Selected Writings: M. Shirokov

This V O L U M E was originally prepared by the Lenin grad Institute of Philosophy as a textbook in Dialectical Materialism for institutions of higher education directly connected with the Communist Party and also for use in the Technical Institutes which correspond to Universities in Great Britain.

This particular textbook was specially selected by the Society for Cultural Relations in Moscow (VOKS) as the · best example they could find of the philosophical teaching now being given in the Soviet Union not only to students

of philosophy but to engineers, doctors, chemists, teachers, n fact to all who pass through the higher technical schools and institutes.

In the original work Part I, which consisted of an historical introduction to Marxist Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge, was of considerable length and included illustrations which would not be familiar to English students. But as it is really quite impossible to comprehend the philosophy of Marx and Engels without some knowledge of the development of philosophy up to Hegel, this section has been considerably condensed and entirely rewritten by the English editor who takes entire responsibility for this part of the work. The original authors did not cover this familiar ground in the manner of a conventional history of philosophy but from the Marxist point of view, and this whole method of approach has, of course, been faithfully followed in the rewritten section.

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Does Philosophy matter ?

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of
M. Shirokov 1941

We are now more in a position to see why such practical people as the Russian communists are deeply concerned about philosophy. It is frequently assumed that a practical man can do very well without a philosophy, that the religious and metaphysical beliefs of a scientist or a politician have no kind of relation to their life's work, and that speculation constitutes a more or less leisure time occupation like music or golf.

But the Russian knows that a man's creed matters, that it may be a positive force behind exploitation and parasitism and that you cannot destroy the social disease if you do not accompany your political and industrial measures with the refutation of capitalist philosophy and the propagation of an alternative. It is for this reason that philosophical discussion plays such an important part in Russia to-day. In every higher technical school, institute, and university philosophy is a compulsory subject in the curriculum. Works chemists, textile engineers, agricultural experts and school teachers are thoroughly trained in philosophy. They know the fallacies of the system they repudiate and they have a system of their own to be " the master light of all their seeing."

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Philosophy and Politics

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of
M. Shirokov 1941

No exposition of dialectical materialism can proceed for long without an excursion into political

controversy. Again and again in this textbook we shall meet with practical applications to contemporary Russian problems. At first this may appear disconcerting and irrelevant, but a great deal would be lost if the theory remained on the abstract plane and never allowed itself to be mingled with practice.

In fact this is quite impossible, for this philosophy first of all reflects every kind of material and social change and helps us to understand it, and of such changes none are so important as political changes. Secondly, however, since political change requires above all things just such an understanding of events, a philosophy of this sort will itself be an indispensable agent of such change. Hence the political importance of this philosophy. Under these circumstances it is not difficult to understand two peculiarities of communist philosophy, :firstly it is taken seriously by everyone in Russia and is studied and debated universally with great insistence on correct conclusions; secondly, no discussion proceeds very far without plunging into political controversy.

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Dialectics and Metaphysics

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of
M. Shirokov 1941

Dialectical materialism takes up a somewhat hostile attitude to metaphysics. Why is this ? It is because " the persistent problems of philosophy " are not, as is usually supposed, merely problems for thought, but problems in separably connected with stages in social development which carry with them contradictions insoluble at these particular levels.

For instance the failure of a pre-scientific world to under stand nature creates special intellectual problems for the philosophy of that period which only clear up when science advances.

Or again, before the discovery of emergent evolution philosophy will be troubled with dualism and vitalism, and there will be no help for it.

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August 17, 2018

The Dialectic of Social Change

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of
M. Shirokov 1941

It is not only in physical and biological phenomena that dialectical development takes place. It is the driving force behind human evolution and social development.

Man is partly determined by his environment. But his relation to his environment is not a static one. In the first place the environment itself is as much the creation of man as man is the creation of the environment. Interaction is continuous. The changes wrought by man react on man himself and then man proceeds to yet further changes. Man fells forests and practices a crude husbandry, as a consequence soil erosion sets in and man launches vast irrigation projects like the Tennessee Valley experiment, which in turn change the social habit and industrial structure of a whole area, introducing electrification, scientific agriculture, new industries and a new level of social development. But this awakens the fierce antagonism of vested interests outside the Tennessee Valley so that the relation of the district to its environment, politically, brings into existence new internal movements and institutions. It is such mutual influences arid corresponding adjustments which lead, not only to gradual change, but, after a cumulative process of parallel modification, to a revolution.

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Why Materialism ?

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of
M. Shirokov 1941

By materialism we usually mean either the reduction of all phenomena to inert matter and its movements, or the evaluation of life in terms of eating and drinking. Dialectical materialism means neither of these things. Where it differs from every form of Idealism is in its belief that in the evolution of the universe the non-living preceded the living. There was a time when there was no mind. Mind is a characteristic of matter at a high stage of its develo ment. Dialectical materialism fully recognizes the progres sive enrichment of evolving matter from level to level, and fully accepts the reality of mind and of spiritual values.

It is only mechanistic materialism thinking statically instead of dialectically that shuts its eyes to such obvious facts. Dialectical thinking is strictly empirical, and this may be regarded as another aspect of its materialism. Whatever facts emerge in experience must be recognized, but transcendental objects it does not recognize. In the Middle Ages there was a fierce controversy between nominalists and realists. The nominalists said that concepts are only products of human thought, and that real existences are always concrete and individual. The realists asserted that ideas and ideals have an actual existence of their own. Plato held that Beauty exists in the ideal world from which it descends to dwell for a moment only in beautiful objects,which all eventually lose their beauty.

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What is Dialectic ?

Molière, with good reason, ridiculed the mediaeval savants. Their explanation of “soporific action” as due to “soporific force,” and of soporific force as due to “soporificness” are indeed extremely vapid and laughable. But in what lies the root of this error of the mediaeval scholars? It lies in their determination to find a definition of an isolated quality apart from all relations. Try to define any quality without alluding to some other or implying, to however small a degree, its relation with something else, and inevitably you will find that you have fallen into the plight of Molière’s “sage.”

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Quality and the Self Movement of Matter

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of

M. Shirokov 1941

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was no longer possible to see in the workshop of the craftsman and in his manual skill a model of the domination of man over the forces of nature as imagined byDescartes in the seventeenth century. The development of capitalism brought with it a radical upheaval in the entire productive activity of society.

“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.

The dream of the rising bourgeoisie of subduing nature, of making use of the “forces of

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December 25, 2017

From the Metaphysic of Properties to the Metaphysic of Relations

The question whether this or that property belongs to a thing is not at all as simple as appears at the first glance. For most people iron is the type of a hard substance, but the polisher of precious stones says contemptuously of a bad material, “soft as iron.” Compared with wood, iron is hard, compared with a diamond it is soft.

There is no absolute hardness or absolute softness in itself. The hardness of a thing appears in relation to other things; and according to the things to which it is related are its properties thus or otherwise. A workman may for many years be regarded as ungifted, good for nothing, but if you set him to a job that suits him he may display great gifts in relation to it. Rain may be a blessing or a curse; it depends on the situation. The deserts that surround the valley of the Nile were at an early stage a help to the development of the productive forces of Egypt, since they acted as a protection from the onslaughts of wild nomads. But at a much later stage, when Egypt was ripe for trade relations with other lands, these same deserts became an obstacle to further economic growth.

All properties exist only in determined relations, all properties are relative – such is the conclusion to which we are led by our knowledge of mutual action.

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From Naïve Dialectic to the Metaphysic of Properties

A TEXT BOOK O F MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

Prepared by the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy under the Direction of

M. Shirokov 1941

Primitive man did not construct scientific theories. His knowledge was built up from a variety of concrete observations and by practical rules of living which grew out of these observations. These rules were connected together by a system of mythological representations replete with images but lacking precise and logical sequence. The connection of natural phenomena with his own primitive practice was explained by myths and legends in which thunder-storms, the rain, the sun and so forth were identified with the actions of mysterious beings. Only at a certain point in social development does knowledge become scientific and man rise to the construction of a logical, connected picture of the objective world. For this transition there was necessary a definite level of development of the productive forces at which a separation of mental work from physical was possible. From that time science has emerged as a special aspect of social action, from that time man began to theorize and to build up a picture of the objective world in logically connected ideas.

And the first thing that confronted science was the mutual action of the infinite multitude of phenomena, their ceaseless interweaving and change, their ceaseless emergence and disappearance. Knowledge, before it turns to the study of concrete details, accepts reality as a sequence of changes arid interactions. In spite of the entire naïvety and superficiality of this initial view the first steps of science were at the same time the first steps of conscious dialectic. “All flows, nothing is at rest nor ever remains the same “–thus one of the greatest dialecticians in history, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, used to characterize the ever-changing face of nature. As the Greeks used to say of him, “He likens things to a flowing river and says that it is impossible to enter twice into the same stream.”

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