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PARTISAN REVIEW
formations that move society from one stage to the next. It was only
natural, therefore, that Marx should have taken over Hegel's Dialec–
tic, stripped of its spiritual trappings, as the principle of social. change
through contradiction. And though we may find it necessary to
dis–
card the Dialectic today, we should note that Marx never thought of
it as either the
proof
or the
means
of attaining socialism. At most it
was a metaphor which related Marx's pragmatic studies of history to
the most advanced philosophy of his time.
So, too, with the Dialectic in science. During Marx's lifetime, the
older conceptions of science, based on the solidity of matter and on a
mechanistic causality, were giving way to theories of organic change,
through such discoveries as the cell in biology, the transformation of
energy in physics and chemistry, and the theory of evolution. To Marx
and Engels the Dialectic seemed to be the philosophic equivalent of
these new developments in science, which emphasized change, recip–
rocity of action, and interpenetration. Today so many of these ideas
have become laboratory axioms, and so many new problems have been
raised by science, that we tend to forget it is not Marx who lagged
behind the advance of science, but rather his professed disciples who
today recite his formulas.
So, too, in presenting socialism as an empirical certainty, Marx
did not violate any of the canons of nineteenth century thought. Sci–
ence itself accepted the postulate of inevitability. It was considered ab–
solutely certain, for example, that, barring changes in the nature of
the world, hydrogen and oxygen combined would
always
produce
water and that the sun could be depended on to rise in the east
everJ
morning. Modern science, however, no longer accepts this version. It
bases itself rather on the idea of probability, so that we now speak of
the high probability, amounting in practice to certainty, of the sun's
rising. And as James Burnham has pointed out in a polemic against
Max Eastman, one could easily substitute the idea of probability for
that of inevitability with regard to socialism. Hence one would not en–
danger his scientific reputation,
if
he stated that Marx's analysis
of
capitalism leads to the conclusion that the achieving of socialism
is
highly probable, sufficiently high, in fact, to spur practical action
to
that end. Would not Mr. Wilson, who objects to any metaphysical
as–
surances, accept such a translatjon into current scientific usage?
What is really at issue in Mr. Wilson's discussion is the role
of
Marxism today. How much of it is still valid? Is it a philosophic
sys–
tem in the traditional sense? Is it relevant to our scientific and cultural
activities?
At one point, Mr. Wilson says Marxism "may be accepted
as
partly valid in our own time."
(As
to how valid, he does not say). But
