M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism

8/18/2019 M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism

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M. N. Roy’s New Humanismand 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. RamendraPh.D., D.Litt.

Reader, Department of Philosophy,

Patna College, Patna University

Buddhiwadi FoundationPatna


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This publication has been made possible by a

grant from Rationalist Foundation , Mumbai

First Edition

All rights reserved, including the right of repro-

duction 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 7

Introduction 9

I. M. N. Roy's New Humanism 13

II. Materialism 47

III. Roy's Materialism and Traditional

Materialism 63

IV. Roy's Materialism and Marxian

Materialism 91V. Materialism or Physical Realism? 113

Appendix: Twenty-Two Thesis 133

Bibliography 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 troublefor thoroughly revising and extensively reorgan-

izing the material as well as for greatly simplify-

ing 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 mate-

rialism and its differences from traditional and

Marxian materialism. Besides, the author has also

discussed the appropriateness of the term “mate-rialism” 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 him-

self. In his well-researched and extensively docu-

mented book, the author, Dr. Ramendra, has also

explored the relationship between Roy’s “materi-

alism” and new humanism. In addition to being an

authoritative exposition of M. N. Roy’s new hu-


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manism and materialism, Dr. Ramendra’s book is

an authentic source of information on traditionalmaterialism as well as on Marxian materialism.

M. N. Roy is a leading humanist thinker of twen-

tieth century India. We are sure that the publica-

tion of this important work on him will help in

promoting rationalism-humanism. BuddhiwadiFoundation, which is a registered, non-profit, tax-

exempt trust for promoting rationalism and human-

ism, is proud to add this valuable work to its list

of publications.

The publication of this book has been made pos-sible by a grant from Rationalist Foundation,

Mumbai. We thank Justice R. A. Jahagirdar

(Retd.) of Rationalist Foundation for his encour-

agement 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. Un-

like some other Indian thinkers of twentieth century, Roy

has made a clear distinction between philosophy and reli-

gion in his thought. This alone, I think, entitles him to berecognized as the foremost Indian philosopher of twenti-

eth century. According to Roy, no philosophical advance-

ment 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 intellec-tual or philosophical revolution in his philosophy. Ac-

cording 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 de-

velopments. 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 philoso-

phy. Roy not only takes into account the then contempo-

rary 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 philoso-

phy. 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 inter-pretation 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 “ma-

terialism” which Roy is talking about in the sentences

quoted above is different from what is commonly under-

stood by materialism. Roy himself distinguishes his “ma-terialism” 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 differ-

entiates itself from Marxist materialistic deter-minism 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 material-

ism 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 newhumanism. Besides, the chapter includes a brief life-sketch

of Roy and a discussion of Roy’s conception of philoso-

phy. The second chapter “Materialism” deals with tradi-

tional 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 traditionalmaterialism. 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’sphilosophy. 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 hisnew humanism.

In this critical part of my book, I have mainly ar-

rived at two conclusions: one, that both from the cogni-

tive 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 com-

patible with his revised and renamed version of material-

ism, 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 com-

plete 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.2 M. N. Roy, Beyond Communism (New Delhi: Ajanta

Publications, 1981), p. 28.3 Ibid., p. 43.


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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 summa-

rized by M.N. Roy in the “Theses on the principles of Radical Democracy” or the “ Twenty-Two Theses of Radi-

cal 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 di-

rectly to a brief exposition of Roy’s new humanism, it

would be worthwhile to take a synoptic look at Roy’s bi-

ography, particularly his intellectual development, and his

conception of philosophy.

Biography

M. N. Roy was not inclined to write his autobiogra-

phy. 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 cov-

ers 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 develop-

ment.

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 politi-

cal dacoities and conspiracy cases. In 1915, after the be-

ginning 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 en-

counter with police.

Towards Communism

The news of Roy’s arrival at San Francisco was some-

how 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. Thischange 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 col-laborator. 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 Americanradicals, 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 him-

self 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 ma-

terialist 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 thesecond 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 confer-

ence of the Communist International. The following yearswitnessed 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 inChina ended in a failure. On his return to Moscow from

China, Roy found himself in official disfavor. In Septem-

ber 1929 he was expelled from the Communist Interna-


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tional for “contributing to the Brandler press and sup-

porting 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 ar-

rested in July 1931 and tried for his role in the KanpurCommunist 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, keptproviding 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 dur-

ing 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-examina-tion 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 foolscap-

size 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 NewDelhi. 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 idea-

tional factors in traditional and contemporary India, in therise 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 de-

velopments 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 ren-aissance 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 itcan be discerned in these notes”. However, he adds that

the “ideas took a long time to crystallize as Roy was al-

ways 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 Novem-

ber 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 dif-

ferences 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 de-

veloped his philosophy of new humanism.

After Roy’s release from jail in 1936, Ellen Gottschalk

joined Roy in Bombay in March 1937. They were marriedin 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 con-

stitution, 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 impor-tant national issues. According to Sibnarayan Ray, another

prominent associate of Roy, “the Plan and the Constitu-

tion 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, pub-

lished subsequently under the title Scientific Politics in

1942, Roy had said:

The discussion ... will show the necessity of re-

vising or even discarding certain formulas which

are considered by orthodox Marxists to be partand parcel, even the very essence, of Marxism. I

mean, dictatorship of the proletariat ... if the proc-

ess 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 seenthat our social and political program is such as was asso-

ciated with the philosophical Radicalism or Rationalism

of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, one need not accept Marx-

ism in order to subscribe to our social and political pro-

gram.”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, "itwould be more correct, historically and scientifically, to

give a new name to our philosophy.”7

Roy’s definition of “revolutionary” in Scientific Poli-

tics is of considerable interest, because it shows Roy’s

departure from the orthodox Marxian doctrine of histori-

cal 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 termi-

nology. Seven years ago, I still spoke as an orthodox Marx-ist criticizing deviations from, or faulty understanding of

the pure creed. Nevertheless, the tendency to look be-

yond Communism was already there in a germinal form.”9

Thus, the principles of revolutionary theory and prac-

tice 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 reactionarycult; they also marked a departure from orthodox Marx-

ism.”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, pub-

lished subsequently as New Orientation. Here he declares

explicitly, “Marxism is not the final truth; even its funda-mental principles should be from time to time re-exam-

ined 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 dog-

matic presupposition. Otherwise, we could not pretend to

be advocates of scientific politics…We also proclaim that

our thinking and action know no authority… Those whoregard Marxism as such a closed system of thought, can-

not 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 phi-

losophy of freedom… Without a philosophical revolution,

no social revolution is possible.” The “cardinal principleof 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 commu-

nism goes farther then that of Marxism. “The history of Soviet Union”, says Roy, “makes one doubt whether Com-

munism 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 en-

larged edition of his book The Russian Revolution (1949)

which incorporated his earlier book of the same title pub-lished 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 Marx-

ism and radicalism are “not identical”, he also added that

they are “not mutually exclusive”. He describes radical-ism 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 fundamen-

tal 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 wecan work systematically”. Or, to put it differently, “there

can be no political revolution without a philosophical revo-

lution”.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 Twenty-

Two Theses were published later under the title Beyond

Communism.

In 1947, Roy published New Humanism − A

Manifesto, which offered an elaboration of the Twenty-

Two Theses. Roy prepared the draft of the manifesto, but,

as Roy himself says, in the preface of New Humanism, hederived help from valuable suggestions of Philip Spratt,

Sikander Choudhary and V. M.Tarkunde in improving his

draft. The ideas expressed in the manifesto were, accord-

ing 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-politicswas 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 modi-fied accordingly. Thus, the revised versions of the Twenty-

Two Theses and the manifesto constitute the essence of

Roy’s New Humanism.

Indian Renaissance Institute

In 1946, Roy established Indian RenaissanceInstitute 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 in-

tellectual project. Roy’s magnum opus Reason, Roman-

ticism 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 ahistorical 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 com-

prehensive philosophy which links up social and politi-

cal 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 develop-

ment 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 toDehradun 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, how-

ever, elected M. N. Roy, in absentia, as one of its vice-

presidents and made the Indian Radical Humanist Move-ment 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 25January 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, ed-

ited, and contributed to several journals. The Oxford Uni-

versity 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 Materi-

alism 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 naturalreligion 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 phi-

losophy as “the theory of life”. The function of philoso-

phy, in words of Roy, “is to solve the riddle of the Uni-

verse”.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 sur-

roundings; 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, some-

thing 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 specu-lation. 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 pry-

ing into the transcendental being above and behind thephysical universe − of acquiring the knowledge of the re-

ality 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 philoso-

phy 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 theologyand religion. As he says in Science and Philosophy:

For the average educated man, the term philoso-

phy has a very vague meaning, but sweeping

application; it stands not only for speculative

thought, but also for poetic fancy. In India, par-

ticularly, this vague, all-embracing sense is gen-erally 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 phi-

losophy 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 phi-

losophy”34 [emphasis mine].

“With the assumption that the phenomena of nature

are determined by the will of some supernatural being orbeings,” says Roy, “philosophy must make room for faith.”

What is supernatural, points out Roy, must be always be-

yond 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 hu-

man knowledge, the world itself becomes incomprehensi-

ble.”35

Roy is of the view that, “religion is bound to be liqui-

dated by science, because scientific knowledge enables

mankind to answer questions, confronted by which in its

childhood, it was compelled to assume super-natural forcesor 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.” Sci-ence is, says Roy, “stepping over the old boundary line.

Digging deeper and deeper into the secrets of nature, sci-

ence 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 ‘meta-

physical’ realm.”37

The problems of philosophy−

cosmological, onto-logical and epistemological − can all be progressively

solved, according to Roy, in the light of scientific knowl-

edge. 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 com-

prehensive 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, phi-

losophy can now exist only as the science of sciences − a

systematic coordination, a synthesis of all positive knowl-

edge, continuously readjusting itself to the progressive en-largement of the store of human knowledge.” Such a phi-

losophy, 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 con-

structive part, on the other hand, consists of giving high-

est value to the freedom of individuals, presenting a hu-

manist 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 free-dom 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 existenceof individuals. Except as the sum total of freedom and

well-being, actually enjoyed by individuals, social libera-

tion 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 wellas collective, is attainment of freedom in ever increasing

measure. The amount of freedom available to the indi-

viduals 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 ben-

eficial 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 tothe quest for freedom? Explaining this Roy says:

The moment an ape discovered that he could

break a branch and pluck fruits with it, the proc-

ess of mechanical evolution ended; purposiveness

became the basic feature of the subsequent bio-

logical evolution. Man’s struggle for the conquestof nature began. The struggle for existence be-

came quest for freedom. From that very modest

beginning, we have come to the twentieth cen-

tury with its modern technology; powerful instru-

ments 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 isthe 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 “correspond-

ence with objective reality”, which, incidentally, is the re-

alistic conception of truth. Thus, according to Roy, “free-dom, 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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34

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 empha-

sizes 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 andtheir 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 re-

lations. 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 mostpowerful determining factor in history. Otherwise, there

would be no room for revolutions in a rationally deter-

mined process of history. The rational and scientific con-

cept 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 andabolition of private property in the means of production.

For creating a new world of freedom, says Roy, revolu-

tion must go beyond an economic reorganization of soci-

ety. A political system and an economic experiment which


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36

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 parlia-

mentary democracy in his twelfth and thirteenth theses.

These flaws, according to Roy, are outcome of the del-egation 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. Ac-

cording to Roy:

Liberalism is falsified or parodied under formal

parliamentary democracy. The doctrine of laissez

faire only provides the legal sanction to the ex-

ploitation of man by man. The concept of eco-

nomic 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 instinctivelyrational 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 de-

mocracy 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 thecherished 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 secu-lar rationalism and a rationalist ethics. Roy insists that a

“moral order will result from a rationally organized soci-

ety, 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 ben-

eficial 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, sponta-

neously and voluntarily...The innate rationality of

man is the only guarantee of a harmonious order,which will also be a moral order, because moral-

ity is a rational function.49


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38

Radical Democracy

Roy’s ideal of radical democracy, as outlined in the-

ses fourteen to twenty-two consists of a highly decentral-

ized democracy based on a network of people’s commit-

tee’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 at-

omized 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’sCommittees (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 in-

tellectual and other finer human potentialities. Accordingto 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 Seven-

teen).

The ideal of radical democracy will be attained, ac-cording 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 indomita-

ble will to remake the world, moved by the ad-

venture of ideas, and fired with the ideal of a free

society of free men, can create the conditions un-der 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 revolu-tion, 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 combina-

tion of both. The program of revolution will similarly be

based on the principles of freedom, reason and social har-

mony.

The picture of radical democratic state, accordingto Roy, can be visualized only approximately, leaving a

very wide margin of error and uncertainty. Thus, the pic-

ture outlined in the Twenty-Two thesis is necessarily ten-


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tative, in the nature of a utopia. The justification, accord-

ing to Roy, for outlining this picture is that human action

must be driven by an ideal or else there will be no incen-

tive for action.

As pointed out by Roy himself in his preface to the

second edition of the New Humanism, though new hu-

manism 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-ex-panding 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 thepeople, and in the increase of their influence in the State.”

According to Roy:

To consolidate the intellectual basis of the move-

ment, Radicals will continue to submit their

philosophy to constant research, examine it in

the light of modern scientific knowledge and ex-perience, and extend its application to all the so-

cial sciences. They will, at the same time, propa-

gate 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 senseof individual dignity, inculcate the values of ra-

tionalism 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 au-

thoritarianism. They will put all the social tradi-

tions 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 re-volt 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 peo-

ple 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 ex-changing 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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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 dog-

mas of religion to a searching analysis, is a condition for

the belated Renaissance of India. The spirit of inquiryshould overwhelm the respect for tradition.”55

According to Roy, “a critical examination of what is

cherished as India’s cultural heritage will enable the In-

dian 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 fu-

ture.”56

Thus, Roy was opposed to an uncritical and vain glo-

rification of India’s so-called “spiritual” heritage. How-

ever, 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 civi-lization, which were lying buried in the Middle Ages ow-

ing 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 res-

cue the positive outcome and abiding contributions of

ancient thought − contributions which just like the contri-

butions of Greek sages are lying in ruins under the de-cayed structure of the brahminical society − the tradition

of which is erroneously celebrated as the Indian civiliza-

tion.


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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, Roman-

ticism 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 member-

ship-organization called Indian Radical Humanist Association−IRHA.22 The Institute now functions from New Delhi.23 Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Op.Cit., p. 46.24The Indian Renaissance Institute presently publishes The


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49 Ibid., p.36.50 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.


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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 toRoy, “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 par-

ticular? What logical connection, if any, exists between

Roy’s new humanism and materialism? I will try to an-

swer these questions in this book. However, in this chap-ter I am only interested in exploring the nature of “mate-

rialism”, 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 in-

flicting 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 ar-

bitrary 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 con-trary, 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 follow-

ing 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 eve-

rything 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 diction-

aries report what meanings are actually attached to a wordby 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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powers, no angels or devils, no demiurges and no gods (if

these are conceived as immaterial entities). Hence noth-

ing 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 ex-

plained can be explained on the basis of laws involving

only the antecedent physical conditions.”

“Materialists,” maintains the Encyclopedia, “have tra-ditionally 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 follow-ing exposition of materialism:

Especially since the 18th century, the word Ma-

terialism has been used to refer to a family of

metaphysical theories (i.e., theories on the na-

ture of reality) that can best be defined by saying

that a theory tends to be called materialism if it isfelt 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 theworld 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 at-

traction. The theory denies that immaterial or

apparently immaterial things (such as minds) ex-

ist 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 philoso-

phy. 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 ad-

vent 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 Indianmaterialism is known, is one of the three major heterodox

(nastika) schools of ancient Indian philosophy − the oth-

ers 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 doc-

trines of materialism from statements of the position andcriticism 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 existenceof 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 ma-

terialist. 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 mat-

ter. 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, ac-cording 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); eve-

rything occurs for a reason and of necessity. This neces-

sity is natural and mechanical; it excludes teleologicalnecessitation.

3. Nothing can arise out of nothing; nothing that is can be

destroyed. All changes are new combinations or separa-

tions 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 an-

other 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 ex-

planation. (Some scholars dispute the attribution of ran-

dom motion to the atoms and credit the Great Diakosmoswith the Epicurean doctrine of an eternal fall through infi-

nite 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 con-

tinually 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 theorigin 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 construc-

tion, 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 phi-

losopher 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 freemen from the burdens of religious fear. He argued at length

against the existence of any spiritual soul and for mortal-

ity 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 pe-

riod until the renaissance the Church and Aristotle so domi-

nated Western thought that materialism went into back-

ground. The revival of materialism is attributed to the work

of two seventeenth century philosophers, Gassendi andHobbes.

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 im-mortal intellect in human beings.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was much more con-

sistent 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 any-

thing existing independently of our thought and having

volume. Further, according to Hobbes, all change in uni-

verse 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 proper-

ties) 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, mate-

rialism was advocated in France by Jean Meslier (1664-

1729), La Mettrie (1709-1751), Diderot (1713-84),

Helvetius (1715-71), Holbach (1723-89), Naigeon (1738-

1810) and Cabanis (1757-1808).11 Probably the most fa-

mous 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 philoso-

phy, was himself a dualist. He accepted a materialist and

mechanical account of the inanimate world and lower ani-

mals but insisted that human beings had immaterial, im-mortal 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 them-

selves. He criticized all views of soul as spiritual and pre-

sented 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 thatnothing 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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materialism of ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was

indeterministic and he allowed for free will. In this con-

nection, the following comment in the Britannica is worth

taking note of, “… it is popularly supposed that Material-

ism and determinism must go together. This is not so...

Even some ancient Materialists were indeterminists, and a

modern physicalist Materialism must be indeterministic be-

cause of the indeterminism that is built into modern phys-

ics.”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 Phi-

losophy and the Britannica. According to The Encyclo-

pedia of Philosophy:

It should also be mentioned that metaphysical

materialism does not entail the psychological dis-

position to pursue money and tangible goods

despite the popular use of "materialistic" to de-

scribe this interest.13

Similarly, the Britannica says:

…A quite different sense of the word Mate-

rialism 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 inter-

ested mainly in sensuous pleasures and bodily

comforts and hence in the material possessionsthat bring these about. A man might be a Materi-

alist in this ethical and pejorative sense without

being a metaphysical Materialist, and conversely.


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An extreme physicalistic Materialist, for exam-

ple, might prefer a Beethoven record to a com-

fortable 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 describedas “materialistic” but also there is no historical relation-

ship 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 un-

derstood by “Epicurean”.

The first meaning of “Epicurean” according toWebster’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 pleasuresthan 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. Con-

trary 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 sim-

ple 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” con-

tained 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. Material-

ism is a doctrine about the nature of reality and not about

which part of that reality we ought to prefer or how weought to live. It is true that metaphysical materialism is

logically incompatible with any spiritualistic ethics involv-

ing 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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III. Roy’s Materialism and

Traditional Materialism

As already mentioned in the previous chapter, accord-

ing 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 total-

ity, 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 thesubject matter of this chapter. In addition to these books,

Roy’s Bey

M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism

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Transcript of M. N. Roy's New Humanism and Materialism