“Let's Move On”: Bob Young's Contribution to Radical Science Concepts and Practices

‘Let's move on’ is a memorable phrase from Bob's comments in group discussions and articles. The phrase combined a friendly invitation with a sometimes scary challenge to contest and abandon conventional concepts. They were perpetuating systems of capitalist domination, variously disguised as neutral objectivity, as the natural order, as technoscientific progress. etc. His invitation meant a joint task to substitute different concepts and practices prefiguring a post-capitalist society. This meant collectively creating pathways and methods for such a future, while addressing anxieties about uncertainties. ‘Move on’ arose especially in discussions within the Radical Science Collective. The same phrase began his 1977 essay, ‘Science is social relations’, where he enjoined readers:

It is time to move on both in theory and in practice. … It is time that our theories and our lives expressed struggle towards socialism and prefigured that social order in the process (Young, 1977: 65).

Social order? Even for its advocates, a move towards a future socialist order was experienced as potential disorder - at once exhilarating and frightening. To inspire a transitional process, Bob formulated several aphorisms, e.g. “Make political work relations more personal and personal relations more political', and ‘Prefigure the ends in the means’ (pp. 99, 101). As pithy observations, these aphorisms were at once insightful, stirring, and unnerving, as noted by Maureen McNeil (this issue).

Bob's phrase ‘move on’ expressed a close engagement with his colleagues, readers, societal change and practices seeking to prefigure post-capitalist futures. In Gary Werskey's history of radical science generations as ‘three movements’, he compared Bob Young's role with J.D. Bernal's prominent role in the 1930s movement. Gary described Bob's role as follows:

As a thinker and writer on often highly abstruse subjects, Young had the gift of being clear and entertaining enough to keep you hard at work trying t