M. N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism

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Books by the same author Why I am Not a Hindu & Why I do not want Ramrajya (1993, 1997) The Ethical Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1993) Is God Dead? (An Introduction to Kya Ishwar Mar Chuka hai)[1998]

Forthcoming Rationalism, Humanism and Atheism in Twentieth Century Indian Thought

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M. N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism

Dr. Ramendra Ph.D., D.Litt. Reader, Department of Philosophy, Patna College, Patna University

Buddhiwadi Foundation Patna 3

This publication has been made possible by a grant from Rationalist Foundation, Mumbai

First Edition All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Copyright © 2001 by Dr. Ramendra

Price: Rs.100

ISBN 81-86935-00-2

Published by Buddhiwadi Foundation 216-A, S. K. Puri, Patna-800 001, India

Printed at Satya Prints, Kadamkuan, Patna

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Contents Foreword Introduction

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I. M. N. Roy's New Humanism II. Materialism III. Roy's Materialism and Traditional Materialism IV. Roy's Materialism and Marxian Materialism V. Materialism or Physical Realism?

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91 113

Appendix: Twenty-Two Thesis Bibliography

133 141

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Foreword This book is a revised and updated version of Dr.Ramendra’s D.Litt. Thesis titled “A Critical Study of M. N. Roy’s New Humanism and Materialism”. The author has taken lots of trouble for thoroughly revising and extensively reorganizing the material as well as for greatly simplifying the presentation. His main aim in doing so has been to make the book more readable for general readers. Several books have been written and published on Roy. This scholarly book by Dr. Ramendra is unique in the sense that it focuses on Roy’s materialism and its differences from traditional and Marxian materialism. Besides, the author has also discussed the appropriateness of the term “materialism” for describing M. N. Roy’s philosophy. According to Dr. Ramendra, it is better to use “physical realism” for describing M. N. Roy’s theory of reality, a term preferred by Roy himself. In his well-researched and extensively documented book, the author, Dr. Ramendra, has also explored the relationship between Roy’s “materialism” and new humanism. In addition to being an authoritative exposition of M. N. Roy’s new hu7

manism and materialism, Dr. Ramendra’s book is an authentic source of information on traditional materialism as well as on Marxian materialism. M. N. Roy is a leading humanist thinker of twentieth century India. We are sure that the publication of this important work on him will help in promoting rationalism-humanism. Buddhiwadi Foundation, which is a registered, non-profit, taxexempt trust for promoting rationalism and humanism, is proud to add this valuable work to its list of publications. The publication of this book has been made possible by a grant from Rationalist Foundation, Mumbai. We thank Justice R. A. Jahagirdar (Retd.) of Rationalist Foundation for his encouragement and co-operation without which it would have been very difficult to publish this book. Kawaljeet Managing Trustee Buddhiwadi Foundation

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Introduction M. N. Roy (1887-1954) is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Indian philosopher of twentieth century. Unlike some other Indian thinkers of twentieth century, Roy has made a clear distinction between philosophy and religion in his thought. This alone, I think, entitles him to be recognized as the foremost Indian philosopher of twentieth century. According to Roy, no philosophical advancement is possible unless we get rid of orthodox religious ideas and theological dogmas. On the other hand, Roy has envisaged a very close relationship between philosophy and science.1 Secondly, Roy has given a central place to intellectual or philosophical revolution in his philosophy. According to Roy, a philosophical revolution must precede a social revolution. Besides, Roy has, in the tradition of eighteenth century French materialist Holbach, revised and restated materialism in the light of twentieth century scientific developments. If we wish to place Roy’s philosophy in the context of ancient Indian philosophy, we may place Roy in the tradition of the ancient Indian materialism, Lokayat. However, compared to the ancient doctrines of Lokayat, Roy’s “physical realism” is a highly developed philosophy. Roy not only takes into account the then contemporary discoveries of physics in reformulating “materialism” as “physical realism”, but also gives an important place to ethics in his philosophy. Moreover, Roy’s philosophy has an important social and political component. Roy started his political career as a militant national-

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ist. He went on to become a communist of international rank. Finally, he propounded his own philosophy of new humanism or radical humanism. The essence of Roy’s new humanism is contained in the “Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy”. In a speech explaining new humanism to the members of Radical Democratic Party in 1947, Roy says: The Theses are deduced from materialist philosophy. As one of those who have formulated these principles of the philosophy of revolution in our time, I am firmly convinced that Materialism is the only philosophy possible.2 However, in his Twenty-Two Theses Roy, himself a former communist, explicitly rejects the Marxist interpretation of history, which is also known as “materialistic conception of history” or “historical materialism”. Roy has given in his new humanism an important place to the freedom of will and to morality. It is obvious that the “materialism” which Roy is talking about in the sentences quoted above is different from what is commonly understood by materialism. Roy himself distinguishes his “materialism” from Marxian materialism in the following words: In so far as our philosophy traces the origin of human evolution to the background of the physical Universe, it is Materialism. But it differentiates itself from Marxist materialistic determinism by recognizing the autonomy of the mental world, in the context of physical nature.3 In this book, I have tried to explore the relation-

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ship between Roy’s new humanism and materialism. What exactly Roy meant when he said that the Twenty-Two Theses are “deduced” from materialist philosophy? What exactly he meant by “materialism”? On what specific points Roy’s “materialism” is different from traditional materialism in general and Marxian materialism in particular? I have tried to answer these questions in this book. In the first chapter titled “M. N. Roy’s New Humanism”, I have presented an exposition of Roy’s new humanism. Besides, the chapter includes a brief life-sketch of Roy and a discussion of Roy’s conception of philosophy. The second chapter “Materialism” deals with traditional materialism in general, without any reference to Marx or M. N. Roy. The third chapter “Roy’s Materialism and Traditional Materialism” concentrates on Roy’s revised version of materialism and its differences from traditional materialism. Besides, it briefly discusses the relationship between materialism and new humanism, as envisaged by Roy. The fourth chapter “Roy’s Materialism and Marxian Materialism” discusses the differences between Roy’s materialism and Marxian materialism. In the concluding chapter “Materialism or Physical Realism?” I have made some critical comments on Roy’s philosophy. I have discussed the appropriateness of the term “materialism” for designating Roy’s metaphysical views. Could the term “materialism”, in the context of Roy’s philosophy, be substituted with some other more suitable term such as “physical realism” or “monistic naturalism”? I have also discussed whether there is, in fact, a logical relationship between Roy’s “materialism” and his new humanism. In this critical part of my book, I have mainly arrived at two conclusions: one, that both from the cognitive and the emotive point of view, “physical realism” is a

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more appropriate name for Roy’s metaphysical views; and, two, that though Roy’s new humanism is logically compatible with his revised and renamed version of materialism, it certainly cannot be deduced from it. Finally, the bibliography includes the names of the works, which have been referred to in this book. The complete version of Roy’s “Twenty Two Theses on Radical Democracy” is to be found in the appendix. I have used American spellings in this book.

Notes 1

See, “Roy’s Conception of Philosophy” in the first chapter. M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981), p. 28. 3 Ibid., p. 43. 2

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I. M. N. Roy’s New Humanism “New humanism” or “radicalism” is the name given by M. N. Roy to the “new philosophy of revolution” which he developed in the later part of his life. The philosophy of new humanism has been summarized by M.N. Roy in the “Theses on the principles of Radical Democracy” or the “ Twenty-Two Theses of Radical Humanism”. He further elaborated it in his New Humanism - A Manifesto, first published in 1947. As Roy himself points out in his preface to the first edition of his book, “the background material” on the development of new humanism is to be found in his books New Orientation and Beyond Communism, first published in 1946 and 1947 respectively. However, before coming directly to a brief exposition of Roy’s new humanism, it would be worthwhile to take a synoptic look at Roy’s biography, particularly his intellectual development, and his conception of philosophy.

Biography M. N. Roy was not inclined to write his autobiography. However, after much persuasion he started writing his Memoirs in the last part of his life. Sadly, he was not able to complete it. This incomplete autobiography covers only a period of seven years from 1915 to 1922. The following brief life-sketch of M. N. Roy is based mainly on V. B. Karnik’s M. N. Roy, Sibnarayan Ray’s introduction to Selected Works of M. N. Roy (Vol. 1) and V. M. Tarkunde’s Radical Humanism. I have also derived

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some help from Essence of Royism, compiled by G. D. Parikh, and M. N. Roy Philosopher Revolutionary, edited by Sibnarayan Ray. Besides, I have drawn from M. N. Roy’s Scientific Politics, New Orientation and Beyond Communism for tracing his intellectual-political development. M. N. Roy, whose original name was Narendra Nath Bhattacharya, was born on 21 March 1887, at Arbelia, a village in 24 Parganas district in Bengal. His father, Dinabandhu Bhattacharya, was head pandit of a local school. His mother’s name was Basanta Kumari. From school going age, Roy lived in Kodalia, another village in 24 Parganas.

Militant Nationalist Phase: In Search of Arms Roy began his political career as a militant nationalist at the age of 14, when he was a school student. He joined an underground organization called Anushilan Samiti, and when it was banned, he helped in organizing Jugantar Group under the leadership of Jatin Mukherji. In course of his underground work, he was involved in many political dacoities and conspiracy cases. In 1915, after the beginning of the First World War, Roy left India for Java in search of arms for organizing an armed insurrection for overthrow of British rule in India. However, the plan failed and Roy went a second time to Java for the same purpose. Thereafter, he moved from country to country, with faked passports and different names, in his attempt to secure German arms. Finally, after wandering through Malay, Indonesia, Indo-China, Philippines, Japan, Korea and China, in June 1916, he landed at San Francisco in United

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States of America. Roy’s attempts to secure arms ended in a failure. In fact, Roy concluded that Germans were not serious about giving arms to the Indian revolutionaries. Besides, police repression had shattered the underground organization, which Roy had left behind. He had also come to know about the death of his leader, Jatin Mukherji, in an encounter with police.

Towards Communism The news of Roy’s arrival at San Francisco was somehow published in a local daily, forcing Roy to flee to Pao Alto, the seat of Stanford University. It was here that Roy, until then known as Narendra Nath Bhattacharya or Naren, changed his name to Manbendra Nath Roy. This change of name on the campus of Stanford University was like a new birth for Roy. As stated by him in his Memoirs, it enabled him to turn his back on a futile past and look forward to a new life of adventures and achievements. Roy’s host at Pao Alto introduced him to Evelyn Trent, a graduate student at Stanford University. Evelyn Trent, who later married Roy, became his political collaborator. She accompanied him to Mexico and Russia and was of great help to him in his political and literary work. The collaboration continued until they separated in 1929. At New York, where he went from Pao Alto, Roy met Lala Lajpat Rai, the well-known nationalist leader of India. He developed friendships with several American radicals, and frequented the New York Public Library. Roy also went to public meetings with Lajpat Rai. Questions asked by the working class audience in these meetings made

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Roy wonder whether exploitation and poverty would cease in India with the attainment of independence. Roy began a systematic study of socialism, originally with the intention of combating it, but he soon discovered that he had himself become a socialist! In the beginning, nurtured as he was on Bankimchandra, Vivekanand and orthodox Hindu philosophy, Roy accepted socialism except its materialist philosophy. Later in Mexico in 1919, Roy met Michael Borodin, an emissary of the Communist International. Roy and Borodin quickly became friends, and it was because of long discussions with Borodin that Roy accepted the materialist philosophy and became a full-fledged communist. Roy was also instrumental in converting the Socialist Party of Mexico into the Communist Party of Mexico. In 1920, Roy was invited to Moscow to attend the second conference of the Communist International. Roy had several meetings with Lenin before the conference. He differed with Lenin on the role of the local bourgeoisie in nationalist movements. On Lenin’s recommendation, the supplementary thesis on the subject prepared by Roy was adopted along with Lenin’s thesis by the second conference of the Communist International. The following years witnessed Roy’s rapid rise in the international communist hierarchy. By the end of 1926, Roy was elected member of all the four official policy making bodies of the Comintern − the presidium, the political secretariat, the executive committee and the world congress. In 1927, Roy was sent to China as a representative of the Communist International. However, Roy’s mission in China ended in a failure. On his return to Moscow from China, Roy found himself in official disfavor. In September 1929 he was expelled from the Communist Interna-

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tional for “contributing to the Brandler press and supporting the Brandler organizations.” Roy felt that he was expelled from the Comintern mainly because of his claim to the right of independent thinking.1

Return to India: Prison Years Roy returned to India in December 1930. He was arrested in July 1931 and tried for his role in the Kanpur Communist Conspiracy Case. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment. When Roy returned to India, he was still a full-fledged communist, though he had broken from the Comintern. The forced confinement in jail gave him more time than before for systematic study and reflection. His friends in Germany, especially his future wife, Ellen Gottschalk, kept providing him books, which he wanted. His letters to her from jail, published subsequently as Letters from Jail (1943), contains pointers to his reading and thinking during those years. Roy had planned to use his prison years for writing a systematic study of ‘the philosophical consequences of modern science’, which would be in a way a re-examination and re-formulation of Marxism to which he had been committed since 1919. The reflections, which Roy wrote down in jail, grew over a period of five years into nine thick volumes (approximately over 3000 lined foolscapsize pages). The ‘Prison Manuscripts’ have not so far been published in totality, and are currently preserved in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Archives in New Delhi. However, selected portions from the manuscript were published as separate books in the 1930s and the 1940s. Materialism (1940), Science and Superstition

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(1940), Heresies of the 20th Century (1939), Fascism (1938), The Historical Role of Islam (1939), Ideal Of Indian Womanhood (1941), Science and Philosophy (1947) and India’s Message (1950) are among the books that were made from these handwritten notebooks. These writings show that Roy was not satisfied with a primarily economic explanation of historical processes. He studied and tried to assess the role of cultural and ideational factors in traditional and contemporary India, in the rise and expansion of Islam, and in the phenomenon of fascism. He was particularly severe on the obscurantist professions and practices of neo-Hindu nationalism. Roy tried to reformulate materialism in the light of latest developments in the physical and biological sciences. He was convinced that without the growth and development of a materialist and rationalist outlook in India, neither a renaissance nor a democratic revolution would be possible. In a way, seeds of the philosophy of new humanism, which was later developed fully by Roy, were already evident in his jail writings. M. K. Haldar, in his preface to the 1989 reprint of Roy's major work Reason, Romanticism and Revolution goes to the extent of saying that “the germs of Roy’s monumental work or, even the first rough draft of it can be discerned in these notes”. However, he adds that the “ideas took a long time to crystallize as Roy was always willing to revise his ideas in the light of criticism by others or self-criticism.”2

Towards New Humanism Immediately after his release from jail on 20 November 1936, Roy joined Indian National Congress along with his followers. He organized his followers into a body called

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League of Radical Congressmen. However, in December 1940, Roy and his followers left Congress owing to differences with the Congress leadership on the role of India in the Second World War. Thereafter, Roy formed the Radical Democratic Party of his own. This signaled the beginning of the last phase of Roy’s life in which he developed his philosophy of new humanism. After Roy’s release from jail in 1936, Ellen Gottschalk joined Roy in Bombay in March 1937. They were married in the same month. Subsequently, Ellen Roy played an important role in Roy’s life, and cooperated in all his endeavors. In 1944, Roy published two basic documents, namely, People’s Plan for Economic Development of India and Draft Constitution of Free India. According to V. M. Tarkunde, who played a role in drafting People’s Plan, these “documents contained Roy’s original contributions to the solution of the country’s economic and political problems”.3 The Indian state, according to the draft constitution, was to be organized on the basis of countrywide network of people’s committees having wide powers such as initiating legislations, expressing opinion on pending bills, recall of representatives and referendum on important national issues. According to Sibnarayan Ray, another prominent associate of Roy, “the Plan and the Constitution anticipated several of the principles which were to be formulated and developed as Radical Humanism in 1946 and the subsequent years.”4 According to M. N. Roy, his books Scientific Politics (1942) along with New Orientation (1946) and Beyond Communism (1947) constitute the history of the development of radical humanism. In fact, Roy had rejected some communist doctrines,

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such as the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat, as back as 1940. In his lectures delivered at a study camp of the League of Radical Congressman in May 1940, published subsequently under the title Scientific Politics in 1942, Roy had said: The discussion ... will show the necessity of revising or even discarding certain formulas which are considered by orthodox Marxists to be part and parcel, even the very essence, of Marxism. I mean, dictatorship of the proletariat ... if the process of development of the Indian Revolution will be as we can visualize it even to-day, there will be no room for a dictatorship of the proletariat.5 In Scientific Politics itself Roy says, “we have seen that our social and political program is such as was associated with the philosophical Radicalism or Rationalism of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, one need not accept Marxism in order to subscribe to our social and political program.”6 He goes on to add, “the analysis given previously makes it clear that we cannot call ourselves Marxists in the narrow sense." For these considerations, says Roy, "it would be more correct, historically and scientifically, to give a new name to our philosophy.”7 Roy’s definition of “revolutionary” in Scientific Politics is of considerable interest, because it shows Roy’s departure from the orthodox Marxian doctrine of historical materialism: A revolutionary is one who has got the idea that the world can be remade, made better than it is to day, that it was not created by a supernatural

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power, and therefore could be remade by human efforts [emphasis mine].8 In his preface to the second edition of Scientific Politics, written in October 1947, Roy says, “whatever difference there may be between these lectures and the theory and practice of Radicalism as formulated after seven years of storm and stress, is superficial, − mainly of terminology. Seven years ago, I still spoke as an orthodox Marxist criticizing deviations from, or faulty understanding of the pure creed. Nevertheless, the tendency to look beyond Communism was already there in a germinal form.”9 Thus, the principles of revolutionary theory and practice concretized in The Draft Constitution of Free India as pointed out by Roy himself, “not only implied rejection of Nationalism as an antiquated and therefore reactionary cult; they also marked a departure from orthodox Marxism.”10 As far as Marxism is concerned, Roy is much more candid and outspoken in his lectures delivered at a study camp of the Radical Democratic party in May 1946, published subsequently as New Orientation. Here he declares explicitly, “Marxism is not the final truth; even its fundamental principles should be from time to time re-examined in the light of empirical evidence,... ”11 “Our approach to the problems of political theory and practice,” says Roy, “is claimed to be free from any dogmatic presupposition. Otherwise, we could not pretend to be advocates of scientific politics…We also proclaim that our thinking and action know no authority… Those who regard Marxism as such a closed system of thought, cannot also pretend to subscribe to the iconoclastic principles of Radicalism, which knows no dogma and respects no

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authority.”12 Outlining the salient points of his new philosophy, Roy says, “a philosophy, to be a guide for all forms of human action, must have some ethics, some morals, which must recognize certain things as permanent and abiding in humanity.”13 According to Roy, “what the world needs is a philosophy of freedom… Without a philosophical revolution, no social revolution is possible.” The “cardinal principle of our philosophy,” adds Roy, is that “man is the maker of his destiny.”14 Roy had come to the conclusion that “the modern State is too powerful to be overthrown as at the time of the French Revolution or of the Russian Revolution; the modern weapons and the modern technique of military operations have rendered the old technique of revolution − seizure of power through insurrection − impossible.” That is why he advocates “the new way of revolution: revolution by consent or persuasion.”15 Roy also makes a distinction between Marxism, which according to Roy, is a philosophy, and communism, which is “only a political practice”. Roy’s critique of communism goes farther then that of Marxism. “The history of Soviet Union”, says Roy, “makes one doubt whether Communism will lead to the ideal of freedom.”16 The radical change in Roy’s assessment of the Soviet Union, as pointed out by Sibnarayan Ray, “took place over a period of time and is recorded in the substantially enlarged edition of his book The Russian Revolution (1949) which incorporated his earlier book of the same title published in 1937 plus his writings on the Comintern and the Soviet Union during the 1940s.”17 Thus, by 1946, when he delivered these lectures, Roy

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had come to believe that “revolution can no longer take place under the banner of Communism, and that Marxism as vulgarized by its orthodox exponents can no longer give us strong enough inspiration. We shall have to set up higher ideals and find a nobler philosophy of life.”18 However, even at this stage of his thinking, Roy did not totally disown Marxism. Though he insists that Marxism and radicalism are “not identical”, he also added that they are “not mutually exclusive”. He describes radicalism as an attempt “to rescue Marxism from degeneration into orthodoxy” and as a “revision of Marxism”.19 He mainly differed from Marxism in emphasizing the role of ideas in human progress, and in stressing the fundamental importance of ethics as a basis of political action. In words of Roy, “organized thought is the condition for planned action” and “we must learn to think, then only we can work systematically”. Or, to put it differently, “there can be no political revolution without a philosophical revolution”.20

Beyond Communism: Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy and New Humanism Roy prepared a draft of Basic Principles of Radical Democracy before the All India Conference of Radical Democratic Party held in Bombay in December 1946. The draft, in which basic ideas were put in the form of theses, was circulated among a small number of selected friends and associates of Roy including Laxman Shastri Joshi, Philip Spratt, V. M. Tarkunde, Sibnarayan Ray, G. D. Parikh, G. R. Dalvi and Ellen Roy. The “Twenty-Two Theses” or “Principles of Radical Democracy”, which emerged as a result of intense discussions between Roy

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and his circle of friends, were adopted at the Bombay Conference of the Radical Democratic Party. Roy’s speeches at the conference in connection with the TwentyTwo Theses were published later under the title Beyond Communism. In 1947, Roy published New Humanism − A Manifesto, which offered an elaboration of the TwentyTwo Theses. Roy prepared the draft of the manifesto, but, as Roy himself says, in the preface of New Humanism, he derived help from valuable suggestions of Philip Spratt, Sikander Choudhary and V. M.Tarkunde in improving his draft. The ideas expressed in the manifesto were, according to Roy, developed over a period of number of years by a group of critical Marxists and former Communists. Further discussions on the Twenty-Two Theses and the manifesto led Roy to the conclusion that party-politics was inconsistent with his ideal of organized democracy. This resulted in the dissolution of the Radical Democratic Party in December 1948 and launching of a movement called the Radical Humanist Movement.21 At the Calcutta Conference, itself where the party was dissolved, theses 19 and 20 were amended to delete all references to party. The last three paragraphs of the manifesto were also modified accordingly. Thus, the revised versions of the TwentyTwo Theses and the manifesto constitute the essence of Roy’s New Humanism.

Indian Renaissance Institute In 1946, Roy established Indian Renaissance Institute at Dehradun. Roy was the founder-director of the Institute.22 Its main aim was “to develop, organize and conduct a movement to be called the Indian Renaissance

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Movement.”23 Since 1937, Roy was editing a new weekly named Independent India. In 1949, Independent India weekly changed to The Radical Humanist weekly.24 The name of another quarterly journal The Marxian Way, which Roy had been publishing since 1945 in collaboration with Sudhindranath Datta, was changed to The Humanist Way in the same year.25

Reason, Romanticism and Revolution In 1948, Roy started working on his last major intellectual project. Roy’s magnum opus Reason, Romanticism and Revolution is a monumental work (638 pages). The fully written, revised and typed press copy of the book was ready in April 1952. It attempted to combine a historical survey of western thought with an elaboration of his own system of ideas. As Roy says in the preface of the book: “On the basis of a humanist interpretation of cultural history, this work endeavors to outline a comprehensive philosophy which links up social and political practice with a scientific metaphysics of rationality and ethics.”26

International Humanist and Ethical Union While working on Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, Roy had established contacts with several humanist groups in Europe and America, which had views similar to his own. The idea gradually evolved of these groups coming together and constituting an international association with commonly shared aims and principles. The inaugural congress of the International Humanist

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and Ethical Union (IHEU) was planned to be organized in Amsterdam in 1952, and Roys were expected to play an influential role in the congress and in the development of the IHEU. However, before going abroad, Roy needed some rest. He along with Ellen Roy went up for a few days from Dehradun to the hill station of Mussoorie. On June 11, 1952, Roy met a serious accident. He fell fifty feet down while walking along a hill track. He was moved to Dehradun for treatment. On 25 August, he had an attack of cerebral thrombosis resulting in a partial paralysis of the right side. The accident prevented the Roys from attending the inaugural congress of the IHEU, which was held in August 1952 in Amsterdam. The congress, however, elected M. N. Roy, in absentia, as one of its vicepresidents and made the Indian Radical Humanist Movement one of the founder members of the IHEU. On 15 August 1953, Roy had the second attack of cerebral thrombosis, which paralyzed the left side of his body. Roy’s last article dictated to Ellen Roy for the Radical Humanist was about the nature and organization of the Radical Humanist Movement. This article was published in the Radical Humanist on 24 January 1954. On 25 January 1954, ten minutes before midnight, M. N. Roy died of a heart attack. He was nearly 67 at that time.

Publications Roy was a prolific writer. He wrote many books, edited, and contributed to several journals. The Oxford University Press has published four volumes of Selected Works of M. N. Roy, edited by Sibnarayan Ray. We have already mentioned some of his works related to the final humanist

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phase of his life. Of these Materialism, Science and Philosophy, New Humanism and Reason, Romanticism and Revolution are of special interest to us.

Roy’s Conception of Philosophy Roy has discussed the nature of philosophy and its relationship with religion and science in his books Materialism and Science and Philosophy. Philosophy, says Roy, quoting Pythagoras, in his book Materialism, is “contemplation, study and knowledge of the nature.” Its function is “to know things as they are, and to find the common origin of the diverse phenomena of nature, in nature itself.”27 “Philosophy”, according to Roy, “begins when man’s spiritual needs are no longer satisfied by primitive natural religion which imagines and worships a variety of gods as personification of the diverse phenomena of nature. The grown-up man discredits the nursery-tales, with which he was impressed in his spiritual childhood ... Intellectual growth impels and emboldens him to seek in nature itself the causes of all natural phenomena; to find in nature a unity behind its diversity.”28 In his book Science and Philosophy Roy defines philosophy as “the theory of life”. The function of philosophy, in words of Roy, “is to solve the riddle of the Universe”.29 Elaborating on his definition of philosophy, Roy says: Philosophy is the theory of life, because it was born of the efforts of man to explain nature and to understand his own being in relation to its surroundings; to solve the actual problems of life in

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the light of past experience, so that the solution will give him an encouraging glimpse into the future.30

Philosophy and Metaphysics Roy has made a distinction between philosophy and metaphysics. According to him, metaphysics, too, begins with the desire to discover unity behind the diversity. But it leaves the ground of Philosophy in quest of a noumenon above and beyond nature, something which is distinct from the phenomena. Thus, it abandons the inquiry into what really exists with the object of acquiring knowledge about it, and plunges into the wilderness of speculation. It takes up the absurd task of knowing the intangible as the condition for the knowledge of the tangible.31 It is obvious that Roy was opposed to speculative philosophy, which set for itself the impossible task of prying into the transcendental being above and behind the physical universe − of acquiring the knowledge of the reality behind the appearance. In words of Roy: Speculative philosophy is the attempt to explain the concrete realities of existence in the light of a hypothetical absolute. It is the way not to truth, but to dream; not to knowledge but to illusion. Instead of trying to understand the world, the only reality given to man, speculative philosophy ends in denying of the existence of the only

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reality and declaring it to be a figment of man’s imagination. An inquiry, which denies the very existence of the object to be enquired, is bound to end in idle dreams and hopeless confusion.32

Philosophy and Religion Roy is opposed not only to speculative philosophy but also to the identification of philosophy with theology and religion. As he says in Science and Philosophy: For the average educated man, the term philosophy has a very vague meaning, but sweeping application; it stands not only for speculative thought, but also for poetic fancy. In India, particularly, this vague, all-embracing sense is generally prevalent. Philosophy is not distinguished from religion and theology. Indeed, what is believed to be the distinctive feature of Indian philosophy is that it has not broken away from the medieval tradition, as modern Western philosophy did in the seventeenth century.33 According to Roy, “Faith in the super-natural does not permit the search for the causes of natural phenomena in nature itself. Therefore, rejection of orthodox religious ideas and theological dogmas is the condition for philosophy”34 [emphasis mine]. “With the assumption that the phenomena of nature are determined by the will of some supernatural being or beings,” says Roy, “philosophy must make room for faith.” What is supernatural, points out Roy, must be always beyond the understanding of man, who is himself a product

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of nature, and is, therefore, limited by the laws of nature. In this way, according to Roy, “as soon as the cause of the phenomenal world is thus placed beyond the realm of human knowledge, the world itself becomes incomprehensible.”35 Roy is of the view that, “religion is bound to be liquidated by science, because scientific knowledge enables mankind to answer questions, confronted by which in its childhood, it was compelled to assume super-natural forces or agencies.”36 Therefore, according to Roy, in order to perform its function, “philosophy must break away from religion” and start from the reality of the physical universe.

Philosophy and Science On the one hand, Roy regards rejection of orthodox religious ideas and theological dogmas as the essential condition of philosophy, and on the other, he envisages a very intimate relationship between philosophy and science. In fact, according to Roy, the philosophical significance of modern scientific theory is to “render the old division of labor between science and philosophy untenable.” Science is, says Roy, “stepping over the old boundary line. Digging deeper and deeper into the secrets of nature, science has come up against problems, the solution of which was previously left to philosophy. Scientific inquiry has pushed into what is traditionally regarded as the ‘metaphysical’ realm.”37 The problems of philosophy − cosmological, ontological and epistemological − can all be progressively solved, according to Roy, in the light of scientific knowledge. The function of philosophy is, points out Roy, to

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explain existence as a whole. An explanation of existence requires knowledge of existence; knowledge about the different phases of existence is gathered by the various branches of science. Therefore, in words of Roy: The function of philosophy is to coordinate the entire body of scientific knowledge into a comprehensive theory of nature and life…Therefore, philosophy is called the science of sciences.38 Even in his Scientific Politics, which is more in the nature of a popular lecture than a philosophical treatise, Roy says, “having thus yielded position to science, philosophy can now exist only as the science of sciences − a systematic coordination, a synthesis of all positive knowledge, continuously readjusting itself to the progressive enlargement of the store of human knowledge.” Such a philosophy, according to Roy, has “nothing in common with what is traditionally known, particularly in this country, as philosophy. A mystic metaphysical conception of the world is no longer to be accorded the distinction of philosophy.”39 In Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, too, Roy repeats his conception of philosophy as a logical coordination of all the branches of positive knowledge in a system of thought to explain the world rationally and to serve as a reliable guide for life.40

New Humanism New humanism, as presented in the Twenty-Two Theses, has both a critical and a constructive part. The critical part consists of describing the inadequacies of communism (including the economic interpretation of his-

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tory), and of formal parliamentary democracy. The constructive part, on the other hand, consists of giving highest value to the freedom of individuals, presenting a humanist interpretation of history, and outlining a picture of radical or organized democracy along with the way for achieving that ideal.

The Basic Tenets of New Humanism In the first six theses, Roy presents the basic tenets of new humanism. In theses seven to thirteen, he points out the inadequacies of communism and formal parliamentary democracy, whereas in theses fourteen to twenty two, he outlines a picture of radical democracy and indicates the way for achieving that ideal.41 Apart from Roy’s effort to trace the quest for freedom and search for truth to the biological struggle for existence, the basic idea of the first three theses of Roy is: individualism. According to Roy, the central idea of the Twenty-Two Theses is that “political philosophy must start from the basic idea, that the individual is prior to society, and that freedom can be enjoyed only by individuals”.42 “Collectivity,” says Roy, “presupposes the existence of individuals. Except as the sum total of freedom and well-being, actually enjoyed by individuals, social liberation and progress are imaginary ideals, which are never attained”(Thesis One). Quest for freedom and search for truth, according to Roy, constitute the basic urge of human progress. The purpose of all-rational human endeavor, individual as well as collective, is attainment of freedom in ever increasing measure. The amount of freedom available to the individuals is the measure of social progress. Roy refers quest

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for freedom back to human being’s struggle for existence, and he regards search for truth as a corollary to this quest. Reason, according to Roy, is a biological property, and it is not opposed to human will. Morality, which emanates from the rational desire for harmonious and mutually beneficial social relations, is rooted in the innate rationality of human beings. According to Roy, human beings are moral, because they are rational. How is search for truth, one may ask, a corollary to the quest for freedom? Explaining this Roy says: The moment an ape discovered that he could break a branch and pluck fruits with it, the process of mechanical evolution ended; purposiveness became the basic feature of the subsequent biological evolution. Man’s struggle for the conquest of nature began. The struggle for existence became quest for freedom. From that very modest beginning, we have come to the twentieth century with its modern technology; powerful instruments for conquering nature, all invented by man, no longer for mere existence, but in quest for freedom. Science is a search for truth, and it is the result of man’s quest for freedom. Therefore we may say that search for truth is the corollary to the quest for freedom [emphasis mine].43 Finally, “truth” is defined by Roy as “correspondence with objective reality”, which, incidentally, is the realistic conception of truth. Thus, according to Roy, “freedom, knowledge and truth can be woven harmoniously in the texture of one philosophy explaining all the aspects of existence − material, mental, moral”.44

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Humanist Interpretation of History In his humanist interpretation of history, presented in theses four, five and six, Roy gives an important place to human will as a determining factor in history, and emphasizes the role of ideas in the process of social evolution. Formation of ideas is, according to Roy, a physiological process but once formed, ideas exist by themselves and their own laws govern them. The dynamics of ideas runs parallel to the process of social evolution and both of them influence each other. Cultural patterns and ethical values are not mere superstructures of established economic relations. They have a history and logic of their own. Historical determinism, according to Roy, does not exclude freedom of the will. In fact, human will is the most powerful determining factor in history. Otherwise, there would be no room for revolutions in a rationally determined process of history. The rational and scientific concept of determinism, says Roy, is not to be confused with the teleological or religious doctrine of predestination.

Inadequacies of Communism Roy’s criticism of communism, contained in theses seven to eleven is based mainly on the experience of the former Soviet Union. According to Roy, freedom does not necessarily follow from the capture of political power in the name of the oppressed and the exploited classes and abolition of private property in the means of production. For creating a new world of freedom, says Roy, revolution must go beyond an economic reorganization of society. A political system and an economic experiment which

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subordinate the man of flesh and blood to an imaginary collective ego, be it the nation or class, cannot possibly be, in Roy’s view, the suitable means for the attainment of the goal of freedom. Roy is opposed to sacrificing the individual at the altar of an imaginary collective ego. Any social philosophy or scheme of social reconstruction, which does not recognize the individual, and dismisses the ideal of freedom as an empty abstraction, says Roy, can have no more than a very limited progressive and revolutionary significance. The Marxian doctrine of state, according to which the state is an instrument of exploitation of one class by another, is clearly rejected by Roy. According to Roy, the state is “the political organization of society” and “its withering away under Communism is a utopia which has been exploded by experience” (Thesis Nine). Similarly, Roy rejects the communist doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. “Dictatorship of any form, however plausible may be the pretext for it, is,” asserts Roy, “excluded by the Radical-Humanist perspective of social evolution”.45 Referring to the Soviet experiment, Roy says: In the Soviet Union, proletarian dictatorship promises to be a permanent institution. It has become identical with Communism. The means have become the end. The State does not hold out any hope of withering away. If a socialist society has been established in the Soviet Union, then, the period of transition has passed, and dictatorship must disappear. But so long as no other party is allowed to exist, or the party of the proletariat does not disappear with dictatorship, it is

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idle to say that a higher form of democracy has been established.46

Shortcomings of Formal Parliamentary Democracy Roy has discussed the shortcomings of formal parliamentary democracy in his twelfth and thirteenth theses. These flaws, according to Roy, are outcome of the delegation of power. Atomized individual citizens are, in Roy’s view, powerless for all practical purposes, and for most of the time. They have no means to exercise their sovereignty and to wield a standing control of the state machinery. “To make democracy effective,” says Roy, “power must always remain vested in the people, and there must be ways and means for the people to wield the sovereign power effectively, not periodically, but from day to day” (Thesis Twelve). Roy also criticizes the doctrine of laissez faire. According to Roy: Liberalism is falsified or parodied under formal parliamentary democracy. The doctrine of laissez faire only provides the legal sanction to the exploitation of man by man. The concept of economic man negativates the liberating doctrine of individualism. The economic man is bound to be a slave or a slave-holder. This vulgar concept must be replaced by the reality of an instinctively rational being who is moral because he is rational. Morality is an appeal to conscience, and conscience is the instinctive awareness of, and reaction to, environments. It is a mechanistic bio-

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logical function on the level of consciousness. Therefore, it is rational (Thesis Thirteen). It is worth noting that the thirteenth thesis, in addition to tracing the defects of formal parliamentary democracy to the doctrine of laissez faire, states Roy’s views on morality. In fact, Roy gives a very important place to ethics in his new humanism. According to Roy, “politics cannot be divorced from ethics without jeopardizing the cherished ideal of freedom. It is an empirical truth that immoral means necessarily corrupt the end.”47 Therefore, Roy asserts that the inspiration for a new philosophy of revolution must be drawn from the traditions of humanism and moral radicalism. According to Roy, the “nineteenth century Radicals, actuated by the humanist principle of individualism, realized the possibility of a secular rationalism and a rationalist ethics. Roy insists that a “moral order will result from a rationally organized society, because, viewed in the context of his rise out of the background of a harmonious physical Universe, man is essentially rational and therefore moral. Morality emanates from the rational desire for harmonious and mutually beneficial social relations.”48 Roy was of the view that: Morality must be referred back to man’s innate rationality. Only then, man can be moral, spontaneously and voluntarily...The innate rationality of man is the only guarantee of a harmonious order, which will also be a moral order, because morality is a rational function.49

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Radical Democracy Roy’s ideal of radical democracy, as outlined in theses fourteen to twenty-two consists of a highly decentralized democracy based on a network of people’s committee’s through which citizens wield a standing democratic control over the state. According to Roy: The alternative to parliamentary democracy is not dictatorship; it is organized democracy in the place of the formal democracy of powerless atomized individual citizens. The parliament should be the apex of a pyramidal structure of the State reared on the base of an organized democracy composed of a countrywide network of People’s Committees (Thesis Fourteen). Roy has not ignored the economic aspect of his ideal of radical democracy. According to Roy, progressive satisfaction of the material necessities is the pre-condition for the individual members of society unfolding their intellectual and other finer human potentialities. According to him, “an economic reorganization, such as will guarantee a progressively rising standard of living, is the foundation of the Radical Democratic State. Economic liberation of the masses is an essential condition for their advancing towards the goal of freedom” (Thesis Seventeen). The ideal of radical democracy will be attained, according to Roy, through the collective efforts of mentally free men united and determined for creating a world of freedom. They will function as the guides, friends and

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philosophers of the people rather than as their would-be rulers. Consistent with the goal of freedom, their political practice will be rational and, therefore, ethical. According to Roy: The function of a revolutionary and liberating social philosophy is to lay emphasis on the basic fact of history that man is the maker of his world… The brain is a means of production, and produces the most revolutionary commodity. Revolutions presuppose iconoclastic ideas. An increasingly large number of men conscious of their creative power, motivated by the indomitable will to remake the world, moved by the adventure of ideas, and fired with the ideal of a free society of free men, can create the conditions under which democracy will be possible (Thesis Fifteen). Roy categorically asserts that a social renaissance can come only through determined and widespread endeavor to educate the people as regards the principles of freedom and rational cooperative living. Social revolution, according to Roy, requires a rapidly increasing number of men of the new renaissance, and a rapidly expanding system of people’s committees and an organic combination of both. The program of revolution will similarly be based on the principles of freedom, reason and social harmony. The picture of radical democratic state, according to Roy, can be visualized only approximately, leaving a very wide margin of error and uncertainty. Thus, the picture outlined in the Twenty-Two thesis is necessarily ten-

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tative, in the nature of a utopia. The justification, according to Roy, for outlining this picture is that human action must be driven by an ideal or else there will be no incentive for action. As pointed out by Roy himself in his preface to the second edition of the New Humanism, though new humanism has been presented in the Twenty-Two theses and the Manifesto as a political philosophy, it is meant to be a complete system. Because of being based on the ever-expanding totality of scientific knowledge, new humanism, according to Roy, cannot be a closed system. “It will not be”, says Roy, “a dogmatic system claiming finality and infallibility.” Roy also declares, “the work and progress of the Radical Humanist Movement will no longer be judged in terms of mass following, but by the spread of the spirit of freedom, rationality and secular morality amongst the people, and in the increase of their influence in the State.” According to Roy: To consolidate the intellectual basis of the movement, Radicals will continue to submit their philosophy to constant research, examine it in the light of modern scientific knowledge and experience, and extend its application to all the social sciences. They will, at the same time, propagate the essentials of the philosophy amongst the people as a whole by showing its relevance to their pressing needs. They will make the people conscious of the urge for freedom, encourage their self-reliance and awaken in them the sense of individual dignity, inculcate the values of rationalism and secular morality, and spread the spirit of cosmopolitan Humanism. By showing

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the people the way to solve their daily problems by popular initiative, the Radicals will combat ignorance, fatalism, blind faith and the sense of individual helplessness, which are the basis of authoritarianism. They will put all the social traditions and institutions to the test of the humanist outlook [emphasis mine].50

Philosophical Revolution or Renaissance It is obvious from the foregoing that Roy was a great supporter of philosophical revolution or renaissance, and he has given a central place to it in his radical humanism. Roy was an admirer of European renaissance and drew inspiration from it. For him, the renaissance “was the revolt of man against God and his agents on this earth”.51 According to Roy, the renaissance heralded the modern civilization and the philosophy of freedom. He strongly believed that India, too, needed a renaissance on rationalist and humanist lines. According to him, this was a necessary condition for democracy to function in a proper manner. As Roy says in his Reason, Romanticism and Revolution: In the first place, there must be a conscious and integrated effort to stimulate amongst the people the urge for freedom, the desire to rely upon themselves, the spirit of free thinking and the will never to submit to any external authority by exchanging their freedom for the security of the slave. A new Renaissance based on rationalism and cosmopolitan Humanism is essential for de-

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mocracy to be realized [emphasis mine].52

As mentioned earlier, according to Roy, a philosophical revolution must precede a social revolution. He was opposed to blind faith and superstitions of all kinds and supported rationalism. He rejected all allegedly supernatural entities like God and soul. Similarly, he was opposed to fatalism and the doctrine of karma. He unequivocally rejected the religious mode of thinking and advocated a scientific outlook and a secular morality. As noted earlier, he was in favor of delinking philosophy with religion and associating it closely with science. Roy believed that science would ultimately liquidate religion. He considered the promotion of rationalism and atheism as part of his humanist movement. As he says in Beyond Communism: A philosophical revolution must precede any radical social transformation…The belief in God and fate is the strongest link in the chain of the slavery of the Indian people…The Radical Democratic Movement will be the school to teach the Indian people to revolt against fate and the God or gods who preside over it.53 As mentioned earlier, according to Roy, a revolutionary is one who has got the idea that the world can be remade, made better than it is to-day, that it was not created by a supernatural power, and therefore, could be remade by human efforts. Further, according to Roy, “the idea of improving upon the creation of God can never occur to the God-fearing.

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We can conceive of the idea only when we know that all gods are our own creation, and that we can depose whomsoever we have enthroned.”54 Roy’s critical approach towards religion comes out very clearly in the preface of his book, India’s Message, where he asserts that “a criticism of religious thought, subjection of traditional beliefs and the time-honored dogmas of religion to a searching analysis, is a condition for the belated Renaissance of India. The spirit of inquiry should overwhelm the respect for tradition.”55 According to Roy, “a critical examination of what is cherished as India’s cultural heritage will enable the Indian people to cast off the chilly grip of a dead past. It will embolden them to face the ugly realities of a living present and look forward to a better, brighter and pleasanter future.”56 Thus, Roy was opposed to an uncritical and vain glorification of India’s so-called “spiritual” heritage. However, he did not stand for a wholesale rejection of ancient Indian thought either. He favored a rational and critical approach towards ancient traditions and thoughts. Roy believed that the object of European renaissance was to rescue the positive contributions of ancient European civilization, which were lying buried in the Middle Ages owing to the dominance of the Church. Roy had something similar in his mind about India. According to him, one of the tasks of the renaissance movement should be to rescue the positive outcome and abiding contributions of ancient thought − contributions which just like the contributions of Greek sages are lying in ruins under the decayed structure of the brahminical society − the tradition of which is erroneously celebrated as the Indian civilization.

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Notes 1

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), “Introduction” Selected Works of M. N. Roy, Vol. I (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 33. 2 M. N. Roy, “Preface to the 1989 Reprint” Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989), p. XV. 3 V. M. Tarkunde, Radical Humanism (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1983), p. 49. 4 Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Selected Works of M. N. Roy, p. 41. 5 M. N. Roy, Scientific Politics (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1947), pp. 210-11. 6 Ibid., p. 199. 7 Ibid., p. 196. 8 Ibid., p. 38. 9 Ibid., p. VII. 10 Ibid., p. V. 11 M. N. Roy, New Orientation (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1982), p. 98. 12 Ibid., p. XII. 13 Ibid., p. 19. 14 Ibid., pp. 19-20. 15 Ibid., pp. 35-38. 16 Ibid., p. 44. 17 Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Op. Cit., p. 42. 18 M. N. Roy, New Orientation, p. 73. 19 Ibid., pp. XIII-XIV. 20 Ibid., p. 23. 21 In 1969, the movement was transformed into a membership-organization called Indian Radical Humanist Association −IRHA. 22 The Institute now functions from New Delhi. 23 Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Op.Cit., p. 46. 24 The Indian Renaissance Institute presently publishes The

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Radical Humanist as a monthly from Mumbai. 25 This journal has ceased publication. See R. M. Pal (ed.), Selections from The Marxian Way and The Humanist Way (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 2000). 26 Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Op. Cit., p. 53. 27 M. N. Roy, Materialism (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers Ltd., 1951), p. 1. 28 Ibid., pp. 1-2. Apparently, Roy has used the term "spiritual" in the sense of "mental-intelectual". However, the use of term "spiritual" by Roy is misleading because Roy did not believe in the existence of "soul" or "spirit". 29 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1984), pp. 5-6. 30 Ibid., p. 6. 31 M. N. Roy, Materialism, p.2. 32 Ibid., p. 4. 33 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy, p.1. 34 Ibid., p. 3. 35 M. N. Roy, Materialism, p. 5. 36 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy, p. 9. 37 Ibid., p. 28. 38 Ibid., p. 31. 39 M. N. Roy, Scientific Politics, p. 51. 40 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989), p. 493. 41 See appendix for a complete version of the Twenty-Two Theses. 42 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981), p. 88. 43 Ibid., p. 31. 44 Ibid. 45 M. N. Roy, New Humanism − A Manifesto (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981), p. 41. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., p. 35.

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Ibid., p.36. Ibid., pp. 76-77. 51 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism, p. 65. 52 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 474. 53 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism, p. 72. 54 M. N. Roy, Scientific Politics, p. 39. 55 M. N. Roy, India’s Message, p. XIV. 56 Ibid., p. XIII. 50

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II. Materialism In his book Beyond Communism, M.N.Roy has stated that his philosophy of new humanism as expressed in the “Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy” is “deduced from materialist philosophy”. Not only this, according to Roy, “materialism is the only philosophy possible.” In what sense Roy has used the term “materialism”? How is Roy’s “materialism” different from traditional materialism in general and Marxian materialism in particular? What logical connection, if any, exists between Roy’s new humanism and materialism? I will try to answer these questions in this book. However, in this chapter I am only interested in exploring the nature of “materialism”, and that, too, without any reference to Marx or M. N. Roy.

Concept of Materialism What, then is the meaning of “materialism”? Perhaps I should make clear in the very beginning that in answering this question I have no intention of inflicting my own meaning of the word “materialism” on unsuspecting readers. As pointed out by John Hospers in his An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, “a word is an arbitrary symbol which is given meaning by human beings.” According to Hospers, when we indicate what a word means “we are doing one of two things: either (1) we are stating what we are going to mean by it, or (2) we are

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reporting what people in general, more specifically those who use the language we are speaking, or sometimes some segment of those who use that language, already mean by it. In the first case we are stipulating a meaning, and we have a stipulative definition. In the second case we are reporting the usage of others, and we have a reportive, or lexical, definition.”1 So, to use Hospers’ terminology, I am not interested in stipulating a definition of “materialism”. On the contrary, I am interested in finding out the sense in which the word is already used. In others words, I am interested in finding out the reportive or lexical definition of the word “materialism”. Now, the easiest way to find out the lexical definition of a term is to consult any standard dictionary. Let us find out what the dictionaries have to say about “materialism” The Oxford Paperback Dictionary gives the following meanings of “materialism”: "1. belief that only the material world exists 2. excessive concern with material possessions rather than spiritual or intellectual values.”2 Similarly, Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “materialism” as: “1. the philosophical doctrine that everything in the world, including thought, will, and feeling, can be explained only in terms of matter. 2. the tendency to be more concerned with material than with spiritual values.”3 These dictionary definitions of “materialism”, though useful as a starting point, cannot be considered adequate from a philosophical point of view. No doubt, the dictionaries report what meanings are actually attached to a word by an average educated user of the language, or a section of those who use the language. However, more often than not, this popular sense of the term is different from − even

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if not totally unrelated to − the technical sense in which the word is used in philosophy. Though I am not interested in stipulating a definition of “materialism”, yet I am more interested in the way the word is used in philosophy than in the way it is used in common language. In other words, what I am looking for is a reportive definition in the technical sense. And for this we could turn more profitably to technical dictionaries, encyclopedias and standard textbooks of philosophy. According to The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Materialism is the name given to a family of doctrines concerning the nature of the world which give to matter a primary position and accord to mind (or spirit) a secondary, dependent reality or even none at all.4 “Everything that is, is material” is according to the Encyclopedia, “the cardinal tenet of materialism”. Further, a “material thing” is defined as “being made up of parts possessing many physical properties and no other properties. The physical properties are position in space and time, size, shape, duration, mass, velocity, solidity, inertia, electric charge, spin, rigidity, temperature, hardness, and the like.” This list, according to the Encyclopedia, is “open ended” and is “composed of properties that are the object of the science of physics.” Materialists add that there is no second class of fundamental beings possessing psychological properties like consciousness, purposiveness, aspiration, desire, and the ability to perceive and no other. “Therefore, there are no incorporeal souls or spirits, no spiritual principalities or

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powers, no angels or devils, no demiurges and no gods (if these are conceived as immaterial entities). Hence nothing that happens can be attributed to the action of such beings.” Thus, according to the Encyclopedia, “the second major tenet” of materialism is “Everything that can be explained can be explained on the basis of laws involving only the antecedent physical conditions.” “Materialists,” maintains the Encyclopedia, “have traditionally been determinists”. Thus, adding the claim that there is a cause for every event. This claim, however, says the Encyclopedia, “is not strictly entailed by materialism; recently, it has apparently been weakened by development of quantum theory, and some contemporary materialists are opponents of determinism.”5 The New Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the following exposition of materialism: Especially since the 18th century, the word Materialism has been used to refer to a family of metaphysical theories (i.e., theories on the nature of reality) that can best be defined by saying that a theory tends to be called materialism if it is felt sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called mechanical Materialism.6 The Britannica explains mechanical Materialism in the following words: Mechanical Materialism is the theory that the world consists entirely of hard, massy material objects, which, though perhaps imperceptibly small, are otherwise like such things as stones.

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(A slight modification is to allow the void − or empty space − to exist also in its own right.) These objects interact in the sort of way that stones do: by impact and possibly also by gravitational attraction. The theory denies that immaterial or apparently immaterial things (such as minds) exist or else explains them away as being material things or motions of material things.7

History of Materialism It is often said that materialism is as old as philosophy. In fact, materialism flourished in both ancient Indian and ancient Greek philosophy. A brief historical survey of materialism up to eighteenth century until before the advent of Marxism in nineteenth century will give us a greater understanding of what materialism has been traditionally.

Ancient Indian Materialism Lokayat or Charvaka, as the ancient school of Indian materialism is known, is one of the three major heterodox (nastika) schools of ancient Indian philosophy − the others being Buddhism and Jainism. It did not believe in the authority of the Vedas as the orthodox (astika) schools do. The main work of the system the Brhaspati Sutra (600 B.C.) is not available, and we have to reconstruct the doctrines of materialism from statements of the position and criticism of it found in polemical and other works. In the second act of the allegorical play Prabodhachandrodaya, Krisnapati Mishra sums up the

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teachings of materialism in following words: Lokayat is the only Shastra; perception is the only authority; earth, water, fire and air are the only elements; enjoyment is the only end of human existence; mind is only a product of matter. There is no other world: death means liberation.8 Thus, ancient Indian materialists denied the existence of God, non-physical soul, heaven, hell and life after death; and explained consciousness as a product of matter. Not only this, they severely condemned vedic religion and its rituals. Their ethics was hedonistic.

Ancient Greek and Roman Materialism Ancient Greek philosophy is said to have begun with Thales (born about 624 B.C), who is regarded as “the founder and father of all philosophy”.9 And Thales, who treated water as the primary stuff of all things, was a materialist. The other thinkers of Ionian school, Anaximander, who considered indefinite matter as ultimate reality, and Anaximenes, who accorded this status to air, were also materialists. However, though Thales and some other pre-Socratic philosophers may be described as materialists, Western materialism is generally traced back to Leuccipus and his pupil Democritus, who flourished at Abdera in the late fifth century B.C. Between them they worked out the first clear conception of materialism in Western philosophy. The Great Diakosmos, a lost work, written by one or the other (or both) expounded their position. According to Leucippus and Democritus, if matter

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were divided far enough, we should ultimately come to indivisible units. These indivisible units are called atoms, and, therefore, atoms are the ultimate constituents of matter. Empedocles, another pre-Socratic philosopher, had assumed four different kinds of matter − earth, air, fire, and water − but, according to atomists like Leuccipus and Democritus all the atoms are composed of exactly the same kind of matter. Insofar it can be reconstructed, their doctrines, according to The Encyclopedia of Philosophy consists of the following theses: 1. Nothing exists but atoms and empty space. 2. Nothing happens by chance (for no reason at all); everything occurs for a reason and of necessity. This necessity is natural and mechanical; it excludes teleological necessitation. 3. Nothing can arise out of nothing; nothing that is can be destroyed. All changes are new combinations or separations of atoms. 4. The atoms are infinite in number and endlessly varied in form. They are all of the same stuff. They act on one another only by pressure or collision. 5. The variety of things is a consequence of the variety in number, size, shape, and arrangement of the atoms, which compose them. 6. The atoms have been in confused random motion from all eternity. This is their natural state and requires no explanation. (Some scholars dispute the attribution of random motion to the atoms and credit the Great Diakosmos with the Epicurean doctrine of an eternal fall through infinite space.) 7. The basic mechanism whereby bodies are formed from

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atoms is the collision of two atoms, setting up a vortex. In the vortex, motion is communicated from the periphery towards the center. In consequence, heavy atoms move to the center, light ones to the periphery. The vortex continually embraces new atoms, which come near it in their random motion, and it thus begins a world.10 Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), the most famous and influential Greek materialist, too, adopted the position of the Great Diakosoms but gave a modified account of the origin of worlds. There are, according to him, indefinite numbers of atoms falling through an infinite space. In one construction of the Epicurean system, the heavier, faster atoms occasionally stride the lighter, slower ones obliquely, giving then a slight lateral velocity. In another construction, the original deviation is actuated by something like free will. From this point onwards, the development of vortices, etc., proceed in much the same way as in Democritus. Thus, Epicurean materialism differed from that of Democritus in being indeterministic. Epicurean philosophy also contained an important ethical part, which was a sort of enlightened, refined, egoistic hedonism. Epicurus’s philosophy was expounded by Roman philosopher Lucretius (born 99 B.C.) in his long didactic poem De Rerum Natura (English translation, On the Nature of Things). Lucretius, who was a powerful influence in the propagation of Epicurean philosophy among the Romans, adopted the second account of the fall of atoms through void and appealed to some form of voluntary action to explain the original deviation from vertical descent. Like Epicurus, Lucretius, too, was motivated by wish to free men from the burdens of religious fear. He argued at length against the existence of any spiritual soul and for mortality of human beings. These beliefs have been explicit fea-

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tures of materialism since then.

Modern Materialism Seventeenth Century: From the close of the classical period until the renaissance the Church and Aristotle so dominated Western thought that materialism went into background. The revival of materialism is attributed to the work of two seventeenth century philosophers, Gassendi and Hobbes. Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), a French Catholic priest, who in the last part of his life taught astronomy at the Royal College in Paris, tried to rehabilitate and adapt the ancient materialism of Epicurus. However, Gassendi’s materialism was not thorough going, for he admitted a creative and providential God and an immaterial and immortal intellect in human beings. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was much more consistent and uncompromising. According to Hobbes, no part of the universe contains no body. He held all space to be filled by intangible material ether if nothing else. This doctrine followed from his definition of a body as anything existing independently of our thought and having volume. Further, according to Hobbes, all change in universe is motion of bodies, and nothing can cause a motion but contact with another moving body. The substance of anything is body, and “incorporeal substance” is only a contradiction in terms. Hobbes, therefore, disposed of angels, the soul, and the god of theology. However, Hobbes departed from strict materialism in his introduction of “conatus” and “impetus” (which are not physical properties) into his account of motion and measurement of acceleration as well as in his account of human sensation

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and action. Eighteenth Century: After Gassendi and Hobbes, materialism was advocated in France by Jean Meslier (16641729), La Mettrie (1709-1751), Diderot (1713-84), Helvetius (1715-71), Holbach (1723-89), Naigeon (17381810) and Cabanis (1757-1808).11 Probably the most famous materialist of eighteenth century was Julien de la Mettrie (1709-1751), a doctor with a philosophical bent, who seized upon the mechanistic side of Rene Descartes’s (1596-1650) philosophy. Rene Descartes, the well-known French philosopher, who is often regarded as the founder of modern philosophy, was himself a dualist. He accepted a materialist and mechanical account of the inanimate world and lower animals but insisted that human beings had immaterial, immortal spirits whose essential nature lay in conscious thought undetermined by casual process. In his L’ Homme Machine (1747, English translation, Man is Machine) Julian de la Mettrie applied Descartes’s doctrine that animals are automata to human beings themselves. He criticized all views of soul as spiritual and presented a view of man as self-moving machine. Holbach (1723-1789), a German nobleman, who passed his life in Paris, was another prominent materialist of eighteenth century was. His work the Systeme de la nature (System Of Nature) was published under a false name in 1770. In his book, Holbach expounded a deterministic type of materialism in the light of evidence from then contemporary science. Holbach maintained that nothing is outside nature. Nature is an uninterrupted and causally determined succession of arrangements of matter in motion. Matter, according to Holbach, has always

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existed and always been in motion, and different worlds are formed from different distributions of matter and motion. Matter is of four basic types (earth, air, fire and water), and changes in their proportions are responsible for all changes other than spatio temporal ones. Holbach regarded mechanical causes of impact type as only intelligible and real ones. Since human beings are in nature and part of nature, all human actions spring from natural causes. As in Epicurus and Lucretius, there is a strong antireligious motive in Holbach’s work. The purity of Holbach’s materialism is marred only by his admission of relations of sympathy, antipathy, and affinity among material particles, in addition to the primary qualities, gravity and inert force. So, this completes my brief historical survey of materialism up to eighteenth century. In this chapter, I am not discussing Marxian materialism, which will be discussed in the next chapter, or even contemporary materialism, because right now I am more interested in materialism as it existed before the advent of Marxism. To sum up, “materialism” refers to metaphysical theories (theories about the nature of reality), which give to matter a primary position and accord to mind (or spirit) a secondary, dependent reality or none at all. According to materialism, there are no incorporeal soul, gods, etc., (if these are conceived as immaterial entities). Thus nothing that happens can be attributed to the action of such things, and everything that can be explained on the basis of laws involving the antecedent physical conditions. As pointed out in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, materialists have traditionally been determinists, though determinism is not strictly entailed by materialism. As we have seen in our brief historical survey of materialism, the

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materialism of ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was indeterministic and he allowed for free will. In this connection, the following comment in the Britannica is worth taking note of, “… it is popularly supposed that Materialism and determinism must go together. This is not so... Even some ancient Materialists were indeterminists, and a modern physicalist Materialism must be indeterministic because of the indeterminism that is built into modern physics.”12 Another point worth nothing is that metaphysical materialism has nothing to do with the ethical attitude, which is popularly associated with materialism. This point has been emphasized in both The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Britannica. According to The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: It should also be mentioned that metaphysical materialism does not entail the psychological disposition to pursue money and tangible goods despite the popular use of "materialistic" to describe this interest.13 Similarly, the Britannica says: …A quite different sense of the word Materialism should be noted in which it denotes not a metaphysical theory but an ethical attitude. A person is a Materialist in this sense if he is interested mainly in sensuous pleasures and bodily comforts and hence in the material possessions that bring these about. A man might be a Materialist in this ethical and pejorative sense without being a metaphysical Materialist, and conversely.

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An extreme physicalistic Materialist, for example, might prefer a Beethoven record to a comfortable mattress for his bed; and a person who believes in immaterial spirits might opt for the mattress.14 The interesting thing to take note of is that not only there is no logical connection between metaphysical materialism with the kind of attitude popularly described as “materialistic” but also there is no historical relationship either. For instance, Epicurus, as we noted earlier in this chapter, expounded a refined and enlightened kind of egoistic hedonism. The ethical philosophy of Epicurus, however, was much different from what is popularly understood by “Epicurean”. The first meaning of “Epicurean” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary is “of Epicurus or his philosophy”, which of course, is correct. But the second meaning “fond of luxury and sensuous pleasures, esp. that of eating and drinking”, is philosophically misleading if it makes us suppose that Epicurus was this kind of person or that he taught this kind of ethical philosophy. Epicurus, in fact, attached greater importance to mental pleasures than to those of body because, according to him, mental pleasures last longer, and because he believed that we should not aim just at the pleasure of the moment but at such pleasures, which endure throughout a lifetime. Contrary to the popular belief, Epicurus led and preached a calm and contended life free from anxieties. Though he neither opposed nor despised innocent pleasures of sense, he stressed that we should limit and control our desires instead of multiplying them. Epicurus himself lived a simple life, and advised his followers to do the same. Simplic-

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ity, cheerfulness, moderation, temperance are, according to Epicurus, the best means to happiness. To conclude, the first meaning of “materialism” contained in The Oxford Paperback Dictionary and Webster’s New World Dictionary, quoted in the beginning of this chapter, is largely correct, even if not adequate, but the second meaning, is philosophically misleading. Materialism is a doctrine about the nature of reality and not about which part of that reality we ought to prefer or how we ought to live. It is true that metaphysical materialism is logically incompatible with any spiritualistic ethics involving soul, life after death, heaven and god; but, on the other hand, it is compatible with any this-worldly ethics, which does not involve belief in such “spiritual” entities. In no case, it necessarily entails a particular kind of ethics or ethical attitude.

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Notes 1

John Hospers, An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (New Delhi: Allied Publishers Private Ltd., 1975), pp. 32-33. 2 Joyce M. Hawkins (compiler), The Oxford Paperback Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 392. 3 David B. Guralnik (ed.), Webster’s New World Dictionary (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., 1975), p. 462. 4 Keith Campbell, “Materialism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. in chief, Paul Edwards), Vol. V (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1972), p. 179. 5 Ibid. 6 J. J. C. Smart, “Materialism” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.11 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1981), p. 611. 7 Ibid. 8 Quoted by Chandradhar Sharma in A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1964), p.41. 9 W. T. Stace, A Critical History of Greek Philosophy (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1962), p.20. 10 Keith Campbell, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 180. 11 Finngeir Hiorth, Introduction to Atheism (Pune: Indian Secular Society, 1995), p. 115. 12 J. J. C. Smart, The NewEncyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 11, p. 611. 13 Keith Campbell, Op. Cit., p. 179. 14 J. J.C. Smart, Op. Cit., p. 612.

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III. Roy’s Materialism and Traditional Materialism As already mentioned in the previous chapter, according to M. N. Roy, the Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy are “deduced from materialist philosophy”, and “Materialism is the only philosophy possible.”1 In this chapter, I will concentrate on Roy’s revised version of materialism and its differences from traditional materialism. Besides, I will briefly discuss the relationship between materialism and new humanism as envisaged by Roy. In what sense Roy has used the word “materialism”? How is Roy’s materialism different from pre-Marxian materialism, which has been discussed in the last chapter? (The differences between Roy’s materialism and Marxian materialism will be discussed in the next chapter). What, according to Roy, is the relationship between materialism and new humanism? I will be discussing these questions in this chapter. Roy had used his prison years in writing about ‘the philosophical consequences of modern science’. Though his ‘Prison Manuscripts’ have not been published in totality, selected portion from them were published as separate books in the 1930s and 1940s. Among the books that were made from Roy’s ‘Prison Manuscripts’, Materialism and Science and Philosophy are most closely related to the subject matter of this chapter. In addition to these books, Roy’s Beyond Communism and Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, also contain some valuable material.

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Roy’s Conception of Materialism In his Beyond Communism, Roy says, “... I am firmly convinced that Materialism is the only philosophy possible. That conviction breathes through all my other works, philosophical and scientific, not directly related to political theories. In those works . . . I have shown that all systems of philosophy since the dawn of human civilization, which have received any place in history of thought, are essentially materialist.” According to Roy, “any other philosophy, in the last analysis, takes us outside the physical Universe, into the wilderness of a mystical metaphysics over which presides God . . . “2 Defining “materialism” in Beyond Communism, Roy says: Materialism knows no elementary indefinable. It reduces everything to the common denominator of the physical Universe, subject to its fundamental law. The physical Universe is lawgoverned; nothing happens without a cause; it is rational.3

Materialism Roy’s conception of “materialism” has been discussed in much more detail in his book Materialism. In the very first chapter of the book, Roy says: Strictly speaking, philosophy is materialism, and materialism is the only possible philosophy. For, it represents the knowledge of nature as it really

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exists − knowledge acquired through the contemplation, observation and investigation of the phenomena of nature itself.4 According to Roy, materialism is not the monstrosity it is generally supposed to be. It is not the cult of “eat, drink and be merry”, as it has been depicted by its ignorant or malicious adversaries. It simply maintains that “the origin of everything that really exists is matter; that there does not exist anything but matter, all other appearances being transformations of matter, and these transformations are governed necessarily by laws inherent in nature.”5 Roy admits that, “in the light of the latest discoveries of atomic physics, the term matter can no longer be used in the classical sense”; but, according to Roy, “it cannot be abandoned until a more appropriate new term is coined.”6 The fact that matter, as classically conceived, is not the ultimate physical reality does not prove, maintains Roy, that the ultimate reality as known today is immaterial, mental, or spiritual. The Origin of Materialism: In the second chapter of the same book titled “The Origin of Materialism”, Roy says, “Ancient materialism became a comprehensive system in the hand of Democritus. Several hundred years later, it was further developed by Epicurus. The atomist theory propounded by the former, and perfected by the latter, ultimately became the foundation of modern science. The atomism of Democritus contains the skeleton of materialist philosophy.”7 Similarly, in the third chapter of the book, titled “Materialism in Indian Philosophy”, Roy approvingly re-

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fers to the ancient Indian materialism of Charvak or Lokayat. According to Roy, “The long process of the development of naturalist, rationalist, sceptic, agnostic and materialist though in ancient India found culmination in the Charvak system of philosophy, which can be compared with Greek Epicureanism, and as such is to be appreciated as the positive outcome of the intellectual culture of ancient India.”8 Modern Materialism: According to Roy, modern materialism is the outcome of scientific thinking since the time of Democritus. Explaining the meaning of “materialism” in the sixth chapter titled “Modern Materialism”; Roy describes materialism as “the explanation of the world without the assumption of anything supernatural.”9 According to Roy, “The efforts made throughout the ages for such an explanation have established a monistic view of the Universe, and revealed the substratum of everything − body, mind, soul − as a material substance, a physical entity, largely known and progressively knowable: Existence precedes thought; things, ideas; matter, spirit.”10 Roy once again admits that the discoveries of quantum physics have “made the classical notion of matter untenable.” However, according to Roy, “they do not suggest that the old philosophical concept of substance has turned out to be a metaphysical category or it can be altogether discarded.” Roy insists, “The substratum of the Universe is not matter as traditionally conceived; but it is physical as against mental or spiritual. It is a measurable entity.” Roy also suggests “to obviate prejudiced criticism, the philosophy hitherto called Materialism may be renamed Physical Realism.”11

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The “Crisis” of Modern Materialism: Roy has discussed the “crisis” of materialism in the seventh chapter of his book Materialism. According to Roy, in the last analysis, the “crisis” involved the conception of matter; it did not affect the existence of matter as such. The “crisis” simply exposed the inadequacy of the old atomist theory. It simply showed that the atom was not the ultimate, irreducible, state of matter. The substance of the “crisis” was, in words of Roy, “that it appeared to reduce matter from mass to energy or radiation.” There was nothing particularly new in the changed conception of the nature of matter, according to Roy, which could turn over all traditional theories of physics and mechanics.12 Another result of the “crisis” − a corollary to the supposed disappearance of matter − was, according to Roy, the alleged destruction of the old theory of mechanics. In the absence of mass, all traditional laws of mechanics seemed to become untenable. Physics appeared to have abolished the mechanistic conception of the universe. Roy, as pointed out earlier in the first chapter, had a very scientific conception of philosophy. He believed that “metaphysical concepts must be constantly revised in the light of empirical knowledge.” If the nature of the contents of a priori metaphysical concepts, such as space, time, substance and causality, could not be revealed a posteriori by the advance of the empirical knowledge of objective reality, they should be discarded as empty abstractions. “Whenever”, says Roy, “any philosophical doctrine is rendered palpably untenable by verified results of scientific research, it must go. Otherwise, philosophy could not claim to be the science of sciences − a logical system of knowledge.”13

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According to Roy, the revolutionary significance, in the epistemological sense, of the twentieth century physics is that is has acquired a body of experience which cannot be fitted into the moulds of old concepts. New conceptual moulds must be created to suit the new experience. Therefore, Roy was ready to discard the concept of matter if it was exploded by scientific research. As he says, “If it were true that modern physical research had exposed the concept of matter to be a metaphysical abstraction, devoid of any empirical, physical, ontological content, well, so much the worse for it.”14 However, according to Roy, the results of modern physical researches, instead of contradiction materialist philosophy, further strengthen it by giving it a positive foundation. Referring to the conclusions of W.Waubel, author of standard works on physical chemistry, and other scientists, Roy tries to drive home the point that, “The atom has not disappeared. The old conception of it has been modified in the light of a greater knowledge about it. The atom has disappeared as the basic unit of matter. It has been discovered to be a minute solar system, composed of a large number of infinitesimally small particles of matter.”15 The sub-atomic particle electron, for example, points out Roy, is not a mysterious entity. It has a mass of its own. Energy, on the other hand, is not a non-material entity, but a form of matter. Thus, according to Roy, the new theories do not destroy the mechanistic conception of the universe. Roy also refers to Bertrand Russell’s view, expressed in the introduction to the English edition of Lange’s History of Materialism:

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The theory of Relativity, by merging time into space-time, has damaged the traditional notion of substance more than all arguments of philosophers. Matter, for commonsense, is something which persists in time, and moves in space. But for modern Relativity Physics, this view is no longer tenable. A piece of matter has become, not a persistent thing with varying states, but a series of inter-related events. The old solidity is gone, and with it the characteristic that, to the Materialist, made matter seem more real than fleeting thoughts.16 However, according to Roy, the theory of relativity might go against the “common-sense” view of matter. But, it does not destroy the scientific basis of the materialist philosophy. As regards the substance and structure of the world, there is, according to Roy, no room for any serious scientific doubt. In words of Roy, “To-day the substratum of the world has been revealed to be an all-pervasive substance. That is the philosophical implication of the ‘wave theory’ of matter. The dualist conceptions of mass and motion, matter and energy have become untenable. The world has been analyzed down to a unitary substance. Not only matter can be converted into energy, but energy also can be converted into matter. That has been demonstrated experimentally. So, energy is a material entity. That being the case, the fact that the substratum of the world is composed of waves of energy does not prove that the world is made of a spiritual substance. Physics thus has vindicated materialism, having provided it with an unshakable foun-

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dation of positive knowledge.”17 Materialism and Twentieth Century Physics: In the eighth chapter of his book titled “Materialism and Twentieth Century Physics”, Roy also discusses the philosophical consequences of Heisenberg’s uncertainty or indeterminacy principle. “It has been discovered,” points out Roy, “that deep down in the foundation of the structure of the physical world, the classical laws of mechanics do not hold good; that the ultimate constituents of matter have no simple location in space.”18 The significance of this revolutionary discovery is, according to Roy, that ultimately the stuff of the world is not a granular substance; that extension in space is not the final test of physical existence. Heisenberg, says Roy, does not deny the objectivity of material world. His point is that our knowledge of physical processes is largely subjective, being necessarily dependent on our intelligence; and that there is a limit to the accuracy of measurement because in the microcosmic world the position and velocity of entities are disturbed by the very act measuring them. According to Roy, the issue is evidently epistemological − how far the physical theories, particularly those dealing with sub-microcosmic processes, give a true picture of reality. But there is no doubt about the fact, says Roy, that “physics does describe processes in something which actually exists − outside the mind of the physicists.” This something is a measurable magnitude, therefore, it is physical. “Materialist philosophy, with the more appropriate name Physical Realism, is,” concludes Roy, “corroborated by the latest scientific knowledge”19 [emphasis mine].

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Science and Philosophy Roy has also discussed materialism in his Science and Philosophy. In this book, too Roy repeats his view that “the philosophical outcome of the twentieth century science is corroboration of Materialism.”20 According to Roy, the philosophical significance of new physics lies in the fact that it brings problems, hitherto considered to be metaphysical, within the range of physical research. Such basic concepts as space, time, matter, causality, etc., are no longer objects of speculative thought. Exact knowledge about their intrinsic nature and inner structure is being acquired through observation and experiment. For classical physics, points out Roy, matter was composed of atoms, which were supposed to have no internal structure. New physics, on the other hand, has not only analyzed (and actually broken up) atoms into protons and electrons, but has ascertained the quantitative value of these newly discovered units of the physical world. In fact, investigation is pushed still farther as regards the internal structure of these units themselves. In consequence of the investigation, says Roy, “the old philosophical concept of substance is shedding its metaphysical character and is appearing as something accessible to experience; that is, as a physical category which can be measured mathematically.”21 According to Roy, it is not true that new physics, as represented by the quantum theory, has discarded the notion of substance. In fact, Roy maintains that is completes a task begun by the theory of relativity by abolishing the notion of absoluteness regarding substance and causality.

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The theory of relativity, says Roy, reduces the entire cosmic scheme, including space, time, mass, motion, force, energy to one single category. The ultimate units of that fundamental reality are conceived as “events”, instead of mass-points in order to lay emphasis on its dynamic character. The world is not a static being; it is a process of becoming. Therefore, it should be interpreted in terms of “events”, that is, of changes in the state of its ultimate constituents. Because “events” are dynamic physical magnitudes, intervals between them are spatial as well as temporal. Roy observes that as long as physics and philosophy believed in absolute space and time, regarded these as ultimate categories, logically antecedent to being and becoming, the criterion for reality of matter was simple location in space. Matter was conceived as minute particles of mass occupying discrete positions in space at given moments of time. However, atomic physics has discovered that matter does not possess those properties − always in the absolute sense. The notion of simple location in space must be abandoned. These developments, points out Roy, has led some philosophically minded scientists to the conclusion that the old concept of substance must be discarded: matter does not exist physically because its ultimate units are not extended in space. However, says Roy, that conclusion follows inevitably only if we hold on to the idea that existence is extension in space. The revolution in the concept of space, brought about by the theory of relativity, according to Roy, “compels rejection of the old definition of existence. Matter does not exist in space. On the contrary, space is a function of matter.”22 Roy insists that the concept of substance is affected

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by the revolution in new physics only as far as it was identified with mass. Mass is a property of matter, but it is, says Roy, variable like all other properties. The absoluteness of mass disappears already in the theory of relativity. Energy is a form of matter, and matter is vibratory substance. In this way, atomic physics has reduced matter to energy. However, that does not mean a denial of matter, because, according to Roy, no quantum physicist would deny the existence of atom and its constituents − electrons and protons. There cannot be any doubt about the fact, says Roy, “that atomic physics deals with material realities which exist objectively, outside the mind of the physicist.”23 “Thus”, concludes Roy, “the revolution in the concept of matter, brought about by the discoveries of Quantum physics, does not mean that all established physical theories are upset, with the consequent downfall of the mechanistic-materialist philosophical notions associated with classical physics. The impending process is towards a higher synthesis of ideas. Matter is not an inert mass moved by a mysterious force. Matter and energy are the dual manifestations of substance, which enters our experience as these manifested forms.”24 Science, according to Roy, has “proved the self-sufficiency of matter.” “Matter”, says Roy, “is an objective category. Self-sufficient objectivity is the ultimate reality. Therefore matter is the only reality.”25 The basic principle of Materialism, as corroborated and reinforced by modern scientific research, is, in words of Roy: The world, physical as well as biological, exists objectively, is self-contained and self-explained;

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there is nothing beyond and outside it; its being and becoming are governed by laws inherent in itself; laws are neither mysterious nor metaphysical, nor merely conventional; they are coherent relations of events; consciousness, with its manifestations and derivatives is a property of that which, in a certain state of organization, distinguishes existence from non-existence [emphasis mine].26 Biology, according to Roy, does show that matter has the capacity to organize itself into complex, conscious, knowing, thinking beings; though we do not know as yet how exactly the capacity of matter to produce life operates. Anyhow, says Roy, it is proved beyond doubt that consciousness and mind are functions of organic matter. Roy is not averse, in Science and Philosophy, to designating his philosophy as “objectivism”, “naturalism” or “realism”. Referring to his formulation of the basic principle of materialism, as corroborated by modern scientific research, he says, “Call this philosophical generalization of the various branches of scientific knowledge, objectivism, naturalism or realism, or by any other name you prefer to Materialism.”27 However, Roy’s preference for the term “physical realism”, which is evident in the revised version of Materialism, is even more apparent in Reason, Romanticism and Revolution.

Reason, Romanticism and Revolution “Materialism”, says Roy in Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, “restated with the help of the latest scientific

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knowledge, is the only philosophy possible.” Roy frankly admits “materialism must be dissociated from certain notions which have been rendered untenable by the latest discoveries of science.”28 For these considerations, according to Roy, “all really scientific objections to the term Materialism should be obviated if the new philosophy is called ‘Physical realism’.”29 “Even so revised and renamed, to avoid confusion, Materialism is vindicated as the only philosophy possible, provided that philosophy is defined as a logical coordination of all branches of positive knowledge in a system of thought to explain the world rationally and to serve as a reliable guide for life.”30 According to Roy, ever since the dawn of civilization, materialism has been “the most plausible hypothesis for rationalist philosophical thought and fruitful scientific investigation.”31 The alternative views of life − religious, teleological, idealist, mystic − are not able to prove their assumption and verify their postulates. Materialism is the most plausible hypothesis, says Roy, because the categories of its metaphysics are not unknowable, even if unknown yet.

Causality, Probability and Determinism Determinism, as we have seen, is a part of Roy’s materialism. As he says in Beyond Communism, materialism “reduces everything to the common denominator of physical Universe, subject to its fundamental law” [emphasis mine]. Further, according to Roy, the physical universe is law-governed; nothing happens without a cause.

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In Materialism and Science and Philosophy, too, Roy insists that the latest scientific theories do not destroy the mechanistic conception of the universe. However, Roy also considers it essential to revise the conception of causality in the light of latest scientific developments. In particular, he tries to show that determinism and probability are not mutually exclusive conceptions. Roy also makes a distinction between the “rational and scientific” concept of determinism and the “teleological or religious” doctrine of predestination, and tries to reconcile freedom of the will with determinism. In his article “The Concept of Causality in Modern Science”,32 published in The Humanist Way in 1949-50, Roy refers to the view held by some physicists that Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty necessitates the rejection of the doctrine of determinism. Nevertheless, according to Roy, no such drastic conclusion follows from Heisenberg’s principle; only a modification of the traditional principle of causality is required. Roy insists that the new conception of matter introduced by atomic physics does not raise any doubt about the reality of causal relations in nature. The question raised by the new conception of matter is, according to Roy, about the exactness with which causal relations, deep down in the structure of the physical world, can be traced. It has been discovered, says Roy, that the law of electronic movement cannot be stated in terms of causality, because the light used for observing it disturbs the path of an electron. As a result, it cannot be accurately predicted where a particular electron will be the next moment. Only the most probable position can be predicted. Thus, the problem raised by the new quantum theory is, in words of

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Roy, “how to reconcile the concept of causal relations with the observed uncertainty of electronic movement.” The application of the statistical method in the researches of atomic physics, however, maintains Roy, does not disprove causality. In his article “Probability and Determinism”33 published in The Humanist Way in 1950 Roy draws our attention to Heisenberg’s statement that “there exists a body of exact mathematical laws” which hold good for quantum phenomena. The only difficulty is that these laws cannot be interpreted as “expressing simple relationships between objects existing in space and time.” Roy is quick to point out, on the basis of Heisenberg’s observation, that the sub-atomic world is not chaotic. In words of Roy: If sub-atomic phenomena can be described by exact mathematical laws they cannot be indeterminate. Indeterminacy and law are mutually exclusive conceptions. Uncertainty is not indeterminacy.34 In a way, Roy’s main point is that we must not transfer the uncertainty of our knowledge to the object of knowledge. The fact that we cannot determine with certainty the position and the velocity of an electron at a given time (because its position and velocity are disturbed by the very act of measuring them) does not mean that the electron behaves in a chaotic and indeterminate manner. Had it been really so, it would not have been possible to predict its behavior even on the basis of probability. When the number of entities entering in calculations is so great as to be incalculable, there can be no absolute certainty about prediction. Not all the causal influences,

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even upon a particular event can be possibly traced. In such a situation, says Roy, determinism has to be interpreted in terms of probability. Nevertheless, according to Roy, determinism still remains. The innumerable numbers of possibilities of a given situation are all determined. Even if the most improbable event happened, it would be causally determined. There is no place for miracles in nature. Rejection of the idea of causality − that there are invariant relations in nature − will mean, according to Roy, “blasting the very foundation of science.” As he says: The point of departure of all scientific enquiry is the belief that the universe is a law-governed system, and that these laws can be discovered, understood and qualitatively stated. As long as predictions can be made, and events happen approximately as predicted, the principle of physical determinism stands.35

Roy’s Materialism and Traditional Materialism How is Roy’s “materialism” different from traditional materialism in general? Or, to be more exact, how is Roy’s “materialism” different from “classical” or ancient Greek materialism and “modern” materialism? I will attempt to answer this question in this section with particular reference to ancient Greek materialists, Democritus and Epicurus; and “modern” western materialists Hobbes (17th Century) and Holbach (18th Century). However, before we enumerate the important differences between Roy’s materialism and traditional materialism, it is worthwhile to draw attention to important simi-

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larities between them. The two basic tenets of materialism, according to Russell, are: one, sole reality of matter; and two, the reign of law.36 Roy has accepted both these basic principles. Therefore, broadly speaking, Roy’s philosophy is in the tradition of materialism. However, there are also important differences between Roy’s materialism and traditional materialism. Roy’s “materialism” is a restatement of traditional materialism in the light of contemporary scientific knowledge. According to Roy, materialism restated with the help of the latest scientific knowledge is the only philosophy possible. Roy clearly states “materialism must be dissociated from certain notions which have been rendered untenable by the latest discoveries of science.” Roy even renames “materialism” as “physical realism”. According to Roy: All really scientific objections to the term materialism should be obviated if the new philosophy is called “Physical Realism” . Thus, Roy’s “materialism” is revised and renamed to avoid confusion. Holbach, the great modern materialist of eighteenth century, expounded a deterministic type of materialism in the light of evidence from then contemporary science. In a way, Roy has tried to do the same thing in the twentieth century. However, Roy’s revision and restatement of materialism affects both the basic tenets of materialism. Roy has revised the concept of matter as well as that of physical determinism in the light of latest scientific knowledge.

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Change in the concept of “matter” According to Roy, “in the light of the latest discoveries of atomic physics the term matter can no longer by used in classical sense.” The discoveries of quantum physics, says Roy, have “made the classical notion of matter untenable.” But, Roy insist that though the substratum of the universe is not matter as traditionally conceived, it is physical as against mental or spiritual. It is a measurable entity. The so-called “crisis” of materialism, according to Roy, involved the conception of matter, and not its existence. The “crisis” simply exposed the inadequacy of the old atomist theory. The substance of the “crisis” was, in words of Roy, “that it appeared to reduce matter from mass to energy and radiation.” For classical physics, matter was composed of atoms, which were supposed to have no internal structure. New physics, points out Roy, has not only analyzed (and broken up) atoms into protons and electrons, but has ascertained the qualitative value of these newly discovered units of physical world. Further, energy has been discovered to be a form of matter, and matter has been found to be a vibratory substance. In this way, atomic physics has reduced matter into energy. However, that, says Roy, does not mean the denial of matter. No quantum physicist would deny the existence of atom and its constituents − electrons and protons. There cannot be any doubt about the fact that “atomic physics deals with material realities which exist objectively, outside the mind of the physicist.” Roy is even ready to discard the term “matter” provided a more appropriate new term is coined. In Science and Philosophy, Roy describes “matter” as the “sole ex-

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istence”. According to Roy, it is not very important what name is attached to the “substratum of existence” − matter, energy, action, vibratory motion or field. However, he insists that it is a physical reality. What Roy means by calling it physical is that it exists objectively and that it is measurable. So, in Roy’s “materialism”, “matter” is not made up of hard and massy, stone-like atoms as in traditional “mechanical materialism”. The whole concept of “matter” has been revised in the light of new physics. The “atoms” of new physics are not only different from “atoms” of ancient Greek atomists Democritus and Epicurus, which are all supposed to be made of the same stuff though endlessly varied in shape and size, etc., but also different from the indivisible “atoms” of Newtonian natural philosophy. Thus, according to Roy, materialist philosophy with the more appropriate name physical realism is corroborated by the latest scientific knowledge.

Revision of physical determinism in the light of Heisenberg’s principle Physical determinism, as we have seen, is a part of Roy’s “materialism”. According to Roy, the latest scientific theories do not destroy the mechanistic conception of universe. In fact, Roy rejects the view held by some that Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty necessitates the rejection of the doctrine of determinism. He asserts that only a modification in the traditional conception of causality is required. Causality, according to Roy, is not an a priori form of thought or an axiomatic law. It is a physical relation inherent in the constitution of the universe. Roy actually tries to temper a rigidly mechanical

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view of determinism by interpreting it in terms of probability. He admits plurality of possibilities and contingency in the world, and tries to show that determinism and probability are not mutually exclusive. According to Roy, statistical methods presuppose determinism. In midst of chaos it is not possible to say what is most probable to happen. The universe is a law-governed system, and existence of law pre-supposes causality. He is emphatic that the element of uncertainty in the sub-atomic world is not to be equated with indeterminacy. Rejection of the idea that there are invariant relations in nature will, maintains Roy, blast the very foundation of science. “Soft” Determinism: Roy also tries to reconcile freedom of the will with determinism. In Roy’s view the idea of freedom, the possibility of choice distinguishes the rationalist concept of determinism from the teleological doctrine of predestination. According to him, human beings possess will and can choose. Roy, however, is not unique among materialists in recognizing free will. Epicurus, among ancient materialists, and Hobbes, among modern materialists, allowed for freedom of the will. Thus, Roy, to use the terminology of William James, is not a “hard” determinist like Holbach, but a “soft” determinist like Hobbes.37 While Epicurus attributes free will to atoms, and Hobbes reconciles determinism and freedom by defining freedom as absence of external constraints on human action,38 Roy gives an altogether different explanation. According to Roy, the vast world of biological evolution lies between the world of human beings and the world of inanimate matter, and, therefore, the world of human beings has its own specific laws, though these laws can be

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referred back to the general laws of the world of dead matter. The living matter grows out of the background of dead matter; consciousness appears at a much later stage. Therefore, human will, says Roy, cannot be directly related to the laws of physical universe.

Objective Reality of Ideas and the Autonomy of the Mental World Though Roy traces the origin of mental activities to the physical background of the living world, yet he also grants them an objective existence of their own. Mind and matter, according to Roy, can be reduced to a common denominator; but as such, they are two objective realities. Any attempt to deny the objective reality of ideas, says Roy, only vulgarizes monism.39 After the generation of ideas, the single basic current of physical events bifurcates: the biological world, on the higher levels is composed of a double process − dynamics of ideas and succession of physical events. Thus, in Roy’s view, once they are formed, ideas exist by themselves, governed by their own laws. In this way, though Roy, like other materialists, traces the origin of ideas to “material” or “physical” world, he perhaps grants them much more objectivity than traditionally granted by materialists. As we have noted in the previous chapter, materialism, according to Keith Campbell, gives to matter a primary position and accords to mind (or spirit) “a secondary, dependent reality or even none at all” [emphasis mine]. Materialism, which grants no existence to mind at all, and asserts that the real world consists of material things, varying in their states and relations, and nothing

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else has been called “extreme materialism” by Campbell.40 Roy, we may say, is not an extreme materialist. Julian de la Mettrie, an eighteenth century materialist had declared man to be a self-moving machine, whereas, according to Roy, “Man is not a living machine, but a thinking animal”.

Emphasis on Ethics Roy has given a very important place to ethics in his philosophy. In Roy’s view, “the greatest defect of classical Materialism was that its cosmology did not seem to have any connection with ethics”.41 Roy strongly asserts that if it is not shown that materialist philosophy can have an ethics, then, human spirit thirsting for freedom will spurn materialism. According to Roy, a materialist ethics is not only possible, but materialist morality is the noblest form of morality, because it enables human beings to be moral without debasing themselves before imaginary super human powers. Roy links morality with human beings innate rationality. Man is moral, says Roy, because he is rational. In Roy’s ethics freedom, which Roy links with struggle for existence, is the highest value. Search for truth is a corollary to the quest for freedom. Roy makes a distinction between metaphysical idealism (derived from the word “idea”) and ethical idealism (derived from the word “ideal”) or “practical idealism”. In this second sense, points out Roy, “idealism is identified with the virtue of dedicating life to an ideal.” Roy is at pains to emphasize that metaphysical idealism has nothing to do with “practical idealism”; and that philosophical materialism, though opposed to metaphysical idealism, is not opposed to “practical idealism”.42 Thus, we may regard the very important place given

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to ethics by Roy in his philosophy as a special feature of his materialism. However, it is pertinent to note that, contrary to the popular impression, some ancient and modern materialists, too, accorded an important place to ethics in their philosophies. Epicurus, for example, as we have seen in the previous chapter, not only allowed for free will but also advocated an enlightened and refined variety of egoistic hedonism. Among modern materialists, surprisingly, the principle aim of a “hard” determinist like Holbach was to construct a system of ethical and political values on materialistic grounds. According to Holbach, happiness is the supreme natural goal of human existence. However, as no one can be happy without services of others, ethics, in Holbach’s view, is the science of human co-operation to promote the well being of the individual through that of society. Ethics, therefore, is based, maintains Holbach, on the positive knowledge of man’s reciprocal social needs. If mankind has always been morally corrupt, says Holbach, religion has been mainly to blame. Supernatural theology, by falsifying man’s nature and linking man’s salvation to the illusory notions of god and immortality, has entirely subverted ethical truth. Holbach, thus, concludes that atheism is “the prerequisite of all valid ethical teaching”.43 Therefore, Roy is not unique among materialists in trying to give an important place to ethics in his materialism, though he does emphasize that the greatest defect of classical materialism was that it did not seen to have any connection with ethics. Roy rather resembles Holbach in this respect, though he is not a “hard” determinist like Holbach, and also the details of his ethical ideas are different from that of Holbach.

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Materialim and New Humanism What, according to Roy, is the relationship between materialism and new humanism? As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, Roy has stated in his Beyond Communism that the “Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy”, are “deduced from materialist philosophy.” In his preface to the second edition of New Humanism Roy says that “the principles of humanist philosophy of history and society outlined in the Theses … are deducible only from a general philosophy of nature and life, still to be elaborated on the basis of cosmological, ontological, epistemological and ethical concepts and propositions which are also stated in the Theses” [emphasis mine]. Further, according to Roy, “Though presented here as a political philosophy New Humanism is meant to be a complete system. Based on the ever expanding totality of scientific knowledge, it cannot indeed be a closed system claiming finality and infallibility.” In his Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, Roy reiterates his view that, “Except on the basis of a philosophy embracing the totality of existence, all approaches to the problems of individuals as well as social life are bound to be misleading … a sound social and political philosophy must have a metaphysical foundation.”44 He further adds, “In so far it shows a way out of the crisis of our time, New Humanism is a social philosophy. But, as such, it is deduced from a general philosophy of nature, including the world of matter and the world of mind. Its metaphysics is physical-realist and its cosmology is mechanistic.” Thus, according to Roy, social and political philoso-

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phy must have a metaphysical foundation, and new humanism, which is presented in the Twenty-Two Theses, as a political philosophy is deducible from a general philosophy of nature and life, which Roy calls “materialism” in Beyond Communism and “physical realism” in Reason, Romanticism and Revolution.

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Notes 1

M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981), p. 28. 2 Ibid., p. 38. 3 Ibid., p. 44. 4 M. N. Roy, Materialism (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers Ltd., 1951), p. 5. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 58. 8 Ibid., p.94. 9 Ibid., p. 184. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., pp. 208-9. 13 Ibid., p. 217 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 213. 16 Ibid., pp. 213-14. 17 Ibid., pp.215-16. 18 Ibid., p. 218. 19 Ibid., p. 232. 20 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1984), p. 18. 21 Ibid., p.63. 22 Ibid., p. 85. 23 Ibid., p. 97. 24 Ibid., pp. 88-89. 25 Ibid., p. 100. 26 Ibid., p. 189. 27 Ibid. 28 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989), p. 492. 29 Ibid., p. 493.

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30

Ibid. Ibid., p. 492. 32 M. N. Roy, “The Concept of Causality in Modern Science”, The Humanist Way, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1949-50. 33 M. N. Roy, “Probability and Determinism”, The Humanist Way, Vol. IV, No. 3, 1950. 34 Ibid., p. 244. 35 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy, pp. 104-5. 36 F. A. Lange, The History of Materialism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1925), p. xii. 37 As Paul Edwards has pointed out in A Modern Introduction to Philosophy, philosophers have mainly taken three different positions on the question of freedom and determinism. Some philosophers have accepted determinism and rejected freedom. Secondly, there have been philosophers who, agreeing that determinism is not compatible with freedom and moral responsibility, have accepted freedom and rejected determinism. Thirdly, there have been philosophers who have maintained that both determinism and our belief in freedom are true, and that any appearance of conflict is deceptive. Among pre-Marxian modern materialists, Holbach belongs to the first category, whereas Hobbes belongs to the third category. Roy, too, like Hobbes belongs to the third category mentioned by Edwards. [Paul Edwards and Arthur Pap (eds.), A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957), pp.312-314.] 38 R. S. Peters, “Hobbes, Thomas” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4, p. 41. 39 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism, p.32-33. 40 Keith Campbell, “Materialism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 179. 41 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p.462. 42 M. N. Roy, Materialism, p. 234. 43 Aram Vartanian, “Holbach, Paul-Henry Thiry, Baron D” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 4, p. 50. 44 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p.487. 31

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IV. Roy’s Materialism and Marxian Materialism In the previous chapter, I have enumerated the important differences between Roy’s materialism and traditional materialism in general. In this chapter I will concentrate on differences between Roy’s materialism and Marxian materialism in particular: how is Roy’s materialism different from Marxian materialism? However, before discussing the differences between Roy’s materialism and Marxian materialism, I will discuss Marxian materialism in brief.

Marxian Materialism The word “Marxism” has been used in different senses. However, in its most essential meaning it refers to the thought of Karl Marx, sometimes extended to include that of his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels. In this chapter, I am mainly interested in understanding Marxism materialism with reference to the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Sometimes a distinction is made between “orthodox Marxism” and “Western Marxism” or “neo-Marxism”. The so-called “Western Marxism” or “neo-Marxism” derives inspiration from the early writings of Marx and differs from “orthodox” or traditional Marxism in emphasizing, not historical materialism, but the description of consciousness as the central component in Marx’s social analysis. It will be worthwhile to make clear in the very beginning

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that in this chapter I am not concerned with “neo-Marxism” but with “orthodox Marxism” based on hitherto wellknown writings of Marx and Engels. Marxian materialism in the sense mentioned above may further be analyzed into (a) dialectical materialism and (b) historical materialism. The view of the world as a whole is called “dialectical materialism”, a title devised by the Russian Marxist Plekhanov. On the other hand, the view of human society is called “historical materialism”, the name given to it by Engels.

Dialectical Materialism Marx and Engels admit only two philosophical masters − Hegel and Feuerbach. Marx was born in 1818 in Germany and he grew up at a time when the influence of Hegel was at its height. He studied law in Bonn, and philosophy and history in Berlin where, as Marx later said, the intellectual legacy of Hegel, dead five years earlier, “weighed heavily on the living”. Marx received a doctorate from the university of Jena in 1841 for a thesis on ancient Greek materialists, Democritus and Epicurus. As an undergraduate, Marx attached himself to a group called Young Hegelians, particularly to its left wing, which was rapidly moving towards atheism and also talked vaguely of political action. Marx was known as a militant atheist whose creed was: “Criticism of religion is the foundation of all criticism.”1 In 1841 Marx, together with other Young Hegelians was much influenced by the publication of The Essence of Christianity in German by Ludwig Feuerbach, a young philosopher in reaction against Hegel’s thoughts. Another work of Feuerbach, which aroused the enthusiasm of

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Marx and Engels, was his Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1839) in which he argued that Hegelian metaphysics is simply theology in disguise − “the last refuge, the last rational support of theology”. In his Essence of Christianity Feuerbach tried to show that theology itself is a confused, fantastic way of depicting social relationships. Man makes god, maintained Feuerbach, in his own image.2 Ludwig Feuerbach, to Marx’s mind, successfully criticized Hegel from the materialist standpoint, and destroyed metaphysics and religion in a single blow, leaving only “nature” as something to be studied by observation, not deduced by “thought”. Thus, through the influence of Feuerbach, Marx became a thorough going materialist, and abandoned critically, what he considered the “mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic”. However, in reacting against Hegel, argued Marx, Feuerbach had failed to appreciate Hegel’s great contribution to philosophy − his dialectic method. So, the philosophical efforts of Marx and Engels were towards a combination of Hegel’s dialectic with Feuerbach’s materialism. As Engels says in a preface to Anti-Duhring, “Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics from German idealist philosophy and apply it in the materialist conception of nature and history.”3 Approving references to materialism are prominent in the early works of Marx and Engels such as The Holy Family (1845) and The German Ideology (1846). In The Holy Family, for instance, they argued that one branch of eighteenth century French materialism developed into natural science and the other branch into socialism and communism. Thus, they regarded “the new materialism”

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as a source of the social movement, which they believed, was destined to revolutionize human life.4 One aspect of Marxian materialism is rejection of idealist attempts to undermine and belittle sense experience. Hence, the Marxian view of knowledge is realist. According to H. B. Acton the author of The Illusion of the Epoch, Marx’s materialism is “very wide in scope, combining empiricism, realism, belief in the use of scientific methods pragmatically conceived, rejection of supernaturalism, and rejection of mind-body dualism”.5 According to John Passmore, on the other hand, by “materialism”, the Marxists “usually mean what is more customary to call representationalism − the view that ‘the concepts in our heads’ are ‘images of real things’”6 [emphasis mine]. Marx, too, emphasizes the same aspect of his materialism when he distinguishes his dialectic method from Hegel’s in the following words: My dialectic method is not only different from Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of "the Idea", he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of "the Idea". With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought [emphasis mine].7

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John Passmore summarizes the meaning of “dialectical materialism” in the following manner: Dialectical materialism is the theory that things exist independently of us and are ‘reflected’ in our minds as ideas. These objective existences, as well as our ideas of them, are in a constant state of flux, the flux which Engels describes as the overcoming of contradictions, the negation of negations.8 The three main “laws” of dialectics, namely, the law of transformation of quantity into quality, the law of interpenetration of opposites and the law of the negation of negation has been explained by Engels in his Dialectics of Nature (written 1872-86; first published in 1925).9 According to Engels: The world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things but as a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable, no less than their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away.10 Finally, according to dialectical materialism the manifold processes taking place in the universe are in “essential relation and interconnection, so that they cannot be understood each separately all by itself but only in their relation and interconnections”.11 Thus, dialectical materialism is materialist in theory and dialectical in its method.

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Historical Materialism As mentioned earlier, the Marxian view of human society is known as “historical materialism”. Marx has given a brief presentation of historical materialism in his preface to his Critique of Political Economy (1859). Marx and Engels had, however, already formulated it in their The German Ideology, written in 1845-46 but not published until 1932. Marx himself gave a brief account of historical materialism or the “materialist conception of history” in his Poverty of Philosophy (1847). A vigorous sketch of this view is found in the Communist Manifesto (1848), authored jointly by Marx and Engels. Marx’s chief work Capital (the first volume of which was published by Marx in 1867 and the other two by Engels after Marx’s death) is an application of the historical materialist view to the capitalist form of society. The word “historical materialism” has been used by Engels in his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific “to designate that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another”.12 According to historical materialism or “materialist conception of history”, in order to understand society, it is necessary to distinguish between economic base of social order from the legal, political and cultural superstructure, which rests on it. Karl Marx has formulated the doctrine in the preface to the Critique of Political Economy

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in following words: In the social production of their means of existence men enter into definite, necessary relations which are independent of their will, productive relationships which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The aggregate of these productive relationships constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a juridicial and political superstructure arises, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of the material means of existence conditions the whole process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, it is their social existence that determines their consciousness. Further, At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing productive relationships, or, what is but a legal expression for these, with the property relationships within which they have moved before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relationships are transformed into their fetters. Then an epoch of social revolution opens. With the change in the economic foundation the whole vast superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.13

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Doctrine of Class Struggle: The Marxian doctrine of class struggle is a part of its interpretation of history, or, in other words, historical materialism. From Marxian point of view, a class is a social group whose members share the same relationship to the means of production. Thus, during the feudal epoch, there are two main classes distinguished by their relationship to land, the major means of production: the feudal landowner who own the land, and the landless serfs who work on land. Similarly, in the capitalist era, there are two main classes, the bourgeoisie or capitalist class which owns the means of production and the proletariat whose member sell their labor power to the capitalist for wages. According to Marxism, any society develops through four main epochs: primitive communism, slavery or ancient society, feudal society and capitalism. Marx further believed that class struggle was the driving force of social change. In the famous words of The Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”. According to Marx, the basic “contradictions” contained in the capitalist economic systems would lead to its eventual destruction. The proletariat would overthrow the bourgeoisie and abolish private property. Property would be communally owned and since all members would now share the same relationship to the means of production, a classless society would result. This, stage of development is called “socialism”. Finally, because, according to Marxism, state is an instrument of class-rule − oppression of one class by another − with the abolition of class, the coercive power of state will no longer be needed and state itself will disappear.

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Roy’s Materialism and Marxian Materialism Marxian materialism, as we have seen earlier may further be analyzed into (a) dialectical materialism and (b) historical materialism. Out of these two, historical materialism is clearly rejected by Roy in his Twenty-Two Theses. However, in addition to this, Roy also had reservations on linking materialism with Hegelian dialectics and, accordingly, he tries to delink dialectics from materialism.

Delinking of Dialectics and Materialism According to Roy, there is “no necessary connection between dialectics and Materialism”. Marx “arbitrarily hitched the Hegelian ‘fever fantasy’ on to Materialism.”14 Roy points out that the orthodox exponents of Marxian materialism take great pains to differentiate it from the “mechanical materialism” of the eighteenth century. This practice, in Roy’s view, betrays a remarkable lack of historical sense. Marx, according to Roy, learned not only from Epicurus but also from other materialist philosophers. Holbach’s System of Nature, says Roy, “still remains the fundamental treatise of materialism”, and the “relation between Diderot and Marx is closer than that between Marx and Hegel”.15 In Roy’s view, Marx, misguided by his Hegelian schooling disowned the heritage of eighteenth century mechanical materialism and he was carried away by the essentially idealistic concept of dialectics. To quote Roy, “The Hegelian heritage, indeed, is the weak spot of Marxism. The simplicity and scientific soundness of material-

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ism are marred by making its validity conditional upon dialectics”16 [emphasis mine]. “Marx loaded his otherwise self-contained materialism with Hegelian ballast”, continues Roy, “because in his earlier days his epistemology was unsound”. “The ideal is nothing other than the material, when it has been transferred and transplanted inside the human head”. This “naïve theory of perception”, says Roy, “could not be maintained except with the help of the mysticism of Hegelian dialectics”. According to Roy, “It is not true that Marx put Hegelian logic on its head. On the contrary, he simply took it over, and called his philosophy dialectical materialism.”17 “Later on”, says Roy “Marx corrected his epistemology. Thereafter his philosophy could be freed from the handicap of Hegelian mysticism, called dialectics. But that did not happen because the earlier epistemological error of Marx somehow persisted in his philosophy”.18 The supreme emphasis laid on dialectics in the Marxist theoretical system has been, according to Roy, “the source of endless confusion”. All Marxist theoreticians, says Roy, “talk tirelessly and tiresomely of dialectics and dialectical laws without themselves having any clear idea of what they talk about. The result has been like the blind leading the blind − into the ditch”.19 Eduard Bernstein, says Roy, was the first Marxist to point out that the errors of Marx and Engels were “due to the disastrous influence of dialectics”. The basic error in the philosophical thinking of the founders of dialectical materialism, according to Roy, was “to confound logic with ontology”. In words of Roy, In the Marxist system, dialectic is the fundamen-

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tal law of thought, and it is also a description of the processes of nature, biological as well as inanimate. The subject matter of a branch of metaphysical enquiry is confounded with the instrument for conducting that enquiry. In Marxist philosophy logic as well as ontology bear the identical label of dialectic. Confusion, therefore, is inevitable.20 The only serious attempt to explain Marxian dialectics in terms of rational philosophical language was made, according to Roy, by Plekhanov. He tried to meet the criticism, not only of the “revisionist” Bernstein, but also of authoritative logicians like Ueberweg and Trendelenburg. As regard the latter two, Plekanov’s contention was that their arguments were valid for the “identical dialectics” of Hegel, but had no relevancy for the Marxist brand. The contention, says Roy, was pointless unless it could be proved that Marxian dialectic was really different from the Hegelian “fever fantasy”; and Plekhanov could not do that. In one short essay, Plekhanov defined dialectics as “the logic of contradiction” and also “the logic of movement”. Thus he took, in words of Roy, “the absurd position of identifying contradiction with movement, and unwittingly threw away his entire case in defense of dialectical Materialism as materialist dialectics”.21 Marxian casuists, according to Roy, “came to grief because none of them ever knew what exactly they were defending − a system of logic or of metaphysics”.22 However, since there is, in Roy’s view, no necessary connection between dialectics and materialism, the absurdities of Marxian dialectics, according to Roy, do not affect

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the validity of materialist philosophy. Therefore, Roy categorically asserts: Materialism, pure and simple, stands on its own legs, progressively reinforced by science, because it is the only philosophy possible [emphasis mine].23

Rejection of Historical Materialism Roy rejects “historical materialism” or the economic interpretation of history, and presents a humanist interpretation of history in the fourth, fifth and sixth theses of his Twenty-Two Theses. Historical determinism, according to Roy does not exclude freedom of the will. In fact, human will, in Roy’s view, is the most powerful determining factor in history. In Roy’s words, “History is a determined process; but there are more than one causative factors. Human will is one of them, and it cannot always be referred directly to any economic incentive [emphasis mine]. Roy not only regards human will as an important determining factor in history, but also rejects the Marxian doctrine which treats ideas as mere superstructure erected on the economic infrastructure. As he says in his sixth thesis, the dynamics of ideas runs parallel to the process of social evolution, the two influencing each other mutually. However, in no particular point of the process of integral human evolution, can a direct causal relation be established between historical events and the movement of ideas. (‘Idea’ is here used in the common philosophical sense of ideology or system of ideas). Cultural patterns and ethical values are not mere ideological superstructures

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of established economic relations. They are also historically determined − by the logic of the history of ideas. In Beyond Communism, too, Roy categorically rejects the view that ethical values, cultural patterns, movement of ideas, are mere superstructures raised to justify established economic relations. Roy points out that his own materialism “differentiates itself from Marxist materialist determinism by recognizing the autonomy of the mental world, in the context of physical nature.”24 Elaborating on his rejection of the economic interpretation of history in his New Humanism − A Manifesto, Roy says: The economic interpretation of history has brought Marxism to grief. A philosophy of history, which ignores other factors of human life than the forces of production, particularly the dynamics of ideas, and disregards moral problems, cannot be a reliable guide for constructive social action. Marxist historicism has been put to test and found wanting. A new, more comprehensive, philosophy of history is the crying need of the day …25 Roy expresses his dissatisfaction with Marxian economic determinism is the following words in his Reason, Romanticism and Revolution: Marxist economic determinism is no less antithetical to the idea of social revolution than the religious teleological view of nature, life and society.26

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In trying to combine rationalism, that is, the view that history is a determined process, with the romantic view of life, which declares the freedom of will, Marxist historiology, according to Roy, contradicts itself. The doctrine of Marx that “man is the maker of the social world” contradicts materialist philosophy, unless the mechanistic view of evolution is clearly differentiated from teleology; and unless romanticism is reconciled with reason, and freedom of will is fitted into the scheme of determined evolutionary process. That can be done, in words of Roy, “only by recognizing the creative role of man, not as a mere cog in the wheel of mechanistic process, determined by the development of the means of production, but as a sovereign force, a thinking being who creates the means of production.”27 The doctrine that social revolution is determined by the development of the means of production, points out Roy, begs the question: who created the first means of production and how? According to Roy, “Man is greater than any means of production, which are his creation”.28 As we have seen in the previous chapter, Roy in his revised version of materialism allows for the freedom of will and the autonomy of the mental world. According to Roy, man possesses free will and can choose. Human will, says Roy, cannot be directly related to the laws of physical universe. Similarly, Roy is also of the view that “once they are formed, ideas exist by themselves, governed by their own laws.” According to Roy, materialism needs to be restated to “recognize explicitly the decisive importance of the dynamics of ideas in all the processes of human evolution…”29 Both these features of Roy’s materialism have an im-

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portant bearing on his philosophy of history, and his consequent rejection of historical materialism. In fact, Roy is at pains to emphasize that there is no logical connection between materialism and the so-called “historical materialism”. The economic interpretation of history, according to Roy, is deduced from a wrong interpretation of materialism. It implies dualism, whereas materialism is a monistic philosophy. Roy asserts: Materialism is the only philosophy possible; economic determinism is a method of interpreting history. There are other methods [emphasis mine].30 Incidentally, Bertrand Russell, too, in his The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism makes the point that there is no essential connection between philosophical materialism and historical materialism. According to Russell, “philosophical materialism does not prove that economic causes are fundamental in politics. The view of Buckle, for example, according to which climate is one of the decisive factors, is equally compatible with materialism. So is the Freudian view, which traces everything to sex. There are innumerable ways of viewing history which are materialistic in the philosophic sense without being economic or falling within the Marxian formula. Thus the ‘materialistic conception of history’ may be false even if materialism in the philosophic sense be true”31 [emphasis mine].

Emphasis on Ethics We have seen in the previous chapter that Roy gave a very important place to ethics in his materialism. We have

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also noted that Roy is not unique among materialists in emphasizing the importance of ethics in his philosophy. The same is true of Epicurus, among ancient materialists, and Holbach, among modern materialists. Nevertheless, this, certainly, is an important difference between Roy’s materialism and Marxian materialism, which seems to give no place at all to ethics in its scheme of things. Marx and Engels were primarily interested in social change, as is evident from the oft-quoted statement of Marx: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”.32 In their anxiety to make their theory of social change “scientific”, Marx and Engels appear to have totally neglected the ethical aspect of social change. Not only they neglected the ethical aspect of social change, but, in fact, they had nothing but contempt for such an approach, which they condemned as “utopian”. M. N. Roy, on the other hand, is highly critical of such insensitive attitude towards problems of ethics. As he says in Reason, Romanticism and Revolution: An unbiased study of the pre-Marxian history of socialist thought shows that some of the charges against the Utopians were simply unfounded. As regards the charge of appealing to morality, they were guilty, but only from the Marxist point of view. For rejecting that appeal, Marxism was doomed to betray its professed ideas and ideals. The contention that "from the scientific point of view, this appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch farther", was based upon a false notion of science.33

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According to Roy, Marx, under the influence of Hegelian dialectics, rejected eighteenth century materialism as mechanical, and, at the same time, “disowned the humanist tradition of the earlier advocates of social justice, ridiculing them as Utopians.”34 In Roy’s view Feuerbach could “throw off Hegelian influence more completely than Marx”, and Marx made a mistake by beginning the formulation of his dialectical materialism with a criticism of Feuerbach. “That wrong start”, says Roy, “put an indelible stamp on the entire Marxist system”.35 Marxian materialism is, according to Roy, defective in so far it disowns Feuerbach’s humanism. “The defect”, says Roy, “divorces materialism from ethics, and consequently opens up the possibility of its degenerating into a carnal pragmatic view of life.”36 Roy himself believed that the problems confronting the modern world leads to the conclusion that “the crisis of our time calls for a complete reorientation of social philosophy and political theories, so as to recognize the supreme importance of moral values in public life.”37 Further, according to Roy, the inspiration for a new philosophy of revolution must be drawn from the traditions of humanism and moral radicalism. Roy, as we have seen earlier, finds fault with the Marxian interpretation of history for disregarding moral problems and treating ethical values as merely superstructures raised to justify established economic relations. To sum up, Roy’s materialism is different from Marxian materialism in three important ways. Firstly, Roy considers the Hegelian heritage a weak spot of Marxism. Making its validity conditional upon dialectics mars the simplicity and scientific soundness of materialism. Accord-

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ing to Roy, on the other hand, materialism, pure and simple, can stand on its own legs, and, therefore, he tries to delink dialectics from materialism. The validity of materialism, maintains Roy, is in no way conditional on dialectics, as there is no logical connection between the two. Secondly, Roy rejects historical materialism and advocates a humanist interpretation of history in which he gives an important place to human will as determining factor in history and recognizes the autonomy of the mental world. According to Roy, human will cannot be directly related to the laws of physical universe. Ideas, too, have an objective existence and their own laws govern them. The economic interpretation of history is in Roy’s view, deduced from a wrong interpretation of materialism. Thirdly, Roy’s materialism is sharply different from Marxian materialism in so far it recognizes the importance of ethics and gives a prominent place to it. According to Roy, Marxian materialism wrongly disowns the humanist tradition and thereby divorces materialism from ethics. The contention that “from the scientific point of view, this appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch farther” was based, according to Roy, upon a false notion of science. Roy, before he formulated and expounded his own philosophy of new humanism, was an orthodox Marxist. In fact, Roy’s revision of materialism, which we have discussed in detail in the previous chapter, was carried on in the context of Marxism. This fact comes out very clearly in the issues of The Marxian Way, where Roy repeatedly emphasizes the need to revise Marxian materialism. For instance, in the JulySeptember, 1945, issue of The Marxian Way, Roy says:

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Human knowledge has advanced considerably since the days of Marx. The startling discoveries of modern physics appear to have knocked off the foundation of materialist philosophy. Some hypotheses of nineteenth century physics have, indeed, proved to be fallacious, and new facts have been discovered. The Marxist materialism must be accordingly revised, if its claim to be the only scientific philosophy is to be vindicated.38 The convincing way out of the situation, according to Roy, is to show that the philosophical consequences of the post Marxian scientific research can be fitted into the materialist view of nature and life. “The fallacies of Newtonian natural philosophy should be admitted; Materialism should be freed from those fallacies and restated in terms which would harmonize with the latest scientific knowledge …”39 Roy’s “physical realism”, as we have seen, is precisely such a restatement of traditional materialism. Thus, Roy’s revision of traditional materialism is also applicable to Marxian materialism to the extent Marxian materialism resembles traditional materialism.

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Notes 1

Neil McInnes, “Marx, Karl” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 172. 2 John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd., 1978), p. 44. 3 Fredrick Engels, “Prefaces to the three editions of AntiDuhring” in On Dialectical Materialism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 58. 4 H. B. Acton, “Dialectical Materialism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 2, p. 389. 5 Ibid. 6 John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, p. 46. 7 Karl Marx, “Afterword to the Second German Edition of the first Volume of Capital” in On Dialectical Materialism, 56-57. 8 John Passmore, Op. Cit., p. 46. 9 In his book Dialectical Materialism, Maurice Cornforth has explained the three main laws of dialectics, namely, the law of transformation of quantity into quality; the law of interpenetration of opposites and the law of negation are. The first law, according to Cornforth, can be illustrated by the fact that if water is being heated, it does not go on getting hotter and hotter indefinitely, at a certain critical temperature, it begins to turn into steam undergoing a qualitative change from liquid to gas. According to “the law of unity and struggle of opposites,” the internal content of the transformation of quantitative into qualitative change consists in the struggle of opposites − opposite tendencies, opposite forces − within the things and process concerned. In order to understand how and why transition takes place from an old qualitative state to a new qualitative state. We have to understand the contradictions inherent in each thing and process we are considering, and how a “struggle” of opposite tendencies arises on the basis of these contradictions. For example, the “contradic-

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tion” between socialized production and capitalist appropriation is the basic contradiction of capitalism. It is because of this contradiction that the struggle between the classes develops. Moreover, it is from the struggle of opposite tendencies arising because of the contradiction inherent in the social system, that social transformation, the leap to a qualitatively new stage of social development, takes place. According to “the law of negation of negation”, in the course of development, because of double negation, a later stage can repeat an earlier stage, but repeat it on a higher level of development.[Maurice Cornforth, Dialectical Materialism (Calcutta: National Book Agency Private Ltd., 1984), pp.7880] 10 Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, Chapter IV, quoted by Maurice Cornforth in Dialectical Materialism, p. 35. 11 Maurice Cornforth, Dialectical Materialism, p. 44. 12 F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), p. 15. 13 William Ebenstein, Modern Political Thought (New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Company, 1970), p. 411. 14 M. N. Roy, “Editorial Notes”, The Marxian Way, Vol. II, No. 4, 1946-47, p. 364. 15 M. N. Roy, “Editorial Notes”, The Marxian Way, Vol. I, No. 3, 1946, p. 274. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., pp. 274-275. 18 Ibid., p. 276. 19 M. N. Roy, “Editorial Notes”, The Marxian Way, Vol. II, No. 4, p. 356. 20 Ibid., pp. 356-57. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 M.N.Roy, “Editorial Notes”, The Marxian Way, Vol. I, No. 3, 1945, p.276. 24 M.N. Roy, Beyond Communism, p. 43. 25 M. N. Roy, New Humanism – A Manifesto, p. 16.

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26

M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 478. Ibid., p.410. 28 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism, p. 66. 29 M.N.Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 9. 30 M. N. Roy, “Philosophy of History”, The Marxian Way, Vol.II, No. 3, 1947, p. 255. 31 Bertrand Russell, The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1975), p. 59. 32 Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach” in On Dialectical Materialism, p. 32. 33 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 405. 34 Ibid.,p. 418. 35 Ibid., p. 388. 36 M.N.Roy, “Philosophy of History”, The Marxian Way, Vol. II, No. 3, p. 244. 37 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 451. 38 M. N. Roy, “Editorial”, The Marxian Way, Vol. I, No. 1, , 1945, p. 80. 39 M. N. Roy, “Editorial Notes”, The Marxian Way, Vol. II, No. 1, 1946, p. 80. Also see M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution, p. 416. 27

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V. Materialism or Physical Realism? In this book, I have been mainly interested in clarifying the nature of Roy’s materialism, and differentiating it from traditional materialism in general and Marxian materialism in particular. I have also been interested in clarifying the nature of Roy’s new humanism, and in investigating the relationship between new humanism and materialism. In this concluding chapter, I will make some critical observations on Roy’s philosophy. In doing so, I will concentrate on answering two questions: (a) How far the use of the term “materialism” to designate Roy’s philosophy appropriate? and (b) Is there, in fact, any logical connection between new humanism and materialism?

“Materialism” or “Physical Realism”? How far is the use of term “materialism” for designating Roy’s philosophy appropriate? Could it be substituted with some other more suitable term such as “physical realism” or “monistic naturalism”? Interestingly, Roy himself has discussed this question in his writings. In Beyond Communism, for instance, Roy strongly asserts: “I am firmly convinced that Materialism is the only philosophy possible. That conviction breathes through all my other works, philosophical and scientific, not directly related to political theories.”1 However, in Beyond Communism itself Roy raises

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the question of the appropriateness of the term “materialism” for designating his philosophy. To quote Roy: Materialism has been so badly misinterpreted and vulgarized by its protagonists that, as soon as you say that you are a materialist, you are taken for a man without morals, without principles, a Jesuit and a cut-throat. From that point of view, the apprehension regarding the declaration of our adhesion to Materialism is quite well founded, and if we modify the term, the apprehended reaction may be obviated. As regards the substitution of the term Materialism by another, I have been thinking about it for many years. Strictly speaking, the term has lost its meaning. It makes a wrong impression. But it has not been possible to find a more appropriate term. Terms like Monistic Naturalism or physical Realism may be considered. But then we shall have to write an essay to make people understand. In the beginning, it may create more confusion. The communists will say we are dishonest; that we reject Materialism, but do not dare to say so. Others will think that we still remain materialists, but have not the courage to say so, and are only trying to insinuate ourselves into their favor [emphasis mine].2 Roy has obviously made the above remarks in a political context. But this important question of terminology has also been discussed by Roy in his more philosophical and scholarly works, written, in Roy’s words, “without being haunted by disgruntled faces of party members”, or,

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one may add, the fear of unfair and prejudiced criticism by one’s political opponents. In the second revised edition of Materialism, published in February 1951, for instance, Roy says, “Although, in light of the latest discoveries of atomic physics, the term matter can no longer be used in the classical sense, it cannot be abandoned until a more appropriate new term is coined. The sense, however, remains unchanged: it is physical reality or the substance.”3 In the same book, Roy says, at another place, “The substratum of the Universe is not matter as traditionally conceived; but it is physical as against mental or spiritual. It is a measurable entity. Therefore, to obviate prejudiced criticism, the philosophy hitherto called Materialism may be renamed Physical Realism” 4 [emphasis mine]. Similarly, in the eighth chapter of Materialism entitled “Materialism and Twentieth Century Physics”, Roy again says, “There is no question about the fundamental fact that physics does describe processes in something which actually exists − outside the mind of the physicist. It is a measurable magnitude; therefore, it is physical. Materialist philosophy, with the more appropriate name Physical Realism, is corroborated by the latest scientific knowledge”5 [emphasis mine]. Roy refers to this question of terminology in Science and Philosophy, too, where he says, “Call this philosophical generalization of the various branches of scientific knowledge, objectivism, naturalism or realism, or by any other name you prefer to Materialism. That would make no essential difference.”6 However, Roy’s preference for “physical realism” which is evident in the revised version of Materialism is even more apparent in Reason, Romanticism and

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Revolution. In Reason, Romanticism and Revolution Roy categorically declares: …All really scientific objections to the term Materialism should be obviated if the new philosophy is called “Physical realism”. Even so revised and renamed to avoid confusion, Materialism is vindicated as the only philosophy possible…7 A close analysis of preceding references from Roy brings us to the following conclusions: 1. Roy was aware of the popular prejudices against the word “materialism”, particularly regarding the ethical sense of the term, and realized the need to avoid it in the context of his own philosophy in which ethics has been given an important place. 2. He also realized the inappropriateness of the term “materialism” from a purely scientific point of view in light of the radical change in the conception of “matter”. 3. Accordingly, he felt the need to substitute the term “materialism” with some other more appropriate term. 4. Initially, as the passage quoted from Beyond Communism shows, Roy was hesitant (a) because he was in doubt about the appropriate substitute term; (b) because he thought that it would require “an essay” to explain the meaning of the new term; and (c) because he feared that this may create more confusion in the beginning owing to the unfair attacks from his political opponents. (This third consideration is irrelevant from a long-term philosophical point of view). 5. To begin with, Roy toyed with several substitute terms

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such as “physical realism”, “monistic naturalism” and “objectivism”. 6. Finally, as the references from Materialism and Reason, Romanticism and Revolution indicate, he settled down for the term “physical realism”, because he thought that it was a more appropriate term, and also because he believed that it would prevent prejudiced criticism as well as all really scientific objections to his philosophy. To put all this in the technical terminology of contemporary philosophy, Roy was aware of the unfavorable emotive meaning of the word “materialism”, particularly in the popular language, and was also aware of the inappropriateness of the cognitive or literal meaning of the term from a scientific point of view in light of the radical change in the concept of “matter” in contemporary science.8 Initially, he hesitated in introducing a new term because, apart from other reasons, he believed that, to begin with, the new term, unlike the term “materialism”, will not have a definite cognitive or literal meaning in the minds of most of the readers or listeners and, as a result, the meaning will have to be explained to them. Finally, he settled down for the term “physical realism” because it is more appropriate from “cognitive” point of view, and also because the term, being “emotively neutral” (non-emotive), does not evoke any unfavorable attitude or emotions in others. Let us examine whether Roy was justified in making this change or not. First, from the point of view of cognitive meaning, as we have seen earlier, Roy’s “materialism” is different from traditional materialism as well as Marxian materialism in many important ways. Even if

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Roy’s philosophy is to be treated as a variety of materialism, it clearly differs from the paradigm of mechanical materialism, and is closer to what J. J. C. Smart, a contemporary materialist, refers to as “physicalistic materialism”. To quote Smart: In modern physics (if interpreted realistically), however, matter is conceived as made up of such things as electrons, protons, and mesons, which are very unlike the hard, massy, stone like particles of mechanical Materialism. In it the distinction between matter and energy has also broken down. It is therefore natural to extend the word Materialist beyond the above paradigm case (of mechanical Materialism) to cover anyone who bases his theory on whatever it is that physics asserts ultimately to exist. This sort may be called physicalistic Materialism [emphasis mine].9 In the final analysis, what Roy asserts in his “materialism” is (1) that the world exists objectively outside our minds (realism), and (2) that it is physical, or, in other words, it can be measured (physicalism). Therefore, there is not doubt that the term “physical realism” is more appropriate for designating his philosophy or, to be more exact, his metaphysics (theory of reality). As for the problem of making clear the cognitive meaning of the term “physical realism”, it presents no problem from a technical point of view, because all serious students of philosophy know the meaning of “realism” if not “physicalism”. Even from a popular point of view, the problem is not an insurmountable one, because it certainly would not require “an essay” to explain the meaning of

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the term. On the contrary, the above-mentioned two sentences would suffice. In any case, the trouble is worth taking, particularly because Roy’s philosophy, in spite of being, broadly speaking, in the tradition of materialism, is different from traditional and Marxian materialism in some important ways. Labeling of Roy’s theory of reality as “materialism”, for instance, may lead even students of philosophy to suppose (1) that like traditional “mechanical” materialists, Roy considers “matter” to be a hard and massy substance, or (2) that Roy subscribes to a rigid and “hard” variety of materialistic determinism which rules out contingency, probability and free will, or (3) that Roy believes in “extreme” form of materialism which does not recognize the objectivity of ideas or the autonomy of the mental world. Again, in the Marxian context, labeling of Roy’s metaphysics as “materialism” may lead the unwary to assume (1) that Roy adheres to dialectic materialism, or (2) that Roy accepts “historical materialism”, or (3) that he does not give an important place to ethics in his philosophy. As we have seen, the inference would be wrong in each of the above-mentioned case. Even from the point of view of the emotive impact of the term “materialism”, the change made by Roy seems to be justified, because, though the “emotive meaning” of a term may vary from person to person, there is no denying the fact that the word “materialism” has acquired, by and large, an unfavorable “emotive meaning” in the popular language, particularly in the ethical context. Much can be said in defense of materialism on this point, but the existence of an unfavorable attitude towards materialism is a fact, which cannot be denied. Therefore, it is better, in the interest of clarity and objectivity, to substitute the term

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“materialism” with an emotively neutral term. The emotive language has, no doubt, its many uses and abuses, but, as pointed out by Irving M. Copi, “… when we are trying to ‘get at the facts’, to follow an argument, or to learn the truth about something, anything which distracts us from that goal tends to frustrate us … It follows that when we are attempting to reason about facts in a cool and objective fashion, referring to them in strongly emotive language is a hindrance rather than a help”10 [emphasis mine]. Therefore, Copi rightly recommends in his Introduction to Logic: If our purpose is to communicate information, and if we wish to avoid being misunderstood, we shall find that language most useful which has the least emotive impact. If our interest is scientific, we shall do well to avoid emotional language and to cultivate as emotively neutral a set of terms as we can.11 The term “physical realism”, unlike the term “materialism”, is certainly an emotively neutral term. Thus, to conclude, Roy was fully justified in making the transition from “materialism” to “physical realism”, because labeling of his philosophy as “materialism” is not only likely to convey a wrong impression to others regarding his philosophy from a cognitive point of view, but also unnecessarily prejudice many against his philosophy, and thus become an obstacle to an unbiased and objective evaluation of his philosophy. As far as the alternative term “monistic naturalism”, a term preferred by eminent radical humanist V. M.

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Tarkunde,12 is concerned, it certainly has the advantage of bringing out the important monistic aspect of Roy’s metaphysics, but the accompanying term “naturalism” is a bit vague from ontological point of view, and it does not bring out the essence of Roy’s theory of reality as clearly as the term “physical realism” does. Arthur C. Danto, for instance, has this to say about “naturalism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Naturalism, in recent usage, is a species of philosophical monism, according to which whatever exists or happens is natural in the sense of being susceptible to explanation through methods which, although paradigmatically exemplified in the natural sciences, are continuous from domain to domain of objects and events. Hence, naturalism is polemically defined as repudiating the view that there exists or could exist any entities or events which lie, in principle, beyond the scope of scientific explanation. In all other respects naturalism is ontologically neutral in that it does not prescribe what specific kinds of entities there must be in the universe or how many distinct kinds of events we must suppose to take place... There is thus room within the naturalistic movement for any variety of otherwise rival ontologies, which explains the philosophical heterogeneity of the group of philosophers who identify themselves as naturalists: it is a methodological rather than an ontological monism to which they indifferently subscribe, a monism leaving them free to be dualists, ideal-

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ists, materialists, atheists, or nonatheists as the case may be [emphasis mine].13 So, while Roy can certainly be classified, broadly speaking, as a “naturalist”, and his philosophy can be designated as “monistic naturalism” as well, his metaphysical or ontological view can more exactly be designated as “physical realism”. Indeed, if one is very keen to emphasize the monistic aspect of Roy’s philosophy, one may refer to it as “monistic physical realism”.

Materialism and New Humanism According to Roy, the “Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy” are “deduced from materialist philosophy” [emphasis mine]. In Roy’s view new humanism, which is presented in the Twenty-Two Theses as social and political philosophy is deducible from a general philosophy of nature, which Roy calls, “materialism” in Beyond Communism and “physical realism” is Reason, Romanticism and Revolution. Is there, in fact, any logical connection, of the kind, which Roy believed to exist, between new humanism and “materialism” or “physical realism”? Are the “Twenty-Two Theses on Radical Democracy”, in fact, deduced from “materialist” philosophy? Before we try to answer this question, let us, first, clarify the meaning or the nature of a logical deduction. As pointed out by Irving M. Copi in his Symbolic Logic: It is customary to distinguish between deductive

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and inductive arguments. All arguments involve the claim that their premises provide some grounds for the truth of their conclusions, but only a deductive argument involves the claim that its premises provide absolutely conclusive grounds. The technical terms ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ are used in place of ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ in characterizing deductive arguments. A deductive argument is valid when its premises and conclusions are so related that it is absolutely impossible for the premises to be true unless the conclusion is true also.14 Similarly, Cohen and Nagel tell us in their An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method: We infer one proposition from another validly only if there is an objective relation of implication between the first proposition and second …” and “the test as to whether there is a logical implication between one proposition and another is the impossibility of the former being true and the latter being false.15 To put it symbolically, in order that proposition q may be deduced, or formally inferred from p, there must be between p and q a relation such that q is a consequence of p. This relation is usually called “implication”. Consider, for example, the following argument: All logicians are philosophers. Aristotle is a logician. Therefore, Aristotle is a philosopher.

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This argument is valid because if its premises were true, its conclusion would have to be true also. Therefore, the conclusion, “Aristotle is a philosopher” is deduced validly jointly from the two propositions “All logicians are philosophers” and “Aristotle is a logician”. Consider another argument: All logicians are philosophers. Therefore, some philosophers are logicians. This, again, is a valid argument. The conclusion “Some philosophers are Logicians” is validly deduced from the proposition “All logicians are philosophers” because it is absolutely impossible for “All logicians are philosophers” to be true and “Some philosophers are logicians” to be false. Let us now concentrate on new humanism as expressed in the Twenty-Two Theses, and try to find out whether they can be said to have been deduced validly from Roy’s “materialism” or “physical realism”. In the first six theses, as noted earlier, Roy presents the basic tenets of new humanism, in theses seven to thirteen he points out the inadequacies of communism and formal parliamentary democracy, whereas in theses fourteen to twenty-two he outlines a picture of radical democracy and indicates the way for achieving that ideal. In our attempt to find out whether new humanism is validly deduced from “materialism” or “physical realism”, let us, first, concentrate on the basic tenets of new humanism as expressed in the first six theses. Out of the first six theses, the first three theses are even more important, and,

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as we have seen earlier, in these theses Roy regards quest for freedom and search for truth as the basic urge of human progress and traces them to the biological struggle for existence. Apart from this, the central idea of the first three theses of Roy is individualism: that the individual is prior to society, and only individuals can enjoy that freedom. Now, is it possible to validly deduce any of these conclusions from Roy’s metaphysical views? For example, can we validly deduce the proposition, (1) “Collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals” from the proposition (2) “The external world exists objectively” or the proposition (3) “The reality is physical”, or from both of them jointly? It is obvious that we cannot. Because it is quite possible for the proposition (2) or/and proposition (3) to be true, and the proposition (1) to be false. Whereas for the relation of logical implication to exist between propositions (2) or/and (3) and proposition (1); and for proposition (1) to be deducible validly from propositions (2) or/ and (3), it should be absolutely impossible for (2) or/and (3) to be true unless (1) is true also, or, in other words, it should be impossible for (2) or/and (3) to be true and (1) to be false. That this is not case will become obvious if we consider the following arguments: A.

B.

The external world exists objectively. Therefore, collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals. The reality is physical. Therefore, collectivity presupposes the

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existence of individuals. C.

The external world exists objectively. The reality is physical. Therefore, collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals.

In the above arguments if we replace “Collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals” (Theses one) with the proposition, “Quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress” (Theses two), or the proposition “The position of the individual is the measure of the progressive and liberating significance of any collective effort or social organization” (Thesis three), the results will be similar. In each case, the argument will be invalid. It is important to keep in mind, however, that when we assert that in the above-mentioned arguments the conclusion cannot be deduced validly from the premis or the premises, we do not assert that the propositions constituting these arguments are false. (May be they are true or may be they are false). We only assert that the relation of logical implication does not exist between the premises and the conclusion. In other words, we assert that it is quite possible for the propositions (2) “The external world exists objectively” or/and the proposition (3) “The reality is physical” to be true and the proposition (1) “Collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals" to be false. It is quite possible, on the other hand, that in the abovementioned arguments both the premises and the conclusion are true. (In fact, in this particular case I believe the conclusion to be true). However, the truth of the conclusion is not proved by the premises. Its truth will have to be

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proved independently: it requires independent support. If a person asserts the truth of the premises, he is not logically bound to support the truth of the conclusion, and vice versa. The truth and falsity of the premises and the conclusion are logically independent of one another. Let us now turn our attention to theses four, five and six in which Roy presents a humanist interpretation of history. Is the humanist interpretation of history deduced validly from “physical realism”? While discussing the logical relationship between philosophical materialism and “historical materialism” in the fourth chapter, we referred to Bertrand Russell’s observation that “philosophic materialism does not prove that economic causes are fundamental in politics”. Russell has, in fact, drawn our attention to the fact that Buckle’s view, according to which climate is one of the decisive factors, and the Freudian view, which traces everything to sex, are equally compatible with materialism. In Russell’s words: There are innumerable ways of viewing history which are materialistic in the philosophic sense without being economic or falling within the Marxian formula. Thus the ‘materialistic conception of history’ may be false even if materialism in the philosophic sense should be true.16 “On the other hand”, continues Russell, “economic causes might be at the bottom of all political events even if philosophic materialism were false. Economic causes operate through men’s desire for possessions, and would be supreme, if this desire were supreme, even if desire could not, from a philosophic point of view, be explained in materialistic terms”.

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“There is, therefore”, concludes Russell, “no logical connection either way between philosophic materialism and what is called the ‘materialistic conception of history’.” [emphasis mine] What Russell says about the logical relationship between philosophical materialism and “materialistic conception of history” is equally true, I think, about the logical relationship between “physical realism” and the “humanist interpretation of history”. We certainly cannot deduce validly the proposition, “Human will is the most powerful determining factor in history” (Theses four), or the proposition, “The dynamics of the ideas runs parallel to the process of social evolution, the two influencing each other mutually” (Theses six) from the proposition, “The external world exists objectively” or/and the proposition, “The reality is physical”; just as we cannot deduce validly the propositions “Collectivity presupposes the existence of individuals” or the proposition “Quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress” from them. On the other hand, it is pertinent to note that Roy’s humanist interpretation of history is logically compatible with his physical realism. In other words, they can be true together as no inconsistency is involved. Roy’s philosophy of history would have become incompatible with his physical realism, if he had, for example, invoked divine intervention of any kind in his philosophy of history, which he certainly does not. Similarly, Roy’s philosophy of history would have been inconsistent with his metaphysics had he been a “hard” materialist of a rigid variety denying human will, or an “extreme” materialist denying the autonomy of the mental world. What is true of the first six theses of Roy expressing

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the basic tenets of new humanism is equally true of theses seven to twenty-two, which are explicitly political, dealing with Roy’s criticism of communism and formal parliamentary democracy as well as with his ideal of radical or organized democracy. Consider for example, the following propositions: 1. The state is the political organization of the society. (Thesis nine) 2. Dictatorship tends to perpetuate itself. (Thesis eleven) 3. The alternative to parliamentary democracy is organized democracy. (Thesis fourteen) 4. The function of a revolutionary and liberating social philosophy is to lay emphasis on the basic fact that man is the maker of his world. (Thesis fifteen) It is obvious that none of them can be deduced validly from physical realism, though all of them are compatible with it. Roy’s doctrine of state, for instance, would have been in compatible with his physical realism if he had believed that the state is a manifestation of spiritual entity called God or of absolute idea. However, as it is, Roy’s new humanism is consistent with his revised and renamed version of “materialism” though certainly not deduced from it. It may be worthwhile to clarify once again that in saying that new humanism cannot be deduced from physical realism, I am not saying that physical realism is true and new humanism is false. I am only saying that it is possible that physical realism is true and new humanism is false. In fact, I have not entered into a critical evaluation of these philosophies in this book. The only question which I have tried to answer is

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whether new humanism can be validly deduced from physical realism, and my answer is categorical: no. On the other hand, I assert that physical realism and new humanism are logically compatible and consistent: both of them can be true together, but their truth (and falsity) is independent of one another. We need independent support for new humanism. We cannot prove the truth of new humanism by proving the truth of physical realism. As for as the logical relationship between physical realism and new humanism is concerned, my conclusions may be summarized as follows: 1. It is possible that physical realism is true, and new humanism is false. 2. It is possible that new humanism is true and physical realism if false. 3. It is possible that both of them are false, and 4. It is possible that both of them are true. That is to say, physical realism and new humanism are not contradictory or contrary to one another, but the relation of implication does not exist either way.

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Notes 1

M.N. Roy, Beyond Communism (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981), p. 28. 2 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 3 M. N. Roy, Materialism (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers Ltd., 1951), p. 5. 4 Ibid., p. 184. 5 Ibid., p. 232. 6 M. N. Roy, Science and Philosophy (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1984), p. 189. 7 M. N. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989), p. 493. 8 According to Irving M. Copi, “For the sentence to formulate a proposition, its words must have literal or cognitive meaning, referring to objects or events and their attributes or relations. When it expresses an attitude or feeling, however, some of its words may also have an emotional suggestiveness or impact. A word or phrase can have both a literal meaning and an emotional impact. It has become customary to speak of the latter as ‘emotive significance’ or ‘emotive meaning’.” [Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1982), p. 82.] 9 J. J. C. Smart, “Materialism” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 11, p. 611. 10 Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic, pp. 93-94. 11 Ibid., p. 95. 12 See, V. M. Tarkunde, Radical Humanism (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1983), p. 55. 13 Arthur C. Danto, “Naturalism” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 448. 14 Irving M. Copi, Symbolic Logic(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979), p. 3. 15 Cohen and Nagel, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (London: Allied Publishers, 1936), pp. 7-9.

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16

Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London: Unwin Books, 1975), pp. 59-60.

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Appendix Principles of Radical Democracy Twenty-Two Theses Thesis 1 Man is the archetype of society. Co-operative social relationships contribute to develop individual potentialities. But the development of the individual is the measure of social progress. Collectivity pre-supposes the existence of individuals. Except as the sum total of freedom and well-being, actually enjoyed by individuals, social liberation and progress are imaginary ideals, which are never attained. Well-being, if it is actual, is enjoyed by individuals. It is wrong to ascribe a collective ego to any form of human community (viz., nation, class, etc.), as that practice means sacrifice of the individual. Collective well-being is a function of the well-being of individuals. Thesis 2 Quest for freedom and search for truth constitute the basic urge of human progress. The quest for freedom is the continuation, on a higher level − of intelligence and emotion − of the biological struggle for existence. The search for truth is a corollary thereof. Increasing knowledge of nature enables man to be progressively free from the tyranny of natural phenomena, and physical and social environments. Truth is the content of knowledge. Thesis 3 The purpose of all rational human endeavor, individual as well as collective, is attainment of freedom, in ever in-

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creasing measure. Freedom is progressive disappearance of all restrictions on the unfolding of the potentialities of individuals, as human beings, and not as cogs in the wheels of a mechanized social organism. The position of the individual, therefore, is the measure of the progressive and liberating significance of any collective effort or social organization. The success of any collective endeavor is to be measured by the actual benefit for its constituent units. Thesis 4 Rising out of the background of the law-governed physical nature, the human being is essentially rational. Reason, being a biological property, it is not the antithesis of will. Intelligence and emotion can be reduced to a common biological denominator. Historical determinism, therefore, does not exclude freedom of the will. As a matter of fact, human will is the most powerful determining factor. Otherwise, there would be no room for revolutions in a rationally determined process of history. The rational and scientific concept of determinism, is not to be confused with the teleological or religious doctrine of predestination. Thesis 5 The economic interpretation of history is deduced from a wrong interpretation of Materialism. It implies dualism, where as Materialism is a monistic philosophy. History is a determined process; but there are more than one causative factors. Human will is one of them, and it cannot always be referred directly to any economic incentive. Thesis 6 Ideation is a physiological process resulting from the awareness of environments. But once they are formed, ideas exist by themselves, governed by their own laws.

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The dynamics of ideas runs parallel to the process of social evolution, the two influencing each other mutually. But in no particular point of the process of the integral human evolution, can a direct causal relation be established between historical events and the movements of ideas. (‘Idea’ is here used in the common philosophical sense of ideology or system of ideas). Cultural patterns and ethical values are not mere ideological super-structures of established economic relations. They are also historically determined − by the logic of the history of ideas. Thesis 7 For creating a new world of freedom, revolution must go beyond an economic reorganization of society. Freedom does not necessarily follow from the capture of political power in the name of the oppressed and exploited classes and abolition of private property in the means of production. Thesis 8 Communism or Socialism may conceivably be the means for the attainment of the goal of freedom. How far it can serve that purpose, must be judged by experience. A political system and an economic experiment which subordinate the man of flesh and blood to an imaginary collective ego, be it the nation or a class, cannot possibly be the suitable means for the attainment of the goal of freedom. On the one hand, it is absurd to argue that negation of freedom will lead to freedom; and, on the other hand, it is not freedom to sacrifice the individual at the altar of an imaginary collective ego. Any social philosophy or scheme of social reconstruction which does not recognize the sovereignty of the individual, and dismisses the ideal of freedom as an empty abstraction, can have no more than a

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very limited progressive and revolutionary significance. Thesis 9 The State being the political organization of society, its withering away under Communism is a utopia which has been exploded by experience. Planned economy on the basis of socialized industries presupposes a powerful political machinery. Democratic control of that machinery alone can guarantee freedom under the new order. Planning of production for use is possible on the basis of political democracy and individual freedom. Thesis 10 State ownership and planned economy do not by themselves end exploitation of labor; nor do they necessarily lead to an equal distribution of wealth. Economic democracy is no more possible in the absence of political democracy than the latter is in the absence of the former. Thesis 11 Dictatorship tends to perpetuate itself. Planned economy under political dictatorship disregards individual freedom on the pleas of efficiency, collective effort and social progress. Consequently, a higher form of democracy in the socialist society, as it is conceived at present, becomes an impossibility. Dictatorship defeats its professed end. Thesis 12 The defects of formal parliamentary democracy have also been exposed in experience. They result from the delegation of power. To make democracy effective, power must always remain vested in the people, and there must be ways and means for the people to wield the sovereign power effectively, not periodically, but from day to day.

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Atomized individual citizens are powerless for all practical purposes, and most of the time. They have no means to exercise their sovereignty and to wield a standing control of the State machinery. Thesis 13 Liberalism is falsified or parodied under formal parliamentary democracy. The doctrine of laissez faire only provides the legal sanction to the exploitation of man by man. The concept of economic man negativates the liberating doctrine of individualism. The economic man is bound to be a slave or a slave-holder. This vulgar concept must be replaced by the reality of an instinctively rational being who is moral because he is rational. Morality is an appeal to conscience, and conscience is the instinctive awareness of, and reaction to, environments. It is a mechanistic biological function on the level of consciousness. Therefore, it is rational. Thesis 14 The alternative to parliamentary democracy is not dictatorship; it is organized democracy in the place of the formal democracy of powerless atomized individual citizens. The parliament should be the apex of a pyramidal structure of the State reared on the base of an organized democracy composed of a countrywide network of People’s Committees. The political organization of society (the State) will be coincident with the entire society, and consequently the State will be under a standing democratic control. Thesis 15 The function of a revolutionary and liberating social philosophy is to lay emphasis on the basic fact of history that

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man is the maker of his world − man as a thinking being, and he can be so only as an individual. The brain is a means of production, and produces the most revolutionary commodity. Revolutions presuppose iconoclastic ideas. An increasingly large number of men conscious of their creative power, motivated by the indomitable will to remake the world, moved by the adventure of ideas, and fired with the ideal of a free society of free men, can create the conditions under which democracy will be possible. Thesis 16 The method and programme of social revolution must be based on a reassertion of the basic principle of social progress. A social renaissance can come only through determined and widespread endeavor to educate the people as regards the principles of freedom and rational co-operative living. The people will be organized into effective democratic bodies to build up the socio-political foundation of the post revolutionary order. Social revolution requires in rapidly increasing number men of the new renaissance, and a rapidly expanding system of People’s Committees, and an organic co-ordination of both. The programme of revolution will similarly be based on the principles of freedom, reason and social harmony. It will mean elimination of every form of monopoly and vested interest in the regulation of social life. Thesis 17 Radical democracy presupposes economic reorganization of society so as to eliminate the possibility of exploitation of man by man. Progressive satisfaction of material necessities is the precondition for the individual members of society unfolding their intellectual and other finer human potentialities. An economic reorganization, such as will

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guarantee a progressively rising standard of living, is the foundation of the Radical Democratic State. Economic liberation of the masses is an essential condition for their advancing towards the goal of freedom. Thesis 18 The economy of the new social order will be based on production for use and distribution with reference to human needs. Its political organization excludes delegation of power which in practice, deprives the people of effective power; it will be based on the direct participation of the entire adult population through the People’s Committees. Its culture will be based on universal dissemination of knowledge and on minimum control and maximum scope for, and incentive to, scientific and creative activities. The new society, being founded on reason and science, will necessarily be planned. But it will be planning with the freedom of the individual as its main purpose. The new society will be democratic − politically, economically as well as culturally. Consequently, it will be a democracy which can defend itself. Thesis 19 The ideal of Radical Democracy will be attained through the collective efforts of spiritually free men united in the determination of creating a world of freedom. They will function as the guides, friends and philosophers of the people rather than as their would-be rulers. Consistently with the goal of freedom, their political practice will be rational and therefore ethical. Their effort will be reinforced by the growth of the people’s will to freedom. Ultimately, the Radical Democratic State will rise with the support of enlightened public opinion as well as intelligent action of the people. Realizing that freedom is in-

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consistent with concentration of power, Radical Democrats will aim at the widest diffusion of power. Thesis 20 In the last analysis, education of the citizen is the condition for such a reorganization of society as will be conducive to common progress and prosperity without encroaching upon the freedom of the individual. The People’s Committees will be the schools for the political and civic education of the citizen. The structure and function of the Radical Democratic State will enable detached individuals to come to the forefront of public affairs. Manned with such individuals, the State machinery will cease to be the instrument in the hands of any particular class to coerce others. Only spiritually free individuals in power can smash all chains of slavery and usher in freedom for all. Thesis 21 Radicalism integrates science into social organization and reconciles individuality with collective life; it gives to freedom a moral-intellectual as well as a social content; it offers a comprehensive theory of social progress in which both the dialectics of economic determinism and dynamics of ideas find their due recognition; and it deduces from the same a method and a programme of social revolution in our time. Thesis 22 Radicalism starts from the dictum that “man is the measure of everything” (Protagoras) or “man is the root of mankind”(Marx), and advocates reconstruction of the world as a commonwealth and fraternity of free men, by the collective endeavor of spiritually emancipated moral men.

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Bibliography Cohen and Nagel. An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (London: Allied Publishers, 1936). Copi, Irving M. Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1982). − Symbolic Logic (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979). Cornforth, Maurice. Dialectical Materialism (Calcutta: National Book Agency Private Ltd., 1984). Ebenstein, William. Modern Political Thought (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Company, 1970). Edwards and Pap. A Modern Introduction to Philosophy (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1957). Engels, F. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968). Guralnik, David B, ed. Webster’s New World Dictionary (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co., 1975). Hawkins, Joyce M, compiler. The Oxford Paperback Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). Hiorth, Finngeir. Introduction to Atheism (Pune: Indian Secular Society, 1995). 141

Hospers, John. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (New Delhi: Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1975). Karnik, V. B. M. N. Roy (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1980). Lange, F. A. The History of Materialism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1925) Marx, Engels, Lenin. On Dialectical Materialism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977). Pal, R. M. Selections from the Marxian Way and the Humanist Way (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 2000) Parikh, G. D, compiler. Essence of Royism (Pune: Nav Jagriti Samaj, 1987). Passmore, John. A Hundred Years of Philosophy (Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd., 1978). Ray, Sibnarayan, ed. M.N. Roy Philosopher-Revolutionary (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1995). − Selected Works of M. N. Roy, Vol. I, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987). Roy, M. N. Beyond Communism (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981). − Materialism (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers Ltd., 1951). − New Humanism - A Manifesto (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1981). − New Orientation (Delhi: Ajanta Publica142

tions, 1982). − Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1989). − Science and Philosophy (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1984). − Scientific Politics (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1947). Russell, Bertrand. The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1975). Sharma, Chandradhar. A Critical Study of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1964). Stace, W. T. A Critical History of Greek Philosophy (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1962). Tarkunde, V. M. Radical Humanism (New Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1983).

Articles Roy, M. N. “Philosophy of History” in The Marxian Way, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1947. − “Probability and Determinism” in The Humanist Way, Vol. IV, No. 3, 1950. − “The Concept of Causality in Modern Science” in The Humanist Way, Vol. IV, No.2, 1949-50. − “Editorial” in The Marxian Way, Vol. I, No. 143

1, 1945. − “Editorial Notes” in The Marxian Way, Vol. I, No. 3, 1945. − “Editorial Notes” The Marxian Way, Vol. II, No. I, 1946. − “Editorial Notes” in The Marxian Way, Vol., II, No. 4, 1946-47.

Encyclopedias The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vols. 2, 4, 5 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1972). The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol.11 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1981).

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M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism.pdf

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