Adding to John Pilger's "Academia is silent on imperialism, as German
universities were during the rise of the Nazis." The continuing distortion of
history. A Personal academic development.

To compliment John Pilger's enlightening article, the following, by British
historian Rajani Palme Dutt:

"Almost all Western non-Marxist historical treatment of world events since 1917
has tended to produce a mythology as a substitute for serious history.

It may be useful to examine how this conception of the supposed non-Marxist pure
pursuit of truth in the historical field works out in practice. For we come here
to the heart of the question of truth and history; the reason why we consider
that Marxist historical theory provides the key - not the ready-made answer -
but the key to the discovery of historical truth; while non-Marxist theory leads
to the distortion of truth. For this purpose we may examine a practical example
from one of the most famous Western universities, Oxford University...

At the age of eighteen years I came to Oxford University... Knowing my own
ignorance I came in all humility to learn from those wiser.

Then the first imperialist world war broke out. What happened to the search for
historical truth at Oxford in this hour of testing? At once all the most
distinguished Professors of the Oxford Faculty of History published a
collectively signed Manifesto declaring that, having examined all the evidence
as trained historians accustomed to weighing impartially historical evidence,
they had reached the unanimous conclusion that Britain was in the right in the
war and Germany in the wrong. Immediately came a Counter-Manifesto from all the
most famous names of German historical learning, names one had equally learned
to revere and respect as masters of knowledge - German learning at that time
stood very high in the academic world - proclaiming that, in the light of their
no less authoritative and scrupulous weighing of historical evidence, they had
reached the unanimous conclusion that Germany was in the right and Britain in
the wrong...

But truth is truth, and must be faced. This is what happened to Western
supposedly impartial historical science when brought to the test of the
imperialist war. Just as the test of the imperialist war laid bare the
rottenness of the old social democracy, so the same test laid bare the
rottenness of the claim of Western capitalist scholarship to represent objective
historical science.

In face of this conflict of the learned, what was the innocent searcher after
truth to do? The conclusion was reluctantly forced upon me, that if the greatest
and most honoured exponents of academic historical wisdom reached diametrically
opposed conclusions according to whether they resided in this or that degree of
longitude by a few degrees of difference, there must be something defective in
this academic historical science, and that the humble searcher after truth could
rely on no authority, however dazzling, but must endeavour, however
ill-equipped, to reach his own judgement...

Whilst the most famous Professors of History were thus enrolled in the uniform
of their imperialist masters, I found that among the small groups of socialist
workers with whom I was in contact, who had no such benefits of higher
education, there was an entirely different type of discussion of the war as a
war between rival masters and exploiters for the spoils of the world. Let us ask
the question in the light of contemporary knowledge: who was closer to the truth
of history? The great and famous bourgeois professors of history? Or the handful
of socialist workers with limited advantages of education? At the present day
the essential analysis of Great Power rivalry leading to the first world war is
the commonplace theme of conventional history text-books even in schools. But
the litter of Oxford War Pamphlets, as they were called, which poured out in a
flood from the University Professors of history at this time, today crumble in
oblivion and contempt.

How was this possible? Why were these workers, deprived of educational
facilities, closer to what is today universally recognised as historical truth
(even by present day Oxford historians who remain as wildly astray as their
predecessors in relation to the modern contemporary world of the cold war) than
all these professors of history? Was it superior mental capacity? The professors
had on the contrary been chosen by a rigorous selective process, even though
from a narrow stratum of the population, for mental capacity. But their
basically false theory rendered them incapable of reaching a correct historical
judgement, although they were supposed to be trained historical experts.
Socialist theory enabled these class-conscious workers to reach, however
crudely, the essential kernel of historical truth...

Academic service to imperialism had collapsed completely when faced with open
argument...

It was indeed these and many similar experiences and deepening disillusionment
with the hollowness of official bourgeois academic claims and theories during my
apprenticeship at Oxford which led me from the very generalised socialist
outlook I had already drawn from earlier years, to the serious and systematic
study of Marxism since 1915. Here I began to find the answers to the insistent
questions which the world situation raised and which all the professors and
tutors, when I in all innocence pressed them on these questions, avoided and
refused to discuss. Before I was twenty years of age I had some experience of
various prisons. At twenty-one years, in the last week of October 1917, that is,
ten days before November 7 1917, I had the honour to be expelled from Oxford
University for the offence of propagating Marxism...

In the last week of October I addressed a meeting of students on the subject of
"Socialism and the War". There was the usual attempt of some hooligan jingo
students to create a disturbance... the rowdies... broke some windows and
shouted jingo slogans outside. Next morning the wrath of the University
authorities was visited, not on the rowdies who had created the disturbance, but
on me for organising the meeting; and I was ordered to leave Oxford permanently
within twenty-four hours. When a year later I was allowed to take the final
examination... it was only under the explicit condition that I had to undertake
to arrive only the night before the examination, to leave the day the
examination ended, and to address no public meetings...

It may be worth adding that A.D.Lindsay, later Lord Lindsay, who as my tutor
held official responsibility with the other governing authorities for the
decision to expel me for socialist propaganda, was himself a member of the
Fabian Society and in this sense claimed to be a socialist. When he was
subsequently appointed Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University, in his inaugural
address he dwelt on the tradition of academic freedom of opinion, including
political opinions, as the treasured characteristic of the university tradition
in Britain. As an example of this freedom he called attention to the fact that
he himself was a Socialist and yet was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh
University... illustrating once again the familiar truth that there are two
kinds of Socialists... those acceptable to the capitalist authorities and those
not acceptable.

The next stage of education in the pursuit of pure truth at Oxford University
followed... I discovered that every avenue of employment appeared closed. No
professor or tutor was prepared to give me the necessary testimonial... The
professors and tutors, when written to by prospective employers... invariably
replied that I had such and such academic qualifications, but that whether the
extreme political views I held were suitable for any responsible position... was
a matter entirely for their governing authority to decide. This invariably
finished the approach.

From this experience I learned a useful political lesson."

(Rajani Palme Dutt "Problems of Contemporary History." London 1963.)



I am now going to be what I might consider, but not fear, somewhat foolhardy -
since nobody who is intellectually honest (which is not the same as academically
honest), will have no problem with it.

My own intellectual development, and this includes twenty years of working in
technology of all sorts - electrical, surgical and aircraft engineering and
computers; and because it matured in the heady days of Marxist academia,
followed a similar pattern, and is now, I would say, now heavily influenced by
Marxism. That is, its primary source - the reading of Marx himself, not the
tellytubby academic pseudo Marxism which many academics who call themselves
Marxist produce in the lorry loads of volumes found on most academic
bookshelves.

I found that reading Marxism at its source required a special kind of effort.
For one thing, having a working class "education" in a prefab between the gas
works and the pork pie factory, where we were taught only enough English to be
able to understand factory instructions ("start, stop, slow, fast, very fast, no
tea breaks allowed, you're fired") etc, and not being allowed anywhere near
Shakespeare or Chaucer, I found the English language of Marx's day a little
different. However, this was not a problem, and should be an advantage to those
with a more middle-class education; and I had guidance from a rare genuine
Marxist academic and a couple of genuine modern Marxist books - but of course
you have to know what they are! I also had to overcome the narrow constraints of
my bourgeois thinking.

I spent most of one summer college break getting it all together in my mind with
the help of the relevant few books and my own annotational scribblings, notes
and explanatory diagrams. It was a bit like bulldozing snow, it piles up
increasingly higher until one of those rewarding intellectual moments when you
break through to increased illumination and clarity. It was like having a filter
removed from my mind and I could see the world as it really is, and I have never
since, in science and technology, and especially in the humanities - economics,
history, sociology, anthropology, evolution and the natural sciences, found a
single incidence of illogicality or inconstancy in any Marxist notion. It is
always logical and consistent. To my early perseverance and determination to get
to the truth or essence of anything, and to to the patient teacher and friend
who gently fanned the spark of my determination to search for credible and
coherent answers which were not present in mainstream British academia, I am
eternally grateful

If I had not found this so, I would now either be completely disillusioned,
washed out and politically burnt out - as many incomplete Marxists are, or be
working for television producing the fake tellytubby intellectual documentaries
now produced by those "academic" Marxists of the heady 1960s and 70s. One, and
an ex-Communist Party member to boot, even works for Camelot producing the
Lottery! Whenever television wants to wheel out a Marxist for an academic
opinion or comment on a news or historical event, especially when involving a
socialist country, the old USSR, or China, Vietnam or Cuba, it is always one of
these highly placed and highly paid academic magicians and smugglers. Some of
them own "Marxist" or "radical" publishing companies, spewing out volumes of
"Marxist studies" full of everything that Marx did not say or distortions of
Marx. Other pretend Marxists s are in art and design, advertising and marketing,
or are staunch New Labourites. I remember many of Blair's babes and boys and
their conservative supporters from my college student union days and their petty
self-serving arguments and policies. Such is the power of non-Marxist Marxism
you will find abundant on many teachers' bookshelves and in colleges, libraries
and bookshops.

Read any one of these so-called Marxist interpretations and I guarantee that you
will not be intellectually or factually elevated one little bit. Read original
Marx, perhaps alongside the very few true Marxist writers for guidance and
explanation - which helps because the English language has changed since Marx's
writings, and Engels' writing on Marx's economics is also a useful help; and I
promise you that you will find it an essential and consistent explanation of all
human historical, socio-economic, international and military interaction.

My potential foolhardiness over, we now come to its application to the search
for truth in the investigation of either historical or what perhaps should be
called historico-current events.

Before we study the history of anything we must first establish a philosophy, or
a method of validating phenomena, and apply this method of validation to the
study of history in order to form a useful interpretation of historical events.

Philosophy is the discipline of validating phenomena. There are only two basic
schools of thought within the discipline of philosophy; and all philosophies
fall under one or the other. Found in science, they are most apparent in the
humanities - economics, sociology, history, anthropology, evolution and natural
studies. These two basic philosophical schools of thought are called the
idealists and the materialists. Within the discipline of philosophy these two
words, idealist and materialist, are used slightly differently from the way they
are used in ordinary language. In ordinary language, an idealist is a person who
wants to do good works for the world without regard for what other people call
reality; and a materialist is a person who cares less for the world but wants to
accumulate material possessions.

To explain the meanings of these two words within philosophy we can consider a
story which I use early in courses, since they are applicable in history,
philosophy, or indeed any of the humanities. It is certainly valid and essential
in the study of in economics - true economics that is, not the accounting or
business studies which, even in the London School of Economics, passes for
economics; since economics is essentially about the study of socio-economic
relations, and is a science, often also called political economy. This true
subject of economics, a scientific economic philosophy, reveals the slight of
hand by which finance and business studies is palmed off as economics.

Two primitive men were standing on the side of a mountain discussing a thunder
storm in the next valley. One said that whoever can make all that banging and
flashing must be big and powerful, therefore we'd better not annoy him or he
might harm us; so we'd better leave some food out for him to please him. The
other said he thought it was simply particles in the clouds crashing into each
other. A simplistic meteorological interpretation might be that lightning burns
out a corridor of the oxygen through the atmosphere, and the thunder is the
surrounding atmosphere rushing in to fill the vacuum. So both were wrong in a
way.

The man who thought it was some powerful being was the philosophically idealist.
He was attempting to explain a phenomena purely by the ideas he could imagine
inside his mind without reference to any outside reality. Herein lie the origins
of superstition, and on which much religion is based. The other man was the
philosophical materialist, attempting to explain a phenomena by using his mind,
but applied to real things existing outside his mind, by material fact. Herein
lies the origin of science. He was attempting to interpret something
scientifically. We attempt to interpret something by studying it in a scientific
way, by studying real material cause and effect.

I have seen syllabuses where von Daniken's theory of the lines across the Nazca
Desert in Peru being proof of visitors from outer space before mankind is
actually taken seriously - in that no final conclusion is arrived at and the
thing is left in the balance for students! Worse than that, I have seen parts of
syllabuses where the predictions of Nostradamus were treated as a serious
contention in history!

All sorts of ridiculous notions have been applied to history. It is suggested
that Henry Ford said "All history is bunk", and that Cecil B de Mille said
"History is just one damn thing after another."

It is necessary to attempt to find a method of validation that we can usefully
apply to the study of history.

In my early teaching days I compiled a handout for students, which has been
added to over the years. Its current form is as follows:

HISTORY: BALANCED? UNBIASED? OBJECTIVE?

There is no such thing as "unbiased" or "balanced" history; nor is there any
such thing as an unbiased or balanced historian or history teacher. It has been
said by some historians that so-called balanced or unbiased history is dishonest
because it reduces to history for history's sake and devoid of any historical
meaning. To apply meaning to history is immediately biased.

Bias can hardly be "balanced"; nor does it need or claim to be. But can bias be
objective? How is it possible for bias to be objective?

There is a certain way in which it is possible for historical bias to be
objective. What you must do; what is essential for you to do; and what any truly
objective historian would uncompromisingly insist that you do, is to look at all
points of view, no matter how "extreme". Views of history coincide with
political poles of, to use the various terms often used to describe these poles
of points of view: on the one extreme, the point of view of the "left wing",
"Marxist", "materialist", "scientific", "socialist", "communist", "working
class", "progressive" historians, and on the other extreme we have the views of
the "capitalist", "bourgeois", "non-Marxist", "idealist", "right wing",
"fascist", "western", "reactionary" historians.

It is essential that you look at both poles of points of view. Look at them in
their "extremity" or polarity; and thus - and only thus - qualify yourself to
come to a fully informed conclusion and develop a reasoned opinion. This is as
close as we can get to objectivity in history, formed with the full information
from both sides in any historical argument, and not just from one or a
combination of one side and a so-called "middle ground."

There is no such thing as any middle ground. What is the middle ground when
investigating an event? Is this so-called "balance" or "objectivity" in history
some "middle ground", somehow midway between two extremes?

A lot of history can, and has, been called a crime. But crime is not history.
Nevertheless some methods of investigating crime are useful in investigating
history.

Events do not happen in a vacuum. If a robber steals from an old lady; or if the
drunken driver of the red car hits the parked blue car; what is a "balanced" or
"middle ground" point of view when apportioning blame? Is the old lady somehow
part of the blame? Did the thief half rob her? Is the blue car somehow half to
blame? Any scientific investigation will show that the thief and the driver of
the red car is to blame and is the cause in both cases.

Can any middle ground be useful when investigating crime, accidents, or indeed
history?

The old lady says the thief robbed her. There we have a starting point which is
already biased. The thief says he did not rob her. There we have another biased
starting point for our investigation. We have already said that crime is not the
same as history. But philosophically, can objective historical truth lie somehow
equidistant between two extremes, not for one moment imagining that objective
truth could lay at one of those extremes? Can a court somehow arrive at a
"balanced" or "objective" truth between the thief and the old lady or between
the red and the blue car that is somehow not biased, not at an extreme, not the
point of view of either the old lady or the thief? Of course not. Either the
thief robbed the old lady or he did not. Either the red car hit the blue car or
it did not. Whatever were the causes of the crime or accident and where blame or
cause can be apportioned can be scientifically established. There is no middle
ground view about it. Indeed; some historians assert that it is a fruitless
waste of time to try to find a "middle ground" in history, whether this is
called "balanced", "unbiased" or "objective".

Balance excludes bias, but bias does not necessarily exclude objectivity.
Historical meaning is always biased and therefore cannot be "balanced", but it
can still be objective. To say that history cannot be objective because of the
subjective role of the historian is philosophically idealist and denies history
having any material meaning.

Let's look at a practical example of how this supposed "balanced" pursuit of
truth in history works out in practice, and whether any idealist "balanced" view
of history leads to a distortion of truth or whether a biased or objective view
of history is more useful in bringing us closer to material truth. Let's look at
an example from that most hallowed seat of learning - Oxford University: an
example recounted by British historian Rajani Palme Dutt in a lecture he gave:

"At the age of eighteen years I came to Oxford University... Knowing my own
ignorance I came in all humility to learn from those wiser. Then the first...
world war broke out. What happened to the search for historical truth at Oxford
in this hour of testing? At once all the most distinguished Professors of the
Oxford Faculty of History published a collectively signed Manifesto declaring
that, having examined all the evidence as trained historians accustomed to
weighing impartially historical evidence, they had reached the unanimous
conclusion that Britain was in the right in the war and Germany in the wrong.
Immediately came a Counter-Manifesto from all the most famous names of German
historical learning, names one had equally learned to revere and respect as
masters of knowledge - German learning at that time stood very high in the
academic world - proclaiming that, in the light of their no less authoritative
and scrupulous weighing of historical evidence, they had reached the unanimous
conclusion that Germany was in the right and Britain in the wrong...

(Rajani Palme Dutt, in his book "Problems of Contemporary History.")

But surely truth is truth? What happens to this idealistic notion of "balance"
in historical science when faced with the practicalities of a real event? What
is the innocent searcher after historical truth to do when the greatest and most
honoured exponents of academic historical wisdom reach diametrically opposed
conclusions according to whether they resided in this or that country? Is there
something wrong with this philosophically idealist notion of "balance" in
history? If the most venerable historians of Britain and Germany have different
views on causation then surely truth is anybody's and any notion of "balance" is
questionable?

The question of "balance", bias and objectivity in any history agenda should
never be assumed to be a closed assumption.

As already said, history does not happen in a vacuum and is not merely a series
of unexplainable chance events. The study of history is the study of causes.

"The historian, as I said at the end of my last lecture, continuously asks the
question 'Why?'"

(E.H.Carr.)

The past is meaningless to the historian unless he can understand the thought
that went behind it. The role of the historian must be investigative, and
requires objective interpretation in accordance with the historian's stated
ideological set of rules and stated bias. A truly objective and honest historian
gives sources for everything he writes and explains his bias.

"History requires the selection and ordering of facts about the past in the
light of some principle or norm of objectivity accepted by the historian, which
necessarily includes elements of interpretation. Without this, the past
dissolves into a jumble of innumerable isolated and insignificant incidents, and
history cannot be written at all."

(E.H.Carr.)

History affects, is effected by all of us in society. Therefore we cannot expect
to have history explained "impartially" by anyone standing outside society.

"The historian, before he begins to write history, is the product of history."

(E.H.Carr.)

If anyone claims impartiality, then we must suspect his honesty or competence. A
historian who claims "balance" and omits sources and does not explain his
interpretative bias, or denies causation, is usually trying to hide something
and is guilty of distortion and dishonesty. And to see history as a series of
chance events or the character of individuals is to render history impotent and
the historian unintelligent or devious.

"To describe something as a mischance is a favorite way of exempting oneself
from the tiresome obligation to investigate its cause; and, when somebody tells
me that history is a chapter of accidents, I tend to suspect him of intellectual
laziness or low intellectual vitality."

(E.H.Carr.)

History is past politics. Politics is present history. Those who want to make
history impotent are afraid that people who learn from the past will understand
the present and might want to effect the future. No past equals cannot influence
the present equals no future.

In history we need to understand the past causally as a key to understanding the
present.

History does not teach us the way to the future; but it helps teach us the art
of navigation.

"History is to the community what memory is to the individual."

(Arthur Marwick.)

Otherwise, such an empty reconstruction of the past is meaningless and
purposeless, except to hide and distort causes. If history is a meaningless and
purposeless series of accidents then one must deny any causal relationships in
history. If one denies any causal relationships in history then one must
fatalistically deny anything can be done about the present or the future.

To be "balanced" is to have no opinion. You cannot argue with someone who has no
opinion. To be "balanced" is to have the luxury of remaining in a comfortable
but fatalistic position. It means that you don't have to defend anything and can
reject everything. Such "balanced" notions of causation in say the Second World
War or the Cold War are full of obvious contradictions. It means for instance
that wars are natural fate and cannot be avoided because they are not planned
and have no identifiable cause.

Enough is objectively known about traffic accidents to identify causes in
general and causes of specific accidents that it is therefore possible to build
preventative factors into cars and traffic systems and rules. It would be
useless to take a "balanced" notion of no objective causes and say that you
cannot do anything to prevent accidents; it would make insurance claims
impossible and safety measures impotent. It is equally useless and destructive
to take such notions of history.

If you assume that all versions of history are doubtful - a "balanced" view -
means that you accept no objective historical truth. But because history can be
seen in different ways does not mean that objective historical facts cannot be
established:

"It does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different shapes
from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape at all or an
infinity of shapes. It does not follow that, because interpretation plays a
necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing
interpretation is wholly objective, one interpretation is as good as another,
and the facts of history are in principle not amenable to objective
interpretation."

(E.H.Carr "What Is History.")

Just as the objective facts of a mountain can be established by looking from all
angles and a conclusion objectively explained from these facts, so it is
possible to establish the objective facts of history and explain a conclusion.

"We comprehend the formation of mountain ranges by tectonic activities of the
earth's crust, but we cannot explain why Mount Blanc has the specific shape that
we see today, nor can we predict which side of Mount Saint Helens will cave in
at the next eruption. The occurrence of unpredictable events does not mean that
the laws of nature are violated."

(E.H.Carr.)

An examination candidate who answered a question on, say, the origins of the
Second World War with only one cause would get less than a "C", and no
responsible examiner would give marks for suggesting there was no particular
cause at all. A candidate who merely listed a multitude of causes might get a
second. But a first would more likely be awarded to a candidate who arranged all
these causes and interpretations into some order of priority with reasons
explained.

So, in studying history, look at both points of view, and show that you are able
to come to a qualified and a reasoned conclusion: Qualified because you can show
that you have considered both ideological points of view properly and
extensively, and reasoned so that you can show the reasoning behind your
selection and priority of causes.

When you show that you come to your conclusion through a well reasoned process,
then you will become a good historian - as biased as the best of us.

end of handout

History teachers and tutors have a crucial responsibility to humanity. It is the
knowledge they dispense which decides whether the future will be peaceful or
catastrophic for the human race on this incredibly rich and abundant planet.

Submitted by Brian Mitchell. Evolution.





"The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can understand it."
(Einstein.)


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