One of the major problems of a socialist movement is its relationship with the society which it must subsist in and yet oppose absolutely. It is impossible to achieve an isolation from capitalism within capitalism, but many socialist parties have tried to do just this—notably the maximalist psi in Italy and the spd in Germany in the period leading up to the October Revolution. Normal political intervention in the society compromises pure opposition to it, while active revolution threatens the organization that the isolation is based on; the only middle course is one of inaction. This is as true of political theory as of political practice. There is a strong temptation to develop a critique of the society based on an old-established theoretical position, with occasional destructive sorties against the ideologists of the society and their attempts to come to grips with their situation. Hence wholesale denunciations by Marxists of the idealism of all new bourgeois thought. The result is the same in both practice and theory; the isolationist position cannot combat the immediate material advantages of opportunist participation in the society (reformism), or of the uncritical acceptance of the ruling ideas of the society (revisionism). At the same time it cannot combat the immediate spiritual advantages of revolutionary romanticism and utopianism. Marx saw a solution to the theoretical dilemma in the concept of the critique: every false consciousness and theory has its moment of truth, which can be surpassed to create a richer theory—thus Marx’s response to Hegel or Ricardo did not involve pure rejection, but demystification. The implication of this for contemporary Marxism is that we cannot use Marx merely to destroy bourgeois ideology—Marxism must be continually recreated and made possible again for every generation by the reintegration of demystified elements of the contemporary bourgeois theory. Modern Marxism is Marxist insofar as it is a development of Marx’s work, not an exegesis of it.

Similarly, the practice of isolation, essentially the acceptance of a policy valid at one conjuncture as eternally valid, does not allow for the continuous development of capitalist society, its capacity to contain some of its contradictions but its inability to prevent the transposition of these contradictions to another arena. A fixed theory, laying fixed stress on fixed categories soon finds itself abstract in relation to the development of society, and the refusal to recreate categories leads to their misuse in the interests of the theory rather than of the revolution. Thus concepts like class, obviously applicable in a revolutionary situation, have to be, not revised, but discovered again in a period of reaction. If this does not happen, belief in the class character of societies in which class conflict is not immediately intelligible as such to the actors in the conflict, becomes faith in the concept. The development of new theoretical conceptions such as the Marxist theory of imperialism are also examples of the correct response to the changing centres of contradiction in the capitalist world. The new theoretical totality arises both out of the necessity to re-establish categories that have become abstract and to create new categories to deal with completely new situations.

A third form of petrifaction within Marxist theory is typically caused by conflicts within the socialist movement itself. Categories and descriptions developed initially as clarifications in a debate on policy can become associated with the opposing factions as slogans, or even as labels. The result is that it is impossible to move theoretically within the context of their debate without committing oneself to one or other of the factions, even when, at some later date, the original and real differences dividing the factions have become obsolete in the real terms of the new conjuncture. The debate between left and right in the cpsu(b) in the twenties has a trajectory of this kind—the theory of permanent revolution is no longer a theory, it is a declaration of Trotskyism, etc. The only solution to this is to move out of the old theoretical arena by considering new problems and employing new concepts—actual differences hidden behind petrified theory can then be dealt with in a new framework in line with the contemporary conjuncture.