A Revolutionary Understanding

Lenin was very critical of Positivism

The major Wrong Turning at the beginning of the 20th Century within Physics (and then the other Sciences), was undoubtedly that taken by the Positivists, who were troubled by the increasing number of solely Empirical Laws arising within Modern Physics, which seemingly had no evident Physical Causes naturally available - as had always been the case with the usually historically-sought Causal laws. The advantage with those Prior Laws, was that they could be related to the involved componentsí Natural Properties, that also clearly held sway all the way from the Atomic & Molecular Level, to their performances in Bulk at a higher Level of Reality. So, in addition to any purely Quantitative Relations extracted, there was also always this Qualitative Information: so, together, they married Quantity & Quality into two-sided, Meaningful Laws! 

But, those New sort of relations, also emerging, though they involved similar numerical relations between certain evident variables, clearly DID NOT & COULD NOT ever relate these to any Qualitative relations, to, together, deliver meaningful Explanations of Real phenomena.

Now, before we go any further, we simply must make absolutely clear that the now usually achieved Totally Separate Quantitative & Qualitative Equations as such delivered NO PERFECT standard to mutually relate to! And, this inadequacy became a far more general attitude to behaviours well outside The Sciences too!

Once accepted as legitimate, ALL LAWS covering much wider areas of Reality also were acceptable as mere Quantative Relations having NO Qualitative Explanations!

And this was highly dangerous, for what effects they produced were seemingly Unknowable!

And they were only finally possible as Mankind developed the means to largely Control Limited Areas of Reality, extremely effectively, and, thereafter maintain that situation throughout subsequent variations within the Main Components, that would have to be clearly associated with certain actually consequent changes: and if these were then extracted as Laws they could effectively be used - BUT ONLY in Artificial Tightly-Controlled Production Methods.

That became their primary motivation!

For more genereally evident Quantitative & Qualitatative Relations were NOT there simultaneously available! And so NO Explanations were possible

You would imagine that the growth of The Sciences would simultaneously greatly enable Mankind in Explaining their World: BUT the Pluralist limitations caused by those tightly restricted conditions made it so the relations that they were limited to DID NOT reflect Reality-as-is, and was linked to Numeric Values rather than Explanations! And, it, inexhorably, began to move Human Society from merely taking Reality, exactly AS IT IS, to instead having to be able to direct, small parts of it into very useful chosen (and more-and-more-often), Entirely New Directions. 

The age of advanced technology effectively killed Science.

It wasnít so much a Revelation of Reality-as-is, as it was a ìNew Extracted and Totally-Controllable More-Limited Versionî, capable of empowering the Manufacture (but NOT the Understanding) of useful, artificially extracted & Transformed Additions - both as clean & unadulterated, as were most of the wholly Natural & Different Productions, independent of Man, within Reality-as-is!

Indeed, the New approach embodied a Veritable Revolution in the Capabilities and the assumptions of Mankind in order to achieve ONLY that & no other. But, it also originally explained Absolutely Nothing! For, it was situated only within a Parallel Artificial Domain, which was initially, at best, much more useful than it was informative.

But, Mankind saw, at least, the possibility of it delivering a great deal more, if, and only if, it could be married to its evident Properties with roughly-appreciated from already-known (for many Natural Phenomena) and their inter-relationships. But the two were only separately known. 

Of course, these ideas emerged as such, ONLY within the Working People of Society: for NO progress could possibly be made by those who didnít actually DO any such work! So, the initial gains were always made by the Artisans and their descendent Engineers and Experimentalists - the most skilled pragmatic workers in Society - whose knowledge of making things was Wholly Pragmatic, rather than Explanatory.

Now, simultaneously with these crucial developments, a very different Social Class had politically taken control of their individual Localities, (often by Force), and, thereafter, convinced the Populations which they now controlled, that they alone were ALSO both Capable Defenders of their now-subsevient charges, and were also absolutely necessary to stop even-worse-others (from elsewhere) taking away all that was now being achieved, and doing it by viscious-looting Force, and even killing any who got in their way, when they thought it necessary.

Now, such consequent internal social divisions, were never conducive to the increasing requirement for a real Understanding of what was currently actually being both pursued & achieved, and, by which the overall Level of Understanding AND Achievement could be extended.

Somehow, the false paths, and even the consequent wrong conclusions imposed by all the participators within so far experienced History, just had to be somehow transcended, if the many usual prematurely-terminated outcomes were to be avoided.

But, it, unavoidably, had to eliminate the usual consequences of a very poorly understood, and consequently always deteriorating situation, especially as the Ruling Classes (and their many privileged hangers-on), constantly used their limited Control to actually prevent the Real-if-hidden Truth being both considered and then developed effectively!

How are we to convince ordinary people of the Real Truth of the situation, when as individuals it will always be impossible, within such a situation, where every usual means of informing them, of what is possible, has been well-and-truly tightly controlled for centuries, if not actually millennia, by the Ruling Classís generally agreed self-centered means of dealing with all such features, while ALWAYS maintaining their CONTROL!

The consequently-developed route unavoidably-achieved, came to be via Wholly New Political Parties, along with Jointly-agreed actions, based solely upon their Own Class! But, those benefitting mostly from the current situations, would, in any Generally-Precipitated Crisis Situation, always turn to the much wilder, more direct Forms of Repression, such as Fascism & even naked Military Control of Society.

So, the best hope surely now, has to be to equip the Real Class Forces of Change to take maximum advantage of the Coming Inevitable Terminal Crises, by knowlegibly revealing the predictable Result, if the Forces of Reaction within the battle for The Minds AND The Forces necessary to impose their preferred outcome. As always, a union of The Working class Youth and the latest Marxist Theory - as spelled out, for exanple, in this Major Series of Essays, can be the only salvation.

But beware of false Prophets!

It is also very clear that the Stance fought for in these papers is neither complete, nor does it have sufficient Forces to achieve the Necessary Objective of providing what will be needed, to direct that Assault! Alliances with currently existing and tolerated organisations clearly presently, does the Very Opposite, and ALWAYS also undermines the only valid means of understanding the current Headlong Deterioration!

It IS NEVER mere Organisation that will equip the Necessary Forces of Social Revolution, BUT ONLY a genuine UNDERSTANDING of what drives such situations.

Not Alliances, but Understanding! 

And, currently, absolutely NONE of the current Claimed-to-be Left Parties have added significantly to the contributions of Karl Marx - the unavoidable limitations of a philosophic stance initially derived almost 200 years ago, will NEVER be sufficient to address TODAY!

That is why this research was begun, some 16 years ago, following an active participation in literally ALL the Parties of the LEFT, but also an increasingly a commitment to the essential Development of Marxism via the Sole attempt at a Dialectical Critique of both Social Development, and its inevitable Turning Points within Social Revolution.

BUT, and it turns out to be a very big BUT: the necessity of Theory involved which can NEVER EVER be developed by a single individual! It is far too big a risk to be the work of only a single contribution, as was clearly proved by the example of Marx himself!

Though the gains I have been able to contribute, have at least been significant, they have been so in spite of over 60 years commitment, which has NEVER been sufficient! And, in spite of my most productive contributions being in the last 16 years, amounting to over 1,600 papers, it has only been in the last couple of years that the most significant contributions have been produced.

It isnít the job for a single individual (no matter how committed), for it is without doubt, an approach which not only transcends any single discipline: but, indeed, needs to be adequately developed, it requires them all - and not just produced by real interest, but also, necessarily, by the required methods to breakthrough all the many constraints, implemented to simplify analyses!

For example, it has been the inclusion of the major discoveries in Systems Theory, by Biologist Denis Noble and others, that has for the first time also addressed several limitations in the ways Marxism has regularly pursued ever since - and including, Marx himself!

Now, this project, along with a series of others, has put into serious question, NOT just these type of problems, though also upon a much wider scale, in which the Whole set of ways that problems can occur - both in Reality-at-large, AND in the whole range involving both natural and consequent engineered problems, concerned with Explaining all that we now also see, as well as the full range of situations both now possible and also as newly evident, achievable Objectives in delivering what they all can do. For, in the past, a set of assumptions about what makes things the way that they are, have MOST CERTAINLY greatly over-simplified our Understanding.

The perceived basic (and invariably inadequately described) situations, have, almost always been believed to be those possible States - that some Natural, or even Man-Made Action or Event can actually exist within!

Indeed, on-going-investigations are always revealing New Forms, which could-and-often-did actually persuade Artisans that their objectives were impossible: especially as ìprecisely-knowingî the current state turns out to be never a simple task, as so many interactions frequently produce results that ìlook unchangedî and are in fact actually significantly-different, in a way which is not immediately evident.

Remember that Artisans have long established required conditions for certain processes WITHOUT a full theoretical basis for them, & their Laws reflect curtailed & severely limited Equations only!

The usual solution was always to so-greatly-restrict both the Context and Controllable Content, as to always produce a single, easily reproducible State, that could validly be considered One of the Many Basic States possible, which would always be taken as a legitimate extraction from all of the others known to be possible in that Context! For such always was the Primary Objective, as a starting point, in all Manufacturing - as the dependable Basis for all Subsequent Productions.

But that doesnít help us Understand complex, dynamic, Natural Systems - including those of Society itself. 

The Odessa Steps

The separately arrived at properties in Reality-as-is DO NOT just ADD UP - they DO NOT deliver the Full Set of possibilities. They are a Strictly Limited Set, selected for by the particularly severe constraints that had been imposed in order to extract them in the first place.

For the objective was NOT, and, indeed, was never intended to enable an Explanation of the subsequent performance, BUT, instead, only those required for Future Production of a Chosen Result.

And these two sets of conditions produce Very Different Possibilities!

The ones always chosen are just those with ONLY a Future Production in mind! Indeed, that objective is the ONLY One usually fulfilled: the whole Approach is solely directed towards Production, and NEVER Explanation!

And the Conclusions from this are that our assumptions are certainly NOT sufficient! Reality-as-is contains many other cases we are unaware of, and, they also affect one another, which would greatly complicate the then required processes yet to be implemented.

So, they donít even try!

So-called Physics is NOT what it is claimed to be: it is a SYSTEM for controlling Reality, solely designed to aid Production. 

The Required Revolutionary New Stance

Clearly, we have been well-schooled, in this Wrong Turning, for a very long historical period, and for what always were Very Good Reasons indeed!

You would not criticise a child for not dancing before it could even walk - NOR understand what you were saying before they could even talk!

There have been profound and unavoidable Purely Natural Reasons for the necessary route we have taken, which, if we are Now (and Subsequently) to avoid at least some of the consequent pitfalls, in our future updates upon our methods.

For, the problem emerges entirely from our distorted - yet completely understandable, Early Misconceptions of the True Nature-of-Things!

For, we, ourselves, actually also developed from a Whole Series of Lesser Forms, and many earlier solutions, within our then Primitive Thinking, only had to be close enough to Reality-as-is, to deliver an improved, and hence worthwhile, benefit! This, anyway, has always been the situation for Mankind: for settling upon the ìSupposed Truthî, long before anybody even had the required means to do so absolutely, or even partially! So, it NEVER delivers the required complete-and-wholly-correct Truth as its evidently, arrived-at conclusions.

Let us attempt to address this problem better NOW!

We will still NOT yet arrive at the Complete Truth (for it doesnít yet even ìexistî), BUT, we can eliminate just a few obvious very long-standing ìsupposed truthsî as now completely evident as errors.

The daddy of them all is the belief that The Truth is FIXED!

It isnít.

Indeed, Absolutely Nothing is!

But, it can certainly appear so in stable Systems, for some considerable periods of time, because even with apparently constant random variation, Really Significant Changes will only emerge when that ìseemingly undirected variationî, somehow, finally arrives, surprisingly, and at a Much Better State - and, thereafter, vigorously proliferates the New Form fast!

BUT NO External Judgement of Quality was necessary in this crucial transformation: its own increasing relative success, alone confers that by itself.

This is something like Darwinís notion of Natural Selection, but extending that to all Levels of Reality - all Natural Systems.

So to us, at our Level, , most things either continue to appear Fixed, or in ìGetting-Nowhere Randomnessî seemingly permanently! But, that isnít actually The Full Truth.

Yet, appreciating this, still doesnít indicate, in advance, exactly what Laws are going to emerge. On the contrary, to ensure Current Success, you simply always have to be maximally aware of what Laws seem, ìfor nowî, to be Fixed! But, the scientists who do ONLY that, will unavoidably be caught into getting nowhere, when suddenly a New Law finally does emerge!

So, instead of ONLY Subject-Based-Research: there, surely, has to be also Constant Background Research probing-deeply into the very important Dynamic Development of Laws.

A Final Aspect of this whole Approach, when generally-applied, concerns how the various well-established Laws, being unavoidably radically challenged by this Current Stance, occupied by almost Everybody Else with the argument that it most closely reflects what has been continuing to significantly Change. Laws that were usually considered as Forever Fixed now are more correctly seen as involving Whole Mixtures of Laws, most usually swamped by one that had previously emerged as totally naturally dominant.

This is a rarely appreciated feature of Reality-as-is, which is usually simplified into that which is currently dominant, so when circumstances begin to greatly amplify another element, it seems to have come in from outside of the System, whereas it was always a built-in, though currently suppressed, aspect of Reality-as-is that was therefore always totally hidden and ineffective previously, but in non-conducive condutions. It is clearly an important philosophic feature that was naturally, if mistakenly, assumed as such in the past.

For with the Long Established view determined by both tailored and rigidly maintained Fixed Sets of Contents, along with unchanging Contexts - they are all separately dealt with - each in its own required Context and Content, the resulting Laws, are then coupled with sets of another, Absolutely NEVER arrived-at in a Commonly occurring Situation - and in a Production always applied as part of a sequential Series, with each step in its own ideally necessary and maintained different Context.

So, clearly, that will constitute a wholly Artificial Union, and will never suffice if they were all applied in a singular Common Context - which is, of course, certainly mainly the case in Reality-as-is!

In Conclusion

So, in finnaly assessing what has ultimately been achieved, we must draw some general conclusions, primarily about the most important areas tackled in these essays.

The key objectives were always to deliberately target the absolutely necessary Philosophical Developments, which are particularly difficult when no longer addressing Restricted Contents & Contexts, as we always do in Mathematics: but, instead, approach the Real World-as-is - much of which still remains not only yet to be revealed, but also Explained in any way!

And, that, Iím afraid, is much easier said than done: for an Extremely Important Ser of Reasons:

Reality-as-is is NOT already fixed!

Neither does it change within limits!

It is an Evolutionary System - forever developing to the Wholly New!

So, they were here addressed hopefully to transform the underlying assumptions unavoidably-associated with the usually involved important Ideas and Methods, upon which our current Theories are always based.

But, unlike most Explanations that only ever deliver within Constrained Rationalities (like Mathematics), what we have to deal with is absolutely NEVER finished: for it creates the Wholly New regularly (if infrequently) and requires, instead, an Open-Ended System, integrating the Totally New, BUT also never as an Anything Taken-up Collection. It also has to fit!

But, in doing so, it adds more to have to relate predictably with every new addition! So, it involves a Rationality, which grows, amd though preserving the old, it also adds-in, an affecting, yet mostly conforming, NEW!

How about that for a truly demanding Discipline!? 

This article is taken from Issue 79 of the SHAPE Journal, and is the last in the series of papers called The Systems Theory of Everything.

Within Marxism?

Review: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History by Helena Sheehan
With a title like that you would think we'd be singing from the same hymn sheet, but sadly this doesn't deal with the real issues at hand.

A critique of Helena Sheehan's book

upon Marxism, Science & Philosophy

Part I

This paper, at this very early stage, addresses only Helena Sheehan's 38-page Introduction to her book, but such is, I have found, always a legitimate first step, as the writer's main purposes are usually clearly emphasized there, and so what will be delivered later in detail, will be usefully outlined in an Introduction to give direction to the ultimately following narrative. For then, you will have a fair idea of what you are going to get, before any other, as-yet-unmentioned diverting elements introduce any confusion, in the following detailed treatments.

This work, of almost 600 pages, attempts to relate both Marxism and Science, via their "philosophies" and their "histories", but does it from a surprisingly-claimed standpoint, namely from "Within Marxism", and this leads her to treat all of what she considered were natural, if sometimes aberrant, developments, from a supposed common-ground - established by Karl Marx in the 1840's, and including all that has been delivered, ever since, under that explicit banner.

Significantly, extensive access to the many countries, which, at the time of her extensive visits to them, and her consequent writing of this book, were still under the aegis of being "Socialist States", and still largely dominated by the Soviet Union. And, this was indertaken along with unrivalled access to their Centres of Learning in those countries. It, certainly, infers a strong connection, with one or another of the Communist Parties in the West, and having been a member of the CPGB, myself, for a time, I recognised the names of comrades from that time, within her Acknowledgements.

Sheehan personally sees her account as being about, "The story of the shifting nexus of science, philosophy and politics within Marxism", to which you have to ask, "So what is this 'container' which can include all of that?"

For, she puts that aberrant path down to "new scientific discoveries, new philosophical trends and new political formations", as the determining causes! And, that statement alone answers my question, by defining that "container" as being clearly - all those either professing to be Marxists, and, surely, also, in addition, even those defining that stance from without: that is both everyone calling themselves Marxists, and even opponents defining it, seem to be included within its inevitable trajectory of development! But, such errors are surely only later explained, while dealing with their origins within the criticisms of Formal Reasoning by the German Idealist philosopher Hegel, and his consequent assault upon Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, which always led to rationally-unbridgeable-impasses in Reasoning, and, thereafter, his consequent discovery that the problem always resided within inadequate or missing premises.

For, the origins of that crucial flaw had been there in Reasoning ever since the Intellectual Revolution in Ancient Greece, which occurred as an inevitable-consequence of the Neolithic Revolution some thousands of years earlier. What finally occurred was the beginnings of conceptual Abstractions, first in Geometrical Forms, and then in Mathematics in general, which was so productive in those idealised realms, that they were extended to Reasoning in Formal Logic too.

But, those original and highly-productive contexts were NOT about Reality-as-is, but, always, about stable-concepts-alone: where things didn't change qualitatively. And, though not originally overtly stated, such a stance was later found to conform exactly to The Principle of Plurality, wherein qualitative changes were prohibited, and entities, concepts and even Laws were considered to be fixed- it was also where the idea of eternal Natural Laws came from later in Science!

Now, this chosen trajectory colours the subsequent use of words like "rational" - for it usually implies a dependable mode of reasoning, which Formal Logic never delivers outside of Stabilities. And, in the same way, reference to eternal Laws, and even Truth has to be undermined if used loosely too.

It's not Marxism!

And, I must take issue with the "Broad Church" definition of "Marxism": for Marx's contribution was initially philosophical, and carried over Hegel's Dialectical Logic entirely, but into a strictly Materialist stance. And, thereafter, he began to apply it to his own specialist discipline of History, where he was able to explain prior Social Revolutions in terms of Crises in Stable Social Forms, progressing into total, general collapses, and subsequent creative construction of wholly new Social Stabilities. 

Marx developed Dialectics as the a more reliable way to deal with all qualitative changes , in particular with all situations in crisis, and at every possible Level.

Now, Sheehan calls it, "A story with its dark side, with retrogressive episodes, unscrupulous characters, hasty and ill-conceived projects, and superficial solutions, sometimes with dire consequences" - does this sound remotely like those involved applying Marx's Dialectics to currently happening situations?

Of course not! And such people were not Marxists, at all!

Sheehan is actually talking about the Stalinist bureaucrats, who drove the real Marxists out, or executed them as traitors, or even had them assassinated abroad. These perpetrators were trenchant enemies of Marxism who appropriated its name - and they were strong defenders of their accrued privileges and power.

Not every supporter of the Revolution, or even every member of the Bolshevik Party were Marxists, and the Civil War with the Whites, and the many armies of intervention, as well as the economic blockade inflicted upon the first Socialist State, would, and indeed did, distort the ways and the means of those running the new state. The bureaucracy became a reflection of these external forces from the capitalist states. and imposed "solutions" upon their own population, whether they liked or understood it or not!

The Marxism of Marx, or even that of Lenin was driven out by this bureaucracy, and the people's support for "Their Socialist State" was constantly eroded.

To explain all this, also required a trenchant criticism of State Ownership merely replacing Capitalist Ownership, with little or no Worker's Control of their places of work. And the same set-ups, but worse, were imposed upon the subject peoples of Royalist Russia, and the USSR's enlarged "Empire" too!

Nope. "Bad apples in the barrel" is not a Marxist analysis!

And, the many "complexities", of which Sheehan complained, were actually due to diverse pragmatic solutions isolating the Soviet Union from the efforts of the Capitalist World to destroy it. Such a struggle could have been the means of raising the Soviet People's Marxist consciousness, but, that was never the policy of the Bureaucracy.

Sheehan goes on to claim that:

"This work attempts to give an historical account of the development of Marxism as a philosophy of science as well as a philosophical analysis of the issues involved."

But sadly, the essentially-required prior-project to enable her intention had never actually happened! The 40 years invested by Marx into Capitalist Economics, was never replicated to do the same for Science, where it would surely involve a great deal more than what Marx had had to invest into a much smaller area. He had correctly concluded that he had first to become an Economist, and studied the best of the English School first, before he could even embark upon a meaningful critique of that subject.

So, with Science, the task would either involve the same sort of learning curve to be undertaken by an excellent Marxist (as good a dialectician as Marx), or, alternatively, its undertaking, along with the detailed study of Marxism, by a professional scientist critical of the consensus stances within that discipline.

It never happened, either way!

The aspiring Empirio Criticists within the Bolshevik Party, had it wrong, and had to be retrieved by Lenin with his book Materialism and Empirio Criticism, but Lenin was no qualified scientist and was pre-occupied with preparing to lead a Revolution.

The essential task was never undertaken, so Sheehan's intention also could also never be fulfilled - for the wherewithal to tackle it didn't actually exist.

Sheehan also claims that: 

"It shows the Marxist tradition to be far more complex and differentiated than is usually imagined, characterised by sharp and lively controversies for contending paths of development every step of the way."

And claims she is tracing the History of the Mainstream of Marxism in the century since Marx set out upon his colossal task. But she illegitimately confuses Dialectical Materialist Philosophy, and the Politics which both flowed from that stance, and conversely elicited a hostile incursion to those purposes from without! You cannot make those two coincident, for they never were. Each-and-every attempt at building a Workers International Organisation was betrayed by non-Marxists, largely consisting of Middle Class interlopers fearing what such an organisation would do to their intentions and aspirations.

It always occurred! And, there were always resources from defenders of Capitalism to finance such incursions.

The use of the term "Marxism" to cover all of this is certainly incorrect!

The Philosophy which Marx arrived at is has to be the engine of any consequent Politics. And the so-called controversies occurred when that wasn't the case. Stalinism was never a strain of Marxist philosophy: it was the stance of bureaucrats with State Power in the new State, which emerged from the Russian Revolution. The fights were not between groups of Marxists who honestly disagreed with each other: the two groups had very different stances and purposes.

The so-called controversies concerned with Relativity and Quantum Theory actually revealed the as yet uncompleted tasks of applying Dialectical Materialism to Science, but if the Marxists hadn't been removed from the struggle, they, and definitely not their opponents, could have completed that task. To blame the errors on the new discoveries in Science is dishonest. For dealing with these aberrations would have strengthened the new Philosophy: that's how developments occur!

The very fact that the new Idealist Stances in Sub Atomic Physics spread to Russia, showed clearly how far the Bureaucrats had strayed from Dialectical Materialism. For what they claimed was Marxism was nothing like the most important means that had been in Marx's hands, and should and would have tackled the latest Positivist inventions, if its supporters had survived the purges.

Imagine what the centres of Learning in a genuinely Marxist state could have achieved in this area!

NOTE: I must interject at this point, for the writer of this paper is both a Physicist and a Marxist, and has recently completed a real Marxist treatment of the Idealist Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, which any real Marxist could have done long ago. And a key reason for this never happening before was the triumph of the Stalinists.

And remember the collapse of the Soviet Empire was down to them too!

This scientific undertaking has taken most of my adult life, because I had to effectively "do-a-Marx-type-job" from scratch! There weren't any Marxists to help me.

Reportage, Activism and Theory

You can’t have one without the others!

I always remember, as a young student, listening to a speech by Gerry Healy of the then Socialist Labour League, a Trotskyist Revolutionary Party affiliated to the International Committee of the Fourth International, and his answer to a question about the rights and wrongs of a particular strike, which caused him to respond with, “What you don’t seem to understand”, he affirmed, “is that the bosses are always wrong!” Such a response took the questioner by surprise, for he expected a rational, or even moral, explanation, for that was how he arrived at his political positions and “beliefs”. But Healy didn’t come from that background at all. He knew the enemy and their lying ways, and knew that you had to fight them with Working Class action, AND also that, to be a Marxist meant that that you were always on the side of the Working Class, and against the Ruling Class on every single issue!

But though he was right to answer the Middle Class student in that way, he was wrong when it came to training a Marxist Revolutionary Leadership for the Working Class, for those would have to go well beyond Trade Union consciousness: they would have to understand deeply about Capitalism, and even more fundamentally, would have to become both a Marxist Philosopher and a Trained Marxist analyst and theorist. And that would involve the necessary Philosophy – including both Holism and Dialectical Materialism, which would have to be their steadfast yet developing worldview, in order to supply their required methodology for dealing with all problems at all levels. The gut reaction may place a speaker, like Healy, on the right track, but the preparation of a revolutionary leadership required a great deal more than that.

After a lifetime in and around revolutionary politics, I finally realised that those who currently profess to be Marxists were NOT doing what Marx and Engels, and later Lenin and Trotsky, knew to be imperative. They were neither developing Marxism (absolutely essential), nor training a new cadre to be Marxist in the Leninist sense. They weren’t, and still aren’t, equipping a leadership, and hence they were failing the Working Class.

Now, I have just finished reading the most detailed (and extensive) Marxist essay on Syria (written January 2013), which was a serious and competent delivery of much that we need to know. It was, by far, the best that I have read, but it gave no clues as to what Marxism really is – and by that I mean it did not reveal its philosophy and method. The dialectics of a tract by Marx were absent. You either took what the writer revealed, or you didn’t.

There wasn’t an evident and unstoppable imperative of a superior philosophy clearly in action, and that, as Lenin himself was well aware, is vital! He didn’t write Materialism and Empirio Criticism as a filler between vital political activities. He wrote it because he was attempting to train a Marxist cadre, and even colleagues like Lunacharsky (later Commissar for Education in the Revolutionary Regime) were tarnished with the positivist brush of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach.

It seemed to me that there are many sides to the essential activities of Marxist revolutionaries. The common denominators to all groups who profess to be such are Reportage and Activism the first must inform of the facts before any appropriate action is decided upon. BUT both will be flawed without the essential ground provided by the Marxist Philosophy, and its methods. For the World is in constant change, and a Marxist cannot just “look up” appropriate measures: he has to re-invent them as things change. In the midst of a revolution, the revolutionary will be changing “what has to be done” by the hour!

What characterised Lenin was this sound Marxist basis and analysis. In the midst of the Russian February Phase, only his philosophy and method saw “what had to be done”, and in his April Theses, he turned the whole Party around.

Finally, in the turmoil of fast transforming Reality, he usually knew what to do. No time for reportage or even political activism then! The correct analysis of the moment, and the right immediate actions were essential. Without his solid and brilliant philosophy, he simply could not have done it.

I, therefore, ask, with respect, the writer of that excellent piece of Marxist reportage (**see reference below), “Where is the Marxist Philosophy?” Needless to say, I ask because I am attempting to contribute towards that standpoint and theory via my expertise as a scientist and teacher, plus 50 years in the revolutionary movement.

Jim Schofield : A Marxist Philosopher - March 2013

References:

** Economic & Philosophic Science Review (EPSR) on the internet article dated January 2013

Also several Special Issues and individual articles by Jim Schofield on SHAPE Journal, SHAPE Blog and SHAPE Channel on YouTube

Quotes and Inferences from The Wonders of Life

What is Life?

Let us consider some of the direct quotes, or occasionally the recast statements that infer certain positions uttered by Professor Brian Cox in the What is Life first installment of his Wonders of Life series for BBC TV, which commenced on Sunday 27^th January 2013.

Elsewhere, this writer has written a review of this programme, but the exact meanings of part’s of Cox’s narration really do need to be revealed as exactly as possible as he delivered them, because they do reveal exactly where he is coming from, and what he actually believes, not only about Life, but about the true nature of Reality in general, which he is certain resides primarily in his own specialist subject – Physics.

For Brian Cox is most certainly a fully paid up member of the current consensus in Sub Atomic Physics, He agrees completely with the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, originally put forward by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, and this puts him, and all his colleagues, into a particular and surprising philosophical position.

For the whole group are what are usually termed “shamefaced materialists”, who have steadfastly embraced a purely idealist philosophical position, beloved of such people, which has physical Reality being wholly determined by abstract, disembodied and purely formal laws. These are so pure that they can be most perfectly represented by mathematical equations.

Now, let us be quite clear exactly what is involved in such a position. These laws have to be eternal – in existence throughout the duration of our Universe, and act as driving essences, actually making the concrete material World behave as it does. Now, you may find it hard to believe that there is anyone at all who subscribes to such a position, and especially professional scientists, but I assure you, it is entirely true. They do have reasons, of course, for such a profound retreat from the once steadfastly maintained materialist standpoint, but that will become clearer as this exercise proceeds, along with just a little history of 20^th century Physics.

For, this position has been around for some considerable time, and is usually termed as Positivism when applied within Science. But, a much more descriptive label is the philosophical term Agnosticism (“I do not know”), for though the position purports to be materialist, it also says that there are many things not only that we do not yet know, BUT that we can never know: things that are “Unknowable Things in Themselves”.

Clearly, this was the stance made famous by the philosopher Kant, though it has resurfaced several times – a fairly recent interlude being at the end of the 19^th century, with what were sometimes called the Empirio-Criticists. This group included both of the scientists Max Ernst and Henri Poincaré.

When, a little later, something like this position was considered necessary to paper over the ever widening cracks in 20^th century Sub Atomic Physics, there was already in existence (and fairly “modern”) a body of philosophical suggestions that these physicists could subscribe to, and indeed tailor to their particular needs in their very esoteric area.

Now, in taking what Brian Cox actually says about The Wonders of Life, you certainly must see clearly where he is coming from. He is “in one way” a materialist, stressing the development of Reality without recourse to any spiritual or supernatural input, while, at the same time, rejecting the longstanding purpose of Science to explain why it is as it is. And, to cap it all, he surrenders all impetus in development entirely to a set of eternal Natural Laws – abstract relations (or Forms), which he insists actually “cause” the World to behave as it does, and even develop as it has.

So, nice easy put-downs will not suffice in dealing with such post-modernist eclecticism. The positions taken do NOT form a single coherent standpoint, but a variously based one, with either omissions (not spoken about), or a papering over the cracks (spoken about at length). So, the reason for these extractions from the programme should be clear. If you think that this universally commended paragon has been misquoted by this critic, you can make up your own mind by studying these important quotes. You may find many of his throw away lines more than a little difficult to accept. This fairly extensive collection will reveal many questions, which Cox does not answer, and many arguments that are certainly invalid.

The Quotes:

1. “Are wonderful products of evolution like dragonflies simply complex machines, for when they die nothing remains of what would be called Life?”
2. “The idea of the Spirit is understandable, because otherwise we would have to accept that Life emerges from an inanimate bag of stuff”
3. “It is incumbent on Science to explain what animates Life”
4. “What is the difference between a lump of rock and me?”
5. “It is only recently that Science has begun to answer these deepest of questions”
6. “Life is the result of the same laws which govern everything else”
7. It is how Life uses energy!”
8. Energy is indestructible: it only ever changes from one form to another”
9. “What is true for the waterfall, is true for everything in nature. It is a fundamental law of nature. The First Law of Thermodynamics – the conservation of energy law!”
10. “Energy is eternal!”

11. “The story of the evolution of the Universe, is just the story of the transformation of eternal energy from one form to another”
12. “And at some point that transformation of energy led to the Origin of Life on earth!”
13. “Volcanoes transferring energy from the very depths to the surface can produce chemicals and their reactions, which are very similar to those that produced the Origin of Life”
14. “Hydrogen ions (H⁺) instead of balancing the Hydroxyl ions (OH^-) as in neutral water, can be increased in number by energy, hence storing that potential in the heightened number of Hydrogen ions.”
15. “And such a produced proton gradient can do work, and it is through that, somehow, that early Life was able to use that source to drive its necessary processes”
16. “Now there are alkaline sub-ocean volcanic vents, and it is thought that, at the time if the Origin of Life, the oceans themselves were mildly acidic. Hence there was the possibility of a ready source of energy for Life to exploit.”
17. “And the vents are also rich in the chemicals that Life needs”
18. “Now, the energy currency for Life even today is still in that same sort of proton gradient, and it occurs in Mitochondria in every cell of every living thing”.
19. “So, if you are looking for a universal Spark of Life this proton gradient is it”
20. “But, Life doesn’t use energy up. So what does it do?”
21. “The evolution of the Universe involves the changing of energy from one form to another. But, that energy becomes less and less useful. It becomes more and more disordered. It’s the quality of energy that is changed. Light can be absorbed, but it is then re-emitted as Heat. The energy of a lower quality: it can do less. It becomes Heat which is of a very low quality of energy indeed”
22. Life takes highly ordered, high quality energy from the Sun, and converts it to an equal amount of low quality, disordered energy”
23. “This descent into disorder is happening across the entire Universe”
24. “Everything is converted to Heat, and the Universe cools down to absolute zero, and with NO ordered energy left, and everything comes to a halt, and everything decays away”
25. “Yet, while the Universe is dying, everywhere you look, Life goes on”
26. “How can it be that Life continues to build increasingly complex structures, while the rest of the Universe is falling to bits – decaying away?
27. (It is) “according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics!”
28. “The key is to look at the energy Life takes in, and the energy that it gives out. Heat is a highly disordered form of energy, and that is what Life gives out, but Life can hang on to a tiny amount of order, just enough to resist the inevitable decay”
29. “Living things borrow order from the wider Universe and export it again as disorder, but they have to export more disorder than the amount of order that they import.”
30. “Living things, being physical structures, must obey the laws of Physics, so they must obey the Second Law.”
31. “Just by being alive, we are part of the energy transformation that drives the Universe.”
32. “All living things share the same fate. Each individual will die, but Life itself endures!”
33. “Something separates Life from every other process in the Universe”

Now, I originally thought of countering every single quote, but let’s face it, they do speak for themselves! I cannot imagine many reading them with a genuine realisation of their truth, and with real pleasure. I am sure that they don’t need me to explain which orifice he is talking out of.

NOTE: For those who might like to hear a more explicit alternative to Brian Cox’s conception of Life, this author has written another parallel paper attempting to do exactly that.