Philosophical doctrines don’t fall from the sky or appear readymade in the mind of some genius or another. They develop to fill the unique needs of a particular class in society, reflecting the material conditions and interests of that class.
As Marx explained, the dominant ideas in any society are those of the ruling class. But a revolutionary class requires its own revolutionary theory to combat the prejudices of its age, justify the overthrow of the old system, and secure its own rule.
The development of bourgeois ideology
Europe’s bourgeois revolutions were preceded by a flourishing of philosophy. The rising capitalist class, which was progressive at the time, needed groundbreaking ideas capable of challenging the long-established ideologies and structures of the church and feudal monarchies. Alongside this, the development of capitalist industry required the most up to date science and technique. During the Enlightenment, materialist thinkers fought for truth based on reason, observation, and experimentation in the real world. They put all the old traditions, authorities, and dogmas to the test, laying the ideological groundwork for revolution.
Unlike the Europeans, however, the American capitalists didn’t need a well-developed theory in order to take power. There was no church or aristocracy with centuries of tradition weighing them down. The nascent bourgeoisie simply murdered the Indigenous population and started building capitalism wherever it seemed most practical. Land and resources were abundant on the vast continent, producing pioneers and innovators, many of whom had been expelled from Europe for their energetic radicalism. In these conditions, the American bourgeoisie didn’t need a coherent and nuanced philosophical outlook. They raided the coffers of 17th and 18th-century European materialism, rationalism, and empiricism—plucking whatever ideas proved useful in justifying their rule and developing the productive forces.
Land and resources were abundant on the vast continent, producing pioneers and innovators. In these conditions, the American bourgeoisie didn’t need a coherent and nuanced philosophical outlook. / Image: George Caleb Bingham, public domain
Impatient, inconsistent, and individualist
It wasn’t until the 1870s that the American ruling class began developing its own unique philosophy, known as pragmatism. Reflecting the rapid and relatively smooth development of 19th-century American industry, pragmatism starts from the premise that nature and society are indeterminate. Things simply exist and develop gradually without antecedent causes. For the pragmatist, the past has no bearing on the present or the future. No objective laws determine the course of development. Anything can happen at any time.
Like the class that birthed it, pragmatism is inherently impatient, inconsistent, and individualist. Instead of relying on theory to guide action, pragmatists fetishize individualist experimentation and argue that truth has no relation to objective reality. In their view, something is true so long as its being true is useful to the individual. It flows from this that individual experience outweighs the generalized collective experience of a class.
Growing out of the unique convergence of factors that produced the US itself, pragmatism became American capitalism’s dominant philosophy, consciously or unconsciously influencing all classes in society. We all feel its pull whenever we’re thrown into a complex situation and get the urge to just “do something” based on “common sense.”
Pragmatism in action
The other day, a former classmate told me she thinks the Democratic Party is an oppressive capitalist institution that makes life worse for us all. Fundamentally, she said, they offer nothing different than the Republicans. Despite knowing this, she still plans to vote for Kamala Harris. Why? Because she feels she has to “do something” to fight Trump now. She thinks voting for Harris is the most immediate and practical way to “stop” Trump.
This is a narrow minded, short-term view of what “works.” It ignores the reality that the liberals’ inability to solve the crisis of capitalism and arrest the decline in working-class living standards produced Trumpism in the first place. It assumes that the Democrats’ long history of defending the rich and attacking workers and oppressed people doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about how they’ll behave in the future. “Maybe this time will be different!” This is pragmatism in action.
Leading figures of the petty-bourgeois progressive movement were conscious pragmatists, including pragmatism’s greatest proponent, John Dewey. / Image: Деветьяров Руслан, Wikimedia Commons
Pragmatism and reformism
Another important political manifestation of pragmatist philosophy was the petty-bourgeois progressive movement of the early 20th-century. Leading figures of the movement were conscious pragmatists, including pragmatism’s greatest proponent, John Dewey, as well as his fellow University of Chicago professor, George Herbert Mead, and activist Jane Addams.
Though they were alarmed by the growth of monopolies, the progressives didn’t challenge the system, and instead yearned for a return to capitalism’s early days. To bring this utopian idea about, they worked within the confines of bourgeois democracy. They didn’t understand how class struggle is rooted in economic production—with workers and capitalists fighting for control of the social surplus. Pragmatic progressives thought tensions between rich and poor were reconcilable problems that could be resolved through policy change, not revolution. When the capitalist system was still expanding, they succeeded in winning limited reforms, such as the expansion of public libraries and kindergartens. But when the system inevitably went into crisis, austerity and cuts were on the order of the day.
Reject the philosophy of the class enemy
Today, with a worldwide economic crisis and capitalism in terminal decline, there is no longer a material basis for serious reforms. Just as there is a crisis of reformism, there is also a crisis of pragmatism. The material conditions that gave life to philosophical pragmatism—the massive expansion of American imperialism between the Civil War and World War I—no longer exist.
To overthrow capitalism, workers need an understanding of capitalism’s underlying forces and development. We need a long-view of history to understand our role within the march of events. Dialectical materialism is the only philosophy that can provide us this. Unfortunately, the history of the American communist movement is full of setbacks and missed opportunities due to comrades’ low theoretical level— their inability to consciously reject the class enemy’s pragmatism and assimilate the dialectical materialist method.
In the 1930s, Trotsky warned American communists to study dialectics and overcome their low theoretical level. As he put it, “pragmatism . . . is the greatest curse of American thought. You must inoculate younger comrades against its infection.” Like a chameleon, this philosophy can blend in anywhere and will creep into our work if we do not consciously fight it with Marxist theory.