Dialectical Materialism and Science
Maurice Cornforth
12. Dialectical Materialism and Science
Dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook. Its scientific character is manifested especially in that it turns socialism into a science and, by developing the science of society, shows how the whole of science can be developed in the service of mankind. In general, dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook in that it does not seek to establish any philosophy “above science” but bases its conception of the world on the discoveries of the sciences.
The entire advance of the sciences is an advance of materialism against idealism; and further, science shows that our materialist conception of the world must be dialectical. Such great past discoveries as the law of the transformation of energy, the Darwinian theory of evolution and the theory of the cell have demonstrated the dialectic of nature.
Nevertheless science in the capitalist world has entered into a state of crisis, due primarily to (1) the subjugation of scientific research to the capitalist monopolies and to military purposes, and (2) the conflict between new discoveries and old idealist and metaphysical ideas. Dialectical materialism is not only a generalization of the achievements of science, but a weapon for the self-criticism and for the advancement of science.
A Scientific World Outlook
Dialectical materialism, the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party, is a truly scientific world outlook. For it is based on considering things as they are, without arbitrary, preconceived assumptions (idealist fantasies); it insists that our conceptions of things must be based on actual investigation and experience, and must be constantly tested and re-tested in the light of practice and further experience.
Indeed, “dialectical materialism” means: understanding things just as they are (“materialism”), in their actual interconnection and movement (“dialectics”).
The same cannot be said about other philosophies. They all make arbitrary assumptions of one kind or another, and try to erect a “system” on the basis of those assumptions. But such assumptions are arbitrary only in appearance; in fact they express the various prejudices and illusions of definite classes.
The scientific character of Marxism is manifested especially in this, that it makes socialism into a science.
We do not base our socialism, as the utopians did, on a conception of abstract human nature. The utopians worked out schemes for an ideal society, but could not show how to achieve socialism in practice. Marxism made socialism into a science by basing it on an analysis of the actual movement of history, of the economic law of motion of capitalist society in particular, thus showing how socialism arises as the necessary next stage in the evolution of society, and how it can come about only by the waging of the working-class struggle, through the defeat of the capitalist class and the institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Thus Marxism treats man himself, society and history, scientifically.
“Socialism, having become a science, demands the same treatment as every other science—it must be studied. The task of the leaders will be to bring understanding, thus acquired and clarified, to the working masses, to spread it with increased enthusiasm, to close the ranks of the party organizations and of the labor unions with even greater energy.”[80]
Scientific study of society shows that human history develops from stage to stage according to definite laws. Men themselves are the active force in this development. By understanding the laws of development of society, therefore, we can guide our own struggles and create our own socialist future.
Thus scientific socialism is the greatest and most important of all the sciences.
The practitioners of the natural sciences are now getting worried because they feel that governments do not know how to put their discoveries to proper use. They have good cause to worry about this. Science is discovering the secrets of atomic energy, for example; but its discoveries are being used to create weapons of destruction. Many people are even coming to believe that it would be better if we had no science, since its discoveries open up such terrifying possibilities of disaster.
How can we insure that the discoveries of science are put to proper use for the benefit of mankind? It is scientific socialism, Marxism-Leninism, alone which answers this problem. It teaches us what are the forces which make history and thereby shows us how we can make our own history today, change society and determine our own future. It teaches us, therefore, how to develop the sciences in the service of mankind, how to carry them forward in today’s crisis. Physics can teach us how to release atomic energy, it cannot teach us how to control the social use of that energy. For this there is required, not the science of the atom, but the science of society.
Science and Materialism
Dialectical materialism is in no sense a philosophy “above science.”
Others have set philosophy “above science,” in the sense that they have thought they could discover what the world was like just by thinking about it, without relying on the data of the sciences, on practice and experience. And then, from this lofty standpoint, they have tried to dictate to the scientists, to tell them where they were wrong, what their discoveries “really meant,” and so on.
But Marxism makes an end of the old philosophy which claimed to stand above science and to explain “the world as a whole.”
“Modern materialism... no longer needs any philosophy standing above the sciences,” wrote Engels. “As soon as each separate science is required to get clarity as to its position in the great totality of things and of our knowledge of things a special science dealing with this totality is superfluous.”[81]
Dialectical materialism, he further wrote:
“Is in fact no longer a philosophy, but a simple world outlook which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences standing apart, but within the positive sciences.... Philosophy is therefore... ‘both overcome and preserved’; overcome as regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content.”[82]
Our picture of the world about us, of nature, of natural objects and processes, their interconnections and laws of motion, is not to be derived from philosophical speculation, but from the investigations of the natural sciences.
The scientific picture of the world and its development is not complete, and never will be. But it has advanced far enough for us to realize that philosophical speculation is superfluous. And we refuse to fill in gaps in scientific knowledge by speculation.
For instance, we do know that life is the mode of existence of certain types of organic bodies—proteins; but we do not yet know exactly how such bodies, how life, originated. It is no use speculating about this; we will have to find out, the hard way, by intensive scientific investigation. Only so will we come to understand “the mystery of life.” Thus:
“Science is already able to control life, can control living and dead protein. But science cannot yet say definitely what protein is, what life is, as to the derivation of it. Why? Engels in his day put it excellently when he said that ‘in order to gain an exhaustive knowledge of what life is, we should have to go through all the forms in which it appears, from the lowest to the highest.’ Consequently, in order to understand and learn what protein is, it is also necessary to go through all the forms of manifestation, from the lowest to the highest. And for this we need experiment, experiment and again experiment.”[83]
The growing picture of the world which natural science unfolds is a materialist picture—despite the many efforts of bourgeois philosophers to make out the contrary. For step by step as science advances it shows how the rich variety of things and processes and changes to be found in the real world can be explained and understood in terms of material causes, without bringing in God or spirit or any supernatural agency.
Every advance of science is an advance of materialism against idealism, a conquest for materialism—although when driven out of one position idealism has always taken up another position and manifested itself again in new forms, so that in the past the sciences have never been consistently materialist.
For every advance of science means showing the order and development of the material world “from the material world itself.”
Science and Dialectics
As science has advanced, not only has this materialist picture of the world become less shadowy, more definite and more convincing, but Engels pointed out: “With each epoch-making discovery even in the sphere of natural science materialism has to change its form.”[84]
The discoveries of the natural sciences over the past hundred years or more have this significance—that the materialist picture which they unfold is a dialectical one.
Thus Engels wrote:
“The revolution which is being forced on theoretical natural science by the mere need to set in order the purely empirical discoveries... is of such a kind that it must bring the dialectical character of natural events more and more to the consciousness even of those... who are most opposed to it.”[85]
“Nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature’s process is dialectical.”[86]
Three great discoveries of science in the nineteenth century above all contributed to this result, Engels pointed out.[87] These were:
The discovery that the cell is the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body develops (announced by Schwann in 1839).
The law of the transformation of energy (announced by Mayer in 1845).
The Darwinian theory of evolution (announced in 1859).
Let us briefly consider the dialectical significance of these discoveries.
First, the transformation of energy.
It used to be thought that heat, for example, was a “substance,” which passed in and out of bodies; and that electricity, magnetism and so on were separate “forces,” acting on bodies. In this way different types of physical processes were considered each separate from the other, in isolation. Each was placed in a separate compartment as the manifestation of a separate “substance” or “force” and their essential interconnection wan not understood.
But science in the nineteenth century, with the principle of the conservation and transformation of energy, discovered that: “mechanical force... heat, radiation (light or radiant heat), electricity, magnetism and chemical energy are different forum of manifestation of universal motion, which pass into one another in definite proportions so that in place of a certain quantity of one which disappears a certain quantity of another makes its appearance, and thus the whole motion of nature is reduced to this incessant process of transformation from one form into another.”[88]
The clue to this discovery was not found in any abstract philosophy, by any process of pure thought. No, it was closely related to the development of steam engines and to the working out of their principles of operation.
In a steam engine the burning of coal releases heat energy, which heats up steam, which is then forced through a cylinder where it drives the piston forward and turns the wheels of the engine. Heat is transformed into mechanical motion.
Where did the energy released from the coal come from? We now know that it came from the sun’s radiations, was stored up in the plants which formed the coal seams, and was finally released when the coal was burned. A lot of it came from the solar atoms in the process of building heavier elements from hydrogen in the interior of the sun.
This discovery was first formulated as a conservation law—energy cannot be created or destroyed, the quantity which disappears in one form reappears in another form. But it is fundamentally, as Engels pointed out, a transformation law—one form of motion of matter is transformed into another.
Thus physics becomes a science of transformations—no longer studying the different types of physical processes, or forms of motion, each in isolation, but studying their interconnections and how one is transformed into another.
(Transformation laws are laws of motion and interconnection, concerning the interconnection of the forms of motion of matter and their passage one into the other; they are not laws of the transformation of quantity into quality. Knowledge of the transformation laws is essential for understanding the passage from quantity to quality in particular cases. For example, knowledge of the laws of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion will show how much heat energy must be released before enough steam-pressure is generated to drive the piston.)
The Darwinian theory of evolution is in the same way dialectical and materialist.
In place of separate species, each created by God, Darwin showed us a picture of the evolutionary development of species by means of natural selection. The sharp divisions were broken down, it was shown how species are inter-related and how living nature is transformed. For instance, the swimming-bladder of the fish becomes the lung of the land animal, the scales of the reptile become the feathers of the bird, and so on.
Closely related to this was the development of geology, which also became an evolutionary science, studying the evolution of the earth’s crust.
Lastly, the discovery that the cell was the unit from whose multiplication and division the whole plant or animal body developed replaced the older conception of the body as made up of separate tissues. The cell theory was also a theory of motion and interconnection, showing how all the tissues and organs arose by differentiation.
Thus we see how natural science, step by step, unfolds a picture of nature’s dialectic.
When we say “a picture,” we must add that it is a picture in the sense that, so far as it goes, it is a faithful image. But we did not make it by just observing nature and writing down what we observed, nor does it serve as something which we merely admire, an object of contemplation and intellectual enjoyment.
It is sometimes said that the essential feature of science is that it is based on observations. Of course, science is based on observations; but this is not its most essential feature. The basis of science is not mere observation, but experiment. Science is based on an activity of interfering with nature, changing it—and we learn about things, not just by observing them, but by changing them.
Thus science would never have found out the secrets of the transformation of heat into mechanical motion solely by observing nature. They were found out as a result of building steam engines; we learned the secrets of the process in proportion as we ourselves learned how to reproduce that process.
Nor could Darwin have written The Origin of Species on the sole basis of the observations he made on the voyage of the Beagle. He made use of the practical experience and results of English animal breeders and plant breeders.
The scientific picture is based, not just on observing things, but on changing them.
And we test it, develop it and use it also in changing nature. Science is not a dogma, but a guide to action. On the other hand, if it becomes divorced from practice, it degenerates into a dogma.
Natural science, then, proves that nature’s process is dialectical, and gives us an ever more concrete, detailed picture of the real dialectical motion and interconnection in nature.
The Crisis of Science in the Capitalist World
But, while pointing this out, Engels also pointed to the very great confusion which exists in the sciences.
“The scientists who have learned to think dialectically are still few and far between, and hence the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional mode of thought is the explanation of the boundless confusion which now reigns in theoretical natural science and reduces both teachers and students, writers and readers to despair.”[89]
This confusion has become very much worse today. In fact, as the general crisis of capitalism has developed and become more acute, so has the confusion in scientific theory and the distortion of scientific practice developed and increased with it.
Science which by its discoveries lays bare the true dialectics of nature is nevertheless in a state of crisis in the capitalist world.
What is the nature of this crisis? It has a double nature.
In the first place, science is an activity of research and discovery. In capitalist society it has grown enormously, along with the other forces of production. Scientific research can no longer be carried out by individuals on their own: it requires great institutes, vast equipment, elaborate organization, big financial expenditure.
But the more scientific research expands and the greater these requirements become, the more it falls under the control of the monopolies and of their governments, and particularly of the military.
Science has to contribute to profits and to war. Such science as does not so contribute is increasingly starved of the resources necessary to carry on.
“For example, the whole important field of plant physiology remains relatively undeveloped. This is, to put it crudely, because there is no money in it. The state of agriculture under capitalism is such that the conditions are not created for fundamental researches in this field.... It is interesting to note, too, that while some fields of science are neglected because there is no money in them, others suffer because there is too much. Thus geo-chemistry is hampered, for instance, because the very powerful oil interests impose conditions of secrecy on such researches. Science is called upon to answer just those particular problems in which the capitalist monopolies are interested, which is by no means the same as answering the problems which are bound up with the further development of science and with the interests of the people. This warps the whole development of science.”[90]
Thus science becomes more and more commercialized—and militarized. And as a result science is more and more disorganized and distorted. This is what is happening to science in the capitalist world. Science can contribute mightily, not only to giving us knowledge, but through that knowledge to human welfare, to developing our powers of production, to conquering disease. Yet it is not being developed as it could be toward these ends.
How can the disorganization and distortion of science be overcome?
We can and must resist the misuse of science here and now. But only the advance to socialism can ensure the full development and use of science in the service of mankind. Just as socialism means that the development of all the forces of production can be planned and organized in the service of man, not for profit and war, so it means the same for science in particular.
The second aspect is that of theory—the crisis of scientific ideas.
How does this arise?
The primary role of science is to discover the interconnections and laws operating in the world, so as to equip men with the knowledge necessary to improve their production and live better and more fully.
But to develop research and formulate discovery, ideas are necessary. To work out and guide the strategy of advance of science, theory is necessary.
And in this sphere of ideas and theory, the great achievements of science in capitalist society come into collision with the traditional forms of bourgeois ideology.
As Engels stated, there develops “the conflict between the discoveries made and the old traditional modes of thought.”
In two words, the idealism and the metaphysics characteristic of and ingrained in bourgeois ideology have penetrated deeply into the ideas and theories of the sciences.
Thanks to the way in which, in field after field, scientific discovery reveals the real dialectic of nature, it follows that, as Engels put it, the further development of scientific discovery demands “the dialectical synthesis.”[91] But this would carry theory far beyond the limits imposed on it by the bourgeois outlook.
The New Against the Old in Science
So it is that we find that in field after field bourgeois science turns back from its own achievements, gives up vantage grounds won, and instead of going forward suffers a theoretical collapse. Here, indeed, is a case of the struggle of the new against the old—of advancing scientific discovery against the old ideas in terms of which scientific theory is formulated. Understanding it thus, we can be quite sure that the retrogressive trend will be but temporary, and that the advance of science will break through the barriers of old ideas and outworn dogmas.
In biology, it was the fate of the Darwinian theory to have a dogma imposed on it—the theory of the gene. The same thing happened to the cell theory, with Virchow’s dogma that the cell comes only from the cell. In each case a dialectical theory of development had imposed on it a metaphysical dogma which denied development.
In physics, the great discoveries about the electron, the atomic nucleus, the quantum of action—about physical transformations—were interpreted, and not by idealist philosophers alone but by theoretical physicists, as meaning that matter had disappeared and that the limits of investigation had been reached. In the allied science of cosmology, scientists, having found out so much about the universe and its development, began to have recourse to ideas of creation.
In all these cases, a dogma is imposed upon science, strangling its further development. Hence the crisis.
The “crime” of Soviet science is that it is successfully challenging and removing such dogmas.
In the Soviet Union scientists have followed Stalin’s wise advice, when he called for the progress of:
“Science whose devotees, while understanding the power and significance of the established scientific traditions and ably utilizing them in the interests of science, are nevertheless not willing to be slaves of these traditions; the science which has the courage and determination to smash the old traditions, standards and views when they become antiquated and begin to act as a fetter on progress, and which is able to create new traditions, new standards and new views.”[92]
Conclusions
We have now briefly surveyed the principal features of the Marxist materialist conception of the world and of the Marxist dialectical method. What conclusions can we draw at this stage?
(1) The world outlook of dialectical materialism is a consistent and reasoned outlook, which derives its strength from the fact that it arises directly from the attempt to solve the outstanding problems of our time.
The epoch of capitalism is an epoch of stormy development in society. It is marked by revolutionary advances of the forces of production and of scientific discovery, and by consequent uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions. This sets one theoretical task above all, and that is to arrive at an adequate conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society.
To this theoretical task dialectical materialism addresses itself.
(2) This is not the task of working out a philosophical system, in the old sense. What is required is not any system of ideas spun out of the heads of philosophers, which we can then admire and contemplate as a system of “absolute truth.”
Capitalist society is a society rent with contradictions, and the more it has developed, the more menacing and intolerable for the working people have the consequences of these contradictions become. The new powers of production are not utilized for the benefit of society as a whole but for the profit of an exploiting minority. Instead of leading to universal plenty, the growth of the powers of production leads to recurrent economic crises, to unemployment, to poverty and to hideously destructive wars.
Therefore the philosophical problem of arriving at a true conception of the laws of change and development in nature and society becomes, for the working people, a practical political problem of finding how to change society, so that the vast new forces of production can be used in the service of humanity. For the first time in history the possibility of a full and rich life for everyone exists. The task is to find how to make that possibility a reality.
It is to the solution of this practical task that the theory of dialectical materialism is devoted.
(3) Addressing itself to this task, dialectical materialism is and can only be a partisan philosophy, the philosophy of a party, namely, of the party of the working class, whose object is to lead the millions of working people to the socialist revolution and the building of communist society.
(4) Dialectical materialism cannot but stand out in sharp contrast to the various contemporary schools of bourgeois philosophy.
What have these various schools of philosophy to offer at the present time? Systems and arguments by the bucketful—none of them either original or cogent, if one takes the trouble to analyze them closely. But no solution to the problems pressing upon the people of the capitalist countries and the colonies. How to end poverty? How to end war? How to utilize production for the benefit of all? How to end the oppression of one nation by another? How to end the exploitation of man by man? How to establish the brotherhood of men? These are our problems. We must judge philosophies by whether or not they show how to solve them. By that criterion, the philosophical schools of capitalism must one and all be judged—“weighed in the balance and found wanting.”
The prevailing bourgeois philosophies, with all their differences, have in common a retreat from the great positive ideas which inspired progressive movements in the past. They emphasize men’s helplessness and limitations; they speak of a mysterious universe; and they counsel either trust in God or else hopeless resignation to fate or blind chance. Why is this? It is because all these philosophies are rooted in acceptance of capitalism and cannot see beyond capitalism. From start to finish they reflect the insoluble crisis of the capitalist world. And their function is to help entangle the people “in a web of lies.”
(5) Dialectical materialism asks to be judged and will be judged by whether it serves as an effective instrument to show the way out of capitalist crisis and war, to show the way for the working people to win and wield political power, to show the way to build a socialist society in which there is no more exploitation of man by man and in which men win increasing mastery over nature.
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of practice, indissolubly united with the practice of the struggle for socialism.
It is the philosophy born out of the great movement of our times—the movement of the people who labor, who “create all the good things of life and feed and clothe the world,” to rise at last to their full stature. It is wholly, entirely dedicated to the service of that movement. This is the source of all its teachings, and in that service its conclusions are continually tried, tested and developed. Without such a philosophy, the movement cannot achieve consciousness of itself and of its tasks, cannot achieve unity, cannot win its battles.
Since the greatest task facing us is that of ending capitalist society and building socialism, it follows that the chief problem to which dialectical materialism addresses itself, and on the solution of which the whole philosophy of dialectical materialism turns, is the problem of understanding the forces of development of society. The chief problem is to reach such an understanding of society, of men’s social activity and of the development of human consciousness, as will show us how to achieve and build the new socialist society and the new socialist consciousness. The materialist conception and dialectical method with which we have been concerned in this volume are applied to this task in the materialist conception of history and in the Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge. These will form the subject matter of the second volume.
Bibliography
We mention here only works by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin in which the general underlying principles of dialectical materialism are expounded and developed.
The best general introduction is contained in Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific and in Stalin’s Anarchism or Socialism? After these it is necessary to study the Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels.
It is advisable to become acquainted with these three works before studying the two short books in which the basic ideas of dialectical materialism are brought together and summarized—Lenin’s The Teachings of Karl Marx and Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism. The latter is of absolutely fundamental importance for the student, containing as it does a systematic exposition of the principal features of the Marxist dialectical method, Marxist philosophical materialism and the Marxist science of history, generalizing the conclusions of the whole experience of the application and development of Marxist theory in the course of the working-class struggle for socialism.
The place occupied by dialectical materialism in the whole theory and practice of Marxism is dealt with in Lenin’s “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism,” in connection with which should also be read his “Marxism and Revisionism” (both in Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 11).
The creative, developing character of Marxism, and the role of history in the working-class movement are dealt with in the “Conclusion” of Stalin’s History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The essential difference between materialism and idealism, between dialectical and mechanistic materialism, and between the Marxist and Hegelian dialectics is to be found in Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach, with its appendix, Marx’s “Eleven Theses on Feuerbach.”
Along with this we may draw attention to Engels’ “Introduction” to Dialectics of Nature, and to Lenin’s “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party toward Religion” (Selected Works, Vol. 11).
Of fundamental importance then are three longer and more difficult works: Engels’ Anti-Dühring, especially Part I; Engels’ Dialectics of Nature; Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.
A part of Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks is translated into English under the title “On Dialectics”; and he deals with the fight for materialism in “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (both in Selected Works, Vol. 11). Important statements summarizing the essentials of the dialectical method are contained in Lenin’s “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” Section R, “Something About Dialectics” (Selected Works, Vol. 2), and “Once Again on the Trade Unions,” section on “Dialectics and Eclecticism” (Selected Works, Vol. 9). See also Lenin’s “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight for the Social Democrats” (Selected Works, Vol. 11), which is concerned mainly with historical materialism, the subject of the next volume.
[80] Frederick Engels, Peasant War in Germany, Preface to second edition, N. Y., 1926.
[81] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Introduction, I.
[82] Ibid., Part I, Chapter XIII.
[83] T. D. Lysenko and others, The Situation in Biological Science, Speech of S. G. Petrov, August 2, 1948, N. Y., 1949. The quotation from Engels is from Anti-Dühring, Part I, Chapter VIII.
[84] Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, Chapter II.
[85] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Preface.
[86] Ibid., Introduction.
[87] Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, Chapter IV.
[88] Ibid.
[89] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Introduction.
[90] J. D. Bernal and Maurice Cornforth, Science for Peace and Socialism, London, 1948.
[91] Engels, Anti-Dühring, Preface.
[92] Joseph Stalin, Speech to Higher Educational Workers, delivered in 1938.
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