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From International Socialism, No.44, July/August 1970, pp.??.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
This year has seen an increasing flow of books and articles on the subject of women’s liberation. Before Ken Green attempts any further reviews of jointly-authored books, may we suggest that he makes himself familiar with some of this literature, or enters into dialogue with a local division of the women’s liberation army? He might then avoid the error of inverting joint authors so as to maintain male superiority. Could not a revolutionary Marxist be expected to avoid this mistake at least as well as the bourgeois press?
But the substance of Green’s review of our book, while entertaining, is somewhat ungenerous. One wonders if he himself would like to be quoted as if a seven-year-old, 100-word review was intended to represent a substantial political contribution? After all, has FORSS so far achieved much other than to talk about revolution? Neither of us believes that revolution and rhetoric are causally connected, and indeed have a somewhat traditional belief in praxis. Marx himself had some not dissimilar views, speaking of such rhetoricians as mere ‘alchemists of revolution’. But doubtless all’s fair in this sort of political battle.
Equally, to imply, as Green does, that we have been concerned only with providing ‘an account of (science) from the point of view of the scientific institutions’ is to miss the point of practically all of the last half of the book, which draws a series of international and generalising conclusions.
But substantially, what he is asking the book to have done is to run before it could walk. Generalist critiques of capitalist society exist in substantial number, and our intention was certainly not to add yet another to these, but to concentrate on the one specific theme of the structure of the institutions of science (and largely academic science at that, only peripherally with industrial science) and their relation to the state and society at large. References to Marx (as Green points out, Science & Society has only three references; one of us has edited a book on CBW which has none; so?) are of only limited use in this endeavour, albeit we take for granted a generally Marxist framework within which we write.
Having complained that we lack revolutionary fervour and clarity, and show inadequate respect to Marx, he then accuses us of not providing a prescriptive path forward, setting out how science should be run. Again it was not our intention – nor, as we shall see in a minute, would we think it correct – to provide such a prescription. There is more than enough material to be dealt with critically here already, and if Green thinks it is no part of the task of those who ‘fancy themselves as some kind of revolutionary socialist’ to provide such a critique, we cannot agree. Issues must not only exist but be seen to exist before a path forward can be developed (the casebook example is the way in which CBW is a live political issue now, but was not three years ago – despite the existence of almost the same set of ‘acts’) and in the field we are dealing with there has so far been a considerable lack of clarity in stating the real issues. Often naive sloganising has replaced this task – an intellectual dereliction of which socialists should not be guilty. To argue as we did for the democratisation of scientific decision-making is not a sentiment with which even the ‘arch-reactionaries’ would agree; it has the potential to be exploded into a revolutionary demand – or it can peter out into the situation of a society whose decision-making processes are simultaneously as ‘open’ and as inaccessible as is the case in the US.
The truth is that Green has a very old-fashioned view of the virtues of science. Thus he concludes his review by recalling Bernal’s work. He praises him as
‘... apologist for Stalin though he may have been, (he) was not afraid to say that socialism was the only way forward for the rational use of science, and to see the organisation of science in the light of this idea.’
Now this shows a very real misunderstanding of Bernal’s position. Basically he is a pre-Bomb scientist, that is, at root supremely optimistic about science. More science, in some general way, meant more human welfare. Consequently it was possible to lay out a programme for science which was both highly reformist and at the same time traditionally Marxist. What Green fails to come to terms with are the issues we begin to discuss only at the end of our book, which have been opened by Marcuse, and which help prevent us laying out the blueprint he argues for. These are the problems of the relationship of basic science, traditionally regarded as ideology-free, to the social and economic structure. Bourgeois commentators have more often than Marxists come to a very radical critique of contemporary science – Skoinikoff, for example, in Science, Technology and American Foreign Policy seriously considers the case for ceasing to support physics at all. Granted the limitations of dealing with physics as an isolated body of knowledge and series of social institutions, it seems a potentially revolutionary demand, like ‘Ban the bomb’, in a way that generalised and abstract appeals are not. After all, the slogan of 1917 was Bread, land and peace.
Coming now to ‘softlee, softlee, catchee monkee’, Green’s somewhat simplistically Machiavellian description of the relationship of our book to the ‘naive’ membership of BSSRS, who haven’t got so far in their readings of Marx as we and he have. One of the things about which we are extremely clear is that the day of dishonest politics, of tightly-knit vanguard parties manipulating the masses for higher ends, is not with us. The political message of the book is an open one, and the BSSRS’s style of activity is equally open. If Green really thinks we are operating according to discredited CP permeating tactics, he does us and himself no credit. The essence of the political process is surely to open up areas of discussion, to enhance individual’s consciousness of their work and social situation, and to work towards changing society in the light of these discussions. It is not clear to us that any of these objectives are achieved by shouting revolution every third word, as if the incantation itself was sufficient to achieve the objective. Only on the basis of analysis can one begin to build the requisite party which will change the structure – and in this building process we are happy to be numbered amongst the rank and file.
And as for analysis, there are no immediately obvious and easy answers. The shape of contemporary science and technology is to a large measure determined by the structure of society which surrounds it, but the nature of the relationships between what science has done and societal goals is only very partially understood. There is deep intellectual work to be done here, and the pitfalls, as shown both by the overall ‘science is neutral’ debate and the short note by Martin Thomas on ideology in mathematics in the same issue of Red Scientist as Green’s review, are equally deep. To assume the answers before the analysis, and to assume that we should have written them into the book before they exist, is in equal measure dishonest, unscientific and un-Marxist. Science & Society is not the last word on this subject, nor the first, but part of a continuing analytical process. So, too, are the activities of the BSSRS. Like any organisation, it is a product of its time. The debate at the moment seems to us to be about what science we should do, teach and learn, the institutions within which it should be done, the social situation of the scientist and science student, the responsibility of the scientific community and the accessibility of science to the public at large. And these are the issues with which BSSRS is concerned.
Another situation, either on the verge of revolution or post-revolutionary, will demand a different debate. Ken Green wants us to lay out a blueprint for the future but remains curiously unwilling to indicate whether the revolution is actually imminent. As Lenin [1] quite correctly only drew up the plans for science in the spring following the October revolution, we would suggest Green’s timing is premature.
1. Lenin, V.I., Works, Vol.27, pp.288-9.
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