Philosophy and Religion, Part 6a
Dialego, Philosophy, and Class Struggle
In 1976, in the year of the Soweto uprising, ten years after the
“Tricontinental”, four articles were published in the African Communist,
written by John Hoffman under the
pen-name “Dialego”. The first two are linked below, as our main texts for
today.
Hoffman still teaches philosophy as an Emeritus Professor at Leicester
University in England. He is no longer trying to be a revolutionary, but is an
overt liberal these days. His liberalism of today is foreshadowed in these
works of three and a half decades ago. His liberalism, now, is a child of his
“Dialectical Materialism”, then. “Dialectical Materialism” is not always
revolutionary. It can also be liberal. We will develop this argument in due
course.
Hoffman’s four articles were subsequently republished, more than once,
as a set, in a booklet. (Click here for Part 3 and Part 4 if required). The articles
were popular with MK and are still famous. They certainly raised the banner of
theory high. But they contained major deficiencies, of which the principal one
is “Dialectical Materialism” itself, as presented by Dialego.
Hoffman (in his Part 2) writes of “Materialism vs. Idealism: the Basic
Question of Philosophy”. But the Fundamental Question of Philosophy is the
relation of the Subject to the Object, and not “Materialism vs. Idealism”.
Glaring errors arise if and when these two different formulations are conflated
into one.
For example, going back to Hoffman’s Part 1 under “Philosophy and Our
‘Experience’”, Hoffman writes about “stress[ing] the materialist component of
our philosophy at the expense of the dialectical”. This is a muddle. What he is
describing is what he himself is doing: idealising the objective factors of a
situation, while all but eliminating the human Subject.
An original causation is demanded, which then has to be given a higher
status than all else. Out goes God the Creator; in come the atoms and the
molecules.
In this way of thinking (dialectical materialism) the atoms and the
molecules, the inanimate a priori material,
take precedence over life. This is “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” dressed up as
revolutionary theory. But it cannot be.
Revolution is a quality of life, not ashes.
The dialectic that is political is the one between subjective humans and
the objective universe (which is indeed material). In this political dialectic,
the human Subject is “the point”.
As Marx wrote in the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers
have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Who’s point is that? It is our point.
It is the human beings’ point. We are humanists. We are on the side of the
humans, and of their humanity, which we ourselves have created and continue to
create out of the world’s mud, through labour.
A purely material event is like a tree falling in the forest, unseen and
unheard by anyone. It is an event, but it is not a political event.
Similarly, a switch from an imaginary world of superstition, to one that
fetishises inert material, is no gain at all. These are merely two different
forms of idealism.
In both these latter cases, powers are held up that are higher than
people, whether the powers are invisible or visible. But in politics, the power
that matters is people-power. For sure, that means people-power in a real,
material world. But it does not mean a “balancing act” between the human and
the inhuman.
There is no dialectic of the ideal versus the material. These two
categories are not interdependent, but constitute alternatives: either/or.
But there is certainly a dialectic of the Subject and the Object,
because these two categories define each other. They are inseparable in their
opposition to one another. But people still come first. People have priority.
The Subject, who labours, is what it is all about, and not the material Object.
Hoffman’s (then) devotion to “materialism” led him to write that “[man] developed out of the world of nature
through a long process of evolution and his ideas are the product of the mental
activity of his brain, itself a highly developed and complex form of matter.”
How does a “complex form of matter” become human? Actually, it is not
even necessary to ask. It is only Hoffman’s kind of “materialism” that leads to
such miserable, reductionist questions: questions that run away from humanity.
The atoms and the molecules may be taken as “given”, whether by God or
by chance. But humanity is special, while matter is only matter. Humanity is
historical, while matter is infinite. Humanity is revolutionary
work-in-progress. Humanity is what humans make. Making humanity is what humans
do. It is the free-willing human Subject that is at the centre of our
consciousness, our concerns, our morality, and our politics.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-texts: Dialego, Part 1,
Necessity of Theory, 1976, John Hoffman and Dialego, Part 2,
Theory of Action, 1976, John Hoffman.
