Essay Ten Part One -- Practice Refutes Dialectics

Readers need to make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final view on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.

This Essay should be read in conjunction with Essay Nine Parts One and Two.

Parts of this work are based on my experiences of life inside one particular wing of un-orthodox Trotskyism, but I have no reason to think that what I have to say here is unrepresentative of other revolutionary tendencies within Trotskyism in general, and indeed beyond. Naturally, readers will have to make up their own minds on that one.

If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.

This Essay is over 31,000 words long; a summary of some of its main points can be found here.

Quick Links

Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections:

(1) Practice And Truth

(a) Binding The Future

(b) Bad Start -- But It Gets Worse

(c) A Short-Sighted View?

(d) This Forgets About The Dialectical Inter-Play

(e) Science Converges On The Truth?

(2) Dialectics -- Tried And Tested?

(a) Appearances To The Contrary

(b) In Fact, History Refutes Dialectics

(c) Anti-Dialectical Impertinence?

(d) Capitalism Verified In Practice?

(e) Mass Seizure Versus Critical Mass

(f) SWP-UK And Respect

(3) Excuse Central

(a) Dialecticians Have Nothing To Lose But Their Prozac

(b) Excuses, Excuses

(c) Practiced At Ignoring Practice

(d) The Excuse Dumpster

(i)    Excuse One: Flat Denial Of Failure

(ii)   Excuse Two: "Objective" Factors

(iii)  'Excuse' Three: Ignore The Problem

(iv)   Excuse Four: "It's Too Early To Tell"

(e) The Silence Of The DIMs

(4) Lenin And The Tumbler

(a) The Electric Light Orchestra

(b) Lenin's Abstract Account Of Concrete Objects

(c) Lenin's Impractical Advice

(d) The Relevance Of Relevance

(5) Reductionism And Its Opposite -- HEX

(a) HEX And Scepticism

(b) For Whom The Noumenon Tolls

(c) Engels's Divergent 'Realism'

(d) 'Commonsense' To The Rescue?

(e) The Reduction Of HEX -- To Absurdity

(f) Yet Another Dialectical Inversion

(6) Notes

(7) References

Abbreviations Used At This Site

Practice And Truth

At this stage, it could be objected that the considerations advanced in the Essays posted at this site ignore the plain fact that truth is confirmed in practice. This frequently repeated DM-claim was summarised by Lenin as follows:

"From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphasis in the original.]

Similarly, the author of TAR both asks and answers his own question:

"[H]ow are we to be sure that our theory is correct? The answer is that there is a point where the theory and the consciousness of the working class meet -- in practice." [Rees (1998), p.236.]

Other dialecticians agree; here is Rob Sewell:

"Marxists have always stressed the unity of theory and practice. 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it', as Marx pointed to in his thesis on Feuerbach. 'If the truth is abstract it must be untrue,' states Hegel. All truth is concrete. We have to look at things as they exist, with a view to understanding their underlying contradictory development. This has very important conclusions, especially for those fighting to change society....

"The idealist view of the world grew out of the division of labour between physical and mental labour. This division constituted an enormous advance as it freed a section of society from physical work and allowed them the time to develop science and technology. However, the further removed from physical labour, the more abstract became their ideas. And when thinkers separate their ideas from the real world, they become increasingly consumed by abstract 'pure thought' and end up with all types of fantasies." [Rob Sewell, quoted from here.]

These comments are underlined by Sewell's comrades-in-arms, Woods and Grant:

"The ability to think in abstractions marks a colossal conquest of the human intellect. Not only 'pure' science, but also engineering would be impossible without abstract thought, which lifts us above the immediate, finite reality of the concrete example, and gives thought a universal character. The unthinking rejection of abstract thought and theory indicates the kind of narrow, Philistine mentality, which imagines itself to be 'practical,' but, in reality, is impotent. Ultimately, great advances in theory lead to great advances in practice. Nevertheless, all ideas are derived one way or another from the physical world, and, ultimately, must be applied back to it. The validity of any theory must be demonstrated, sooner or later, in practice." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.84-85.]

All this is, of course, just a reiteration of Marx's famous words:

"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." [Marx (1968), pp.28, 30.]¹

From this it could be argued that if dialectics has been tested in practice and has been verified countless times, then the abstract, academic points raised in these Essays can be ignored -- as mere "sophistry", perhaps?

However, as we will see, far from being the Ace-in-the-Hole DM-fans imagine it to be, practice is in fact their Black Spot.

[TAR = The Algebra of Revolution (i.e., Rees (1998); DM = Dialectical Materialism; DIM = Dialectical Marxism, or Dialectical Marxist, depending on context.]

'Binding' The Future

We saw in Essay Three Part Two that traditional theories found it impossible to specify conditions which would guarantee (with necessity) the future occurrence of past or present contingent events, or that the one would 'resemble' the other.

Empiricists could only appeal to the past (or to obscure mental 'habits') upon which to build such expectations, these days perhaps expressed as part of a probability calculus. Unfortunately, the problem with 'habits' of mind is that not only are they creatures of contingency, equally incapable of guaranteeing their own constancy, but the course of nature is not in fact bound by their many and varied fancies. And this, too, afflicts the probability calculus: probabilities can only be specified where we have knowledge, and since we cannot know the future we plainly cannot bind the future with such calculi. We may express our various certainties in diverse ways, but these will only ever remain as 'subjective' and mutable as 'habits' of mind ever were.

Hence, Empiricists found it impossible to guarantee that even their calculi will give the same results tomorrow -- that is, not without fatal concessions being made to Rationalism (disguised perhaps as part of a counterfactual law rooted in possible world semantics, or founded upon an "inference to the best explanation") --, vitiating the whole exercise. Indeed, as seems plain, what is highly probable today could be highly unlikely next week (especially given the fact that every event is in its own way unique (as Hegel too acknowledged), and thus impossible to regiment). Short of an appeal to a necessary 'law', how could anyone safely conclude otherwise?

In contrast, Rationalists of various sorts sought recourse to 'law', 'the natural light of reason', 'logic' (with the most desperate among them invoking 'dialectical logic' -- a bogus discipline based on a series of Hegelian howlers) to lock-in non-actualised contingencies, taming them as 'law-governed' future certainties.

In Essay Three Part Two, we saw that desperate ploys like this could not work either, for they had to appeal to the necessary connection between 'ideas', or between 'concepts' -- or, to the verbal expression of 'laws' --, to justify that which was imagined to exist between events in nature, making this account entirely circular.

Anyway, 'necessary connections' are no less unreliable than their feckless, contingent cousins were; not only are they all disconcertingly located in the here-and-now -- but aimed at locking-in the there-and-then --, when expressed in language/'thought', they simply reduce to a series of brute facts about the way human beings think they think, or imagine they knit ideas, concepts and/or words together. But what guarantees are there that human thought processes (linguistic practices and the use of rules) will always remain the same, or that today's certainties will not end up on top of that ever-growing scrap heap of past failures?²

Traditional Metaphysics could not solve this 'problem', and it remains 'unsolved' to this day. Modern versions of traditional Philosophy are no less susceptible to corrosive 'epistemological acid' like this -- for whatever is offered as a 'solution' must of necessity exist in the here-and-now --, the there-and-then forever mocking its feeble pretensions.

Unless someone invents a time machine (and the epistemological equivalent of superglue (Krazy glue), which is powerful enough to convert the contingent deliverances of our minds into the necessary thoughts of the 'divine', and all possibility of error is cast into eternal darkness), even our best laid theories remain locked in the contingent present, formed as they must always be on the back of yet more brute facts about the way we humans think we think. All the while the course of nature takes no heed. The Future even less.

Hence, traditional Philosophy cannot fail to fail, and not just here. The disconcerting reasons for its practitioners' consistent and heroic emulation of Sisyphus are given in in Essay Twelve Part One. But for now, we need merely note the insubstantial attempts made by dialecticians to solve this intractable 'problem'. How do they guarantee that today's 'truths' are not the content of tomorrow's trash can? In their case, this question is all the more pressing in view of their open commitment to universal Heraclitean change.

Unfortunately, as we have seen throughout these Essays, reality has seldom been kind to such Hermetic parvenus; no less so here. For, in order to tame the voracious appetite of this epistemological monster, dialecticians sit it down and offer it the equivalent of a slap-up meal, for their theory places its most important criterion of truth -- practice -- in the future, and thus out of reach!

Naturally, this concedes ignominious defeat even before the first course has even been cooked.

Bad Start -- But It Gets Worse

However, let us step back from high theory to examine low dialectics.

As we have seen, dialecticians appeal to practice as their most important criterion of truth. But we will soon discover that, as far as DIM is concerned, not only is past practice best wiped from memory (since it has delivered little else but long-term failure), on-going practice is thoroughly depressing, at best. And the prospects of future practice are about as reassuring as a confirmed drug addict's promises to quit.

[PMT = Pragmatic Theory of Truth; COT = Coherence Theory of Truth; CTT = Correspondence Theory of Truth.]

Nevertheless, a reliance on practice means that DM-epistemology has inherited many of the weaknesses of the PMT. In fact, is possible to show that the PMT collapses into the CTT, which in turn depends on the COT. And, as is well-known, the COT has always enjoyed a close, if not unhealthily incestuous relationship with Idealism.³

Moreover, the idea that truth is confirmed in practice is dependent on the CTT, not the other way round (as several of the quotes above, and in Note 1, confirm).

This is because, if a theory, T, predicts that for some sentence "S" expressing a prediction P of T, and practice brings it about that what S says actually occurs, then in order to judge that P is indeed the case, P would have to be compared with relevant changes in reality. Manifestly, no one would try to guess whether S was true (i.e., that P was correct); and there is no way that more practice could confirm that S was indeed the case. So, the confirmation of the results of practice is dependent on correspondence relations, not the other way round.⁴

To give a concrete example: if, say, party RR sets out to help win a strike by, among other things, mounting a series of meetings, distributing leaflets, organising marches, making collections, widening the dispute, advocating active picketing, and so on (on the basis of revolutionary theory predicting that one or more of these will win that strike) -- and that strike was won as a result --, the fact that those predictions had been successful could not itself be confirmed by yet more practice.

[Here "S" would be something like "Workers at the NN plant demand a 10% rise in wages and a 35 hour week, and party RR advocates the following: The strike at NN will only be won if we argue for public meetings, extensive leaflet distribution, well-supported marches, work-place and public collections, a widening of the dispute  drawing in other workers, involving the surrounding community, active mass picketing...".]

A successful outcome would be clear from the way that the world had changed in line with earlier expectations (i.e., if the said workers received the 10% pay award and the 35 hour week). But who in their left mind would try to ascertain this by having another march, or holding more collections? In that case, practice cannot serve as a fundamental test of truth.⁵

Of course, the above example is rather simplistic, but it was deliberately chosen to illustrate the point that even if practice were a criterion of truth, it would still be parasitic on the CTT. So, for instance, if party RR at some point in the future puts together a strategy to win a revolution (as and when that revolution was unfolding), and it was won successfully as a result, nobody still in command of their senses would think to confirm that the said revolution had actually been won by staging more practice --, such as another revolution!

Despite this, it is worth noting that practice is not a guarantor of truth anyway. Incorrect theories often make successful (practical and theoretical) predictions -- as, for example, Ptolemy's system did for many centuries. In fact, the allegedly superior Copernican system was no more accurate than the older theory had been.⁶ Indeed, Ptolemy's system was refined progressively in line with observation for over a thousand years, and it became more accurate as a result. Despite that, it was no nearer to what we might now regard as the 'truth'.⁷

And, correct theories can sometimes fail, and they can do so for many years. For instance, Copernican Astronomy predicted stellar parallax, which was not observed until 1838 with the work of Friedrich Bessel, three hundred years after Copernicus's book was published.

Similarly, Darwin's theory of descent through modification made predictions that were at variance with patently obvious facts: the persistence of inherited variations. The latter were inconsistent with Darwin's own "blending"* theory of transmission. Given Darwin's account, new and advantageous variations should be blended out of a breeding population, not preserved or enhanced. It was not until the advent of genetically-based* theories of inheritance forty or so years later that Darwin's theory became viable.

Moreover, this new synthetic theory did not achieve success by preserving anything from the old blending theory (and, because of that fact, this defunct theory cannot be seen as an approximation to the 'truth', toward which later developments more closely inched this theory). Indeed, because of the difficulties his ideas faced, Darwin found he had to incorporate Lamarckian* concepts into later editions his classic book in order to rescue his theory. Hence, in the period between, say, 1865 and 1900 there were good reasons to reject Darwinism (as many serious biologists did). This means that the development of the most successful theory of the 19^th century (and one of the most successful ever) actually contradicts the DM-account of truth, by making incorrect predictions.⁸ [*Links below.]

In addition, the elements that early Darwinists edited into or out of their theory did not move what was left of his theory closer to the 'truth', either. In fact, these changes achieved the opposite effect, since they relied on Lamarckian principles. Even worse, as Darwin himself noted, his theory was contradicted by (and is still contradicted by, and might always remain contradicted by) the fossil record. This massive obstacle is still largely ignored, downplayed, re-interpreted, or explained-away by Darwinians. The fact that 'orthodox' neo-Darwinism is probably incorrect however has not stopped Marxists of almost every stripe from hailing it as if it were the biological equivalent of the Holy Grail.⁹

Furthermore, some theories can make both successful and unsuccessful predictions. Consider the 'contradictions' between Newtonian Physics and observation -- those that prompted both the discovery of Neptune and the 'non-discovery' of the planet Vulcan:

"The arguments which terminate in an hypothesis's positing the existence of some trans-Uranic object, the planet Neptune, and the structurally identical arguments which forced Leverrier to urge the existence of an intra-Mercurial planet, the planet 'Vulcan', to explain the precessional aberrations of our 'innermost' solar system neighbour are formally one and the same. They run: (1) Newtonian mechanics is true; (2) Newtonian mechanics requires planet P to move in exactly this manner, x, y, z, …; (3) but P does not move à la x, y, z; (4) so either (a) there exists some as-yet-unobserved object, o, or (b) Newtonian mechanics is false. (5) 4b) contradicts 1) so 4a) is true -- there exists some as-yet-undetected body which will put everything right again between observation and theory. The variable 'o' took the value 'Neptune' in the former case; it took the value 'Vulcan' in the latter case. And these insertions constituted the zenith and the nadir of classical celestial mechanics, for Neptune does exist, whereas Vulcan does not." [Hanson (1970), p.257.]

[More details in Hanson (1962). There are many other examples like this in the history of science. This claim will be documented more fully in a later Essay.]

However, we do not have to appeal to the natural sciences for more examples of this sort of thing; there are plenty to be found in revolutionary practice itself.

For instance, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the SWP-UK argued that the UK Poll Tax could only be defeated by the active involvement of organised labour. A strategy of civil disobedience (coupled with demonstrations and meetings) was regarded as insufficient to beat this tax. Admittedly, the SWP did not counterpose these tactics, but argued that both should be built together.

As it turned out, the other strategy won.

A Short-Sighted View?

It could be objected to this that these examples clearly ignore wider and/or longer-term issues. In the first case, the Ptolemaic system was finally abandoned because it proved inferior to its rivals in the long run. The same applies to Darwin's theory, which when combined with Mendelian genetics, is closer to the truth, something that is also true of Newtonian Physics, which has been superseded by the TOR.¹⁰

[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]

Furthermore, the Poll Tax simply reappeared in a modified form as the present-day Council Tax. To be sure, the total defeat of such regressive taxes (etc.) must wait for the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism; here the involvement of the organised working class is essential.

All this is undeniable, but the above response is unfortunately double-edged: if it is only in the long run that we may determine whether or not a theory as successful, then that theory might never be so judged. As we saw in Essay Three Part Two (summarised above), this is because future contingencies could always arise to refute that theory -- no matter how well it might once have seemed to 'work'. In fact, if history is anything to go by, this has been the fate of the vast majority of previous theories. Even though most, if not all, at one time 'worked', or were well-supported, the overwhelming majority were later abandoned. As Stanford notes:

"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18^th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19^th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9.]

[See also Stanford (2000, 2003, 2006).]

So, if anything, practice shows that practice is unreliable!

Furthermore, if it is only in the long run that superior theories win out, or can be seen to be superior, then for most of the time inferior theories could make (and have made) successful predictions. In that case, we would have no way of telling the good from the bogus for most of the time.

The above observations apply equally well to dialectics. If dialectical Marxists have to wait for the revolutionary overthrow of Capitalism before they know whether their theory is correct, then they might not only have a long time to wait, they could find that Marx's caveat (reproduced below) in the end refutes everything (i.e., everything but that anti-deterministic pronouncement itself). Clearly, Marx and Engels would not have put this passage in the Communist Manifesto if practice always determined truth, and correct theories invariably worked -- whatever they might appear to have said elsewhere:

"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." [Marx and Engels (1968b), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis added.]

Anyway, such long-term promissory notes cannot tell us today whether 'Materialist Dialectics' is now correct. Indeed, as noted earlier, this is one of the main weaknesses of pragmatic criteria: they are projective, not merely assertoric.

Furthermore, an appeal to the "closer approximation" of a particular theory to the truth would be to no avail (or, at least, of no help to fans of the 'dialectic'); as we have seen throughout this site, in this respect DM is not even in the running. This is partly because its own precepts condemn its adherents (and humanity) to infinite ignorance (on this, see below), and partly because its core theses make not one ounce of sense (on that see Essays Two through Eleven).

Of course, speculation about the length of humanity's sojourn in DM-inspired 'epistemological limbo' is a separate matter. The whole point of the exercise had been to use practice as a crucial test of the truth of theory. It is not now to the point to appeal to yet more theory (i.e., "approximation to the truth") to bail out the practice.

Part of the problem with this sort of alethic consequentialism is that conditions and circumstances change -- a fact which dialecticians would be the first to acknowledge. But, this minimal point of agreement only serves to weaken their case, for if they continue to pin their hopes on outcomes alone to vindicate their theory, then, as noted above, it might never be judged correct. Indeed, the opposite could turn out to be the case, especially if events unfold in unexpected ways -- a denouement clearly allowed for by Marx and Engels, as noted above, too.

Naturally, in such circumstances, an appeal would have to be made to mitigating factors to save the theory from any awkward facts that might emerge -- as, indeed, the SWP had to do when the aforementioned rival strategy won in the anti-Poll Tax campaign, and as Marxists in general do to explain the long-term failure of DIM.

But, if such additional (possibly theoretical) principles have to be deployed to reinterpret each and every apparently refuting outcome -- in order to explain why the latter do not actually disconfirm the theory, but 'conform' to it -- then pragmatic criteria are clearly irrelevant.

Of course, in the Poll Tax dispute, the explanation for the failure of SWP-UK tactics merely underlined the temporary and limited nature of any victory for workers under Capitalism, at the same time as reminding activists that what might appear to be victories are really only partial and/or transient this side of a successful revolution.

Now, there is nothing at all wrong with such claims -- except that the more of these there are the more it becomes apparent that pragmatic criteria are no use at all.

And this fact should be apparent even to hard-nosed Bolsheviks, if they but thought about their own practice with respect to practice. There seems to be little point in appealing to practice if the results have to be constantly reinterpreted when outcomes fall short of expectations -- as they almost invariably seem to do for us Marxists.¹¹

Indeed, when confronted with the glaring and long-term failure of DIM, dialecticians do just this -- they deny that it has been tested in practice and thus shown to fail, promptly appealing to "objective factors" to account for its long and sorry record. On the other hand, the few successes DIM has witnessed they happily attribute to 'Materialist Dialectics'. In that case, practice can only ever win: it is never used to account for failure, only success. Hence, practice and the theory that inspired it need never be altered, since they can never fail. And so this sorry theory staggers on through yet another half-century of defeat.

Once more, the reason for saying this is that pragmatic theories are eternal hostages to fortune. Because of that, those who appeal to practice as a test of truth should feign no surprise when future contingencies fail to match repeatedly dashed expectations.

Dialectical Inter-play

To be fair, Rees does refer his readers to other criteria to underpin the legitimacy of DM.

"There is no final, faultless, criterion for truth which hovers, like god, outside the historical process. Neither is there any privileged scientific method which is not shaped by the contours of the society of which it is a part. All that exists are some theories which are less internally contradictory and have a greater explanatory power….

"[A theory's] validity must be proven by its superior explanatory power -- [which means it is] more internally coherent, more widely applicable, capable of greater empirical verification -- in comparison with its competitors. Indeed, this is a condition of it entering the chain of historical forces as an effective power. It is a condition of it being 'proved in practice.' If it is not superior to other theories in this sense, it will not 'seize the masses,' will not become a material force, will not be realized in practice." [Rees (1998), pp.235-37.]

DM-theorists generally along the same sort of lines (as the quotations in Note One will confirm).

In which case, it could be argued that DM-theorists do not just appeal to practice as a guide to truth; in point of fact they argue that there is a dialectical interplay between theory and practice.

Unfortunately, these "other criteria" have also proven to be inadequate -- whether taken singly or as a job lot. As we saw in Essay Eleven Part One, and Essay Seven, DM-theorists cannot appeal to greater consistency to buttress their theory since they openly admit that the world is fundamentally contradictory. Hence, if DM is to reflect nature faithfully it could not fail to be contradictory, too.  Worse: the closer dialectics approaches 'the truth' about this avowedly contradictory world, the more it should reflect the latter accurately, the more contradictory it should become! So, far from it being the case that increasingly accurate theories should be "less internally contradictory", if DM were correct, they should become more contradictory!

On top of that, since every single DM-thesis collapses into incoherence with alarming ease upon closer examination, as has been demonstrated time and again in these Essays, DM is not even in the running as a theory that should be considered fit enough to be tested in practice.

It does not even make the reserve list!

Moreover, as will be demonstrated in Essay Three and below, DM-epistemology is radically flawed; apart from anything else, it would condemn humanity to infinite ignorance -- even with respect to humble tumblers.

Given all of this, the 'dialectical-interplay' between theory and practice would be better described as diabolical.

[Other criteria to which dialecticians appeal to validate their theory seem to depend on the CTT, which will be examined in Part Two of this Essay. See also here.]

Finally, we have seen that the dialectical process itself is highly suspect -- that is, where any sense can be made of it. This means that even if DM were vindicated in practice, we should regard that in the way that astronomers, say, would perhaps view any 'successes' that astrologers might report: i.e., as a sheer coincidence.

Science 'Converges' On 'The Truth'

Again, it could be objected that modern scientific theories are remarkably successful, which must mean that they are closer to the truth, and that is why they work. The same is true of DM.

This doctrine has recently been called "Convergent Realism". I will discuss this theory in more detail in a later Essay. In the meantime, the reader is referred to Laudan (1981, 1984). See also here. [This is a PDF.] In addition, cf., Stanford (2000, 2001, 2003, 2006).

Independently of all this, it is worth pointing out that a theory's success does not imply it is 'nearer the truth'. This is because:

(1) We have already seen that success does not imply truth anyway.

(2) Theories not only have to survive rigorous testing, they evolve over time. But, the fact that certain theories remain viable is down to the additional and obvious fact that they have so far survived. But, just because of that, it does not mean that they are 'closer to the truth' -- no more than the fact that an organism survives in nature means that it is 'closer to the truth'.

For example, there is no such thing as the true form of a cat, which all cats are evolving toward. Cats just survive. Truth does not enter into it. So successful cats do not prove cats are true. Moreover, cats, like theories, could become extinct one day, no matter how well they once survived, or 'worked'. Indeed, most of the species that have ever existed are now extinct; does that mean that they were unsuccessful when they were around? Hardly. And did that guarantee they would always remain so? Clearly not. And the same goes for any and all theories.

(3) There are other reasons for arguing that no scientific theory could be true, even if they made true predictions. This is not because they are all false, or of indeterminate truth-value, but because they operate more like rules, and thus they are not the sort of thing that could be true or false. This idea will also be spelt-out in more detail in another Essay.

However, in response to item (2) above, it could be objected that theories are not like cats, or dogs, or any other species; they are either (partially-) true or they are not. Species cannot be characterised this way in any meaningful sense.

Maybe not, but the DM-link between practice and truth makes the analogy with cats all the more apt, for on this account, theories are true because they work. Now, the reason why some theories work/survive and others do not is analogous to the way certain species do in fact survive. There are all sorts of historical, social and ideological pressures on theories, which, like the environmental impact on organisms, filter out those suited to that environment.

In that case, the fact that a theory survives/works does not imply it is true. To be sure, a case for the obverse inference might well be made (i.e., that a 'true' theory will or should work/survive -- however, we have already seen that this too is doubtful), but not this. Unless we know on independent grounds that a theory is 'true', its survival cannot be used to infer its 'truth'. And, as we have seen, practice itself cannot discriminate the 'good' from the 'bad'.

If all this is so, then the emphasis revolutionaries place on practice as a guide to truth is misguided at best --, which is all to the good, given the points raised in the next section.

Revolutionary Practice

Appearances To The Contrary...

Despite the above, it could be argued that the actual success of revolutionary practice speaks for itself; this alone shows the above comments are either badly mistaken or merely "academic".

Indeed, revolutionaries often appeal to 1917 as just such a success. The Party that advocated 'Materialist Dialectics' won the day, they argue. Here is Trotsky arguing to that effect (in his Open Letter To Burnham):

"You are not unacquainted with the great role played by Iskra in the development of Russian Marxism. Iskra began with the struggle against so-called 'Economism' in the labour movement and against the Narodniki (Party of the Social Revolutionists). The chief argument of the 'Economists' was that Iskra floats in the sphere of theory while they, the 'Economists,' propose leading the concrete labour movement. The main argument of the Social Revolutionists was as follows: Iskra wants to found a school of dialectic materialism while we want to overthrow Czarist autocracy. It must be said that the Narodnik terrorists took their own words very seriously: bomb in hand they sacrificed their lives. We argued with them: 'Under certain circumstances a bomb is an excellent thing but we should first clarify our own minds.' It is historical experience that the greatest revolution in all history was not led by the party which started out with bombs but by the party which started out with dialectic materialism." [Trotsky (1972), p.100. Bold emphases added. "Iskra" changed to italic emphasis. Spelling altered to conform to UK English; quotation marks also altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]

However, as we saw in Essay Nine Part Two (here), such an appeal cannot successfully be made by dialecticians, since it is clear from the record that the revolutionaries involved did not use DM (or even 'Materialist Dialectics') to propagandise and organise the Russian working class. [As noted above, the evidence for this can be found in Essay Nine Part Two.]

Does anyone really think that Bolshevik workers, having to face up to the likes of General Kornilov, were all that interested in the fact that Being is different from but at the same time identical with Nothing, the contradiction resolved in Becoming? Or that the Totality is a mediated whole? Or that ice negates water? Or that there are UOs everywhere? Small wonder then that dialectics gets no mention in this period.

This is, of course, all quite apart from the fact that the 1917 revolution has now gone backwards, confounding the NON.

So, to answer Trotsky, the party that used DM/'Materialist Dialectics' (if it did) also screwed up.

[NON = Negation of the Negation; UO = Unity of Opposites.]

In Fact History Refutes Dialectics

Nevertheless, as it turns out, past events do give clear testimony --, unfortunately they speak of the long-term failure of DIM.

Hence, dialecticians would be well advised to avoid using practice as a test of the correctness of their theory.

When a list is constructed of all the 'successes' that 'our side' has 'enjoyed' over the last 150 years or so it soon becomes obvious that it is depressingly short. Worse: our 'successes' are easily out-numbered by our 'failures'. A shortened list of both is given in Figure One, below.

 Figure One: The Dialectically-Depressing List

Naturally, this does not mean that we can't explain all the set-backs, defeats, catastrophes, screw-ups and disasters that have plagued the labour and socialist movement over the last 150 years, but we can only do so if we appeal to yet more theory, not more practice. Nor does it mean that theory and practice have to be counterposed. However, if we insist on making practice a test of the truth of revolutionary socialism, we would surely have abandoned Marxism years ago, since our failures greatly outnumber our successes.¹²

[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; DIM = Dialectical Marxism/Marxist.]

Furthermore, it is only when viewed against a rich enough theoretical background that is it possible to classify events one way or another. For example, OTs in general regard the 'victory' of North Korea in the 1950s as a 'success', whereas the IST viewed it as a draw/stand-off between rival imperialisms. Similarly, the IST is inclined to interpret the events in Eastern Europe seventeen or so years ago as a 'partial success', whereas unreconstructed Stalinists and OTs (and others) look upon them as a major defeat for workers.¹³

Anti-Dialectical Impertinence?

In response, it could be argued that the above list is highly prejudicial since it is padded out with dozens of failures that pre-date revolutionary Marxism, or with those that have nothing to do with 'Materialist Dialectics'.

But, if these are filtered out -- along with the corresponding successes enjoyed by these non-revolutionary Marxist movements -- the list would be even more depressing!

As noted above, many of the items in the list are open to re-classification upon closer examination, and that includes most if not all of our 'successes'. Naturally, the validity of that observation itself depends on when that judgement is made --; indeed, as Zhou Enlai once remarked of the French Revolution, "It's too early to tell".

For example, although the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was a resounding success twenty-five years ago, the resurgence of the BNP over the last four or five years could lead to the future re-classification of the ANL in the other column. If everything is mutable (according to DM) then so are reputations. History is no respecter of the past; no status is locked in permanent stasis -- which is why, of course, pragmatic criteria are so unreliable.

Moreover, several outwardly successful movements could turn out to be exactly the opposite if they are given an unsympathetic reading. For instance, the massive demonstrations around the world in 2003 failed to stop the invasion of Iraq. Was this a success or a failure?

(1) It was clearly a success if it is regarded as the latest high-water mark of the anti-Capitalist movement -- especially if every other relevant political and historical factor involved is taken into account (including, how close the movement came actually to stopping the war, the fact that this movement has so far forestalled further imperialist 'adventures', and how it has drawn in new comrades).

(2) But, on the other hand, it could be viewed as a failure if its explicit aims are read into the equation.

This alone shows that the concepts of success and failure are highly contestable; they are theory- and context-dependent. No doubt in the long run many 'failures' will turn out to be 'successes', but that just underlines the point being made here: if we have to wait for the future to tell us if DIM is correct, or is a 'success', that would be an implicit admission that we cannot (on this basis) determine whether it is so now.

Capitalism: Verified In Practice?

In stark contrast, the Capitalist class has been highly successful -- whatever one thinks of their rotten and unstable society -- on most measures of success.

They have not only conquered virtually every square inch of the planet and won countless revolutions (as well as practically every major battle they have fought against 'our side'), their ideas dominate society (even if somewhat precariously at times). The bourgeoisie have clearly transformed the earth, and continue to do so.

Hence, if practice were a reliable guide, we would have to declare ourselves supporters of the Capitalist system!

That dialecticians do not do this -- an