1.0. Contextualising Realism

Before I move to discuss the term realism itself it will be worth stating why it is still such an important philosophical category. With what can be identified as a move to the right in the dominant fields of western intellectual thought, largely represented by the term post-modernism, approaches to notions of truth, ideology and critique have been disconnected (and seemingly neutralised) from any approach which describes the world in rationalistic or 'truthful' terms. Although Postmodernism contains many different (and often opposing) positions simultaneously, the central tenets (as espoused by its most prominent ideologues: Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard) amount to a position which fragments and reletavises any attempt towards a unified theory of reality, arguing that such a position is no longer (if it ever was) attainable. Thus Lyotard's conception of science as 'just one amongst a range of incommensurable language games and one which no longer exerts any privileged claim in respect of knowledge and truth,'9 Baudrillard's 'world of images, of hallucinatory evocations of a non-existent real'10 and Foucault's conception of the history of discourses or 'structures of representation' as being marked by 'a series of ruptures, or 'epistemological breaks', which make it strictly impossible to compare them in point of scientific truth, accuracy, scope or explanatory power,'11 all serve to deny the possibility of grasping a coherent account of reality. Although I do not have the space here to go into detail to refute these specific points in turn,12 it will be argued that it is the category of realism which enables an understanding of how reality can be grasped, therefore allowing it to be open to transformation. In doing so, we will see what is represented by postmodernism and how it does 'a great service to the interests of state and corporate power in diffusing the idea that there really is no difference between things as they seem, things as they really are, and things as they might be according to the values of enlightened critique'13 and allows us to switch off from the implications of the 'outdated' transformative potential of critical thought and:

learn to enjoy these heady New Times where what counts is no longer an appeal to truth - to some reality beyond appearances - but rather the willingness to just get along, exploit the various forms of fantasy gratification.14

1.1 Understanding Realism

It is the philosophical concept of realism that allows us to approach a coherent understanding of the material world and enables a critical resistance to the (fashionable) relativist formulations described above. However, it must also be observed that realism itself is one of the 'most controversial and disputed debates in the history of philosophy'15 and it is clear that this term has no 'fixed' meaning, thus it can mean very different things according to various philosophical positions. Different philosophical understandings of how we perceive the world will result in radical different pictures of what is reality. As Roy Bhaskar, who was instrumental in developing the concept of critical realism, puts it,

it should be appreciated that all philosophies, cognitive discourses and practical activities presuppose a realism-in the sense of some ontology or general account of the world. The crucial question is: what kind?16

Bhaskar's critical realism may be seen to be in keeping with a Marxian notion of realism17 and is a theory of knowledge that professes to understand and reveal the underlying structures that constitute reality. Critical realism is formulated out of strands of other notions of realism. While it adamantly rejects these realisms as inadequate theories of knowledge, it simultaneously extracts parts of these theories for its own use and thus allows us to grasp reality. The two major theories of realism that provide the kernel for critical realism are empiricism and conventionalism and, for the purposes of clarity, will be very briefly mapped out below.

Empiricism, or positivism (as it is sometimes known), is based upon the premise that knowledge can be only be gained through directly experiencing the object and explains the real world 'where things are independent of consciousness and theories...but is accessible through sense experience'.18 For the empiricists there is an independent material world which can only be known by directly experiencing it. For Marx this was a flawed theory of knowledge and he argues 'science would become superfluous if there was an immediate coincidence of the appearance and reality of things'.19 To get to the real, as Lovell points out, it is necessary to

go beyond the surface appearance of things, beyond the manner in which social relations are experienced, in order to arrive at knowledge of these social relations.....appearances taken at face value are misleading.20

Conventionalism or idealism, is the converse of empiricism. Although conventionalism can be seen to be a critique of the empiricist argument which fails to consider the complex relationship between subjective appearance and objective reality, it holds the view that reality is 'ultimately ideal in character, and can be seen as a construct or creation of mere ideas, interpretations.'21 We relate to and understand the world through different sorts of language systems and it is this activity that is the site of the real for conventionalism: It is a world constructed by theories alone. With no rational procedure of choosing between these theories or identifying a 'correct' one, with each theory being as valid as the next, the result is the relativism which is so popular with much of postmodernist thought. The problem with this theory of knowledge is that by making reality a function of language there is a gap between the discourse theory and the social reality that the theory seeks to address. This separation becomes, as Lovell again suggests:

the complete substitution of discourse analysis for analysis of social reality. Discourse analysis is never far from the temptation of treating social reality itself as a discursive other, rather than as a reality external to discourse but to which discourse refers.22

Critical realism then rejects most of empiricist and conventionalist arguments as inadequate, but it does acknowledge that certain elements within these theories have some use value. The empiricist identification of the real solely with what can be experienced is seen as false, but critical realism does share with it the belief that there is an external world or independent reality which can be known. Similarly with conventionalism, critical realism rejects the belief that nothing can be said or known about the external world and that language is the site of the real while conceding that 'knowledge is socially constructed and that language, even the language of experience is a social construct and theory impregnated.'23

So critical realism is a theory of knowledge which states that there is an objective material world which is knowable, or in the language of classical German philosophy, 'reality has a being-in-itself, an objective being, independent of consciousness, which at the same time is graspable by consciousness'.24 But how can we know this reality, the relationship between the subject and object, if for a large part the empiricist and conventionalist accounts are to be rejected? The answer lies in the concepts of materialism and the dialectic.

Materialism in its simplest form states that everything in the world is constructed of matter. Sean Sayers observes:

All reality is material, there is nothing in the world but matter and motion. Consciousness is matter organised and acting at its most complex and developed level...this is philosophical (or ontological) materialism25

and insists that 'there is no consciousness independent of matter'.26 It thus follows that things and ideas about things are not and cannot be separate or unrelated though this may appear to be so in experiential reality. The dialectic is based upon the idea of the concrete unity of opposites'27 and is, at least for Marx and Hegel who developed the concept, 'no magic formula. On the contrary, it is a fully developed, systematically worked out philosophical theory and view of the world.'28 Central to the notion of the dialectic is the unity of the subject and the object through knowledge. It acknowledges the fact that the subject and object are both 'distinct but also united'29, meaning that relations between the two can hold both united and contradictory positions at the same time.

A classic Marxian example of this would be the objective and subjective nature of the working class. As an object it generally accepts the ideology and values of the ruling class and therefore its relatively unimportant and seemingly naturalistic position30 in society, but as a subject it is a class which has a central role in the capitalist economic structure, where everything in that society is fundamentally based around the extraction of surplus value at the point of production in the form of profits. If the working class becomes fully aware of this, it is able to penetrate the dominant ideology of the state and become self-conscious of what Marx would call its 'historic role,'31 thereby transforming itself from the object of history into the subject of history. It is materially the same working class which hold both positions simultaneously and in contradiction. Moreover, it is the first state which contains the potential for the second within itself. We can see that there is a relationship between subject and object beyond that of appearances and it is in the understanding of the dialectic and the material that enables the penetration of the object and thus reveal the subject.

So critical realism is the understanding that beneath surface appearances and experiential reality are relations 'which interact and interpenetrate and which are constantly being transformed into each other in the course of practical activity and in the development of consciousness and knowledge.'32 The relations of subject and object have a dynamic unity, but can also be in opposition at the same time and it is this that the dialectic allows us to understand. It provides us with the theoretical tools on the basis of which we can begin to understand the world, are able to conceive or 'reveal' the underlying structures and relations of the material world and thus change it. These structures and relations are not, as Roy Bhaskar points out, 'spontaneously apparent in the observable pattern of events; they can only be identified through the practical and theoretical work of the social sciences'33 and to be able to penetrate these relations it is not just a matter of applying

either a set of substantive analyses or set of practical policies. Rather, it provides a set of perspectives on society (and nature) and on how to understand them. It is not a substitute for, but rather helps to guide, empirically controlled investigations into the structures generating social phenomena.34

It is this conception of realism which will provide the main point of orientation for this paper.

 Footnotes

9 ibid. p 158

10 Callinicos, A, 1989, p 145

11 Norris, 1996, p 168

12 It is, however, not too difficult to challenge some of these central tenets. The notion that there is no longer any 'real' or 'truth' for example, can be refuted by asking from what critical standpoint is this statement made? If, as Baudrillard remarks, we are now experiencing the 'demise of truth' or the 'eclipse of the real,' then his own position must be also included in this observation. If there is no longer any truth then his own observation must also be part of this 'no truth premise'- it is an untenable contradiction.

13 Norris, C, op.cit. p 182

14 ibid. p 183

15 Sayers, S, 1985, p 3

16 Bhaskar, R, 1989, p 2

17 Realism itself does not itself equal Marxism- but Marxism can be described as a realism. See Lovell T, 1980, p 9

18 ibid. p 10

19 Quoted by Lovell T, Ibid. p 23

20 Lovell T, ibid. p 23

21 Sayers, S, 1985, p xv

22 Lovell, 1980, p 29

23 Ibid. p 29

24 Sayers, S, 1985, p 35

25 Ibid. p 11

26 Ibid. p xv

27 Ibid. p 32

28 Marx, K, Quoted by Sayers, 1989, p 32

29 Sayers, S, op.cit. p 4

30 In today's postmodern culture even the recognition of the existence of a class society is something which is denied in some quarters-hence John Major's statement about a classless society. Of course, it can be argued he doesn't actually believe this himself but that this is for the benefit of its 'ideological effect' -the general perception of social reality.

31 Marx suggested that the only class capable of becoming fully aware of itself and its central role in the historical process was the working class and as such could be the only class which is capable in bringing about genuine socialist transformation and thus human liberation.

32 Sayers, S, 1989, p 15

33 Bhaskar, R, 1989, p 2

34 Ibid. p 3