Dialectics of nature or dialectics of practice?

Abstract

In recent years western social scientists and commentators have hailed the coming of "post-industrial" society, maintaining that the old ideological debates about capitalism and socialism have been rendered sterile. The increasingly organized application of science to the productive forces of society, with its array of technical experts at all higher levels of business and government, is said to mark a historic advance in human civilization. In the east, where historic advance is viewed according to another schema, the technoc? ratic forecasts emanating from the west are spurned. Yet since 1917 Marxism, or rather Marxism-Leninism, whatever its claims and intentions, has functioned primarily as an ideology promoting rapid industrialization according to bureaucratic planning. Hence, it has had little, if anything, to do with the goals of Marx and his nineteenth-century followers such as William Morris, for whom socialism implied above all the democratiza? tion of all walks of life and the progressive liberation of the individual's creative potential. The similar trends of east and west are reflected in the use of certain common or related measures of the progress of society toward the respective goals of communism and post-industrialism. These measures in? clude organizational complexity, information content, and the development of the forces of production. And these are supported by a theoretical dialectics of nature, which grounds them in natural law. The term "dialectics of nature" is taken from Engels, but may be used in general to describe the attempt to understand human society as part of a hierarchy of natural organizations, and to derive the ideal form of human society from a consideration of this natural hierarchy. In the east dialectical materialism is official philosophy: in the west systems theory has made itself increasingly the order of the day. Although systems theory has emerged in various specific forms and in connection with a number of disciplines, I am concerned here with the attempt that has been made to elaborate a world-view from systems princi? ples ? that is, with "general systems theory" in its philosophical aspect. This world-view involves an account of the evolution of historical systems, including assertions about social formations and human values. General systems theory offers striking parallels with certain orthodoxies of dialectical materialism, and it is these parallel general scientific philosophies which I shall focus on in this paper. Both share the dialectics of nature perspective. General systems theorists have claimed to recognize the importance of man as an active, creative being; like the adherents of dialectical materialism, they have espoused humanist ideals. Yet it is problematic whether this claim can be reconciled with the dialec? tics of nature perspective which charac? terizes general systems theory, at least in Angus M. Taylor studies Political Science at the Univer? sity of Amsterdam.