"Dialectics cannot be imposed upon facts; it has to be deduced from facts, from their nature and development."-Trotsky.
One of the chief claims of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) and the "International Committee of the Fourth International," the ex-Trotskyist sect led by Gerry Healy, is that it stands on the ground of the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. Yet the Healyites disregard even the most elementary positions, not only of Marxist politics but also of its philosophy, as can be seen in virtually every article they write.!
The prime role that "dialectical materialism" serves for the WRP and the "International Committee" is to provide a pseudo- Marxist smoke screen behind which they settle their real business by virtually the sole weapons they are now capable of utilizing or understanding-falsification, lying, slander, and physical violence (see accompanying box). As Joseph Hansen has rightly put it:
Healy's "dialectics," it is clear, serves a quite utilitarian purpose. In the factionalism promoted by the headquarters gang, it is handled as a battle weapon like lying or mud-slinging. Insofar as it amounts to a logic, it merely reflects Healy's organizational methods. ... "holding opposites fast" means calling a group of critical members into the Centre for "interviews" and giving each one a good clobbering.?
The Healyite leaders also use "dialectics" in another way—awing their supporters into believing that these gangster methods are the height of Marxism. Again as Hansen has put it:
Its adherents genuinely believe in it, or at least are awed by the claims made for it, or are wary of the perils that can face those who voice doubts.?
The bases of Healy's departures from Marxism on dialectical materialism and politics have been many times previously dealt with in Intercontinental Press and elsewhere.* However a number of new developments in the last period make the matter worth returning to. These are:
• The political course of the Healyites has reached a new, qualitative point of degeneration with the WRP's explicit alliance with the demagogic, bourgeois nationalist regime of Qaddafi of Libya and the WRP's campaign in Britain to bring down the government of Labour ministers kept in office by the Labour-Liberal pact."
• The Healyites have stepped up their slander campaign against Joseph Hansen and George Novack with a further escalation of false charges.®
• The WRP's resurrected "theoretical" journal Labour Review descends to such a level of falsification and slander in contrast to the fine journal of the same name their predecessors were able to put out in the 1950s that it represents a real yardstick of degeneration.?
• The last two or three years have seen
7. This journal, particularly its editorials, is a perfect reflection of the ignorance, insularity, and falsifications of the Healyites.
The editorial in the first issue "Introducing the new journal" got off to a start in usual Healyite style by announcing that the most important development in the world at the time was unfolding in Britain-with the WRP in the leadership of course:
*It [Labour Review| appears during a period of the deepest-ever crisis for the world capitalist system and for its agencies inside the international working class movement-Stalinism and social democracy. Nowhere is this crisis sharper and more revolutionary in its implications than in Britain." (Labour Review, June 1977, p. 1. Emphasis added.)
On the Healyite provincial scale of values the situations in Italy, France, Spain, and southern Africa all pale beside the one in Britain!
Following this is an even more bizarre display of chauvinist insularity:
"... we are convinced that Labour Review can and will be a decisive weapon in the coming a number of "theoretical" productions of the WRP leadership that show an even greater departure from Marxism than that of the 1960s or early 1970s.8
• The continuing degeneration of the WRP has been paralleled by crises and splits among various tendencies that attempted to build organizations on the basis of defending the supposedly correct positions taken by the Healyites at the time of, or immediately following, their break with the Fourth International in 1963.9
revolution." (Ibid., P. 5. Emphasis English added.)
That, at least, well and truly puts the people of Scotland and Wales in their place!
All this is, of course, in addition to the usual charge that the Fourth International is covering up the exposure of Hansen and Novak as "accomplices of the GPU."
We need merely compare these ravings to the Labour Review of the late 1950s to measure the degeneration of the Healyites in the field of theory. The original Labour Review was a fine theoretical journal. Articles by Brian Pearce on the early history of the British Communist Party and the history of Bolshevism can be read with profit even today. Tom Kemp wrote serious reasoned articles on the class nature of the Soviet Union and economic situation. A Cliff Slaughter of different vintage was acknowledging the importance of Gramsci and even Lukacs. Isaac Deutscher, the very mention of whose name in a "Pabloite" publication today would arouse the Healyites to a frenzy of denunciation, was a contributor. Labour Review was not even presented as a specifically Trotskyist journal but was projected in a way that would be denounced as the last word in "liquidationism" today:
"We do want, however, to emphasize that Labour Review is not a sectional, Trotskyist journal. We wish to make it the main journal for conducting the principled discussion of every aspect of revolutionary theory.... Our columns are open to all who wish to put a point of view on how Marxist science is to be enriched." (Labour Review, March/April, 1957, p. 36. Emphasis in original.)
The descent of Labour Review from its original achievements to its present level of falsifications and display of ignorance offers a case for the textbooks on how the Healyites carried out their self-proclaimed central task of "developing theory."
All this should give food for thought to those who did not see the WRP as having degenerated, or who failed to appreciate the true roots of the degeneration and were unable to find their way to the Fourth International. The aim of this article is to examine a few of the Healyites' revisions of Marxism—in particular those connected with rejection of dialectical materialismthat provide a smoke screen for their real political positions.° By showing some of Healy's most obvious departures from Marxism it is hoped that those militants at present breaking from the WRP, or having suffered reverses in attempts to create organizations based on its allegedly progressive features in the 1960s or early 1970s, will be led to making a more thoroughgoing study of the sources of the Healyites' break with Trotskyism."
for ignorance and falsification. It enables us to see why the Healyites stopped even pretending to deal with the arguments of their opponents and proceeded to the simpler business of frame-ups of people as "GPU accomplices," "FBI informers," and the like.
10. I have chosen to deal with the particular question of Marxist philosophy, and its relation to some fundamental questions of politics, for a to some rundamental questions of politics, tor a number of reasons:
• It is where the Healyites make the greatest pretensions, attempting to awe their supporters, but where their abandonment of Marxism stands among the most grotesque and complete.
• It is possible here to show quite clearly that the current glaring degeneration of the Healyites is rooted in their breaks with Marxism in the late 1950s and early 1960s that culminated in their split with the Fourth International in 1963.
• It allows us to demonstrate clearly why Healy is forced to stage his frame-up of Joseph Hansen and George Novack. From 1960 onwards Healy proved incapable of dealing with any major political question in his polemic against the Fourth International and the SWP. He avoided all such serious discussion and staked everything on his alleged defense of dialectical materialism against revisionism. However, as we shall see, the Fourth International and the SWP in general, and Joseph Hansen and George Novack in particular, exposed the Healyites not merely as revisionists in Marxist politics but also abandoners of dialectical materialism. as Healy's pretensions and falsifications were totally unmasked—as anyone reading the material would realize. Therefore Healy had to attempt to block serious study of the writings and positions of Hansen, Novack, and the Fourth International. Hence the frame-up campaign accusing his opponents of being "GPU accomplices," "FBI informers," and the like.
11. The most important source for this is, as indicated above, Marxism Vs. Ultraleftism.
Finally there is a more general reason for taking up the question of Healy's falsifications of Marxist philosophy. Dialectical materialism has always been one of the chief targets of assault not only by bourgeois ideologues but by political reformists and centrists. They deny it is scientifically correct, and present it as a ridiculous rigmarole of quasi-religious obscurantism, whose role is to allow total falsehoods to be presented in authoritative guise. There is no doubt that despite limited dissemination the distortions of the Healyites have aided reformists and centrists in their denigration of dialectical materialism. By not treating dialectical materialism as a serious study, but abusing its terminology as a form of mystification to cover over their political gangsterism, the Healyites have served to travesty Marxist philosophy—much in the same way that for a period they succeeded in discrediting the name of Trotskyism itself in Britain. To show that the diverse interpretations of Marxist philosophy have an influence upon the way current political problems are taken up and trends formed within the workers movement, we need only look at the reformist and ultraleft use made of the views of the younger Lukacs, the reformist and centrist utilization of Colletti, the disparate utilization of Althusser. Clearing away the Healyite ideological rubbish, and opening the way for serious work thus becomes a necessary task of theoretical clarification.!?
I do not intend to follow the Healyites through all their labyrinthine meander. ings on dialectical materialism. This would be both pointless—a large part of their writings are either meaningless!? or openly revisionist for totally pragmatie endsl4—and in any case it is unnecessary to take up all their nonsense. The Healyites have quite clearly taken their central philosophical stand. They launched their offensive against Hansen, Novack, and the rest of the Fourth International for unequivocally stating that Marxism proceeds from facts. As this question concerns the basic proposition of dialectical materialism-and any other school of materialism-it is well worth pursuing.
The issue can be put quite simply. Does Marxism, like all correct science, proceed from facts? Marxism, dialectical materialism, Hansen, and Novack say Yes. The Healyites say No. By that answer they reject the keystone of the structure of Marxist philosophy and science, so it is unnecessary to follow the Healyites through all their sordid byways. As we shall see, the Healyites' rejection of the position that Marxism proceeds from facts leads them to reject the foundation of dialectical materialism.
1. Historical Materialism and Facts
In the last major document they put out before splitting from the Fourth International in 1963, which they aptly titled Opportunism and Empiricism, the Healyites spelt out their conception of the relation between theory and the facts of material reality against the alleged "empiricism" and "revisionism" of Hansen, Novack, the SWP, and the Fourth International. They stated:
Dialectical analysis insists on seeing facts in the context of a whole series of interrelated processes, not as finished, independent entities about which "practical' decisions have to be made.'
When we attack empiricism we attack that method of approach which says all statements, to be meaningful, must refer to observable or measurable data in their immediately given form.'
"Facts" are Abstractions.'?
This method [empiricism—A.J.J insists that any "abstract" concepts, reflecting the general and historical implications of these "facts" are meaningless. It neglects entirely that our general concepts reflect the laws of development and interconnection of the process which these "facts" help to constitute. Indeed the so-called hard facts of concrete experience are themselves abstractions from this process. They are the result of the first approximation of our brains to
Trotsky pointed out:
"Philosophic materialism is a theory imbedded in the foundation of natural sciences; while historical materialism explains the history of human society. ... It is difficult, if not impossible, to be a Marxist in politics and remain ignorant of historical materialism. It is quite possible to be a Marxist in politics and not know about philosophic materialism; such instances can be adduced to any number." (Trotsky: "Marxism and Military Knowledge" in the essential interrelations, laws of motion, contradictions of the eternally changing and complex world of matter... of which they form a part. 1s
They conclude from this:
Only higher abstractions, in advanced theory, can guide us to the meaning of these facts.19
It is from these 1963 positions that the later "developments" of Healyite philosophy flow, such as: "By starting from the primacy of facts and deriving the significance of dialectics from them, you [Novack] actually deny the dialectical character of knowledge and its development."20 And equating the concrete with appearance, as in: "
... the process of movement from abstract to concrete, from essence to
21 Plus the view that the appearance... • particular is appearance, as with: "... the appearance (the particular).. "22
It is precisely because Hansen, Novack,
Military Writings [New York: Merit Publishers, 1969], p. 110.)
14. Thus, for example, at the time of Alan Thornett's resignation, and then expulsion, from the WRP, Healy suddenly discovered that unity and not contradiction was the fundamental feature of Marx's philosophy which had to be expressed. (See Healy: "Some Notes Towards a Study of Thornett's Philosophy"-WRP Internal Document, 1975) The unbelievable Banda got himself into incredible knots in Whither Thor nett? in attempting to defend Healy's blatant revision of the basic dialectical materialist point that contradiction is absolute and unity relative (see footnote 34 below). Healy's sudden stress on unity was somehow, we feel, not exactly unconnected to the fact that Healy wanted to stop more people from following Thornett out of the WRP! For a good exposure of Healy's maneuvers and revisions of Marxist philosophy at this time, see "Healy Revises Marxist Philosophy" in Social ist Press, March 20, 1975.
and other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International reject all this nonsense, and instead insist that Marxism proceed from facts, that the Healyites launched their tirades concerning "empiricism," "revisionism," etc.
The first part of these Healyite ramblings is of course pure bluff. No one in the Marxist movement or the Fourth International has ever held that statements to be meaningful or correct "must refer to observable or measurable data in their immediately given form." Indeed if any of them did hold such a position it would be unnecessary to engage in any theoretical work whatever, for, as Marx put it, "all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. 23
The point at issue has nothing to do with "immediately given form" but with the relation of theory and facts. The question is whether ultimately it is facts that are fundamental, determining theory, or whether it is theory that is fundamental, determining facts.
Let us turn to what Marxism, as opposed to Healyism, has to say on this question.
Theory and Materialism
In order to approach the real relation of theory and facts the first thing that we may readily establish is that Marxism does indeed attribute tremendous significance to revolutionary theory. This point is obvious even from the evidence of the huge number of fundamental writings of Marx and Engels, the forty-five volumes of Lenin's Collected Works, the hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles produced by Trotsky, Luxemburg, and all the other Marxists of note. Lenin phrased it scientifically when he said: "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."24 From this it follows that "to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree, means to strengthen bourgeois ideology."25
To those outside Marxism, of course, this emphasis on, and disputes over, theory frequently seems absurd. However, the attitude of those who understand the significance of Marxism was summed up in an anecdote told by Lenin's companion Krupskaya:
Vladimir Ilyich and I recalled a simile that L. Tolstoy used somewhere: Once when walking, he spotted in the distance the figure of a man squatting on his haunches and moving his hands about in an absurd way; a madman, he thought-but on drawing nearer, he saw that it was a man sharpening his knife on the pavingstone. It is the same thing with theoretical controversies. Heard from aside, they do not seem worth quarreling about, but once the gist is grasped, it is realised that the matter is of the utmost importance.28
Crucial as Marxists consider theory to be, however, they also hold something else to be true. Marxism is a materialism. It does not consider that theory itself is the ultimate criterion of truth. The final criterion of correctness or incorrectness is not theory but correspondence to material reality. As Engels put it:
the principles are not the starting point of the investigation, but its final result; they are not applied to nature and human history, but abstracted from them; it is not nature and the realm of humanity which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid in so far as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialistic conception of the matter. ... [Emphasis added.]?
Having made these basic points we will now go through the Healyite argument section by section to show clearly where it departs from Marxism.
Facts and Processes
The starting point of the Healyite argument is, as we have seen, the following:
Dialectical analysis insiste on seeing facts in the context of a whole series of interrelated processes, not as finished, independent entities about which "practical" decisions have to be made.28
The last part of this sentence is a typical piece of Healyite bluff as no Marxist ever suggested that facts were "finished, independent entities" with or without making "practical decisions" about them.
contrary all Marxists, and On the therefore Novack, Hansen, and other writers of the Fourth International, polemicize ceaselessly against this real idea of actual empiricism.?9 The first part of the Healyite sentence, however, although very badly formulated, is
In his article "Healyite Revisionism in the Field of Philosophy," reprinted in Marxism Vs. Ultraleftism (p. 247), Novack precisely notes: "Marxists part company with the empiricists by considering facts, not as isolated, fixed, and selfsustaining entities, but as changing historical products that appear in concrete contexts and evidently intended as a paraphrase of the famous statement of Engels on dialectics:
The great basic thought that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes... 30
This position of Engels is indeed a fundamental aspect of Marxist philosophy. It means, follows from, and entails that:
••. the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away... 31
In short, the entire apparently stable material world is in reality:
••. in eternal coming into being and passing away, in ceaseless flux, in unresting motion and change. ...32
The driving force of this continuous change, this creation and destruction of things, is the relation-within the unity of contradictions that comprises each thingbetween contradiction and unity. In the famous words of Lenin, which the Healyites sometimes also like to quote:
The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitive, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute.33
special forms and that have to be taken in their interconnections and interactions."
Innumerable other examples and concrete applications could be given. The Healyite attack on this point is a tissue of lies from beginning to end.
It is from this that we can see the real Marxist position on the nature of things and facts. A particular thing, or fact, is not something permanent but a temporary relative unity of opposites. The development of its internal contradictions finally leads to its breakup and replacement by some new thing or fact. Its contradiction is absolute and its unity relative. However, from the point that the thing or fact is a temporary relative unity of contradictions, it does not flow that it is unreal, merely appearance, and the like. On the contrary it is a definite, real fact or thing with a specific form of manifestation.
To illustrate this point we need merely take the case of capitalism itself. Capitalism really exists. It exists as a real actual social system and not at all as a mere figment of the imagination. But it exists as a unity of contradictions—in particular it contains the contradiction between a socialized mode of production and an individual mode of appropriation, which gives rise to the contradiction of working class and bourgeoisie.
Whether you hold that it is the unity of the
This question of understanding the absolute character of contradiction, and the relative character of unity, is indeed fundamental in issues of Marxist theory. It is this which is the source of endless change in reality, the creation and destruction of things, their continual transition one into the other. Again in Lenin's words:
The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their "self-movement,"
working class and bourgeoisie in the entity capitalism that is absolute, or whether on the contrary it is their contradiction that is absolute evidently determines the entire analysis of polities. If the unity of proletariat and bourgeoisie is absolute, and their contradiction relative, then the task becomes to conciliate between classes; and the class struggle is an unfortunate friction to be resolved as soon as possible. If, on the other hand, the contradiction of proletariat and bourgeoisie is absolute, and any unity in capitalism is merely relative, then the fundamental issue and policy is the irreconcilable struggle of the classes, which continues until the relative unity is destroyed and the entity of capitalism is replaced by a new entity-the dictatorship of the proletariat in transition towards socialism. Marxism of course gives its own answer on capitalism. It is precisely the contradiction of the classes which is absolute. But this does not alter the situation that capitalism is real.
On this point for once a Healyite publication got it right when Tim Wolforth wrote:
"The existing workers movement is a unity of opposites-the leadership reflecting essentially the interests of the capitalists and the working class seeking to fight back against capitalist attacks. At the moment there is a relative idenin their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the "struggle" of opposites. The two basic conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).
In the first conception of motion, selfmovement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external-God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to the knowledge of the source of "self" movement.
The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes tity between the two and this identity cannot be destroyed except through the intervention of the conscious factor—our struggle to pit the working class against the leadership and in the course of this struggle build the parties of the Fourth International as the alternative.
"The breaking of the unity between the opposi tion forces of the rank-and-file workers and capital reflected through the leadership and its ideology is a necessary part of breaking the capitalist system itself which is a contradictory unity between capital and labour." (Wohlforth: "Revisionists in Crisis" in the August 25, 1969 Bulletin, supplement p. S-8. Emphasis added.)
Although this passage is not consistent with other parts of the same text this formulation is correct on the question of absolute contradiction and relative unity-and in sharp contrast to other Healyite writings. Perhaps this indicates that it was not accidental that Tim Wolforth broke with Healy!
Notes
1. A record of all the Healyite revisions of Marxism would take too long to deal with fully here. For an extensive discussion, see Marxism Vs. Ultraleftism: The Record of Healy's Break With Trotskyism (New York: National Education Department of the Socialist Workers Party, 1974). For examples of the Healyites' gross breaks with even the most elementary Marxist positions, readers are referred in particular to the sections in this collection on Healyite revisions involving economic theory, philosophy, Black nationalism, permanent revolution, Ireland, and the oppression of women.
2. "The Secret of Healy's Dialectics"" by Joseph Hansen in Intercontinental Press, March 31, 1975, p. 442.
3. Ibid., p. 442.
4. See the various articles by George Novack reprinted in Marxism Vs. Ultraleftism.
5. See "Healy's Political Pact With Qadaffi" by Steve Wattenmaker in Intercontinental Press, December 12, 1977, p. 1377.
6. See "JOSEPH HANSEN: A double agent at work" in News Line, February 25, 1978.
8. See for example Slaughter: Marxism and the Class Struggle (London: New Park Publications Ltd., 1975); Banda and Jeffries: A Reply to the British Agents of the OCI Liquidationists (London: Workers Revolutionary Party, 1974); What Makes Wohlforth Run? Workers League Political Committee Statement (New York: Labor Publications, Inc., 1975); Banda: Whither Thornett? (London: Workers Revolutionary Party, 1975). This last hack job in particular takes the prize
9. The Bulletin Group, which considered that even in October 1975 "the WRP remains a Trotskyist organization" (Marxist Bulletin, Winter 1976, p. 7), has split into two groups. The Workers Socialist League, which defended the policies of the WRP up to 1973, has suffered three splits-the most recent being in February 1978 when around fifteen to twenty percent of its members left in favor of fusion with the Spartacists of the United States.
12. Which is not to say that an immediate identity can be drawn between polities and philosophy, as the Healyites insist. However, rejection of dialectical materialism is usually a highly symptomatic sign of movement away from Marxist politics. Trotsky's admonition should nonetheless be borne in mind: "To demand that every party member occupy himself with the philosophy of dialectics naturally would be lifeless pedantry." ("A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party" in In Defense of Marxism [New York: Pathfinder Press, Inc.], p. 45.)
13. For an analysis of some typical pieces of nonsense by the Healyites, see "WRP Puts Marxism on the Rack" in Socialist Press, June 12, 1975.
15. "Opportunism and Empiricism" in Trotskyism Versus Revisionism (London: New Park Publications Ltd., 1974), Vol. 4, p. 78.
16. Ibid., p. 81.
17. Ibid., subheading p. 81.
18. Ibid., pp. 81-82. Emphasis in original.
19. Ibid., p. 82. Emphasis in original. Here, as in some of the preceding quotations, the Healyites are guilty of sophistry-trying to substitute a different subject for the one at issue. The dispute is not over the necessity of theory to ascertain the meaning of facts and to determine a correct basis for action in relation to them.
20. Falk: "An Open Letter to George Novack"; cited by Novak in "Facts Are Stubborn Things" in Marxism Vs. Ultraleftism, p. 251.
21. Jeffries: "Marx and Classical Political Economy: Part 3" in Workers Press, May 3, 1972.
22. What Makes Wolforth Run? (New York: Labor Publications, Inc., 1975), p.14.
23. Marx: Capital (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), Vol. 3, p. 817.
24. Lenin: Collected Works (CW), Vol. 5, p. 369.
25. Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 385. Emphasis in original.
26. Krupskaya: Memories of Lenin (London: Panther, 1970), p. 84.
27. Engels: Anti-Duhring (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954), p. 54.
28. Trotskyism Versus Revisionism, Vol. 4, p. 78.
29. We need only take a few examples. Thus George Novack in his book Empiricism and Its Evolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1968) attacks the founder of the school of empiricism for the fact that "Locke ... pictured the world as composed of independent, self-determining, unchangeable substances" (p. 33) and that "in Locke's view of nature only particular things exist..." (p. 52).
30. Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (MESW), one volume. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968), p. 620.
31. Ibid., p. 620.
32. Engels: Dialectics of Nature (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House 1954) n. 43 eign Languages Publishing House, 1954), p. 43.
33. Lenin: CW, Vol. 38, p. 360.