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Preface to the second English edition of Reason in Revolt – by Alan Woods
"Philosophers have only interpreted
the world in different ways: the point, however, is to change it."
(Marx)
More than a decade has passed since Reason in Revolt was first published in
English. The response to it has surpassed our greatest expectations. Sadly, Ted
Grant, my old friend, comrade and teacher will not see the publication of the
second edition. After a lifetime of tireless service to the cause of Marxism
and the working class, he passed away last year at the ripe old age of 93.
Ted always had a
passionate interest in Marxist theory, and philosophy in particular. He also
followed all the developments of modern science very closely. In addition to
the Financial Times and The Economist, he subscribed to The New Scientist, which he used to
devour from cover to cover. He would often be infuriated by the mystical and
idealist slant that some scientists gave to the discoveries of modern science.
He would look up from the pages of his journal and shake his head in disbelief:
"These people confuse science with science fiction," he would exclaim
indignantly.
There was one remark
that struck me as particularly profound. He said that in the human mind,
"matter has finally become conscious of itself". A more beautiful way
of expressing philosophical materialism would be difficult to imagine.
It is a matter of great satisfaction to me
that in the last years of his life Ted could see the tremendous interest in our
ideas that has been expressed in many countries. So far Reason in Revolt has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German,
Greek, Urdu, Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese and
Turkish, and new translations are being prepared in French and Dutch. In
addition, it has appeared in an "American" translation in the USA,
and has also been published in separate editions in Venezuela,
Mexico, Cuba and India.
Many of the discoveries made by science
over the last decade have confirmed the positions of dialectical materialism
defended in Reason in Revolt. In
particular, the Human Genome Project has completely undermined the position of
the reactionaries who sought to use genetics to justify racism, homophobia and
creationism. This is a colossal advance for science and for socialism.
Other discoveries have made us reconsider
some of our original opinions. In the first edition we were still unsure about
the existence of black holes-those mysterious objects in which the compression
of matter has reached such an extremity, that not even light can be emitted.
These black giants suck in all surrounding matter, so that nothing can approach
them without being crushed and devoured. Until recently there was little hard
evidence for it. But the observations made possible by the Hubble telescope
have shown that black holes play a fundamental role in the formation of
galaxies.
They are present at the centre of every galaxy and serve to hold
galaxies together, giving them the cohesion without which life, and ourselves,
would be impossible. Thus, what appeared to be the most destructive force in
the universe turns out to have colossal creative powers. The dialectical conception of the unity of
opposites thus received powerful confirmation from a most unexpected source!
Role
of dialectics
The recognition of the pioneering role of
dialectical materialism is long overdue. The theory of chaos, and its
derivatives complexity and ubiquity, has provided a striking confirmation of
many of the main tenets of dialectical materialism, but this debt has never
been acknowledged. This is unfortunate, since knowledge of the dialectical
method would have helped avoid a number of pitfalls into which science has
occasionally strayed as a result of incorrect assumptions. This fact was
acknowledged by the late Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote that if scientists had
paid attention to Engels‘ The Role of Labour in the Transition of Ape
to Man, they could have avoided a hundred years of errors.
The great advantage of dialectics is that
it deals with things in their motion and development, and moreover shows how
all development takes place through contradictions. The dialectical method
explains how quite small changes can, at a critical point, produce enormous
transformations: the law of the transformation of quantity into quality. The
importance of this law has only recently been recognised by science through
chaos theory. Engels deals at length with the three fundamental laws of
dialectics, which he specifies as:
The
law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;
The law of the interpenetration of opposites;
The law of the negation of the negation.
This does not mean, of course, that
philosophy-any philosophy-must dictate to science, as did the Church in the
Middle Ages, or as the bureaucracy in Stalinist Russia. Science has its own
methods of investigation, observation and experiment, and must follow these and
these alone. Engels writes in The
Dialectics of Nature:
"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere
laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic,
in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and
by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of
Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the
construction of the whole system. The
mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as
laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole
forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out
to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the
product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought. If we turn the thing
round, then everything becomes simple, and the dialectical laws that look so
extremely mysterious in idealist philosophy at once become simple and clear as
noonday." (My emphasis, AW.)
Scientists necessarily approach their
subject matter with certain assumptions, of which they are usually unaware.
These assumptions invariably have a philosophical character. Behind every
hypothesis there are always many assumptions, not all of them derived from
science itself. For example, what led geneticists to conclude that humans
possessed far more genes than is, in fact, the case? It is the method of
reductionism, which flows from the mechanical assumption that nature knows
only purely quantitative relations. Biological
determinism considers humans as a collection of genes, and not as complex
organisms, processes, the product of a dialectical interrelation between genes
and the environment.
In reality, in nature changes in quantity
eventually end in a qualitative leap. Very small modifications can produce huge
changes. Tiny genetic mutations can give rise to huge differences. This is what
explains the apparent contradiction between the size and complexity of humans
and the relatively small number of genes involved. In Reason in Revolt,
this was our criticism of the method of Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.
Later, Dawkins himself retreated from his earlier position, shocked by the way
in which it had been used by right-wing reactionaries.
The genetic difference between humans and
chimpanzees is less than two per cent and most of the genetic material present
in modern humans is very old. Organic matter has evolved from inorganic matter,
and higher life forms have evolved from lower ones. We share most of our genes,
not just with monkeys and dogs, but with fishes and roundworms. This is quite
sufficient to demolish all the arguments of the Creationists and "intelligent design"
merchants.
"Intelligent design"
The decay of capitalism is an expression of
its inability to develop the productive forces as it did in the past. This
inevitably has serious intellectual consequences. Dialectics teaches us that
human consciousness in general is not revolutionary but profoundly
conservative. It tends to lag behind the development of the productive forces.
Men and women initially react to change by clinging to the old, familiar ideas,
habits, traditions and routine. It requires great historic events to shake them
out of this routine and impel them on the road to revolution. This process is
neither simple nor painless.
As incredible as it may seem, in the first decade of the twenty first
century, religion is experiencing a revival, not only in the form of Islamic
fundamentalism, but also of Christian, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalism. The
President of the United
States firmly believes that God created the
world in six days, that man was created from dust and that the first woman was
made out of one of his ribs, and so on. The Founding Fathers of the United States
were rationalists and products of the French Enlightenment. Many of them were
agnostics or even atheists. But if we were able to open the brain of George W.
Bush and peer inside, we would see all the accumulated rubbish of the last
2,000 years.
At a time when the discoveries of
science-particularly in the United
States-are unlocking all the secrets of
nature and establishing the material conditions for a new stage in human
civilization, we are witnessing on all sides a monstrous regression of culture.
It is as if capitalism in its phase of senile decay is returning to its
childhood. And there can be few spectacles as nauseating as a decrepit old man
who has lost his powers of reason and has become mentally childish.
"Intelligent design" is merely
the resurrection under a more plausible name of the Creationist movement, which
in the USA
involves millions of people and is backed by some scientists. The ideas of Darwin are being challenged in the USA by
supporters of the so-called intelligent design theory. They demand that
American schoolchildren be made to read the First Book of Genesis as an
alternative "theory" to Darwinism. If this movement were to
succeed, we would be back in the Dark Ages when men and women prostrated
themselves before graven idols and burnt witches at the stake.
The revelations of the Human Genome Project
have cut the ground from under the feet of the reactionaries. It has decisively
settled the old "nature" versus "nurture" controversy. It
shows that the number of genes in humans is not more than 23,000. This has
shattered the case for biological-genetic determinism at a single stroke. The
relatively small number of genes rules out the possibility of individual genes
controlling and shaping behaviour patterns such as criminality and sexual
preference.
We share our genes with other species going
far back into the mists of time. Evolution is very economical. It constantly
fashions new genes from old parts. Thus, the idea of the supporters of "intelligent design"
theory that humans are a special creation of God is exploded. Human beings have
only about 3,000 more genes than the humble roundworm, a creature with a body
of 959 cells, of which 302 are neurons in what passes for its brain. By
contrast, humans have 100 trillion cells in their body, including 100 billion
brain cells.
Thus, the human genome holds important
philosophical and political implications. The biological determinists insisted
that in some way genes are responsible for things, like homosexuality and
criminality. They attempted to reduce all social problems to the level of
genetics. We criticised these false theories in Reason in Revolt, but at
that time we had no means of knowing that in a few years their unscientific
character would be so clearly demonstrated. As I wrote in the preface to the
second Spanish edition in 2001:
"The latest discoveries have finally exploded the nonsense of
Creationism. It has comprehensively demolished the notion that every species
was created separately, and that Man, with his eternal soul, was especially
created to sing the praises of the Lord. It is now clearly proved that humans
are not at all unique creations. The results of the Human Genome Project show
conclusively that we share our genes with other species-that ancient genes
helped to make us who we are. In fact, a small part of this common genetic
inheritance can be traced back to primitive organisms such as bacteria."
Marxism
and optimism
Ted Grant was an incorrigible optimist all
his life. Marxists are optimistic by their very nature because of two things:
the philosophy of dialectical materialism, and our faith in the working class
and the socialist future of humanity. Most people look only at the surface of
the events that shape their lives and determine their destiny. Dialectics
teaches one to look beyond the immediate, to penetrate beyond the appearance of
stability and calm, and to see the seething contradictions and ceaseless
movement that lies beneath the surface. The idea of constant change, in which
sooner or later everything changes into its opposite enables a Marxist to rise
above the immediate situation and to see the broader picture.
In the 15 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have witnessed an unprecedented
ideological offensive against the ideas of Marxism. Ted and I wrote Reason in Revolt to answer the critics
of Marxism. And history has not taken long to prove us right. In the space of
little more than a decade not one stone upon another is left of the absurd
delusions of the bourgeoisie. On a world scale the capitalist system is in
crisis. War follows war. Terrorism spreads like an uncontrollable epidemic.
Millions of people live in poverty on the edge of starvation. In one country
after another elements of barbarism are appearing. The very future of the
planet is threatened by global ecological degradation.
In the period of the decline of the Roman Empire people believed that the end of the world
was approaching. This idea had its clearest expression in the Christian
religion and the Book of Revelations. In the period of the decline of feudalism
the same idea was revived by the Flagellants and other millenarian sects who
confidently awaited the Day of Judgement when the earth and all its inhabitants
would be consumed with fire. But in reality what was approaching was not the
end of the world but only the end of a particular socio-economic system that
had exhausted its potential for progress.
In the first decade of the twenty first
century the capitalist system, together with its values, morality, politics and
philosophy, finds itself in a blind alley. The ingrained pessimism of the
bourgeoisie and its ideologues in this period is manifested in the poverty of
its thought, the triviality of its art and the emptiness of its spiritual
values. It is expressed in the wretched philosophy of post-modernism, which
imagines itself to be superior to all previous philosophy, when in reality it
is vastly inferior.
In its youth the bourgeoisie was capable of
producing great thinkers: Locke, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Adam Smith and Ricardo.
In the period of its decline, it is only capable of producing what Marx
describes as flea-crackers. They talk of the end of ideology and the end of
history in the same breath. They do not believe in progress because the
bourgeoisie has long since ceased to be progressive. When they talk of the end
of history it is because they have ended in an historical dead-end and can see
no way out. When they talk of the end of ideology it is because they are no
longer capable of producing one.
Capitalism is not something eternal, as its
defenders would like us to believe. It is a very recent phenomenon with a
turbulent past, a shaky present, and no future at all. The comforting illusions
of the past, the notion that the free market economy held the key that could
unlock all doors barring the way to progress and universal happiness, have all
been shattered. In a vague way, the ideologues of the bourgeoisie sense that
the system they defend is reaching its end. Naturally, they cannot accept this.
A man on the edge of a precipice is not capable of rational thought. The spread
of irrational tendencies, mysticism and religious fanaticism reflect the same thing.
It did not take long for all the
contradictions to come to the surface. On a world scale the situation is
characterised by extreme turbulence and volatility. This is expressed in the
turbulence on world stock markets. The present slowdown shows that the boom is
running out of steam, and this is preparing the way for a global recession, as
Greenspan was recently compelled to admit. At bottom, what this expresses is
the revolt of the productive forces against the straitjackets of private
ownership and the national state. The system is being shaken by one shock after
another. The earlier confidence has evaporated. The articles in the bourgeois
press are full of foreboding.
The crisis of capitalism has produced an
opposite reaction. There is now a growing interest in Marxist ideas. The
so-called anti-globalization movement and the wave of
"anti-capitalist" demonstrations show the existence of a ferment
among the petit-bourgeois youth. The student and middle-class youth reflect the
contradictions that are maturing in the bowels of society. Even before the
crisis has properly matured, there is a general questioning of the kind of
society that could generate such horrors.
In the next period ideas that now are
listened to by small groups will be eagerly sought by hundreds of thousands and
millions. The proof of this can be seen by what is happening in Venezuela,
where socialist and Marxist ideas are being enthusiastically debated in every
factory and village. It is no accident that Reason
in Revolt is a best-seller in Venezuela, and has been warmly
recommended by Hugo Chávez. What has happened in Venezuela
today will happen tomorrow in Britain,
in Russia, in China and the USA itself.
The main contradiction is that the big
battalions of the proletariat in the industrialised capitalist countries have
still not moved. The crisis of humanity can be reduced to the crisis of
leadership of the proletariat. The right-wing leaders of the workers’ parties
and trade unions-the product of decades of reformist degeneration-are holding
the movement back. But that will change. In the next period these organizations
will be shaken from top to bottom. At a certain stage mass left-wing tendencies
will emerge, which will move in the direction of Marxism.
The discussion of socialism of the 21st
century in Venezuela
is an important development, which has led to an enormous interest in
the ideas
of Marxism. It is true that the revisionists of the Heinz Dieterich
type are
moving heaven and earth to erect a barrier between the masses and
Marxism,
alleging that Marxism is out of date and that we need to create a new
and
entirely novel system of ideas that will, they assure us, be the
authentic "socialism of the 21st century". But on closer inspection we
see that this
brand of ideas is neither new nor socialist, but only a rehash of the
utopian
attempts of the reformists to create "capitalism
with a human face".
We do not need to reinvent socialism, just
as we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The most modern analysis of the world
of the 21st century is the Communist
Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels over 150 years ago. For in the pages
of the Manifesto we have a precise
description of the world, not as it was in 1848, but as it is today. This fact,
in and of itself, is a striking proof of the superiority of the scientific
method of Marxism, which is rooted in the method of dialectical materialism.
Does this mean that Marxism admits of no
modification and change? Of course, not! Marxism must take into account all the
changes in the objective situation, or else it would not be a scientific method
but a lifeless dogma. But what is really remarkable is how few adjustments we
have to make to the ideas that were worked out by Marx and Engels in the 19th
century and developed and enriched by Lenin and Trotsky in the 20th
century. We may make this or that change, but in all the fundamentals the basic
ideas retain all their vigour and actuality.
In writing Reason in Revolt, I was deeply impressed by the fact that the
discoveries of modern science furnish us with many more examples of the truth
of dialectics than the examples that were available to Engels in the 19th
century. The method of Marxism provides one with all the basic tools needed to
analyse and understand living reality. Dialectical materialism allows us to
study reality, not as a series of dry, unconnected, senseless events or
"facts", but as a dynamic process, driven by its internal
contradictions, ever changing and with an infinitely rich content. Marxism is
much more than a political doctrine, or a theory of economics. It is the
philosophy of the future.
London, March 15, 2007
