How powerful is global capitalism at present?

Well a very interesting question indeed as it would appear contradictory. On one hand you have a system which seems incredibly powerful and somewhat untouchable in terms of any real threat from an outside force from an opposing system. We used to have Stalinism of course in the east with the USSR and the Chinese totalitarian regimes which for all their brutal dictatorial and clamping down on freedoms and democracy at least offered the idea that there was at least a different system possible if you wished. Yet there is no movement that looks likely that it will take power any time soon in terms of an alternative economic system. Not to do the working class down as they are extremely powerful yet I am not convinced are ready to take power anywhere on the planet. On the other hand we have a system of capitalism which is in probably the biggest crisis its faced since the 30's and possibly ever some say. So we do have a real contradiction in many ways. It is hard to understand on the surface anyway how powerful and how strong of a system capitalism is at the moment. On the one hand it seems quite fragile and yet on the other side it looks indestructible and that there is no way of changing things. Of course as we know and as we learn from the past no social and political system is indestructible and nothing stays the same forever. Dialectics tells us as much so to think that capitalism is here to stay and it can’t be changed or removed is just not true. It may seem like we are a long long way from change and in many ways we are yet change is always on the agenda and is constantly happening even when we cannot see it at the very moment. Revolutions are not just things that appear they are constantly being developed and worked on. I do believe that we can start to begin to build the new society in the shell of the old by putting into practice our ideals and values right now not after the revolution we can begin to shape things even if all be it on a small scale to start with. We must be in a way the change we want to see to oppose things we don’t agree with and we don’t want to take with us to the new society we must start today by opposing the likes of racism, fascism , sexism and all forms of discrimination. We must lead from example as revolutionaries we cant expect others to follow us and buy into our ideas if we ourselves do not live up to our own ideals. So in terms of power capitalism is still very much in the driving seat but for how long and in what form we cannot say. We must remember any victory we win off the ruling class must be forced home and if there is the opportunity to remove this rotten exploitative system then we must cease any chance we get!

The bond of political economy

Politics and economics in my opinion as was Karl Marx cannot be separated and the two go hand in hand politics effect economics and economics effect politics. To some people certainly in the bourgeois media politics and the economy seem detached but they are really not. Karl Marx recognised this many years ago when he set about his work on political economy including his most famous works in Das Capital. Marx's critique of political economy was not a proposal for a new, 'socialist economics'-for Marx, socialism implied the withering away of economics. Nor was it a 'critique of capitalism'. I think that 'criticising' a social order is a bit like criticising the weather. (As Mark Twain complained, everybody grumbles, but nobody seems to do anything about it.) In any case, Marx never used the word 'capitalism'. As he explained, his critique is directed primarily against the categories of political economy, that is, against economics as such. (When Marx spoke of 'the system of bourgeois economy', he always meant the science of political economy.) For Marx, classical political economy, utopian socialism and the Hegelian system represented the attempts of the greatest bourgeois thinkers to grasp the nature of modern society. Their categories and methods of thought gave the highest theoretical expression to the contradictions of bourgeois social relations. Essentially, all of these contradictions, including the struggle between capital and the proletariat, express a more fundamental one: that between humanity-self-creation, selfconsciousness, sociality-and inhumanity-whatever blocks and perverts these. What economics took for granted as 'natural' and 'rational', Marx saw as the inhuman and irrational shell inside which human life was imprisoned. Marx's critique is inseparable from its struggle to smash this shell. Marx characterised the 'classical political economists' as those who, 'since the time of W Petty have examined the real internal framework [innern Zusammenhang = inner coherence] of bourgeois relations of production' (Marx, 1976 Vol.I/l: 174-5). As he wrote in a well-known letter: Once insight into the connectedness has been gained, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before the practical collapse. (Marx to Kugelmann 11/7/1868, in Marx and Engels, 1983:149). There clearly is a dialectical relation between politics and economics which for Marx made perfect sense. In examining the work of the classical political economists, Marx was investigating a social illness. It was like his attitude to religion: it could not be cured by correcting some logical errors, but only by overthrowing the social order whose contradictions they expressed. His critique opened the way for 'revolutionary practice', in which 'human activity or self-change' could be seen to coincide with 'the changing of circumstances' (ibid. The greatest philosophers and political thinkers tried to systematise this ordinary consciousness. That was how political economy, when it was still a science, studied the heart of the capital relation, its 'inner coherence', and that was why Marx spent forty years on its critique. Political economy took the upside-down forms within which the inhumanity of bourgeois relations seemed 'natural' to ordinary consciousness, and tried to make them into a coherent system. But because these forms were essentially a denial of humanity, this attempt could not succeed. Just as the exchange relation itself was crazy [verruckt],4 so were the categories of the very best political economy. ('Vulgar economists' were absolutely no use for Marx's purposes.) Through the essential inconsistencies in this science, Marx sought to reveal the contradictions of those social forms. The critique of this bourgeois science thus showed that the 'integument' could be broken through by the socialist revolution, to open the way for a life 'worthy of our human nature' (Marx, 1978 Vol 3. So when we think about politics we must link it always in to economics and vice versa. Marx was right on this point and we should not forget this fact.

Succumbing to reformism and how to avoid it

As Marxists we are all too aware of reformists in the labour movement those who see no alternative to the capitalist system of exploitation and despair. They genuinely think we can reform capitalism into a nicer system which is a bit less brutal. This is completely false in so many ways and is quite a dangerous position to hold too. If you’re a trade union leader you’re quite likely to be reformist or at least confine yourselves to fighting for reforms within the current system however difficult that may look. We encounter them all the time reformists and some are won over to a revolutionary stand point and can develop into good Marxists but the type of reformists around today are the sort who worship the accomplished fact. Much like Owen Jones in the labour party and independent journalist. They do not see the world in a dialectical fashion with all things in constant flux and change. Jones and his ilk see things as static entities and do not see the changes going on in society under their very eyes. For example Owen believes there is a labour party and always will be a labour party he can see no further than the end of his nose unfortunately. I respect Owen a lot he writes some excellent stuff in a national newspaper and is no doubt socialist and fights against capitalism but ultimately does not see things in a process or a Marxist point of view. This is not to do down the likes of Owen as this is not uncommon. Those who support Cuba uncritically think well that’s socialism over there so we must support it without seeing the faults and contradictions locked up in that bureaucratic workers state where there is little democracy there. Reformists are often the ones looking for the easiest answers to everything take for example many in the labour party and see themselves on the left. Many shoot down TUSC and our low election results without seeing that we have a perspective over this and ok the votes are not great but we have had the fore sight to lay down a marker for a new workers party at this stage it is hard. The original founders of the Labour party including Kair Hardie were ridiculed and faced the same bemusement from those who pelted them with stones for daring to stand against the liberal party now look where we are a similar situation where we are laughed at for daring to stand against the labour party who are a fully fledged capitalist party now the second eleven for the ruling class if you like. But how to we avoid falling into reformist ideas ourselves? Its all about having perspectives and a basic understanding of Marxism the scientific socialism which Marx and Engel’s stood by which Lenin and Trotsky stood by too. It is not demanding more than the party can give or getting too down when things don’t appear to be going our way or get too excited if we win a victory. As we know that any reform won under this current capitalist system is only temporary and the ruling class will come back to take it back maybe in a different o name one day. Take the bedroom tax we may defeat this rotten cruel tax but there will be more attacks and unless we put an end to the capitalist system for good the ruling class will keep coming back for more and more as they always do. SO we must warn our younger socialist friends the dangers of reformism while being the best fighters for reforms ourselves whilst pointing out the temporary nature of those reforms. Our eventual goal is the over throw of the existing order of society turn it on its head in a sense for the working class to become the ruling class therefore abolishing itself as a class.

The Marxist view of individuals in history

All throughout history we learn of various kings and queens who played vital roles in the changing of history but the bourgeois view of history doesn’t take into consideration the role of class forces in society the moving of one class against another and the role of revolutions. At socialism 2012 this weekend I attended the session on historical materialism which was a fascinating discussion hosted by Ken Douglas of the socialist party. The discussion was very interesting too. A Few people raised the role of the individual and the role of Stalin for example. As Trotsky Stalin did not win a personal battle with Trotsky or was the stronger leader or anything like that he was propelled to power due to the fact of the material conditions at the time. The combined isolation of the workers state, the degeneration and the rising bureaucracy due to Russia being attacked from all angles lead Stalin to be put in that position due to the conditions. If not Stalin it would have been someone else. Trotsky answers this when he says if I had removed Stalin from his rise and taken the position myself then i’d have ended up like Stalin, The fact Trotsky could see this and with Lenin on his death bed Lenin urged the removal of Stalin but it was too late the material forces were working against the left opposition at the time and very little could stop this slide apart from the political over throw of the bureaucracy and resuming the movement which started in October. CAPITALISM THE system we live under today is unequal and undemocratic. This is because capitalism is a class society, based on the exploitation of the working-class (the majority of the population) by the capitalist class (a small minority of the population) who own and control industry and financial institutions, and dominate governments and the political establishment. We are told that capitalism is the best way of organizing society; that socialism is impossible. We are told that history is made by famous individuals like kings, queens and politicians, and that working-class people have no power to change society. We are even told by some people that there is no way of understanding how society develops: followers of post-modernism, a theory which gained popularity in the 1990s, believe that there are no general laws that govern the development of society. None of these things are true. The theory of historical materialism, developed by Marx and Engels, provides a framework for analyzing human society and the laws of its development. It explains that class societies have not always existed; that in fact the earliest human societies were classless ones based on co-operation not exploitation. MARX AND Engels worked out their theory of how human society develops in a struggle against 'idealist' philosophers. Many people think of socialism as being 'idealist' - that is that it is a nice idea, but unrealistic (what Marx and Engels called 'utopianism'). On the contrary, the ideas of socialism and Marxism are very practical and realistic because they are based on analyzing the real world and how it works. Unlike the way most people understand the word today, 'idealism' originally meant a trend within philosophy. The idealists believed that ideas come first, and that material reality comes into being as a result of these ideas. An idealist (in philosophy) would say that changes in material reality are caused by ideas, not by material forces; that ideas have an existence that is independent of an unrelated to material reality. While we recognize that ideas play an important part in social change, Marxists are materialists (again, in the philosophical sense). To a materialist, human society and history is shaped by material social and economic forces - real things and processes - and ideas are the reflection of this material reality in human consciousness. Change i.e political change comes about due to mass social forces from below every change in society even bourgeois society capitalism was born from below over throwing feudal systems aspects of feudal society still remain in parts today with institutions such as the Monarchy in some nations still today. Marxists believe that human society is based on material forces. In other words, in order for any human society to exist, humans must produce the necessities of life which enable us to survive: food, shelter, water, etc. These are material things without which we would die out. But the way we interact to produce these necessities, who controls the products of our labour and how they use them, determines the type of society we live in. At the beginning: evolution WITHOUT CERTAIN physical factors, human society as we know it could not have developed: the large human brain, the voice box and the opposable thumb. The development and growth of the brain and the voice box happened because of the way early humans evolved in interaction with their environment. They were less well adapted to their environment than many species and compensated for this by working together in large groups and developing tools. The growth of the physical size of the human brain, which is much larger than any other animals’ when compared to our body weight, was both a result of the growth of human intelligence (driven by the need to co-operate and make tools) and a cause of its further growth. With a larger amount of brain available for use, early humans had more potential to develop their intelligence further. The opposable thumb allows us to hold, make and use tools. Without the fine handling skills it made possible, early humans wouldn't have been able to develop and use the sophisticated tools that allowed them to survive and prosper in a changing environment. "THE MOST indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business - kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime . . ." Preface, the History of the Russian revolution, Trotsky. Revolutionary change - how society develops OVER TIME the contradictions built into the economic, political and legal structures of each class society grow. Eventually they become a block on the productive forces (the productivity of human labour), holding back their development. The old ruling class try desperately to block change in order to cling on to their privileges and power. In this situation the only way that society can move forward is for the old ruling class to be removed from power and a new way of organizing society to be put in its place. This means a revolution. A socialist revolution to free the working class and humanity as a result. Excellent quotes and extracts taken from http://www.marxism.org.uk/pack/history.html

Learning to think dialectically

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is, however, to change it." (Marx:‘Theses on Feuerbach’)

Was one of the most well known sayings by Karl Marx one of the greatest thinkers we've ever known.

I thought i'd look at how we look at things and the nature in which we do. Of course we are aware as socialists that in society we have two major class's at play. The ruling class who look to make their position permenant and continue to drive for profit.
There is also the working class which the majority of us who work for a living are and sell our labour power to liv e. The wealth that is created by this is creamed off by the ruling capitalist class.

Every ruling class throughout history has sought to give its regime the stamp of permanence. Never mind that there have been many forms of class rule including slavery and feudalism, today’s smug apologists for capitalism believe their way of running society is best and represents the Everest of achievement.

Tony Blair has sneeringly denounced Marxism as "an outmoded sectarian dogma." His sole contribution to philosophy has been to bestow credit on Anthony Gidden’s Third Way theory – the very old and discredited idea that there can be a middle way between the market and a planned economy. Most capitalist leaders believe they don’t require a philosophy. Making money is all that matters and they embrace the idea that if it works, it’s good. They are largely empirical in their approach, responding pragmatically to new challenges and rarely bothering to understand the relationship and connections between policies and events, cause and effect. In the spheres of politics and economics, theirs is the complacent philosophy of thinking that what has gone on before will continue largely unchanged into the future.

In the 1990s they were sure the dotcom boom would just keep on growing. When it crashed they were astonished, but learning nothing, scratched their heads, said they’d predicted it all along, then went back to the comfort-blanket of believing capitalism would get better again.


But as Marxists we look and see things differnt. We look at the world dialecticaly that everything is constantly changing and nothing ever stays the same. We look at what has created a situation to get to a certain point and where it is going next. We do not see things in their isolation as capitalists do where they see things in their moment as simply just being. We as materailists look at the differences and how that moment came into being.

Dialectical materialism, the basis of Marxist philosophy is still the most modern method of thought that exists.

As Leon Trotsky observed in Marxism in our Time: "…if the theory correctly estimates the course of development and foresees the future better than other theories, it remains the most advanced theory of our time, be it even scores of years old."

Marxism is the science of perspectives - looking forward to anticipate how society will develop - using its method of dialectical materialism to unravel the complex processes of historical development.

It endeavors to teach the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself as a class. Dialectical Materialism – the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought – was and remains a revolutionary philosophy, challenging capitalism in every sphere and substituting science for dreams and prejudice.


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Materialism versus Idealism.
"It is not consciousness that determines existence, but social existence that determines consciousness." (Marx & Engels: ‘The German ideology.’)

People have always sought to understand the world they lived in through observing nature and generalising their day-to-day experiences. The history of philosophy shows a division into two camps – Idealism and Materialism. The Idealists argue that thought (consciousness) is paramount and that people’s actions stem from abstract thought, devoid of history and material conditions.

It was Marx and Engels who first fully challenged this conception, explaining that an understanding of the world has to start not from the ideas which exist in people’s heads in any particular historical period, but from the real, material conditions in which these ideas arise.

Nature is historical at every level. No aspect of nature simply exists; it has a history, comes into being, changes and develops, is transformed, and, finally ceases to exist. Aspects of nature may appear to be fixed, stable, in a state of equilibrium for a shorter or longer time, but none is permanently so. For Trotsky: "Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae."

Marx and Engels based their materialism upon the ideas and practice of the great materialist philosophers of the 18th century. The ‘renaissance’ in the 16th century with its spread of cultural and scientific enquiry was both a cause of and an effect of the early growth of capitalism. In Engels’ words: "Science rebelled against the Church; the bourgeoisie could not do without science, and therefore had to join the rebellion."

Astronomy, mechanics, physics, anatomy and physiology were feverishly developed as separate disciplines, with the consequence that age-old beliefs in an inviolable god were rocked. Galileo for instance began to discover some of the physical properties of the universe and revealed that the planets revolved around the sun. Later, Newton’s theories of gravity and laws of physical motion uncovered the mysteries of movement and mechanics.

The philosopher Hobbes declared that it was impossible to separate thought from matter that thinks. Marx observed that this ‘enlightenment’ had "cleared men’s minds" for the great French revolution and the age of reason.

But Engels added that "The specific limitation of this materialism lay in its inability to comprehend the universe as a process, as matter undergoing uninterrupted development."

He and Marx were to fuse the brilliant scientific advances of materialism with dialectical thought, creating the most revolutionary and far-reaching theory for explaining and changing our world.

The German philosopher Hegel, who resurrected dialectics from ancient Greek learning in the early 19th century, was a proponent of the Idealist approach. To him the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract images of actual things and processes, but on the contrary, things and their development were only the realised images of the Idea/God existing somewhere from eternity before the world existed.

Marx turned this confusion on its head. "To me the idea is nothing else than the material world reflected in the human mind."

Marxism therefore bases itself upon a materialist view of history. The material world is real and develops through its own natural laws. Thought is a product of matter, without which there are no separate ideas.

Flowing from this it is clear that Marxism must reject universal truths, religions and spirits. All theories are relative, grasping one side of reality. Initially they are assumed to possess universal validity and application. But at a certain point, deficiencies in the theory are found. These have to be explained and at a certain point new theories are developed which can account for the exceptions. But the new theories not only supercede the old, but also incorporate them in a new form.

For example, in the field of biological evolution, Marxists are neither biological nor cultural determinists. There is a dialectical interaction between our genes and our environment.

Recently the ‘human genome project’ has enabled the complete mapping out of the structure of the genes which are passed on from one human generation to the next. Some biologists have asserted that this would reveal individual genes shaping behaviour patterns ranging from sexual preference to criminality and even political preference!

A consequence would be that a person’s position in society would be largely pre-determined and unalterable.

However, any attempt to ‘tag’ individual genes for ‘intelligence’ has failed and the attempt to define social position as genetically determined has been exposed as a pure consequence of the ideology of the biologists involved.

A breakthrough that has revolutionised our understanding of human behaviour, scientists recently discovered we possess far fewer genes than previously thought, revealing that environmental influences must be vastly more powerful in shaping the way humans act.


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What is dialectical thinking?
" Men thought dialectically long before they knew what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the term prose existed." (Engels: ‘Anti-Duhring’.)

Dialectics is the philosophy of motion. The dialectical method of analysis enables us to study natural phenomena, the evolution of society and thought itself, as processes of development based upon motion and contradiction.

Everything is in a constant state of flux and change; all reality is matter in motion.

The roots of dialectical thought can be traced back to the ancient Greeks who, just because their civilisation was not yet advanced enough to dissect and analyse nature in its separate parts, viewed nature as a whole, in its connections, dialectically. Nothing in life is static. In the words of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: "All things flow, all change."

Around us in the natural world are illustrations of the dialectical development of our Earth and space itself. Astronomers are transfixed as super-telescopes allow us to witness the birth and death of distant stars, while no geologist or vulcanologist can function without having an understanding of the basic and interlinked laws of the dialectic – the law of quantity into quality, the interpenetration of opposites and the negation of the negation.

In mathematics a dialectical approach is indispensable. In everyday life we often need to distinguish between curved and straight lines. But mathematically a straight line is merely a special sort of curve. Both can be treated using a single general mathematical equation.

We also learn how at a specific temperature, solid ice changes to liquid water then at a higher temperature to steam – a gas – and that the three apparently different substances are actually different manifestations of the motion of the same water molecules.

But though capitalist or bourgeois society uses the dialectical method in its pursuit of scientific advance, in the fields of philosophy and economy it stubbornly seeks to refute dialectics, clothing itself in the straightjacket of metaphysics (formal logic). Metaphysics translated into politics becomes a justification for the status quo, the idea that evolution proceeds unchangingly at a snail’s pace.

It is not hard to see why. Explained in a Marxist manner, the development of all past and present forms of society would show that at certain periods in history when the mode of production has come into acute conflict with the mode of exchange, wars and revolutionary movements have followed. The forms of class struggle have changed through different historical epochs, but the fundamental struggle over the division of the surplus value between exploiter and exploited forms a continuous line from the early slave societies to the present day.

The capitalist class or bourgeoisie (as Marx described it) must therefore hide the materialist conception of history from us, extolling instead the acts of great men (and occasionally women!) who it is claimed have changed history. Great social revolutions are attributed not to the struggle between classes, but to the mistakes of tyrant kings and tsars and the bloodthirsty ambitions of ruthless men like Cromwell, Robespierre and Lenin to name three of their special bete noirs.

Metaphysical thought is often described as the science of things, not of motion. Basing itself upon rigid classification techniques and seeing things as static entities, it is a useful tool in our day to day lives, but does not let us see things in their connections.

The formal logician operates within the limitation of three laws:

The Law of Identity – where A is equal to A

The Law of Contradiction – where A cannot be equal to non-A

The Law of Excluded Middle – where A must be equal to A, or must not be equal to A.

Formal logic sees cause and effect as opposites, but for Marxists the two categories merge, mix and melt into each other all the time.

Trotsky compared formal logic to dialectics using the analogy of a photograph and a moving film. The former has its uses, but as soon as we go into complex questions formal logic proves inadequate.

For instance we can say ours is a capitalist society and all will agree.

But viewing it dialectically as a bourgeois society in an advanced stage of development, we have to add that it still possesses remnants of feudalism, while more importantly it contains in its technological potential, the seeds for a Socialist planned economy. This example is not abstract.

Marxists use the dialectical method in order to clarify perspectives. All realities have more than one side to them.

What stage has British capitalism reached, what character will the recession have, how powerful is the working class, what is the role of New Labour, where and when do we expect big industrial struggles to break out… all these questions and many more can only be answered by analysing society dialectically.


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The laws of the dialectic
"Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought." (Engels: ‘Anti-Duhring.’)

BASED UPON the laws of motion, dialectics enables us to see things in their connection. Our bodies and our thoughts are continually changing. From conception to death there is never a moment when our physical development is still. Neither are our thoughts and mental growth. We are always evolving our ideas.

But how specifically do dialectics apply in relation to a study of society? What are the general laws of dialectical materialism beyond the primary idea that everything changes? If dialectics is the theoretical toolkit of Marxists, what do the tools look like and how do they assist us in challenging capitalism and changing society?

Marx and Engels elaborated three broad and interconnected laws of dialectics, each of which is continually at work and give us the insight into how society develops and what theoretical and practical tasks confront us as revolutionaries seeking to build the forces to overthrow capitalism.

The law of quantity and quality

Just as a scientist is familiar with the concept of things altering their quality at certain quantitative points (water into steam at boiling point), so too an observation of the evolution of class societies illustrates the same law.

Society does not develop in a slow, evolutionary manner. The friction between the classes can and does create episodic periods of sharpened struggle leading to political and social crises, wars and revolutions. For a whole period the class struggle may appear to be at a low-ebb, low levels of industrial action, apparent disinterest in political struggle, etc.

Marxists however view events in an all-sided manner. On the surface there can be apparent stability, but a quantitative build-up of frustration and antagonism towards capitalism can break out suddenly, creating entirely new conditions for struggle and catching the bosses and their New Labour echoes completely by surprise. This law is vulgarly recognised by even some bourgeois philosophers who, usually after the event, refer sadly to "the straw that broke the camel’s back."

It has enormous consequences for Marxists. We analyse the build-up of class conflict and at all times intervene in the workers’ movement to build the ideas of Socialism to take advantage of these sudden changes and sharp turns.

The law does not always denote a progression of course. For many years we characterised the Stalinist bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union as a relative fetter upon the growth of the planned economy. By this we meant that despite the waste and corruption of the bureaucrats, there was still a potential for the planned economy to grow, albeit less efficiently than had the working class been in charge. By the 1960s command-style rule from the Kremlin was struggling to cope with the fresh challenges of a more technically advanced form of economy. Trotsky’s maxim that a planned economy needs workers’ control as a body needs oxygen became more relevant than ever. We observed this change and concluded that the bureaucracy had gone from being a relative fetter to an absolute fetter. Quantity had turned into quality.

From a study of all the declining economic statistics coming out of the USSR we began to draw theoretical rounded-out conclusions.

A society in economic, political and social crisis where the bureaucratic caste has become absolutely incapable of further playing any progressive role cannot stay in absolute stasis. A point was being rapidly reached where either the working class would have to overthrow the incubus of bureaucracy and carry through a political revolution, or there would occur a social counter-revolution leading to the restoration of capitalism; this possibility was predicted by Trotsky over 50 years earlier. The triumph of the latter with Yeltsin undoing all the remaining gains of the 1917 revolution marked a qualitative defeat for the working class in Russia and everywhere else.

The Interpenetration of Opposites

Dialectics applied to the class struggle does not have the same degree of precision as it does in the science laboratory. The role of individuals, political parties and social movements is not scientifically pre-ordained. A trade union leader might be a repected left-winger, but may capitulate when faced with a determined onslaught from the bosses. A moderate trade union leader may surprise himself or herself however and become much more "militant" than intended, when faced with mass pressure from below.

There are no absolutes in the class struggle! We often stress for instance that boom and slump are not antithetical categories as crude GCSE textbooks proclaim. Within every economic growth of capitalism are the seeds of future recession and vice versa. It is not slump alone, which causes workers to rebel against the class system. The very opposite may be the case, with workers feeling intimidated by the threat of widespread unemployment.

In a boom, workers can go on the offensive not only in order to recapture past gains that have been lost, but to win new victories around pay and conditions.

Trotsky illustrated this law in his analysis of the forces which made the Russian Revolution in 1917: "In order to realise the Soviet State, there was required a drawing together and mutual penetration of two factors belonging to completely different economic species; a peasant war – that is, a movement characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development – and a proletarian insurrection, the movement signaling its decline. That is the essence of 1917". (History of the Russian Revolution.)

This "combined and uneven development" illustrates the complex manner in which societies develop. Application of the law of interpenetrating opposites is crucial in our clarification of the stage at which capitalism has reached, its future direction and our responses.

The Negation of the Negation

Described by Engels as "an extremely general, and for this very reason extremely far-reaching and important, law of development of nature, history and thought", the negation of the negation deals with development through contradictions which appear to annul, or negate a previous fact, theory, or form of existence, only to later become negated in its turn.

Capitalism’s economic cycle illustrates this law. Great wealth is created in the boom, only to become partially destroyed by episodic crises of over-production. These in turn create afresh the conditions for new booms, which assimilate and build upon previously acquired methods of production, before once again coming into contact and being partially negated by the limits of the market economy.

Everything, which exists, does so out of necessity. But everything perishes, only to be transformed into something else. Thus what is ‘necessary’ in one time and place becomes ‘unnecessary’ in another. Everything creates its opposite, which is destined to overcome and negate it.

The first human societies were classless societies based on the co-operation of the tribe. These were negated by the emergence of class societies basing themselves upon the developing material levels of wealth. Modern private ownership of the means of production and the nation state, which are the basic features of class society and originally marked a great step forward, now serve only to fetter and undermine the productive forces and threaten all the previous gains of human development.

The material basis exists now to replace the bosses’ system with socialism, the embryo of which is already contained in class society, but can never be realised until the working class negates capitalism.


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Dialectical Materialism as a revolutionary theory
"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature.." (Engels: ‘Dialectics of Nature.’)

In the realm of science, explicitly or implicitly, the dialectical method continues to vindicate itself as a vital tool for progress. Apparently unrelated scientific disciplines have come to share visions and methodologies reflecting the real connectedness of our living universe.

Even the idealist philosopher Kant, writing before the time of Marx and Engels and who believed in a supreme being, was forced by experience to arrive unconsciously at a dialectical position. He argued that if the earth was something that had come into being, then its present geological, geographical and climatic states, its plants and animals too, must be something that had come into being. If this was the case, then earth must have had a history not only of co-existence in space but also a succession in time.

In particular, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the revolutionary significance of which was immediately understood by Marx and Engels, has itself become enriched and a more profound confirmation of dialectics of nature as a result of further study and practice.

Darwin demonstrated how evolution develops through natural selection, creating outrage among those for whom "God" determined all. But while he argued that "nature does not make a leap", the debates now raging among neo-Darwinists are about whether or not leaps take place and the nature of them.

Incorporating the science of genetics, new concepts such as MUTATION (the spontaneous formation of new variations in genetic make-up), GENE FLOW (the introduction of new genes into a population by immigration of breeding individuals) and GENETIC DRIFT (random gene changes in a population due to its limited size) as well as natural selection, have begun to be studied.

In a brilliant endorsement of dialectics as the science of sharp turns and sudden changes as opposed to gradualist development, it is now widely accepted that rate of evolutionary change can vary enormously. The theory of PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA takes this idea a stage forward, maintaining that the development or appearance of a new species can be, in terms of geological time, instantaneous breaking an apprarently stable equilibrium.

This theory deals with rapid and sudden speciation and mass extinction of species, in the same way as Darwin spoke of the struggle for existence of individual varieties within a single species.

Modern scientific theories rest on a dialectic view of nature. Quantum mechanics, the theory on which all modern technology is based, rests on a unification of the two classical (apparently contradictory) concepts of wave motion and particle motion to produce a new deeper understanding of the nature of reality.

Theories of fundamental particles find themselves working on concepts which bridge the contradiction between matter and the space-time in which matter moves.


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Towards a Socialist World.
" …the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.

They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch." (Engels: ‘Socialism: Utopian & Scientific.’)

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM is not a dull theory to be pondered over by erudite academics in their studies. It is a guide to action. For young workers and students seeking to understand capitalism and more importantly change it, it is an indispensable tool.

The so-called New World Order is daily proving to be less harmonious than the old one. Of the six billion people on Earth, almost 3.6 billion have neither cash nor credit to buy much of anything. A majority of people on the planet remain, at best, window shoppers. Although the development of giant corporations straddling continents and the existence of computer technologies underline the potential for the world planning of production and trade, capitalism remains a system based on wasteful competition between nation states where rival multinationals fight to improve market share, productivity and profit at our expense.

Great social revolutions in the past have been carried out by emerging minorities who best articulated the new economic and political needs of the rising class. History is made by conscious men and women, each driven by definite motives and desires. The struggle for Socialism is qualitatively different as it involves the conscious participation of the majority – the world’s working class and oppressed masses. Standing in our way is diseased capitalism.

Our task is to harness the indefatigable energy of the workers worldwide to throw off our exploitation, through the building of a mighty Socialist force. The dialectical method applied to every stage of the class struggle, illuminates our path, assists us in turning our ideas into a material force and brings closer the day when men and women can pass over from the realm of necessity into the realm of human freedom.





extracts taken from the introduction to marxist theory from teh pamphletts on introducing marxism from the socialist party.

A marxist look at current class contiousness

According to Marxist theory, a socialist revolution requires a class conscious working class. Consequently, most socialist political activity is directed one way or another to raising workers' consciousness.

Making a Marxist inquiry into the class-consciousness of today's workers on the other hand, requires that we bring the whole of this notion into focus. For this, we must clarify the nature of class and the consciousness of a class in Marxist theory. To begin with the latter, "consciousness" in the expression "class consciousness" does not mean the same thing as it does in the expression "individual consciousness." It is not just a matter of individuals being conscious, or having a certain understanding, of their class. Rather, class is the subject, and consequently, consciousness is not just a larger version of individual consciousness. What is it then? Before answering we must shift our attention to class.

We find that defining "class"—or indeed any other important notion in Marxism—proceeds from the whole to the part (class, in this case) rather than from still smaller parts (individuals) to class, viewed as some larger composite notion. According to Marx, "the subject, society, must always be envisaged as the precondition of comprehension" This whole, this society, is capitalism, or more specifically, Marx's analysis of capitalism, which captures both its distinctive character as a social formation and the unique dynamics, or "law of motion," that has transformed it from its beginnings in feudalism to and through the present to whatever future awaits it. Before we can offer more precision on Marx's notion of class, we need to have a better idea of the whole in which it plays such a crucial role.

Capitalism is not a perpetual motion machine destined to last forever and a day. But if it isn't, what is it about the way this system works and develops that will eventually bring on its destruction? Marx believed he found the answer to this question in the process of accumulation and centralization of capital (or wealth producing wealth), especially when view in connection with the limited purchasing power of the workers. This relationship is often expressed as the contradiction between social production and private appropriation. Production and consumption follow two different logics. The former is determined by profit maximization; the capitalists invest in order to make and maximize profits. While what gets bought and consumed is determined by what people, most of whom are workers, can afford. And, as the capitalist never return as much wealth to workers (in the form of wages) as the workers produce (in the form of commodities), there is a constant pressure on the system to find alternative buyers for this surplus.

This contradiction intensifies as the gap between the amount of wealth produced (and producible) and the amount returned to the workers as wages grows, as it invariably does, chiefly through advances in science and technology. Increases in the workers' real wages, which can occur from time to time and from place to place does not seriously impede this process. Every decade or so for the past 150 years this contradiction has resulted in a crisis of overproduction (or, viewed from the perspective of the workers, of underconsumption), with the accompanying destruction and wastage of factories, machines, goods and workers. Eventually the need to rebuild what has been destroyed or left to wear out together with the appearance of new markets makes investment more profitable. There is a renewed burst of accumulation, and the cycle starts over. The new beginning takes place on a higher level; more is invested, more people, tasks, and area are involved all around the world; more is at stake. Capitalism has been saved, but only at the cost of increasing the scale of risk in the next crisis. In Marx's estimation, capitalism is a little like a drunk who drinks in order to steady his nerves until the time that... And that time always comes. Marx's prediction of the downfall of capitalism is not to be read as the prediction of the arrival of a comet on such and such a day, but as the projection of the most likely outcome of a worsening impasse, whose development one can see and study in the past and present.



STATEMENTS SUCH as "the working class has disappeared" or "the barriers between the classes no longer exist" have been repeated for many years. This is often backed up by pointing to the de-industrialisation of Britain especially over the last two or three decades.

In fact there are still around four million workers in manufacturing industry in the UK. It is true that increased globalisation of the world economy has meant a large number of manufacturing jobs being transferred to areas such as Eastern Europe and China. But manufacturing jobs lost in the west have often been replaced by low-paid jobs in the service sector, for example in retail, finance and tourism. The fastest growing job sector in Britain is those who clean, shop, child-mind, garden etc for others.

In "white collar" jobs, measures such as performance related pay, imposed targets and casualisation have been increasingly introduced. Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members in Revenue and Customs for example, have been fighting the introduction of 'lean processing' which breaks down tasks into small repetitive parts to create assembly line type work. Civil servants organised in the PCS have been one of the most militant sections of the working class in recent years and have elected a left union leadership.

New Labour and tory politicians and academics tend to talk of the poor being the 'underclass' living off benefits on council estates, or about 'social exclusion', thereby trying to separate the unemployed off from the rest of the working class. Effectively they repeat the old Victorian idea of the 'undeserving poor' and want people to be 'encouraged' into work by the threat of benefit cuts,
It is a strange solution to poverty - to cut the income of the poorest! And by forcing people into low paid work, they do not eliminate poverty. Millions are now described as the 'working poor'.

Capitalist definitions of class confuse the issue. The term "middle class" is often used very broadly, from a white collar worker on low pay in local government or the civil service to a rich businessman.

Official classifications also obscure the real class divide. The highest category according to the Office for National Statistics is 'professional and managerial' which includes people such as teachers and nurses. These certainly do not constitute the ruling class!

Marxists however say that the main class divide in society is between the ruling class - big businessmen and financiers who own "the means of production" on the one hand, and those who have to work for a boss to earn a living and actually create the wealth (value) on the other.

In the past, the average worker sold their "labour power" in a factory. Today, in addition to the millions who still do this there are others working in different fields who also produce new value. Others again, such as many public sector workers, do not strictly fit into this category but are part of the working class because of their social outlook and economic situation. The working class is not homogenous; far from it, there are many sections and layers. There are also middle layers in between the working class and ruling (capitalist) class, what Marx called the petit-bourgeoisie, particularly the self-employed, including small farmers, shopkeepers etc - altogether a wide and varied range of people. Many of them however are in debt to the big banks and have much in common with "workers".

In dealing with the possibility of socialist revolution in the present however, whether Marx's present or our own, it is not enough to treat people as embodiments of social-economic functions. As much as this helps us understand their conditions, the pressures they are under, and their options and opportunities, the people involved must still respond to these influences in ways that make what is possible actual. In Marxist terminology, they must become class conscious. To study whether this can actually occur here and now, or at least soon, we must add a subjective, people-oriented, more directly and narrowly human element and focus to the objective, system-oriented view of class that has been presented so far. In short, in analyzing history and political economy, Marx could operate with an essentially functionalist conception of class derived from the place of a function within the system. Class here is something to which recognizable individuals are attached. In this way, incidentally, it is possible for an individual who serves more than one function (managers and wage-earning professionals, for example) to belong to more than one class. But in analyzing the present state of the class struggle and in developing political strategy, this view has to be supplemented, not replaced, by a conception of class that gives priority to the actual people who occupy this place and perform this function. Sharing a social space and functions, they also tend to acquire over time other common characteristics as regards income, life-style, political consciousness, and organization that become, in turn, further evidence for membership in their class and subsidiary criteria for determining when to use the class label. Here, class is a quality that is attached to people, who posses other qualities—such as nationality, race or sex, for example—that reduce and may even nullify the influence on thinking and action that comes from their membership in the class. Conceived as a complex social relation, in line with Marx's dialectical outlook on the world, class invites analysis as both a function and a group, that is to say, from different sides of this relation.

Exploitation and inequality are built into the system. To get rid of them, capitalism needs to be removed and replaced with a socialist society. The multinational companies owned by the rich need to become publicly owned.

An end to the chaos of the market and the introduction of socialist planning would mean an overall increase in the real wealth of society, not just a redistribution of the wealth that already exists.

IN THE last 30 odd years, there has been a relative lull in trade union struggle in Britain. In the wake of the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR and eastern Europe, there was a shift of former working-class based parties such as the Labour Party, towards being openly bosses" parties with a full acceptance of the market. This, together with the effects of a long period of modest economic growth, led to a drop in consciousness of socialist ideas.

Despite this, there is still clear recognition of the existence of classes. Surveys have consistently shown that the majority of people in Britain describe themselves as working class. The latest British Social Attitudes survey shows 57% of people consider themselves working class.

The report authors call this 'remarkable' considering that only 31% of the workforce is in traditional "blue collar" sectors. In reality it gives the lie to the idea that class politics is no longer relevant. How much more sharpened will class-consciousness be in the future when big workers' struggles take place and when economic downturn has an impact on millions of people

Even those who see themselves as middle class, or who are on relatively comfortable incomes, have plenty of reasons to oppose the capitalist system, run for the benefit of big business.

Many problems created by capitalism affect them. The rising cost of university tuition fees for example, or the cutbacks in public services such as the NHS. For the vast majority of people who have private health insurance, it is very limited, only covering routine things.

For socialists it is not just that the working class is exploited under capitalism and therefore has good reason to end it, but also that it has the power to do it. Through struggles to defend and extend their own livelihoods, working-class people develop a greater class-consciousness. On a mass scale this can go together with a growth in socialist ideas.

But in particular, workers have the power to change things because of their role in society - their position in relation to the functioning of the economy and the "means of production". Even small groups of workers taking strike action, especially in an era of high technology, can have a massive effect. This power will be decisive when the working class moves together.

The removal of capitalism, led by the working class and with the support of most of the middle layers of society, can create the beginnings of conditions for a genuinely classless society.

This would be a socialist society where, for example, you would not have a higher chance of dying early simply because of where you were born, and where the resources of society would be democratically planned and used for the benefit of all.


Studying class consciousness has something in common with trying to catch a wave at the moment when it breaks. All movement toward this point is treated as development, as preliminary, as the unfolding of a potential. Everything that either contributes to or helps it movement is equally the object of study, but the constant point of repair, the perspective from which the whole process is viewed and interpreted, the event that gives everything that proceeded it its distinctive meaning, is the moment at which the wave breaks. Naturally, there is the assumption, derived from a Marxist analysis of capitalism, that the waves will almost certainly break, that sooner or later the worsening problems of the system, together with the reduction and eventual disappearance of system-approved alternatives for dealing with them, will drive most workers to embody the consciousness of their class.