A response to Ted Grant, part 1: Preliminary text — Mr Grant's Misadventures in Materialism [30/04/2025]

I would be remiss if I didn’t first address the fact that Mr Grant is responding to one particular conceptualisation of the USSR, specifically that of Tony Cliff and his claim that the USSR was a "state capitalist" economy. Mr Cliff’s assertion goes against Trotskyite orthodoxy, which holds that the USSR was not capitalist, but rather a "degenerated workers’ state." While these gentlemen are sorting out between themselves whether or not their particular interpretation of Stalinist Russia’s political-economy is in line with the doctrine of Bolshevik-Leninism, I must confess that I am writing not as a participant but as an onlooker. Mr Cliff’s theory, while perhaps sharing similar sentiments, is not the conceptualisation of the political economy of the USSR made by the Communist Left; in analysing this text I make no claim to the political heritage of the Trotskyite tradition, offering instead my own thoughts on the ideas presented by Mr Grant. 

Now, the text. 

…

Mr Grant kicks us off: 

|| Upon careful examination [of Mr Cliff’s work], it will be observed that not one of the chapters contains a worked-out thesis. The method is a series of parallels based on quotations, and its basic weakness is shown by the fact that conclusions are not rooted in the analysis. From his thesis it is not possible to conclude whether Stalinist Russia remains a progressive system (despite its deformations), or whether for Cliff it has now assumed the same reactionary role as 'individual' capitalism or fascism. The weakness is sharply brought out by the fact that no practical conclusions emerge. Is Russia to be defended, or is the revolutionary party to be defeatist? Instead of the answer being rooted in and flowing from the analysis, it has to be worked out a posteriori. ||

As of now, we know little about Mr Cliff’s work and its quality (or lack thereof); I would just like to take note of that last sentence, “Instead of the answer being rooted in and flowing from the analysis, it has to be worked out a posteriori.” A loaded rifle displayed onstage in the first act, this sentence may show its relevance later. For now, Mr Grant elaborates on how exactly Mr Cliff’s answer is worked out a posteriori: 

|| Nowhere in the document does Cliff pose the main criterion for Marxists in analysing social systems: Does the new formation lead to the development of the productive forces? The theory of Marxism is based on the material development of the forces of production as the moving force of historical progress. The transition from one system to another is not decided subjectively, but is rooted in the needs of production itself. It is on this basis and this basis only that the superstructure is erected: of state, ideology, art, science. It is true that the superstructure has an important secondary effect on production and even within certain limits, as Engels explained, develops its own independent movement. But in the last analysis, the development of production is decisive. ||

This paragraph, as benign as it might look at first, serves as the launch pad for Mr Grant’s analysis and the peculiarities that logically follow this analysis; given how much this one paragraph reveals about Mr Grant’s methodology, it would do well to give it a closer look.

First, the statement that "the theory of Marxism is based on the material development of the forces of production as the moving force of history" is wrong: the theory of Marxism is based on individual man en actualité and the relationship that he enters into with both nature and society, which Marx makes plain in The German Ideology.[1] The human being is a social creature, and insofar as an individual is human, they cannot be separated from the real conditions that surround them: this relationship between real, active man (Subject) and the world around him (Object) is the foundation of Marx’s materialist conception of history.

Judging by the above paragraph, it appears as though Mr Grant has mixed up his materialisms, using a middle-class materialism when he meant to describe historical materialism. For the former, the Subject of historical analysis is not the real human being but matter itself, with human consciousness as its Object. The conceptualisation of materialism as a "matter-mind antithesis" instead of the study of human society as it objectively exists is typical of German philosophy, and was surpassed by Marx for good reason: in its desperate attempt to show off how "materialist" it is, it — by complete accident — lapses back into total idealism.

Mr Grant’s approach posits that the independent motion of matter is what decisively determines how a society produces and distributes its goods; the human mind and all its products (up to and including actually existing society!) are not only secondary to matter, but can all be reduced to complex arrangements of matter — the results of this-or-that neuron firing off. All of the sciences, social sciences included, are not human constructed understandings of objective phenomena, but are components of those phenomena in and of themselves. The theory of gravity is not a concept that humanity created in order to understand how reality behaves, it is reality itself. The dialectic — a product of human philosophy analysing human thought — is thus rendered as an eternal law of the universe and all things within it; as the human mind follows this universal law, humans can grasp the objective essence of the world because the world itself is dialectical. 

This conceptualisation of Marxism as a totalising worldview is best summarised by the Leninist axiom which states that « the Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression [emphasis added] ».[2] The issue with this vulgarisation of science stems from its presupposition that there can be an "objective, true point-of-view" to begin with. In fact, the term "objective point-of-view" is a completely paradoxical, nonsense term that falls apart upon any closer scrutiny: a point-of-view is by definition subjective, a viewer’s position relative to every other position. One can only observe reality with their own sense organs, created differently from every other individual’s, and one can only interpret reality through relating it to their own subjective experiences and beliefs. 

The existence of an "objective point-of-view" rests upon two things: 1) human thought can be reduced to complexly arranged matter, formed through processes independent of human action, and 2) human thought, being reducible to an objective process itself, is able to transcend its own subjectivity and raise itself to an absolute, true understanding of the substance of reality.  The only way that the first supposition is true is if all matter possesses some sort of "atom-soul", to borrow the term from the Dutch astronomer Anton Pannekoek[3] — its own spirit with the capacity for intentional action, out of which life and consciousness are formed. It just so happens that Lenin confirms this to be his own belief, writing: 

« We have already seen in the case of Diderot what the real views of the materialists are. These views do not consist in deriving sensation from the movement of matter or in reducing sensation to the movement of matter, but in recognising sensation as one of the properties of matter in motion. On this question Engels shared the standpoint of Diderot. »[4]

And again: « it is illogical to assert that all matter is conscious but it is logical to assert that all matter possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection. »[5]

It has now been established that all matter within the universe has a Geist, its own Spirit that senses and reflects, permeating the whole world around it; because all aspects of the universe can be expressed in terms of arrangements of matter, the universe itself comprises all of the individual atom-souls moving together in one big material World Spirit. Human consciousness is thus not only a product of this Weltgeist, but is itself animated by it — humans themselves are the means by which this natural and historical force realises its internal motion, matter and mind ultimately become one in the same. 

Human thought — by virtue of itself being but one part of the material Weltgeist — has the capacity to interpret and reflect upon this collective movement of the universe, building upon its knowledge (in linear fashion) from simple self-consciousness, through a more social conception of humanity, to eventually a capital ‘t’ True understanding of the world and man’s place in it. In this last evolution, human thought has freed itself from its subjectivity and aligned itself with the objective motion of the universe, achieving the final stage of unity between Subject and Object, of matter and mind in their total self-movement: the Absolute Spirit![6] Staying true to his organisation’s later commentaries on Hegel,[7] Mr Grant has not only taken up the mantle of monistic metaphysics, but has replicated almost one-to-one the philosophy of Absolute Idealism.

...

If this so-called "materialism" is not, in fact, materialist, then it begs the question: what historical materialism? What is the Marxist method? Dr Pannekoek puts it quite well when he writes the following:

« Both [philosophies] agree insofar as they are materialist philosophies, that is, both recognize the primacy of the experienced material world; both recognize that spiritual phenomena, sensation, consciousness, ideas, are derived from the former. They are opposite in that middle–class materialism bases itself upon natural science, whereas Historical Materialism is primarily the science of society. Bourgeois scientists observe man only as an object of nature, the highest of the animals, determined by natural laws. For an explanation of man’s life and action, they have only general biological laws and, in a wider sense, the laws of chemistry, physics, and mechanics. With these means little can be accomplished in the way of understanding social phenomena and ideas. Historical Materialism, on the other hand, lays bare the specific evolutionary laws of human society and shows the interconnection between ideas and society.

« The axiom of materialism that the spiritual is determined by the material world, has therefore entirely different meanings for the two doctrines. For middle–class materialism it means that ideas are products of the brain, are to be explained out of the structure and the changes of the brain substance, finally out of the dynamics of the atoms of the brain. For Historical Materialism, it means that the ideas of man are determined by his social conditions; society is his environment which acts upon him through his sense organs… For middle–class materialism the problem of the meaning of knowledge is a question of the relationship of spiritual phenomena to the physico–chemical–biological phenomena of the brain matter. For Historical Materialism it is a question of the relationship of our thoughts to the phenomena which we experience as the external world. »[8]

Mr Grant’s approach to history being little more than an empiricist rehashing of the worst parts of Hegel has important consequences for any analysis that follows. Mr Grant posits that the transition from one mode of production to another is not a subjective affair, driven by the conflicting relationships that humans enter into with one another, but is instead driven by the force of the materialistic Weltgeist: it is the needs of dead matter that animate its human puppets in the process of history unfolding itself. Perhaps Marx was mistaken in saying that men make their own history,[9] after all. This proposal can be dismissed with a cursory reading of the Theses on Feuerbach: 

« The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object [Objekt] or of intuition [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in contradistinction to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the objects of thought, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity… Hence he does not grasp the significance of "revolutionary," of "practical-critical," activity. 

« The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that men themselves change circumstances and that the educator himself must be educated. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society… The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionizing practice… 

« Feuerbach dissolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter on a critique of this real essence, is consequently compelled: 

« To abstract from the historical process and to fix the religious sentiment [Gemüt ] as something for itself and to presuppose an abstract — isolated — human individual.  

« Therefore, with him the human essence can be comprehended only as "genus," as an internal, dumb generality which links the many individuals merely naturally. »[10]

The religious essence referred to above, in this case, being the so-called objective, eternal laws of the universal dialectic. These particular passages bring to light the most practically significant errors of Mr Grant’s proposition, namely the total omission of the relations of production — and with it the class struggle they produce — and a rejection of the notion that social revolution is a subjective, human act. After all, if the mind is reducible to matter, then why bother with human relations instead of focusing on the means of production? 

The mode of production is reduced from the practical, dynamic process by which human society sustains and propagates itself to a rigid category within a schema, denoting little more than how advanced technology is at a given point in history: when a society technologically advances to this-or-that point, the Weltgeist of dead matter "changes quantity into quality" through its own will, and society levels up to the next stage– er, mode of production. In the end, human subjectivity is reduced to the role of a passenger in the drive of history. 

As stated in the previous chapter, what causes the erosion of one mode of production and the birth of another is, in the first place, a series of technological innovations that fundamentally change production and distribution. As this new way of producing things spreads to more facets of the old society, it generates more and more friction against the old relations of production — the existing classes that form the foundation of the existing economic order — and against the legal-political superstructure that governs this old society; new relations bubble up within the old society, new classes with definite social interests tied to the advanced forces of production and opposite to those of the old, and these new classes enter into economic and political struggle with the dominant ones. This class struggle culminates in the social revolution, where the downtrodden classes wage open war against the entirety of the old order, decisively seize political and economic power and codify their interests over those of the old classes — accelerating the process by which the new relations becomes generalised in day-to-day production, by which the new classes become the dominant ones and by which the new legal-political order becomes the old yet again.

The causes of this change in mode of production are rooted in objective reality, this is uncontested, but practical society is just as objective as the natural world it inhabits. The mode of production is not a formal category: it is the real, day-to-day production process and the real, day-to-day social interactions between human beings. These relations between humans and the classes that emerge from them are by definition subjective: their activities can only exist in relation to one another and the society which birthed them. Likewise, the act of revolution itself is owed to human subjectivity: it is the downtrodden, exploited and oppressed themselves who make the decision to take arms against all that exists and lay claim to the world, not the material that forms tools and machines.

Historical materialism recognises the real human being as the subjective force which acts upon objective reality, acknowledging both the opposition and the unity of the two, and serves as a method to guide humanity towards its ultimate liberation from the shackles of oppression by fellow man and alienation from its own existence. Mr Grant’s empiricist monism sees dead matter as the self-driving force both composing and acting upon the human mind, collapsing the differentiation between Subject and Object — fusing them into one, Absolute existence —  and serves as a means for Mr Grant to spout sophisms about "objective laws" which animate society independent of human subjectivity and which will transform man’s social existence for him.

This last part — that simply improving upon the productive forces in and of itself transforms the whole of political and economic life to the point of reaching a "new stage," quantity transforming, by its own will, into quality — is core to the entirety of Mr Grant’s polemic against Mr Cliff, and the notion that the USSR was anything other than a workers’ state more broadly. This premise is what allows Mr Grant to gloss over the relations of production within the USSR and the practical, day-to-day existence of worker, peasant, small producer and apparatchik; this premise is what allows Mr Grant to skip over the question of workers’ direct control over production, distribution and political life, and conceal the actual role of the state; ultimately, this premise is what allows Mr Grant to sideline the the proletariat’s very struggle against its own alienation and exploitation, and demand that workers fall in line so that they may generate economic growth for the Soviet bureaucracy and fight on its behalf to defend the accumulation and consolidation of wealth in the hands of a new set of oppressors.

Citations

1:Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German ideology (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022), 7, https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/C37-The-German-Ideology-Marx-1st-Printing-FINAL.pdf 

2: Vladimir Lenin, The three sources and three component parts of Marxism (Sydney: New Age Publishers Pty Ltd, 2010), 3, https://cpa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/3-sources-n-3-component-parts-of-marxism.pdf 

3: Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as philosopher, ed. Lance B. Richey (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), 82, https://files.libcom.org/files/Pannekoek%20-%20Lenin%20as%20Philosopher.pdf 

4:  Vladimir Lenin, Materialism and empirio-criticism (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1972), 40, https://michaelharrison.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Lenin-Materialism-and-Empirio-Criticism-Peking-1972.pdf 

5: Ibid., 98

6: Georg F. W. Hegel, The phenomenology of spirit, ed. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 315-322, https://files.libcom.org/files/Georg%20Wilhelm%20Friedrich%20Hegel%20-%20The%20Phenomenology%20of%20Spirit%20(Terry%20Pinkard%20Translation).pdf 

7: Hamid Alizadeh, “In defense of Hegel,” In Defense of Marxism, August 27, 2020, https://marxist.com/in-defence-of-hegel.htm 

8: Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as philosopher, ed. Lance B. Richey (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), 84-85, https://files.libcom.org/files/Pannekoek%20-%20Lenin%20as%20Philosopher.pdf 

9: Karl Marx, The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2021), 9, https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/C23-18th-Brumaire-of-Louis-Bonaparte.pdf 

10: Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy, ed. Friedrich Engels (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), 61-64, https://michaelharrison.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ludwig-Fuuerbach-and-the-end-of-Classical-German-Philiosophy-FLP.pdf