MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 106, 29 January 1935, Page 11

MARXIST PHILOSOPHY

Outline of Fundamental Defects

SCIENCE CONGRESS PAPER

What in his opinion were fundamental defects of Marxist philosophy were discussed by Professor J. Anderson in a paper read to the education, psychology, and philosophy section of the recent Science Congress in Melniourne.

Professor Anderson said that the Marxists held rightly that social conditions influenced philosophical views, but they regarded the truth of views as depending on, or as relative to, the conditions. That doctrine' of relative truth was opposed to the development of theory, for theory could consist only in finding something to be nnanibiguously the case. But the doctrine was supported by a theory of the representation of external reality by ''ideas,” a theory which, as it was formulated by Locke, vas refuted by Berkeley, at the beginning of the 18th century. Berkeley, in iced, made the mistake of retaining "ideas" as objects dependent on mind, instead of recognising, as modern realism had done, that minds had direct knowledge of things, and that both knower and known existed independently. The Marxists had net reached that realistic position, but had fallen into an error as idealistic as Berkeley’s, only with them it was “matter” t'm was the superior reality and mind tii° lower. “Marxism has certainly helped to keep before our minds the important fact that all things are events or processes, Interacting with other processes,” Professor Andersen added. “But these processes must be recognised as facts; and the introduction of ‘dialectic,’ which conceives facts as forming a hierarchy and net as being all equally and absolutely the case, merely obscures the social and other issues. The rejection of the mythical element iu Marxist theory would leave the positive element all the e'earer and stronger. It would establish a kinship between the general movement for a producers’ society, to which no one has contributed more than Marx, and the working out of a pluralistic or ‘freethinking’ philosophy. Failing fids alliance Marxism, if what is left of it be worthy of that name, can only become increasingly anti-intellectual and reactionary.”