We should not be looking to history as a catalogue of political positions which we can translate into contemporary practice, as if history was just some grand revolutionary laboratory. This transforms contemporary politics into an endless discussion over the minutiae of the past, and the politics of the past into a theater of shadow puppets, reflecting only the author's contemporary political concerns. In a similar vein, Frederick Bier criticised analytical historians of philosophy for using history as a veil for contemporary debates, transforming Kant, for example, into a 'cognitivist', or Hegel into a 'neo-Kantian', 'social epistemologist'.
This puppetmasters view of history, leads to an inability to comprehend the real historical process. If Hegel is made acceptable to contemporary philosophers by robbing him of his speculative abstractions and his 'absolute Spirit', how are we to make sense of the later development of the Hegelian school? Robbing the past of it's content ultimately leads to total impotence in understanding the present.
The process of history is not a closed one moving towards a definite preconceived end point. Contemporary Left Communist organisations might like to view the history of the 'Left' as moving inexorably towards the validation of their own positions. This would be to ignore all the elements of contradiction and opposition in that history. It means reading history backwards instead of forwards.
Men and women make history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing. The emphasis here should be on the fact that it is real men, and real women, in real circumstances, who are the ones making history, and not any ideological abstractions. To reduce the history of the period from 1914 to 1927, for example, to a history of various positions on parliament, the unions, the 'united front', the 'national and colonial question', would be to write a history of ghosts.
Taking a 'position' on this or that historical event - for or against 1917, for or against Brest-Litovsk, for or against the Spanish Civil War - is all too easy. All I need to do is make the decision, this or that. Nothing consequential emerges. On the other hand, when we begin to really look at, analyse and attempt to understand and explain events, countless difficulties emerge. This is the point at which theoretical production begins, as opposed to the formation of positions.
