It is rare to come across a book which covers such hefty topics with both depth and brevity. At just over 300 pages, one such volume is Thinking Systematics: Critical–Dialectical Reasoning for a Perilous Age and a Case for Socialism, by Canadian Marxists Murray E. G. Smith and Tim Hayslip.
Smith’s and Hayslip’s book, which was published early this year, argues that we live in a society rife with crises, including absurd levels of inequality, imperialist wars, ecological crisis, and potential nuclear annihilation. While these crises would be very difficult even for a fully rational government to tackle, the authors point out that mainstream political ideologies cannot even understand these crises correctly, much less solve them.
Against faith-based thinking, for monist dialectical materialism
One particularly interesting trend among mainstream political ideologies is fideism, or faith-based thinking. While religious fideism is of course the mainstay of the right, liberals and reformists are themselves prone to secular fideism, an irrational faith in scientific progress, human rationality, or governmental reforms.
One particularly interesting trend among mainstream political ideologies is fideism, or faith-based thinking. While religious fideism is the mainstay of the right, liberals and reformists are themselves prone to secular fideism, an irrational faith in scientific progress, human rationality, or governmental reforms.
Secular fideism’s adherents believe that science, rationality, or justice will prevail in the end, somehow. This sort of fideism is far more prevalent on the left because of its insidious cloak of rationality. Although it doesn’t claim the existence of a god or angels, it nevertheless demands a different kind of faith that flies in the face of observable reality.
Smith and Hayslip offer a quote from the former US president George H. W. Bush as an example of secular fideism. Bush was responding to an incident in 1988 in which the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial flight, killing 290 civilians:
I’ll never apologize for the United States of America — ever! I don’t care what the facts are.
At the time, the US was supporting the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was later deposed by Bush’s son, in a proxy war against Iran. Hence why there was US military presence near Iran at the time. Bush’s vicious disregard for human life is obvious, but as Smith and Hayslip point out, there is more to his statement:
Putting aside the possibility of a sociopathic personality disorder, something more than a justification for a particularly heinous act of mass murder was at work here. […] Bush may have considered his remarks to be politically advantageous at the time, especially given the hatred toward Iran that he had helped whip up in the US over the previous decade. But it’s also likely that he was giving expression to the worldview and faith of the oligarchy to which he belonged […]
For members of the US oligarchy, the moral superiority of the US is not a matter of rational belief, but faith; US domination of the rest of the world is moral and justified, regardless of the human toll. This worldview naturally flows from their material interests, which are fundamentally based in imperial domination abroad and oppression and exploitation at home.
The main philosophical trend the book takes aim at is dualism, which claims that ideas and the physical world are absolutely separate domains.
The book’s basic premise — that our political landscape is dominated by irrationality — will be clear to many readers who have given serious thought to today’s political situation. One could be forgiven for assuming that Thinking Systematics is a mere introductory text for that reason. However, as the long-winded title implies, this book’s audience is actually found among those already initiated into philosophical debates and Marxism.
The authors argue that monist dialectical materialism — in short, Marxism — is the antidote to the mental poison of the mainstream. The word “monist” here means viewing all objects in the world as fundamentally composed of the same substance, and within the same world.
Specifically, Smith and Hayslip argue for analyzing the political issues of our time with a method focusing on the interplay between consciousness (i.e., the political ideas present in our society), the social element (society at large, its institutions, relationships between human beings), and nature (the physical world we inhabit, its natural laws and limits). All three elements are part of the same world, and while distinct, they also shade into and influence each other, forming a unity.
Smith and Hayslip present an analysis of the climate crisis using this schema as an example. In it, they argue what has by now become common sense among Marxists on the issue. Capitalist economic competition leads to environmental destruction, and because of national competition between capitalist nation-states, the regulation which could really curtail this destruction is impossible. Thus, the only solution is a socialist revolution wherein the working class takes power and finally deals with the issue.
The schema presented by Smith and Hayslip is legitimately interesting and has interesting use cases. However, as the authors themselves would readily admit, using this or that schema is no guarantee of producing a correct analysis. For that, practice and experience are required.
The temptations of dualism
If Thinking Systematics stopped here, it would be interesting enough. Luckily it goes much further. Rather than simply pointing out the deficiencies of mainstream political thought, including reformism and liberalism, the book analyzes their philosophical provenance. In doing so, it reveals the hidden assumptions that lead followers of the mainstream astray. This is the book’s main value.
The main philosophical trend the book takes aim at is dualism, which claims that ideas and the physical world are absolutely separate domains. The source of ideas may be called “the mind,” “the soul,” “the spirit,” or anything else, but the result remains the same: reality is cleft into the physical and the ideal. The “mind” may interact with reality and receive sensations from it, but according to dualism, receiving these sensations from the world is not the same as really knowing it.
Scientific investigation requires a materialist philosophical outlook, so idealism must be set aside to a degree. Of course, it can only be set aside to a degree, because the average person knowing the whole truth is dangerous to capitalism. Thus, under capitalism, dualism tends to predominate.
This philosophical outlook is obviously contradictory and easy to defeat rhetorically. For example, Lenin confronted a type of dualist philosophy developed by the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. Mach’s dualism had become popular among a section of Russian “Marxists,” whom Lenin sardonically referred to as “Russian Machists.” In just the first chapter of his book Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Lenin delivered a devastating critique, not just to Mach’s particular brand of dualism, but indeed to all types of dualism:
If bodies [physical objects] are “complexes of sensations,” as Mach says, […] it inevitably follows that the whole world is but my idea. Starting from such a premise it is impossible to arrive at the existence of other people besides oneself: it is the purest solipsism.
Smith and Hayslip make a similar critique of the great liberal philosopher Immanuel Kant’s dualism. Kant argued that reality was split into two fundamentally different substances: phenomena, i.e. the mental image of something, and noumena, the actual material thing. Noumena are fundamentally unknowable, according to Kant. Kant’s argument falls apart just as easily as Mach’s, as Smith and Hayslip point out:
Kant’s system is illogical insofar as it states that noumena, which are by definition unknowable to consciousness, are nevertheless consciously known to exist.
Indeed, as any student of philosophy knows, the only two logically consistent positions are either pure idealism or pure materialism. Dualist philosophies, which are eclectic mixes of idealism and materialism, fall apart upon the barest examination. Typically, they devolve into pure idealism, and ultimately the absurdity of solipsism, i.e. the idea that the “self” is all that we can be sure exists; everything and everyone else is merely “my idea.”
If dualism is so easy to counter, why does it remain so prevalent? That is the question Smith and Hayslip set themselves the task of answering. The main reason is the division between mental and manual labor, characteristic of all class societies. In earlier class societies, this led to a worldview mostly based in idealism. Actual investigation into the underlying laws of nature was expressly discouraged.
Smith and Hayslip argue that Marxism can and does account for the preoccupations of its dualist critics, whether that be race, gender relations, knowledge work, the role of ideas, or anything else important to social life.
The overthrow of the prior feudal order and the establishment of capitalism changed this. Under capitalism, the means of production must be constantly revolutionized, and for that a degree of freedom for scientific investigation is required. Scientific investigation requires a materialist philosophical outlook, so idealism must be set aside to a degree. Of course, it can only be set aside to a degree, because the average person knowing the whole truth is dangerous to capitalism. Thus, under capitalism, dualism tends to predominate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, dualism tends to be most dominant (and thus most problematic) in the social sciences. Mainstream economics is a particularly egregious example, with a tendency to revert to subjective idealism whenever a thorny question arises. For example, why does inflation happen? According to mainstream economic thought, inflation happens because people expect it to! According to this risible theory, to avoid inflation we simply need to assure everyone that prices will be stable. How simple!
Regrettably, similar problems are rampant among the other liberal social sciences as well. Liberal sociology and political science consider investigations into how society functions at a large scale taboo, since it is supposedly impossible to make sweeping statements about society as a whole. Instead, liberal sociologists and political scientists confine themselves to “small” and “personal” questions, without consideration of what it might mean for their understanding of society at large. As Smith and Hayslip put it:
To this day, the liberal social sciences and those unwilling to proceed past Kant’s position on the journey toward dialectical reason remain stuck in a quagmire of agnosticism. Convinced that the real world is unknowable, they urge knowledge creators to humbly recognize the limits of their understandings, as imposed by their own social position and subjectivity.
Agnosticism serves the status quo well. While the mainstream social sciences may identify social issues, such as racial disparities in wealth, ecological destruction, or misogyny, they can never connect them to the fundamental structure of society itself. They are thus “shielded” from coming to revolutionary conclusions about capitalist society.
Unfortunately, dualism is not confined to the mainstream. Many popular radical thinkers on the left fall prey to it as well. Smith and Hayslip take aim at numerous prominent authors on the left for their inconsistent adherence to materialism.
For example, Smith and Hayslip critique the post-Marxist philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, best known for their book Empire (2000). Hardt and Negri argue that the role of labor has been replaced by technological and scientific innovation, since “immaterial labor” (i.e., knowledge work or mental labor) has become a much larger part of the capitalist economy. In simpler terms, for Hardt and Negri, knowledge work is not “real” (material) work.
Rather than succumbing to dualism and eclecticism, Marxists must proudly proclaim that the truth about society is indeed knowable, and that Marxism remains the best tool for knowing that truth.
On this basis, Hardt and Negri argue that Marx’s analysis is no longer relevant, as the labor theory of value only applies to “material” labor. As Smith and Hayslip point out, Hardt and Negri’s argument is based in capital fetishism — the idea that value is produced by the machines, computers, and factories themselves — rather than the human beings operating them. The idea that mental labor is “immaterial” as opposed to “material” manual labor is fundamentally based in dualism, as Smith and Hayslip argue:
Ironically, Hardt and Negri’s capital fetishism attests to the residual influence of dualistic metaphysics in their thinking, despite their disavowal of “the great Western metaphysical tradition.”
If it weren’t clear enough, Firebrand’s position is that mental labor is real work like any other form of labor, albeit with quite different conditions compared to manual labor.
The critiques in this section alone make Thinking Systematics worth reading. It is here we find one of the book’s most illuminating quotes:
Notwithstanding their diversity, dualist critics of Marx’s materialist and dialectical monism are remarkably united in their insistence that Marxism “misses something” of great importance to human social life […]
Smith and Hayslip go on to argue that it is rather dualism which “misses something,” namely a materialist account of the social relationships that make up our society. They argue that Marxism can and does account for the preoccupations of its dualist critics, whether that be race, gender relations, knowledge work, the role of ideas, or anything else important to social life.
Conclusions
It is refreshing to read the words of confident Marxists. The left today is littered with thinkers who equivocate and sow doubt. Often, this doubt is extended to even the idea that we can know any objective truth about society at all. How many times have we been reproached with the statement that Marxism is “outdated”? That it needs to be “updated” with whatever the passing fancy of the movement is?
Rather than succumbing to dualism and eclecticism, Marxists must proudly proclaim that the truth about society is indeed knowable, and that Marxism remains the best tool for knowing that truth. Thinking Systematics is a valuable reminder of that fact.
Image: Spiral galaxy NGC 1566 by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
