This  is a response to an item published by Will on his blog  - A General Theory of Rubbish.  As the item is now several weeks old and not so easy to find, I’ve put a copy on Last Superpower.  Click here to read it.

The focus of the  article was on the relation between the ‘material’ and the ‘ideal’ in Marxist philosophy.  I think Will’s main point was that  it is misleading to view Marxist dialectics in terms of the Marx’s oft quoted  'inversion metaphor'.

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. (Marx, Capital Vol 1. Afterword)

Will objects to characterizing Marxist dialectics  as “a  straightforward inversion of Hegelian dialectics”  because he thinks  this way of looking at it  tends toward mechanical (or vulgar) materialism rather than dialectical materialism. He says that :

“Marxian materialism is, however, distinct from vulgar or bourgeois materialism because it rejects the very separation between the 'idea' and the material. What is novel in the Marxist formulation of materialism is that 'matter' itself is conceived dialectically.”

And a bit later:

“The reason inversion is so inadequate a metaphor for this critique should by now be evident. What Marx actually does is to challenge the terms material and ideal themselves. He denies the validity of the distinction of material and ideal, as previously drawn, — (including by vulgar materialists) — in the first place, and it is the presumed separability of the two which forms the specific target of his attack. Material and ideal can be separated, for the social world, only at the cost of paying no heed to both.”

I think all this deserves some fleshing out.   

I agree with Will that the materialism of Marx and Engels was not mechanistic.  In rejecting idealism and asserting that consciousness is determined by life rather than vice versa, they were certainly not suggesting that correct ideas were automatically (mechanically)  generated inside our heads as some sort of knee-jerk response to ‘the conditions of life’. Although they sometimes talked of the human mind as a “mirror” of reality, it was always clear that human cognition must be seen  as  an active process of moving  from the concrete to the abstract, rather than just a passive reflection of reality.  Marx ‘s statement that “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.” puts this in a nutshell  And Engels’ extensive writings on natural science and dialectics  leave us in no doubt  that there was nothing crudely mechanical in the way he viewed the relation between the ideal and the material.

However while materialist dialectics in no way demeans the human capacity for thought and understanding, it  does reject the idealist premise that  human thought (rationality, consciousness) must be the starting point for philosophy.

According  to the idealist we can “know” our own thoughts, perceptions and so on but we  don’t have the same direct access to the world outside us, therefore human rationality must be taken as the foundation of all knowledge.  In philosophy idealism  eventually leads to a denial of the reality of the material world (or at the very least to a denial that we can know the real world),  in politics it is more generally manifested in the idea that people are oppressed because their beliefs are wrong. 

Marx’s attack on the Young Hegelians (in the German Ideology) puts this quite well:

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation. The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly "world-shattering" statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against "phrases". They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world.”

Idealism at its most crass, sees reality as something to be moulded or shaped by ideology – from this perspective the material world is not much more than the  passive recipient of  ideological ‘force’.  (And this is something we see  in the pseudo-left )  It should be noted however that Hegel was never as crass as this. His  statement “All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real” recognizes the connection between what is possible (or necessary) and what is rational – an example of why Marx called him a “mighty thinker”. 

Nevertheless,  Hegel’s idealism was a dead-end for the very reason  that it was incapable of  understanding the source of human consciousness. Although his dialectics enabled him to put forward the idea that conceptual development (and therefore human rationality) keeps progressing (due to the transformations resulting from the playing out of contradictions), he was forced to fall back on the idea that the consciousness of human beings is a manifestation of the mind of God becoming ‘actual’ via the human ascent toward greater and greater rationality.
 

It is for this reason that I don’t agree with Will that the inversion metaphor is misleading.  The inversion  - ie the application of Hegel’s dialectical method to the material world – was precisely what was needed. It was a liberating move.    Marx and Engels’  most certainly did insist on the primacy of the material world and I think they were correct to do so. This was where they made the fundamental break from idealism. Paradoxically, in doing this they  created the possibility of humans taking real, conscious  control over the blind forces and processes that have been the engine of development in nature and society up till now.   

Scientifically,  an acceptance that  (historically) matter came first and consciousness (much) later is vital.  This is where we break from religion and mysticism of all types. Life and eventually consciousness is the product of a blind evolutionary process arising out of the transformation of matter.  Similarly, human social and economic development has thus far been simultaneously the product of laws or forces over which we have had no control as well as the source of all our ideas.  It was only by breaking with the illusion of the primacy of human consciousness that Marx and Engels were able to hand us the pnossibility of one day seizing control over the real world.

 I agree with Will that “the Marxist formulation of materialism is that 'matter' itself is conceived dialectically.”. Superficially this seems like just another way  of saying  “Marxists are dialectical materialists” – one couldn’t be a dialectical materialist without seeing the constant transformations of matter  (especially obvious in biology) as resulting from a dialectical process.  However I think the operative word here is “conceives”. In contrast to the idealists who were stumped when it came to explaining how we could know anything beyond our own minds Marx and Engels saw our conception of the material world as itself an active dialectical process.

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism — which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

(Marx:: Theses on Feuerbach)

Here Marx  points out that (non-dialectical) materialits  have neglected  the role of  human mental activity and conceived of “the thing” in terms of its form –as something that is passively observed . The idealist on the other hand have developed “the active side” (Reason)  but do not know “real, sensuous activity as such” – that is, although they see the importance of reason, they fail to conceive of it as a  process of abstracting from (or objectifying) our active experience of real things.

Idealism in philosophy has always been a response to the inadequacies of empiricism.  In many ways the entire history of philosophy before Marx (and unfortunately afterwards) can be seen in terms of the tension between idealism (or rationalism) and empiricism (mechanical materialism, positivism). The perennial question, in one form or another, has always been  “What is primary?  Reason or experience?”

Dialectical materialism  is the synthesis of these two opposites – not in the wishy washy sense of being a “middle road” but in the sense of breaking sharply from both. 

So the application of dialectics to the material world was itself part of the dialectical process.

I can see what Will means  by saying “Marxism rejects the very separation between the 'idea' and the material” – as humans struggling to understand and change the world we need to avoid slipping  toward  either idealism or materialism and this means being careful not to isolate reason from experience -  this is the dialectical method.   However  I  think the wording of Will’s statement is misleading.  This relates to  my disagreement with him on the significance of the inversion metaphor.  Our commitment to dialectical materialism (rather than to  mechanical materialism)  does not license us to back away from the fundamental premise of all forms of materialism – namely that matter is primary and in that sense is quite separate from “the idea”.  The relationship between the material world and the mental world is not a symmetrical one. Although ideas can’t be separated from their base in the material world there is no necessary dependence of matter on ideas. As I said above, matter has  existed without ideas for  almost all of history. Hope I'm not labouring the point ...but  I think we need to be very clear about that.
 

Another sense in which the  ‘inversion metaphor’ seems to be an apt way of describing  the difference between Marxist and Idealist dialectics is that in moving dialectics from the ideal world of Hegel and applying it to the material world Marx revealed the  dialectical relationship between these two worlds.  This I think is mainly what he was referring to when he talked of turning the Hegelian dialectic “right side up”.  The inversion wasn’t merely  a matter of “reversing  idealism’s supposed order of priorities” but of placing the dialectical method firmly in the real world.  As a result  the dialectical opposition (contradiction?) between the ‘idea” and the “material” was uncovered – showing that  progress in the domain of ideas ( our understanding of the world ) is driven not only by contradictions between the ideas themselves but more fundamentally by contradictions between the dominant ideology and material conditions.  Once again I don’t think this process is well captured by the idea that Marxism rejects the separation of the idea and the material.  There clearly is a separation here –   the dialectical process refuses to consider them separately – but this is something different altogether.
 

“The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.” (Marx:  A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy - Preface )

Dawkins et al 

Moving on to another aspect of Will’s article…
 

I found it interesting that Will accused the contemporary evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins of being a ”scientific zealot” – a “bourgeois materialist” (etc). Although Dawkins is certainly no Marxist and most definitely has his elitist side,  I would class him as a militant materialist who thinks quite dialectically.  The materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett (who has some quite close connections with Richard Dawkins) takes an even more dialectical (materialist) approach.   Of course neither of them would call themselves dialectical materialists  –  they have simply been forced in that direction as a result of trying to understand the real world.  Marx and Engels are just not read by scientists and philosophers these days - their views have been very effectively marginalized in science as well as everywhere else.  This can’t stop the dialectical approach being rediscovered however.  Engels comments in  “On Dialectics” are quite pertinent here:

“It (the use of the dialectical method by scientists) can come about spontaneously, by the sheer force of the natural-scientific discoveries themselves, which refuse any longer to allow themselves to be forced into the old Procrustean bed of metaphysics. But that is a protracted, laborious process during which a tremendous amount of unnecessary friction has to be overcome. To a large extent that process is already going on, particularly in biology. It could be greatly shortened if the theoreticians in the field of natural science were to acquaint themselves more closely with dialectical philosophy in its historically existing forms.”

There’s a lot of confusion in progressive circles about the notion of “reductionism” in science.  I suspect that Will’s dislike of Dawkins  is based on claims that he’s a nasty reductionist who maintains that we are no more than the sum of our genes.  I won’t attempt a detailed discussion of Dawkins views in this post  - that will have to be done separately.  However  I’d like to make the point that  science is necessarily reductionist – it tries to understand the whole by looking at the parts.  The sense in which complex things are “more than the sum of their parts”  is not off-limits to science – the job of science is to explain how  this is possible. And as Engels pointed out,  this confronts biologists in particular.  Just how do we explain the “miracle” of life on earth?   Dawkins does a pretty good job of it actually – and he doesn’t reduce us to automatons in the process.

But this is a topic for another post.  I’ve already written too much  - and in the process developed some uncertainties which are probably not very evident in what I’ve written. 

To finish it all, I’ll  add a quote from Lenin whose contribution I’ve completely neglected:

"Essentially, Hegel is completely right as opposed to Kant. Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB) (and Kant, like all philosophers, speaks of correct thought) - does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth, of cognition of objective reality. Kant disparages knowledge in order to make way for faith: Hegel exalts knowledge, asserting that knowledge is knowledge of God. The materialist exalts knowledge of matter, of nature, consigning God, and the philosophical rabble that defends God, to the rubbish heap.
 

Lenin's annotations on Book III (The Notion) of Hegel's Science of Logic from "Conspectus of Hegel's Book The Science of Logic".

Over to you Tom G? I believe you’ve got an acquaintance with Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks?

keza

Kerry,

thanks for a really thoughtful response to Will's original post.

As with my recent response to Anita and Will my life is still beset by my daughter's passion - we have just returned from a game which was, shall we say, a character building experience.

What I want to comment briefly upon here is the issue Will originally raised of the relationship between idealism and materialism.

 None of us disagree that the relationship is dialectical (this is not a contentious proposition) and that in consequence the relationship is characterised by struggle and transformation in an ascending spiral of development.

As communists we would expect Lenin to be very good on this and our expectations are not disappointed. Hegel, however, is sublime. On p.167 0f Lenin's Philisophical Notebooks (his Conspectus on Hegel's Science of Logic), we find this Quote by Hegel:

   "...in general the refutation of a philisophical system does not mean discarding it, but developing it further, not replacing it with another, one sided opposing system, but incorporating it into something more advanced."

I think that there are lessons for us here. Again, however, I'm going to have to leave this for the mo and come back at it later.

Bill, I think "monism" is the wrong word in this context.  I think what you're talking about is the way people tend to veer between materialism and idealism and then eventually lapse into wishywashy liberalism.  And I agree with that basic tought.

But monism is the view that all of reality is of one kind - either (all) material or (all) mental.   Dialectical materialism  denies the primacy of the mental and asserts that everything has a material basis - but it doesn't deny the existence and importance of the mental.  It's all a bit tricky because clearly the mental does really exist - but only by a huge stretch of the imagination can we say that it is "made" of atoms and molecules.  It couldn't exist without the material substrate but it's just not a "thing" - its an activity or process - or perhaps a function.  

Monists can be idealists or materialists - but I don't think they can be dialectical materialists.

I think what you said about people "flipping" from one position to another is right - it's been a serious problem in the left all along because dialectical materialism is so very different from the way we are taught to think. 

It's currently more "natural" for people to think one-sidedly -  as in seeing only the vase or only the two faces in this image   .  An image like this can make your head hurt - and so can dialectics. It's easier to  try to make a phenomenon stay still, freeze - than to understand it as something that is undergoing change and can't be just categorised in one way or another and then put away.   People did that with US imperialism -  they saw it as having only one side - eventually it became inconceivable (literally) that US imoerialism could play a progressive role.

It is hard to simultaneously see something like US imperialism as being progressive and reactionary. I think what most of us in the pro-war left hav been doing is "rapid flipping" - we are capable of seeing both then progressive and reactionary side,  but not simutaneously . Howvere we  can flip from one to the other which is a lot better than being stuck within a single, rigid framework.

"Rapid flipping"  isn't the same as being wishy washy and just drifting along - it requires mental agility.

Its interesting that the pseudo-left views you listed seem to be both wishywashy and rigid - but perhaps I'm seeing it dialectically!

Bill,

I am in agreement with Kerry re the use of the term 'monism'. To my understanding, it was used by Plekhanov as a synonym for materialism to get around Tsarist censorship. As Kerry's link to Wikipedia demonstrates monism has a number of meanings, of which materialism is but one. Since we do not have censorship to contend with, materialism should be our term of choice, as it would have been for Plekhanov had he had one.

"My point is that we need to look at dialectical materialism seriously because it seems to be the only monist philosophy around.  Experience with  communist movements in the past  is that they often flip into  philosophical  and psychological world views that are more like the default settings we might acquire from our parents (eg. self righteous Protestant ethic) than something that has actually been thought out deeply."

While I demur with your off the cuff view that dialectical materialism is the only monist philosophy around I am in full agreement with you that we need to take dialectical materialism seriously - very seriously. Your point about communist parties from the past (including our own past) flipping into default settings is spot on. I love the analogy by the way. The point about these default settings, philisophical or psychological, is that they are reflections of/compatable with ruling class ideas  - in the sense that Marx was getting at when he said that the dominant ideas of the age are those of the ruling class.

The combating of these ideas with progressive and revolutionary ones is, as I think we have come to understand, no simple matter. As you suggest, gaining a dinkum understanding of dialectal materialism is essential in this struggle, especially the dialectical bit, and I am of the view that this cannot be adequately done without having a working understanding of Hegel. This is something that Marx and Engels had and which they assumed most of their contemporaries had). One of the things that I am coming to appreciate about dialectics is its ability to see past the initial appearence of things and to expose the contradictory relationships that lie at the heart of a thing and which drive its development. Its a good way of exposing the default settings.

I am of the view that this cannot be adequately done without having a working understanding of Hegel

just a few quick notes

I agree it would be a good idea to study philosophy, especially material dialectics. I agree with tom g.  that we probably should start at the source although i wouldn't want to spend much time on that as i see it more as a starting point.

The discussion about social existence determinig consciousness incorporates the relationship between practice and theory. I agree with bill here that a study of mao's 'on practice 'and 'on contradiction' did it for me. There is no point knowing that objective reality exists if one doesn't act on it.

Materialism can lead one into determinism which i think comes from a passive view. It is the analysis that is all important. The consciousness that arrives from ones analysis of reality allows human beings to affect that reality.

Philosophically it is important to know which is primary.  However politically the relationship between theory and practice is ongoing without a need for a beginning or and end. It is a tool to understand the universe and to actively take part in pushing the contradictions forward. We are not observers but active participants. Socail existence will determine our consciousness but being part of that social existence means that we can change it. Our consciouness can identify  what is progressive and what is reactionary and we can determine how we affect change.

tom b

Tomb wrote: "I agree with Bill here that a study of Mao's 'on practice 'and 'on contradiction' did it for me.

Mao's article "On Contradiction"  is now available on the site. 

Click on the  chick to read it    

"Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. "

Here's a quote from it about the difference bewteen dialectical and mechanical materialism:

Some people think that ... in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are[always] the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is[always] the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is[always] the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions.

This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.

The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."  When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy. When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive.

Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also--and indeed must--recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.  

keza

Thoughts on idealism, materialism, and contradiction.