Thoughts on Thinking
A few years ago a series of articles appeared in the Western Socialist dealing with the theoretical basis of Socialism. These were clearly written, and readers found them interesting and informative. It is our intention to publish extracts from time to time, as space permits, for the benefit of readers who missed them when they first appeared.
All marine engines, from Fulton’s Clermont to the giant turbines of the Normandie, are based on a few fundamental mechanical principles of thermodynamics, energy coefficients, reciprocal motion, and the like. These principles at least must be understood by anyone who intends to run a steam ship. And the vast intellectual machinery of modern socialism is too based on a few relatively simple principles. Principles of thought, interpretation and action. And in order to become a Socialist these principles must be grasped, understood and applied. And all this to what purpose? Merely for the satisfaction of knowing in a general sort of way? We think not! Marx has said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Our philosophy is more than expository and interpretative—it is dynamic; it deals with a real world, and is itself a potent force for change.
Have you ever listened to an argument between a Socialist and a non-Socialist? If so, the most remarkable thing you will have noticed is the degree of disagreement in the meanings they attach to the terms employed. The Socialist might assert, for example, that we are Materialists, not Idealists. Right away a protest of disapproval is voiced. Why? Nine times out of ten because the non-Socialist has an entirely erroneous conception of the meanings of these terms. Or the Socialist might say that we intend to abolish capital. This seems to his opponent like utter nonsense. Why? Because he looks upon capital as a thing, whereas the socialist regards capital as a condition of a thing. “Who will pay the workers his wages under Socialism?” the opponent demands to know. “We intend to abolish the wages system,” is his answer. This reply only confirms the questioner in his suspicion that all Socialists are hopeless mental cases. When he asks this he has in mind a conception of “wages” as the unconditioned reward for labour. The Socialist regards the “wage system” as an historically determined relationship between labour and capital, a transitory phase in social development.
Arguments such as these may go on interminably with relatively little change of view for either party. Both sides are, in a way, right; the substantive difference between their mental states is seldom as wide as it appears. The clashes are essentially verbal and the viewpoints irreconcilable so long as each puts a distinctly different interpretation on the terms used. Our Socialist contender must first realize that there is scarcely an important word used by him that is not tinctured in meaning by our economic theories or by its scientific or philosophical significance. The non-Socialist on the other hand almost invariably reacts to the same set of terms by their colloquial or every-day sense. Confronted with this barrier of language there can never be a meeting of the minds.
So the first step necessary towards an understanding of Marxian Socialism is a clear comprehension of the terms involved. The beginner must not only enlarge his vocabulary to accommodate new ideas but must make many of the old words with which he is familiar take on new shades of meaning, and in many instances entirely different from commonly accepted usage.
While reading this the question may be shaping in your head—”why do Socialists find it necessary to fashion a philosophy of their own, and why should proletarian logic differ from the currently accepted forms?” This is a reasonable query, and briefly, here is the answer: Socialists proceed on the incontestably established fact that society has for many thousands of years been divided into economically distinct classes. And now, on this one point, it is well to settle what we mean, and also what we don’t mean by the expression “economic classes.” The science of economics, as you are doubtless aware, deals with the social process of producing and distributing wealth. In a Capitalist society, based as it is on the private ownership of property, a fierce contest is at all times raging for each member of society to annex as much of this wealth as possible. But by the very nature of the game it calls into existence two mutually opposing classes. Both, while Capitalism lasts, necessary to each other, yet diametrically opposed in interests. Gravitated at one pole are those who, by the rules of the game, sanctioned by the Law, Church, Tradition and Custom, have acquired possession of the machinery of wealth production, and by means of this ownership exact tribute from the rest of society. These persons, although at war among themselves, are knit into a cohesive unit in a common resolve that the rules governing the private nature of property shall not be changed. But by their similarity of economic interests they form a category which we variously call the Capitalist, master, ruling or dominant class.
The opposing economic pole is composed of those who, by the very nature of the game, are excluded from participation in the ownership of the means of wealth production. Capitalism can only be Capitalism where this sharp cleavage exists. These compose that heterogeneous mass known as the proletariat (from the Latin, meaning children of the soil), wage-slaves or working class. They are the overwhelming majority in modern society and are doomed by an ineluctable law of Capitalistic development to be swamped in the mire of poverty and whipped by the scourge of necessity to offer their only possession—their power to labour—to the owners of creation. How well Marx describes this “free” transaction: “the possessor of labour-power follows as his (the Capitalist’s) labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business: the other timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but—a hiding.” This brief synopsis should give you a fair understanding of economic class distinction. Do not confuse it with social, cultural, political or educational differences. These latter may be, and often are, explicable on the basis of different economic levels; but they are effects only, reflections of the actual parts men and classes play in the scheme of the economic system. The wealth of society is represented as a vast accumulation of commodities, and an incessant struggle obtains between the two class divisions over the share each shall possess. On the economic field this conflict is known as the class struggle. But we live in a political society in which the diverse economic groups strive to achieve their ambitions through the control of the state power. This contest for policical supremacy is the ground on which is fought the battle for economic mastery. Whichever group succeeds in capturing the state imposes its economic will on the rest of society. Now the strongest economic class today is the Capitalist. They dictate the policies of state and directly control the functions of the state, i.e., the police, judiciary, armed forces, primary education, etc., and indirectly, by reason of wealth and influence, the prevailing ideology (this word means, roughly, reflected ideas from a system or social order) of the people. Writers, preachers, scientists, educators, philosophers, dance to the tune called by the Cicsars of commerce and industry. The ruling class permits the dissemination only of those ideas which tend to perpetuate the existing order. This viewpoint is class biased and serves to vitiate the teachings of history, science and philosophy and bend them to the support of entrenched privilege.
And this interest, as we have shown, is contrary to the true interests of the working class. Consequently the enlightened, class-conscious element among them, the Socialist, must, to achieve its economic and political emancipation, correct the distortion in the world of ideas and supplant error and prejudice with true proletarian knowledge.
From Hegel to Marx
Hegel was in advance of his times by reason of the enormous historical sense that underlay his system. The current of his thought always proceeded in line with world development. But the process of world development was regarded as a test of the unfolding of the concept, that is, the Concept was the ultimate Reality and the uncoiling of physical events over time evidence of the logicalness of his postulated concept. Hegel regarded phenomenal change, i.e., manifestations of social and natural law, as the self-development of the Absolute Concept. Not his concept or that of any man, but a universal concept that existed independently of time and space—an all-embracing world-soul. The dialectic development in nature and history struggled along after the self-developing concept, which moved itself, how or why, nobody knew.
Now, if the universal concept be self-moving, governed by laws inscrutable, or no laws at all, and the process of natural change be but a reflection of the evolution of the cosmic concept, then what purports to be an explanation, being itself explained, is no explanation. How explain the known in terms of the unknown? How can history be logical if history but images a ’causeless, self-changing -mind?
The only wisdom such a philosophy can impart is that whatever is in the world is in the world and that it changes because it does change. Four thousand years ago the chroniclers of Hebrew myths had explained as much—or as little—and in language simple and direct. The cosmology of Genesis, the gropings of primitive speculation, had said as much and left the rationale of the universe as enigmatic as before; and similarly the ponderous intellectual machinery of Hegel, milling the same metaphysical grist, could grind out no more logic than what was already in the world.
But the great value in Hegel’s system was his sense of historical continuity. The principle of evolutionary progression pervaded his entire work, its content was historical and there was a real relationship between the thought process and the world. But the true relationship between the concept and the universe was inverted. It was standing on its head. If it could be turned upright on its feet the real content which everywhere entered the philosophy would be in alignment with the true sequence of causality. Before Marx could satisfactorily apply the dialectic he had to make his ideological reversal. Marx turned Hegel’s system upside down, or rather, he turned what had heretofore been upside down right side up; and as Engels says, “We contemplated the concepts in our heads once more materialistically—as images of real things instead of regarding the real things as images of this or that stage of development of the absolute concept.”
Marx applied the dialectic primarily to history and human society and showed that all problems, all knowledge and the purposes of all knowledge are always set in a concrete historical context. Here was discovered a guiding thread running through the mazes of the social process. By its guidance not only were the apparent anomalies and inconsistencies of the past reconciled and explained, but a course of action was suggested that would rid society of its major ills.
Nowhere in Marx is the dialectic expounded as a formal philosophical system. But the method is bone and sinew of his entire work and its detailed application is to be found in all of Marx’s economic theories. It is practically applied in the materialistic conception of history and is woven warp and woof in the socialist theory of the state and the class struggle.
The essential idea in the dialectic as applied to society is-this; it seeks the. cause of social change within the social process itself and not in the realm of metaphysical abstraction.
Socialists do not claim that society is an organic mechanism which can be entirely explained by one invariable rule. They admit the existence of relatively independent factors which effect the course of history in varying degrees. The influence of the exceptional intellect on the state of general culture, the inimical or benign influences of religious movements, the accidents of technological and scientific discovery, or the caprices of fashion — all are recognized as real, active subsidiary influences on the body social and politic. It may safely be admitted that many of the minor and some of the major turns in social and economic progress are unpredictable. The multi-variety of causes, the incalculable complexity of social reactions do not admit of strict scientific prediction. But again. the point to remember is—all the causes and all the effects operative within the body of society are to be explained in terms of nature and society itself. Or in other words nature and society generate the forces under which new forms and expressions arise. This explanation of social motivation completely eliminates the idealist’s soul-concept.
Marx’s method is realistic, materialistic; but it should not be reduced to a standardized mechanical formula by which alone to account for every possible variety of social phenomena.
A philosophy of social change must admit of empirical verifications of its theories, that is it should be submissible to proof; and the conditions under which change is possible must be indicated as at any given time. Furthermore, it must recognize the consciousness of human beings; that they actively participate in shaping the course of their own histories.
Dialectics provides a nexus between one culture and another. This is revealed in the development of social institutions: an antecedent condition exists—from it arises more or less appropriate social responses. But as the conditions become unstable the form of the institution either effects a change in the conditions or perpetuates itself as a new thing, the product of the altered conditions and its antecedent form. The new combination in turn giving rise to a continuous modification of conditions, reacting reciprocally on them and itself. Marx refused to divide social experience into two mutually exclusive compartments and classify one, the external world, “cause,” and the other, consciousness, “effect.” On the contrary, he showed that social change resulted from the interactions of nature, society and human intelligence. That the conventionally accepted “effect,” consciousness, was itself as much a cause as the laws of nature and society, and that vice versa, the assigned causes were in turn effects.
Marx applied the dialectics of social change to all stages of development. For the first time in the history of human thought a law was discovered with which to explain local and universal social evolution. The gist of the dialectic—the merging and harmonizing of opposites into a new but different synthesis—may be reduced to a definitely stated law: From conditions arising outside of man’s consciousness, the social and natural environment (thesis), there come into being certain human needs and corresponding purposes which act upon the possibilities of the given situation (antithesis), and therefrom arise purposive responses which resolve the possibilities into a new situation (synthesis). The process of change from situation to situation and social system to social system exhibits certain inevitable features; there is unity between both phases in that certain features of the old are preserved and carried over into the new; e.g., the technically developed processes of production and highly specialized division of labour under capitalism will be carried over into the new society. Socialism. Secondly, there is a difference in that certain features of the old do not appear in the new; e.g., the slave status of labour and private ownership of the means of social existence along with the coercive state will fall into desuetude under Socialism. Thirdly, the quality of novelty appears. New forms, activities and purposes arise out of the new combination; and these further change the meaning of whatever is retained of the old. The novelties are something more than a simple sum of the old plus the new: there is a reorientation of moods and purposes; e.g., the monarchy in feudal society was a bulwark for the landed aristocrats against the encroachments of serf, freeman and burgher; under capitalism it becomes a figure-head for commercial expansion and international salesmanship and more too, the deathless champion of “democratic liberties.”
The process of social change, interchange and development goes on forever. The only law that never varies is the eternal, immutable law of change itself. And contrary to anti-Marxists who wilfully or ignorantly misrepresent Socialists as ignoring the factor of consciousness and human nature, Marx never wearied reiterating that the characteristic mark of social development, as opposed to biological or natural development, was the increasingly greater part played by human consciousness.
W. C. CURREY