A Review of Etienne Balibar's 'Marxist Philosophy Today'

Balibar

First some general comments on the book. The protracted and discrete quotations, many of them very well known, make it appear to be some kind of textbook yet the main text is often written at a fairly high level of abstraction as befits its obviously academic audience. The organisation is fairly eclectic and often it is difficult, for me anyway, to determine any real flow in Balibar's pot pourri of argumentation. Non sequitur's are rather prevalent. Read it carefully and you notice that many sentences and whole passages have little in commonality with what went before. This seems such a constant feature of the text that it is probably more than a translation problem. The text has an eclectic nature which will appeal to some readers because they think that this is what philosophy is: non-rigorous intersecting of concepts is viewed as profundity.

(Marxist philosophy today, in my opinion, is better represented by someone like William Ash, ('Marxism and Moral Concepts'-'Marxist Morality'), whose work is grounded in Marxist discourse in a detailed and systematic manner.)

Chapter four of 'Marxist Philosophy Today' contains a plethora of topics, negation of the negation p.81, ambiguity of the dialectic p.83, Marxist ideology of progress p.85, economism of Second and Third Internationals p.87.

I suppose that this could be condensed down to two parts in a section entitled Marxism and History. Dialectical materialism and historical materialism. However, Whilst some important works on histmat do exist, Franz Mehring 'On Historical Materialism' for instance, I take it that no one now believes that stages of historical movement can be predicted with a preciseness akin to the natural sciences. Unfortunately there has been a concentration in Marxist theory on interpreting history in terms of meta-predictions which have usually been based on superficial and impressionistic analysis and have mainly proved to be wildly inaccurate. The number of variables involved, and the "intrinsic nature of mental phenomena", (to use Searle's phrase), in any case make accurate meta-prediction highly unlikely if not impossible.

A more useful orientation towards histmat may be to attempt to understand how specific social phenomena may effect a societies development. For example, to attempt to understand how geographical and environmental conditions can allow one to project some possible economic aspects of social development, (William Shaw 'Marx's Theory of History'), or how cultural traditions could impact on socio-ideational formations, (Georg Lukacs, 'The Destruction of Reason'.

Many Marxists are hostile to this type of analysis because they view all capitalist societies as essentially similar with the one single problem, a capitalist socio-economic structure, and socialism is seen as a complete solution to all problems. Essentially there tends to be a focus on combined rather than uneven development. Despite its idealism the early Frankfurt School did at least research into social phenomena such as the authoritarian personality and anti-semitism.

Here I want to do something different and talk about diamat and its application in a specific historical situation: how history influenced the dialectic rather than how the dialectic influenced history.

A qualification

Before starting the discussion proper I want to briefly deal with the idea that crops up with monotonous regularity that Marx finished with philosophy. The Eleventh Theses on Feuerbach reads:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it"

This thesis has been misunderstood by the left, (who read it as the close of philosophy), and in academia, (where the relative autonomy of philosophical thought from social life has been, at times, rendered as absolute autonomy). Both misconceptions tend to reinforce each other. In contrast Theodore Oizerman presents a dialectical interpretation of the final thesis.

"To counter the many non-Marxist interpretations of that thesis, one should stress the following: Marx does not at all reject the need for a philosophical explanation of the world. He is against reducing the mission of philosophy to the interpretation of that which exists because such self-restriction opposes philosophy to the struggle for a radical transformation of reality. Thus the true meaning of this thesis is a categorical imperative: to make philosophy a theoretical substantiation of the need for the revolutionary transformation of the world". ('Dialectical Materialism and the History of Philosophy', Progress, Moscow, 1982, p.86.)

Without assimilating some basic points regarding the particular manner in which Marxist philosophy developed it is impossible to understand the misconceptions, not to say crude vulgarisations, which exist about it. Many of the theoretical 'negations' of the model are derived from commentaries which are themselves only partial 'readings' of its origination and application.

One can note that the publication of some of Marx's major philosophical works was delayed. As Colletti notes:

"Marx's youthful philosophical work was for the most part only discovered comparatively recently". (1) For example the 'German Ideology' was not published until 1932 in complete form and the 'Paris Manuscripts' were published the same year.

The consequences of such a delay were that Marxist theorists before that time had to rely on extrapolating Marx's philosophical precepts from Capital and other (non-philosophical) works. (2)

It was inevitable, then, that the work of Marx's closest collaborator should fill the vacuum not only because of his systematic presentation of a Marxist philosophical system, (3) but precisely because of the authority invested in him due to the collaboration. It is true to say that, "Engels arguments in the Anti-Duhring decisively influenced the later life of the theory". (4)

In the historical period in which Marx and Engels were writing, it was necessary to emphasise the 'positivist' aspect to Marxist theory in opposition to the influence of utopian socialism. (5) It is also worth noting, and cannot be emphasised too much, that dialectical movement is drawn from nature itself. Dialectical movement even if it was not always referred to by that name, dates from, at least, 5000 B.C. in China through the ancient Greeks to the present day. Indeed, one of the interesting points about dialectical movement is the manner in which it appears, and re-appears, in philosophical discourses radically differentiated in time, structuration, geography and orientation. This appears to lend substance to the surmise that the dialectic enjoys a certain explanatory primacy drawn from reality. As Guido De Ruggeiro puts it dialectic is "reality in the making", i.e., it is not an abstract intellectual invention but emanates from life itself. Obviously this argument constrains Hegel's role as the "discoverer" (6) of dialectic. The, idealist, elaborator yes; the discoverer; no. It is entirely necessary to reject the obsession which some Marxists have with Hegel. Much 'Marxism' is, in fact, radical Hegelianism.

Engels work on the 'Dialectics of Nature' is important if incomplete. It is incomplete because little concern is paid there to the operation of human agency in the historical process: ie., dialectics apply to social life too. Problems occur when the dialectic as present in nature is taken as a total explanation of dialectical motion. This can lead to the view that Marxism is a theory of causal determinations akin to a natural science: 'vulgar Marxism'. 'The Dialectics of Nature' taken on its own could take you towards a causally deterministic, model of Marxism. However, you would have to ignore the context of the work, the concern to combat utopian socialism with science, and reject, the wealth of Marxist literature - from 'The Paris Manuscripts' to 'Capital' - that present the doctrine as one consisting of explications of conditional determinations. Marx sums up conditional determination succinctly in a famous passage:

"Men make their own history but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted. The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the living." (7)

In other words the doctrine acknowledges the importance of structures but also recognises that people can act in opposition to the constraints imposed by those structures: relative autonomy can be achieved. This must be the case or revolutionary social change would not be possible. Unfortunately, the systematic homage paid to nature and natural science led to the implication of an historical inevitability, as dialectics remote from praxis were applied to historical movement. This has more to do with interpreters of Engels than the man himself: see Sebastiano Timpanaro, 'On Materialism'.

It is worth noting that "Engels arguments" did bear fruit in the historical materialism of the Second International. Debate on Engels interpretation of philosophy is no abstract affair devoid of consequences in practice.

A notion of dialectic wholly reliant on nature and the method of natural science is inadequate and distorted. On the other hand my disagreement is total with an important footnote on dialectic which Lukacs appends to What is Orthodox Marxism? arguing that a dialectical explanation applies only to history and society. According to Lukacs, Engels has been misled by Hegel into applying the dialectic to nature. (8) Lukacs appears to follow Marx here in that Marx implies, in his kernel metaphor, that it is possible to extract part of the Hegelian dialectic. There is a difference of emphasis with Engels who believes that a complete extraction of the Hegelian dialectic from his overall system is possible. (Both of them, of course, reject the notion that the Hegelian dialectic is totally compromised by its idealist origination.)

The work on science by Engels can be seen as a systematic attempt to reconstruct the dialectic on a fully materialist basis in the positivist traditions of the time. Engels approach emphasises the content of the dialectic whilst Marx emphasises its methodology.

It is also worth mentioning that the German worker Joseph Dietzgen developed the conception of dialectic independently of Marx and Engels. The influence of Dietzgen has been lost with the passage and specific conjunctural configurations of historical time: the doctrine was referred to as Marx-Engels-Dietzgenism. Marx referred to 'our Dietzgen'. (9)

Quantity and Quality.

Here is how Hegel explains the relationship between quantity and quality,,

"It was asked, for example whether a single grain makes a heap of wheat, or whether it makes a a bald-tail to tear out a single hair from a horse's tail, At first, no doubt, looking at the nature of quantity as an indifferent and external character, of Being, we are disposed to answer these questions in the negative. And yet, as we must admit, this indifferent increase and diminution has its limit: a point is finally reached, where a single additional grain makes a heap of wheat; and the bald tail is produced." (10)

This may appear to be a trivial example, but we have a method here. If we trouble ourselves to make the conceptual leap to a substantial social example and ask: at what precise point in the historical process could a socialist society have been said to have eliminated the law of value and thereby have created a fundamentally different mode of production? Then the importance of Hegel's dialogue becomes clear. (11)

Negation of the negation.

Here is how Engels describes the process of negation drawing on an example from plant biology,

"Let us take a grain of barley. Millions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which for it are normal, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture a specific change takes place, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. (12)

The fact that Engels has an initial qualification to this passage, that "millions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed" explicitly indicates that he is not unaware that human intervention can change the course of the "normal" cycle of nature. Here again, if one takes the trouble to apply this process of the negation of negation to social life, we can note it is not an inexplicable explanation of actual social movement. Not in the least to the manner in which whole societies grow and decay and are transformed!

Formal logic.

It is an aside, but an important aside, here to recall that the proposition of the negation of the negation is not compatible with the law of the excluded middle in formal logic. As Plekhanov explains,

"A body in motion is at a given point, and at the same time is not there". (13)

This is supported by the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics which notes that particles do not have separate trajectories and velocities but rather exist in a quantum state which is a combination of these. (Having accepted the above perspective on the law of excluded middle, it necessarily means, in my opinion, that we must also view the law of identity and its negative form the law of contradiction as relative and not absolute 'laws' of formal logic). (14)

Lukacs on Engels.

In a later 'recantation' Lukacs modifies his position on Engels.

"It was quite wrong to maintain that 'experiment is pure contemplation'. My own account refutes this. For the creation of a situation in which the natural forces come under investigation can function 'purely', i.e. without outside interference or subjective error, is quite comparable to the case of work in that it too implies the creation of a teleological system, admittedly of a special kind. In its essence it is therefore pure praxis". (15)

The implications for a viewpoint which sees dialectics solely as a method of scientific enquiry enjoying its own 'objective' basis free from the 'bias' of the impingement of being locked into proletarian class struggle are enormous. Indeed, because of the 'inevitablism' inherent in this approach it, "...offers no good reason why a Marxist scientist should also be politically committed. Only two positions follow logically, voluntarism and fatalism." (16)

By drawing his explanation of dialectics from nature. "Engels helped to stimulate the notion among the epigones that ideas simply 'reflect' material reality in a passive sense" rather than seeing them as a factor which can enact upon and help to change material reality.

In his famous letter, to Bloch, Engels states that

"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this. Therefore if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he is transforming the proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase". (17)

An understanding of Engels interpretation of dialectics as incomplete rather than simply incorrect leads me to accept his argument at face value. I do not accept Giddens argument that it is simply an "attempt to escape the theoretical impasse to which his views led". (18)

We can proceed to a discussion of how dialectics come to be viewed in a concrete historical situation.

The position that socialism equals a substantial rise in the productive forces, which in and of themselves will then effect a transformation of all other social areas, was endemic in the Second International and, as Sirianni notes, became rooted in Bolshevik thinking.

"The major theoretical flaw in Lenin's approach was to view the goal of a democratic and classless division of labour as more or less an automatic result of the development of the capitalist productive forces pushed to their limit and the concomitant education of the entire population in economic management...The subjective factor in this process, namely the socio-cultural formation of the working class within this productive apparatus was almost completely ignored." (19)

In this inevitablist stages dialectic the reason for wanting to raise the level of productive forces, to create an economy devoid of scarcity where mans creative ability could flower and allow profound changes in consciousness, (20) is forgotten in the imperative to raise productive forces. And it is an imperative: socialism cannot be conceived of without a massive rise in the productive forces, but the manner in which productive forces are raised, with or without the intervention of the masses, themselves an important productive force, is vital also.

Quite simply, socialism cannot be built on the basis of capitalist production relationships, and at some future date when the productive forces have increased sufficiently, (21) attention be given to creating a 'new man' out of a workforce which by that time is likely to be rigidly organised and devoid of initiative and self-activity. There is a dialectical interaction between the raising of productive forces and how they are raised. (22) In the case of the Bolshevik Revolution, the 'theory of productive forces' was located firmly in material conditions.

There was a clear contradiction between the exigency of combatting economic chaos and the suppression of proletarian self-activity. (23) Without the explicit recognition of such a contradiction, necessity is portrayed as a virtue and the dialectical method becomes a means of explaining away contradiction in society. The best overview of this exists in Mao Tse-Tung's, 'A Critique of Soviet Economics'.

Specifically, one can note that a dialectic which is devoid of an explicit explanation of human activity has a one sided echo in the 'theory of productive forces'. In a theoretical sense, the absence of the subject-object interaction tends to validate the primacy of productive forces interpretation.

In terms of philosophy his major systematic work, 'Materialism and Empirio- Criticism' Lenin is concerned, as is Engels in his 'Anti-Duhring', to combat a profound philosophical regression. (24) In Lenin's case, the battle is the more vital as he is dealing with a wide ranging attack on dialectical materialism. (25) Whilst Lenin was not excluded from the consequences of the non-publication of Marx's early writings on philosophy and clearly was influenced by Engels - especially via Plekhanov - interpretation of philosophy, it is also true to say that he was constrained, to be precise, accepted the constraints, of the Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Mach et al intellectual grounds of debate. As Ilyenkov points out,

"Lenin had to rummage through mountains of literature devoted to questions which he had previously not studied, and most of all in literature about 'modern physics', from which the Machists extracted the arguments for the use of their 'modern philosophy'". (26)

Lenin viewed the writing of 'Empirio-Criticism' as such an important project that he dropped all other tasks for a time in order to work on it. (27) This was because whilst Lenin was still in general agreement with Plekhanov on the question of philosophy, he was opposed to him politically as a leader of the Mensheviks. (28) Furthermore, the philosophical agreement was only general, there was some concern that Plekhanov was not sufficiently antagonistic to the ideas of Mach, Bogdanov and Lunacharsky. (29) Lenin's work then can be viewed as an extremely important defence and consolidation of materialism. My reading of it is that it stands firmly in the tradition established by Engels and Plekhanov.

Marx said of the dialectical method,

"In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, and its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in essence critical and revolutionary". (30)

Contrast Marx's sentence on dialectics with what Marcuse considers to be its methodological degradation in the U.S.S.R.

"But while not a single of the basic dialectical concepts has been revised or rejected in Soviet Marxism, the function of dialectic itself has undergone a significant change: it has been transformed from a mode of critical thought into a universal 'world outlook' and universal method with rigidly fixed rules and regulations, and this transformation destroys the dialectic more thoroughly than any revision. ". (31)

The "rational form" of the dialectic, then, is not immune from revision. Soviet dialectics, far from seeing the society in "fluid Movement", is characterised by its staticity as embodied in the immutable 'laws' of dialectic. Marxism became an ideology of magical incantations providing supporting rhetoric to the ruling elite which sections of it were reluctant to drop until the very end. (32) It is necessary to examine how a method of analysis which "is in essence critical and revolutionary" was rendered down to a profoundly undialectical - "universal method" with rigidly fixed rules and regulations".

If we follow through Marcuse's argumentation, the importance of what may have appeared to be fairly esoteric qualifications over the limitations of a dialectic derived solely from nature become clear "because the emphasis on the dialectic of nature is a distinguishing feature of Soviet Marxism" (33) with the Dialectics of Nature the favoured source of authority. (34)

The inattention paid to human activity by Engels and his successors when it intersected with the specific concrete historical conjuncture of Soviet history, led to serious amplification of the theoretical distortion. (35)

The influence of Engels on Soviet theory can be traced directly in Stalin's, 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism'. (36)

Stalin's account can be regarded as an authoritative indication of the 'official' viewpoint. (37) However, it is necessary to add that when Marcuse mentions the "difficulties of Soviet Marxism in producing an adequate 'textbook' on dialectics and logic" (38) he is wrong.

For the historical record it can be noted that the 'Textbook of Marxist Philosophy' was originally published, in Russian and English, in 1937 a year before Stalin's work. (39) Again this work can be assumed to have been closely vetted by the party leadership. It is difficult to accept the importance which Marcuse attaches to the negation of the negation being absent from Stalin's work when it figures prominently in the textbook. Certainly, the work concentrates almost exclusively upon scientific 'proofs' of the veracity of dialectics, yet it is more than a mere "paraphrase" of Engels and, within its given limits, is a comprehensive commentary.

In concrete terms the Soviet argument was that 1917 harmonised the relationship between political superstructure and economic base and furthermore, that whilst economic laws are an objective category, the Soviet state can exercise some influence over them by political means, whereas under capitalism the anarchy of production reigns supreme. (40) This is an extremely important conception because it means that revolutionary change of the economic base was no longer a necessary corollary of social change. Evolutionary change of the extant base was possible: "base and superstructure change their relation." (41)

Precisely when a necessary corrective to Engels would have been to 'bend the stick' in favour of expanding an understanding of the dialectical method to include praxis, the reverse was done and examples drawn exclusively from nature and science were narrowly concentrated upon.

Dialectical method, described not in totality but in part, is necessarily presented undialectically and what was a tendency in Engels became in Soviet philosophy, a codification enacted at the level of conscious application. Such an application is particularly useful in the case of base and superstructure because the pair cannot be explicated by 'dialectical examples' drawn from nature and science. This is precisely because subjects inhabit all areas of the pair and substantiate all relationships with their activities and proceedings. In the absence of praxis from any theoretical exposition, the relationships between the pair and its elements is difficult to explain, from a 'Marxist' viewpoint, in any other way than via strict superstructural derivations from economic base. (42). 

Ted Hankin. 

REFERENCES  

1. COLLETTI, Lucio, Introduction to: 'Karl Marx: Early Writings', Penguin, Middlesex, 1975, page 7.

2. Ibid, page 8.

3. RUBEN, David-Hillel, 'Marxism and Materialism', Harvester, Sussex, 1977, page 67.

4. LUKACS, Georg, 'History and Class Consciousness', Merlin Press, London, 1974, page 3.

5. ENGELS, Frederick, 'Socialism: Utopian and Scientific', Progress, Moscow, 1974. As Engels mentions in this "Special Introduction to the English Edition of 1892", this arrangement of three chapters of the Anti-Duhring had a relatively wide impact.

6. Letter from Karl Marx to Frederick Engels, 14 Jan 1858

7. MARX, Karl, 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', In:- Surveys From Exile, Penguin, Middlesex, 1973, p.146.

8. LUKACS, Georg, op cit, page 24, Reference 6.

9. REE, Jonathan, 'Proletarian Philosophers', O.U.P., 1984, pp.23 to 45.

10. HEGEL, G.W.F., 'The Logic of Hegel', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931, page 203.

11. EWING, A.C., 'The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy', R.K.P., London, 1951.

In his chapter on Matter, Ewing relates to us the story of an impecunious nobleman whose housekeeper darned his black stockings with green wool and asks at what point the gentleman's apparel ceased "to be the same pair of stockings? He answers his rhetorical question thus,

"Exactly when we say that the one pair ended and the other began is a question of language, of no philosophical or scientific significance like the question of how few hairs a person must have on his head to entitle us to call him bald". Pages 96/7. For the reason given in the main text he is entirely incorrect.

12. Anti-Duhring, op cit, page 152. In:- PLEKHANOV. Georgi, 'The Development of the Monist View of History', Progress, Moscow, 1972 the author elaborates on Engels' example in a critique of Mikhailovsky better known to us under his pseudonym of Bogdanov. Pages 92 to 94.

13. PLEKHANOV, G.V., 'Dialectic and Logic', in RYANZANOV, D. Ed., Fundamental Problems of Marxism, Martin Lawrence, London, 1929, page 112.

14. Marxists refer to "primary" and "secondary" contradictions. It is pertinent to note that the latter should be perceived as emanating from the former whilst realising that the former is relative to the velocity and trajectory of movement. For instance, the contradiction between labour and capital may be an absolute one within capitalism but it is relative in terms of an overall historical movement preceding and anteceding that particular socio-economic organisation.

15. 'History and Class Consciousness', op cit, Preface to the New Edition, (1967), pages xix/xx.

16. WALTON Paul, and GAMBLE, Andrew, 'From Alienation to Surplus Value', Sheed and Ward, 1972, page 56.

17. ENGELS to Joseph Bloch, September 21, 1890. In:- MARX, Karl, ENGELS, Frederick, 'Selected Letters', P.F.L.P., Peking, 1977, page 75. Emphasis in original in italics.

We may recall Engels later correspondence with Mehring (1893). The derivation of superstructural entities "from basic economic facts" has some resonance with Engels attempt to explicate dialectics via nature and scientific procedure, i.e. the attempt to finally demolish utopian socialism.

18. GIDDENS, Anthony, 'Capitalism and Modern Social Theory', C.U.P., 1971, page 189, footnote 14.

19. SIRIANNI, Carmen, 'Workers Control and Socialist Democracy: The Soviet Experience', Verso/N.L.B., 1982, page 259.

20. DEUTSCHER, Isaac, 'On Socialist Man', Merit, N.Y., 1967, puts it this way,

"Our idea of socialism is not an arbitrary intellectual construction but a careful extrapolation and projection into the future of those elements of rational social organization that are inherent in capitalist society but are constantly thwarted and negated by it. Similarly our idea of Socialist Man is but a projection of the social man who already exists for within us potentially, but is distorted, crushed and stultified by the condition in which he lives." Page 9.

21. What level of productive forces is necessary to allow this transition from quantity to quality to occur? To ask the question is largely to answer it. One has the impression that, at a certain point, the party will issue a decree pronouncing sufficient material conditions exist for socialism rather like the scientist observing water change into steam at 100 degrees centigrade at sea level.

22. SIRIANNI, op cit, page 324. Interestingly, Sirianni argues that the suppression of workers control was not even instrumentally correct.

23. Marx and Engels to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others, (Circular Letter), September 17/18 1879. In:- 'Selected Letters', op cit,

The famous admonition from the above communication "The emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves" (page 69) is clearly open to tactical interpretation, not least in Lenin's theory of organisation, but it is fundamental to Marxism in that no other course is possible.

24. LENIN. V.I., 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism', P.F.L.P., Peking, 1972.

25. Ibid, page 5.

26. ILYENKOV, E.V., 'Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism', New Park, London, 1982, page 9.

(Incidentally, this book, published in Britain by the W.R.P., had a significant impact on the extremely protracted debate on Marxist philosophy which occurred in that organisation. For a brief outline see.

Fourth International, (Northite), volume 13, number 1, June 1986, pages 73/80).

27. ILYENKOV, Ibid, pages 16/17.

28. This goes to show that political programme cannot be crudely divined from philosophical perspectives. See my correspondence on this, entitled, "Never has so much been owed to so few...". In:- WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY, Workers Press number 44, October 10, 1986, page 13.

29. ILYENKOV, op cit, page 8.

30. MARX. Karl. Afterword to the Second German Edition, in his 'Capital', Volume 1, Lawrence and Wishart, 1974, page 29.

An expanded commentary on this passage is given in, SHIROKOV, M, LENINGRAD INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY, 'Textbook of Marxist Philosophy', Proletarian Publishers, Chicago, Ill, 1978.

31. Marcuse, Herbert, 'Soviet Marxism', Penguin, Middlesex, 1971, page 115.

32. The reluctance of Gorbachev to resign as General Secretary of the C.P.S.U. after the 1991 August coup attempt was an indicator of how important, albeit a formal and organisational, adherence to a version of 'socialist ideology' was.

33. Ibid, page 119.

34. Ibid, page 120. Emphasis in original in italics.

35. Ibid, page 120.

36. Ibid, page 119. Emphasis in original in italics.

37. STALIN, J.V. Dialectical and Historical Materialism. In:- FRANKLIN, Bruce, Ed. 'The Essential Stalin', Croom Helm, London, page 300.

As Bettelheim notes, "...it (Dialectical and Historical Materialism, E.H.) is the most systematic exposition of what gradually became, after the late 1920's, the dominant conception in the Bolshevik Party".

BETTELHEIM, Charles, 'Class Struggles in the U.S.S.R. Second Period: 1923 - 1930', Harvester, 1978, page 509.

38. Soviet Marxism, op cit, page 115.

39. SHIROKOV, M., LENINGRAD INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY, op cit, Textbook of Marxist Philosophy.

40. Marcuse, op cit, page 102.

41. Ibid, page 106.

Both Stalin, op cit, pages 318/326-7 and the "Textbook", op cit, page 318 proclaimed the U.S.S.R.s socialist credentials.

42. That Marx is somewhat optimistic when he states that the dialectic, "lets nothing impose upon it, and is in essence critical and revolutionary", is illustrated not only by the Soviet episode but also by the manner in which it was converted into a W.R.P. party religion under G. Healy.