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16-09-01 -- Summary Of Essay Nine Part One:
Dialectics, Workers And Substitutionism
These are Introductory Essays, which have been written for those who find the main Essays either too long, or too difficult. They do not pretend to be comprehensive since they are simply summaries of the core ideas presented at this site. Most of the supporting evidence and argument found in each of the main Essays has been omitted. Anyone wanting more details, or who would like to examine my arguments and evidence in full, should consult the Essay for which each is a précis. [In this particular case, that can be found here.]
In this Essay, the obvious objection that the critique advanced at this site implies that the ideas of the vast majority of leading revolutionaries have been compromised by the adoption of ruling-class ideology is tackled head-on. This response is connected with a novel but partial re-analysis of the poorly understood term, "substitutionism".
In order to do this, I first of all show that it is not possible for workers to comprehend dialectics (this is because it is impossible for anyone to understand it), which means that it has had to be substituted into their heads, from the "outside". This is not true of HM.
I then show that there are sound materialist reasons why prominent comrades have fallen for such radical sounding "ruling ideas". All this is then linked to the abysmally poor record that DIM has built up since at least 1921 (and arguably for longer still), and why comrades under the influence of dialectics tend not to be able to see this glaring anomaly.
[HM = Historical Materialism; DIM = Dialectical Marxism/Marxist; DM = Dialectical Materialism.]
Dialectics -- An Alien-Class Theory
In Essay Twelve, it will be argued that in ancient Greece, western Metaphysics received its most formative and important impetus from ambient ruling-class priorities and interests. In subsequent Modes of Production, traditional metaphysicians have, directly or indirectly, fed-off, served and/or rationalised the power of the State (or of some other nascent ruling elite). While Theology, for example, has always been a theoretical expression of alienated religious consciousness (among other things), in its different forms Metaphysics has provided an overall systematisation and legitimation of ruling-class ideology, linking the authority of the State to the 'natural order', or the will of 'God'.
Indeed, Metaphysics has invariably been dressed-up as a sort of Super-Scientific theory of 'Being', which can, supposedly from thought alone, uncover fundamental principles governing the universe, revealing its underlying rational structure -- the latter often mirroring contemporaneous class relations.
So, behind the velvet glove of Metaphysics (at some point) lies the mailed fist of class domination, its necessary truths dimly reflecting -- but often justifying, sometimes mystifying --, the iron rule of the State. [This argument is developed fully in Essay Twelve (summarised here).]
As Marx and Engels noted:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch....'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65. Bold emphasis added.]
In Essay Nine Part One, I aim to show that while workers are capable of developing ideas consonant with HM (which enables them to connect with revolutionary theory and practice systematised by the revolutionary party), they cannot form from their own experience -- as a matter of fact or of logic -- any of the concepts drawn exclusively from DM or from Hegel.
Indeed, it will be shown that such concepts lie way beyond the experience that any human beings could conceivably have -- and that includes dialecticians.
It will be argued, therefore, that workers (and party members) have had to have this alien-class ideology imposed on them. DM has to be substituted into workers' heads by outside 'teachers' (i.e., teachers in general who were not workers), and this has to be done against their materialist inclinations. In fact, 'Materialist Dialectics' has to replace many of the ideas that workers might already have formed which could have helped them understand not only Marxism, but how to transform their own lives by acting for themselves and in their own interests. In short, it will be argued that dialectics not only cripples workers' comprehension of Marxism, it hinders their self-activity, fatally compromising their capacity to create a socialist society for themselves --, all the while allowing DIMs to rationalise practically any form of substitutionism.
Even worse, it will be maintained that not only does DM put workers off Marxism (because it is incomprehensible), it exacerbates sectarianism and splits in revolutionary parties, encouraging a climate of unreasonableness and systematic personal corruption in and among Marxists.
Furthermore, it will also be shown that, despite claims to the contrary, revolutionaries themselves could not possibly employ -- or have employed -- dialectical concepts in their day-to-day activity, or during revolutionary upheavals (such as 1917). [On that, see here.]
This is because it is impossible to use incomprehensible concepts. Since no one (not Engels, not Lenin, not Trotsky, not Plekhanov -- nor anyone else) is capable of understanding dialectics, it cannot feature, nor could it have featured, in the practical activity of the Party, despite what we are constantly told. Again, this is not because dialectics is too difficult to grasp, it is because its theses are either non-sensical or they are far too confused for anyone to understand their implications, and thus act upon them. Except: because dialectics can be, and has been used to justify and rationalise practically anything, and its opposite, it has played a significant part in destroying the workers' movement worldwide. Those who object can be accused of not "understanding dialectics, and then shot, imprisoned or ignored.
[Substantiating the allegations advanced in the last few paragraphs will form much of Essay Nine Part Two and Essay Twelve. Part One of the latter is here, the rest is summarised here.]
Hence, it will be concluded that the concepts found in DM could not have been developed out of -- nor have been created in response to -- the class struggle by any stretch of the imagination. In that case, whatever else DM-theses are, they are neither historical nor materialist.
Furthermore, it will also be argued that one of the side-effects of this alien theory is that it chains workers to a passive ideology -- one that makes them the objects of theory and not the subjects of history. In connection with this it will be maintained that DM encourages in workers a servile notion of themselves as the playthings of mysterious metaphysical forces that neither they nor anyone else understands -- nor ever will, nor ever could understand --, but which they find they have to accept because it forms an integral part of a philosophical tradition they had no part in building.
Indeed, it is the self-activity of workers that DM-theorists have turned on its head, not Hegel.
Unwitting Dialectical Dupes
It is first of all pointed out that revolutionaries of the calibre of Engels, Lenin and Trotsky did not wittingly allow their ideas to become compromised in this way. There were other factors at work, of which they were well aware -- but apparently not as they applied in their own case -- that pre-disposed them toward adopting a traditional, ruling-class approach to Philosophy: their class origin and education.
[Whether or not this is a 'reductionist' account is tackled here, and here, and again below.]
Substitutionism
It is an odd fact that the ideological roots of substitutionist thinking have received scant attention from revolutionaries. In his otherwise excellent essay on Trotsky's views on this phenomenon, Tony Cliff does not even mention the ideological roots of substitutionist thinking. And as far as can be determined, no one else has either.
It's almost as if the party were run by automata, or by individuals who have no class-origins and no philosophical baggage which they brought with them into the movement.
But, to suggest that the above stalwarts were human beings, who might just have had alien-class ideas already installed in their brains by their upbringing or class background, and who reacted just like other humans to defeat and demoralisation (by looking for some sort of consolation, some sort of explanation to allay the cognitive dissonance that such set-backs must have created in their minds) is by no means "vulgar reductionism"; it is to take Marx seriously when he said:
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." [Marx (1859), p.181. A copy is available here.]
Naturally, one must deal with the beliefs of fellow human beings with some sensitivity, but revolutionaries like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were not beamed down to earth from a passing spaceship, nor were they born fully-formed with all their ideas pre-installed.
However, the fact that 99.9% of all avowed Marxists, from Leninists to Trotskyists, Maoists to Stalinists, Libertarian Communists to non-Orthodox Trotskyists, share the broadly the same dialectical doctrines, derived from a ruling-class hack like Hegel, provides powerful prima facie evidence that Marx was indeed right: "social being" does determine the collective dialectical consciousness of generations of Marxists. [There is much more on this in Part Two.]
DM: A Deep Mystery Even To Marxists
It could be objected to the above that while many scientific theories lie way beyond the grasp of the majority -- given the poor education they receive in class society -- that does not automatically brand those theories as inimical to their interests. Much of modern science transcends ordinary experience; since this presents no problems for science, it can present none for DM. So, the fact that workers do not understand dialectics (that is, if they don't) does not imply that it represents alien-class interests. Or so it could be maintained.
However, with respect to understanding genuine scientific theories, only an inadequate education and insufficient leisure time stands in the way of ordinary individuals comprehending them. With regard to DM, on the other hand, things are completely different. We have seen on numerous occasions at this site that even DM-classicists find it impossible to explain their core theses to one another (let alone to workers) -- or to anyone else, for that matter -- in a comprehensible form. Not only have we witnessed DM-theses repeatedly collapse into incoherence at the slightest encouragement, we have also seen how impenetrably vague and equivocal they are. In fact, even now, well over one hundred and twenty years since Engels, Dietzgen and Plekhanov first invented DM, none of its core ideas have been explicated in anything other than a terminally obscure form. [On this, see Essays Two through Thirteen Part One.]
Indeed, DM-theses remain today in the same confused state that DM-classicists originally left them. From the beginning, dialecticians have merely relied on repeating, generation after generation, the same vague notions and confused ideas they inherited from Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin.
[LOI = Law Of Identity; LEM = Law of Excluded Middle; LOC = Law of Non-Contradiction; FL = Formal Logic.]
Hence, what we find in DM-writings are the same erroneous assertions made about FL (which is repeatedly conflated with a bowdlerised version of Aristotelian Syllogistic), the same confused references to the LOI, the LEM, the LOC and change, the same repetition of vague reformulations of Engels's "three laws of Dialectics", the same appeal to an epistemology that is as implausible as it is impracticable, the same unimaginative examples repackaged as if they were either brand new or relevant (e.g., those involving water and steam, Mendeleyev's table, John's manhood, a character from Molière's Monsieur Jourdain discovering he has been speaking prose all his life, plants negating seeds, Mamelukes out-fighting French soldiers (or otherwise), "yea, yea", and "nay, nay", and so on, ad nauseam).
In tandem with all this, we encounter the same old bluster, hand waving, sweeping generalisations, special pleading, snide remarks and diversionary tactics, whenever dialectics encounters any serious criticism.
DM, the erstwhile philosophy of change, has remained stuck in a 19th century time-warp; little sign here of the Heraclitean Flux!
Worker Dialecticians?
It is pertinent to ask, therefore: How is it possible for DM to be "brought to workers" (as a part of revolutionary theory) if its best theorists appear to be incapable even of bringing it to themselves after over 120 years of trying?
Claims that there have been working-class dialecticians (such as Joseph Dietzgen, Tommy Jackson and Gerry Healy, etc.), who are supposed to have re-discovered the dialectical view of reality for themselves from scratch, are entirely bogus. According to his son, Dietzgen was a capitalist most of his life and he obtained his ideas from reading books on Philosophy. [Introduction to Dietzgen (1906a).]
Jackson, on the other hand, was a genuine working-class Marxist, but he 'caught dialectics' from Hegel, and his own classic book on the subject [Jackson (1936)] shows that he, too, did not understand a word of it (not because it was too difficult, but because, like the Trinity, it is incomprehensible). In that work, where Jackson touches on DM, his account is as clear as mud. [Proof? See the long quotation from Jackson's book given in Essay Three Part One.]
Healy also came from a petty-bourgeois background; he drifted in and out of the working class for a while -- later becoming a de-classé professional revolutionary --, only to 'catch dialectics' from reading Lenin's MEC, a condition that was later seriously compounded by a lethal strain he picked up from prolonged exposure to PN. [Proof? Just open a copy of Healy (1990) at any randomly selected page; then, it will readily be apparent that no sane individual could possibly "understand" dialectics. Read more, if you have the stomach for it, here, and here.]
[MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism; i.e., Lenin (1972); PN = Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks; i.e., Lenin (1961).]
Finally, Trotsky's attempt to show that workers are "unconscious" dialecticians is subjected to detailed criticism in Essay Nine Part One (here). For example, his claim that workers know that it is impossible to make two identical objects is itself rather puzzling. [Trotsky (1971), p.65.] Not only is this not a counter-example to the LOI (which concerns an object's alleged self-identity), it is not even an instance of Trotsky's own confused 'definition' of it!
However, it is in fact very easy to make two identical objects; physicists tell us that every photon, for example, is identical to every other photon. Hence, each time a worker throws a light switch, he or she makes countless trillion identical objects, which, it seems, must mean that such workers are "unconscious" anti-dialecticians. [Substantiation for this can be fouind in Essay Six.]
Naturally, contentious claims like these can only be neutralised by an a priori declaration that every photon in existence (past, present and future) must be non-identical -- despite what scientists tell us, and in abeyance of the almost infinite amount of data that would be needed to support such a cosmically ambitious thesis.
Well: Have You Read And Fully Understood The Whole Of Hegel's Logic?
The alarming facts upon which the above allegations supervene are thrown into even starker relief by Lenin's surprising and oft-quoted remark that not a single Marxist up until his day -- which must have included Engels, Dietzgen, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Plekhanov -- actually understood Marx's Capital, since none of them had fully mastered Hegel's Logic!
"It is impossible to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!" [Lenin (1961), p.180. Bold emphases added.]
Clearly, Lenin's aside raises serious questions of its own. If professional revolutionaries (and many philosophers) find Hegel's work impossibly difficult to comprehend, is it credible that workers themselves can understand the whole of Hegel's Logic fully? In which case -- if Lenin is correct --, what chance is there that anyone (revolutionary or worker alike) will ever make head or tail of Marx's Capital?
Furthermore, it's worth noting that Lenin himself admitted that he found certain parts of Hegel's Logic impossibly obscure, or just plain nonsense. [Cf., Lenin (1961), pp.103, 108, 117, 229.]
This means that even Lenin understood Capital!
Of course, all this is rather puzzling, anyway, since Marx himself never claimed this of his own work. [More on that, here.]
HM -- Introduced From The Inside
In the end, it is shown that no thesis exclusive to DM can be generated from workers' experience (whereas workers are already aware of key areas of HM -- and of those they aren't, they are easily persuaded of their truth when in struggle). This means, of course, that while DM has to be substituted into workers' heads from the "outside", HM does not have to be introduced to workers in this way.
Because of their materially-grounded language, their experience of exploitation and oppression, and the fact that HM is based on and addresses that experience (as well as their suppressed awareness of their own de-humanised condition, and their struggle), it is actually introduced to workers, as it were, from the inside.
In that case, DM can only ever appeal to substitutionists.
Revolutionary politics merely brings to workers a developed, scientific theory (HM) that generalises their experience and provides the tactics, strategy and organisation necessary to overthrow Capitalism. In fact, this is all that needs to be "brought to workers".
This should make revolutionaries organisers and administrators, not prophets or teachers.
HM And DM -- A Dialectical Unity?
Throughout these Essays, HM has been counterposed to DM. To some, this might seem a bogus distinction; but no Marxist of any intelligence would use slogans drawn exclusively from DM to agitate or propagandise workers. Consider for example the following: "The Law of Identity is true only within certain limits and the struggle against the occupation of Iraq!" Or "Change in quantity leads to change in quality (and vice versa) and the campaign to keep hospital HH open!" Or, "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the strike next week!" Or even, "Being is identical with but at the same time different from Nothing, the contradiction resolved by Becoming, and the fight against the BNP!"
Slogans like these would be employed only by militants of uncommon stupidity and of legendary ineffectiveness. In contrast, active revolutionaries use ideas drawn exclusively from HM to communicate with workers. Papers like Socialist Worker, for instance, use ordinary material language, coupled with concepts drawn from HM, to agitate and propagandise; rarely do they employ DM-phraseology (a few examples are considered here).
Only deeply sectarian papers, of exemplary unpopularity and impressive lack of impact, use ideas lifted from DM to try to educate and agitate workers. Newsline (the daily paper of the old WRP) used to try to do this, but like the Dinosaurs it resembled, it is no more.
[WRP = Workers Revolutionary Party.]
So, the distinction drawn here is made in practice every day by militants.
The present work merely systematises it.
Ruling Ideas Continue To Rule
In order to make their theory seem to 'work', DM-classicists have had to adopt a ruling-class view of nature (which 'allows' them to see the world governed by hidden forces and "essences", accessible to thought alone). Hence, their theses are dependent on centuries of alien-class experience and Ideal forms-of-thought.
Lenin admitted as much, perhaps without realising the full significance of what he was saying:
"[Marx's] doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]
That being so, it is clear that the spectacular lack of success enjoyed by DIM is not the least bit surprising; plainly, this is partly due to the class-compromised and divisive theory that dialecticians have tried to substitute into workers' heads (against the materialist grain, as it were).
Dialectics cannot "seize" the masses since it seizes-up the brain of anyone unfortunate enough to "suffer from it" (to paraphrase Max Eastman).
Any who remain unconvinced by that assertion should read the writings of any randomly-selected academic dialectician. Unless you are extremely lucky, you will find page after page of incomprehensible jargon, most of which is about as clear as lengthy commentaries on the Incarnation of Christ.
The writings of hardcore 'revolutionary' dialecticians (like Healy, and to a lesser extent, Ira Gollobin and Woods and Grant, for instance), amply confirm this conclusion.
Hegel's Immaculate Concepts
Despite this, the importation of Hegel's ideas into Marxism is often justified by comrades on the basis that the latter lived at a time when the bourgeoisie were the revolutionary class; hence his ideas were not ideologically-tainted to the same extent as those of later thinkers.
Now this excuse might work with theorists like Smith and Ricardo, but it cannot work with Hegel. Not only did he live in politically backward Germany, where there was no such revolutionary bourgeois class, his ideas represented both a continuation of ruling-class thought and a throwback to earlier mystical views nature and society. [On this, see Essay Twelve Part Five and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here).]
Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination were Hegel's ideas scientific, unlike those of Smith and Ricardo.
Nor can it be argued that Marx derived HM from Hegel; the fact is (as Lenin himself half admits) they were both influenced by the Scottish Historical Materialists: Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, and Smith, etc. [On this see Meek (1967b).] If anything, Hegel's work actually helped slow down the formation of Marx's scientific ideas, mystifying them.
Finally, no dialectician, as far as I know, would argue the same for other figures who were writing at this time, and who were much closer to the class action (as it were). Does anyone think this of Berkeley or Hume? And yet both lived in and around the leading capitalist country on earth at that time. Or of Shaftesbury and Mandeville? Slap bang in the middle those two guys.
And it is little use pointing out that this pair wrote shortly after the reaction to the English Revolution, since Hegel did so, too, after the French. Nor is it any use arguing that these two were card-carrying ruling-class hacks, since the same can be said of Hegel --, or even that one of them was an aristocrat; it may be news to some, but Hegel was not a coal miner!
Indeed, the only reason Hegel is chosen for special treatment is because of contingent features of Marx's biography. Had Marx's life taken a different course, does anyone think we'd now be bothering with this mystical buffoon? It is no surprise then to find Marx himself moved away from Hegel all his life. [These controversial claims are substantiated in detail in Part One of Essay Nine.]
Innocent Until Proven Guilty?
Independently of that, it could be objected that this allegedly class-compromised background is not sufficient reason to condemn DM/Materialist Dialectics. After all, it could be argued that the advancement of humanity has always been dependent on practices, concepts and theories developed by those freed from the need to toil each day just to stay alive. Surely, this does not automatically impugn every idea drawn from outside the workers' movement. Neither does it render notions like this of no use to revolutionaries. Indeed, denouncing such beliefs just because they are alien to the working-class is inconsistent with key ideas found in HM itself. In that case, the fact that Materialist Dialectics is based on Hegel's system does not automatically malign it, especially if it has been given a materialist make-over, and then subsequently tested in practice.
Or so it could be maintained.
However, DM is not so easily exonerated. This is so for several reasons:
(1) DM-theses make no sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise is invited to say clearly, and for the first time ever, what sense they do make. As the Essays posted here show, those attempting to perform this latter-day labour of Sisyphus will have an impossibly difficult task ahead of them.
(2) DM-ideas hinder the development revolutionary theory and practice. We saw this in more detail in Essay Ten Part One, in connection with Lenin's advice relating to a certain tumbler. [Other examples will be given in Part Two of Essay Nine.]
(3) DM is locked into a tradition of thought that has an impeccable ruling-class pedigree. No wonder then that it hangs like an albatross around our necks, to say nothing of the negative effect it has had on generations of comrades (these are also detailed in Essay Nine Part Two).
(4) Although many claim that science is intimately connected with earlier philosophical and religious/mystical forms-of-thought, this is in fact less than half the truth. Indeed, materialist and technological aspects of science have not been as heavily dependent on ruling-class ideas as many believe. [That bold claim will be substantiated in a later Essay.]
(5) Dialectical concepts undermine ordinary language and common understanding; this means that workers have to have its alien ideas planted in their heads against the materialist grain, as it were. As such, DM fosters substitutionist ideology and exacerbates sectarianism. [More on this in Parts One and Two of Essay Nine.]
(6) It has been shown in these Essays that the materialist flip allegedly performed on Hegel's system -- so that its "rational core" may be appropriated by revolutionaries -- was through a full 360 degrees, not the 180. [On that, see Essay Twelve Part One, and Essay Thirteen Part One.]
(7) It is not being claimed here that DM is false because of its ruling-class pedigree; it is in fact being maintained that this 'theory' is far too confused to be classified as true or false. Nevertheless, several of this theory's deleterious effects can in fact be traced to ruling-class forms-of-thought. [More on that in Essay Nine Part Two, and Essay Fourteen Part Two.]
(8) Practice has in fact refuted dialectics.
(9) Finally, and connected with the above, DM has played its own part in not only rendering DIM the long-term failure we see before us today, but also in exacerbating the serious personal and political problems that generations of petty-bourgeois input into revolutionary socialism has brought in its train.
'Tradition'
In spite of all this, it could be argued that the above counter-response does not account for the fact that some of the best class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it into the fabric of each and every classic Marxist text. How could this be even remotely possible if the above accusations are correct? And what alternative theory and/or literature (that has been tested in the 'heat of battle', as it were) can Ms Lichtenstein point to, to recommend her ideas as superior to those of this proven tradition, one stretching back now over 150 years?
Most of the above volunteered response is demonstrably wrong; the link between 'Materialist Dialectics' and (successful) practice was irrevocably severed in Essay Ten Part One (and will be undermined further in Part Two of Essay Nine).
Moreover, very few of the 'classic' texts (outside the DM-cannon) mention this 'theory' (except in passing). Indeed, as Part One of Essay Nine shows (here and here), Das Kapital itself is largely a 'Materialist Dialectics'-free zone. But, even if this were not so, the fact that DIM has been such a long-term failure ought raise serious questions about the malign influence that 'Materialist Dialectics' has had on HM itself.
In addition, a commitment to dialectics just because it was good enough for the 'ancient worthies' of our movement, and because of 'tradition', is itself based on the sort of dogmatic and conservative faith one finds in most religions, and is no less sickening when alleged radicals copy it.
Failure Substituted For Success
But, we have yet to consider the flip side of all this: the effect on militant minds of all this ruling-class thought, and how this is connected with the long-term failure of DIM.
More to the point: How and why have leading revolutionaries fallen for this ideological con? How were first-rate comrades were so easily duped?
These and other questions will be tackled in Part Two.
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Latest Update: 27/03/08
© Rosa Lichtenstein 2008
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