Author's introduction to eBook edition¶
Core Argument¶
Author’s Introduction to the eBook Edition
Twenty years after the publication of Reason in Revolt, the author argues that the intervening period has vindicated its central thesis: that nature operates dialectically, and that Engels’ nineteenth-century scientific foundations have been confirmed, not superseded, by subsequent discoveries. Far from being outdated, Engels’ insights are shown to be more relevant than ever, especially in light of chaos and complexity theory. The chapter’s core narrative thrust is that modern science—particularly in palaeontology, genetics, and cosmology—has demolished both the old gradualist orthodoxy and the reactionary ideological offshoots that seek to reimpose religious or idealist frameworks upon scientific inquiry.
Key claims are supported by specific evidence. The late Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibria is cited as having overthrown the gradualist model of evolution, replacing it with a dialectical understanding of sudden leaps and catastrophic change. Gould himself, the author notes, acknowledged his debt to Engels’ The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, arguing that a century of errors in the study of human origins could have been avoided had scientists heeded Engels. The human genome project is presented as having dealt a mortal blow to genetic determinism and to creationist and intelligent design arguments. The author offers a polemical critique of intelligent design, pointing to the panda’s inefficient proto-thumb and the human skeleton’s unsuitability for bipedalism as evidence of a bungling, not benevolent, designer. The genetic evidence, it is argued, conclusively demonstrates humanity’s evolutionary kinship with all life, from bacteria to fruit flies, and refutes any claim to special divine creation.
The chapter draws heavily on the dialectical tradition, from Hegel’s Logic to Marx and Engels’ philosophical writings, and situates these within the history of scientific revolutions as theorised by Thomas Kuhn. The most controversial section of the original book—its rejection of the Big Bang theory—is defended at length. The author characterises the standard inflationary model as a modern equivalent of religious creation ex nihilo, and points to its internal contradictions, particularly the problem of undetectable “dark matter.” He cites the growing dissent of physicists such as Neil Turok, Paul Steinhardt, and Sir Roger Penrose, who have moved toward models of an eternal, cyclical universe with no beginning or end. The Vatican’s hostility to Turok is presented as circumstantial evidence that he is on the right track. The author insists that the material universe is infinite and eternal, and that dialectical materialism will be vindicated by the further march of science.
The polemical targets are multiple and clearly identified. The author attacks modern bourgeois philosophy as barren, pretentious, and irrelevant, contrasting it with the undeveloped but brilliant insights of Marx and Engels. He excoriates religious fundamentalism in all its forms—Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and Hindu—and draws a direct line from the prayers of George W. Bush and Tony Blair to the bombing of Baghdad. The crisis of capitalism itself is presented as the most striking manifestation of dialectics: the very adaptations that enabled capitalism to triumph over feudalism have now turned into their opposite, driving the system toward extinction. Consciousness lags behind events, but the author predicts that this lag will be compensated by sudden revolutionary shifts, as seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, and Greece, and soon to come in Britain, France, and the United States.
The introduction closes with a tribute to Ted Grant, the author’s comrade and teacher, and a reaffirmation of Marxism as the philosophy of the future. The book, originally written during a period of revolutionary retreat and capitalist triumphalism, is now presented as more necessary than ever. The author insists that dialectical materialism, properly understood, is not a dry academic system but a dynamic method for grasping reality in its motion, contradiction, and infinite richness. The struggle for socialism, he concludes, will be guaranteed only by the workers and youth reclaiming these ideas for themselves.