George Novack: a source of inspiration

Issue 

Marxist Writings on History and Philosophy
By George Novack
Resistance Books, 2002
269 pages, $21.95 (pb)
Order at <http://www.resistancebooks.com>

REVIEW BY JONATHAN STRAUSS

When the ideologists of imperialism in the 1950s declared "the end of ideology", only a few intellectuals did not accept this cry to conform. George Novack was one of the few.

Novack was committed to activity in the revolutionary socialist movement and a member of the US Socialist Workers Party. His most significant contribution was his historical and philosophical writings.

Novack authored and edited a number of books which studied the development of US capitalism and the popular resistance to it, and expounded various aspects of Marxist theory. These books have been relatively difficult to obtain in Australia in recent years. Resistance Books' publication of a selection of Novack's writings, drawn from pamphlets and International Socialist Review articles published in the 1950s and 1960s, will this great thinker's ideas accessible to a much broader audience.

The task facing Novack was similar to that which Frederick Engels confronted almost 100 years before: to popularly explain the ideas of dialectical materialism as they related to the political and scientific developments of the time. Building on the theoretical work of Karl Marx, Engels and later revolutionaries, such Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Novack's essays span the fields of history, biology, sociology and philosophy and discuss the course of natural and social development.

The significance of the Russian Revolution and its degeneration during the 20th century is discussed in an important article in the collection, "The Problem of Transitional Formations". Novack outlines the fundamental features of social formations founded on different modes of production.

In his articles on philosophy, Novack takes on existentialism at the particular moment when one of its principal exponents, Jean-Paul Sartre, had declared it a subordinate branch of Marxism. Intriguingly, Novack's discussion of the positions presented by existentialists such as Sartre, Jean Hyppolite, Jean-Pierre Vigier and French Communist Party theoretician Roger Garaudy, from a 1961 debate on the question of whether dialectics applies in nature, is both critical and sympathetic to all.

Arguments about a philosophical perspective that has had little direct popular or academic impact for over 30 years may not seem relevant today. However, a brief piece by Democratic Socialist Party member Doug Lorimer on the topic of existentialism and Marxism outlines the links between existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism (more broadly, post-modernism).

For anybody who wants to help fundamentally transform society, Novack's ideas, and especially his method, are a vital source of inspiration.

From Green Left Weekly, December 4, 2002.
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