Re: Exchanges on Marxism and ecology

[bernie wool <bernard.wool@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This discussion might benefit from the following article from International 
Socialist
Forum Issue 4, 1999.  Basing himself on articles by Farr and Ball (see
refs), Hooke follows through the logic of identifying a break between the 
philosophy
and method of Marx and those of Engels, and likewise those of Lenin and
Trotsky who followed Engels' essential line on dialectical materialism.  I am 
not sure
that I agree with Hookes, but equally find it difficult no to agree!

BW

Marx and Positivism

by David Hookes

This is the summary of a talk given at the International Socialist Forum

Background

It is important locate any philosophical discussion within a concrete historical
context. This is in keeping with Marx?s own dictum in the Theses on
Feuerbach that
"Previously philosophers have only interpreted the world, the task however is to
change it". In this spirit, I list some of the relevant issues that confront
all those who
wish to build an effective movement for socialism:

1. The apparent "triumph" of capital as it appears to establish a global 
hegemony.

2. The collapse of state bureaucratic regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe into
robber-baron, jungle capitalism. The same process is effectively taking place
in China but
with different dynamics.

3. The revolutionary developments in the productive processes on the planet, 
centred
on the development of the "new technologies" of information processing,
communications, and biotechnology, together with associated technologies for 
automatic
control of the productive processes. Generally this can be described
as
making explicit that which was implicit in the revolutionary developments within
physics and molecular biology in the first half of this almost completed
century.

4. There is a positive feedback between these new technologies and the 
development of
the understanding of nature. The greater understanding of nature leads
to
improved technologies, which lead to a better understanding of nature, and so 
on. This
process has continued rapidly to accelerate in last couple of decades.
It is
commercially driven by the intensification of competition between different 
sections
of capital thus leading to the highly unstable situation of the global
capital system
at present.

5. The increasing destitution of the majority of humanity of the so-called 
"Third
World" (actually "Two Thirds World", to quote Fr. Sean McDonagh), as these
countries
seek to pay back massive debts to imperialist finance capital through the 
"structural
adjustment programmes" of the IMF.

6. The increasing threat to the basis of life itself through the pollution and
destruction of the biosphere by profit-hungry capital and the former state
bureaucratic
regimes.

7. The wretched state of social democracy with its open bootlicking of the
representatives of capital personified in the antics of certain European 
leaders,
supported
enthusiastically by the former "communist" parties.

8. The cacophony of squabbling sects representing the allegedly anti-Stalinist
revolutionary socialist movement ? each sect existing in its own hermetically
sealed
universe of discourse, "knowing" that it and it alone has the key to building 
the
"revolutionary party". Out of desperation for new members and influence
they attempt
to form alliances, with paper-thin protestations of the need for open comradely
democratic discussion. Meanwhile, no doubt, they report back to their
respective central
committees on the possibilities for recruitment of a new layer of paper sellers.

9. The clear need for a mass party of the working class for socialism built by 
the
working class not for the working class by an elite group of revolutionary
know-a-lots.
Such a party will be internationalist at its core due to the character of the 
class
whose interests its pursues.

10. There are many rich opportunities for building such a party present today 
during
the intensifying crisis ? the crisis of "the social metabolic processes"
to quote
Istvan Meszaros [1] ? of the global capital production system, its manifest 
inability
to create a viable future for the human species.

11. The need to thoroughly grasp the origins of the crisis in the revolutionary
movement, particularly its historical and theoretical basis. There can be no
no-go areas,
sacred cows to be still worshipped, shibboleths to be recited afresh.



Positivism

I believe a central issue is the concept of the "revolutionary vanguard party" 
and its
malign influence on the development of the socialist movement,
particularly the
disastrous consequences for the Russian revolution. I also believe that the 
origin of
this tragic mistake lies in the French revolution, which ascribed
excessive
importance to the role of a revolutionary intellectual elite, those who can 
apply
reason to society as a whole. This was given philosophical form in the
philosophy of
positivism.

According to The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers [2]
"positivism" is the name given (a) to a doctrine and movement founded by the

French Philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and (b) to the general 
philosophical view
of which Comte?s Positivism is one instance. In this latter sense
positivism is
the view that all genuine knowledge is based on sense experience and can only be
advanced by means of observation and experiment.

Metaphysical or speculative attempts to gain knowledge by reason alone, 
unchecked by
experience should be abandoned ("meaningless" according to Vienna circle

Logical positivists) in favour of the special sciences. All positivists hold 
that the
task of philosophy is to understand the methods by which the sciences
are advanced
but not to seek for any independent knowledge of the world. In short they are
empiricists.

Francis Bacon in many ways can be considered the founder of empiricism and 
therefore
positivism, and a key figure (or "organic intellectual") in the rise of
the English
mercantile bourgeoisie. He held that it was impossible to "deduce" the ultimate 
facts
of nature, philosophers should not wander beyond "the limits of
nature". He thinks
that there are ultimate facts that should be approached " without any previous
conception" ? that they should be accepted "on the faith of experience" and
uses the
word "positive" to denote these "inexplicable" facts. Bacon was much admired by 
the
18th century empiricist philosophers in England and France and hence his
usage
of the word "positive" came to be applied to the methods of the natural 
sciences in
their reliance on observation and experiment.

Saint-Simon in his Essay on the Sciences of Man (1813) applies the word 
"positive" to
the sciences which are based on "the facts which have been observed and

analyzed"; sciences not so based are called "conjectural". Comte (sometime 
secretary
to Saint-Simon) uses the word in this sense in article entitled Plan of
the Scientific
Works Necessary for the Reorganisation of Society (1822) and later in his 
Course of
Positive philosophy (1830-42). In the latter he says that the function of
theories is to
co-ordinate observed facts rather than explain them in terms of causes. Comte is
usually credited with being the originator of the famous Law of Three Stages
(in fact
this is due to Saint-Simon) in which the human mind passes from a theological 
through
a metaphysical to a final positive stage. In the first two stages,
attempts are
made to penetrate to the inner nature of things by explaining behaviour in 
terms of
supernatural or metaphysical entities. In the final, positive, stage this
attempt is
abandoned and the positive thinker seeks only to establish by reasoning based on
observations the invariable sequences and co-existences of phenomena.

Comte held that the time would come when human society itself would be studied 
by such
positive methods. Such a positive science he called "sociology" or
sometimes
"social physics". He argues that the development of society corresponds to the 
three
stages. First, a theological social outlook upheld by priestly learning
and
authority. This is followed by the era of metaphysical criticism of traditional
doctrines, when they are replaced by such unverifiable doctrines as belief in
natural rights
and the sovereignty of the people. In Europe this is the era of the Reformation,
Enlightenment, and the French revolution. This era would be replaced by a
stable society
where agreement is established on the basis of incontrovertible positive social
knowledge. A new form of authority would then reside in a new spiritual power

consisting of men of science whose knowledge would enable humanity to achieve a
peaceful unity of thought and action. In later years Comte developed this
authoritarian doctrine into a Religion of Humanity. His prominent English 
supporters,
JS Mill and the novelist George Eliot refused to follow him in this
direction.
Positivist Societies flourished for many years and one group of Positivist
Proletarians was allowed to join the First International.

In positivism there only two types of knowledge: knowledge of matters of fact, 
how
things are through observation and experiment, and then there is knowledge
of logic
and mathematics which is not about the world at all. All other books that do 
not fit
into these two categories are "sophistry and illusion". This view was
widely held in
the 19th century by men of science but not in faculties of philosophy where 
various
forms of Idealist metaphysics prevailed.

Positivism in the form of Logical Positivism revived in the 1920s particularly 
in the
Vienna Circle, and also in Berlin, based on the work of the early
Wittgenstein and the
developments in Physics (quantum theory and, especially, relativity). This 
group of
thinkers asserted that Kant?s category of the Synthetic a Priori must be
rejected, and
that only verifiable matters of fact or truth of mathematics or logic were 
meaningful.
Everything else was strictly meaningless. Unfortunately, "when it came
to explaining
what exactly the facts are, which observation and experiment can reveal, 
positivists
give as widely different answers as the metaphysicians" [2, page 256].
Bacon?s
"simple nature", Humes?s "impressions" or the "atomic facts" of the 20th century
positivists raise theoretical problems every bit as difficult and elusive as
those of the
metaphysicians. Two members of the Vienna Circle, Kurt Goedel and Karl Popper,
effectively dismantled the whole program of Logical Positivism. The former
showed
that mathematics itself was incomplete and could not be reduced to "pure" 
logic, and
the latter that the method of science was based on conjectures and
refutations not
verifications.



At this point I would like to refer the reader to two papers by two American
academics: Marxism and Positivism by James Farr, and Marxian Science and
Positivist
Politics by Terence Ball (see reference [3]). They demonstrate clearly , and 
with much
greater erudition than I could claim, that the ideas of the
Positivists were an
anathema to Marx himself but NOT to Engels. To give a flavour of these articles 
I will
like to quote the following :

Never one to mince words, he (Marx) condemned the "shit positivism"
(Scheisspositivismus) of Comte and vehemently denied ever "writing Comtist 
recipes for
the
kitchens of the future"(4). More tellingly, Marx insisted that the much vaunted 
value
neutrality and expertise of Comtean social engineers was a sham,
inasmuch as they
purport to stand above society, manipulating social variables and changing
circumstances of everyone except themselves. "The materialist doctrine 
concerning
the
changing of circumstances and education," wrote Marx, "forgets that the 
circumstances
are changed by men and that the educator himself must be educated. This

doctrine has therefore to divide society into two parts, one of which is 
superior to
society"( Marx and Engels [5]). This is, of course, impossible. For the
social technician
is also human, and is therefore " no abstract being squatting outside the 
world. Man
is the world of man, the state, society"(Marx [6]). Contra Comte, there
can be no
objective asocial Archimedean point from which expert engineers may move people 
and
manage societies. (Ball, reference [3] page 241).

And also:

Physical reductionists marching under the banner of unified science [a key 
positivist
notion-DH] fail to understand this elementary but quite crucial point.
They mistake
the "language of commodities" for the language of physical things [Marx(7)]. In 
so
doing they are not only bad scientists but fetishists as well. Physicalism
[the
reduction of all reality to physics-DH] is in short a version of fetishism. 
Physical
thing terms cannot provide the bedrock of a unified scientific
vocabulary because they
misdescribe the very reality a social science attempts to capture ? Even Darwin 
was
guilty of this(biological reductionism). After an initial fascination
with Darwin, Marx
viewed his achievements in a more sceptical light. Indeed, he finally found 
Darwin?s
theory downright "amusing" because it smuggled a social interpretation
of capitalist
society into biological law: "It is remarkable how Darwin recognises among the 
beasts
and plants his English society with its division of labour,
competition, opening up
of new markets, inventions, and the Malthusian ?struggle for existence?. His is
Hobbes? ?bellum omnium contra omnes?, and one is reminded of Hegel?s
Phenomenology
where civil society is described as a ?spiritual animal kingdom?, while in 
Darwin the
animal kingdom figures as civil society."(Marx Engels [8]). From James
Farr [3], pp.
223-4.

[Both these two articles should be read by comrades. I will try to get them made
available on the internet-DH]

I would also argue that these ideas were not abhorrent to Lenin and Trotsky, 
despite
the former?s celebrated attack on the Russian Machist Positivists [9].
Lenin
replaced the positivists? sensationalist relativism by an even cruder vulgar
materialist empiricism, e.g. the idea that our brains "photograph" reality. Of
course as
everyone knows Lenin modified these philosophical views after reading Hegel?s 
Science
of Logic, but by then the die was cast and the vanguard party was ready
to
assume its historical role. Ironically the least knowledgeable of its central
committee elite, J Stalin, was waiting in the wings ready to deal with the
intellectuals. The
appalling debacle of Stalinism and Fascism shaped the rest of the century.

After the revolution, and long before Stalin got control of the bureaucratic 
apparatus
created by Lenin and Trotsky, there were crude examples of positivist
methods. For
instance workers were put into a special apparatus to attempt to improve their
productivity. Then there is Trotsky?s talk about remaking humanity "as in a
mortar and
pestle" ? chemical social engineering as it were ? and the enthusiasm for 
Taylorism in
the early Soviet Union. There is also Lenin?s simplistic mechanistic
positivism in
his celebrated equation: "Soviets + Electricity = Socialism". Ball?s paper 
clearly
shows the connection between the Soviet use of psychiatric methods against
dissidents
and a positivist philosophical outlook.

It is also important that the reformist branch of social democracy was also 
heavily
influenced by positivist scientific social engineering. The espousal of
eugenics by
British Fabians and Scandinavian social democrats is but one example. Recent
revelations that the latter actually carried out the forced sterilization of
biologically
"inferior" people is both shocking and instructive.

Of course it is critically important for capital to have its cadres of 
scientific and
technical experts, its social engineers, and administrative
bureaucratic elites. It is
essential that these social layers are kept loyal and uncritically carry out 
their
allotted tasks of creating the means of engaging in economic and, if
necessary, military
competition. Such elites are also essential for creating the means of 
repression and
oppression of the vast bulk of humanity, those who earn their living
through labour,
be they workers or peasants. Such elites are the "organic intelligentsia" of the
ruling class described by the Italian Marxist, Gramsci. [10]

I believe a central issue facing the revolutionary socialist movement is the 
need to
win over to the side of labouring humanity elements of the scientific
and technical
intelligentsia in new non-positivist relationship ? a true organic 
intelligentsia.

My proposal is to fight for the setting up of "Community Development Parks" 
especially
as part of the implementation of a Workers International Plan for
Development
[11] . The potential of the new technologies for implementing such a plan is 
obvious.

References

1. The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers, ed 
J.O.Urmson and
Jonathon Ree. Routledge, pbk. 1991.

2. Istvan Meszaros ; Beyond Capital, Merlin 1995.

3. After Marx ed. Ball and Farr, CUP 1984.

4. Marx and Engels Collected Works, vol 31:234, and Capital, vol.1 p17.

5. Marx and Engels, Selected Works, New York International Publishers.

6. Marx (1970) Critique of Hegel?s Philosophy of Right, trans. A Jolin, J 
O?Malley ed
J.O?Malley CUP.

7. Marx (1967) Capital vol.1:52.

8. Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, ed. S.W. Ryazanskaya, trans. I 
Lasker
Moscow: Progress Publishers.

9. V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Collected Works vol.14.

10. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Hoare, Q and Nowell 
Smith,
Lawrence and Wishart, London 1971.

11. D E Hookes and A W Brick, New Technology and the Political Economy of 
Development
Second Triennial Conference (1993) Science and Technology for
Development.