Gerry Healy: An Appreciation
Gerry Healy was a consummate dialectical materialist, but he never took his scientific theory as his starting point. In spite of, or rather because of, his mastery of this method, his starting point was always objective, some new development in the class struggle at the international level. Such events as a new deepening of the capitalist crisis, a lurch in the direction of bonapartist dictatorship or a revolutionary upsurge in some part of the world always served as the first cause of a new theoretical departure. In each such new moment his philosophy was reborn in his mind as a living and developing process and rapidly concretised into political perspectives as a guide to immediate revolutionary practice. This was the secret of his success.
“The source of all thought is in the external world”, he would repeatedly insist in his many cadre training classes, and as historical verification of this assertion he led his students in an intensive study of Volume 14 of Lenin’s Collected Works which contains the famous Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. This work, it must be said, is by far the best starting point for anyone, whether of the Marxist persuasion or not, who wishes to undertake a serious study of philosophy. The materialist outlook is proven again and again in this work; Healy would repeatedly refer to page 101 of this work, where Lenin begins one such proof with a quote from Engels:-
“The most telling refutation of this, [the idealist outlook, which holds that thought is primary to the external material world], and all other philosophical crotchets is practice, namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our perception of natural processes by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian incomprehensible ‘thing-in-itself’. The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such ‘things-in themselves’ until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the ‘thing-in-itself’ became a ‘thing-for-us’, as, for instance, alizarin, the colouring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow in the madder roots in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.”
The concept of the ‘thing-in-itself’ was introduced into philosophical discussion by the great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, (1724-1804). Kant accepted that the external world of matter was real and existed independently of our consciousness of it, but that the world of thought also had its own independent existence and so affected our sense perception of the external world that we could never know the real truth of things we perceive. Things remain ‘in themselves’. The ‘thing-for-us’ is the ‘thing-in-itself’ once its inner truth, or Essence, is revealed to consciousness through practice. Lenin goes on to explain this as follows :-
“What is the kernel of Engels’ objection ? Yesterday we did not know that coal tar contains alizarin. Today we know that it does. The question is, did coal tar contain alizarin yesterday ? Of course it did. To doubt it would be to make a mockery of modern science. And if that is so, three important epistemological conclusions follow:
1) Things exist independently of our sensations, outside of us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this alizarin and received no sensations from it.
2) There is definitely no difference in principle between the phenomenon, [this thing as it exists as a sensual experience], and the thing-in-itself, and there can not be any such difference. The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the thing-in-itself is ‘beyond’ phenomena, (Kant), or that we can and must fence ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) - all this is the sheerest nonsense, Schrule, crotchet, fantasy.
3) In the theory of knowledge, as in every other sphere of science, we must think dialectically, that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready made and unalterable, but must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.”
Why must we think dialectically? Healy explained: Simply because it is the only way to proceed materialistically. There is a strong tendency for idealist philosophers and scientists to introduce much confusion concerning the concept of matter, but for Lenin, and after him for Healy, it is simple enough. Matter is a general philosophical category denoting all that exists external to, and independently of, the world of thought, whatever its nature, whatever we know of it today or may discover in the future. The reason why we must think of matter dialectically is because all matter is interconnected and is in eternal motion and change. Motion is the fundamental attribute of matter, it is the mode of existence of matter. Since, as we have said, matter is all that exists beyond the world of thought, then this motion, the mode of existence of matter, is included in the general concept of matter itself, since it is its very nature. If we do not grasp the external world in its movement and life, then we have not grasped it materialistically.
Early in his life Healy set out to intervene in the class struggle at the international level, and he understood that the final emancipation of the working class depended in the first instance on the construction of a leading organisation, a political party, which could correctly reflect the class struggle in the only possible way, materialistically and dialectically. In this he proceeded from the classical Marxist proposition, “the crisis of mankind resolves itself into the crisis in the leadership of the working class.”
Having said all this, and without wishing to engage in comprehensive biography, we must surely understand Healy “in his movement and life”. He was born to a poor farming family in Ireland in 1913. In the election of 1919 Sinn Fein swept the board and announced their “Democratic Programme of the First Dail”, proclaiming at the same time the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland. The result, as is well known, was the ghastly oppression under the British army and the Black and Tans. Then came Healy’s first political experience – his father was shot by the Black and Tans. Few of us in Britain, where the class struggle has been mitigated by the economic cushion of profits from empire, have had such harsh experience.
In 1928 Healy moved to Wales where he trained as a ships radio operator, then joined the seaman’s union and the Communist Party and began to study Lenin, but he encountered a problem. Studying the Lloydes shipping list he noticed that oil was being exported from the Soviet Union to fascist Italy and Spain during the Spanish Civil war. He protested, and was accused of being a Trotskyist and promptly expelled from the Communist Party. The infamous Moscow frame-up trials of the old Bolsheviks in the 1930’s convinced Healy that the Trotskyist position was actually correct – the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers state ruled by a corrupt bureaucracy under Stalin, and he joined the Trotskyist Militant group.
From that point on Healy remained a leader of the Trotskyist movement, nationally and internationally, editing various newspapers and journals, and in 1959 he became national secretary of the Socialist Labour League, a new organisation formed largely by people expelled from the Labour Party for opposing nuclear testing and fighting for full employment and trade union rights. Under Healy’s leadership the SLL made good progress, and by 1961 sufficient finance had been raised to install a modern printing press in the Clapham headquarters, clear evidence that the level of theory and practice had been raised to a high level. Then into this situation came something in the nature of a spark to ignite this explosive mixture of theory and practice - in that same year Lenin’s philosophical notes were published in English as volume 38 of his Collected Works, and never has such a seemingly mundane event as the publication of a book proved to be such an important moment in the political history of the working class. Healy pounced on it, mastered its content, and for the rest of his life made it the basis of his political work. He understood that here was the scientific theory to guide the world social revolution, and from then on cadre training stood at the centre of his practice, both nationally in his own organisation, and internationally in his work as a leader of the Fourth International. Others, however, who could not make the break from the subjective idealist outlook we are trained in from birth, Trotskyist leaders such as Ted Grant and Tony Cliff, degenerated into petty bourgeois opportunism and became his bitter political adversaries.
Healy’s method of cadre training in materialist dialectics as a guide to practice led to results that none of his adversaries could achieve. In 1964 plans were laid to launch a daily newspaper. Healy’s detractors ridiculed the idea, but a further confirmation of his perspective came when the Young Socialists, having been expelled on bloc from the Labour Party, allied themselves to the SLL and threw themselves into the preparation work for the daily paper. On September 27 1969 the first Trotskyist daily paper in the world, the Workers Press, began publication, its print-shop bought and paid for to guarantee complete editorial freedom.
“The party is built in struggle”, Healy would always insist. “We do not do what is possible, but what is objectively necessary.” Hence he led his party to meet every new challenge arising from the class struggle, and they came fast enough. In 1971 the basis of world trade was transformed when the US dollar was taken off the gold standard. Seriously weakened the ruling class was impelled to attack and take back all the gains the working class had made since the end of World War II. Anti-trade union laws fell like rain, working practices were attacked, dock workers’ leaders were jailed for defending jobs. Healy concluded that these heightened conditions of class struggle necessitated the transformation of the Socialist Labour League into a political party, rallies many thousands strong were held, and the League became the Workers Revolutionary Party in 1974. Membership of the WRP grew to several thousands, the circulation of the daily paper rivalled that of the Stalinist Morning Star, and candidates stood in elections, but at the centre of it all was cadre training in dialectical materialist theory and practice led by Healy. A college was established and residential courses open to the public were held.
Healy’s insistence of philosophical training, and his determination that the practice of the Party must be inseparably connected with it, engendered opposition, much of it in the form of unspoken resentment from those who could not master their own subjective idealism. Cliques began to form and in 1985 the Party suffered a serious split following the intense struggles surrounding the miners’ strike of 1984-5 which heightened all the contradictions contained in the Party. In a six part series written for the Party’s daily paper, by now re-named the News Line and printed in full colour on new presses, Healy explained that the leaders of the split were fighting shy of training themselves and the members in materialists dialectics, regarding it as something to mention in passing when making speeches. For their part the leaders of the split were incapable of any attempt to analyse and make serious reply to Healy's views and could only resort to ludicrously false accusations as to his personal integrity.
Such theoretical short-comings quickly caused a second split in 1986, the objective cause this time being the developments in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Gorbachev, who was struggling to restructure the government and economy, to restore soviet democracy and reveal the truth of what had happened under the dictatorship of Stalin. Healy, who was already aware that vital theoretical developments had been made in the Soviet Union by philosophers such as E. V. Ilyenkov, insisted that the political revolution, long ago predicted by Trotsky, was unfolding in the Soviet Union, and that the consequent overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy was a great step forward for the world social revolution. However, his opponents saw these dramatic changes as the restoration of capitalism and the disagreement was deep enough to cause a split. (Capitalism was of course restored later when Boris Yeltsin overthrew Gorbachev’s government in a coup in 1993, but at that time Healy was correct in his analysis.) Following this second split only a minority remained with Healy, those who had consistently taken the theory and practice of dialectical materialism seriously, and these formed themselves into a new organisation called the Marxist Party. Its first practice was a series of cadre training classes, and soon a new theoretical journal, the Marxist Monthly, appeared, but by now Healy had been suffering poor health for some years, and he died on December 14, 1989.
This appreciation of the life and work of Gerry Healy would be incomplete without an account of what happened to the organisation he left behind. Shortly after his death the Marxist Party split again. Those who separated from the Marxist Party continued to organise according to his method and published a political biography, Gerry Healy, A Revolutionary Life, (Corinna Lotz and Paul Feldman, Lupus Books, ISBN 0 9523454 0 4, available from www.aworldtowin.net), and continue to re-publish his work. With Healy gone the leaders of the side that inherited the party name and publication, the Marxist Monthly, proved unequal to the challenges of new developments.
It became clear that they had not really grasped Healy's dialectical analysis of the changes taking place in the Soviet Union. The contradictory situation there contained both a revolutionary and a reactionary moment. Reactionary because of the tendency to the restoration of capitalism, and revolutionary because of the inevitable defeat of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The essence of Healy's position was that even in the event of a restoration of capitalism the revolution would at the same time receive a mighty impetus because the greatest obstacle in its path, the Stalinist bureaucracy, would be removed. When the political revolution which had begun in the Soviet Union was defeated and capitalism was restored by the counter-revolutionary coup led by Boris Yeltsin during the period 1991 to 1993, a deep pessimism descended over the Party. Cadre training steadily fell into a state of dereliction and finally ceased completely and the Marxist Party degenerated into an opportunist clique with individuals who knew nothing of Marxism in leading positions. Shortly before his death, in an article entitled "Sceptics and the Political Revolution" in the November 1989 issue of Marxist Monthly, Healy, writing from long experience, described just such situations as this:-
"Sceptics can be arrogant and assertive towards internal party relations or passive towards materialist dialectics. In this way they achieve 'peace of mind' by concealing their real sceptical differences from their political colleagues. But the sceptics themselves by no means refrain from decision-making when they consider it politically suits them. Their organisational manifestation is their clique or 'personal ties' relations. In this way, they have almost a tribal instinct for self-preservation. Their basic outlook is that the interests of the clique come first, especially that of their 'leader', who is the political guru whose ego demands unconditional support and political adulation. This is indeed an absolute precondition for being recognised by the clique as one of their 'trusties'."
There could not have been a better characterisation of the leadership of the Marxist Party during its final years. It is no surprise that they could not live with the Party's democratic centralist constitution which was later abandoned for a system of formal rules which better suited their authoritative methods. In 2001 the Party adopted an anti-Leninist, social-chauvinist manifesto calling for armed forces to be retained for “the legitimate defence of a population from a threat from a more powerful neighbour” and for “self defence at home”, with only one member voting against, the writer of these lines. In July 2002 its leading member publicly repudiated dialectical materialism in the capitalist press, and another of its leaders accepted a CBE for "services to acting" and allowed herself to be described as "a great admirer of Prince Charles" in a glossy magazine interview. Voting became a matter of hand raising in favour of the perspectives put by these leaders, who, after Protagoras, imagined themselves the measure of all things. The magazine Healy had founded ceased publication in 2003, following an abortive attempt to transform it into a commercial publication. The death of the Marxist Party came in 2005 when it was liquidated into a single issue organisation campaigning for peace and the retention of existing legal rights under the name “Peace and Progress”. No mention of Marxism or even the class division of society was made in its initial manifesto or any subsequent statement; indeed all attempts at retaining Marxist organisation and training of any kind were ignored and suppressed.
Nothing, of course, can eradicate the scientific, political, and social force which took the form of Healy’s life and all that he and his associates created. Personal relations with him were not always so easy and always challenging. He sometimes got angry with people, it is true, but he had a way of dealing with such moments. He would always take the first opportunity to apologise and his apology meant something, because it was always accompanied by a sincere attempt to clarify the political cause of his anger. Even his anger had an objective cause, stemming as it did from the intensity of the contradictions contained in the class struggle, contradictions that were focused through him as through a lens. One of Healy’s long time close associates said years after his death, “Healy’s method was paralysing.” Had he been more honest he would have said “Healy’s method paralysed me.” In general such paralysis resulted not from Healy’s method but from the inability of individuals to conquer their own subjective idealism, individualism and egoism, and to find their way to the proper democratic centralist relations at a personal level. Such people soon parted company with Healy and in extreme cases became his vicious enemies. Years after his death such people continue to fulminate against him.
The word genius is much overworked, but if we understand the term as a talent practiced with consummate ease and carried to a uniquely high level, we can justly describe Healy as a genius. His pioneering work of interpretation of Lenin’s philosophical studies, and his successful struggle to negate this theory into a practical method of revolutionary struggle may yet prove to be a historical turning point. Some have described him as a great man, but to this I do not agree, for one simple reason. Unfortunately, unlike his Bolshevik predecessors, history never gave him anything truly great to do.
Addendum
The essence of Healy's political struggle was his practice of training cadres in the revolutionary theory of dialectical materialism. As an aid to this teaching he produced a graphic guide or "projection" to illustrate this method, beginning from the sensual perception of the external world, and proceeding through logical analysis of empirical knowledge, to the synthesis of political theory and practical ideas as a guide to practice. To see the projection click HERE.
Terry Button, 14 December 2006
