poetic and prac-
tical language, is that poetic language pauses to realize
the existing nature of the things mentioned, practical
language merely indicates them for purposes of action
or adjustment. Even when a poet lends his art to an
effort to change reality, the thing which he lends is a
genius for enjoying, and making others enjoy, the quali-
ties of reality as it is. That these qualities are of infinite
variety, is the very basis of the possibility of his art.
To tell a sensuous poet that there is but one reality"
in matter that expressed in the words " hydrogen
nuclei and electrons "is to deny the emotional validity
of his poems. And yet this formula is, after all, science
and not metaphysics. To tell a poet of humanity that
there is but one reality in contemporary social life and
C6
P
184 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
W
history, the class struggle, is simply ridiculous. What-
ever the poet may try to do with his opinions, his art
by its very nature opposes and refutes all such formulæ.
To recognize the depth and ultimateness of the dis-
tinction between poetry and science, between realization
and adjustment, is in my opinion the way in which
scientifically educated people can best retain their
sanity. It is the way in which, unconsciously, they do
retain it. Science has gradually built up a conception
of the real world which deprives it of every quality that
is humanly interesting. At the hands of Einstein and
the higher chemistry, the "primary qualities ",-shape,
motion, impenetrability-are following the "secondary
qualities "-colour and sound and taste and fragrance--
into the realm of the "unreal". The "reality", with
these savants, is becoming little more than a set of
mathematical formulæ. By this route, science and the
attempt to generalize science, are arriving at a conception
of the universe just as "idealistic" as that of the philo-
sophers, but without the personal qualities which make
the philosopher's idealistic universe interesting. No
complete and living man, who wishes to imagine what
he knows, will be content to live in such a universe. He
will find his way out. And there are, it seems to me,
but two ways out. One is to jump the gulf which
divides this cold idealistic universe of science from the
warmer one of metaphysics. The metaphysicians will
provide abundant tackle and scaffolding for the purpose
of this jump, and we shall find ourselves back again in
the animistic attitude to reality. Those mathematical
formulæ of Einstein will begin to speak with the tongues
of angels, and their first word will undoubtedly be Duty.
But there is another way out of that barren world offered
to our imagination by science, and that is to declare
the parallel and equal rights of poetry, or the pure
RELIGION, ART AND MORAL IDEALS 185
experience of things. When science denied the "ter-J
tiary qualities "-the qualities of spirit-to the material
world, it opposed itself to religion. That opposition
was ultimate and essential to the nature of science,
because religion like science is concerned with adjust-
ment and tries to accomplish things. But when science
denied the "secondary qualities ", it opposed itself
to poetry-an opposition which is not ultimate, because
poetry as such is not concerned with adjustment and
only seeks to realize things as they are. Far from
being an enemy of science, poetry is the one thing which
can sanction it, and justify the violence which it does to
the obvious qualities of experience. If the moment
of realization is invalid, there is not a kind of absurdity
in these intellectual contortions which are only by-products
of the effort to achieve it.
If this view-point is just, or can even be plausibly
defended, in regard to sciences of such high generality
as physics and chemistry, its validity in regard to the
specific scientific enterprise of revolution, can hardly
be denied. The poetry of life, and its infinite variety,
far from being subordinate to this revolutionary enterprise,
is the one thing which justifies it, and gives it any com-
mand upon the energies of men, no matter to what
class they belong. The realizations of artists may help
the revolution or oppose it, but they may also be as
indifferent to it as the wind of a spring morning. All
assertions to the contrary come from the theology of
revolution, and not from the practical science of it. This
science would indeed teach revolutionists to use poets and
artists more often and more skilfully than they have yet
been used. It would teach Marxian editors, for example,
instead of demanding that every contribution to their
magazines shall be coloured with the revolutionary
theme, and thus confining their circulation to those
1
186 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
specifically interested in that theme, to demand that
the essential variety of life be expressed, and thus carry
the revolutionary understanding among all those intel-
lectually interested in life. "One of the greatest and
most dangerous mistakes of communists," as Lenin
said, "is to imagine that a revolution can be achieved
by the efforts of revolutionists alone." An editor
who understood the significance of these words, would
rule out on principle only those contributions which
have a practical meaning that is positively counter-
revolutionary. To such a negative censorship the poets
and artists must be asked to submit. And they will
submit, whether they choose to or not, when a Marxian
party is in power. In that sense they are subordinate-
or to that extent their functions are postponed, just as
realization is always postponed for a serious achievement.
But in every other sense they are independent. And
they should defend their independence, in my opinion,
both against the attempt to organize them, and against
the attempt to intimidate them with a specific practical
principle parading in the guise of a general theory of the
universe.
A practical science of revolution would also abandon
the irresponsible Marxian generalizations about morals.
Real morality, as the Greeks perceived, is intelligent
judgment applied to the problems of conduct, and the
estimation of human character. Moral precepts will
naturally vary, not only according to the maturity of
the intelligence the degree to
degree to which
which responsible
judgment has replaced mere social custom-but also
according to the conditions of each particular problem.
In this science as in other practical sciences, the truth
is always concrete. And no set of moral ideals, no
system of ethics, can relieve each society, each class,
?
RELIGION, ART AND MORAL IDEALS 187
each individual, of the task of solving specific
problems.
Marxism has wisely emphasized this fact; it has done
its share to liberate mankind from absolute moral pre-
cepts. But it has very unwisely blurred the distinction
between moral intelligence and mere customary judg-
ment, and attempted to reduce the whole wisdom of
personal life, along with all the other achievements of
the human brain, to a mere reflection of social relations
↓
that are determined by the state of the productive forces.
In the Marxian religion, all moral ideals change com-
pletely with a revolution in these forces and relations,
the good becoming evil and the evil good. Indeed,
according to the strictest Hegelian kind of Marxism,
evil and good are but two aspects of a single dialectic
process, the evil being the progressive and disturbing
side the natural dress and appellation of the revolution.
In my opinion religions in general cherish moral
irresponsibility far more than they correct it. And
this religion of Marxism is no exception to the rule.
A revolutionist—and particularly a revolutionary leader
-who believes that he is the mere expression of a change
that is being taken care of by the "Productive Forces ",
is far less likely to be reliable than one who understands
that he is guiding a revolutionary struggle in the direction
of a new society. A more explicit reliance upon pro-
fessional revolutionists, is one of the changes adopted
by Lenin in unconsciously abandoning the Marxian
religion. Consciously abandoning this religion will
increase the likelihood of their being reliable. It will
make room for the instinctive sentiment and natural
human opinion, that a person who undertakes to lead
a class struggle toward the goal of a better society has
assumed an unusual moral responsibility. Wherever
the word "ought" has a meaning, it will be affirmed
*
188 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
ง
that such a man ought to know his own motives, and
be honest with those whom he leads. Anything that
weakens that intelligent sentiment and conviction,
weakens the resources of the revolution. Anything that
strengthens it, strengthens the revolution.
Lenin was fully aware of this. Lenin was not in the
least sentimental, and therefore he was free from that
over-correction of sentimentality which makes some
Marxists hold themselves superior-in public discourse,
at least-to the important problems of personal character.
He was not afraid to say that it is necessary for a pio-
fessional revolutionist to be "devoted ", "heroic ",
self-sacrificing ", " honest ".
re
<<
""
A demagogue," he said at the beginning of his career,
"is the worst enemy of the working class . . A man can
slip into demagogism through mere political naïveté, and I
will never stop repeating that a demagogue is the worst enemy
of the working class."
<<
And at the end of his career he said : Without a party
possessing the confidence of all that is honest in the class in
question ... it is impossible to wage the struggle [of
proletarian dictatorship] with success."
In short, while abandoning the illusion that the success
of the revolution is metaphysically inevitable, Lenin
declared that without honesty in the vanguard it is
actually impossible. Marxists could well blot out
most of their large talk about Ethics and the Materialistic
Interpretation of History, and write in its place this
simple statement of fact by a practical revolutionary
engineer. There is no element in the Bolshevik tactics
of Lenin more vitally important than the transparent
purity of his motives, and his perfect intellectual honesty
before the proletariat.
CHAPTER IX
REVISIONISM AND THE FABIANS
""
ANOTHER enemy against which the scientific attitude
would be a protection, is "revisionism". It is an
attempt to amend the theories and qualify the factual
judgments of Marx and Engels, in such a way as to
deprive them of their revolutionary character. Edward
Bernstein, the originator of this tendency, undertook to
prove upon the basis of modern statistics that the funda-
mental contradiction in capitalism is not increasing,
and that capitalism is not developing toward the inevitable
crisis and conquest of power by the proletariat, which
Marx predicted. At the same time he asserted that the
influence of ideological, and particularly "ethical
factors in human history, is increasing, and that therefore
a gradual transition to socialism, without that crisis
and conquest of power, is possible. His writings were
the first formidable assault upon the Marxian science
and art of revolution, and they are still for people of
honest and scientific intelligence, the most dangerous
enemy. They have never been adequately answered.
They never can be adequately answered so long as
Marxism retains its Hegelian-metaphysical character.
For Bernstein speaks in the name of science, and it is
impossible to prove scientifically that capitalism is
evolving toward an inevitable crisis and conquest of
power by the proletariat. That proposition rests upon
a metaphysical foundation. On the other hand, it is
impossible to disprove scientifically Bernstein's affirmative
190 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
proposition-that an ethical evolution toward communism
is possible without having recourse to psychological
knowledge. It is the genetic and real science of human
✓ behaviour which disproves the possibility of an "ethical "
transition to socialism, and which alone can disprove
it for a scientific mind. And since the Marxian philo-
sophy denies the validity of this science in general, and
its relevance to the understanding of history in particular,
orthodox Marxists are deprived of their one real weapon
against this soft-headed school.
ป
✓.
It is the greatest misfortune in the history of Marxian
theory that Bernstein combined his drift toward
reformism, with an attack on the Hegelian Marxian philo-
sophy. That philosophy was already dying a natural
death among all sorts of Marxists, revolutionary and
reformist alike; but Bernstein's overt attack upon it
in the name of reformism automatically revived it in
the minds of all genuine revolutionists. And conse-
quently this vast load of professorial nonsense has been
zealously preserved by exactly those who had no use
for it. I believe that the unnatural dogmatism of Lenin's
philosophy is a direct result of Bernstein's book. If
it had been a revolutionist who first opened the attack
on dialectic materialism, Lenin would have been in the
forefront of the movement to make Marxism scientific,
and the whole intellectual apparatus and outcome of
the Russian revolution would have been a generation
ahead of where it is. Bernstein abandoned animism-
essentially, although with a confused understanding of
what he was doing-and picked up the more dangerous
weapon of instrumental thinking. His opponents,
instead of seizing the same weapon and understanding it
better, only tightened their grip on the old arquebus,
and fell back more rigorously upon the old methods of
fighting. "Revisionism"
Revisionism" therefore remains unvan-
•
REVISIONISM AND THE FABIANS
191
quished, and flourishes as a more "scientific " kind
of Marxism, although the whole history of the epoch
since Bernstein's apostacy has proven that his practical
proposal is absurd.
The shadow of Bernstein will never cease to haunt
the minds of Marxists, until they meet him with weapons
better than his own. To his pseudo-scientific slogan,
Back to Kant!" they should answer with a scientific
slogan, "Forward with the real science of the mind!”
To his assertion that the development of capitalism
does not prove a proletarian dictatorship inevitable,
they should reply, pointing to Russia: We need only
to know that it is possible. To his assertion that the
influence of the "ethical factor" is increasing and that a
gradual transition by way of persuasion into socialism
is possible, they should reply, pointing to the world
We base our method upon the [real nature]
<<
war :
of man.
In this way they will not only confute the revisionists,
but they will recover their own [honesty of mind. A
Marxian with revolutionary determination will not
abandon the method of class struggle toward the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, because it is proven to him that
the number of wealthy capitalists is slightly increasing,
and the number of moderate incomes also. He will
not abandon this method because the petty bourgeois
class is not disappearing, agriculture shows no definite
tendency to centralization, and the "increasing misery
of the working class is proven to be a myth. He will not
abandon his assumption that the essential feature in
modern society is the class struggle no matter how many
facts of a contrary nature may be piled up in front of
him, unless and until these facts convince him that by
acting upon that assumption he cannot arrive at his goal.
Nothing has been contributed by the revisionists to
V
-
››
192 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
convince him of this. And if Marxians understood
that their own theory is a plan of action, they would
only welcome those important tabulations of fact which
have been contributed. These tabulations are just the
thing needed to make revolutionary strategy expert.
But since Marxians imagine their plan of action to be
an objective description of what is happening, they are
compelled to deny these very facts which it is most
important for them to know. Marxian generalship
suffers enormously from the circumstance that its intelli-
gence service spends more time defending a thesis,
than ascertaining the facts. And since the thesis it
defends is not scientifically defensible, an element of
unconscious casuistry is introduced into the thoughts
of the most single-minded soldiers of the revolution.
A man who projects his purpose into the objective facts
is always compelled, sooner or later, either to abandon
his purpose or distort the facts. He has the choice
between weakness of will and dishonesty of mind.
Abandoning the animism of Marx, will relieve revolu-
tionists of this unpleasant and ultimately unbearable
choice.
-
S
“Fabian Socialism" is the Anglo-Saxon equivalent
of revisionism. Instead of revising the revolutionary
teaching of Karl Marx, the Fabians ignore it, or dismiss
it with a few superior words in the name of British
common sense. It has always been something of a
problem for Marxists why the British intellectuals are
able to carry off this attitude-why the doctrines of
Marx, which in his own opinion applied most perfectly
to England, have never found a substantial foothold
there. They have never found a substantial foothold
in America either, except among immigrants from conti-
nental Europe, and yet America is replacing England
REVISIONISM AND THE FABIANS
193
as a model of the economic development analysed by
Karl Marx.
C
The principal reason for this, in my opinion, is the
German metaphysical form of those doctrines, which
[does in actual fact offend (our)" common sense The
whole general spirit of Anglo-Saxon intellectual culture
and philosophy-notwithstanding the little bomb ex-
ploded in behalf of the Deity by Bishop Berkeley-has
been matter-of-fact and scientific. This seems to be
because the Anglo-Saxons are so well at ease with the
hypocrisies of religion. They go to church on Sunday,
or send a little money there, and having thus taken care
of their soul and their property interests, they feel free
to stay at home and occupy themselves with real intel-
lectual problems. The Germans are more honest and
sentimental. They feel obliged to mix God and the
saints all up with pure reason and the categories of the
understanding, and the result, although morally credit-
able, is intellectually abhorrent to an Anglo-Saxon.
Hegel as a "scientific" cult never really crossed the
British Channel. And Marx's philosophy, which may
be described as a partial recovery from Hegel, fails to
catch our interest. We never had the disease, and
we cannot take an enthusiastic part in the convalescence.
In short, the idea of including our own purpose and
its realization in our objective definition of the facts,
is entirely alien to our minds. We simply do not know
how to do it. We have the choice therefore of rejecting
Marxism wholesale, or effecting a compromise between
Marxism and our natural common sense, in which the
• ``
*
pen 24 h
real nature of Marxism is obscured, and our common
sense also loses its clear outlines. Bernard Shaw adopted
the former alternative. He rejected Marxism whole-
sale-not because he is a soft-headed socialist by tempera-
ment or natural conviction, but because he is a man of
N
194 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
↓
""
hard common sense. A good man fallen among
Fabians," Lenin called him. Most Anglo-Saxon revo-
! lutionists, including the theorists of the present British
Communist party, have adopted the other alternative.
They have tried to become Marxists and at the same
time remain sensible and scientific-minded Britons.
The result is that a veil has been drawn over the philo-
sophic aspects of Marx's position, and very few people
in the English-speaking world know or believe that
Marxism really is what it is—a rationalistic philosophy
of the universe. If Marxism became a concrete prac-
tical science, this dilemma would be removed. Both
the scorn and the ignorance of Marxism among English-
speaking intellectuals would begin to disappear, and
Anglo-Saxon common sense might make a significant con-
tribution to the development of a science of revolution.
CHAPTER X
MENSHEVIKS
A MORE subtle enemy of revolutionary science than
its open rejection, or the attempt to destroy it by “re-
vision", is the Menshevik betrayal of it. I have already
shown that the distinction between Menshevik and
Bolshevik can only be defined psychologically, and that
Lenin originally so defined it. It seems to me of great
importance, not only to revolutionary science, but to
human wisdom in general, that this distinction should
be really understood. It does not belong merely to
politics, but can be made wherever human beings
gather together on the basis of belief in a radical or
extreme idea.
The belief in ideas has two contrary functions in our
emotional life, and those in whom it fulfills one function
will inevitably part at the moment of action from those
in whom it fulfills the other. We erect an idea in our
minds because we are ill-at-ease or at pain in the cir-
cumstances of reality. The original function of the
idea was to guide us in an effort to change the reality
fundamentally and so get relief. But in order to fulfill
this function, the idea itself must have for us a certain
reality. We must be able to love it, linger upon it,
adhere to it in social groups, sacrifice our time and
money, and even our respectability, to its cultivation.
And in this process we often manage to alleviate the
pain of the reality without fundamentally changing
V
196 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
CC
the reality itself. We do this with the greater ease if
we are intellectual", and ideas are very real to us.
They become a kind of daily companion and redeemer
of our world, consoling us with an extreme "belief "
about its future, and yet leaving us free to patch it
up in little ways less difficult and more ready to our
hand.
It is obvious that while employing an idea in this
latter fashion, we shall resent any attempt to rob that
idea of its purity which is essentially its ideality. We
shall resent with equal violence the attempt to prove
that the idea is incapable of realization, and the attempt
actually to realize it--because either of these attempts,
if successful, will destroy its value as an object of devout
attention, a love and consolation in the pain and ugliness
of what is real.
Plato was an intellectual of this static type. But he
was conscious of the fact, and boldly declared that ideas
were more interesting and more real to him than things.
He had no method, and he had no need of a method, for
realizing his Ideal Republic. The modern Menshevik
is not conscious of his character. He has not the bold
mysticism of Plato, and he has a method for realizing
his ideal. The method as well as the ideal enters into the
substance of his belief. It is a belief about a real future.
And when that method begins to be actually applied,
when that future begins to show its harsh substance
in the present, this unconscious Platonist finds himself
in a very embarrassing position. He has solved his
problem of life by believing in an idea. He has
perhaps made it his profession to believe in it. And
he is compelled in defence of his vital equilibrium, `in
defence of his very personality-for the belief is deep
and sincere to resist those who undertake to change
that idea into a fact. He is compelled to play the
MENSHEVIKS
197
part of a hypocrite. But he is not a hypocrite; he is
something far more complex and obstructive than that.
He is a Menshevik.
j
If Marxians will accept this much psychology as a
fact, they will soon see that in the struggle against Men-
shevism, as well as in the struggle against revisionism,
they are hampered by their philosophy. That philosophy
involves their keeping up two kinds of knowledge at the
same time. One is the concrete knowledge of facts and
probabilities, discovered, organized, and defined with a
view to guiding their own purposive action. The
other is an abstract knowledge of the world process,
supposed to include that purposive knowledge and also
the action based on it, and assure them of the certainty
of its success. Marxists dart back and forth between
these two kinds of knowledge, and the art of dodging
so rapidly as never to get cornered in either one, is what
it means to be a highly trained and irrefutable Marxian.
But this simultaneous cultivation of two kinds of
knowledge gives the Menshevik exactly the opportunity
that he wants. He wants to believe in Marxism, and
agitate and work for it, up to the point where he comes
in danger of producing a result, and then find a way
out. A very simple way out is to abandon the pur-
posive science altogether, and take refuge in the animistic
philosophy. That is what Mensheviks have done
almost without exception in the revolutionary period
just past.
•
"In view of the situation created by the war," said
Lenin, "we can produce the revolution we have been
working for in Russia now!"
"The world process is not yet producing the revolu-
tion in Russia!" was the answer of the Mensheviks.
"Capitalism is not yet ripe !"
Nothing could be more simple. Nothing could be
198 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
more obvious than the service which this animistic
philosophy extends to those who wish to believe in the
revolution, without incurring the danger of realizing
it. At any moment they can throw off upon the his-
torical process" their own responsibility for action.
(C
"There is to-day," says Kautsky, attacking the Bolsheviks,
"only one revolutionary theory of society, that of Karl
Marx. . . . Now what this theory teaches us is that our
desires and capabilities are limited by material conditions,
and it shows how powerless is the strongest will which would
rise superior to them."
Says Lenin: "Kautsky, in the guise of an economic
analysis', with proud words about historical materialism',
is now advocating the subjection of the workers to the bour-
geoisie."
This merely reproduces the old conflict with Plekhanov.
And that, you remember, was but a continuation of the
life-long struggle of Marx's own mind against his meta-
physical training. Every time that a real man of action
makes use of the Marxian science, he is compelled by
some trick or other to get rid of that animistic
survival. Marx himself cried, "I am not a Marxist!"
Wilhelm Liebknecht pleaded his own lack of educa-
tion-he had been too busy to study Hegel! Lenin
accused the philosophic Marxists of cavilling", of
pedantry ", of "slavish imitation of the past", and
carried the day by violent assertion. Trotsky accuses
them of “fatalistic optimism", of "formless deter-
minism ❞—whatever that may be. He calls them "bad
revolutionists", because they "expect the revolutionary
character of the epoch to help them ". And in Russia
he imputes to them a "scholastic parody" of Marxism
which "consists in converting a conditional and limited
thought of Marx-that 'advanced nations reveal to
((
"C
MENSHEVIKS
199
backward nations the image of their own future —
into a kind of absolute super-historical law and
upon that law trying to found the tactics of the party
of the working class ". This particular thought of
Marx occurs in a profoundly thoughtful preface to the
first edition of "Das Kapital ". It occurs in the sen-
tence immediately following that in which he speaks
of the immanent laws of capitalist production, which
carry themselves through with iron necessity". It
belongs quite obviously to the very essence of the
metaphysics of the revolution as a necessary result
of the ripening of contradictions in capitalism. To
call this a "limited and conditional thought of Marx "
is merely a way of saying that you do not take that meta-
physics seriously.
(6
Karl Radek has another way of saying the same thing :
"When can the social revolution begin?" he asks. “It
can begin and it does begin in every country where the
conditions created by capitalism for the workers are unen-
durable. The sufferings of the people make little account
of the statistics of Cunow & Co; the revolutionary volcano
does not delay its eruptions until the Marxists and doctors
of statistics give the signal. The man who with tables of
statistics goes about to prove the impossibility of a social
revolution only proves how very imperfectly he has under-
stood his Marx."
Obviously a simpler way to say all these things is this:
The philosophy of dialectic materialism is not to be
confused with the practical science of Marxism, and
wherever and whenever it gets in the way, it is to be
kicked out. By becoming [theoretically conscious of
their actual mental attitude, the Bolsheviks could get
this philosophy out of their way permanently and without
casuistry. Instead of dodging around the theoretical
200 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
stronghold of Menshevism with a series of unconvincing
intellectual tricks, they would simply abandon that
stronghold to the Mensheviks, and to the past—where
it naturally belongs-and go forward as the sole expo-
nents of scientific Marxism.
CHAPTER XI
BUREAUCRATISM AND REVOLUTIONARY
EDUCATION
AFTER the conquest of power, a new danger to revolu-
tionary progress arises in the form of bureaucratism
in the proletarian government. And this danger is
greater in proportion to the sovereign part played by a
party of revolutionists within that government. So
long as that party "unites leaders with class with masses
in one single uninterrupted whole "-to quote again the
phrase of Lenin-its dictatorship is in reality a dictator-
ship of the proletariat. But this union, which was com-
paratively easy to achieve in the days of struggle, becomes
difficult to preserve after the victory. The leaders of
the party are now suddenly transformed from disreputable
rebels to sovereign officials and captains of industry.
A tendency to confirm and solidify their own power,
not only at the expense of the proletariat as a whole,
but even of the rank and file membership of the party, is
[inevitable] It is probably by this road that working-
class revolutions—and especially those conducted
according to the organizational principles of Lenin-
will most often tend to relapse. Instead of going forward
with the creation of a new proletarian-democratic
society, they will tend to establish the dictatorship of a
group, in whose minds the ideas of Marx-dynamic in
the past-will degenerate into ideological phrases. A
pious repetition of these ideological phrases will tend
to replace the active science of revolution, and provide
C
202 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
j
a cover for the rebirth of the old system. This new
difficulty—which is really a kind of post-revolutionary
Menshevism-ought not to discourage people in their
scientific efforts, but it ought to be recognized and
prepared against by all vigilant revolutionists. Bureau-
cratism, with its accompaniment of [ideological revolu-
tionary piety, ought to take its place with Menshevism,
Revisionism, and the "Infantile Left", among the
standing enemies of the proletarian revolution.
caste.
That the Hegelian-Marxian metaphysics plays straight
into the hands of this enemy, needs no demonstration.
Being a religion, it is the natural property of a priestly
Its pretence that science is something else besides
a perfection of the natural process of thinking— that
wisdom is, in fact, a mysterious art discovered in Germany
by a professorial wizard entirely unintelligible to simple
men-automatically divides the revolutionary culture
into two parts. There is the esoteric doctrine, property
of the few who have learned to "think dialectically
and there is the vulgar gospel for the common people.
Hegel himself said that his philosophy presupposed
✓
<<
a higher level of culture than ordinary ", and this
view was substantially carried over into dialectic
materialism. "The art of operating with ideas," says
Engels, "is not inborn, and it is not bestowed with
ordinary everyday consciousness." And his American
translator adds: "So removed is the point of view of
the writer of these pages from that of the man in the
street that it is doubtful whether it is possible for more
than a comparatively few students thoroughly to grasp
the significance of the dialectic and apply it in a satisfac-
tory and effective fashion." Kautsky preached a dis-
tinction between Marxism as cheaply and vulgarly
understood ", and the Marxism of those who have
acquired sufficient knowledge and striven faithfully
"(
""
REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION
203
enough, to "resolve the contradiction between the sur-
face and the essence of things ". Plekhanov expressly
divided the Marxian theory "as it may be stated in
popular speech" from the true doctrine. And even
Lenin, who had as little natural taste for the esoteric
as anyone who ever lived, was compelled to concede
that an inferior discipline called formal logic "must
continue to be taught, with amendments, to the lower
grades in the schools ".
All this mystification militates directly against the
formation of a proletarian-democratic society. It not
only withdraws from the masses the right to understand
their own revolution, but it withdraws from them the
right to all scientific understanding. I have already
described the work of the soviet philosophers in their
technical books and journals of dialectic materialism.
It is a work of obscurantism. The simple-hearted reader
who would like to cherish the hope of understanding a
little science some day, may imagine the nebulous
empyrean into which that hope recedes when the theories
of Einstein have been translated into the terms of the
Hegelian dialectic. As a result of the greatest popular
revolution in history, science is being darkened and
withdrawn from the people, instead of popularized and
made clear to them. It needs no special interest in the
proletarian-democratic society to know that this is a
misfortune. But for those who are interested in that
society, it is a misfortune of special political importance.
For animistic mysteries have always been employed by
an aristocracy to befuddle the masses, and the moment
the danger arises of a "revolutionary" aristocracy—a
danger which only fools will deny-this materialistic
animism stands ready to do its work. That Dialectic
Universe, which is producing with such an obscure and
unquestionable necessity the welfare of the toiling masses,
1
204 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
will be found residing in the private chambers of those
chosen by history to understand "the art of operating
with ideas", which is "not inborn, and not bestowed
with ordinary everyday consciousness".
It is absolutely necessary that this metaphysical
nonsense should be abandoned, and abandoned whole-
sale, and without paying any attention to the attempts
of academical-old Marxian minds to preserve the pieces
of it. Aside entirely from the problem of bureaucratism,
the hopes of a revolutionary civilization stand or fall
with the true education of the children. And true
education can only be founded upon a true psychology.
The instinctive position of Lenin in Russia was that of
a "fraternal teacher of the people "--to recall again
the eloquence of Bakunin—and in that he furnishes an
example to all revolutionary leaders that shall follow
him. But in order to develop the full implication of
that example, it is necessary to go beyond Lenin. It
is necessary to understand how you think, and teach
that, as well as the result of it, to those who follow you.
It may be that a psychological science would have made
little difference in the political wisdom of Lenin; that
locomotive genius had small need of self-analysis. But
if Lenin had been conscious of his own intellectual
method and position, he might have tapped an immense
reservoir of revolutionary will and energy existing in
sincere but immature minds, Left Socialist-revolu-
tionaries and anarchists, whom he was compelled to
dismiss as "revolutionary adventurers", because he
did not know how to teach them. It is no accident
that anarchism finds its best adherents among the French
and southern European (races,) who love hard clear
thoughts and prefer doubt to metaphysical consolation.
Hegelian Marxism will never get a firm foothold in those
V
*
REVOLUTIONARY EDUCATION
205
countries. Any natural child of Montaigne or Machia-
velli will always rather remain in a state of innocence
than go to school to a German metaphysician. Approach
an anarchist, not with the proposition that you know just
what the universe is doing, having learned it from a
Hegelian philosopher, but with the proposition that a
great undertaking requires a great plan, and you have
some chance of teaching him how to think.
Moreover if Lenin had understood his own thinking
he could have left in his place a body of men better
trained to carry it forward than those he has left-con-
demned to the vain effort to reconcile his wisdom with
an antique animistic intellectualism which he ignored and
trampled on from the beginning of his life to the end.
They would not be trying to explain his powerful rebel-
lion against Marxism as the mere "reflection " of a new
historical epoch, or imagining that they can solve by
seeking for contradictions in capitalism" the problems
which he solved by seeking in the whole world for
nothing but opportunities to do what he wanted to do.
And finally, if Marxism had existed in the conscious-
ness of the Bolsheviks in the form of a science and not
a philosophy, the Commissariat of Education in Soviet
Russia would present a more thoroughly and systematically
revolutionary picture than it does. Never before have
so many modern educative ideas been adopted on a large
scale as in Soviet Russia; never have so many bold
experiments in scientific education been made. And
yet they have been made under the tolerance, rather
than by the initiative, of the Bolshevik dictatorship.
And that, it seems to me, is [an inevitable consequence
of the Hegelian-Marxian philosophy. So long as the
very preservation of the dictatorship is erroneously
identified with the promulgation of a set of ideas hos-
tile to all psychological understanding, a thorough and
66
206 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
I
>>
systematic revolutionizing of education is impossible.
So long as the proletarian party issues pamphlets indoc-
trinating its members, on pain of exclusion, with a belief
that the sentence "Workers of the world, unite!" is
not an exhortation to action, but "a reflection in the
heads of Marxists of the fact of proletarian solidarity
it is impossible to teach even grammar, to say nothing
of teaching the true art of thinking and being a man.
If "Workers of the world, unite!" means that the
workers are united, what does "The workers are united "
mean?
The example is typical of many absurd pronuncia-
mentoes that are put out in the name of education by the
Doctors of the State Philosophy in Soviet Russia. And
it shows, only a little more clearly than usual, the essential
motive of this, as of other philosophies-to convince the
believer that the objective world is at one with his aspira-
tion. To me the most unsatisfactory feature of the
revolutionary experiment in Russia so far, is the failure to
establish a great system of education. They have estab-
lished in the place of it this great solemn fetish of dialectic
materialism, which is nothing but the old shoes of the
Almighty God.
CHAPTER XII
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
A FINAL enemy which the science of revolution will
have to conquer is the post-revolutionary utopianism of
Marx's own theory. Marx's science of revolution was a
practical and realistic scheme only up to, and including,
the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat
which should expropriate the capitalists. The problems
arising after that, Marx was inclined to regard, not as
postponed problems greater in their complexity than
that of capturing the power, but as problems which
"history" would solve. The very science of Marxism,
indeed, was supposed to begin to die of contradiction
and give place to a "higher unity", when this necessary
process of which it was a reflection, had been achieved.
Marx's attitude to the subsequent course of history was
therefore hardly distinguishable from the general attitude ✔
of the utopians. He believed that truly miraculous things
would follow of themselves. That there might be a
problem of preserving the new society, and preventing its
relapse into capitalism, never occurred to his mind.
✓
The principal miracle which Marx anticipated from
the social revolution, was a wholesale change in human
nature. Marxism knows nothing of the distinction
between hereditary instincts and acquired characters.
That human nature in its fundamental and general
outlines could only be changed by an extended process
of selective breeding, whether artificial or natural, is a
2
208 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
point that Marx never learned from Darwin, and that
he could not learn without breaking down his whole
philosophy of history. For that philosophy requires
that human nature should be regarded as a mere function
of the evolution of the productive forces, an indefinitely
variable factor. "The whole of history," Marx tells
us, "is nothing but a continual transformation of human
nature." And Plekhanov develops this essential thesis
of Marxism as follows:
According to the character of the means of production,
men enter into such and such relations in the process of
production (since this is a social process), and according to
their relations in the social process of production, their habits,
their sentiments, their tastes, their way of thinking and acting,
in short their nature is modified. Thus it is not human nature
which explains the historic movement, it is the historic
movement which fashions human nature in different ways."
(C
↓
From this it follows that once an economic revolution
is achieved and completed, the transformation of human
nature necessary to sustain it will automatically follow.
The problem of adjusting the forms of the new society to
the original nature of man does not and cannot exist.)
Psychology as a science of human behaviour, has no
more place in Marxism than psychology as a science of
the mind. In building a model hen-house a Marxian
would have the good sense to consider the instinctive
nature of the hens, but in building an ideal social struc-
ture for mankind, he is prevented by his religion from
even asking a question about the natural tendencies of
this animal.
The extent of the utopian dreaming which has been
founded upon this myth of the indefinite changeability
of human nature, may be seen in the following assertion of
Engels:
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
209
Socialism will abolish both architecture and barrow-push-
ing as professions, and the man who has given half an hour
to architecture will also push the cart a little until his work as
an architect is again in demand. It would be a pretty sort
of socialism which perpetuated the business of barrow-
pushing."
Here it is evident that Engels is not a practical engineer,
considering the problem of actually producing a socialist
society and making it work. He is a dreamer, discoursing
about an ideal state of things which must come in due
course, if the universe continues its "endless ascending
from the lower to the higher ".
The indifference of Marx and Engels, and of all
Marxians, toward the all-important problem of con-
trolling population, is another example of the utopianism
inherent in their religion. The population of Soviet
Russia is already increasing at the estimated annual rate
of 178 for every 10,000 inhabitants, although the total
wealth-production of the country is still only 71 per cent.
of the pre-war level. Any practical person can see the
need of directive intelligence here. For my part, I
believe that a free and real human society will never be
created by a people who ignore the necessity for intelli-
gent control of the quantity, if not indeed in a negative
way the quality, of the population. But it is very difficult
for Marxians to see this problem or approach it with
practical intelligence, because population is one of those
things which are supposed to be especially in the divine
care of the Process of Production.
-
A similar utopianism prevails among Marxians in
regard to the problem of sex equality. Seeing that the
dependence of woman is largely economic, and that her
general independence, like that of man, can be attained
only in a proletarian democratic society, they jump to
the conclusion that the proletarian revolution will auto-
O
210 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
✓
matically solve the problem of woman's independence.
This great achievement, too, they leave in the hands of
the Productive Forces. But if you face the actual
psychological and physiological elements of the woman's
problem, it is only too obvious that it will not be solved
automatically, even by a social revolution. It will be
solved by men and women, and particularly women
who devote their utmost intelligence and energy to its
solution.
Another example of the Marxian utopianism, is the
theory of the automatic "dying away" of the state.
The fact underlying this theory is that most states are in
large part, and especially in those parts which make
them a nuisance to people who want to make human
life beautiful and live it well, an instrument used by the
possessing class to defend their vested interest in the
existing system, and keep an exploited class in order.
Once this system of class exploitation is abolished, and
the state takes the form of an association of producers,
it can be deprived of its predominant function of repres-
sion and inhibition. Its chief service in that direction,
at least, will be to prevent a recrudescence of the old
system. Nobody can prescribe the limit to which human
society might go in the direction of real liberty, once the
chief obstacle of class exploitation were removed. But
nobody who is deeply interested in liberty, would place
an ultimate reliance upon that automatic and all too
dialectic "dying away" of the state, which forms a part
of the Marxian post-revolutionary utopianism.
A mature science of revolution would replace all such
✔ intellectual legends with a direct and simple purpose
-a purpose to see to it that the proletarian dictatorship
and the collective ownership of the means of produc-
tion shall create, to the full extent possible at any stage
of its development, a free and true human society. An
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
211
absence of that direct and simple purpose, is to my mind
the second most unsatisfactory feature of the Bolshevik
experiment in Russia. Wholesale curtailments of liberty
and violations of their own ultimate ideal of social
relations, are a necessary and intrinsic part of the plan
of action of all scientific revolutionists. But revolu-
tionists who imagine that their plan of action is a "natural
process "by which the material universe is itself achieving
liberty and producing ideal social relations in an in-
definite future, will almost inevitably be callous and
irresponsible in transgressing liberties and violating
social relations in the present. They will be prone to
put the means in the place of the end, to ignore the most
simple and obvious demands that their own ultimate
purpose would put upon them. There is no tyrant
so extreme and irresponsible as the virtuous one, who
has convinced himself that he is an instrument of the
will of God. And this same extremism and irresponsi-
bility of the religious tyrant is to be found, dressed in
the guise of revolutionary virtue, in more than one of
those Russian Marxists who have convinced themselves
that they are the instruments of a Dialectic Universe.
They have exceeded the demands of practical necessity
in postponing and transgressing their own ultimate
purpose. And they have neglected certain simple
measures which would seem most obvious to a revolu-
tionist knowing that his purpose is his own, and that
he and not history is responsible for its achievement.
To what extent this may be a result of inexperience and
the complexities of politics and human nature, and to
what extent it is attributable to the animistic religion of
Marxism, is of course a problem. But it is a problem
whose solution demands first of all and most emphatically
that this animistic religion should be exposed and
abolished.
212 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Lenin himself least of all Marxists was inclined to lean
upon "history", or to leave to that dialectic universe in
which he tried to believe the tasks and responsibilities
that belonged to him. And yet Lenin was not entirely
free from the utopianism inherent in the dialectic philo-
sophy, as the following quotations will show :
"Capitalism inevitably leaves, as an inheritance to Socialism,
on the one hand old professional and craft differences .
and on the other trade unions, which only very slowly and in
the course of years can and will develop into broader indus-
trial rather than craft organizations. . . . These industrial
unions will in their turn lead to the abolition of the division
of labour between people, to the education, training and
preparation of workers who will be able to do everything."
Under socialism all will take a turn at administration,
and will soon become accustomed to the idea of no administra-
tion at all."
(C
These statements have no support whatever in the
facts of human nature. Only by completely ignoring
the data of psychology, and putting a completely meta-
physical faith in the place of this science, is it possible
for a moment to believe them. Bertrand Russell, whom
Lenin could dismiss from the standpoint of revolutionary
method as an extreme utopian, has a far more realistic
and practical approach than Lenin to this future problem.
"People will be taught, he says, "not only as at present,
one trade, or one small portion of a trade, but several trades,
so that they can vary their occupation according to the seasons
and the fluctuations of demand. Every industry will be
self-governing as regards all its internal affairs, and even
separate factories will decide for themselves all the questions
that only concern those who work in them. There will not
be capitalist management, as at present, but management
by elected representatives.
""
The contrast between these two statements is a con-
trast between practical possibilities and utopian dreams.
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM 213
And because they are problems of the future, it is the
anarchistic utopian who is practical, and the "scientific
socialist" who is dreaming.
Lenin was not affected in his practical character and
activity by these dreams, because he knew how to keep
them in the remote future. He used to recall his followers
to the immediate task, and illustrate the practical-scien-
tific realism with which it should be attacked, by means
of the figure of a man who is pulling himself hand-over-
hand along a chain. It is not enough, he would say, to
believe in the ultimate goal of the historic process-one
must be able to "find in the chain at each moment the
link which it is necessary to seize with all one's force,
in order to retain the chain as a whole and pass to the
next link ". There is a difficulty in imagining this picture.
It really illustrates better than anything else the absurdity
of mixing animistic faith with practical science. For
if future history is a chain securely attached to the co-
operative commonwealth, there is hardly more than
one link within reach, and that is the next one. But this
confused figure enabled Lenin to keep the millennium
out of the present task, and that is what he used it for.
There was perhaps a moment, just after the October
revolution, when his faith in the purposes of "history
introduced an element of legend into his practical
calculations. Trotsky tells us, at least, that in the early
meetings of the Soviet of People's Commissars, Lenin
continually asserted that "in six months we will have
socialism". Only four of those six months had passed,
however, when Lenin stated at a convention of his
party that "The bricks are not yet baked with which
socialism will be built."
K
•
""
"What socialism will be when it attains finished forms, we
do not know and we cannot say Our programme is a
description of what we have begun to do, and of the next
214 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
1
steps which we want to take. . . . The name of our party
signifies clearly enough that we are going toward complete
communism, that we present to ourselves such an abstract
proposition as that each will work according to his abilities,
and receive according to his needs, without any military
control or violence. But it is early to talk about that. When
has any state yet begun to die away?'
>>
What had begun to die away here, was the post-
revolutionary utopianism of the Marxian metaphysics.
It will inevitably die away in honest minds when the
real facts arrive. And the most important question we
have to ask is: What shall take its place? The remarks
of Lenin make clear the answer: A thoroughly experi-
mental procedure.] The aim will be defined at first
very loosely and "abstractly ", and held subject to
redefinition in the light of the developing facts; the
facts will be defined more exactly, but they also will
be continually redefined in their relation to the aim and
the redefinition of it; and the hypothesis, the plan of
action, will be kept in a state of development and living
relevance both to the facts and to the aim. In other
words doubt will be given its due place, and thought
will be used as it was formed to be used in the long process
of its evolution.
Marx himself gave a hint of this practical scientific
attitude, when he defined communism as "The declaration
of a permanent revolution, a class-dictatorship of the
proletariat as the necessary transition step to the abolition
of class distinctions in general." Here communism does
not appear as a neat metaphysical legend—a “ negation
of the negation" of individual ownership involved in the
capitalist system"-but as a goal of effort loosely
defined, and a practical method for going towards it.
This definition does not pretend to determine in advance
the concrete forms to be assumed by a class-free society,
"C
POST-REVOLUTIONARY UTOPIANISM
215
the degree and kind of co-operation and competition
which may prove possible or desirable there. Many
such questions can only be answered by the experi-
ment itself. What we know in advance is that a
sufficient block of the controlling industries must be
socialized by the proletariat, so as to assure its
dictatorship and the continuance of the experiment.
The "declaration of a permanent revolution" implies
this. It preserves the extremeness and inflexibility of
the purpose, but it leaves open the field of experiment
and political invention. It does not deny the com-
plexities of the problem, nor pretend to a knowledge
of what cannot be known. It abandons the last rem-
nants of the dialectic philosophy, and therewith the last
remnants of utopianism. It presents the revolution
as a purpose rather than a belief, and the Marxist as a
scientific engineer of revolution.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
NOTES AND REFERENCES
My notes were composed after the completion of the book,
and I urge the reader to ignore them until he understands
my thesis as a whole. They discuss certain points which do
not belong to a simple statement of the thesis, but would
quickly arise in a discussion of it. And they contain transla-
tions of certain passages to which I allude in foreign books.
The references are a little unsystematic, and they may also
contain inaccuracies, because I have been reading Marxism
in various parts of the world, and in different languages, and
many of the books to which I refer were not at hand when I
prepared my manuscript for the press. All the translations,
except where a definite reference is given to the contrary, are
my own.
PAGE 14.
"Some such conception": I try to refrain from dogmatizing
in this chapter, and from giving too much expression to my
individual opinions. I believe that a tendency toward conscious
experience for its own sake will enter into any ultimate explana-
tion of mental evolution (see my article on "The Will to Live "
in the "Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods ", Vol. XIV, No. 4). But psychology is a very imma-
ture science, and therefore a great field for individual specula-
tions. I have tried to confine myself to describing the general
view of conscious thought which is held by the most advanced
investigators in this field, or which, even if it is not consciously
held by them, is implied in their investigations.
The reader who wishes to find his way into the literature of
the subject, might begin by reading "Genetic Psychology",
by Edwin A. Kirkpatrick, Köhler's "The Mentality of Apes
John Dewey's "How we Think ", and "The Influence of
Darwin", Freud's "Introduction" to Psycho-analysis, Tans-
ley's "The New Psychology ", Koffka's <<
The Growth of the
Mind ", and L. L. Thurstone's "The Nature of Intelligence ".
Those who think that the instrumental or Darwinian approach
to Logic is a purely American phenomenon, should read
Vaihinger's book "The Philosophy of As If'", recently
>
رد
220 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
translated into English, but written in Germany in 1877.
Vaihinger's philosophy begins with this simple statement:
The object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal
of reality—this would be an utterly impossible task-but rather
to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about
more easily in the world."
"C
PAGE 18.
"ism
Affirmative scepticism": I insert these words not because
I want to burden the passage of time with another
but because I want to avoid a possible confusion of my view-
point with the philosophy of William James, which he called
<<
pragmatism ". Every new development in science is seized
upon by animistic minds, and made the basis of a new pretence
at metaphysical knowledge. The mind of James was animistic,
and he not only contributed to the development of a functional
science of psychology, but also tried to make this science the
basis of a new kind of metaphysics. His metaphysics is superior
to others, in my opinion, only in that it is more easily refuted.
His identification of the meaning of ideas with their results
in action, is obviously a limitation of the meaning of ideas, and
an endorsement of the methods of applied science-definition
in terms of specific action, and concrete experimental verifica-
tion-as the only means of distinguishing true from false mean-
ings. With any animistic idea that he likes very much, however,
James forgets that his conception of meaning is a limitation;
he forgets the necessity for defining meanings in terms of specific
action, and verifying their truth by concrete experiment. He
permits himself to imagine that such ideas are proven true
because in a general way, to people like him at least, they are
satisfactory". Thus he preserves philosophy in its most
naïve form, upon the basis of a definition of “meaning " which,
if taken seriously, is a death-blow to philosophy.
<<
<c
PAGE 19.
Marx's Theses on Feuerbach " translated into English
by Austin Lewis, may be found in Engel's "Feuerbach, the
Roots of the Socialist Philosophy". I have not relied, however,
upon these translations.
<<
**
((
To see how closely these theses anticipated the " Darwinian
view of Intelligence, compare Marx's statement about the nature
of sensation, and about the new task of philosophy, with the
corresponding statements of John Dewey in his Reconstruc-
tion in Philosophy :
>>
CC
2)
The senses lose their place as gateways of knowing, and take
their rightful place as stimuli to action." "Philosophy, unless
NOTES AND REFERENCES
221
it is to undergo a complete break with the authorized spirit
of science, must also alter its nature; it must become opera-
tive and experimental.”
It is needless for anyone who discusses the influence of the
Darwinian view-point upon the development of a scientific
logic, to express his obligation to John Dewey. I think Dewey's
contribution is most clearly summarized in this book "Recon-
struction in Philosophy ", and I recommend it to my reader-
along with his " Studies in Experimental Logic —as extremely
important.
>>
<<
""
I cannot refrain from observing, however, that this book,
like other works of these who accept the name of " Pragmatist
is a little half-hearted in drawing its conclusions. Dewey
makes it clear in his first chapter that the original and prevailing
function of philosophy has been to prevent practical scientific
intelligence from getting hold of the social problem. At least
so I read what he says. And in developing this theme he
demonstrates the unreality of most of the pretended problems
of philosophy. This prepares me to see practical-scientific
intelligence get hold of the social problem! But no, in answer
to those who are at a loss to know what would be left for
philosophy Dewey says: "Would not the elimination of
these problems permit philosophy to devote itself to a more
fruitful and more needed task? Would it not encourage
philosophy to face the great social and moral defects from which
humanity suffers, to concentrate its attention upon clearing
up the causes and the exact nature of these evils, and upon
developing a clear idea of better social possibilities . . .? '
If this means anything, it means that since philosophers can
no longer defend the existing social order by pretending to
know" a superior "reality", they may still do so by bringing
the glamour and authority of the mere name of philosophy
into the field of social and political science. Otherwise why
not suggest that "philosophers" devote themselves, say, to the
more fruitful and more needed task of clearing up the defects
in Ford motors? The real conclusion of Dewey's book, as I
read it, would be: If you are seriously interested in removing
"
<<
""
the great moral and social defects from which humanity
suffers inscribe the word science on your banner, and beware
of every man who speaks to you in the name of philosophy.
Thus Dewey, in his moralistic way, arrives at a position not
dissimilar to that of James. Having spent his life in building up
a science capable of dealing the death-blow to philosophy, he
devotes some further efforts to trying to revive the victim.
>
در
I do not doubt that philosophy will revive. It has been
knocked out five times before in its short history. But I doubt
if it will revive in its full strength of glory. The scepticism of
÷
222 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
past ages was, as Sextus Empiricus said, like a purge-it carried
itself off along with everything else. But the scepticism that
rests upon a scientific understanding of the mind that creates
systems of belief, is of a more permanent nature. The state-
ment that all truth is a practical definition and interpretation
of concrete facts, does not make an exception of itself. It is
itself a practical definition and interpretation of concrete mental
facts. It destroys the validity of philosophies, but retains its
own validity, because it is not a philosophy, but an applied
science of the mind.
PAGE 20.
(C
The quotations are from Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
(Wallace's translation, p. 208) and from his volume on Logic
in the "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences "
, pp. 47
and 50. (All my references to these two books are to William
Wallace's translation.)
(C
PAGE 21.
The quoted phrase is from the following passage in Hegel's
"Logic" (p. 18): "The mind or spirit, when it is sentient or
perceptive, finds its object in something sensuous; when it
imagines, in a picture or image; when it wills in an aim or end.
But in contrast to, or it may be only in distinction from, these
forms of its existence and of its objects, the mind has also to
gratify the cravings of its highest and most inward life. That
innermost self is thought. Thus the mind renders thought
its object. In the best meaning of the phrase, it comes to itself,
for thought is its principle and its very unadulterated self."
<<
PAGE 23.
Engels describes the rapture
Ludwig Feuer-
bach und der Ausgang der Klassischen Deutschen Philo-
sophie ", I.
<<
,,,
""
"Dynamic principle":"Das energische Prinzip". The
phrase is from Marx's own earlier work on the philosophy of
Democritus. The biographer is Franz Mehring-ch. V, sec. 1,
of his "Karl Marx”.
PAGE 24.
Hegel himself said ": "Logic ", p. 18.
r
دو
PAGE 25.
<<
Desultory empirical observations : The student should ex-
amine Section 81 of Hegel's "Logic” (p. 147 in Wallace's trans-
NOTES AND REFERENCES
223
lation); then the chapter on Dialectic" in Engels'
in Engels' " Land-
marks of Scientific Socialism (A translation of the substance
of his " Herrn Eugen Dühring's Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,"
called Anti-Dühring for short); and then if possible a
letter written by Engels to Konrad Schmidt on November 1,
1891. This will be enough to convince him that the dialectic
t
>>
law of motion" is not a definable and verifiable empirical
generalization, or anything remotely approaching it. Starting
with the assertion that " Everything that surrounds us may be
viewed as an instance of Dialectic ", Hegel proceeds to tell us
about some sufficiently peculiar matters in which we can find
"illustrations " of it, and " traces of its presence ". Here are
two of them : "In political life, as everyone knows, extreme
anarchy and extreme despotism naturally lead to one another.”
"The perception of Dialectic in the province of individual
ethics is seen in the well-known adages, Pride comes before a
fall: Too much wit outwits itself." Engels in his "Anti-
Dühring "adds some equally casual illustrations from the sphere
of chemistry and mathematics, and in his letter to Konrad
Schmidt, who was trying to convince himself of the dialectic
philosophy, he makes the following suggestion (I translate
from a Russian text) :
<<
<<
You as a bridegroom will find a clear model of the insepara-
bility of identity and difference in yourself and your bride. It
is absolutely impossible to determine whether sexual love is
a joy in the fact that there is identity in difference, or that there
is difference in identity. Throw out the difference (in this case
sex) or the identity (the humanity of both) and what have you
left?"-which shows a remarkable innocence of the varieties
of sexual experience, but will certainly not pass for science
in these days.
"
Such illustrations of an aphorism parading as proofs of a
law, would not have convinced anybody even in Hegel's time.
For convincing people, the dialectic philosophy relied entirely
upon rationalistic devices, of which two examples will suffice.
One of them is the difficulty about making physical motion
seem logical-the paradox, or conundrum, discovered by
Zeno. I have discussed it in my chapter on The Dialectic
Method ", p. 107.
, p. 107. The other consists of building up a great
mystification about the general idea of "being". You arrive
at general ideas by dropping out of your connotation the concrete
and real attributes of things, and when you arrive at “being”,
the most general idea which is possible, you find that all the
attributes are gone, and the idea really means nothing! This
may amuse you a little, but it will soon strike you as more
interesting to think about something.
That is a simple
•
224 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
and natural, and also in the rough state a scientific way of
stating the principal fact upon which Hegel builds up his
dialectic mystification. I will quote his own words in " The
Science of Logic ", Part I, Ch. I. (Here I have to take the
responsibility for the translation.)
"A.-BEING.
Being, pure being-without further definition. In its
undefined immediacy it is only equal to itself, and also is not
unequal compared with anything else, has no distinction
within itself, nor without. By any definition or content, which
might be distinguished in it, or through which it might be put
in distinction to something else, it would fail to be grasped in
its purity. It is pure undefinedness and emptiness.-There
is nothing to contemplate in it, if one can speak here of con-
templating, or it is only this pure empty contemplation itself.
There is likewise nothing to think in it, or it is just only this
empty thought. Being, the undefined immediate, is in fact
nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
<<
"B.-NOTHING.
"Nothing, pure nothing; it is simple equality to itself,
complete emptiness, absence of definition and content; undis-
tinguishedness in itself.-In so far as contemplation or thought
can be mentioned here, it is considered a distinction, whether
something or nothing is contemplated or thought. To con-
template or think nothing has thus a meaning; the two are
distinguished, thus nothing is (exists) in our contemplation or
thought; or rather it is empty contemplation and thought
itself; and the same empty contemplation or thought as pure
being. Nothing is consequently the same definition, or rather
lack of definition, and thus the same in general as pure Being.
M
"C.—BECOMING.
"The Unity of Being and Nothing.
"C
Pure being and pure nothing are just the same. What the
truth is, is neither being or nothing, but the fact that being
-not passes over-but has passed over into nothing, and nothing
into being. But in the same way the truth is, not their undis-
tinguishedness, but that they are not the same, that they are
absolutely different, but nevertheless undivided and indivisible,
and each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is,
thus, this motion of immediate vanishing of one in the other;
becoming; a motion in which both are distinguished, but
NOTES AND REFERENCES
225
through a distinction, which itself has just now immediately
been dissolved."
The most significant passage in Hegel's "Logic ", for those
who understand the practical functions of the mind, is that in
which he cautions the reader against taking the statement
that "being and nothing are the same " for a joke (" Logic ",
p. 163). It is a joke, in the most technical sense of the term-
although it is not a very good one-and a functional logic would
have no disposition to take it in any other way. (See my " Sense
of Humour ", III and IV.)
J
"Marx himself used to describe": See the preface to the
second edition of " Das Kapital ".
PAGE 26.
"First taste of Hegel ": Mehring,
Karl Marx ", II, 1.
"As he once contemplated doing": See his letter to Engels,
January 14, 1858.
PAGE 27.
"In
Lafargue: "Le Déterminisme Économique de Karl Marx ".
Plekhanov : "As to the question of the Development of a
Monistic View of History ", p. 103 of the Soviet edition.
order to escape from ignorance covered up in a more or less
learned terminology, we must pass from the study of human
nature to a study of the nature of social relations."
Karl Marx and his Historical Significance
Kautsky.
II. In an essay on
Social Instinct in Marx and Darwin "
Kautsky does broach the question of the relation between genetic
psychology and Marxism, but only to remark that this science
corroborates the "Theses on Feuerbach ".
(C
<<
Lenin: In quoting a passage from Engels' "Feuerbach "
}
Lenin translates the German words Gedanken-Abbilder
as "mental photographs ". Things which seem changeless,
and likewise ideas, their mental photographs made by the head,
are in a state of continuing change" ("Karl Marx, A Short
Biographical Essay with an Exposition of Marxism", p. 13).
In his "Materialism and Empiro-Criticism", Lenin makes
the following similar statements :
"Matter is a philosophic category for the designation of an
objective reality, which is given to man in his sensations, which is
copied, photographed, reflected by our sensations, existing inde-
pendently of them " (p. 142 of the first edition). “Materialism
P
<<
در
CC
226 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
<<
in general recognizes an objectively real existence (matter) inde-
pendent of the consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of
humanity. Historic materialism recognizes a social existence
independent of the social consciousness of humanity. Conscious-
ness in both cases is only a reflection of existence, at the best an
approximately true (adequate, mentally exact) reflection of it "
(p. 394). A recognition of the objective orderedness of nature,
and the approximately true reflection of this order in the head
of man is materialism" (p. 175). To recognize the necessity
of nature and infer from it the necessity of thought is material-
ism"
(p. 189). Knowledge can be biologically useful
only in case it reflects an objective reality, not dependent upon
man " (p. 155).
<<
<<
"" CC
(C
I give these different quotations with my own italics, in order
to show the complete lack of psychological science, or the
conception of such a thing, in Lenin's mind. "Sensation "”
thought", "consciousness social consciousness", "know-
ledge experience ideas ”—any names that happen
to occur to him for anything that exists or takes place in
the head of man "—are lumped together without examina-
tion or discrimination as automatic photographs of the material
environment. This is not materialistic philosophy; it is mere
negligence of psychological facts and distinctions. Lenin's
materialism "is satisfied by his assertion that “ matter, nature,
existence, the physical, is primary, and spirit, consciousness,
sensation, the psychical, is secondary" (p. 164)—a statement
which seems to him, because he has no conception of a psycho-
logical science, practically interchangeable with these other
statements.
<<
ઃઃ
CC
دو
<<
CC
PAGE 28.
"Consciousness in general": "Materialism and Empiro-
Criticism", p. 391. The other quotation is from "The Signi-
ficance of Militant Materialism an article contributed by
Lenin to an early number of "Pod Znamenem Marxisma a
Monthly Journal of Philosophy and Social Economy established
by the Bolsheviks after the revolution.
>
•
">
>>
<<
K. Kornilov: "Dialectic Method in Psychology", and
Contemporary Psychology and Marxism ", articles in Pod
Znamenem Marxisma", 1923 and 1924. An entire text-book
has been written by a communist in Orenburg, V. Ia. Stru-
minsky, entitled: "Psychology: An Attempt to Expound the
Fundamental Principles of Scientific Psychology from the Point
of View of Dialectic Materialism". The book has little value,
both because Struminsky's psychology is old-fashioned, and
because he caters to the State Religion. He thinks it necessary
NOTES AND REFERENCES
227
to prove that Marx himself, whatever may be the failings of his
followers, was a great and perfect psychologist.
PAGE 30.
The phrases quoted are all from Hegel's "Logic " (pp. 50.
51, 149).
"One
:
<<
Hegel had the same phobia Logic ", p. 69:
word on the relation of rational to empirical psychology,"
he says.
"The former, because it sets itself to apply thought
to cognize mind and even to demonstrate the result of such
thinking, is the higher; whereas empirical psychology starts
from perception, and only recounts and describes what percep-
tion supplies." In short it only tells us the facts!
Hegel pretends to study an evolution of the mind, but it
is in reality a resurrection of God that he is studying. It is
a coming back to its "true and unadulterated self" of his
rationalistic conception of the mind, after having been " alienated
from itself" in matter. Such a study of its genesis obviously
does not, and cannot, affect the conception. Hegel's attitude
to a real genetic psychology may be inferred from the fact that
he begins his "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences"
by making a fixed distinction between man and the animals
upon the ground that man thinks", and he recurs to it ten
times in the first one hundred pages. His "Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion" begin with the same assertion: "It
is through thought or more definitely, it is by reason of
his being Spirit, that man is man.
{
<<
<<
•
<<
PAGE 31.
""
("
PAGE 33.
•
Socrates": "Although Socrates was doubtless sincerely
interested in the reconciliation of the two sides, yet the fact
that he approached the matter from the side of matter-of-fact
method was enough to bring him to the condemnation
of death as a contemner of the gods and a corrupter of youth."
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy", p. 14. In
connection with this chapter read also Thorstein Veblen's
essay on
The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View ".
<<
•
PAGE 35.
"The true reason world": Hegel's "Logic " (pp. 152, 153).
PAGE 36.
"Marx's childhood was less churchly-religious": At the
age of nineteen Engels wrote as follows: "I pray every day;
228 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
almost all day long I pray that the truth may be given me.
I have done this ever since doubts assailed me, but still I can-
not return to our faith . . . I write these lines with tears in
my eyes, it is hard for me to control my emotion, but neverthe-
less I feel that I will not be lost, that I will find God, toward
whom I aspire with all my heart.' (I translate from a Russian
text given by Riazanov, "Essays on the History of Marxism",
p. 36.)
""
"Doctor's Thesis
"The General Differences between
the Nature Philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus ", written
in 1841. (“Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lasalle, herausgegeben von
Franz Mehring ", vol. I, p. 65.)
PAGE 37.
<<
"And that faith in the omnipotence of the Idea "
: The
quotation is from Schelling and Revelation: A Criticism
of the Latest Reactionary Attempt upon the Free Philosophy "
a pamphlet long attributed to Bakunin, but written by Engels,
and published in 1842. (From the Russian text given by
Riazanov, “ Essays on the History of Marxism ”, pp. 40, 41.)
PAGE 38.
Says Marx " In Herr Vogt". Compare also the
following statement of Marx in the correspondence published
in the "Deutsch-Franzözische Jahrbucher", in 1843: "We
will not then oppose the world like doctrinaires with a new
principle We expose new principles to the world out of
the principles of the world itself. . . We explain to it only
the real object for which it struggles, and consciousness is a
thing it must acquire even though it objects to it."
<<
<<
PAGE 39.
<<
By means of all seeming accidents": The phrases quoted
are from Engels' "Feuerbach", IV and I. It should be
remembered that before sending this book to the press Engels
re-read a manuscript on German Ideologies" written jointly
by him and Marx in 1845-46, an enormous and wearisome
book in which, as Marx said later, they "settled accounts "
with their " own former philosophical views ". "We submitted
the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice, and this
the more willingly that our own chief end was achieved-we
had arrived at an understanding between ourselves." Engels'
(C
Anti-Dühring", the other exposition of the philosophy of
Dialectic Materialism, was read over in manuscript by Marx
himself. Thus it is admissible to attribute to Marx all the
essential philosophic ideas expressed by Engels.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
229
""
It was not because of emotional dependence
: I say this
with so much assurance, because of the paragraph in Engels'
"Feuerbach ", where he mentions in the most casual manner the
scientific prediction of an end of life on the earth, and the pro-
bability that there is, therefore, “in human history not only an
ascending but also a descending branch". In the face of this
probability—which is an emotional, if not indeed an intellectual,
reduction to absurdity of the whole philosophy of an endless
evolutionary progress of human society from the lower to the
higher ”—Engels nonchalantly remarks : We find ourselves,
at any rate, still at a considerable distance from the turning-
point, where the history of society begins to go downward.
<<
<<
<<
(C
Being a German philosopher": I mean, Being a German
philosopher of the classical or official tradition. Schopenhauer
was a German philosopher, and Schopenhauer first perceived
that relation between impulse and intelligence which lies at
the basis of modern psychology. But Schopenhauer was not
an official German philosopher; he was not an "instructor of
youth appointed by the state". Nietzsche perceived the
significance of this fact. Nietzsche was far more Marxian than
Marx in his attitude to the official German philosophy. 'Ex-
perience teaches us," he said, " that nothing stands so much in
the way of developing great philosophers as the custom of
supporting bad ones in state universities. . It is the popular
theory that the posts given to the latter make them 'free' to
do original work; as a matter of fact, the effect is quite contrary.
No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato
and Schopenhauer. And why? Because the state is always afraid
of them. It seems to me that there is need for a higher
tribunal outside the universities to critically examine the
doctrines they teach. As soon as philosophers are willing to
resign their salaries, they will constitute such a tribunal.
("Schopenhauer als Erzieher ", Translation by H. L. Mencken
in " Nietzsche ".)
CC
در
"The simultaneous occurrence": I give this Thesis "
in the form found by Riazanov in Marx's note-book, and not
as Engels gives it in his "Feuerbach ". ("Essays on the
History of Marxism ", p. 75.)
PAGE 40.
Plekhanov: "From Idealism to Materialism", II.
د.
""
(C
Rosa Luxemburg: From an article in Vorwärts on the
twentieth anniversary of Marx's death, cited by Siemkovsky
in his "Khrestomatia Marxisma". (I translate from his Russian
text.) In her speech at the Inaugural Congress of the Commu-
230 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
nist Party of Germany (Spartacus League) the emotional
function performed by this idea in Rosa Luxemburg's mind,
is even more clear: "On November 10th our revolutionists
allowed to slip from their grasp nearly half the instruments
of power they had seized on November 9th. We learn from
this, on the one hand, that our revolution is subject to the
prepotent law of historical determinism, a law which guarantees
that, despite all difficulties and complications, notwithstanding
all our own errors, we shall nevertheless advance step by step
towards the goal." (British
(British "Communist Review", Sep-
tember 1921.) Here even the present failure is converted into
an evidence of future success.
PAGE 41.
<<
Plekhanov: History shows that even fatalism, not only
does not always hinder energetic practical action, but, on the
contrary, in certain epochs has been a psychologically necessary
foundation for such action. In evidence we may cite the
Puritans, surpassing in their energy all other parties in seven-
teenth-century England, and the followers of Mahomet, sub-
jecting to their power in a short space of time an enormous
strip of earth from India to Spain. They are greatly mistaken,
who think that we need only be convinced of the inevitable
arrival of an event of a given kind, in order to lose every psycho-
logical possibility of co-operating with or opposing it.
<<
Here all depends on the question whether my own activity
constitutes a necessary link in the chain of necessary events.
If yes then so much the less do I waver, so much the more
decisively I act.” (“The Question of the Rôle of Personality
in History ", an article contributed by Plekhanov to a Collec-
tion entitled After Twenty Years ".) Plekhanov speaks in
a footnote of Moses and Cromwell. All Cromwell's activities,'
he says,
were for him coloured in advance with the hue of
necessity. This not only did not prevent him from striving
from victory to victory, but gave to his efforts an unconquerable
power."
""
CC
>>
(6
PAGE 42.
r
"The definition of freedom": Read Sections 145, 46 and
47 of Hegel's Logic", and Section B of the second division
of Part II of his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
(translated by Spiers and Sanderson). And do not read them in
the mood of filial piety that Marxians cherish towards Hegel.
Do not mistake unintelligibility for wisdom. Remember that
Marx too disliked Hegel until he had Hegel drilled into him at
school.
Hegel says: "The link of necessity qua necessity is identity,
""
NOTES AND REFERENCES
231
as still inward and concealed, because it is the identity of what
are esteemed actual things, although their very self-subsistence
is bound to be necessity. The circulation of substance through
causality and reciprocity therefore only expressly makes out
or states that self-subsistence is the infinite negative self-rela-
tion—a relation negative, in general, for in it the act of distin-
guishing and intermediating becomes a primariness of actual
things independent one against the other-and infinite self-
relation, because their independence only lies in their identity.
This truth of necessity, therefore, is Freedom.”
(C
Whatever that may mean logically, it is plain that science can-
not bother with it, for the simple reason that science has too
much to do. And what it means morally, and politically, Hegel
takes pains to make as clear, as his logical meaning is obscure :
•
"We may note in passing," he says, "how important it
is for any man to meet everything that befalls him in the spirit
of the old proverb which describes each man as the architect
of his own fortune. The other way would be to lay the
blame of whatever we experience upon other men, upon un-
favourable circumstances, and the like. And this is a fresh
example of the language of unfreedom, and at the same time
the spring of discontent. If man saw, on the contrary, that
whatever happens to him is only the outcome of himself, and
that he only bears his own guilt, he would stand free, and in
everything that came upon him would have the consciousness
that he suffered no wrong. . . . It is their view of necessity,
therefore, which is the root of the content and discontent of
men."
CC
That is the Marxian doctrine of historic necessity, studied
from the standpoint of its origin ". The meaning of it in
plain language is this: Speculative philosophy is too difficult
for you, a simple artisan or perhaps a housekeeper, to under-
stand. But I will tell you' in passing' what you would learn
from it, if you could understand. You would learn that it is
right and proper for you to feel free to feel that your
choices are real-so far as taking the whole responsibility
for your misfortunes is concerned, but when it comes to doing
anything to change your circumstances', then you must
recognize that your 'freedom' is only a consciousness of the
necessity of everything's being just what it is."
"One of the most brilliant discoveries": Quoted from the
article by Plekhanov above mentioned.
PAGE 43.
"The thinking of Plekhanov about the doctrine of necessity
For example the following paragraph from the same article:
232 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
"A consciousness of the unconditional necessity of a given
phenomenon can only strengthen the energy of the man who
favours that phenomenon, and considers himself one of the
forces producing it. If such a man should fold his arms, because
he is aware of this necessity, he would thereby show that he
knows little about arithmetic. Let us suppose that the phe-
nomenon A must necessarily appear, if we have at hand a given
sum of conditions S. You have proven to me that this sum of
conditions is partly at hand already, and partly will be at hand
at a given time T. Convinced of this I-a man favouring
the phenomenon A—cry' How nice that is !' and flop down to
sleep right up to the joyful day of the event you have foretold.
What comes of that? Just this: In your reckoning, into the
sum S, necessary to the accomplishment of the phenomenon
A, entered also my activity, equal, let us say, to a. Inasmuch
as I took my little nap, at the moment T, the sum of conditions
favourable to the occurrence of the given phenomenon will
now not be S, but S minus a, which changes the whole state
of affairs."
Any reader who has time to think, will see that if Plekhanov
has proven anything here, it is the opposite of what he set out
to prove. He has at least given an excellent illustration of the
opposite thesis-namely that all practical thought or argument,
implies that the future is not determined. You have to be able
to say
"If a man should . . ." and mean it, in order to talk
sense about a practical problem.
In his preface to a Russian translation of Engels' Socialism
Utopian and Scientific, Plekhanov has some more remarks of
the same kind :
(C
The chief distinguishing feature of scientific socialism is
now defined for us with complete clarity. Its advocates are not
satisfied with the hope that the socialist ideals, thanks to their
elevated character, will attract general sympathy and therefore
triumph. No-they require certainty that this very attraction
of general sympathy by the socialist ideals is a necessary social
process. And they derive this certainty from an analysis of
contemporary economic relations and the course of their
development..
Certain writers, for example Stammler,
remark that if the triumph of socialism is a historic necessity,
then the practical activity of the social-democrats is entirely
superfluous. Why help to create phenomena which will in any
case inevitably appear? But this is a pitiful and ridiculous
sophism. Looking upon historical development from the
standpoint of necessity, the social democracy looks upon its
own activity as a necessary link in the chain of those necessary
conditions, the combination of which makes inevitable the
NOTES AND REFERENCES
233
triumph of socialism. A necessary link cannot be superfluous :
its removal would break the whole chain of events.'
Here again the alternative: If my activity is withdrawn,
the whole chain of events will be broken. The only question
then is: Can I, or can I not withdraw my activity? And
if I can not, then what is the use of talking? What is the use of
thinking? In a world which contained no genuine alternatives,
thinking would never have arisen.
I give two more quotations from Plekhanov, as there is no
better way to cure practical minds of a taste for Hegelian
Marxism.
"The Marxists have succeeded in finding a bridge uniting
ideals with reality. They have lifted themselves up to Monism.
According to their opinion, capitalism in the course of its own
development leads to its own negation and the realization of
their
ideals. That is historic necessity. The Marxist
serves as one of the instruments of that necessity, and cannot
fail to serve as such, both because of his social situation, and
because of his mental and moral character, created by this
situation. That also is the side of necessity. But once his social
situation has developed in him just this and not another charac-
ter, he not only serves as an instrument of necessity, and not
only cannot fail to serve as such, but he passionately desires and
cannot fail to desire to serve. This is the side of freedom, or
more truly, this is freedom identifying itself with necessity
-it is necessity transforming itself into freedom." ("The Rôle
of Personality in History.")
CC
'Engels dedicated his life to an extraordinarily high aim,
the liberation of the proletariat. He also had his ideal, but it
was not everlastingly separated from reality. His ideal was this
same reality, but the reality of to-morrow, a reality which will
come into being, not because Engels was idealistic, but because
the attributes of the present reality are such that out of it,
according to its own inward laws, must develop that reality
of to-morrow, which may be called the ideal of Engels. Unde-
veloped people may ask us: if the whole thing lies in the attri-
butes of reality, then what is the use of Engels? Why should
he mix into an unavoidable historic process with his ideals?
Cannot the business get along without him? From the objec-
tive side, the situation of Engels presents itself thus: In the
process of passing from one of its forms to another, reality
seized upon him, as one of the necessary instruments of the
economic overturn. From the subjective side, it results that
to Engels his participation in the historic movement is agreeable,
that he considers this his duty and the great task of his life.'
(Remarks upon Engels' book "Ludwig Feuerbach ".)
234 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Thus after all the commotion and trumpeting about realism
and materialism and atheism, and getting down to the hard
business facts, we find ourselves in exactly the same position
as the Apostle Paul. We are seized upon " by an abstract
Reality", and made to serve as its "instruments ", and
we find it not only agreeable, but “ our duty and the great task
of our lives" to serve !
"C
<<
"When Engels says ": "Anti-Dühring ", I, XI
PAGE 45.
"Feuer-
“Marx and Engels repudiated ” : “ Capital vol. I, ch. 13,
footnote to page 406 of Untermann's translation.
bach ", II. "Socialism Utopian and Scientific ", p. 38.
(6
((
در
<<
PAGE 46.
"The Abolition of Religion": The quotation is from Marx's
"Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie ", published
in 1844. ("Nachlass ", vol. I, p. 385.)
در
CC
Marx himself declared": See the Introduction to his
Critique of Political Economy ", published in 1859, and his
letter to Lassalle, February 22, 1858. Hegel," he says in
this letter, "first understood the whole history of philosophy,
and you cannot demand of him that he should make no mis-
takes in the details.”
'
""
Engels made the same two contradictory assertions. In his
Introduction to the English edition of Socialism Utopian
and Scientific " (page xxxvii) he declares that philosophical
ideas are "offshoots of the economic relations prevailing in a
given society". In his " Anti-Dühring (the chapter on
Dialectic) he asserts that the whole history of philosophy has
been an independent dialectical process.
"
In an
Introduction to the Philosophy of Dialectic Material-
ism", by A. Deborin, a book which has reached its third edition
in Soviet Russia, we have an explanation of the whole course
of modern philosophy as an independent dialectic development.
But the author apologizes in his preface for not having also
explained modern philosophy as a development determined
bv "social relations at the basis of which lies the evolution of
the productive forces"! Such a double-barrelled history of
philosophy seems to Deborin the natural Marxian product,
whose only drawback is that it would require an extended
work of several volumes
<<
>>
<<
The way in which Marx fell into this inconsistency was
undoubtedly as follows: Hegel considered social and political
NOTES AND REFERENCES
235
history to be a self-development of the divine Reason in an alien
form. Therefore Hegel could describe the history of philos-
ophy as an independent self-development of Reason, and yet at
the same time declare that the philosophy of any historic period
is a reflection of the social and political history of that period.
"It is one Mind," as he says, which manifests itself in and
impresses itself upon these different elements." Marx retained
these two ways of viewing the history of philosophy through
mere habituation, although his substitution of the forces of
production for the Divine Mind as an explanation of history,
had rendered them inconsistent. (My quotations here are
from Hegel's "Lectures on the History of Philosophy",
Haldane's translation, vol. I, pp. 5 and 115.)
PAGE 47.
The quotation is from the Introduction to Marx's “Critique
of Political Economy ". (My own translation.)
PAGE 49.
The forces of production rebel ": The quotation is from
Engel's "Anti-Dühring ", III, II.
<c
PAGE 50.
"Condition and determine ": The German words are bedingt
and bestimmt. Plekhanov interchanges condition and cause
in the same way:
"Social man himself creates his social
relations. But if he creates at a given time these and not other
relations, this happens, you may be sure, not without a cause
it is conditioned by the state of the productive forces.
("Rôle of Personality.") Engels, in his original outline for the
Communist Manifesto defined communism itself as
science of the conditions of the emancipation of the proletariat ".
(My italics.)
"the
>>
That Marx at his most Marxian, really conceives of a positive
and detailed causation of the ideological superstructure by the
economic basis, may be seen in a footnote in Chapter XIII of the
first volume of "Das Kapital". Here he suggests that one
can infer religious ideas from the material relations of the
society in which they arise, and that this would be "
the only
materialistic, and therefore scientific" method of studying
religion.
Lafargue: In an essay on "Economics, Natural Science,
and Mathematics ".
PAGE 51.
""
"The Marxian explanation of law and the state : I believe
it is true that this explanation is " usually expressed in a dynamic
236 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
r
is
form" at least by revolutionary Marxists, although in the
classical exposition of it the state appears to have arisen out of
reasons rather than causes. "The state," Engels says,
the product of society at a certain stage of its development.
The state is tantamount to an acknowledgment that the given
society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with
itself, that it has broken up into irreconcilable antagonisms of
which it is powerless to rid itself. And in order that these
antagonisms, these classes with their opposing economic inter-
ests, may not devour one another and society itself in their
sterile struggle, some force standing seemingly above society,
becomes necessary so as to moderate the force of their collisions
and to keep them within the bounds of 'order'. And this
force arising from society, but placing itself above it, which
gradually separates itself from it-this force is the state.'
("The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State ",
translated by Untermann, ix.)
CC
This explanation is decidedly metaphysical and mystical,
but it is usually very quickly supplemented and made real and
scientific by adding some such statement as this :
"The state
is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by
another "(Engels' Introduction to "The Civil War in France "),
or The state power is nothing but an organization given to
themselves by the ruling classes-capitalists and landlords—
in order to defend their social privileges (Engels' Letter to
Kuno, January 24, 1872), or, The state is an organization
for the systematic use of violence by one class against another
(Lenin," State and Revolution ").
CC
Reformists, who wish to make the doctrines of Marx as mild
as possible, cling to the metaphysical statement of this theory,
and maintain on the basis of it that the state is an organ for the
** reconciliation " of opposing class interests. Inasmuch as
everything in the world is supposed, according to the dialectic
philosophy, to be engaged in the process of reconciling oppo-
sites in a higher unity, the reformists have rather the best of this
argument, so long as the theory is stated in the metaphysical
form. The first three pages of Lenin's book," State and Revo-
lution", are therefore occupied with wriggling out of Engels'
classical statement, and arriving at the scientific assertion that
"The state is an organ of class rule ", which was created by
the governing class". The whole first chapter of this book
is a proof of the inappropriateness and inconvenience to a
practical revolutionist of a metaphysical theory of history.
>>
<<
<<
در
>>
"The religious world " Capital ", vol. I, ch. I, sec. IV.
This view-point is developed by Engels in the concluding
NOTES AND REFERENCES
237
CC
chapter of his "Anti-Dühring ". Religion," he says,
is nothing but the fantastic reflection in the heads of men of
those earthly powers which rule over their daily life, a reflection
in which earthly powers take on the form of unearthly ones.
Compare with this glib statement James H. Leuba's work on
The Psychology of Religious Mysticism
""
(C
"Calvin's doctrine of predestination": The quotation
is from "Socialism Utopian and Scientific ", Introduction,
p. xxi. In Engels' Feuerbach", IV, Calvinism appears as
"the authentic religious disguise of the interests of the con-
temporary bourgeoisie ". (My italics.)
In order to realize the remoteness of this sort of thing from
exact science, the reader might compare with Engels' explanation
of the doctrine of predestination, Pokrovsky's explanation of
the doctrine of free will. Pokrovsky is the author of an excellent
Marxian history of Russia. Science has proven, he declares,
that all things are in a state of absolutely determined change,
but the bourgeoisie, in order to make their class enemies
believe that the present order of society is an exception to this
rule, have invented the doctrine that man is free from causal
determination!
PAGE 52.
Trotsky: "Literature and Revolution ", IV.
""
در
PAGE 54.
Principle of investigation": "Historic Materialism is
not a finished system crowned with unalterable truth. It
represents simply a scientific method for the investigation of
the human process of development." Franz Mehring, "Con-
cerning Historic Materialism" (Russian text).
Our interpretation of life is chiefly an introduction to
study.. (Engels' Letter to Conrad Schmidt, August 5,
1890.)
>>
<<
"Classical philosophy": See Engels' Letter to Conrad
Schmidt, October 27, 1890. The quotations are from his
"Feuerbach ", V. See also the concluding chapter where he
speaks of that great theoretic mind", that
mind for pure
scientific investigation, indifferent whether the results were
practically profitable or not, contrary to the police regulations
or not ", which had been "the honour of Germany in the
period of her deepest political humiliation ". A more un-
Marxian description of a cultural phenomenon could hardly
be imagined.
Hegel himself clearly perceived and frankly announced the
t
238 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
<<
reactionary and animistic mission of German philosophy in
the modern scientific world. We shall see in the history of
philosophy," he said in his inaugural address at Heidelburg,
that in other European countries in which the sciences and
the culture of the understanding have been prosecuted with
zeal and with respect, Philosophy, excepting in name, has sunk
even from memory, and that it is in the German nation that it
has been retained as a peculiar possession. We have received
the higher call of Nature to preserve this holy flame, just as
the Eumolpidæ in Athens had the conservation of the Eleu-
sinian Mysteries, the inhabitants of the island of Samothrace
the preservation of a higher divine service.
>>
•
How much truer than what Engels says about German
philosophy!
CC
>
'Feudal and Bureaucratic despotism": The phrase occurs
in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
articles by Engels published in the New York Tribune over
Marx's name.
PAGE 55.
Plekhanov: "The Rôle of Personality in History." Engels
also, and in the same incidental way, acknowledges that an
CC
understanding of the causes of economic and political develop-
ment and the conditions confronting the revolution" gives us
additional assurance of its early success. (Letter to Bebel,
December 11, 1884.)
PAGE 56.
Marx: Letter to Kugelmann, April 17, 1871.
PAGE 57.
Engels: Letter to Starkenburg, January 25, 1894.
Hegel: "Logic ", p. 265.
PAGE 58.
"}
Engels: "Feuerbach ", IV.
<< Problems which trouble them the most : A good example
of this troubledness may be found in Riazanov's Preface to his
excellent "Essays on the History of Marxism". He makes
on the first page the following statement:
"One may say-
and from the theoretical standpoint it would be correct-that
any historic process, or any definite part of it, this or that change
in the life of a people, would have taken place without the
co-operation of any given historic personality."
Upon the page immediately after that, he makes the following
NOTES AND REFERENCES
239
<
statement : "One of the most interesting phenomena in world
history is the fact that the creative power' of ideas, and the
deciding rôle (sic) of historic personalities has nowhere appeared
so fully as in the lives of the two founders of the materialistic
interpretation of history.”
Engels: Letter to Starkenburg, January 25, 1894.
there had been no Napoleon, another would have taken his
place. That is proven by the fact that the man was always
found as soon as he was needed: Cæsar, Augustus, Cromwell.”
(Except, we may add, when he was not found: absence at other
important moments of Cæsar, Augustus, Cromwell!)
PAGE 59.
Trotsky Speech at the Ukrainian Communist Party Con-
ference in Kharkov, April 5, 1923, reprinted in his book “ About
Lenin ".
Kautsky: "What does the Materialistic Interpretation of
History Ask, and What Can it Give? -one of the articles
in his discussion with the English socialist, Belfort Bax, pub-
lished in "Die Neue Zeit" in 1896. "We ought not to protest
against the 'reproach' that we have leaders. Yes we have
leaders, and it depends to a considerable degree upon the
qualities of our leaders whether our road to victory will be long
or short, whether it will be comfortable or covered with thorns.'
Engels also speaks of the "end-result" in discussing the
manner in which "history" operates (Letter to Joseph Bloch,
September 21, 1890).
>>
+
'If
""
رد
>>
<<
PAGE 60.
Bernstein: "Die Voraussetzung des Socialismus and die
Aufgaben der Sozial-democratie translated into English
under the title “ Evolutionary Socialism
:
Jaurès I have in mind his debate with Paul Lafargue on the
Idealist and Materialist Interpretation of History.
Croce: << Materialismo storico ed economia Marxistica."
Simkhovitch : Marxism Versus Socialism."
CC
Seligmann: "The Economic Interpretation of History."
PAGE 61.
<<
Bernstein : Evolutionary Socialism."
""
Kautsky: "Bernstein and the Materialist Interpretation
of History.'
Engels: Letter to Joseph Bloch, September 21, 1890, and to
Conrad Schmidt, October 27, 1890. (My translations of the
second letter are from a Russian text.)
240 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
PAGE 62.
Kautsky: "The Materialistic Interpretation of History and
the Psychological Factor "-his first article in the discussion
with Belfort Bax, referred to above.
"It was Marx and not history”: That Marx was also a
product of history, and his purposes and ideas conditioned by
the age and society in which he lived, does not alter this fact or
contradict it. We do not know the degree in which Marx's
purposive ideas were conditioned by his place in history, and
we do not know the positive concrete causes of those ideas at
all. We shall never escape from metaphysics without ceasing
to pretend to know everything.
PAGE 63.
""
Early Christians ": "Delivered from capitalist slavery,
from the innumerable horrors, barbarities, absurdities, and
infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become
accustomed to the observance of those elementary rules of social
life, known for ages, and repeated for thousands of years in all
maxims, to their observance without violence, without com-
pulsion, without subjection, without the special apparatus for
compulsion which is called the state (Lenin, State and
Revolution ", V. 2).
""
PAGE 65.
All past history" : A statement often repeated by Marx
and Engels and always in this sweeping form. The quotation
here is from Engels' "Socialism Utopian and Scientific
p. 41. The quotation at the end of the chapter is from the
Communist Manifesto.
<<
(C
>>
>>
"Penetrated with unity The phrase is from the article
by Rosa Luxemburg, published in " Vorwärts "on the twentieth
anniversary of Marx's death (Russian text, see note to p. 40).
"Since Marx established in the sphere of philosophy, history
and political economy the historical point of view of the working
class, the thread of bourgeois investigations in these spheres
has been broken. Natural philosophy, in the classical sense of
the word, has ceased to exist. The philosophy of history has
come to an end. Scientific political economy has come to an
end. In historical investigations wherever an unconscious
and inconsistent materialism does not prevail, the place of a
complete theory is occupied by a many-coloured eclecticism
—that is to say, the idea of an explanation of the historic process
NOTES AND REFERENCES
241
penetrated with unity has been renounced, the philosophy of
history has been renounced."
PAGE 66.
"The predominating purpose": My quotations are from
Marx's earliest exposition of his social theory,
"The Poverty
of Philosophy ", II, V, and from his "Zur Kritik des Sozial-
democratischen Programms von Gotha", a letter written late
in his life.
PAGE 67.
"Marx greeted Darwin's theory":
January 16, 1861.
Letter to Lassalle,
Engels: Introduction to the Communist Manifesto (1888).
"Glorious corroboration": The phrase of Anton Pannekoek
in his “ Marxism and Darwinism ", the ablest and most original
of all the writings on this subject.
PAGE 68.
CC
"Universal law of motion": This is in substance Engels'
definition of the dialectic both in Feuerbach" and Anti-
Dühring ".
PAGE 70.
"In studying revolutions": From the Introduction to the
Critique of Political Economy " (See page 48 of this book).
"The law of development of human history”: The phrase
is from Engels' speech at the grave of Karl Marx.
CC
tr
PAGE 71.
"He speaks of his doctrine": See, for instance, the Preface
to the first edition of "Das Kapital". "My standpoint,
which views the development of the economic social formation
as a process in natural history, holds the individual responsible
less than any other for relations whose creature he remains, no
matter how much he may raise himself subjectively above them.”
PAGE 72.
"Reflection in thought":
tific ", p. 47.
Socialism Utopian and Scien-
PAGE 73.
"General expression": "The theoretical conclusions of
the communists merely express in general terms actual
relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a
historical movement going on under our very eyes." (Com~
Q
242 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
munist Manifesto, II.) "The theoretical propositions of the
communists are by no means founded on ideas and principles
invented or discovered by this or that reformer of the world:
they are merely a general expression of the class struggle
(Kautsky-Debate with Belfort Bax).
>>
Rosa Luxemburg: Article in "Vorwärts "on the Twentieth
Anniversary of Marx's death. (See note to p. 40.)
PAGE 75.
Lenin: The quotations are from " Materialism and Empiro-
criticism ", and "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back ".
Trotsky: "Terrorism and Communism."
Plekhanov: From his Preface to the Russian translation of
Engels' Socialism Utopian and Scientific ".
Works, vol. XI, p. 88.)
(Complete
PAGE 76.
(C
Bukharin : Historic Materialism": To this book belongs
the distinction of reducing Hegelian Marxism to a complete
absurdity. Bukharin does not understand the tricks of meta-
physics. He does not realize that in order to establish a dialectic
philosophy over and above science, it is necessary to accept the
mechanical laws of motion just as they are given by the sciences,
but at the same time insert into these mechanical laws a set of
speculative" laws, showing that motion is logical at the same
time that it is mechanical, dialectic at the same time that it is
dynamic. To put it in Hegel's own words: "The relation of
speculative science to the other sciences may be stated in the
following terms. It does not in the least neglect the empirical
facts contained in the several sciences, but recognizes and adopts
them; it appreciates and applies towards its own structure the
universal element in these sciences, their laws and classifications ;
but besides all this, into the categories of science it introduces
and gives currency to, other categories.
This clever
device for the preservation of animism Bukharin does not
understand. He thinks that the dialectic laws are themselves
mechanical like Newton's laws of motion, or Kepler's or Ein-
stein's laws. Thus according to Bukharin we have two mechani-
cal sciences side by side-one invented by Hegel and Marx
who perhaps never entered a laboratory, and the other developed
by men who spent their lives trying to achieve an experimental
understanding of mechanical motion. The absurdity of this
position is obvious. And it reduces the whole dialectic meta-
physics to absurdity, because it is in a sense the same thing
naïvely and clumsily done. Bukharin is like the pupil of a
magician, giving away the tricks of his master by trying to
perform before he has quite learned them.
>>
CC
NOTES AND REFERENCES
243
Lenin: The quotations are from " Materialism and Empiro
criticism VI, 4; from a letter to Maxim Gorky published
in "Pod Znamenem Marxisma"; from his "What to Do?"
II, 2; and again from "Materialism and Empiro-criticism ”.
""
PAGE 78.
"Feuerbach",
"Semi-theological jargon": See Engels'
I, and "Landmarks of Scientific Socialism p. 152. Also
Lenin's "Materialism and Empiro-criticism "the section on
"Absolute and Relative Truth
PAGE 79.
I first indicated this view of the relation between Marxism
and Freud's psychology in an article on "Wilson and Lenin ",
published in "The Liberator" in 1918.
<<
"
Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery": "Der Achtzehnte
Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte ", III.
PAGE 82.
Engels: Letter to Franz Mehring, July 14, 1893.
Marx: “Achtzehnte Brumaire ", III.
PAGE 83.
Engels: Letter to Joseph Bloch, September 21, 1890.
PAGE 84.
Engels: The quotation is from his letter to Conrad Schmidt,
October 27, 1890 The second quotation is from Feuer-
bach ", IV.
PAGE 86.
<<
An early biographer": Scott, Napoleon", VI, 251.
Before Napoleon the word ideology meant the science of ideas,
and in France-strangely enough-it is this meaning which
survives.
<<
<<
<<
PAGE 87.
The quotations are from Engels' " Anti-Dühring ", the chap-
ter on Political Economy, sec. I, and II.
PAGE 88.
The words " more magnificent" occur in the Introduction
to "Anti-Dühring". The heavenly bodies like the forma-
244 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
tions of the organisms by which they are under favourable
conditions inhabited, arise and perish, and the courses that
they run, so far as is on the whole permissible, take on eternally
more magnificent dimensions."
"So often repeated" : Read for instance Engels' Introduc-
tion to Marx's " Poverty of Philosophy ", and Marx's "Criti-
cism of the Gotha Program". This latter document reveals
more clearly than any other the manner in which Marx pro-
jected his own purpose into the evolving " Economic relations ".
PAGE 91.
Marx: Letter to Engels, January 8, 1868.
PAGE 95.
"Marx himself confessed": Preface to the second edition
of" Das Kapital ".
"Famous subject of dispute ": See Böhm-Bawerk's " Karl
Marx and the Close of his System ". The reader will find a
defence of Marx's position, in Louis Boudin's book,
"The
Theoretic System of Karl Marx ", V and VI. I recommend
this book as the most reliable outline of orthodox Marxism
in English. The book is conceived in a spirit of humorless
and unconvincing sarcasm, which will repel the scientific
reader-but this also belongs to the orthodox tradition. Marx's
"Poverty of Philosophy", Engels' "Anti-Dühring " and
Plekhanov's attacks upon Mikhaelovsky, were all weakened with
this cocksure theological sarcasm. Lenin's polemics are more
powerful.
<<
>>
A penetration : The quotation is from " Capital", vol.
III, p. 199 of Untermann's translation.
PAGE 96.
Engels: Introduction to Marx's
Capital ".
<<
CC
Wage, Labour and
'Experimental humility before the facts themselves ": A step
in the direction of this change in Marxian economics has been
taken by Karl Renner in his book, " Die Wirtschaft Als Gesamt-
Prozess Und Die Sozialisierung Conceding that Marx's
theory is deductive and abstract in its mode of exposition, Renner
undertakes to expound it concretely and empirically. So far
so good. But until it is conceded that Marx's economics is
abstract and deductive-and not only that, but Hegelian-
animistic-in its essential intellectual structure, the empirical
and practical science that is tangled up in it will never be made
to emerge clearly.
د.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
245
<<
PAGE 97.
Inner, hidden”: See page 58 of this book.
CC
"Visible external movement":
of Untermann's translation.
<<
PAGE 98.
: In
Independent of their consciousness and their wills
his preface to the second edition of “ Capital" Marx quotes
with approval a Russian critic who says: "Marx regarded the
social movement as a process of natural history governed by
laws, which are not dependent upon the will, the consciousness
or the designs of men, but rather the contrary, which determine
their wills, their consciousness and their designs." Marx
himself said the same thing in a letter to Annenkov, December
28, 1846. See also "Feuerbach ", IV.
CC
>>
'
It is surprising how many studious and scientific people
have made the mistake of imagining that Marxism rests upon
the concept of the economic man "-Bertrand Russell, for
instance ("Roads to Freedom", p. 47), Paul Howard Douglas
in "The Trend of Economics , P. 154, and the Russian
economist, Tugan-Baranovsky. Usually I think this is a
result of mere hasty reading. But Tugan-Baranovsky's error
was the outcome of a serious effort to understand Marx's
mind. He failed in this effort because he took the
"Theses
on Feuerbach to mean all that they seem to mean. On
the basis of these "Theses", and of a similar remark in the
"Heilige Familie", he assumed that Marx had abandoned
the Hegelian view of the relation between will and under-
standing, and that on this decisive psychological point Marx
was at one with Schopenhauer and not Hegel ". Having
thus erroneously assumed that Marx recognized the primacy of
the will, Tugan-Baranovsky naturally proceeded to discover
Marx's fundamental error in the fact that he ignored the
many-sidedness" of this will. "Out of all the variegated web
of human motives he took into consideration one only, economic
interest in the narrowest sense ("Theoretische Grundlagen
des Marxismus ", ch. II, p. 40). Marx did not really take
<< economic interest " into consideration at all, and therefore
Tugan-Baranovsky's whole book is entirely beside the point.
Every effort to understand the mind of Marx will be beside
the point, which fails to understand that the " Theses on Feuer-
bach "
were a step backward toward Hegel, and not forward
with the development of a scientific attitude.
در
Capital", vol. III, p. 369,
<<
>>
PAGE 99.
The translation is from "Die Heilige Familie ", chapter IV.
246 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
PAGE IOI.
The translation is from the next to the last chapter of the
first volume of " Das Kapital ".
PAGE 103.
"Iron necessity": The phrase occurs in the Preface to
the first edition of “ Das Kapital ”.
"C
Hegel's philosophy": See vol. III, p. 55, of his "Lectures
on the History of Philosophy ".
“An association which excludes " "Das Elend der Philo-
sophie ", II, 5.
PAGE 104.
"Leap from the Kingdom of necessity": "Anti-Dühring, "
III, II.
"Most adequate expression ": Engels' Preface to the first
English translation of " Das Kapital ".
PAGE 105.
"Honorific intellectual decoration": The words are meant
to recall the works of Thorstein Veblen, one of the most
original revolutionary minds of our time.
""
That Marx's Capital is among the least important of
his contributions to the science of revolution, may be seen
in the rarity of concrete allusions to its contents among those
who are applying the science. It may be seen also in the
position occupied by this work in Marx's own life. It was not
a preparation for an expected revolution, but a substitute for
one which had failed to appear. If Marx's confident expecta-
tions in the 'fifties had been fulfilled, we should have had a
proletarian dictatorship instead of Das Kapital", and the
proletariat would have been none the poorer for this difference.
These ponderous volumes threw a cloak of honorific intellec-
tualism about the revolutionary movement, disappointed of
its first hopes, and that was something of a service in its time.
But we know now-thanks to a line of thinking which Marx
himself initiated-that the honorific character of a display of
pure intellect lies precisely in its futility, which seems to indi-
cate an association with the leisure class. In the name of
Marxism itself, we ought to approach such bulky and over-
powering parturitions of the "Higher Learning
Kapital", with a slight smile of revolutionary satire. For
twenty-seven years Marx and Engels withheld the solution of
the central difficulty in their theory of value, and for the last
decade of this quarter of a century Engels left standing a public
"Das
as
cr
(C
رد
NOTES AND REFERENCES
247
challenge to the scientific world to guess the answer ".
Whether he and Marx themselves succeeded in guessing the
answer to this riddle, may remain a disputed question. But
there is no questioning their demonstration of the fact that
"Das Kapital" belongs rather to the sphere of noble sports,
than of ignoble utilities.
PAGE 109.
Hegel: The quotation is from his " Philosophy of Religion ".
Engels: The quotations are from the chapter on
Dia-
lectic" in his " Anti-Dühring ”.
"In another passage
tific ", II.
""
CC
PAGE IIO.
Socialism Utopian and Scien-
PAGE III.
"A rotten spot": A good example of what I mean by this
expression will be found in Engels' Introduction to the third
volume of " Capital " (p. 24 of Untermann's translation). He
is discussing the fact that Marx's theory of value, which appears
in the first volume to be a definition and explanation of the
actual normal rates at which commodities exchange on the
market, turns out in the third volume to be a penetration
beneath such superficial phenomena into the "internal essence
and inner form of the capitalist process of production " (p. 199
of the same volume). I have mentioned this difficulty in
Chapter X. What Engels says about it in the spot to which I
allude is this:
<<
It is a mistaken assumption . . . that one may look at
all in Marx's work for fixed and universally applicable defini-
tions. It is a matter of course that when things and their mutual
inter-relations are conceived, not as fixed, but as changing,
that their mental images the ideas concerning them, are likewise
subject to change and transformation; that they cannot be
sealed up in rigid definitions, but must be developed in the
historical and logical process of their formation.”
<<
What seems to me a matter of course ", is that so long
as you have a philosophy which permits you to dodge out of
difficulties in this irresponsible fashion, real and reliable science
is impossible.
>>
For another example of this employment of the idea of
"dialectic thinking to dodge a difficulty, see the paragraph
of Engels' letter to Conrad Schmidt, October 27, 1890, begin-
ning, "What these gentlemen lack is dialectic", and ending,
"For them Hegel never existed ".
248 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
PAGE 115.
Lenin : "C
Once More about the Trade-Unions." Complete
Works, vol. XVIII, part I, p. 60.
PAGE 116.
The quotation is from Lenin's article entitled "Concerning
Our Revolution ", Complete Works, vol. XIII, part II, p. 117.
PAGE 117.
Marx: Letter to Kugelmann, June 27, 1870.
Engels: Preface to the second edition of “ Anti-Dühring ”.
Plekhanov: "Cant versus Kant ", Complete Works, XI,
p. 41.
PAGE 123.
Carry it forward": This does not mean, of course, that
Marxians can make revolutions ", in the catastrophic sense
of the word. It would be truer to say that revolutions are a
natural force like the tide or the lightning, and just as electrical
engineers may be said to have "harnessed the lightning
so Marxian engineers seek to harness revolutions and make
them serve the highest interests of mankind. The distinction,
however, between guiding a natural force, and causing it to
appear at a given place or moment, is not a precise one, and
no man of purpose would dream of founding upon this a dog-
matic rule of action. Lenin indicated the natural limits of
scientific effort, so far as concerns action in a crisis, in the follow-
ing words, which he called the Fundamental Law of Revolution :
Only when the masses do not want the old regime, and
when the rulers are unable to govern as of old, only then can
a revolution succeed. This truth may be expressed in other
words: Revolution is impossible without an all-national
crisis, affecting both the exploited and the exploiters.'
"C
That such crises will arise in the future, is abundantly proven
for all practical purposes by the material assembled in the
Marxian economics-if it is not, indeed, obvious to every person
who has read history. But Marxian scientists will not confine
their efforts to preparing for such economic crises. They will
move everything, all the time, in every sphere of life, to the
full extent possible in the direction of a proletarian-democratic
society.
<<
'
در
PAGE 124.
The quotation is from "The Theses on Feuerbach ”.
PAGE 130.
CC
""
Plekhanov : 'Anarchism and Socialism." (My translation
is from the French text, p. 22.)
NOTES AND REFERENCES
249
PAGE 131.
Kropotkin : "Modern Science and Anarchism", VIII.
Ignored the contribution of psychology": The conclusion
of Köhler, for example, in his painstaking study of the behaviour
of the chimpanzee, that " Mutual obstruction is more frequent
than co-operation", has a more decisive bearing upon the
problem, than all of Kropotkin's more general biological data
put together. ("The Mentality of Apes ", by Wolfgang
Köhler.)
<<
"Bakunin's early protest": Mehring's "Life of Marx ”, V. 7.
"Bakunin wrote his share": See for instance,
"God
and the State (p. 32 of the New Edition, published by the
Freedom Press, 1910): Whatever human question we may
desire to consider, we always find this same essential contradic-
tion between the two schools. Thus, as I have already observed,
materialism starts from animality to establish humanity;
idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn
the masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free
will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the
name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins
of every liberty founds authority. Materialism rejects the
principle of authority, because it rightly considers it as the
corollary of animality, and because, on the contrary, the triumph
of humanity, the object and chief significance of history, can
be realized only through liberty.”
•
•
در
PAGE 132.
Marx: "Das Elend der Philosophie ", II, I.
PAGE 133.
<<
Kropotkin : "Modern Science and Anarchism " XIII
and XV. For another clear statement of what he thinks the
science of economics ought to be, see his preface to Fields,
Factories and Workshops ".
PAGE 134.
The three quotations are from Kropotkin's " Modern Science
and Anarchism ", IX, XIV, and XII.
>>
In Kropotkin's history of the French Revolution, the reader
will see even more clearly the absence of any scientific plan,
the reliance upon magic, upon a mystic virtue supposed
to reside in what he calls the people to save other revolu-
tions from going the way of this one. He makes it plain that
the organization of a centralized state by the middle classes was
what prevented the lower classes from gaining any of their
<<
250 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
ends. But his plan for preventing such a catastrophe in a future
revolution is not to organize a corresponding power for the
lower classes. His plan is simply and literally to wish away
that organization of the middle classes. To a practical mind
interested in communism, there could be no better argument
for the method of proletarian dictatorship than Kropotkin's
book, “The Great French Revolution ”.
PAGE 135.
Any more than the other anarchists": I dwell upon
Kropotkin because, of all the anarchists, he makes the best
claim to be considered scientific. The belief in magic is so
obvious in the writings of other revolutionary anarchists, that
I think it is hardly worth while to demonstrate it. One has
only to seek out in each of them the particular event, or idea, or
formula, to which he ascribes an occult virtue capable of pro-
ducing the desired miracle. For Bakunin it was the very idea
of "science" taken abstractly which possessed this high potency.
"The major part of the natural laws connected with the
development of human society. have not been duly recog-
nized and established by science itself.
<<
•
Once they shall have been recognized by science, and then
from science, by means of an extensive system of popular
education and instruction, shall have passed into the conscious-
ness of all, the question of liberty will be entirely solved. The
stubbornest authorities must admit that there will be no need
either of political organization, or direction, or legislation
(from "God and the State ").
""
<<
"Seems to the anarchist to be the very obstacle " : This is
well illustrated in the writings of Alexander Berkman and
Emma Goldman about Soviet Russia. Every person who has
learned how to face facts, knows that if it had not been for the
Bolshevik organizations, the Russian Revolution would have
produced nothing but an ordinary capitalist republic with
modern improvements, or, what is perhaps more likely, a
limited monarchy. Of this there is not the slightest scientific
doubt. Yet these two sincere and devoted people, because
they believe in revolutionary magic, go about denouncing
the Bolsheviks for having crushed "
dammed up
some mystic entity which they call "the revolution ", the
rising tide of the people's energies ", the "free creative new
humanity", etc., and prevented it from producing a miraculous
transformation of Russian society into non-governmental
anarchist communism". (See "The Anti-Climax" and "The
Bolshevik Myth ", by Alexander Berkman, "The Crushing of
the Russian Revolution ", etc., by Emma Goldman.)
<<
>>
or
<<
<<
NOTES AND REFERENCES
251
PAGE 137.
:
George Sorel The quotations are from " La Décomposition
du Marxisme ", VI, and " Réflexions sur la Violence ", IV, III.
PAGE 139.
"The longest backward step taken by any genuinely revolu-
tionary theorist ": A longer backward step, and a somewhat
similar one, has recently been taken by Hendrik de Man, a
former Marxist, in a book called " Zur Psychologie des Sozialis-
mus ", but De Man cannot be described as a genuinely revo-
lutionary theorist. Sorel worked out a metaphysical conse-
cration of the present motive in order to get the support of the
universe in his revolutionary purpose. De Man has worked
out a similar, although more mystical, consecration of mere
motive, in order to get religious support for his abandonment
of the revolutionary purpose.
"The older I grow," he confesses, "the more I feel myself
a revolutionist, but the less I believe in the revolution. I am
a revolutionist: that means that the transformation of capital-
ism into a socialist order is to me a psychical motive. . . . The
present motive, not the future goal, is the sole essential.
I am a socialist, not because I believe in the superiority of the
socialist image of the future over any other ideal, but because
I have the conviction that the socialist motive makes better and
happier men. It is a perspectival delusion of our will
which, so to speak, sifts out socialism from the activities of the
present moment, in order to misplace it as a goal' in the
future. Goals are only imaginary points of a future horizon,
upon which we project the desired end of our volitional ten-
dency. . . . If socialism as a movement has any general meaning,
it is to make the men who take part in this movement happier.
The essential thing in socialism is the struggle for it.
I believe still only in the revolution which transforms our Self.
This conception corresponds as well to the demands of real-
political opportunity as to those of the moral law. . . . This
same conviction that the ethical motive is at the same time the
best and only real-politic, guides me when I emphasize the
necessity of a regeneration of the socialist attitude through the
moral-religious consciousness. There is nothing more
real in man than the divine power of the moral law."
<<
It is needless to prove that this talk is not scientific, since it
quite frankly declares itself religious. What I am moved to
say about it, is that it is immoral. All that there is in me which
corresponds to those words "ethical motive ", moral law "
etc.—namely a strong sense of what is good and praiseworthy
in human character and conduct-finds this abandonment of
•
252 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
purposive intelligence in behalf of mere emotional motive,
bad and weak and sickly, and to be condemned unconditionally
by every person who loves humanity or has any hope of its
development.
Unfortunately De Man has united this reactionary movement
of his character with some valid criticisms of Marxism from the
standpoint of modern psychology. He has correctly detected
the concealment of the wish in orthodox Marxism. But since
he does not understand the specific historical and cultural
reasons why Marx's mind produced this tangle, he cannot find
the scientific way out. He only succeeds in building up, on a
very thin scaffolding of old-fashioned psychological ideas,
another mythology, a story about various stages " in the
development of an effort of creative imagination-pure utopian,
practical-utopian, practico-rational utopian, and then practico-
ethical, which is the name for his own stage. It would not
take Marx three minutes to point out the essential fact, namely
that this " practico-ethical stage in the development of the
revolution is nothing but an ideological disguise for the aban-
donment of the revolutionary purpose.
De Man's book became known to me only after my own
book had gone to the publisher, and I cannot extensively
discuss his " Psychology of Socialism". I insert this note
at the last moment, merely to indicate my general opinion.
De Man does not understand the mind of Marx, and he does
not understand that " psychological science of science ", from
the standpoint of which he professes to criticize Marxism.
Reason, hopes and the perception
Violence ", IV, p. 181.
CC
Lenin :
PAGE 142.
What to do?", IV, 3.
<<
""
: "Réflexions sur la
PAGE 143.
The quotation is from Lenin's Introduction to the first edi-
tion of a collection of articles entitled "After Twelve Years "
written in 1907.
""
"Official history "A History of the Russian Communist
Party", by Gregory Zinoviev, p. 71, of the Russian Edition,
Moscow, 1923.
PAGE 144.
"Lenin repeatedly declared ": In "What to Do?" the
statement occurs three times. My quotation is from chap.
IV, sec. 3.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
253
PAGES 145-6.
The quotations are all from " What to Do ? "
PAGE 147.
(C
>
Plekhanov : The Working Class and the Social Demo-
cratic Intelligentsia ", an article in "Iskra ", No. 71, August 1
1904. Plekhanov's citation from Marx is from "The Holy
Family". Lenin's tribute to Plekhanov's philosophical writings
is in the article already cited, "Once more About the Trade
Unions", and his response to Plekhanov's attack appears in
the Introduction to "After 12 Years".
PAGE 149.
"Midwife of Revolution": "We are not utopians
we are men of science, we do not devise new social forms, but
only offer to capitalist society the service of midwife, when the
hour comes for the birth of a socialist society." (Paul Lafargue
in a Debate with Jaurès.)
PAGE 151.
"Better that ten workers": The quotation is from the
official report of the second convention of the Russian Social-
Democratic Workers' Party, in London, 1903 (p. 251).
<<
35
rea-
Attempted to define them": Karl Radek describes this
change in Lenin's way of thinking as an advance in scientific
accuracy. He says that Lenin " did not at first understand the
social significance and social sources of Menshevism. For
that reason he first emphasized the distinction between
soners and fighters" within the working class. Subsequently
he learned to identify Menshevism with the new layers of the
petty bourgeoisie which are constantly entering the proletariat.
And at a still later date he regarded it as "the politics of that
part of the working class which can find satisfaction for its
interests inside the frame of bourgeois society ",—that is, the
aristocracy of labour. Radek fails to note that Lenin never
abandoned his original psychological definition, but kept it
going alongside of these new economic ones. How strongly
it survives in authoritative circles, may be seen in the statement
of Clara Zetkin at the Fifth Congress of the Communist Inter-
national, that "the organizational and political superiority of
Bolshevism . . . is the principle that a revolutionary party
cannot tolerate merely paying members, that every member
must be an active, working, fighting member ". A science of
revolution must reconcile these two entirely different ways
rr
254 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
of approaching this important problem, and it seems to me
there is only one truthful way to do it. Lenin's original state-
ment was a correct definition of the distinction between Bol-
shevik and Menshevik: these subsequent statements were
formulations of what made Menshevik intellectuals particularly
dangerous at certain epochs to the proletarian revolution.
(My quotations are from Radek's articles on The Scientific
Organization of Labour in the Perspective of the Further
Development of the Revolution ", beginning in Pravda, No. 41,
1924.)
CC
PAGE 152.
"Work, according to the definition of Marx": "Das Kapi-
tal ", vol. I, sec. 3, ch. V.
PAGE 156.
The quotation is from "What to Do?", IV, 3.
“He was seriously attacked": Speech of Akimov in the
Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party in 1903. The quotation immediately following is from
Lenin's pamphlet "The Infantile Disease of Leftism VI.
>>
PAGE 157.
“Veritable tribunes of the people": These quotations are
also from "What to Do ? ".
}
"Marx also recognized the peasants": In a letter to Engels,
often cited by Lenin himself, Marx wrote: "The whole cause
of Germany will depend upon the possibility of reinforcing the
proletarian revolution with a kind of second edition of the
Peasants' War, then all will be well." (Translated from
Lenin's text.)
PAGE 158.
Policy of sharp turns": The expression is used by Trotsky
in "The New Course ".
<c
PAGE 160.
Pausing to write a tribute to Lenin ": Bukharin's "Lenin,
Marxist " is a fair example of these orthodox writings. After
a conscientious but pale account of certain modifications intro-
duced by Lenin in the Marxian theory, Bukharin casually
mentions his " teaching upon the organization and structure
of the party, the relations among the party, the working class,
'
NOTES AND REFERENCES
255
"secondary
the masses, the leaders, etc.", calling this a
question "
A pamphlet of Karl Radek, “ About Lenin ", contains some
"
marked contrasts to this orthodox way of approaching Lenin.
The principal science of Lenin as a political leader preparing
the conquest of power by the proletariat, was his science of
the significance of the proletarian party. "The greatness of
Lenin consisted in the fact that no formula composed yesterday
ever prevented him from seeing the changing reality, that he
had the courage to abandon yesterday's formula if it prevented
his grasping to-day's reality."
Co
در
PAGE 161.
The quotation is from "The Infantile Disease of Leftism
PAGE 163.
The quotation is from Lenin's article "Concerning Our
Revolution ", Complete Works, vol. XVIII, part 2, p. 118 ff.
PAGE 164.
<<
The quotations from Marx are to be found in the Introduc-
tion to the " Critique of Political Economy ", The Poverty
of Philosophy ", II, 5, the " Criticism of the Gotha Program
and the Preface to the first edition of " Capital".
در
PAGE 166.
The passage from Cardinal Manning is quoted by Lytton
Strachey in his "Eminent Victorians ".
PAGE 167.
“Truth is always concrete ": A favourite maxim with both
Lenin and Plekhanov, quoted from Chernishevsky, who first
introduced the Hegelian philosophy into Russian revolutionary
circles.
"C
Marx says": Letter to Weidemeier, March 5, 1852.
: State and Revolution."
""
"Lenin says
PAGE 168.
"In Lenin the scientific thinker ": The doubleness of
Marx's mental character, and the singleness of Lenin's, were
both observed by those who knew them. H. M. Hyndman
described most vividly the interplay between the purposive
thinker and the metaphysical professor in Marx. The
contrast," he wrote, between his excitement in moments
of strong indignation and the peaceful transition to an expo-
<<
256 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
<<
sition of his views on contemporary economic events was most
striking. He passed without visible effort from the rôle of
prophet and flaming prosecutor to the rôle of tranquil philo-
sopher.
(Re-translated from a foreign text.) Compare
what Trotsky says about Lenin : This great engineer of his-
tory, not only in politics, but in his theoretical works, in his
philosophical speculations, in the study of foreign languages,
and in conversation with people, was continually possessed by
one and the same idea-the goal.'
>>
PAGE 169.
Engels: Anti-Dühring", I, XI. 'How young is all
human history, and how ridiculous it would be, to wish to
ascribe any absolute validity to our present views, may be
inferred from the simple fact that all history up to now may be
described as the history of the period from the practical dis-
covery of the transformation of mechanical motion into heat,
until that of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion.'
<<
Lenin : "Materialism and Empiro-criticism", VI, 2.
The second quotation is from " What to Do?”
and “
PAGE 170.
The quotation is from "Materialism and Empiro-criti-
cism ", VI, 2.
"Partisan "
""
<<
PAGE 172.
“Materialism and Empiro-criticism ", VI, 4,
Conclusion ".
PAGE 176.
"This is the period": The quotation, if I remember
rightly, is the first sentence of the first Manifesto" of the
Third International.
PAGE 178.
Bukharin and Pavlov: Krasnaia Nov, January, February
and March 1924.
Only the final science " : The quotation is from Pavlov's
"Twenty Years' Experience
در
Hegel: "Logic ", p. 103.
PAGE 179.
PAGE 180.
Lenin: "Pod Znamenem Marxisma", No. 2, and " Material-
ism and Empiro-Criticism ", VI, 4.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
257
PAGE 181.
Bakunin: "God and the State ”, p. 44.
PAGE 182.
The statement that Religion is the opium of the people
occurs in Marx's "Introduction to a Criticism of Hegel's
Philosophy of Law". ("Nachlass ", vol. I, p. 385.)
"}
PAGE 183.
"Recent Manifesto from Moscow": published in "L'Hu-
manité," October 13, 1924.
"The only ultimate distinction": See my
See my "Enjoyment
of Poetry ".
PAGE 186.
Lenin: Pod Znamenem Marxisma, No. 3, 1922.
In connection with this page I will mention another slight
advantage which may accrue to revolutionary art from a dis-
establishment of the religion of Marxism. A certain liberty of
opinion may be allowed as to whether Marx himself was a great
artist. Franz Mehring—a person of general literary culture
and discrimination—says in his biography (VIII, 2) that “ Marx
might compete in striking figurativeness of language with
the great masters of comparison, Lessing, Goethe, Hegel ".
And among orthodox Marxists this is a very general opinion.
Here is an example of the way in which Marx used com-
parison-one of the worst examples, to be sure, but still taken
from his mature, and not his youthful writings. He is speaking
of the allotment of land to the peasants in France
С.
The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century
had placed the state as a sentry before the newly arisen allotment
and dunged it with laurels, has become a vampire, which sucks
out its heart's blood and brain-matter and throws it in the
Alchemist's retort of capital." ("Achtzehnte Brumaire", pp.
IOI, 102, of the third edition.)
Nobody who knew the first principles of the art of com-
parison could have written this sentence. Marx had in his
head the materials of which great literature is composed, but
he lacked the fineness of imaginative perception and feeling to
make any consistent use of them. He did indeed write some
great sentences-but only a few, and never when he tried to.
PAGE 188.
Lenin: The quotations are from "What to Do?" and
"The Infantile Disease of Leftism >>
R
258 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
PAGE 189.
Bernstein: See "Evolutionary Socialism and Socialism
and Science ".
PAGE 191.
"Increasing misery": This theory belonged solely to the
metaphysical construction of Marx. How little he cared about
it as a practical man may be seen in one of his own matter-of-
fact remarks: "As to the working-classes, it is still a much
debated question whether their condition has been bettered
at all as a result of the growth of the so-called public wealth
("Poverty of Philosophy ", I, III.)
PAGE 194.
<<
'The theorists of the present British Communist party
Eden and Cedar Paul, in their "Creative Revolution ", show
the keenest consciousness of the problem of reconciling
Marxism with Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking, and they make
the most thoughtful effort to do it. But even they only succeed
in denying that Marxism is what it is.
•
•
""
<<
The following quotation from the "Communist Review
vol. II, No. 4, will give the official theoretic position of the
British party.
"First to clear away a misconception. The term Materialism
has no connection with philosophic materialism in the absolute
and final sense
Eden and Cedar Paul in their 'Creative
Revolution' write :
•
>>9
>>
•
"Historical Materialism is quite distinct from philosophic
materialism. Marx did not assert, as do the materialists
in the philosophic meaning of the term, that the only real things
in the universe are matter and motion.
CC
Again Harry Waton, an American Marxist, says:
“The philosophy of Marx is not an ontology: it is not a
philosophy of the universe, it does not attempt to explain the
ultimate nature of things the philosophy of Marx is the
philosophy of human society.'
That is British Marxism.
در
""
And here is Russian Marxism :
Marxism-this is a complete world-view. Expressing it
briefly, it is contemporary materialism, representing the highest
stage of development in the present time of that view of the
world, the foundations of which were laid in ancient Greece
by Democritus, and in part by the Ionic thinkers who preceded
NOTES AND REFERENCES
259
him the so-called hylozoism is nothing but naïve materialism.
The historic and economic sides of this world-view
are almost exclusively the work of Marx and Engels.
The term Marxism often designates only these two sides of
the contemporary materialistic world-view. These two sides
are regarded in that case as something completely independent
of 'philosophic materialism', if not even opposite to it. And
since these two sides, arbitrarily torn from the context of
opinions which is native to them, and which constitutes their
theoretical foundation, cannot remain hanging in the air,
there naturally arises among people who have perpetrated such
an uprooting operation upon them, a demand that Marxism
should be founded' over again.
(Plekhanov: "Funda-
mental Problems of Marxism ", pp. 1-2.
, pp. 1-2. His own italics.)
Consciousness in general reflects existence-that is the
general proposition of all materialism. It is impossible not to
see its direct and uninterrupted connection with the proposi-
tion of historic materialism, social consciousness reflects social
existence." (Lenin, "Materialism and Empiro-criticism", VI, 2.
His own italics.)
>>
CC
•
>>
"That Marxism really is what it is Vladimir Simkho-
vitch's book, "Marxism versus Socialism ", consists essentially
in telling Anglo-Saxon socialists who do not know it, that
Marxism is not a practical hypothesis, but a system of objective
belief about the necessary course of history. Simkhovitch
assembles the principal points which have been advanced to
show that such a belief is unscientific, and adds some shrewd
comments of his own. If he stopped there, his work, so far as
it goes, would be unassailable. But he tried to infer from this
that the social revolution is an impossibility.
If certain con-
ditions and tendencies make socialism inevitable," he asks,
"do not the absence of these conditions and the existence of
contrary tendencies make socialism impossible? If the
contrary tendencies were forceful and overwhelming, this
question would arrest attention. But as an argument under
the existing circumstances, the only way in which it could be
made cogent would be to supply the major premise: Every-
thing which is not inevitable is impossible." And this would
give us a universe even more rigidly determined than that
Marxian one which Simkhovitch ridicules. Simkhovitch tried
to replace Marx's revolutionary ideology of the necessity of
socialism, with a counter-revolutionary ideology of its impossi-
bility. Both these ideologies are inconsistent with practical
scientific thought and effort, and having dismissed the one, we
need not occupy ourselves with the other.
<<
260 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
:-
PAGE 195.
'The belief in ideas": This psychological definition of
Menshevism, although written originally for this book, was first
published in my " Leon Trotsky, the Portrait of a Youth ".
PAGE 198.
Kautsky: "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat ”, X.
Lenin: "Kautsky, the Renegade ", VIII.
""
"I am not a Marxist!": See Franz Mehring's "Life of
Karl Marx XV, 6; Charles Longuet's Preface to his French
translation of "The Civil War in France ", "Die Neue
Zeit" for 1900-1, p. 427 of the first volume.
or
"C
Wilhelm Liebknecht": See his letter to Marx, published
n Pravda, March 28, 1926.
Lenin: See part II, chap. IV of this book.
, p. XLII;
Trotsky: Lessons of October
"War and
Revolution", pp. 322, 323; "The New Course" p. 85; "Les-
sons of October ", p. XVII.
>
>>
PAGE 199.
Karl Radek : "The development of Socialism from Science
to Practice" (Translation published by the Socialist Labour
Press in Glasgow, pp. 14, 15).
PAGE 202.
"C
Hegel : Logic ", p. 51.
Engels: Preface to the second edition of “ Anti-Dühring ”.
"His American translator ": Austin Lewis (see
"Land-
marks of Scientific Socialism ", Appendix p. 261).
Kautsky: "Three Crises in Marxism". "For the under-
standing of Marx," he says, "a certain knowledge is required,
and a tireless striving to penetrate deeper and deeper. At first
acquaintance one always understands Marxism cheaply and
vulgarly; it is necessary continually to increase the stores of
one's knowledge, and with the newly acquired knowledge
tackle again and again the study of Marx's works, for only then
is it possible to understand and solve the contradiction between
the surface and the essence of things, between their superficially
apparent and their profound relations." (From a Russian
text.)
PAGE 203.
Plekhanov: "A new condition of the productive forces
NOTES AND REFERENCES
261
brings after it a new economic structure, as well as a new
psychology, a new spirit of the times. From this it is evident
that only in popular speech is it permissible to speak of economy
as the primary cause of all social phenomena. Far from being
the primary cause, it is itself a consequence, a 'function' of
the productive forces". "The Question of the Development
of a Monistic View of History ", V.
Lenin: "Once More about the Trade-Unions ", Complete
Works, vol. XVIII, part I, p. 60.
PAGE 204.
CC
"The eloquence of Bakunin ” : "God and the State
"It is time," he says,
to have done with all popes and priests;
we want them no longer, even if they call themselves Social-
Democrats."
PAGE 205.
Seeking for contradictions in capitalism": The advice
of N. Bukharin in an article published in "The Workers'
Monthly", Chicago, 1925.
CC
PAGE 206.
"Reflection in the heads of Marxists": The quotation is
from a pamphlet by Sarabianov entitled "Historical Materi-
alism".
PAGE 208.
Marx "The Poverty of Philosophy ".
Plekhanov : Anarchism and Socialism": (From the
French text, p. 22).
<<
PAGE 209.
Engels: Landmarks of Scientific Socialism ", p. 221.
"The population of Russia": According to a census report
printed in L'Humanité ", December 1925.
<<
PAGE 212.
Lenin : "Infantile Disease of Leftism ", VI, and State
and Revolution ", VI, 3.
Bertrand Russell :
Roads to Freedom ", VIII. Although
he gave his book this very promising title," Roads to Freedom
Bertrand Russell never for the length of one sentence took
the view-point of a man standing in a defined position in the
present, and asking the scientific question: With what forces,
and by what method of their employment, can I begin actually
<<
262 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
moving in the desired direction? His book, like all anarchistic
writings, is about "Programmes of Freedom" —a valuable con-
tribution to that discussion, indeed the first contribution which
shows the influence of modern psychology. But Bertrand
Russell's programmes are left hanging in the air, as though they
might realize themselves by the mere act of their promulgation.
That is why I describe him as an extreme utopian from the
point of view of method.
A similar thing is to be said of Thorstein Veblen's book
Engineers and the Price System ", which purports to be
practically scientific.
<<
PAGE 213.
""
<<
Confused figure": My translation is from the French of
Victor Serge, who quotes this sentence in his "Lenin-1917
It is amusing to note that Trotsky's more visual mind is troubled
by this figure, and in reproducing it from memory he instinc-
tively tries to improve it. Lenin, I think, first expressed in
'Iskra' the thought that in the complicated chain of political
activity one must know how to pick out the link that is central
for the given moment, so that seizing it one may give direction
to the whole chain " (" About Lenin ", V). Trotsky's improve-
ment consists of detaching the chain from its fastening in the
future, and converting it into something more in the nature
of an armoured car!
Trotsky, as I have shown, is none too orthodox. He makes
a more scrupulous effort to be orthodox than Lenin did. He
lacks the philosophic self-confidence of his leader, and he is
more conscious of the intellectual difficulties in their position.
Also he finds the true theological way out.
"The will to revo-
lutionary activity," he says, in a pamphlet on Communism
and Education, is a condition indispensable to the under-
standing of the Marxian dialectic"-which is not far from
saying, All your doubts will disappear after you join the
church".
<<
<<
(C
In six months": See Trotsky's "About Lenin ", V.
What socialism will be ": From the Stenographic Report
of the Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party,
Fifth Session, March 8, 1918.
PAGE 214.
Permanent Revolution": "The proletariat is gathering
more and more to the standard of revolutionary socialism, of
communism, for which the bourgeoisie itself has found the name
of Blanqui. This socialism is the declaration of a Permanent
Revolution, the class-dictatorship of the proletariat, as a neces-
NOTES AND REFERENCES
263
sary transition-period to the abolition of all class-distinctions,
and of all the relations of production upon which they rest, of
all the social conditions which correspond to these relations of
production, and to the revolutionizing of all the ideas which
arise from these social conditions.' (Karl Marx. "Die
Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich: 1848-1850 ", pp. 94, 95.)
nglo-Saxons, 192
nimism, 32, 106, 176
ccident, principle of, 56
lchemists, 127
economic, 54, 60, 175
narchism, 128
historic, 160
narchists, chief contribution of, 130 Dewey, J., 220
rt-
|_ G
futurist, 52
in the revolution, 182
Bakunin, 131, 249
Bergson, Henri, 108, 138
Berkman, 250
Bernstein, E., 189, 239
INDEX
"Economic Man," concept of, 98
Economics, 89
Education, in Soviet Russia, 204
Einstein, 184
Blanqui, 144
Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks, distinc-| Engels, 23, 37, 43, 71, 82, 109, 117,
tion between, 151
179, 209, 228, 234
Evolution, 67
Bolshevik experiment, unsatisfactory
features of, 206, 211
Bolshevism, origin of, 141, 165
Boudin, Louis, 244
Bukharin, 76, 242
Bureaucratism, 201
Capital," Marx's, criticism of, 92,
104, 246
apitalism, 89
ausation, law of, 43
lass struggle, 65, 103
ommodities, conception of values of,
93
ommunist Party--
British, 258
Russian, 159
ommunists, 241
Determinism-
Darwin, 67
eborin, A., 234
Dialectic, Hegel's, 22
"Dialectic materialism," 24, 32, 40.
85, 166, 206
Dialectic method, the, 106, 109
thinking, 108, III
Doctors, Freudian, 81
Fabians, the, 192
Feuerbach, 19, 23, 220
Freedom, definition of, 42
Freud, S., 17, 79
Freudian psychology—
anticipated by Marx, 80
Marxism and, 79, 123
Germany, 34, 54
God, Marx's economic, 130
Goldman, Emma, 250
Gravitation, 103
Hegel-
logic of, 35, 108, 117, 224, 230
philosophy and psychology of, 20
24, 30, 35, 77, 100, 106, 227, 230
Heresy, Lenin accused of, 144
History, 47, 65, 83, 160
265
266
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION
Holy Family", the, 99
Ideas, intellectual people and, 107
Ideological thinking, 81, 86:
Ideologies, doctrine of, 70, 82
Ideology-
"
Manning, Cardinal, 166
Martov, 151
Marx, Karl-
definitions of, 79, 82
Marx's proletarian, 97
"Infantile Leftists," 152
International, Third, 176
Kautsky, 239, 240, 260
Knowledge-
"c
Spectator" theory of, 20, 28
where only to be found, III
Köhler, W., 249
Kornilov, K., 28, 30, 226
Kropotkin, P., 131, 133, 249
Labour-power, 93
Lafargue, P., 27, 235
Leftism, 154
Lenin-
Sg
psychology and philosophy of, 27,
76, 169
methods of thinking, of, 113
fundamental contribution of, 141
"What to Do," by, 145
attacked by Plekhanov, 147
as engineer of revolution, 150
policy of, 158
new kind of sovereignty estab-
lished by, 162
difference between Marx and, 167
lack of psychological science of,
226
Leuba, J. H., 237
Liberty, curtailments of, 211
Logic-
Hegelian, 35, 108, 117, 224, 230
Scientific, a, 15
Luxembourg, Rosa, 73, 229
Magic, 127, 137
Man, economic, 245
Man, H. de, 251
on Feuerbach, 19
influence of education on, 26, 87
95, 99
materialism" of, 45
philosophy of history of, 48, 71
theory of class struggle of, 65
predominating purpose of, 66
views on evolution, 67
concept of ideologies, 70, 86
historical wisdom of, 79
"
·
anticipated Freud, 80, 82
hard-headed idealism of, 86
contributions to economic theory
of, 89
criticism of his economic system, 91
dialectic method of, 100
revolutionary plan of, 122
polemic against Proudhon, 132
error of, 144
and Lenin, difference between, 16
Marxism-
intellectual form of, 38
not pure metaphysics, 54
Russian, 77
and Freud, 79
economics of, 89
a practical science, 122
needs guidance from psychology
123
relation to anarchism, 128
in some respects less scientific tha
anarchism, 128
relation to revolutionary syndical
ism, 136
Bolshevik departure from, 141
Materialism, 45, 226, 237, 242, 249
Mensheviks, 151, 195
Mind, Anglo-Saxon, 192
Morality, 87, 186
Napoleon Bonaparte, 86
Narodniki, the, 132
Nature, human, 207
INDEX
267
Oedipas Complex ", the, 81
Paul, Eden, and Cedar, 258
Philosophers-
German, 34, 54
Modern Russian, 179
Philosophy, 34, 170, 237
Plato, 196
Plekhanov, 27, 40, 56, 75, 117, 130,
147, 208, 230, 260
Poetry, 182, 185
Polit-buro, the, 161
Political Economy-
laws of, 89
ideological element in, 97
Population, problem of, 209
Pragmatist, 221
Proudhon, 131
Psycho-Analysis, 17
Psychology-
biological, 16
Freudian, 16
Hegel's, 24
Marxist's fear of, 177
No place in Marxism, 208
Radek, Karl, 199, 253, 255
Reality, 35, 45, IIO
Reformists, 236
Religion, 182, 187, 236
Revisionism, 189
Revolution-
Scepticism, affirmative scientific, 18,
220
Schelling, 42
Schopenhauer, 229
what a mature science of, would
do, 210
Science-
martyrs of, 33
Marxism and, 177
Bukunin's ideal of, 181
revolutionary, attitude to religion,
182
Sex equality, 209
Shaw, Bernard, why he rejected
Marxism, 193
Society, human, predominately a
business association, 122
Socrates, 33, 227
Sorel, George, 137
Sovereignty, new kind of, in Russia,
162
Soviet form of government, 159, 161
State, dying away of the, 210
Strike, General, 136
Syndicalism, revolutionary, 136
Thinking-
highest kind of, 18
animistic, 32, 106, 176
dialectic, 108, III
Thought-
origin and nature of, 14
abstract and practical, 121
Trades Unions, Lenin's policy to-
wards the, 155
Trotsky, 52, 165, 237, 239, 262
a purpose rather than a belief, 215 Tugan-Baranovsky, 245
permanent, 214, 262
Revolutionist, professional, 142
Universe, Dialectic, the, 211
Utopianism, post-revolutionary, 207
Riazanov, 238
Russell, Bertrand, 212, 245, 261
Russia, new kind of sovereignty in, World, Industrial Workers of the,
162
137
IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
LONDON AND WOKING
PRINTED
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