e of its tenets so as to make sense of their new forms of behaviour. But this led to clashes with the ideological guardians of the old order (the church hierarchy). At this point a series of figures emerged who tried to generalise the challenge to the old ideology - Luther, Calvin, etc. Where the challenge was unsuccessful or where those who made it were forced to compromise (as in Germany, France and Italy), the new ways of working and living became no more than marginal elements in a continuing feudal society. But where the challenge was successful (in Britain and the Netherlands) it liberated the new ways of working and living from the old constraints - it generalised bourgeois forms of production.
The same relationship holds between the workers 'struggle under capitalism and the ideas of revolutionary socialism.
Initially, workers try to fit their experience of fighting back against aspects of capitalism into ideological frameworks that are bequeathed to them from the past. These frameworks shape the form their struggles take, so that the struggles are never a simple reflection of material interests. 'The deadweight of the past hangs like a nightmare on the brain of the living', as Marx put it. [61] But the process of trying to interpret their new experiences through old frameworks creates a tension within the old frameworks, which is only resolved as people try to change the frameworks.
As Antonio Gramsci put it, 'The active man of the masses works practically, but he does not have a clear, theoretical consciousness of his actions, which is also a knowledge of the world insofar as he changes it. ' So there are 'two sorts of consciousness', that 'implicit in his actions', and that 'superficially explicit, which he has inherited from the past and which he accepts without criticism ':
"This 'verbal' conception is not without consequences; it binds him to a certain social group, influences his moral behaviour and the direction of his will in a more or less powerful way, and it can reach the point where the contradiction of consciousness will not permit any action ... [Therefore] the unity of theory and practice is not a given mechanical fact, but a historical process of becoming. "[62]
Thus the Chartists of the 1830s and 1840s attempted to come to terms with new experiences through older, radical democratic notions. But this created all sorts of contradictory ideological formulations. That was why some of the most popular orators and writers were people like Bronterre O'Brien, Julian Harvey and E rnest Jones who began to articulate people's experience in newer, more explicitly socialist ways.
Marxism itself was not a set of ideas that emerged fully formed out of the heads of Marx and Engels and then magically took a grip of the working class movement. The birth of the theory was dependent on a distillation by Marx and Engels of the experiences of the young workers 'movement in the years prior to 1848. It has been accepted by workers since then, insofar as it has fitted in with what struggles were already beginning to teach them. But its acceptance has then fed back into the struggles to influence their outcome.
The theory does not simply reflect workers ' experience under capitalism; it generalises some elements of that experience (Those of struggling against capitalism) into a consciousness of the system as a whole. In doing so, it gives new insights into how to wage the struggle and a new determination to fight.
Theory develops on the basis of practice, but feeds back into practice to influence its effectiveness.
The point is important because theory is not always correct theory. There have historically been very important workers ' struggles waged under the influence of incorrect theories:
Proudhonism and Blanquism in France in the second half of the 19th century; Lassallianism in Germany; Narodnism and even Russian Orthodoxism in Russia in the years before 1905;
Peronism in Argentina; Catholicism and nationalism in Poland; and, of course, the terrible twins, social democracy and Stalinism.
In all of these cases workers have gone into struggle influenced by 'hybrid' views of the world - views which combine a certain immediate understanding of the needs of class struggle with a more general set of ideas accepting key elements of existing society. Such a false understanding of society in its totality leads to enormous blunders - blunders which again and again have led to massive defeats.
In the face of such confusion and such defeats, nothing is more dangerous than to say that ideas inevitably catch up with reality, that victory is certain. For this invariably leads to a downplaying of the importance of combining the practical and the ideological struggle.
The role of the party in hi...
