25.02.1999

Determinist dogma

Phil Sharpe replies to the economistic inevitabilism of Socialist News writer Don Hoskins

In the Weekly Worker (January 21) Don Hoskins, a supporter of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review, makes another attack on my criticism of its views.

His polemic seems to be based around two main issues: firstly, that practice is the main criterion of defining the explanatory nature of a theory in contrast to the alleged epistemological relativism and scepticism of my views; secondly, that my views about science express an adaptation to bourgeois ideology in relation to the question of predictability.

Lenin is utilised by Hoskins in order to uphold the connection of practice to theoretical development with regards to the dispute in 1908-1910 about the new physics. The participants in this dispute were Bogdanov, Lenin and Plekhanov. Contrary to Hoskins, Lenin unlike Plekhanov did not try to minimise the development of a new physics and was not against the objective necessity to develop new theories to explain more succinctly what was occurring. Unlike Plekhanov Lenin did not reject a connection between scientific advance and philosophical advance, but he was also critical of Bogdanov, who adapted to the new science in relation to the idealist justification of the new scientific progress with his theory of collectively organised experience.

If anything, Lenin was biased towards Bogdanov and was still an orthodox Plekhanovite materialist, but contrary to Plekhanov he recognised the importance of scientific practice for showing and developing truths about reality. In contrast, Plekhanov was seemingly content to criticise Bogdanov’s ‘mentor’, Mach, and thereby had nothing substantial to say about Bogdanov’s accommodation to existing scientific practice.

The point being made here is that it is necessary to clarify what is meant by practice. This is something that Hoskins does not do. Bogdanov’s practice was similar to the spontaneity of the workers in relation to the new development of trade unions, in that the workers and Bogdanov have a common uncritical view towards this new phenomenon. Plekhanov’s approach is similar to that of the rightwing Mensheviks in the 1905 Russian Revolution, who disliked the new forms of class struggle - the establishment of soviets - and instead wanted to have strict party control over the static and antiquated bourgeois revolution. Lenin’s approach to practice was to acknowledge the importance of new scientific progress, but to maintain it was still necessary for the party and proletariat to guide these advances in dialectical materialist terms and to oppose the rival bourgeois idealist approaches and perspectives.

Thus Lenin denounces the god-seekers as an ostensibly left social democratic extension of Bolshevism in a situation where the proletariat had become demoralised by the defeat of the 1905 revolution, and progress seemed to be restricted to the new science and the supposed new ideas about religion. The mythology of the relation of the proletariat to god seemed to be a superficially attractive way in which the morale of the proletariat could be restored and spontaneous class practice would then be revitalised. This class practice was idealist in that the power of the proletariat was projected onto an unknown entity, with related idealist conclusions that consciousness could autonomously realise the philosophical character of the proletariat.

Lenin rejected this idealism in his steadfast emphasis upon the revolutionary character of the proletariat in a period of reaction. For the adverse balance of class forces meant that the proletariat and sections of the party were inclined to project their potential economic and political power onto idealist phenomenal forces, such as religion and upholding idealist views about science. Lenin, in contrast, showed that the importance of practice was connected to explaining and confirming new ideas about an objective reality that was independent of consciousness. In other words, revolutionary practice was about demarcating materialism from idealism that upheld the primacy of consciousness over the material world.

Lenin’s Materialism and empirico-criticism is a flawed work in relation to its one-sided criticisms of Bogdanov, but it is still invaluable in relation to its defence of materialism as against the rejuvenation of idealism caused by the advances of the new science, and the equation of observation with scientific practice in an autonomous and relative world of energy that displaces matter in motion.

So how can the EPSR’sconception of practice be characterised? It is very similar to the Bogdanov of 1908-10 and the classical economists of 1900-1903. For the EPSR relies upon economic and political crisis to spontaneously realise a revolutionary consciousness and to bring about a revolutionary situation. This economism means that practice becomes instrumental: any type of opportunist political practice and theory becomes justified for bringing the revolution chronologically closer to fulfilment.

This economism is regressive in comparison to Bogdanov’s over-optimistic call to abstain from participation in duma elections in a non-revolutionary situation, because Bogdanov was still a partisan Bolshevik leader who was trying to understand a complex and changing political situation. He was trying to find the appropriate tactics for a difficult period of class struggle expressed by the aftermath of the revolutionary situation. But the end result was a type of political determinism that replaces economic determinism as the basis for his practice, in that the call for a radical rejection of political work orientated around the duma was considered the basis to reactivate the proletariat after 1905. This meant Bogdanov was trying to impose the political tactics of 1905 onto the situation of a changed balance of class forces in 1910.

The EPSR is not even close to aspiring to realise the one-sided limitations of Bogdanov’s tactics. Instead it continues to support the illusion that economic crisis will spontaneously resolve the problem of developing revolutionary class consciousness, and so imminent revolution is the only practice that is possible and principled. Thus practice and its connection to perspectives is primarily the justification for rigidity and dogma, rather than a profound expression of historical materialist analysis.

To Lenin the concept and actuality of revolutionary practice was not an excuse to be dogmatic, or an abstraction with no meaning, but instead practice is the end result of theory that has attempted to dialectically analyse the world. Thus Bukharin and Lenin showed from their studies of imperialism that the attempt to analyse imperialism showed how inter-imperialist war indicated the necessity of proletarian internationalist revolutionary practice. This analysis was based upon an understanding of the structural mechanisms of capitalism that was able to transcend the misleading phenomenal forms of the capitalist nation state and show the interdependent and international development of the productive forces.

In contrast to this type of analysis Hoskins and the EPSR seem to label as Kautskyite anyone who mentions the stability and organisation within contemporary capitalism. They conveniently gloss over Lenin’s equation of state monopoly capitalism, supervised by the dictatorship of the proletariat, potentially starting the process to realise socialism. (It could be argued that Lenin is accommodating to the theory of socialism in one country in this economic definition of socialism.) To the ultra-radical EPSR monopoly capital is nothing more than chaos, instability and the inability of capitalism to overcome its inter-imperialist contradictions. The possibility that the major capitalist powers could develop as an ultra-imperialist phenomenon, united in exploiting the rest of the world does not deny the necessity of world revolution, nor does it deny the terrible choice of socialism or barbarism. Ultra-imperialism is barbarism, and expresses the evolutionary development of capitalism in the post-war period. But the EPSR cannot accept this possibility because it prefers the literal, formal word of Lenin and Marx, rather than attempting to develop the method and spirit of Marx and Lenin as the basis to define practice.

The EPSR concept of practice ignores the importance of ideological struggle, and regards it as an expression of pessimism in contrast to the constant repetition of empirical facts about the economic crisis leading to revolution. For example, the hegemonic economic role of American imperialism is not linked to its powerful ideology of individual initiative, social improvement and the aspiration to realise equality of opportunity. In order to oppose this form of bourgeois ideology, and its connection to reactionary social practice, it is necessary to constantly develop and modify dialectical philosophy in order to oppose this spontaneously generated bourgeois ideology within the proletariat in favour of a dialectical philosophical consciousness. This requires the contrasting of the hegemonic and sceptical post-modern consciousness with the alternative of dialectics.

If this theoretical and political task is not carried out the proletariat will continue to have a consciousness of fragmented impressions and will not be able to realise its revolutionary potential. In contrast, the EPSR seems to believe that the proletariat will one day develop revolutionary consciousness based upon a single momentous qualitative leap from reformist consciousness, as a result of economic crisis. This idealist approach cannot explain the possible approach from A to B, because it uses a leap from A to C as its methodology.

Does my approach give primacy to theory over practice, as Hoskins suggests? The answer to this question is ‘yes’ in the sense that without theory revolutionary practice is not possible. Obviously this definition does not bring out the necessity of practice as an appropriate corrective to theory - as was shown by Lenin’s significant modifications to his ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ theory in the February-October period of 1917. But we still get to know the material world through evaluating competing theories, and Lenin’s changes in practice in 1917 would have been unintelligible without his theoretical explanation to the party and proletariat.

In order to try to polemically defeat me the EPSR attempts to deny the importance of theory, which formally is opposite to the intentions of the EPSR. This contradiction becomes a dominant factor the longer the time scale of the polemic around the EPSR’stheoretical claims, and shows that dogma, not science takes precedence in their approach.

Is my approach anti-scientific in its stance on predictions and sexuality? Apparently my standpoint is similar to the epistemological relativism of Karl Popper, who tries to deny the historical durability of the theory of Newton, Darwin and Marx. I lack an in-depth knowledge of Popper, but I have profound disagreements with what I do know about him. Popper’s falsification approach that suggests new facts can relatively undermine existing theories is a relativist standpoint that cannot explain anomalies as an important part of a theory. For example Marxism has tried to explain how Stalinism could develop out of a revolutionary Marxist party, but to Popper Stalinism equals the realisation of Marxism, and the historical dominance of capitalism.

My own approach to science generally defends the standpoint of Gaston Bachelard, whereupon the epistemological break explains the struggle between old and new, and it is necessary to break with old conceptions if science is to be differentiated from what has become its antiquated form. Hoskins upholds the antiquated standpoint in his uncritical support for Newton, in that he refuses to differentiate between Newton’s law of gravity and his adherence to a mechanical conception of the universe, which was being superseded by the new physics of the late 19th and early 20th century.

This failure to demarcate between old and new is not a political surprise; it is based upon the continued attempt by the EPSR to defend and uphold antiquated and counterrevolutionary Stalinism, and it is this context that makes them theoretically consistent whilst being seemingly paradoxical and ironic in their defence of an old economistic third period-type of Stalinism.

In his article Hoskins does not elaborate upon the previous criticism of my views about prediction - except, that is, to locate the repudiation of prediction within bourgeois Popperian science. In reply, it is important to emphasise that Popper apparently repudiates prediction in order to uphold the capitalist system, whilst I am trying to show that prediction is not the main or even secondary aspect of revolutionary class struggle. What is being argued about prediction by Popper and myself is from different class standpoints. However, the approach of Hoskins and the EPSR represents the mundane repetition of the approach of the bourgeois enlightenment about uncomplicated historical progress.

On the question of sexuality Hoskins takes an extremely defensive standpoint, and labels all criticism of the EPSR perspective as being politically correct. Apparently to disagree with the EPSR does not merit a serious reply, because it is an expression of Labourist PC reformism. Rightwing PC (Labour Party bureaucracy) does tend to support censorship as the administrative method to suppress dissident views, but the Weekly Worker is entirely opposed to such methods, as the very publication of EPSR articles indicates. This attempt by the EPSR to give itself a martyrdom status is nothing more than a manoeuvre to avoid any real discussion on the rightwing Freudian nature of its approach towards understanding homosexuality.

The rightwing stance of this approach was summed up in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: ‘Four legs good, two legs better’. In other words the EPSR formally attempts to be egalitarian and ‘generously’ tolerant in its standpoint, but it still refuses to accept that diversity and equality is the real basis of a revolutionary approach for understanding sexuality.

Increasingly the EPSR tries to put the same label onto the varied groups opposed to its politics, but presently only in the Weekly Worker is the opposition to the EPSR of an explanatory and revolutionary content.