Author’s preface to the second English edition

More than a decade has passed since Reason in Revolt was first published in English. The response to it has surpassed our greatest expectations. Sadly, Ted Grant, my old friend, comrade and teacher will not see the publication of the second edition. After a lifetime of tireless service to the cause of Marxism and the working class, he passed away last year at the ripe old age of 93.

Ted always had a passionate interest in Marxist theory, and philosophy in particular. He also followed all the developments of modern science very closely. In addition to the Financial Times and The Economist, he subscribed to The New Scientist, which he used to devour from cover to cover. He would often be infuriated by the mystical and idealist slant that some scientists gave to the discoveries of modern science. He would look up from the pages of his journal and shake his head in disbelief: “These people confuse science with science fiction,” he would exclaim indignantly.

There was one remark that struck me as particularly profound. He said that in the human mind, “matter has finally become conscious of itself”. A more beautiful way of expressing philosophical materialism would be difficult to imagine.

It is a matter of great satisfaction to me that in the last years of his life Ted could see the tremendous interest in our ideas that has been expressed in many countries. So far Reason in Revolt has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Greek, Urdu, Bahasa Indonesia and Turkish, and new translations are being prepared in French and Dutch. In addition, it has appeared in an “American” translation in the USA, and has also been published in separate editions in Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba and India.

Many of the discoveries made by science over the last decade have confirmed the positions of dialectical materialism defended in Reason in Revolt. In particular, the Human Genome Project has completely undermined the position of the reactionaries who sought to use genetics to justify racism, homophobia and creationism. This is a colossal advance for science and for socialism.

Other discoveries have made us reconsider some of our original opinions. In the first edition we were still unsure about the existence of black holes – those mysterious objects in which the compression of matter has reached such an extremity, that not even light can be emitted. These black giants suck in all surrounding matter, so that nothing can approach them without being crushed and devoured. Until recently there was little hard evidence for it. But the observations made possible by the Hubble telescope have shown that black holes play a fundamental role in the formation of galaxies.

They are present at the centre of every galaxy and serve to hold galaxies together, giving them the cohesion without which life, and ourselves, would be impossible. Thus, what appeared to be the most destructive force in the universe turns out to have colossal creative powers. The dialectical conception of the unity of opposites thus received powerful confirmation from a most unexpected source!