24 SOCIAL SCIENTIST socialism in these countries were lost for the world socialist camp! Criticising the ecletic definitions of phenomena or objects, Lenin states: "Dialectical logic demands that we go further. In the first place, in order really to know an object, we must embrace, study, all its sides, all connections, and 'mediations'. We shall never achieve this completely, but the demand for all-sidencss is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical logic demands that we take an object in its development, its 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it), in its changes. In relation to a glass this is not clear at once, but even a glass does not remain unchanged, particularly the purpose of the glass, use, its connections with the surrounding world. Thirdly, the whole of human experience should enter the full 'definition' of an object as a criterion of the truth and as practical index of the object's connection with what man requires. Fourthly, dialectical logic teaches that 'there is no abstract truth; truth is always concrete', as the late Plekhanov was fond of saying after Hegel. ... "Of course, I have not exhausted the concept of dialectical logic, but I think what I have said is sufficient for the time being."31 The manner in which the aspect of revisionist errors was singled out and isolated for study, analysis and assessment, divorcing it from the entire phenomenon of the Soviet social system is precisely what Lenin was warning against. The contradiction between the erroneous policies of tlie Soviet leaders and the Soviet working people had become transformed into an antagonistic contradiction to be written into the strategy and tactics of the "Marxists" for world revolution! I also feel that it is absolutely wrong from another angle to characterise this ideological contradiction as an antagonistic class contradiction. For example, a big portion of the industrial working class in several major capitalist states of Europe and America is organised under the leadership of the social-democrats and is under the influence of reformism and revisionism. Furious ideological-political battles were fought, and will have 10 be fought between them and the organised and class conscious sections of the revolutionary proletariat, under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninists. But one cannot theorise that this contradiction between these two ideologically-politically opposed sections of the working class is an antagonistic class contradiction, and then proceed to advocate the revolutionary use of force, i e, methods and forms of struggle, to resolve this contradiction. To conclude, it appears that the philosophical errors committed on the question of contradictions provided the basis for certain serious ideological-political errors in the world communist movement. 1 V I Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, in Collected Works, Vol 38, pp 223 and 359. 2 K Marx and F Engels, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism, in Collected Works, Moscow, Progress, Vol 4, pp 35-36. 3 K Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Collected Works, Vol 6, p 68. 4 Ibid, p 175.