A scientific understanding of social development demands a complete break with the whole method of the pseudo-social sciences of those who defend the existing social order. But that does not mean that we can neglect the elements of truth that those who practise these disciplines stumble across. Still less can we ignore the often quite profound grasp of the social process to be found in certain non-Marxist historians or in great novelists like Balzac or Walter Scott.
Marxism shows its superiority over bourgeois thought not by simply treating all bourgeois thinkers with contempt, but rather by showing that it can encapsulate the advances made by bourgeois thinkers into its own total view of reality - something which no bourgeois `social scientist' can do and which no bourgeois thinker has attempted since Hegel.
The central role of class struggle
The Marxist approach begins, then, by pointing to the contradictory ways in which the forces of production and the relations of production, the base and the superstructure, material reality and people's ideas, develop. But none of these contradictions simply resolve themselves, as the mechanical materialists assert. Their resolution only takes place on the basis of the struggles of human beings, of class struggles.
Once you have societies divided between those who produce directly and those who live off a surplus product, any growth of the productive forces, however slow and piecemeal, leads to a corresponding change in the objective weight of the different classes in society. And some ways of developing the productive forces lead to qualitative changes, to new ways of extracting a surplus, to the embryos of new exploiting and exploited classes (and, eventually, to the formation of a class that can run society without exploiting anyone).
But the new ways of producing always face resistance from at least some of those whose interests lie in preservation of the old ways. The advance of every new mode of production is always marked by bitter class wars (even if, as with the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, these ways do not always involve clean breaks between classes, but often complicated, cross-cutting alliances between the most dynamic section of the rising class and certain interest groups within the old order). Whether the new ways of producing break through depends on who wins these struggles. Economic developments are very important in this. They determine the size of the different classes, their geographical concentration (and therefore the ease with which they can be organised), their degree of homogeneity, the physical resources at their disposal.
Such direct economic factors can certainly create a situation in which the rising class cannot gain a victory, whatever it does. The objective balance of forces is too powerfully weighted the other way. But when the objective factors create a situation of near equality of forces for the rival classes, what come to matter are other factors - the ideological homogeneity, the organisation and the leadership of the rival classes.
For the mechanical materialist, ideas are simply an automatic reflection of material being. But in real historical processes of social transformation it is never that simple.
The institutions of the old ruling class are continually trying to define the ways in which people throughout society see themselves and their relations with others. The members of the rising class at first accept these definitions as the only ones available to them: so for instance, the early medieval burghers accepted the precepts of medieval Catholicism in their totality.
But the members of a rising class get involved in practical activity which cannot easily be encompassed by the old definitions. People begin to do things which the old world view says they should not. The institutions that enforce the old worldview then threaten punitive action against them.
At this point two options are open. Those involved in the new forms of activity concede to the pressures on them from the old order, and the new forms of activity cease. Or they generalise their clash with the old ideology, developing out of elements of it a new total worldview, behind which they attempt to rally all those in a similar objective situation to themselves.
A new system of ideas is not just a passive reflection of economic changes. It is rather a key link in the process of social transformation, mobilising those affected by cumulative small-scale changes in production into a force whose aim is to change social relations in their entirety.
Take, for instance, the classic debate on Protestantism and the rise of capitalism. According to opponents of Marxism, like Max Weber, it was the autonomous `non-economic' development of a new religious ideology which alone provided the ground in which new capitalist ways of producing could take root. Puritanism caused capitalism.
According to the mechanical materialists, it was the other way round. Protestantism was simply a mechanical reflection of the development of capitalist relations. Capitalism was the cause, Protestantism was the effect.
Each missed out a vital link in the chain of historical development. Protestantism developed because some people in a feudal society began to work and live in ways that are not easily reconcilable with the dominant ideology of medieval Catholicism. They began to reinterpret some of its tenets so as to make sense of their new forms of behaviour. But this led to clashes with the ideological guardians of the old order (the church hierarchy). At this point a series of figures emerged who tried to generalise the challenge to the old ideology - Luther, Calvin, etc. Where the challenge was unsuccessful or where those who made it were forced to compromise (as in Germany, France and Italy), the new ways of working and living became no more than marginal elements in a continuing feudal society. But where the challenge was successful (in Britain and the Netherlands) it liberated the new ways of working and living from the old constraints - it generalised bourgeois forms of production.
The same relationship holds between the workers' struggle under capitalism and the ideas of revolutionary socialism.
Initially, workers try to fit their experience of fighting back against aspects of capitalism into ideological frameworks that are bequeathed to them from the past. These frameworks shape the form their struggles take, so that the struggles are never a simple reflection of material interests. `The deadweight of the past hangs like a nightmare on the brain of the living', as Marx put it. Thе Еіghtееnth Brumаіrе оf Lоuіs Bоnаpаrtе іn Cоllеctеd Wоrks, Vоl. 11, p. 103. Іt іs nоnsеnsе fоr pоst-Аlthussеrіаns lіkе Gаrеth Stеdmаn Jоnеs tо clаіm thаt а Mаrxіst аpprоаch іnvоlvеs аn аttеmpt tо `dеcоdе… pоlіtіcаl lаnguаgе tо rеаd а prіmаl аnd mаtеrіаl еxprеssіоn оf іntеrеst', Lаnguаgе оf Clаss, оp. cіt., p. 21. But the process of trying to interpret their new experiences through old frameworks creates a tension within the old frameworks, which is only resolved as people try to change the frameworks.
As Antonio Gramsci put it, `The active man of the masses works practically, but he does not have a clear, theoretical consciousness of his actions, which is also a knowledge of the world insofar as he changes it.' So there are `two sorts of consciousness', that `implicit in his actions', and that `superficially explicit, which he has inherited from the past and which he accepts without criticism':
“This `verbal' conception is not without consequences; it binds him to a certain social group, influences his moral behaviour and the direction of his will in a more or less powerful way, and it can reach the point where the contradiction of consciousness will not permit any action… [Therefore] the unity of theory and practice is not a given mechanical fact, but a historical process of becoming.” Аntоnіо Grаmscі, “Аvrіаmеntо аllо Studіо dеllа Fіlоsоfіа dеl Mаtеrіаlіsmо Stоrіcо” іn Mаtеrіаlіsmо Stоrіcо (Turіn, 1948), trаnslаtеd іn Thе Mоdеrn Prіncе, Lоndоn, 1957, pp. 66-67.
Thus the Chartists of the 1830s and 1840s attempted to come to terms with new experiences through older, radical democratic notions. But this created all sorts of contradictory ideological formulations. That was why some of the most popular orators and writers were people like Bronterre O'Brien, Julian Harvey and Ernest Jones who began to articulate people's experience in newer, more explicitly socialist ways.
Marxism itself was not a set of ideas that emerged fully formed out of the heads of Marx and Engels and then magically took a grip of the working class movement. The birth of the theory was dependent on a distillation by Marx and Engels of the experiences of the young workers' movement in the years prior to 1848. It has been accepted by workers since then, insofar as it has fitted in with what struggles were already beginning to teach them. But its acceptance has then fed back into the struggles to influence their outcome.
The theory does not simply reflect workers' experience under capitalism; it generalises some elements of that experience (those of struggling against capitalism) into a consciousness of the system as a whole. In doing so, it gives new insights into how to wage the struggle and a new determination to fight.
Theory develops on the basis of practice, but feeds back into practice to influence its effectiveness.
The point is important because theory is not always correct theory. There have historically been very important workers' struggles waged under the influence of incorrect theories:
Proudhonism and Blanquism in France in the second half of the 19th century; Lassallianism in Germany; Narodnism and even Russian Orthodoxism in Russia in the years before 1905;
Peronism in Argentina; Catholicism and nationalism in Poland; and, of course, the terrible twins, social democracy and Stalinism.
In all of these cases workers have gone into struggle influenced by `hybrid' views of the world - views which combine a certain immediate understanding of the needs of class struggle with a more general set of ideas accepting key elements of existing society. Such a false understanding of society in its totality leads to enormous blunders - blunders which again and again have led to massive defeats.
In the face of such confusion and such defeats, nothing is more dangerous than to say that ideas inevitably catch up with reality, that victory is certain. For this invariably leads to a downplaying of the importance of combining the practical and the ideological struggle.
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