CND rides again

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"A MASSIVE propaganda campaign like the CND" can reduce the fascist vote at the next election and finish them for ever, according to Labour 'left' Joe Ashton last week.

It took a speaker from the audience to point out to Ashton that in spite of the efforts of CND we are now faced with the advent of the neutron hamh Ashton hopes will become the present-day CND has as much chance of seeing off the fascists with leaflets and placards as the CND had in ending the threat of nuclear holocaust.

"To defeat the fascists means mobilising the working class in the streets and a political fight for a revolutionary leadership in the i- hial the lila. trict Council of NALGO has received an amendment to a resolution calling for the expulsion of NF members -substituting a call for the expulsion of Socialist Workers Party, Communist Pars and Labour Party members from the union 1 Though this move was thrown out, it is on the cards that union officials could soon seize on such opporarities to rid thamcaliss

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SOCIALIST PRESS, beanesday CAp.. S Marx-combined dialectical philo phy with materialism In the rapidly changing inditions of the interitional class struggle an lequate revolutionary adership can only be milt if it is equipped ith the most advanced id scientific method of Fe: Marx, too, the cien of understanding ig in the real world is .: the problem of graspe hat they are in motion. This is made more difficult r the fact that in the écary course of events it 5: no means obvious that is s the case.

Beneath Orit when things ¿denly crack and break a. does it become clear 2: chere was a dynamic m. of movement and ange operating beneath the niece within them all the I=. but under ordinary cirmerances many things ten: an appearance of Ee at rest.

Trings superficially seem a=.. unchangeable or solid any given point. But renal reality is in fact a conflict of passing forces-both in the and social world*:: will eventually shatter • appearance of stability i create something new, t: will contain the ..cal content of the rei.:is apparently stable Es sur which will be essena: iferent from it.

Changes

1 :ack in the desert, for Z-=. can appear very disvery real and very eageable in the short= Ye: it is continually aid and changed by the macess oi slow erosion or lesire of the rock.

ari desert travellers will or that the sun may ris nein conditions heat be cat a point where it =.: .iree: maintain itself CORS up. .. a 00: 0203:05 * 359553 al content, but nevertheless a different and new thing has been created by the destruction of the old thing.

The contradictory forces within the rock have sprung to the surface and brought an abrupt change in practice.

Eruptions

This is not a phenomenon confined to one example. The whole material world abounds with examples of such change-the cracking of the egg to produce the newborn chick; the bursting of the bud to produce the blossom; the shattering of the cocoon to reveal the butterfly; the mushroom cloud that indicates the pent-up contradictory forces of an atom bomb have produced their cataclysmic change.

All these sudden eruptions of change are preceded by longer or shorter periods of apparent "stability"

The essence of Marxism is its understanding of the inner dynamic, the tension, the potential change within all phenomena, all social and material forces, that flows from their own internal contradictions.

Material Contrary to all forms of religious world views, Marxism asserts that the inner laws of the material universe and not divine intervention have produced all of the physical, chemical, biological and historical processes that have resulted in the present situation of mankind And Marxism insists that there is no absolute obstacle to man learning to understand these laws and understanding the complex workings of the world.

Indeed, Marxists argue, it is the historical struggle man to survive in and shape the material world which has led to his developed understanding and given rise to his ideas.

Ideas, with varying degrees of accuracy, reflect the material world: they do not and cannot have any independent existence, nor can they flow from any non-material intluence.

Opposite is fundamentally materialist. And in its conception of the material world as a moving, changing, internally contradictory whole, it is also a dialectical theory.

Dialectics has a long history. The term comes from the Greek "dia" meaning two, opposed, clashing elements, and "logos" meaning reason.

Hence we mean by dialectics "to reason by splitting into two" and this concisely establishes the importance of dialectics to Marxists to their understanding of class struggle within capitalist society Practice We see the working through of dialectical materialism not as an abstract, nor just as an applied theory.

We see it as absolutely essential to the practice we carry out within capitalist society to win the working class to a programme which will destroy capitalism through the process of the internal contradiction within capitalism, the physical battle and struggle for power between social opposites: the propertyless working dass and the properted caritest production and assumes power under its own name, there are constant signs of the existence of the class contradictions of society within our everyday work-whether this be in the explosions of the class struggle at Grunwick, in the victimisations at Cowley; in the Lib-Lab coalition's imposition of wage control, or the fight by workers to break these.

In every instance where workers struggles come to the surface the concept and method of dialectical materialism is verified.

We know that the struggle is between two interests that are irreconcilably opposed, which leads us on to the concept of polarity within dialectics.

Within capitalism there are two poles, two essential elements, which are held together in a surface calm by the capitalist state.

State

As Lenin shows in State and Revolution, the state attempts to reconcile these antagonisms in various ways "peacefully" where possible, -capitalism under mass pressure from the working class can. in a period of ition when the situation demands.

The method adopted depends on the state of profitability and the condition of the authority of the ruling class.

Those reformist politicians who see the state in a fixed way simply as a vehicle for conceding reforms are perpetually confused as soon as it exhibits its true role as the mechanism of capitalist rule by violently suppressing the workers movement.

Opposed to this organised power of the capitalist class is the progressive movement forward of the propertyless and exploited working classfighting to liberate the productive forces from the shackles imposed by private ownership and production for profit.

Though the working class contains within itself the power to destroy and overturn the capitalist social order, this potential strength can only be. fully tapped through the development of a conscious revolutionary This concept of opposite forces in sharp conflict is vitally important in our understanding of the class struggle, the way that in an ever-deepening crisis the respective and diametrically opposed poles attract and develop their forces and enter direct confrontation with eachother.

There is many an armchair "Marxist' who will debate dialectics till death and will present a horde of fascinating polemics about the nature of reality, absolute truth, nature, existence and the rest.

But those who do not see the relevance of taking the conclusions of that concept of dialectical materialism into a revolutionary programme with which to fight in practice within the working class, can never grasp the relevance of the dialectical materialist method beyond the still and motionless pages of the formal textbook, nor even understand its practical conditions But the methods of dialectical r materialism did not spring ready-made to the mind of Karl Marx.

The complex processes that brought this theoretical development in the mid-nineteenth century are related to material and historical conditions.

Among the early Greek philosophers, who were also among the earliest natural scientists, were some whose special interest lay in studying change and motion.

In seeing a stone thrown across a field, they saw that in its motion the thing is changed from being here to being there, and they reasoned that motion is the change of the state of things into their opposites.

Since some philosophers went further and saw that everything is in motion, it is easy to see why dialectics became an important tendency within philosophy from very early on.

Rationalisation

In its theoretical form, modern socialism originally appears as a more logical extension of the rationalist principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century.

Like every new theory, modern socialism had first to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic facts.

Before the emergence of Mark there were theoretical These uprisings were led in that period by the emerging bourgeoisie in conflict with the landowning aristocracy.

Yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts from that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat.

Not yet developed Thus early socialism was a theoretical development from a class not yet materially developed.

In the eighteenth century actual communistic theories began to develop.

The demand for equality was no longer limited to nolitical rights-it was extended also to the social conditions of individuals.

It was not simply class privileges which were to be abolished, but class distinctions as well.

An acid Spartan communism, denouncing all pleasures, was the first form of the new teaching.

Then came three Utopians -Saint Simon, Fourier and Robert Owen.

One thing is common to all three-not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of that proletariat which historical development had by now produced.

They looked to emancipate all humanity at once.

Unjust In the view of these three social reformers the bourgeois world was unjust and irrational and must inevitably soon end up on the dust heap.

Pure reason and justice did not rule the world because men didn't rightly understand them. To the crude conditions of capitalist production and the crude clas conditions corresponded crude theories.

The Utopians attempted to evolve solutions to social problems from out of the human brain alone.

One genius was thought enough to show the world its wrongs, and the rest of the world would follow.

Fourier began to use the dialectical method to argue that every historical phase has its period of ascent and its period of descent, and applied this to the future of the whole human race.

Robert Owen, however, was for long a philanthropist and the conditions of work at his New Lanark factory were counterposed to the squalid conditions of the proletariat elsewhere.

But he advanced beyond philanthropy in the direction of Communism, and came out with communistic theories concerning private property, religion and marriage which laid valuable foundations for Communism to develop.

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rupt to the surface in a mass movement of workers sense. a new, higher, level, by senses perceive. them.

reality. and France-theoretical 5009000588:33 Grunwick saw the class struggle To all the Utopians, however, socialism was not a material necessity but the ideal expression of absolute truth, reason and justice.

They saw it as independent of time, space and the historical development of man.

The examination of such roots of 16th, 17th and 18th century philosophy is important to understand how the theory of dialectics was directed or redirected in its application through Marxism.

While in France and Britain utopian socialists propounded their theories in a situation of developing capitalism, in Germany very different material conditions prevailed.

Germany remained divided into countless virtually impotent and economically backward statelets and the German bourgeoisie looked enviously at the achievements and profits of their British and French fellows.

In these conditions a new turn in philosophical thinking took place in Germany, culminating in the work of Hegel.

Hegel looked for his models not to the materialists and rationalists in England and France but back to the dialectical philosophy of the early Greeks.

As a sychophantic court philosopher to the Prussian autocracy, his motives were profoundly conservative and reactionary. Yet in spite of this the objective outcome of his work was to open the way to the most revolutionary and scientific theory of knowledge yet devised.

51271 * LANAID UNIDI How, then, did Hegel approach reality?

The simple answer is that he didn't, in any materialist The idealist side of his philsoophy was that he denied the reality of what He recognised that tl lere are senses, and that they do perceive something, and he also correctly pointed out that these perceptions by themselves can grasp only the appearance of things, the surface appearance, and not Logical Reality, he argued, is only worked out through constant criticism and logical reasoning.

From this correct principle Hegel drew the false conclusion that only the logical concepts worked out in the mind have any reality.

He went further than this, and envisaged the mind separated from the body completely.

The abstract, idealist "mind" was said to be the only force that could perceive and comprehend reality. This concept is one short step away from "God".

By thus "proving" the existence of God, Hegel made his position secure within the Prussian autocracy, behaved properly and was buried with state honours.

Inadvertent

But the conservative Hegel inadvertently contributed to a major theoretical part of Marxism.

He reviewed and gathered together in systematic form the previous history of dialectics from all world civilisations.

His greatest merit was to have brought the dialectic to founding an entire system of logic upon dialectical principles as he understood The doctrine of Hegel, taken as a whole, left plenty of room for giving shelter to the most diverse practical party views.

And in the Germany of that time-cut off from the material progress of Britain conflicts on religion and politics took the place of practical action.

Hegel's system as a whole enabled its supporters to be conservative on both religion and politics.

But the dialectical method emphasising that there is both a beginning and an end to all social institutions, had room for the most extreme radical opposition.

Abandoned Towards the end of the 1830s the left wing-the Young Hegelians-in their fight with religious orthodoxy and the feudal reactionaries, abandoned bit by bit the "philosophic reserve" to the burning questions of the day which up to that time had secured state toleration and even protection for their teachings.

And when, in 1840, the absolute in terms of religious orthodoxy and feudal reaction in the form of Frederick IV sat on the throne, open partisanship became unavoidable.

The fight was still carried on with philosophical weapons, but no longer for abstract philosophical aims. It turned directly into the destruction of traditional religion and of the existing state.

The main body of the most determined Young Hegelians was, by the practical necessities of its fight against religion, driven back to Anglo-French materialism.

Conflict This brought them into conflict with the system of their school of thought. While materialism conceives nature as the sole reality, nature in the Hegelian system is an alienation of the ideas of the mind.

And faced with this contradiction they floundered as best they could.

Then came Ludwig Feuerbach's lissence of Christiunity. With one blow it pulverised the contradiction and placed materialism back on the throne again.

Nature exists independentHOT OUN foundation on which we human beings, ourselves products of nature, have grown up.

Nothing exists outside nature and material things, and the higher beings created under religion are only the fantastic reflection of ourselves.

Marx, making many critical points, greeted this work enthusiastically, and anyone wishing to follow this up should read The Holy Family.

What were the problems with Feuerbach? His work was of a high-flown literary style, and he deified in a most extravagant way the concept of love.

It was precisely these weaknesses of Feuerbach which so-called "true socialism" took as its starting-point, putting literary phrases in the place of scientific knowledge.

These people looked for the liberation of mankind by means of "love" in place of the emancipation of the proletariat, through the material conflicts and contradictions within society opening up the way to the economic transformation of production.

Marx in 1845 demonstrated in his "Theses on Feuerbach" that he had grasped this essential weakness.

At the centre of Marx's 'Theses' is the recognition that only man's practical struggle to change the material world can resolve the theoretical and philsophical problem mused about by idealist philosophers.

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

Method

Having examined the various aspects of the application of dialectics up to the middle of the 19th century, it is possible to turn towards an examination of dialectical materialism as the method of Marxism.

To begin, we must return for a moment to the work of Hegel.

One of the questions Hegel asks is 'What is a thing? What is it to have a concept of a thing?"

To have a concept means to grasp the thing mentally and to hold it still. That's the way we think.

But what if the thing is in motion or is active, and this motion is part or all of its reality?

Imagine a wheel half way down a hill.

If we visualise it, it is a still object in our mind at a fixed point of progression down the hill... but in realit y it is irtlino downhill under the natural impulse of gravity.

Marx goes on to say that our fixed ideas themselves become fluid in the course of their development. But it is also true that only by holding ideas "fast" at the beginning "is their development possible without confounding everything" • (Grundrisse).

The question for us, then, as Marxists, is how to confront the difficulty of "fluid" concepts.

It is an overall concernwe don't look towards a special branch of philosophy devoted to the study of changes, nor do we look towards a special "faction for political economy" devoted to the questions of devlopment.

• Matters in We recognise that everything-all matter, is in motion; everything is in motion-it has a beginning and an end.

Let us consider how Marx applies this concept of motion in his Introduction to Economy Marx a Critique of Political Here, Marx is examining bourgeois society and production:

«When we consider bourgeois society, in the long view and as a whole, then the final result of the process of social production always appears as the society itself: that is, the human being itself in its social relations.

Everything that has a fixed form, such as the product, etc, appears as merely moment, a vanishing moment, in this movement.

The direct production process itself here appears only as a moment" • Marx directs us to the overall nature of production, an essential element of Marxism.

Because movement, or matter in motion is the only constant we can use in our theoretical assessments, Marx uses the term moment to describe what would be called an element of factor in a system at rest.

The chair is a moment up to the time it openly regains constant motion by rotting and disintegrating.

On a shorter time-scale, a cake is a moment. From the point it emerges fresh from the oven, to the point internal chemical changes reduce it to an inedible block, uninterrupted processes continue beneath the apparently "stable" exterior.

Stability, equilibrium, are thus not absolute terms but relative ones-determined by the balance of internal and external forces affecting the particular thing or process under observation.

Let us look again at the concept of fluidity of our concepts, because it has an important lesson for us.

We used the concept of a wheel to express how we take a thing in motion and hold it still in our minds.

Another analogy would be a moving picture show of a sausage machine-all the elements within the show are in motion ... the machine is churning out sausages, which themsélves are moving down a moving conveyor belt where human labour moves them into packets.

So then you freeze the frame. Still, machine, still labour, and still sausages. The system is "at rest" , its surface appearance is of permanence.

Freezing the frame

Start the projector again, and the system is back in motion again. The lesson here is important in the sense that as Marxists we make consistent attempts to understand the particular nature and character of the class struggle within capitalist society-but we cannot "freeze the frame struggle io stari so i: = few months s0 W3: examine it more ciosel! :: gain an understanding :c: =* "still" mental concepi. uș.= which we will projec: c*: tactics and our programme We have to make ::=: assessment, reach that unce:standing while events are :=. motion, and while the ciass struggle moves on to a new stage -taking us with it.

Product of history

The brain that we bring :: bear in this struggle to grass analyse and intervene in i= complexities of the class struggle is the product a: centuries of real humar We are driven on bi objective, particular, changing social forces and economic factors. As material being: within a material process we are capable of changing the course of history, which flows not along predetermined channels but througt. the actions of men and women.

This world view, the view of dialectical materialism, is revolutionary to its very essence because it sees both the inevitability of change and the necessity for conscious action to shape that change and produce the social transformation that is necessary to open the door to socialism.

Though dialectical materialism first made its appearance with Marx in the mid-nineteenth century, it complements the most modern technology and scientific concepts.

Darwin Firstly, dialectical materialism insisting on the material origins of man and the continuous changes in all things is complementary to Darwin's theory of evolution.

Secondly, it is entirely complementary to discovery of the "electrical nature of matter" atomic structure and the motion of the atom, and all such similar scientific advances.

In that sense it is a supreme method of grasping the concept of reality oi every kind, both social, economic and technological.

Nothing exists, no example.

which can overturn its embrace.

Engels writes:

•The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparentl!

stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away...

For dialectical philosophy nothing is final.

absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything:

nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endles ascendancy from the lower 1o the higher.

'And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain."

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