Marxism & Physics

Marxism & Physics: a new series from Shape Journal

A Prologue

This essay, plus a following extended series to be posted weekly upon SHAPE Blog, addresses a crucial hole in Marxism, which arose since Lenin's Materialism and Empirio Criticism - a book that vigorously attacked the significant slide in Physics Theory, away from Materialism, at that time, epitomised by the positivist ideas of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach.

Since that time, this crucial question - not only for Science, but also for Marxism as a truly, generally applicable Philosophy, was not seriously addressed.

The one incomplete exception was surely embodied in Christopher Caudwell's The Crisis in Physics, but never taken further, as he was killed fighting the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, while still a young man.

This major omission in the most advanced Philosophy available, was crucial for the discipline of Physics, but also for both the reach and depth of the Marxist Method too.

So here, this physicist, who has been a Marxist all his adult life, and throughout has been aware of this discrepancy, has finally grasped the nettle, and this summer, after 50 years of trying, has finally achieved a breakthrough.

Enjoy!

Jim Schofield

August 2016

The Black Hole in Marxist Theory

(How Physics Temporarily Escaped)

A crucial question arises out of the clear failure to recruit professional intellectuals into a Marxist philosophical stance in the last century.

Up to the Russian Revolution it had been precisely within those ranks that Marxism first appeared and developed: indeed, the whole leadership of the Bolshevik Party were such people, and had been wrested from their natural Class stance, by commitment to that Revolutionary alternative presenting a truly enormous potential.

But, the possibility that such Social Revolutions were now possible with conscious, pro-Working Class objectives, changed the emphasis completely, and it was activism and organisation, towards such an outcome, that dominated attitudes among those involved.

You might imagine that the revolutionary transformation of traditional Mechanical Materialism in the Sciences, made possible by Karl Marx's wholesale transfer of Hegel's achievements in Dialectics from an Idealist Stance to one of Materialism, would bring the scientists flocking in. But, it didn't happen!

The crisis precipitated by the discovery of the Quantum, and by the positivist ideas of Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach, which Lenin quickly and vigorously criticised in his book Materialism and Empirio Criticism, would, certainly, lead us to believe that the defeat of such backward tendencies in Science was nigh. 

After all, the new anomalies and crises in Science were proliferating at an accelerating rate, and it should have been clear that what was needed to tackle the increasing mess, and its ever-strengthening swoop into Idealism, had to be in breakthroughs made by Hegel and, most particularly, Marx! 

The basis of their revolution had been the switch to include Qualitative Changes, Development and, as with Darwin, Evolution (not only of Life, but of all Reality!). And, it wasn't only a change of view, for though primarily based upon Marx's study of Capitalist Economics, Dialectical Materialism - as a method, could profitably be extended to Science: indeed Science would surely be its natural home, and give that stance a deserved, widespread credibility, as well as addressing the many problems clearly mounting up within that discipline.

How could this crucial extension not occur?

Indeed, Lenin had effectively managed his remit upon this question, very effectively, in spite of not being a physicist: surely the task cried out for Marxist physicists to complete the rout! But, once more, it didn't happen. And, there were reasons.

In the Socialist Movement, there was an increasing dominance by Democratic Socialists, who rejected Revolution, and with it the philosophical stance of Marx and his followers, and even within those who remained "Marxist", there was increasing emphasis upon political agitation and organisation, and also clear a break from that Social Democracy, with the setting up of Communist Parties across the World.

Clearly, the emphasis with these "Marxist" parties was activism among the Working Class, and work with Middle Class intellectuals, gradually, but increasingly, fell away.

Soon, most professional physicists didn't even hear about Marxism, except, perhaps, as a threat to their privileged existence. And, clearly, several factors within the historical, cultural and intellectual development of Science were crucial in politically countering that possible influence. 

First, culturally, literally all scientists were from a very different Class to the workers, as with all professions. Science was totally dominated by privileged Classes, even up to including the Aristocracy (like Cavendish, for example) .

And, as a full-time, demanding and expensive career, it could not be adopted by those without the necessary and substantial resources. Thus, the Class content within the cultural ideas of scientists, certainly, did not gel with the Class conclusions of Marxism.

But, even that wasn't all!

Science itself, had grown spasmodically, in fits and starts, and in a peculiar ad hoc way - commencing with Pragmatism - "If it works, it is right!", and actually maintaining that as a fall-back position, throughout its history. And, though it had gradually broke from religion, and settled into a thoroughly materialist stance as its bedrock, that actually came very much later, than an early and very close relationship with the first ever intellectual discipline of all - namely Mathematics, which brought in a decidedly Idealist stance into the mix which has also remained there throughout its history.

For, it was Mathematics that first involved an attempt to grasp the quantitative and geometrical patterns so evident in Reality.

Clearly, Science was never a single stance, but a pragmatic mix of contradictory stances, also separated into innumerable and unavoidable sub-divisions, and the gaps between them could never, via the currently available stances, be rationally transcended.

It was a patchwork in every sense!

Indeed, though more correctly termed the "Handmaiden of Science", Mathematics was considered by many scientists to be the Queen of the Sciences, for the discovered relations in the found patterns, enabled formulae to be constructed, which could successfully be employed to predict outcomes, which, along with pragmatism, soon enabled many new uses.

The surprising amalgam of Pragmatism, Idealism and Materialism flexibly, if inconsistently, allowed a kind of piecemeal progress upon many different fronts, with Pragmatism providing the necessary enabling "glue".

And, as the most reveal-able route, Science became besotted with practical applications, and the very philosophical academicism of Marxism, seemed very airy-fairy, compared with all the burgeoning practical uses.

The scientists certainly preferred their amalgam! As a physicist myself, I can safely affirm that, as a group, scientists make lousy philosophers!

But, also there were reasons within the Working Class Movement, and even among self-professed Marxists.

It was because no-one bothered to study the crucial Dialectics of Hegel with regard to its applications in Science. Neither Hegel nor Marx had been up to it, for it required dedicated theoretical work within Science, which as described above was fast becoming a philosophical minefield, with its simultaneously necessary, yet totally contradictory standpoints, and, of course, would have to be carried out by suitably-equipped Marxists, to have any real chance of succeeding! 

Marx, himself, had known precisely what the level of work had to be, and he carried it out, spending many decades in the British Museum studying Capitalist Economics, to finally deliver Capital - his Dialectical Materialist analysis of the Economics of the Capitalist System. Inherent in that work, were the methods required to do the same in other disciplines, but no-one took on the tasks necessary in even one of the Sciences.

Instead Activism was decided upon as the only achievable option!

Sitting in a University Library studying an abundance of works by non-Marxist, and totally eclectic scientists, was an onerous activity, for it not only involved becoming a professional scientist, but also in establishing a consistent, coherent and comprehensive approach applicable across the board.

Not a soul tried!

NOTE: There is a current brilliant exception to this generalisation, though he did the job he tackled correctly, he still only took on today's Capitalist Economics. It is, as you may already be aware, Professor Richard D. Wolff, the American Professor of Economics at the New School University in New York City, USA, who has spent his adult life studying and teaching Economics, and now criticises it with truly devastating effect. He is not only a professional Marxist but also a professional Economist, and his critique is unanswerable.

To show how difficult this could be, let me give an example that I know a great deal about.

I am a qualified physicist, with an Honours Degree in the subject, and very early on indeed, in my University course, I joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (the CPGB), in order to become a Marxist. But, I found no one there, who could (or even wanted to) teach me what that actually meant, and how I could use it.

Instead, we were supposed to learn by reading the classic works of people like Marx, Engels and Lenin. But, though I did precisely as I was advised, it certainly did not make me a Marxist.

And, of course, such advice was rubbish - not only didn't it deliver to me any ideas of method, it also could never ever do that: they were not written to achieve such things.

For, all these works were written long ago, at particular times in the past, and many were only the results of applying a not-overtly-included-method, which though they delivered good advice for the activists of that time, would be useless to inform modern-day Marxists-to-be, on how to address today's many problems: for they were clearly very different. 

Manufacturing #10A, Cankun Factory, Xiamen City, 2005, Edward Burtynsky

Situations would literally never match after a century of vast changes, so it would have to involve, initially, the establishment of the clearest possible philosophic stance, AND, only then from that basis, could crucially-clear and detailed descriptions of the methods used be adjusted to fit wholly new contexts.

And, it would involve nothing like the application of the same technical steps as used historically. Indeed, even the factors acting now, would be of a very different order to what were critical then.

If, perhaps, the reader had substantial experience and had done detailed studies of how things are today, he or she might be able to begin to extract methods, from the classic works, and re-cast them in a modern context. But, for most of us, that would be totally impossible. The advice given was useless, and to my mind, totally irresponsible!

If you were an activist, it would be the only advice you could give. And, mere activism does not a Marxist make!

I, of course, asked about such things, but only got the same advice - "Consult the classics!".

But, Marx never had time to write theoretically about the Method that he was creating, as well as using - not least because the heart of that Method was Holism, which, as distinct from the usually subscribed-to opposite, Plurality, instead insisted that "Everything affects everything else!".

And, it also dealt with the whole normally totally neglected areas concerned with Qualitative Development and Collapse, and with Stability and Emergence. Compared with the usually adhered-to Plurality, Holism was vastly more complex - no easy rules and tidy encapsulating equations here.

And, crucially, NO extractable causality in the Key Emergent Transformations at all. Compared with his work on Capital, the holist, dialectical method would be both an even more enormous, and also an unavoidably ongoing task. Clearly, most followers of Marx didn't really understand exactly what his Method involved: yet that was the true essence of his contribution!

It was, in retrospect, no wonder that I got no help on such a crucial question: they didn't know either!

The population of real Marxists (by which I mean professional researchers developing rather than revising the theory) was never large enough for these questions to be fully addressed. It clearly was Marx alone who had made the transcending transition, so, it was his remarkable analyses that won followers, and NOT his revolutionary Method! 

For, "Marxism" to become a fully developed stance, it needed many dedicated theorists, who were not only specialists in their own professional fields, but also committed to doing what Marx had done with Economics. And, that has never really been the case!

Even the very best of those professionals, who did attempt it, such as V. Gordon Childe, the archaeologist, John Berger and Georg Lukasz, the critics, and even Christopher Caudwell, the philosopher, never really cracked the methods involved. The establishment of that crucial and always continuing task remains to be achieved.

And, this loss had significant repercussions, not just in the many ignored specialisms and Subjects, but within Marxism itself. Marxism is still too young to already be able to supply all the answers in every single sphere. Marx himself read bourgeois Economics for decades, before gradually finding the right way to tackle it in a "Marxist Way"!

So, getting back to this particular physicist, I was far too young too, and found no members who could help.

Indeed, my task was particularly difficult, for I had to tackle the monolith of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory - no small undertaking!

In spite of knowing, intuitively, that Copenhagen was a major and debilitating retreat, who was I, a 19 years old student, to take on the World's leading Physicists, especially when I could find no one to help, within what was surely the best place to find a solution?

Only slowly in an academic career that took in Mathematics, Biology and Computing, as well as Physics, did I make any progress at all. And, it was many years later, when I was the Computer Programmer in a Higher Education establishment, dedicated to helping researchers across the whole range of disciplines with their programming needs, did the penny finally begin to drop.

And, surprisingly, it happened when working with an expert in both Dance Performance and Choreography teaching, that the research that I personally had to undertake, finally revealed the real problem in Science. In dealing with the analysis of movement on Video and Film under computer control, I did finally realise what a Dichotomous Pair really was, and how Hegel had addressed the consequent impasse that was always the inevitable result.

As a result, I applied what I had learned to the Key Dichotomous Pair in Copenhagen, usually termed Wave/Particle Duality, and was, thereafter, able using Hegel's method, to crack a whole series of consequent impasses within that stance.

It had taken me 50 years (by myself) to be able to do it!

The key was Zeno's Paradoxes involving the use of the contradictory concepts of Continuity and Descreteness, when attempting to analyse movement over time. Clearly, this Dichotomous Pair arose just as Hegel had discovered - due to flaws within the usually unstated premises which were the basis for both these concepts.

Hegel found that he had to identify exactly what, in those premises, was causing the contradiction. And, he found, that if the flaw was corrected, the halting dichotomy would dissolve into a clear forked path with strictly logical reasons for taking each option. 

Clearly, I had to solve an identical kind of problem in delivering both Access and Control of the Video and Film footage of key movements, and was able to solve them.

But, in addition, I had finally understood the method involved and in Wave/Particle Duality knew that the key to transcending this impasse would be found in the common premises which delivered both of these conceptions.

I studied the premises (usually never overtly stated) and I found the flaw!

Now, looking for concepts, as Hegel had to do when considering Thinking, at first waylaid me, but he was an idealist, and the problem here was about Reality. It turned out that what was wrong in these premises was an physical omission! 

What had been dispensed with in the 19th century because it could not be detected, turned out to be essential for making sense out of the whole panoply of impasses in Sub Atomic Physics.

What was essential was the presence of a Universal Substrate.

And, after much research into a material, but undetectable, Substrate, I managed to remove every single anomaly in the famed Double Slit Experiments. And since that time, I have been able to dismantle item after item within the Copenhagen Stance, and, philosophically, make significant contributions to the processes and productions of Abstraction, as well as delivering an extended Theory of Emergences.

How Do You Develop Marxism?

Here is perhaps a surprising question and answer!

“What is Marxism for?” And the response is, “Absolutely Everything!”

Now, that doesn’t sound right, does it? Surely, Marxism is the means by which the Working Class gets tooled-up for the coming Revolution? It is a method of analysis of the current state of Capitalism, and also a means for defining its alternative, Socialism, and therefore, crucially the standpoint and method for developing the revolutionary forces to defeat the forces of reaction by means of a Socialist Revolution.

Well, no, that is by no means sufficient, and many others could make a similar sounding claim, without even claiming to be Marxists, as to their objectives and professed means.

Indeed, long before it was so central to political action in the Working Class, it was an unnamed revolutionary re-direction in Philosophy, and was initially composed of a group of young followers of the philosopher Hegel – the Young Hegelians.

And it was certainly because of that origin that it could develop into a materialist philosophy that could better than anything else understand current society, and also analyse what crucial revolutions, such as the English Revolution in the 17th Century and the French Revolution in the 18th century actually were and what the trajectory of significant qualitative changes were going on within those total turnovers of the state of those countries.

So, what point am I trying to make?

Have a look at this diagram.



This is a Marxist conception of the trajectory of a Revolution but maybe not as you've seen it before.

You may with justice wonder what its use is, and I will insist that it is an attempt to show in diagrammatic form what people such as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky were aware of and used to guide their actions as leaders of the Working Class.

You will not have failed to notice that it doesn’t call the depicted event a Revolution, but an Emergence! And this is because absolutely all Qualitative Changes, which result in major transformation of Level, occur in any kind of development process, wherever it is happening, and whatever it is happening to!

Indeed, the most important Emergence in the History of the Universe was the Origin of Life on Earth. And in the fossil record that particular episode is invisible and would still be so even if First life were ten feet high.

It is bound to be invisible, because the Key Transformational Events are of infinitesimal duration compared withy the Stability from which they arise, and the Stability into which they emerged.

And remarkably, you may be surprised to hear that literally ALL Science never addresses these kinds of Events at all! Indeed, Science as it is at present grounded, can only study Stability, and the non-qualitative (quantitative) changes that occur within that much more easily investigatable state.

So, perhaps the surprising answer at the head of this paper is becoming clearer.

Marxism is not only about all development, but also without it NO real qualitative development can be addressed.

Now, I would go further, and suggest that if present day Marxism does not fulfil the promise that only it can deliver, it will also fail to be entirely adequate in the usually agreed areas. It will very easily become something else!

And this is not a mere subjective guess by this observer.

I have been a Marxist, a scientist and a teacher all my life, and have seen failure after failure in my colleagues addressing these precise questions.

They were all as useless at the big questions in Science as their pro-capitalist colleagues.

I am primarily a physicist, and the retreat in the early part of the 20th century usually called the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and even Einstein’s explanation of Gravity in terms of the distortion of his so-called Space-Time, were not addressed and demolished, but actually embraced!

Many are the contributions in socialist newspapers “explaining” these difficult areas to the uninitiated.

Have you read The Crisis in Physics by Christopher Caudwell?

He knew it was drivel and began the task of debunking it. But, he was also a real revolutionary, and when the time came went off to Spain to fight Franco, where he was killed.

You should read Caudwell and take up where he left off!

So, Marxism is a philosophy, and not of the armchair-interpretative kind, but of the kind that can and indeed must, change things. And, there should be no narrow restriction in what Marxists do: they are equipped to address all aspects of Reality including both Physics concerning Copenhagen, and Biology with the Origin of Life. The gulf in attainment in such areas, cannot merely be put down to mediocre practitioners in those specialist fields, but must also be laid at the door of Marxists.

For this achievement by Marx and Engels furnished Mankind with the very best Philosophy yet, which could throw light upon all of Mankind’s areas of study. And, the lack of progress, in the fields mentioned, does reveal that we have truly cut our great philosophy “down to size, and in so doing also severely restricted its role in politics too. For success in answering the big questions in Science will further deepen and widen the scope and profundity of marxian concepts and methods. An evident weakness in such areas will surely mean that Marxism has ceased to be a philosophy and become instead a series of political prescriptions to guide day-to-day political activism.

So, if you want to be a marxist, you will not achieve it merely by reading books. You must tackle the big questions that non-marxists have no hope of solving. If you are a biologist you should tackle the Origin of Life. If a physicist, then your target must be the Copenhagen Myth. If you are a teacher, you should be crucifying the politicians of capitalist democracy for their reactionary policies, and make significant contributions in Pedagogy. And, even if you are none of these, you must include a profound appreciation of the real content of these areas in the definition and development of your method.

And to all those who would energetically oppose such activities as “running away from the struggle”, let me remind them about Lenin.

At a crucial period in the sometimes very slow if not actually retrogressive development towards another Revolution in Russia, he wrote the crucial philosophical work Materialism and Empirio Criticism, when some of those he criticised were actually within his own tendency. And even more unlikely he produced his Philosophical Notebooks in which he read Hegel materialistically.

Is anyone of our persuasion going to condemn Lenin for avoiding the fight?

As he stepped from the train at the Finland Station after a long forced exile abroad, he immediate jumped up and harangued his welcoming crowd with a trenchant criticism of their policies, and via his following April Theses managed to turn his erring party around and ready for October.

Yet what has been done in deepening our understanding of the detailed Nature and Trajectory of an Emergence (a Revolution!)?

In my addressing of this area, I have studied Emergences in all area of human endeavour - all sciences and subjects and even the development of the Universe.

Do you really think that Marx only studied revolutions? He studied History, Economics, Palaeontology, Literature and even Mathematics.

Have you read the drivel they peddle about the Origin and Development of the Universe? It is the most unutterable rubbish, and yet they assure us that they will be able to fully and finally explain the actual Origin, as soon as their particle smashing in the Large Hadron Collider is fully up and running.

Where is the deep investigation of the whole trajectory, from the first murmurings of possible change to the complete overturn? And how about the processes occurring within the Event itself - what is being changed and how?

Can we read a series of books considering Emergence in all possible spheres? Again, you know the answer, it is, “No!”

And we cannot leave out that most important Crisis in Physics, which has beset the Sub Atomic Area for over 100 years without any real resolution.

In 1927 at the Solvay Conference, the idealists Bohr and Heisenberg defeated Einstein and established a major Kantian retreat in that subject, which has reigned ever since. Why has no Marxist tackled this impasse?

Though Christopher Caudwell did attempt the task and would have made a profound contribution, his Marxism also took him to Spain to fight Franco, where he lost his life before he could complete his valuable contributions to Marxism.

So, who took up the reins and continued his contribution? Nobody!

And, what of Evolution? Was Darwin’s incrementalist theory of Natural Selection sufficient?

The answer is certainly , “No!”

It did jettison God from the Nature of living things, but the actual mechanisms, and indeed revolutions, of change were only inferred.

The most important questions in Evolution, as in all other forms of development, has to be how Stability is established and maintained, and how it is consequently and inevitably undermined, and even occasionally totally destroyed in short interludes of what appear initially to be entirely dissolutionary changes, but which can establish a wholly new level of Stability in a crucial Second Phase.

Where are the investigations into these vital revolutionary episodes, which are the only times that can create the entirely NEW? And where are the studies of how mutation could possibly be integrated into an entirely new and almost perfectly reliable set of genetic instructions?

Again, this is not a job for biologists as such, but for Marxist biologists focussing on the processes of real qualitative change, and the establishment of stabilities, not to mention the subsequent and inevitable demise of every single one.

Such tasks are beyond the capabilities and standpoint of the specialists in the various areas: they are too general and holistic for head-down pluralists. They need the philosophical approach that only exists within Marxism. Indeed, to localise Marxism to politics alone, is a major mistake, and a self-inflicted injury to its real universal applicability. WE cannot wait around for the next revolution to increase our grasp of what happens in such events. We must enrich our ideas constantly by the tackling of revolutionary qualitative change wherever and whenever it occurs.

Let me ask an important question.

Have you ever got lost in the abstractions of Hegel, of even Marx himself? Of course you have! So, where is the continuing Marxian investigation into the Processes and Productions of Abstraction?




For my thesis throughout this paper has been the universality of Marxist Philosophy: it is not only a political standpoint and method. It applies to the whole of developing Reality!

Over the last rather long period, very little has been tackled outside of politics and economics within the Marxist Community. Yet without that inevitable widening and constant availability of our considered sources, we will shrink-not-grow!

In my researches, all the real successes were always interdisciplinary.

These questions have to be addressed!

Can we expect to achieve the status of the intellectual leaders of our Class as long as the Copenhagen Myths are allowed not only to exist, but for its followers to condemn all who attempt to explain anything within their hallowed territory?

And, the same can be said for the current nonsense about the Origin of Life and the idealist drivel about Parallel Universes, and Physical Singularities, not to mention Dark Matter and Dark Energy in what passes for Cosmology today.

Let us be clear!

If a so-called Marxist cannot demolish that rubbish, they are unlikely to cope with the minute-by-minute decisions in the midst of a Social Revolution.

Do not forget the importance of a pamphlet like, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. And also remember when it was written and by whom.

Marxism is the Philosophy of Mankind and must be established on all fronts!

A new series on this has begun on the Shape Journal.

The Crisis in Physics (A Conspectus)

It has been decided to publish a Shape Special Issue dedicated to that brilliant work by Christopher Caudwell entitled The Crisis in Physics. This marxist-critique of the situation in the 1930s in Sub Atomic Physics, was a significant beginning, and were it not for Caudwell's death fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War, there is no doubt he would have taken this subject a great deal further. 

As it is, no further significant contributions have been forthcoming from surviving "marxists", so 73 years after his book was first published, a reappraisal and development of Caudwell's contribution seems more than a little overdue. 

Coming soon to Shape Journal.