Introduction to Marxist Philosophy

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For Marxists, the question of philosophy is not something optional, something that they can leave or take as the fancy strikes them.

Marxism is founded upon philosophical method, the method of dialectical materialism.

All the major struggles that have taken place within the international working class movement have involved struggles on philosophical questions. (Which is not to say -as the Healyites of the Workers Revolutionary Party - that these struggles have not involved very important political questions.)

That is why the publication of this important work by Georges Politzer can only be welcomed by our movement.

Politzer was a leading member of the French Communist Party (PCF) in the period preceding the Second Imperialist War.

During the war he lead the resistence within the universities against the Nazis and the Vichy Regime, publishing a paper called The Free University.

It was because of this heroic struggle that he was murdered by the fascists in May 1942.

This book is in many ways a living refutation of those who, like certain tendencies within the "Trotskyist' movement, belleve that there Is a mechanical relation between politics and phiosophy.

According to these theorists the politics of an organisation follows BY directly from its philosophical method and vice versa.

There is, of course, a sense. in which this is true and this reveals itself in Politzer's book in the way in which he chooses examples to illustrate the principles of Marxist philosophy.

This is only the superficial appearance of the question, nowever. Politzer is correct on all fundamental philosophical questions, and it is this that makes his work of importance.

RELATION

The relation between politics and philosophy is a dialectical one. Philosophy and politics form a unity and conflict of opposites, within which each opposite reacts back on the other.

Their unity is relative and historically conditional, mihile their conflict is absolute and eternal.

Within this relationship it is, of course, political practice which is the fundamental and basic opposite and which in the ultimate instance determines politics.

What does it mean to say that the unity of politics and philosophy relative? Precisely that philosophy as one of the higher spheres of ideology enjoys a certain autonomy from its material basis, but that this autonomy is not absolute.

This book consists of the texts of several series of lectures on dialectical materialism which Politzer gave to the French Workers' University during the thirties.

In the first part he considers what he describes, following Engels, as "the fundamental problem of philosophy" that is, the question of the nature of the relationship between Being (matter) and thought (consciousness).

He examines in turn the two main answers that have been given to this question, namely that of, on the one hand, materialism (which maintains that it is matter which is fundamental and from which the phenomena of consciousness are derived) and on the other, that of idealism (which holds the contrary view that thought or Spirit is basic and that matter is a derivitive product of Spirit) - and he shows why Marxism adheres to the materialist viewpoint.

He also briefly considers the way this question has been posed by idealist philosophers such as Berkley.

MATERIALISM

In the second part, he turns to a discussion of the principles of onlosophical materialism, that is, of those views and attitudes which all the philosophies of the material1st camp share in common.

He also briefly outlines the historical development of the materialist world-outlook.

Politzer then goes on to consider that which separates the philosophy (Top Hegel, (Above) Engels of Marxism from all previocs sad later materialist namely the meto el stes Marx and Enges ig 1ez philosophical derelopmen: zs sore or less orthodox adherents of tbe classical German idealist philosopher Hegel in whose system the dialectical method (which Engets described as the "revolutionary side" of Hegel's work) reached its highest point of development, and when they later went over to become materialists they retained the essentials of that method and united them with their new views.

It is this method, which insists on viewing all things, all phenomena as processes, as continuously in motion, that separates Marxism from all the systems of metaphysical philosophy which regard things as static and unchanging, as remaining essentially the same.

Politzer shows why the dialectical method is superior to that of metaphysics and goes on to discuss the fundamental laws of the dialectic. torical he fertalism, entitled "HisThe shows how this philosophical method of Marxism must be applied to study of the development of human society and of the economic relations that underlie society.

He shows how the division of society into classes has not always existed and how it will not always exist and also explains the tasks which flow from this recognition.

STALINIST LINE

Finally, he goes on in the final part, which is easily the worst in the whole book, to consider "the application of the dialectical method to ideologies" and it is in this secton that, the Stalinist political line that he adhered to ET: sesame LE :

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