Mohammad Hatta was born in Bukittinggi on 12 August 1902 into a prominent and strongly Islamic family. His grandfather was a respected ulema in Batu Hampar, near Payakumbuh. His father, Haji Mohammad Djamil, died when he was eight months old and he was left with his six sisters and his mother. As in the matrilineal society of Minangkabau tradition, he was then raised in his mother's family. His mother's family was a wealthy one that Hatta was able to study Dutch as well as finishing Qur'an after school.[2]
He went to the Dutch language elementary school (ELS or Europeesche Lagere School) in Padang from 1913 to 1916 after he had finished Sekolah Melayu ('Malay School') in Bukittinggi. When he was thirteen, he passed an exam that entitled him to follow the Dutch secondary school (HBS or Hogere burgerschool) in Batavia (now Jakarta). However his mother asked him to stay in Padang because he was still too young to go to the capital alone. Hatta then entered junior secondary school or MULO (Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs).
During his spare time, he worked as part time in a post office. Normally, no MULO students were allowed to work, but he could work there because of the HBS exam qualification.[2] Hatta was interested in football; he joined his school's football team. He was then made as the chairman of the football team. He broadened his contacts by using his position.
Hatta used to visit the office of the Sarikat Usaha (United Endeavor), led by Taher Marah Soetan. In the office, he read Dutch newspapers, particularly about political debates in the Volksraad (parliament) of the Dutch East Indies. It was at the age of sixteen that Hatta began interested in politics and national movements. He was chosen the treasurer of the branch of the Jong Sumatranen Bond (or youth association of Sumatra) which was first established in Padang in 1918.[2]
[edit] Time in the Netherlands
In 1919, Hatta finally went to the HBS in Batavia. He completed his study with distinction in 1921,[2] which he was allowed to continue to study at the Rotterdam School of Commerce in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He took economics as his major and earned doctorandus degree in 1932. The degree entitled him to follow a doctorate program. He then continued to pursue the doctorate degree, completed all requirements to get the degree, but his thesis had never been finished. Politics has immersed into Hatta's life.
In the Netherlands, Hatta joined the Indische Vereniging (or the Netherlands Indies Union). In 1922, the organization changed its name into Indonesische Vereniging and changed again later into the Perhimpunan Indonesia (the same meaning but in Indonesian).[3] Hatta was the treasurer (1922—1925), and then the chairman (1926—1930).[2] On his inauguration, Hatta delivered a speech with the title of "The Structure of the Global Economy and the Conflict of Power", of which he supported the idea for Indonesia to be non-cooperative against the Dutch colonial government in order to gain its independence. Since then, Perhimpunan Indonesia was shifted from student organization into a political organization and had an unequivocal demand for Indonesia's independence. They expressed their voiced through the a magazine called Indonesia Merdeka (or Free Indonesia) of which Hatta was the editor.
To gain more supports from other nations, Hatta attended congresses all over Europe. He always made as the chairman of the Indonesian delegates. In 1926, Hatta and PI joined the International Democratic Cogress for Peace in Bierville, France. In February 1927, Hatta went to Brussels to attend a congress held by the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression.[4] He met many other prominent nationalists there, including Jawaharlal Nehru from India, Hafiz Ramadan Bey from Egypt and Léopold Sédar Senghor from Africa. Later in the year, Hatta joined another congress held by the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom in Switzerland. In that occasion, Hatta delivered a speech with the title of "Indonesia and the Matter of Independence".
By the middle of 1927, Perhimpunan Indonesia's activities had alarmed the Dutch authorities.[4] In June 1927, Dutch authorities raided the residence of the organization's leaders, searching through their rooms and putting Hatta and other four other Indonesian activities behind bars.[4] After spending nearly six months in prison, they were taken to trial in the Hague. They were permitted to explain themselves during the hearing, of which Hatta took to the opportunity to explain Indonesia's nationalist cause. He made a speech to the court explaining that Indonesia's interests are in conflict with those of the Dutch's and that was why they could not cooperate. Hatta advocated cooperation between Indonesia and the Netherlands but only if Indonesia is independent and treated as an equal partner, not inequally because of its status as a colony. The speech became famous and it is known as the Indonesia Vrij or Free Indonesia speech.[4]
In 1929, Hatta and other PI activities were released. After their release, they joined their activities with the Indonesian-based nationalist, Sukarno and his Indonesian National Party (PNI). Together, Hatta and Sukarno set up a cadre school to train people with nationalistic interests. In the school, potential cadres were trained in economics, the history of the nationalist movement and in the government administration. In July 1932, Hatta made his way home to Indonesia.[4]
[edit] Independence Struggle
[edit] Struggle Against The Dutch Colonial Government
Hatta returned home to an Indonesia whose nationalist momentum had been slowed down by the arrest and the sentencing to prison of Sukarno. By the time Hatta had returned, most of the members of Sukarno's PNI had joined the Indonesian Party (Partindo) and more radical PNI members, together with the Dutch-educated Sutan Syahrir had banded together to form the New PNI. Although the initials were the same, the PNI in this case stood for the Indonesian National Education, showing that it will have focus on cadre training. In August 1932, after returning from the Netherlands, Hatta became the Chairman of the New PNI.
In December 1932, Sukarno was finally released from prison and the attention now turned on which party will Sukarno choose. Sukarno, who had wanted one united front to gain Indonesia's independence was conflicted, thinking that in choosing one over the other, he would encourage division. In this, he was criticized by Hatta, who was more pragmatic about differences which in this case was the conflict between Partindo's radical and mass party approach versus New PNI's moderate and cadre party approach. Sukarno insisted on negotiations to unify Partindo and New PNI but after failing, chose to join Partindo.
Between 1932 and 1933, Hatta wrote articles on politics and economy for New PNI's newspaper the Daulat Rakyat (The People's Authority). These articles were aimed towards training new cadres for Indonesia's leadership.
Hatta seemed to be extremely critical of Sukarno at this point in time. In August 1933, with Sukarno once again arrested and facing trial he wrote an article called "Sukarno Is Arrested". This was followed by articles entitled "The Tragedy of Sukarno" (November 1933) and "The Stance of a Leader" (December 1933).
The Dutch Colonial Government gave Sukarno a harsh punishment, exiling him to the island of Ende at Flores in December 1933. With Sukarno in exile, the Dutch Colonial Government now turned their eyes to the New PNI and its leadership. In February 1934, they made their move and arrested its leaders from its Jakarta branch (which included Hatta) and its Bandung branch. For a year they were imprisoned at prisons in Cipinang and Glodok, with Hatta spending his time in Glodok. During his time in prison, Hatta wrote a book entitled "The Economical Crisis and Capitalism".
In January 1935, it was decided that Hatta and his fellow New PNI leaders (including Syahrir) would be exiled to Boven Digoel in Papua. When Hatta arrived there, he was told by the local authorities that he had two options. The first option was to work for the Dutch Colonial Government as a civil servant for 40 cents a day with the hope of returning from exile and the second option was being an exile, receiving food but having no hope of returning from exile. Hatta commented if he had decided to take a job as a civil servant in Jakarta, he would have earned a lot of money and knowing that, there was no need to go to Boven Digoel to be paid cheaply. In saying this, Hatta chose the second option.
During his exile, Hatta continued to write articles, this time for the Newspaper Pemandangan (The View). He earned enough money from that to make ends meet at Boven Digoel and to support his colleagues who had financial troubles. Hatta also used his books (which filled 16 chests as it was packed to leave Jakarta) to give his colleagues lessons on economics, history, and philosophy. Later on these lessons would be made into books entitled "An Introduction on the Way to Knowledge" and "The Nature of Greek Thought" (four volumes).
In January 1936, Hatta and Syahrir were transferred to the Bandaneira in Maluku. There they joined more Nationalists such as Iwa Kusumasumantri and Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo. Hatta and Syahrir were given more freedom and was able to interact with the locals. Hatta and Syahrir also gave lessons to the local children, teaching them about politics and history.
In February 1942, Hatta and Syahrir were transferred to Sukabumi in West Java.
[edit] Japanese Occupation
By 1942, World War II was well under way and the Empire of Japan was fulfilling its imperial ambitions in East Asia and South East Asia. In March 1942, they began landing in Indonesia. Like their counterpart in Europe, the Dutch Colonial Government crumbled in the face of the invaders and by 9 March 1942, surrendered. On the 22 March 1942, Hatta and Syahrir were again transferred to Jakarta.
At Jakarta, Hatta met with Major General Harada, the Interim Head of Government. Harada asked Hatta to become an advisor for the occupational Government. Hatta accepted the job and then asked Harada if Japan was here to colonialize Indonesia. Harada assured Hatta that Japan would not do. In Hatta's eyes, an acknowledgement of an Indonesian Independence by Japan was extremely important. If Japan, with its ultra-nationalistic ideology was able to recognize Indonesia's Independence, it would put more pressure on the Allies (especially America and the United Kingdom) as representatives of democracy to do the same thing.
In July 1942, Hatta was reunited with Sukarno who after Flores had been transferred to Sumatra before the Japanese arrived and had also asked for his service. Although they had left off on a bad note, Hatta and Sukarno now had the common goal of working with the Japanese and then trying to achieve Independence from them. Together with Ki Hadjar Dewantoro and Muhammadiyah Chairman, Kiai Haji Mas Mansur, Hatta and Sukarno formed a quattuorvirate of leaders tasked by the Japanese occupational Government as their intermediary with the Indonesian people.
Hatta together with the other members of the quattuorvirate worked with much fervor under the Japanese Government. They echoed Japanese propaganda and presented the Japanese Empire as the protector, leader, and the light of Asia. At the same time however, Hatta continued to promote Indonesia's desire for Independence. In a speech in December 1942, Hatta said that Indonesia has been freed from the Dutch Colonial Government, but if they were freed only to be colonized by another power, he would rather see Indonesia drown to the bottom of the ocean.
On 9 March 1943, the Japanese Occupational Government approved the formation of the Centre of People's Power (Putera) with Hatta and the other quattuorvirate as the co-Chairmen of the association. Sukarno thought that this would be a way from which they could gain support for independence, instead the Japanese used this to their own cause and to start their romusha (forced labour) regime in Indonesia.
In November 1943, Hatta and Sukarno's efforts in cooperating with the Japanese Occupational Government was recognized by Emperor Hirohito who decorated them with awards in Tokyo.
As the tide of the war began to turn against the Japanese, the Japanese Occupational Government in Indonesia became desperate to maintain control. Putera was disbanded and replaced with Djawa Hokokai in March 1944. Although still Chaired by Sukarno, the Indonesians had less freedom of movement than they were in Putera. When defeat began looming on the horizon, Prime Minister Koiso announced in September 1944 that Japan will grant Indonesia its independence in the near future.
From then on, momentum began to gather for the independence of Indonesia, fuelled by the nationalist sentiments of Indonesians and supported by sympathizers from Japan such as Rear Admiral Maeda. In Maeda's case, he even set up a discussion forum called the Free Indonesia Centre and invited Hatta and Sukarno along to deliver lectures on Nationalism. This was followed in April 1945, by the formation of the Investigative Body for the Preparation of Indonesian Independence (BPUPKI). BPUPKI would meet over the next three months and would decide on things such as the constitution and which territories would be part of Indonesia.
[edit] Proclamation of Independence
By August 1945, Japan was on the eve of defeat. This month, the Japanese Government finally approved of Indonesian Independence and formed the Committee to Prepare Indonesian Independence (PPKI) to supervise it. On 8 August 1945, Hatta and Sukarno were summoned to Saigon, to meet with Marshal Terauchi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces in South East Asia. Terauchi told Hatta and Sukarno that the PPKI will be formed on 18 August and that Indonesia will be independent with Japanese supervision.
Hatta and Sukarno returned to Indonesia on 14 August. In Hatta's case, he had been waited on by Syahrir who had heard the news of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Syahrir told Hatta that they have to encourage Sukarno proclaim Indonesia's independence immediately, because in a couple of days the Japanese might not be there to provide supervision. Syahrir told Hatta not worry about the Japanese authorities because the people would be on their side.
Syahrir and Hatta then went to see Sukarno, with Syahrir repeating his argument in front of Sukarno. Hatta then spoke out, saying that he was worried the Allies would see them as Japanese collaborators. Sukarno shared this sentiment and Syahrir left the meeting out of frustration.
The next day, on 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies. In Indonesia, the news was only a rumor and had not been confirmed. Hatta and Sukarno then went to the office of the Japanese Occupational Government in Jakarta, only to find it empty. Hatta and Sukarno then to Maeda who confirmed that Japan had surrendered to the Allies. Hatta and Sukarno seemed shocked that Japan had surrendered. During the afternoon, Hatta and Sukarno were confronted by Indonesian Youths who wanted the Independence to be proclaimed as soon as possible. A heated exchange followed, with Sukarno telling the youths to have more patience. Hatta, who was aware of his and Sukarno's superiority in the exchange, sarcastically commented on the Youths' inability to proclaim independence without Sukarno.
On the morning of 16 August 1945, the Indonesian Youths kidnapped both Hatta and Sukarno and took them to the town of Rengasdengklok where they continued forcing Hatta and Sukarno to declare Independence without any success. In Jakarta, there was panic as PPKI was due to start meeting that day and had planned to elect Sukarno as Chairman and Hatta as Vice-Chairman. When knowledge of Hatta and Sukarno's whereabouts became available and the Japanese surrender confirmed, Achmad Subardjo, a PPKI representative went to Rengasdengklok to break the news to Hatta and Sukarno. That night, Hatta and Sukarno returned to Jakarta where at Maeda's house, they worked on the Proclamation of Independence.
Finally, on 17 August 1945, at Sukarno's residence, Indonesia's Independence was finally Proclaimed in a short statement on paper signed by both Hatta and Sukarno.
[edit] Vice Presidency
[edit] Election and First Months In Office
On 18 August 1945, Hatta was selected as Indonesia's first Vice President by PPKI to accompany Sukarno who had been elected as the Nation's first President.
As Vice President, Hatta quickly established himself as the day-to-day administrator of the Government with Sukarno setting the Government policy and then trying to win support for the said policy. Although they had different styles of Governing, many agree that the style difference complimented both men's talents perfectly. They were nicknamed the Duumvirate (Dwitunggal) and until today they were hailed by many as the best President and Vice President partnership in Indonesia's history.
Hatta would made three important decisions in the Republic's early days. In October, Hatta gave the Central National Committee of Indonesia (KNIP) legislative powers in addition to its advisory role to the President. During the same month, Hatta also authorized the formation of political parties in Indonesia. The next month, in November, Hatta also made the decision which took away the President's role as Head of Government and transferred it to a Prime Minister. Hatta was able to make these crucial decisions because Sukarno was unable to attend the meetings in question, leaving Hatta in charge. For his part, Sukarno did not seem to have to problem with Hatta's decisions, at least not during the War of Independence.
[edit] National revolution
When the Dutch began sending their troops back to Indonesia, Hatta together with Syahrir and Sukarno all agreed that a diplomatic solution should be thought up. This caused tensions with more radical elements within the Government such as youth leaders Chaerul Saleh and Adam Malik.
In January 1946, Hatta and Sukarno moved to Yogyakarta, leaving Syahrir (who was by then Prime Minister) to head negotiations in Jakarta.
By the end of 1946, the diplomatic solution which Hatta and Sukarno had been looking for seemed to have been found. The Linggadjati Agreement, signed in November 1946 called for Dutch recognition of the Republic of Indonesia. However, territorial recognition would only be over Java, Sumatra, and Madura. In addition, this Republic would be part of a United States of Indonesia with the Queen of the Netherlands acting as the Head of State. However, before the agreement was finally ratified by the Dutch House of Representatives, some compromises were made without the consent of the Republic. In turn, Indonesia refused to implement its part of the deal, resulting in the first Police Action in July 1947.
During this time, Hatta was sent out of the country to look for support for Indonesia. One country that he went to was India, the homeland of his old friend, Nehru. Disguised as an airplane co-pilot, Hatta sneaked out of the country to ask for assistance. There he asked Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi for help. Nehru assured him that India will support Indonesia and will make the support known at international forums such as the United Nations (UN).
In December 1947, negotiations were held aboard USS Renville and an agreement was signed in January 1948. This agreement was more favorable towards the Dutch and called for the Republic to recognize the territories which the Dutch had took during the first Police Action. The agreement caused outrage and caused Amir Syarifuddin to resign from his position as Prime Minister.
To replace Syarifuddin, Sukarno appointed Hatta as Prime Minister and declared that the cabinet will be an emergency one and will be answerable to the President instead of the KNIP. Hatta also took on the position of Minister of Defense.
As Prime Minister, Hatta had to make an unpopular decision. In August 1948, with the Republic struggling to pay its TNI troops, Hatta was forced to demobilize some troops.
In December 1948, the Dutch launched its second Police Action and focused their attack on the Yogyakarta. Hatta and Sukarno, instead of running away to fight guerilla warfare chose to remain in the city and was arrested. Sukarno transferred authority to the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PDRI), before going into exile with all the other Republican leaders. Hatta was sent to Bangka.
Resistance continued under General Sudirman and TNI troops who fought guerilla warfare against the Dutch. In March, Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX organized the 1 March General Offensive and played an important role in causing international pressure to be put on the Netherlands. In May 1949, the Roem-Royem agreement was signed and the Netherlands promised to return the leaders of the Republican Government. In July 1949, Hatta and Sukarno made their return to Yogyakarta.
In August 1949, Hatta headed a delegation to the Hague for a Round Table conference. In November 1949, the formation of the United States of Indonesia was finally agreed. It was to be a federation consisting of the Republic and 15 States which the Dutch had created during the National Revolution. The Queen of the Netherlands would continue to become the symbolic Head of State while Sukarno and Hatta would continue as President and Vice President. On 27 December 1949, the Dutch authorities finally recognized the sovereignty.
Hatta continued on as the Prime Minister of the United States of Indonesia and presided over the transition of the federal state to the unitary state, which was made official on 17 August 1950.
[edit] Intellectual Pursuits and Cooperatives
Indonesia soon adopted a constitution which advocated Parliamentary Democracy and reduced the President to the role of a ceremonial Head of State. That left Hatta with little to do as Vice President, especially since his term as Prime Minister was not renewed.
For his remaining time as Vice President, Hatta was regularly invited to deliver lectures in universities. Hatta also engaged in intellectual pursuits, writing essays and books about topics such as the economy and cooperatives. The idea of cooperatives being an integral part of economy would become a pet project for Hatta and he would become an enthusiastic promoter of the idea. In July 1951, on the occasion of Cooperatives Day, Hatta went on the radio to deliver a speech on cooperatives. In 1953, Hatta's contribution towards promoting cooperatives was recognized and he was given the title "Father of Indonesian Cooperatives" at the Indonesian Cooperative Congress.
[edit] Setting Indonesia's Foreign Policy Doctrine
Aside from Cooperatives, Hatta's other main contribution to the running of Indonesia is the setting of the Nation's Foreign Policy doctrine.
In 1948, Hatta delivered a speech called "Rowing Between Two Rocks". In the speech Hatta referred to the Cold War and the conflict between the United States and the USSR. Hatta said that Indonesian foreign policy has to look after its own interest first, not that of the US and the USSR. In saying this, Hatta wanted Indonesia to be independent in deciding its stance during the Cold War. Hatta also added that Indonesia should be an active participant in world politics so that once again, it would be Indonesia's interests that comes first.
This doctrine, which would become known as the "Independent and Active" doctrine, continues to be the basis
[edit] Retirement from the Vice Presidency
In 1955, Hatta announced that when the new People's Representative Council (DPR) as well as the Constituante (A Government body commissioned to create a new constitution) was formed as a result of the year's Legislative Election, he would retire from the Vice Presidency. He announced this intention in a letter to Sukarno.
On the surface, it seemed as if Hatta was retiring for practical reasons. Because the Presidency was a ceremonial role, this made the office of Vice President pointless and Hatta thought that the country was wasting a lot of money paying his wages. There were also personal reasons, however. As a man who believed in democracy, Hatta was beginning to feel disillusioned with Sukarno's increasing autocracy and authoritarianism. Hatta had continued to advise Sukarno against taking this road but he was ignored. Hatta finally gave up and thought that he could no longer work with Sukarno.
On 1 December 1956, Hatta resigned from the Vice Presidency.
[edit] Post Vice Presidency
[edit] Impact of Retirement
Hatta's retirement caused shockwaves all around Indonesia, especially for those of non-Javanese ethnicity. In the eyes of non-Javanese people, Hatta was their main representative in a Javanese dominated Government.
The impact of Hatta's retirement was evident in the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia (PRRI) rebellion which wanted to break feree from Indonesia and the Universal Struggle (Permesta) movement which asked for decentralization. In negotiations with the Central Government, both PRRI and Permesta listed the reunification of the Sukarno/Hatta leadership as one of the concessions that they asked from the Central Government.
[edit] Government Critic
Now outside of the Government, Hatta began to openly criticize Sukarno.
One of Hatta's criticism was Sukarno's lack of commitment towards national development. Hatta said that the revolution ended with the Dutch recognition of Indonesian sovereignty and that the Government's focus should be on Development. Sukarno outright rejected this idea and responded to it during his 1959 Independence Day speech by saying that the Revolution is not over.
In 1960, Hatta wrote a book called "Our Democracy". In it, he criticized Sukarno's Guided Democracy as another form of dictatorship. Sukarno immediately banned the books.
[edit] Transition from Old Order to New Order
During the tumultous time which saw the Presidency change hands from Sukarno to General Suharto, Hatta remained in the background. However, Hatta would break his silence in June 1970, just a week before Sukarno died. In a letter to Suharto, Hatta said that he was disappointed that Sukarno was put on house arrest instead of being taken in front of a trial. Hatta's reason for this was not malicious however, he just wanted things on G30S to be cleared up and give Sukarno a chance to defend himself because there are many who believed that he was not guilty.
[edit] New Order
Hatta's involvement with Suharto's Government came at the beginning of 1970 when protests were made on corruption within the Government. In January 1970, Suharto appointed Hatta, along with three others as members of a commission to investigate corruption within the Government. The results of the commission's investigation was never revealed to public until it was leaked in July 1970. It was then became apparent that the suspicion of the protesters were correct, there was widespread corruption within the Government. Controversially however, in August 1970, Suharto would disband the commission and allow for only two cases of corruption to be looked at by the Government.
In July 1978, together with Abdul Haris Nasution, Hatta set up the Institute for Constitutional Awareness Foundation (YLKB). An institution designed as a forum for critics of Suharto's regime. Suharto's Government moved quickly and did not allow YLKB to conduct its first meeting in January 1979. The YLKB did not give up. In August 1979 managed to hold a meeting in which DPR members included. Perhaps significantly, ABRI members attended the meeting. During the meeting, Nasution criticized the New Order for not fully implementing Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.
Peduli Terhadap Sesama dalam Keseriusan dan Ketenangan. Sesekali Senyum dan Tertawa Ketika Situasi dan Kondisi Menampakkan Kekronisan Keadaan Masyarakat. Senyum dan Tawa kegelian Manakala Kita Menyaksikan Dagelan Kebijakan, Sandiwara Politik.
materialism marx
Throughout their life-long collaboration, Marx and Engels developed a fascination with the revolutions in modern science, from biology, anatomy and physiology to astronomy, physics and chemistry. While Marx made a special study of mathematics, especially differential and integral calculus, Engels devoted his energies in following the natural sciences.
Ever since his arrival in London in September 1870, Engels was anxious to write a comprehensive work on science and dialectical materialism. "To me there could be no question of building up the laws of dialectics into nature", he said, "but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it." In other words, by scientific research he would reveal the objective dialectics of nature and so demonstrate the universal character of the basic laws of materialist dialectics.
The notes and studies for such a work make up the present fascinating book, Dialectics of Nature - edited and published in 1925, some thirty years after Engels' death. Only two of the articles included in the Dialectics were ever published previously: The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1896) and Natural Science in the Spirit World (1898). The original book, as perceived by Engels, was never finished.
This was due mainly to the heavy political and theoretical schedule that lay before Engels. At Marx's insistence the revisionist Eugen Dühring had to be thoroughly answered, which resulted in the encyclopaedic Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, popularly known as Anti-Dühring. After Marx's death, Engels was left with the Herculean task of editing and completing Das Kapital - the only person capable of adequately fulfilling such a task. Aside from this, he wrote two other important classics: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
The close collaboration between Marx and Engels lasted some 40 years. Engels has been regarded somewhat unfairly as the second fiddle in this relationship, a view sometimes fostered by Engels himself. "What I contributed - at any rate with the exception of my work in a few special fields - Marx could very well have done without me", wrote Engels. "What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. Marx stood higher, saw farther, and took a broader and quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best men of talent. Without him the theory would be far from what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name." (1)
Engels was an exceedingly modest man by nature. His extensive contribution to Marxist theory was outstanding, and not just "in a few special fields". His fruitful collaboration with Marx was far from one-sided. He was probably the most widely educated man of his day. He not only had a profound knowledge of economics and history, but his encyclopaedic mind enabled him to discuss the exact meaning of an obscure Latin phrase concerning Roman marriage law, or the reactions taking place when pure zinc is immersed into sulphuric acid. The Selected Correspondence of Marx and Engels illustrates the close affinity between both men.
"This morning in bed the following dialectical points about the natural sciences came into my head", wrote Engels, "The object of science: matter in motion, bodies. Bodies cannot be separated from motion, their forms and kinds can only be apprehended in motion; nothing can be said about bodies divorced from motion, divorced from all relation to other bodies. Only in motion does a body reveal what it is. Hence, natural science obtains knowledge about bodies by examining them in their relationship to each other, in motion. Cognition of the various forms of motion is cognition of bodies. The investigation of these various forms of motion is therefore the chief object of the natural sciences." (2)
Engels saw in the processes of nature a confirmation of the laws of dialectics, of the general laws of change, not only in society and human thought, but also in the external world. His notes on science, compiled in the Dialectics of Nature, were an attempt to comprehend the whole of science from the materialist standpoint.
Lenin, who would later take up the defence of materialist dialectics utilising the revolution in physics, in his Materialism and Empirio-criticism, had little to say on astronomy, geology, chemistry or biology. These scientific fields were however extensively examined by Engels in The Dialectics of Nature, although much of his observations consisted merely of rough notes, which he hoped to correct and expand later.
Many of his manuscripts appear to have been written between 1872 and 1882, a year prior to Marx's death. Readers clearly need a degree of patience with some of the chapters, which deal with the science of more than a hundred years ago. Words such as "force", "motion" and "vis viva" are used, where today we would speak of energy. The chapters on Basic forms of Motion, The Measure of Motion-Work, and Heat deal with controversies over various theories of energy, long resolved. These chapters are interesting from the point of view of how Engels analysed these issues, rather than the issues themselves. The essay on electricity is even more dated, but still revealing.
Needless to say, other parts, most notably the factual data used by Engels, have been rendered obsolete with the rapid progress of natural science. For example, the Kant-Laplace theory of cosmology is outdated. It has been established that the velocity of the electric current cannot exceed that of light. Whereas Engels refers to "albuminous bodies", today we would talk of DNA, RNA and protein molecules. Elsewhere there are incorrect statements in the text, for example in the section on stars and protozoa. With the invention of carbon dating, the estimated time spans used by Engels have also been drastically revised. Engels cannot be blamed for these errors. He simply followed the views of some of the best astronomers and zoologists of his day.
The development of science has vastly increased our knowledge over the last 130 years and many corrections have been introduced into our scientific understanding. It should also be appreciated that the ideas contained in the Dialects of Nature were Engels' preliminary thoughts on different subjects. He even ended the book with the phrase, "All this has to be thoroughly revised." (3) The surprising thing is not that there are mistakes in Engels' work, but how far Engels' ideas have broadly stood the test of time. More importantly, the general method and conception of the book remain completely valid.
Engels' work was recently brought to public attention by none other than Stephen Jay Gould, the celebrated palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, who praised Engels' "trenchant political analysis of why Western science was so hung up on the a priori assertion of cerebral primacy." (4)
Gould went on to explain, "Engels had a keen interest in the natural sciences and sought to base his general philosophy of dialectical materialism upon a ‘positive' foundation. He did not live to complete his ‘dialectics of nature,' but he included long commentaries on science in such treaties as the Anti-Dühring. In 1876, Engels wrote an essay entitled, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. It was published posthumously in 1896 and, unfortunately, had no visible impact upon Western science." (5)
Today, the Dialectics of Nature should be read in conjunction with its modern counterpart, Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science by Alan Woods and Ted Grant. The latter provides an up-to-date analysis of the latest discoveries of modern science, including chaos theory and complexity theory, from the standpoint of Marxism, and reveals that many of these new trends are strikingly similar to the theories of dialectical materialism worked out by Marx and Engels more than 150 years ago. With each passing day, new discoveries are being made which confirm the non-linear dynamics of science, in other words, the dialectical workings of nature.
The latest developments in physics, including the new theory of Ubiquity, have revealed new "power-laws" remarkably similar to the laws of dialectics. Ubiquity theory explains that everything tends towards a state of non-equilibrium, i.e. a critical state. This corresponds to the concept of quantity into quality (and vice versa) in dialectics, where quantitative changes at a certain critical point result in a qualitative change.
According to Mark Buchanan in his book on the subject, "... catastrophe theory, despite its provocative name, has very little to say about the workings of anything like the earth's crust, an economy, or an ecosystem. In these things, where thousands or millions of elements interact, what is important is the overall collective organisation and behaviour. To understand things of this sort, one needs a theory that applies generally to networks of interacting things, something for which catastrophe theory is ill prepared." (6)
He continues: "At the heart of our story, then, lies the discovery that networks of things of all kinds-atoms, molecules, species, people, and even ideas-have a marked tendency to organise themselves along similar lines. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before." (7).
If you compare what Engels wrote 130 years earlier, you can clearly recognise the parallels. "The general nature of dialectics to be developed as a science of interconnections, in contrast to metaphysics ", wrote Engels in the Dialectics of Nature (8). Again, "Dialectics as the science of universal inter-connection." (9) Dialectical thinking considers things "in their interconnection, in their sequence, their movement, their birth and their death." (10). "The great basic thought that the world is to be comprehended not as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes, in which apparently stable things no less than the concepts, their mental reflections in our heads, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away..." (11).
Engels furnishes us with an outline of the main laws of dialectics: "transformation of quantity and quality-mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes-development through contradiction or negation of the negation-spiral form of development." (12) While each level of development is governed by its own specific laws, these merge with the higher general laws of motion governing all spheres of existence and development, as outlined by Engels.
"If one wants to learn about the rhythms of history (or, shall we say, its dis-rhythms), one might just as well become familiar with the process by which, say, earthquakes happen", states Buchanan. According to him, "the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world." (13). For physicists, the heart of this concept is "non-equilibrium physics" or "the physics of complex systems". Marxists have consistently drawn comparisons between revolutions in history and upheavals and catastrophes in nature, whereby slow gradual changes result at a certain point in explosive developments, where quantity changes into quality. Again, physicists describe the point of transition as a "phase transition". "When ice melts in a gin and tonic, or when a puddle evaporates and is lost to the air, these too are phase transitions: each being the transformation of a substance from one form or ‘phase' to another. In every case, there is a change in the internal workings of the stuff, as its atoms or molecules organise themselves differently." (14).
Let us again compare this to Engels: "The rock comes to rest, but weathering, the action of the ocean surf, of rivers and glacier action continually destroys the equilibrium. Evaporation and rain, wind, heat, electric and magnetic phenomena offer the same spectacle. Finally, in the living organism we see continual motion of all the smallest particles as well as of the larger organs, resulting in the continual equilibrium of the total organism during normal period of life, which yet always remains in motion, the living unity of motion and equilibrium. All equilibrium is only relative and temporary." (15)
Studies were made in the 1960s of the changes from vapour to liquid of substances as diverse as oxygen, neon and carbon monoxide. Each critical state can be expressed through a power-law with its own mathematical number. There are many different critical states, each with a different critical number. However, researchers found while comparing the changes in diverse elements, exactly the same critical numbers repeatedly occurred. In the 1970s, Leo Kadanoff, a physicist from the University of Chicago, put his finger on the explanation:
"In studying the critical numbers that pop up in the critical states for different phase transitions, Kadanoff found that the basic physical dimension of the thing in question, of the very space in which it lives, is one of the factors that matters. He also found that only one other detail seems to matter, this being the general shape of the individual elements. In a gas of xenon, for example, each atom is like a tiny billiard ball. It can move around, but it can't point. In a magnet, the atoms are like arrows, and can ‘do' more since they can potentially point in lots of directions. When the individual elements have more options, you can imagine that it is harder for order to propagate from one place to another. Sure enough, this detail also affects the precise form of the self-similarity in the critical state.
"Incredibly, however, Kadanoff found that nothing else whatsoever seemed to matter. So forget the atomic masses and the electrical charges of the particles involved. Forget whether those particles are atoms of oxygen, nitrogen, krypton or iron. Forget even whether they are made of single atoms or are more complicated molecules made of several or even a hundred atoms. Forget everything, in fact, about the kinds of particles and how strongly or weakly they interact with one another. None of these details affects the organisation of the critical state even a tiny bit. Physicists refer to this considerable miracle as critical state universality, and it has now been supported by thousands of experiments and computer simulations.
"In the critical state, the forces of order and chaos battle to an uneasy balance, neither ever fully winning or losing. And the character of the battle, and the perpetually shifting and changing strife to which it leads, is the same regardless of almost every last detail of the things involved." (16)
Not surprisingly, other branches of science have also come very close to the concepts of dialectical materialism. Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge both came forward with the revolutionary theory of "punctuated equilibria", which explained evolution not as some slow, steady, gradual change for the better, as outlined by orthodox Darwinism, but a process full of leaps, breaks and transformations. This challenged the dominant Darwinian view of gradualism. Although Gould and Eldredge are not Marxists, they were certainly influence by materialist dialectics. "I am no Marxist", wrote Niles Eldredge, "and neither for that matter is Steve; learning and adoption are two different things." (17)
Eldredge went on to explain that new dialectical models on the lines of punctuated equilibria have turned up throughout science: "I am still not quite sure what to make of the zeitgeist of our own times, in which, quite apart from Marxism (or so I believe), paradigms similar to punctuated equilibria have shown up in a wide range of academic pursuits. Before us, there was the celebrated case of Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions became a best-seller in the early 1970s. His central thesis was essentially that science proceeds as status quo paradigms in stasis, integrated by rapid events that finally throw out the old paradigm in favour of a new one that handles all the anomalies swept under the table by its predecessor. Catastrophe theory, similarly, became a hot topic in mathematics as the 1970s wore on. Archaeology and political science have also seen new theories emerging along similar lines (some, I am happy to report, explicitly derived from punctuated equilibria). There may well be a general reaction against models stressing smooth, linear continuity emerging in the intellectual community generally-models of which punctuated equilibria is but one example." (18)
In his criticism of Charles L. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Gould made use of Engels' brilliant essay on human evolution contained in the Dialectics of Nature, which has clearly stood the test of time.
"Ironically, for the man's work is anathema to Wilson, who senses the evil influence of Marxism behind all radical criticism of his socio-biology, the best nineteenth-century case for gene-culture co-evolution was made by Frederich Engels in his remarkable essay of 1876 (posthumously published in the Dialectics of Nature), The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man.
"Engels, following Haeckel's outline as his guide, argues that upright posture must precede the brain's enlargement because major mental improvement requires an impetus provided by evolving culture. Thus, freeing the hands for inventing tools (‘labour' in Engels's committed terminology) came first, then selective pressures for articulate speech, since, with tools, ‘men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to one another,' and finally sufficient impetus for a notable (and genetically based) enlargement of the brain:
" ‘First labour, after it, and then with it, articulate speech-these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man.'
"An enlarged brain (biology, or genes in later parlance) then fed back upon tools and language (culture), improving them in turn and setting the basis for further growth of the brain-the positive feedback loop of gene-culture co-evolution:
" ‘The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of judgment, gave an ever-renewed impulse to the further development of both labour and speech.'" (19).
In the field of biology, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin have championed the dialectical approach. In fact their book, The Dialectical Biologist, published in 1985, was specifically dedicated to the memory of Fredrick Engels. Although Engels was limited by the material at his disposal at the time, recent science has confirmed his outlook in so far as "opposing forces lie at the base of the evolving physical and biological world." (20).
"The dialectical view insists that persistence and equilibrium are not the natural state of things but require explanation, which must be sought in the actions of the opposing forces", state Levin and Lewontin. "The conditions under which the opposing forces balance and the system as a whole is in stable equilibrium are quite special. They require the simultaneous satisfaction of as many mathematical relations as there are variables in the system, usually expressed as inequalities among the parameters of that system.
"If these parameters remain within the prescribed limits, then external events producing small shifts among the variables will be erased by the self-regulating processes of stable systems. Thus in humans the level of blood sugar is regulated by the rate at which sugar is released into the blood by the digestion of carbohydrates, the rate at which stored glycogen, fat, or protein is converted into sugar, and the rate at which sugar is removed and utilised. Normally, if the blood sugar level rises, then the rate of utilisation is increased by release of more insulin from the pancreas. If the level of blood sugar falls, more sugar is released into the blood, or the person gets hungry and eats some source of sugar. The result is that the blood sugar level is kept not constant but within tolerable limits. So far we are dealing with the familiar patterns of homeostasis, the negative feedback that characterises all self-regulation. However, the pancreas might respond weakly to a high sugar level, which could result in diabetic coma. Or the blood sugar level may fall so low that the person is incapable of eating.
"The opposing forces are seen as contradictory in the sense that each taken separately would have opposite effects, and their joint action may be different from the result of either acting alone. So far, the object may seem to be the passive victim of these opposing forces. However, the principle that all things are internally heterogeneous directs our attention to the opposing processes at work within the object. These opposing processes can now be seen as part of the self-regulation and development of the objective. The relations among the stabilising and destabilising processes become themselves the objects of interests, and the original object is seen as a system, a network of positive and negative feedbacks." (21)
Dialectics of Nature deals extensively with such problems of dialectics as causality, necessity and chance. Here Engels criticises the one-sided outlook of the scientific establishment, its "commonsense" philosophy, and its metaphysics, which treats chance and necessity as two separate entities, with one or the other taking precedence. "In contrast to both conceptions, Hegel came forward with the hitherto quite unheard-of propositions that the accidental has a cause because it is accidental, and just as much also has no cause because it is accidental," stated Engels (22). In other words, necessity is inseparably linked to accident and expresses itself through accident.
According to Engels, it was this method of looking at things that allowed Darwin to make his epoch-making discovery. "Precisely the infinite, accidental differences between individuals within a single species", stated Engels, "differences which become accentuated until they break through the character of the species, and whose immediate causes even can be demonstrated only in extremely few cases, compelled him to question the previous basis of all regularity in biology, viz. the concept of species in its previous metaphysical rigidity and unchangeability. Without this concept of species, however, all science was nothing." (23)
The theory of Ubiquity also ventures into many different fields, even touching on human history and human behaviour, including free will. "Once you become accustomed to the idea, it is not so hard to accept that the essential logic of the critical state might arise in simple physical things such as a pile of grains, or even in the rocks of the earth's crust or the trees of the forest, where definite physical laws control how activity spreads from one place to another", states Buchanan.
"When the stress becomes too great somewhere along a fault, the rock slips, shifting stress onto the rocks further down the line. In cases such as this, there is no need to reckon with anything so ineffable and capricious as a thought or an emotion. But once people become involved, things are not so simple... aren't we making a dangerous leap in supposing that the critical state has anything to do with human history?" (24)
"... To understand any particular revolution, historians surely need to study all the social conditions from which it springs. To understand what makes a person take up arms, go on strike or decide not to have children, the historian indeed has to try to get inside that person's mind, and weigh up all the social pressures and influences to which the person is responding. Only in this way can the historian come to understand what sparked a revolution, as many people's actions followed in some understandable way from the conditions they were in. But the historian really needs also to know more about the way in which influences of all kinds can propagate through a population. To understand why mass movements are not rare and history is as interesting and as varied as it is, we need to understand the character of the critical state." (25)
After looking at examples, ranging from the making of trails to the movement of populations, the author concludes "there can be a mathematics for people. It cannot tell you, of course, what any one person will do, and yet it may be able to say what kind of patterns are likely to emerge out of the millions." He goes on to explain, "One of the messages of universality is that understanding something often means looking past the surface details to spy the deeper logic beneath."
Here the proponents of Ubiquity are attempting to come to grips with concepts dealt with by George Fredrick Hegel some 200 years ago. Hegel talks of understanding not only the "appearance" but also the "essence" of things, not in isolation but in their inter-connections, in their endless action and reaction. This is the deeper logic that lies beneath the surface of things. We need to understand things in their movement and change, their identity and difference, their contradictory nature, which is the essence of things.
"Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and actuality", stated Hegel. Necessity is blind only as long as it is not understood. Freedom and necessity are not mutually exclusive, but intrinsically bound together. Hegel was the first to understand this relationship. To him, freedom is the appropriation of necessity. It means no independence from natural laws, but knowledge of such laws, allowing them to work for us. The more we understand, the greater is our freedom.
"In this way, necessity is transfigured into freedom, not the freedom that consists in abstract negation, but freedom concrete and positive. From which we may learn what a mistake it is to regard freedom and necessity as mutually exclusive. Necessity indeed qua necessity is far from being freedom: yet freedom presupposes necessity, and contains it as an unsubstantial element in itself... In short, man is most independent when he knows himself to be determined by the absolute idea throughout." (26)
Hegel's reference to the "absolute idea" is but an idealistic expression for objective necessity. Freedom does not exist in the illusion of independence from these natural laws. As Engels explained, it is blind only so long as it is not understood. Freedom comes through the knowledge of these laws, and the possibility of making them work in a particular way towards a definite end. "Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity", wrote Engels.
We cannot circumvent the laws of nature, but through knowledge we can make them work for us. The more we extend this knowledge, the more we begin to conquer nature. Today, we have no control over the weather, and can only predict the weather with accuracy no more that three or four days in advance. However, in the future, with increased understanding of this non-linear system, we can begin to influence and eventually control our weather patterns. Until that time, we remain slaves of blind necessity.
With every step forward in "regulating" nature, new freedoms are opened up. Marx explained that the shortening of the working day was a precondition for true freedom, meaning that it allowed time for people to develop their physical and mental potential to the full. For Engels, the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism meant the leap from the Realm of Necessity to the Realm of Freedom, where conscious planning replaces the anarchy of production.
Buchanan makes an interesting observation: "After a great discovery, scientists suddenly see everywhere that which they had never seen before." (27) For a long time, false philosophical ideas have exercised a negative influence on scientists. Now, in a number of fields, they have stumbled upon a dialectical view of nature, although many still refuse to call it by its correct name:
"If many historians [and scientists - RS] have searched for gradual trends or cycles as a way of finding meaning and making sense of history, they were using the wrong tools. These notions arise in equilibrium physics and astronomy. The proper tools are to be found in non-equilibrium physics, which is specifically tuned to understanding things in which history matters." (28)
It is this accidental discovery of a non-linear (that is, dialectical) view, which has opened up all kinds of new possibilities and allowed scientists to see things in a different way, in their interconnection and contradiction.
Causality exists in nature, and objective laws govern the whole of nature. This represents objective necessity within the material world, and is not an arbitrary invention of the human mind. There exists a natural, objective interconnection between the phenomena of the world. Engels speaks of the "law of nature", of the "necessities of nature". These laws assert themselves unconsciously "in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents." (Engels). Such accidents are things or events, whose interconnection is so remote that we regard them as non-existent or negligible.
Dialectical thinking, which has grown out of the dialectics of nature, gives us a far deeper comprehension of things. By a process of successive approximations, permitting more precise concretisations, and giving thought a richness of content, human thought comes ever closer to living phenomena.
The dialectic is materialist, because its roots are deep in objective reality, in nature. There is no place in this system for Heaven, Hell or the immortal soul. There exists only the material world, made up of infinite processes and not motionless categories. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, and the solar system out of the nebulae. In essence, this constitutes the materialist view of nature.
The movement towards a dialectical view of nature by a number of leading scientists is of fundamental importance. It marks a shift away from the mysticism that has crept into a number of scientific areas such as cosmology and some branches of theoretical physics. It cuts right across all attempts to reconcile science with religion, of which there are numerous examples.
The physicist Stephen Hawking concluded his best seller, A Brief History of Time, with the words "the ultimate triumph of human reason" was "to know the Mind of God". Paul Davis, another physicist, talks in his book, The Mind of God, of the need to embrace "the mystical path". Even Ilya Prigogine concludes his very good book with "time is a construction and therefore carries an ethical responsibility" and makes references to the "God of Genesis". The Catholic Church has embraced the "Big Bang" as evidence of the Creation, while the President of the United States, George W. Bush, the most powerful person on the planet, has openly embraced Intelligent Design-another way of saying Creationism-the clearest example of Christian fundamentalism masquerading as science.
The republication of the Dialectics of Nature, a classic in its own right, is a welcome addition to the arsenal of the new scientific revolution. It will also help provide the philosophical weapons needed in the fight against religious obscurantism, and arm the new generation with the scientific outlook of modern dialectical materialism. This will enable us to attain a better understanding of the world in which we live. Such an understanding is the prior condition for a successful struggle to change the world, to rid it of poverty, hunger and war, and to make it a fit place for people to live in.
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"Philosophers have interpreted the world", stated Marx long ago. "The point however is to change it." However, we leave the last word to Fredrick Engels who to the end of his life displayed such an undying optimism for the future of humankind:
"With man we enter history. Animals also have a history, that of their descent and gradual evolution to their present position. This history, however, is made for them, and in so far as they themselves take part in it, this occurs without their knowledge and desire. On the other hand, the more that human beings become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their history themselves, consciously, the less becomes the influence of unforeseen effects and uncontrolled forces on this history, and the more accurately does the historical result correspond to the aim laid down in advance. If, however, we apply this measure to human history, to that of even the most advanced peoples of the present day, we find that there still exists here a colossal disproportion between the proposed aims and the results arrived at, that unforeseen effects predominate, and that the uncontrolled forces are far more powerful than those set into motion according to plan. And this cannot be otherwise as long as the most essential historical activity of men, the one which has raised them from the animal to the human state and which forms the material foundation of all their other activities, namely the production of their requirements of life, i.e., in our day social production, is above all subject to the interplay of unintended effects from uncontrolled forces and achieves its desired end only by way of exception, but much more frequently the exact opposite. In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously did. And what is the result? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses, and every ten years a great collapse. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for mankind in the specific biological aspect. Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but also with every day more possible. From it will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, and particularly natural science, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it in the deepest shade."
Ever since his arrival in London in September 1870, Engels was anxious to write a comprehensive work on science and dialectical materialism. "To me there could be no question of building up the laws of dialectics into nature", he said, "but of discovering them in it and evolving them from it." In other words, by scientific research he would reveal the objective dialectics of nature and so demonstrate the universal character of the basic laws of materialist dialectics.
The notes and studies for such a work make up the present fascinating book, Dialectics of Nature - edited and published in 1925, some thirty years after Engels' death. Only two of the articles included in the Dialectics were ever published previously: The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1896) and Natural Science in the Spirit World (1898). The original book, as perceived by Engels, was never finished.
This was due mainly to the heavy political and theoretical schedule that lay before Engels. At Marx's insistence the revisionist Eugen Dühring had to be thoroughly answered, which resulted in the encyclopaedic Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, popularly known as Anti-Dühring. After Marx's death, Engels was left with the Herculean task of editing and completing Das Kapital - the only person capable of adequately fulfilling such a task. Aside from this, he wrote two other important classics: Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
The close collaboration between Marx and Engels lasted some 40 years. Engels has been regarded somewhat unfairly as the second fiddle in this relationship, a view sometimes fostered by Engels himself. "What I contributed - at any rate with the exception of my work in a few special fields - Marx could very well have done without me", wrote Engels. "What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. Marx stood higher, saw farther, and took a broader and quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best men of talent. Without him the theory would be far from what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name." (1)
Engels was an exceedingly modest man by nature. His extensive contribution to Marxist theory was outstanding, and not just "in a few special fields". His fruitful collaboration with Marx was far from one-sided. He was probably the most widely educated man of his day. He not only had a profound knowledge of economics and history, but his encyclopaedic mind enabled him to discuss the exact meaning of an obscure Latin phrase concerning Roman marriage law, or the reactions taking place when pure zinc is immersed into sulphuric acid. The Selected Correspondence of Marx and Engels illustrates the close affinity between both men.
"This morning in bed the following dialectical points about the natural sciences came into my head", wrote Engels, "The object of science: matter in motion, bodies. Bodies cannot be separated from motion, their forms and kinds can only be apprehended in motion; nothing can be said about bodies divorced from motion, divorced from all relation to other bodies. Only in motion does a body reveal what it is. Hence, natural science obtains knowledge about bodies by examining them in their relationship to each other, in motion. Cognition of the various forms of motion is cognition of bodies. The investigation of these various forms of motion is therefore the chief object of the natural sciences." (2)
Engels saw in the processes of nature a confirmation of the laws of dialectics, of the general laws of change, not only in society and human thought, but also in the external world. His notes on science, compiled in the Dialectics of Nature, were an attempt to comprehend the whole of science from the materialist standpoint.
Lenin, who would later take up the defence of materialist dialectics utilising the revolution in physics, in his Materialism and Empirio-criticism, had little to say on astronomy, geology, chemistry or biology. These scientific fields were however extensively examined by Engels in The Dialectics of Nature, although much of his observations consisted merely of rough notes, which he hoped to correct and expand later.
Many of his manuscripts appear to have been written between 1872 and 1882, a year prior to Marx's death. Readers clearly need a degree of patience with some of the chapters, which deal with the science of more than a hundred years ago. Words such as "force", "motion" and "vis viva" are used, where today we would speak of energy. The chapters on Basic forms of Motion, The Measure of Motion-Work, and Heat deal with controversies over various theories of energy, long resolved. These chapters are interesting from the point of view of how Engels analysed these issues, rather than the issues themselves. The essay on electricity is even more dated, but still revealing.
Needless to say, other parts, most notably the factual data used by Engels, have been rendered obsolete with the rapid progress of natural science. For example, the Kant-Laplace theory of cosmology is outdated. It has been established that the velocity of the electric current cannot exceed that of light. Whereas Engels refers to "albuminous bodies", today we would talk of DNA, RNA and protein molecules. Elsewhere there are incorrect statements in the text, for example in the section on stars and protozoa. With the invention of carbon dating, the estimated time spans used by Engels have also been drastically revised. Engels cannot be blamed for these errors. He simply followed the views of some of the best astronomers and zoologists of his day.
The development of science has vastly increased our knowledge over the last 130 years and many corrections have been introduced into our scientific understanding. It should also be appreciated that the ideas contained in the Dialects of Nature were Engels' preliminary thoughts on different subjects. He even ended the book with the phrase, "All this has to be thoroughly revised." (3) The surprising thing is not that there are mistakes in Engels' work, but how far Engels' ideas have broadly stood the test of time. More importantly, the general method and conception of the book remain completely valid.
Engels' work was recently brought to public attention by none other than Stephen Jay Gould, the celebrated palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist, who praised Engels' "trenchant political analysis of why Western science was so hung up on the a priori assertion of cerebral primacy." (4)
Gould went on to explain, "Engels had a keen interest in the natural sciences and sought to base his general philosophy of dialectical materialism upon a ‘positive' foundation. He did not live to complete his ‘dialectics of nature,' but he included long commentaries on science in such treaties as the Anti-Dühring. In 1876, Engels wrote an essay entitled, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. It was published posthumously in 1896 and, unfortunately, had no visible impact upon Western science." (5)
Today, the Dialectics of Nature should be read in conjunction with its modern counterpart, Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science by Alan Woods and Ted Grant. The latter provides an up-to-date analysis of the latest discoveries of modern science, including chaos theory and complexity theory, from the standpoint of Marxism, and reveals that many of these new trends are strikingly similar to the theories of dialectical materialism worked out by Marx and Engels more than 150 years ago. With each passing day, new discoveries are being made which confirm the non-linear dynamics of science, in other words, the dialectical workings of nature.
The latest developments in physics, including the new theory of Ubiquity, have revealed new "power-laws" remarkably similar to the laws of dialectics. Ubiquity theory explains that everything tends towards a state of non-equilibrium, i.e. a critical state. This corresponds to the concept of quantity into quality (and vice versa) in dialectics, where quantitative changes at a certain critical point result in a qualitative change.
According to Mark Buchanan in his book on the subject, "... catastrophe theory, despite its provocative name, has very little to say about the workings of anything like the earth's crust, an economy, or an ecosystem. In these things, where thousands or millions of elements interact, what is important is the overall collective organisation and behaviour. To understand things of this sort, one needs a theory that applies generally to networks of interacting things, something for which catastrophe theory is ill prepared." (6)
He continues: "At the heart of our story, then, lies the discovery that networks of things of all kinds-atoms, molecules, species, people, and even ideas-have a marked tendency to organise themselves along similar lines. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before." (7).
If you compare what Engels wrote 130 years earlier, you can clearly recognise the parallels. "The general nature of dialectics to be developed as a science of interconnections, in contrast to metaphysics ", wrote Engels in the Dialectics of Nature (8). Again, "Dialectics as the science of universal inter-connection." (9) Dialectical thinking considers things "in their interconnection, in their sequence, their movement, their birth and their death." (10). "The great basic thought that the world is to be comprehended not as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes, in which apparently stable things no less than the concepts, their mental reflections in our heads, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away..." (11).
Engels furnishes us with an outline of the main laws of dialectics: "transformation of quantity and quality-mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes-development through contradiction or negation of the negation-spiral form of development." (12) While each level of development is governed by its own specific laws, these merge with the higher general laws of motion governing all spheres of existence and development, as outlined by Engels.
"If one wants to learn about the rhythms of history (or, shall we say, its dis-rhythms), one might just as well become familiar with the process by which, say, earthquakes happen", states Buchanan. According to him, "the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world." (13). For physicists, the heart of this concept is "non-equilibrium physics" or "the physics of complex systems". Marxists have consistently drawn comparisons between revolutions in history and upheavals and catastrophes in nature, whereby slow gradual changes result at a certain point in explosive developments, where quantity changes into quality. Again, physicists describe the point of transition as a "phase transition". "When ice melts in a gin and tonic, or when a puddle evaporates and is lost to the air, these too are phase transitions: each being the transformation of a substance from one form or ‘phase' to another. In every case, there is a change in the internal workings of the stuff, as its atoms or molecules organise themselves differently." (14).
Let us again compare this to Engels: "The rock comes to rest, but weathering, the action of the ocean surf, of rivers and glacier action continually destroys the equilibrium. Evaporation and rain, wind, heat, electric and magnetic phenomena offer the same spectacle. Finally, in the living organism we see continual motion of all the smallest particles as well as of the larger organs, resulting in the continual equilibrium of the total organism during normal period of life, which yet always remains in motion, the living unity of motion and equilibrium. All equilibrium is only relative and temporary." (15)
Studies were made in the 1960s of the changes from vapour to liquid of substances as diverse as oxygen, neon and carbon monoxide. Each critical state can be expressed through a power-law with its own mathematical number. There are many different critical states, each with a different critical number. However, researchers found while comparing the changes in diverse elements, exactly the same critical numbers repeatedly occurred. In the 1970s, Leo Kadanoff, a physicist from the University of Chicago, put his finger on the explanation:
"In studying the critical numbers that pop up in the critical states for different phase transitions, Kadanoff found that the basic physical dimension of the thing in question, of the very space in which it lives, is one of the factors that matters. He also found that only one other detail seems to matter, this being the general shape of the individual elements. In a gas of xenon, for example, each atom is like a tiny billiard ball. It can move around, but it can't point. In a magnet, the atoms are like arrows, and can ‘do' more since they can potentially point in lots of directions. When the individual elements have more options, you can imagine that it is harder for order to propagate from one place to another. Sure enough, this detail also affects the precise form of the self-similarity in the critical state.
"Incredibly, however, Kadanoff found that nothing else whatsoever seemed to matter. So forget the atomic masses and the electrical charges of the particles involved. Forget whether those particles are atoms of oxygen, nitrogen, krypton or iron. Forget even whether they are made of single atoms or are more complicated molecules made of several or even a hundred atoms. Forget everything, in fact, about the kinds of particles and how strongly or weakly they interact with one another. None of these details affects the organisation of the critical state even a tiny bit. Physicists refer to this considerable miracle as critical state universality, and it has now been supported by thousands of experiments and computer simulations.
"In the critical state, the forces of order and chaos battle to an uneasy balance, neither ever fully winning or losing. And the character of the battle, and the perpetually shifting and changing strife to which it leads, is the same regardless of almost every last detail of the things involved." (16)
Not surprisingly, other branches of science have also come very close to the concepts of dialectical materialism. Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge both came forward with the revolutionary theory of "punctuated equilibria", which explained evolution not as some slow, steady, gradual change for the better, as outlined by orthodox Darwinism, but a process full of leaps, breaks and transformations. This challenged the dominant Darwinian view of gradualism. Although Gould and Eldredge are not Marxists, they were certainly influence by materialist dialectics. "I am no Marxist", wrote Niles Eldredge, "and neither for that matter is Steve; learning and adoption are two different things." (17)
Eldredge went on to explain that new dialectical models on the lines of punctuated equilibria have turned up throughout science: "I am still not quite sure what to make of the zeitgeist of our own times, in which, quite apart from Marxism (or so I believe), paradigms similar to punctuated equilibria have shown up in a wide range of academic pursuits. Before us, there was the celebrated case of Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions became a best-seller in the early 1970s. His central thesis was essentially that science proceeds as status quo paradigms in stasis, integrated by rapid events that finally throw out the old paradigm in favour of a new one that handles all the anomalies swept under the table by its predecessor. Catastrophe theory, similarly, became a hot topic in mathematics as the 1970s wore on. Archaeology and political science have also seen new theories emerging along similar lines (some, I am happy to report, explicitly derived from punctuated equilibria). There may well be a general reaction against models stressing smooth, linear continuity emerging in the intellectual community generally-models of which punctuated equilibria is but one example." (18)
In his criticism of Charles L. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Gould made use of Engels' brilliant essay on human evolution contained in the Dialectics of Nature, which has clearly stood the test of time.
"Ironically, for the man's work is anathema to Wilson, who senses the evil influence of Marxism behind all radical criticism of his socio-biology, the best nineteenth-century case for gene-culture co-evolution was made by Frederich Engels in his remarkable essay of 1876 (posthumously published in the Dialectics of Nature), The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man.
"Engels, following Haeckel's outline as his guide, argues that upright posture must precede the brain's enlargement because major mental improvement requires an impetus provided by evolving culture. Thus, freeing the hands for inventing tools (‘labour' in Engels's committed terminology) came first, then selective pressures for articulate speech, since, with tools, ‘men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to one another,' and finally sufficient impetus for a notable (and genetically based) enlargement of the brain:
" ‘First labour, after it, and then with it, articulate speech-these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man.'
"An enlarged brain (biology, or genes in later parlance) then fed back upon tools and language (culture), improving them in turn and setting the basis for further growth of the brain-the positive feedback loop of gene-culture co-evolution:
" ‘The reaction on labour and speech of the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of judgment, gave an ever-renewed impulse to the further development of both labour and speech.'" (19).
In the field of biology, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin have championed the dialectical approach. In fact their book, The Dialectical Biologist, published in 1985, was specifically dedicated to the memory of Fredrick Engels. Although Engels was limited by the material at his disposal at the time, recent science has confirmed his outlook in so far as "opposing forces lie at the base of the evolving physical and biological world." (20).
"The dialectical view insists that persistence and equilibrium are not the natural state of things but require explanation, which must be sought in the actions of the opposing forces", state Levin and Lewontin. "The conditions under which the opposing forces balance and the system as a whole is in stable equilibrium are quite special. They require the simultaneous satisfaction of as many mathematical relations as there are variables in the system, usually expressed as inequalities among the parameters of that system.
"If these parameters remain within the prescribed limits, then external events producing small shifts among the variables will be erased by the self-regulating processes of stable systems. Thus in humans the level of blood sugar is regulated by the rate at which sugar is released into the blood by the digestion of carbohydrates, the rate at which stored glycogen, fat, or protein is converted into sugar, and the rate at which sugar is removed and utilised. Normally, if the blood sugar level rises, then the rate of utilisation is increased by release of more insulin from the pancreas. If the level of blood sugar falls, more sugar is released into the blood, or the person gets hungry and eats some source of sugar. The result is that the blood sugar level is kept not constant but within tolerable limits. So far we are dealing with the familiar patterns of homeostasis, the negative feedback that characterises all self-regulation. However, the pancreas might respond weakly to a high sugar level, which could result in diabetic coma. Or the blood sugar level may fall so low that the person is incapable of eating.
"The opposing forces are seen as contradictory in the sense that each taken separately would have opposite effects, and their joint action may be different from the result of either acting alone. So far, the object may seem to be the passive victim of these opposing forces. However, the principle that all things are internally heterogeneous directs our attention to the opposing processes at work within the object. These opposing processes can now be seen as part of the self-regulation and development of the objective. The relations among the stabilising and destabilising processes become themselves the objects of interests, and the original object is seen as a system, a network of positive and negative feedbacks." (21)
Dialectics of Nature deals extensively with such problems of dialectics as causality, necessity and chance. Here Engels criticises the one-sided outlook of the scientific establishment, its "commonsense" philosophy, and its metaphysics, which treats chance and necessity as two separate entities, with one or the other taking precedence. "In contrast to both conceptions, Hegel came forward with the hitherto quite unheard-of propositions that the accidental has a cause because it is accidental, and just as much also has no cause because it is accidental," stated Engels (22). In other words, necessity is inseparably linked to accident and expresses itself through accident.
According to Engels, it was this method of looking at things that allowed Darwin to make his epoch-making discovery. "Precisely the infinite, accidental differences between individuals within a single species", stated Engels, "differences which become accentuated until they break through the character of the species, and whose immediate causes even can be demonstrated only in extremely few cases, compelled him to question the previous basis of all regularity in biology, viz. the concept of species in its previous metaphysical rigidity and unchangeability. Without this concept of species, however, all science was nothing." (23)
The theory of Ubiquity also ventures into many different fields, even touching on human history and human behaviour, including free will. "Once you become accustomed to the idea, it is not so hard to accept that the essential logic of the critical state might arise in simple physical things such as a pile of grains, or even in the rocks of the earth's crust or the trees of the forest, where definite physical laws control how activity spreads from one place to another", states Buchanan.
"When the stress becomes too great somewhere along a fault, the rock slips, shifting stress onto the rocks further down the line. In cases such as this, there is no need to reckon with anything so ineffable and capricious as a thought or an emotion. But once people become involved, things are not so simple... aren't we making a dangerous leap in supposing that the critical state has anything to do with human history?" (24)
"... To understand any particular revolution, historians surely need to study all the social conditions from which it springs. To understand what makes a person take up arms, go on strike or decide not to have children, the historian indeed has to try to get inside that person's mind, and weigh up all the social pressures and influences to which the person is responding. Only in this way can the historian come to understand what sparked a revolution, as many people's actions followed in some understandable way from the conditions they were in. But the historian really needs also to know more about the way in which influences of all kinds can propagate through a population. To understand why mass movements are not rare and history is as interesting and as varied as it is, we need to understand the character of the critical state." (25)
After looking at examples, ranging from the making of trails to the movement of populations, the author concludes "there can be a mathematics for people. It cannot tell you, of course, what any one person will do, and yet it may be able to say what kind of patterns are likely to emerge out of the millions." He goes on to explain, "One of the messages of universality is that understanding something often means looking past the surface details to spy the deeper logic beneath."
Here the proponents of Ubiquity are attempting to come to grips with concepts dealt with by George Fredrick Hegel some 200 years ago. Hegel talks of understanding not only the "appearance" but also the "essence" of things, not in isolation but in their inter-connections, in their endless action and reaction. This is the deeper logic that lies beneath the surface of things. We need to understand things in their movement and change, their identity and difference, their contradictory nature, which is the essence of things.
"Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and actuality", stated Hegel. Necessity is blind only as long as it is not understood. Freedom and necessity are not mutually exclusive, but intrinsically bound together. Hegel was the first to understand this relationship. To him, freedom is the appropriation of necessity. It means no independence from natural laws, but knowledge of such laws, allowing them to work for us. The more we understand, the greater is our freedom.
"In this way, necessity is transfigured into freedom, not the freedom that consists in abstract negation, but freedom concrete and positive. From which we may learn what a mistake it is to regard freedom and necessity as mutually exclusive. Necessity indeed qua necessity is far from being freedom: yet freedom presupposes necessity, and contains it as an unsubstantial element in itself... In short, man is most independent when he knows himself to be determined by the absolute idea throughout." (26)
Hegel's reference to the "absolute idea" is but an idealistic expression for objective necessity. Freedom does not exist in the illusion of independence from these natural laws. As Engels explained, it is blind only so long as it is not understood. Freedom comes through the knowledge of these laws, and the possibility of making them work in a particular way towards a definite end. "Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity", wrote Engels.
We cannot circumvent the laws of nature, but through knowledge we can make them work for us. The more we extend this knowledge, the more we begin to conquer nature. Today, we have no control over the weather, and can only predict the weather with accuracy no more that three or four days in advance. However, in the future, with increased understanding of this non-linear system, we can begin to influence and eventually control our weather patterns. Until that time, we remain slaves of blind necessity.
With every step forward in "regulating" nature, new freedoms are opened up. Marx explained that the shortening of the working day was a precondition for true freedom, meaning that it allowed time for people to develop their physical and mental potential to the full. For Engels, the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism meant the leap from the Realm of Necessity to the Realm of Freedom, where conscious planning replaces the anarchy of production.
Buchanan makes an interesting observation: "After a great discovery, scientists suddenly see everywhere that which they had never seen before." (27) For a long time, false philosophical ideas have exercised a negative influence on scientists. Now, in a number of fields, they have stumbled upon a dialectical view of nature, although many still refuse to call it by its correct name:
"If many historians [and scientists - RS] have searched for gradual trends or cycles as a way of finding meaning and making sense of history, they were using the wrong tools. These notions arise in equilibrium physics and astronomy. The proper tools are to be found in non-equilibrium physics, which is specifically tuned to understanding things in which history matters." (28)
It is this accidental discovery of a non-linear (that is, dialectical) view, which has opened up all kinds of new possibilities and allowed scientists to see things in a different way, in their interconnection and contradiction.
Causality exists in nature, and objective laws govern the whole of nature. This represents objective necessity within the material world, and is not an arbitrary invention of the human mind. There exists a natural, objective interconnection between the phenomena of the world. Engels speaks of the "law of nature", of the "necessities of nature". These laws assert themselves unconsciously "in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents." (Engels). Such accidents are things or events, whose interconnection is so remote that we regard them as non-existent or negligible.
Dialectical thinking, which has grown out of the dialectics of nature, gives us a far deeper comprehension of things. By a process of successive approximations, permitting more precise concretisations, and giving thought a richness of content, human thought comes ever closer to living phenomena.
The dialectic is materialist, because its roots are deep in objective reality, in nature. There is no place in this system for Heaven, Hell or the immortal soul. There exists only the material world, made up of infinite processes and not motionless categories. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, and the solar system out of the nebulae. In essence, this constitutes the materialist view of nature.
The movement towards a dialectical view of nature by a number of leading scientists is of fundamental importance. It marks a shift away from the mysticism that has crept into a number of scientific areas such as cosmology and some branches of theoretical physics. It cuts right across all attempts to reconcile science with religion, of which there are numerous examples.
The physicist Stephen Hawking concluded his best seller, A Brief History of Time, with the words "the ultimate triumph of human reason" was "to know the Mind of God". Paul Davis, another physicist, talks in his book, The Mind of God, of the need to embrace "the mystical path". Even Ilya Prigogine concludes his very good book with "time is a construction and therefore carries an ethical responsibility" and makes references to the "God of Genesis". The Catholic Church has embraced the "Big Bang" as evidence of the Creation, while the President of the United States, George W. Bush, the most powerful person on the planet, has openly embraced Intelligent Design-another way of saying Creationism-the clearest example of Christian fundamentalism masquerading as science.
The republication of the Dialectics of Nature, a classic in its own right, is a welcome addition to the arsenal of the new scientific revolution. It will also help provide the philosophical weapons needed in the fight against religious obscurantism, and arm the new generation with the scientific outlook of modern dialectical materialism. This will enable us to attain a better understanding of the world in which we live. Such an understanding is the prior condition for a successful struggle to change the world, to rid it of poverty, hunger and war, and to make it a fit place for people to live in.
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"Philosophers have interpreted the world", stated Marx long ago. "The point however is to change it." However, we leave the last word to Fredrick Engels who to the end of his life displayed such an undying optimism for the future of humankind:
"With man we enter history. Animals also have a history, that of their descent and gradual evolution to their present position. This history, however, is made for them, and in so far as they themselves take part in it, this occurs without their knowledge and desire. On the other hand, the more that human beings become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their history themselves, consciously, the less becomes the influence of unforeseen effects and uncontrolled forces on this history, and the more accurately does the historical result correspond to the aim laid down in advance. If, however, we apply this measure to human history, to that of even the most advanced peoples of the present day, we find that there still exists here a colossal disproportion between the proposed aims and the results arrived at, that unforeseen effects predominate, and that the uncontrolled forces are far more powerful than those set into motion according to plan. And this cannot be otherwise as long as the most essential historical activity of men, the one which has raised them from the animal to the human state and which forms the material foundation of all their other activities, namely the production of their requirements of life, i.e., in our day social production, is above all subject to the interplay of unintended effects from uncontrolled forces and achieves its desired end only by way of exception, but much more frequently the exact opposite. In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously did. And what is the result? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses, and every ten years a great collapse. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only conscious organisation of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for mankind in the specific biological aspect. Historical evolution makes such an organisation daily more indispensable, but also with every day more possible. From it will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, and particularly natural science, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it in the deepest shade."
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