Arguing some Marxist principles

Peter Symon

In his criticism of the speech made by Sitaram Yechury which was 
published in The Guardian (18/2/04), David Matters 
(letters, 10/3/04) suggests that a more thorough analysis of this 
speech should be made. This is a contribution to that appeal.

Sitaram Yechury, when speaking to the World Social Forum held in 
Mumbai India earlier this year, said that he put forward his 
contribution "in the nature of a healthy provocation". He 
obviously anticipated that it might bring controversy. It would 
be helpful to approach the issues raised in the spirit of 
discussing their content to bring greater understanding.

Sitaram Yechury remarked: "Socialism is the first structure of 
society that was first erected in the mind before it was erected 
in reality".

What does this mean? And is it a departure from Marxism in that 
it is a repudiation of the Marxist concept that the fundamental 
source of ideas is to be found in the economic and social 
conditions of any historical period and that it is these 
objective factors alone that determine developments?

David Matters has drawn the conclusion that "To assert that the 
uniqueness of Socialism is that it was first conceived in the 
human mind is to run back to a view of world development that 
thought is primary (i.e. that it creates the world and in this 
case socialism)".

The remarks of both Sitaram and David raise the question of the 
relationship of thinking to being. This question was fundamental 
in the contest between the Marxists (the materialists) and the 
many brands of idealists. Marxists argue that matter is primary 
and thought is secondary and that thought is the product of 
matter that thinks (the mind).

The idealists in the crudest forms argued that thought was 
primary and matter was the creation of the mind. It is on this 
basis that the creationists derive their explanations of the 
origins of the world and the world around us. It was the will of 
god that brought everything into existence.

Consciousness

The conclusion of the Marxists does not mean that the importance 
of thought (consciousness, ideas) can be ignored and relegated to 
being of no importance in influencing or even determining the 
outcome of events.

As long ago as 1890 Engels made this point. He wrote: "According 
to the materialist view of history, the determining factor in 
history is, in the final analysis, the production and 
reproduction of actual life. More than that was never maintained 
either by Marx or myself. Now if someone distorts this by 
declaring the economic moment to be the only determining factor, 
he changes that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, 
ridiculous piece of jargon".

Engels went on: "The economic situation is the basis, but the 
various factors of the superstructure — political forms of the 
class struggle and its consequences, namely constitutions set up 
by the ruling class after a victorious battle, etc., forms of law 
and, the reflections of all these real struggles in the minds of 
the participants, i.e., political, philosophical and legal 
theories, religious views and the expansion of the same into 
dogmatic systems — all these factors also have a bearing on the 
course of the historical struggles which, in many cases, they 
largely determine the form. (Emphasis in original)

(Full text in Engel's letter to J Bloch. September 21-22, 1890 
Marx-Engels Collected Works Vol 49 p34-35)

Universal emancipation

In his historic work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 
Engels writes: "To accomplish this act of universal emancipation 
is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To 
thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very 
nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian 
class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of 
the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the 
task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, 
scientific Socialism". (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, 
Marx-Engels Collected Works Vol 24 p 325)

Here, Engels makes clear that the task of ending the capitalist 
system and building a socialist one had become a conscious act. 
Furthermore, Marx, Engels and Lenin drew up the general 
principles of the future socialist society before any such 
society came into existence. Humanity was no longer driven by the 
blind, violent and destructive forces that had hitherto driven 
societies.

From necessity to freedom

And to make the point again, Engels wrote in Anti-Duhring:

"With the seizing of the means of production by society, 
production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, 
the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social 
production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The 
struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first 
time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest 
of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of 
existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the 
conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto 
ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who 
for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, 
because he has now become master of his own social organisation 
Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, 
make his own history It is humanity's leap from the kingdom of 
necessity to the kingdom of freedom." (Engels, Anti-Duhring, 
Marx-Engels Collected Works Vol 25 p 270)

It is these concepts summarised above that Sitaram Yechury is 
drawing on when he says that "Socialism is the first structure of 
society that was first erected in the mind before it was erected 
in reality".

This can be tested in another way. The concept of socialism was 
developed decades before it first came into existence following 
the Russian revolution of 1917. That is an historical fact.

Marx and Engels proclaimed this aim even though they did not live 
to see their theory put into practice. Of course they developed 
their theories on the basis of the accumulation of the 
experiences of humanity and the development of the sciences up to 
that time. But they did so by using their brains and testing 
their ideas against practice.

Bourgeois revolutions occurred first of all in Britain and later 
in France and Germany and they proceeded to construct capitalist 
societies. But no one wrote at the time or proclaimed when the 
arising capitalist class seized power, that it would proceed to 
construct a capitalist society.

No one wrote a book called Capitalism: The coming saviour of 
humanity. No one could have made a speech in the rostrums of 
ancient Rome: "We will now proceed to construct slave society" 
although that was the basis of their society and that is what 
came into existence at that time. They did not do so because 
although social classes pursued their economic and political 
interests the people of that time were still not conscious of the 
consequences of their actions.

The rising capitalist class pursued its class interests in 
opposing and setting out to destroy the old and decaying feudal 
societies based on the power of monarchies and feudal lords but 
they proceeded without any knowledge or understanding of what 
they were in fact building.

We know now what they were building but that knowledge came later 
and arose particularly from the analysis of capitalism made by 
Marx, Engels and other revolutionary writers of the times.

David Matters writes that Marx, Engels, Lenin and others "derived 
their thoughts and theories from the material world, i.e., the 
real life events such as the struggles of workers, the Paris 
Commune and the revolutions of 1848 in Europe" Yes, of course 
they did and no-one is arguing that fact. They became conscious 
of the course of events by studying history and the events of 
their times.

Paris Commune

Drawing on the experience of the Paris Commune Engels wrote in 
his Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France: "The 
time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small 
conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness 
is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of 
the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in 
it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what 
they are going in for body and soul. But in order that the masses 
may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is 
required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and 
with a success that drives the enemy to despair." (Engels. 
Introduction to K Marx's The Class Struggles in France. 
Marx-Engels Collected Works. Vol 27 p 520)

This is all about raising the consciousness of the masses and it 
is this work that is a priority task for every communist party. 
In the Russian revolution, a large number of the working people 
knew what they were fighting for.

In today's Cuba a tremendous amount of work to lift the political 
and ideological understanding of masses of people has been 
undertaken and has enabled the Cuban revolutionaries to carry the 
people forward while resisting all the attempts of US imperialism 
to confuse, divide and destroy the Cuban revolution from within. 
The Cuban people have this understanding in their heads and when 
they shout "Socialism or death", they are responding to what they 
understand and have tested against their own experience.

Engels was critical of those who "attribute more importance to 
the economic aspect than is its due" and, thereby, fail to 
understand the relationship between thinking and being and the 
role played by ideas and theory.

"Some pretty peculiar stuff"

He wrote, "Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame. We had to 
stress this leading principle in the face of opponents who denied 
it, and we did not always have the time, space or opportunity to 
do justice to the other factors that interacted upon each other. 
Unfortunately, people all too frequently believe they have 
mastered a new theory and can do just what they like with it as 
soon as they have grasped — not always correctly — its main 
propositions. Nor can I exempt from this reproach many of the 
more recent 'Marxists' who have, indeed, been responsible for 
some pretty peculiar stuff". (Engels letter to J Bloch as above p 
36)

In concluding this part of the discussion it is worthwhile 
recalling the remark of Marx: "Ideas become a material force once 
they have gripped the masses." (Critique of Hegel's Philosophy 
of Right)

It is puzzling that David Matters regarded Sitaram Yechury's 
remarks about the breakup of the Soviet Union and its causes as 
an "attack" on socialism and that he (Yechury) is suggesting 
"that the only escape from bureaucratic distortions is capitalist 
restoration or that Socialism can't be built into a world system 
apart from Imperialism".

Sitaram Yechury lists four causes of the collapse of socialism in 
the Soviet Union and in the socialist states of Eastern Europe. 
They are: "the character of the socialist state; the content of 
socialist democracy, the construction of the socialist economy; 
and inadequate development of ideological consciousness amongst 
the people." He mentions "the extreme centralisation of power in 
the socialist societies".

In the analysis of these same events in 1990 the Socialist Party 
of Australia (now Communist Party) also listed a number of causes 
leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the socialist 
states of eastern Europe. They included a failure to adequately 
develop socialist democracy, a rigid over-centralised and 
bureaucratic economic planning mechanism, the distortion of the 
role of a communist party and its relation to state institutions, 
and a failure to apply Marxist theory to the ever changing 
situation and tasks.

David Matters asserts that "To suggest that we have no theory and 
that we can develop a socialist revolution without theory reeks 
of revisionism". Well, of course, it would amount to revisionism 
if Sitaram Yechury had made such remarks but there is absolutely 
no phrase or words in his whole article to justify such a 
conclusion. Quite the opposite.

Anti-imperialist movement

Sitaram Yechury concluded his speech saying: "Each one of us  
will have to work for integrating the worldwide anti-
globalisation protests with the global anti-war upsurge into a 
mighty anti-imperialist movement.

"This requires, simultaneously, the intensification of the 
ideological combat within these movements that seek to obfuscate 
socialism as the only alternative available to humanity".

This hardly suggests any abandonment of theory or of socialism or 
any compromise with imperialism.

* * *

Peter Symon is the General Secretary
of the Communist Party of Australia.