rebellion is at its core anti-capitalist, anti-state, anti-bureaucratic, anti-clerical, anti- ...... Through simple hedonism we preserve the best of nature for our heirs.
Debate Over Lunch: Second Edition Michael Joseph Francisconi Contents Introduction Introduction……………………………………………………….2 Part 1 Withering of the State……………………………………3 Radical Ethics ........................................................................4 Human Activity and Production ..............................................8 Issues and Social Movements ..............................................12 Legal, Reform, Revolution, Insurrection ................................22 Radical socialism ..................................................................39 The Revolution or Betrayal ...................................................44 Theory ...................................................................................48 Vanguard or Mass Movement………………………………….59 Workers and Farmers Reform, Revolution, ..........................72 Working Class Organizations: Labor is symbolic and natural 74 Standard Bibliography for Withering of the State……………..79 Part 2 Post War Marxists ..................................................................... I. Raya Dunayevskaya The Theory of Alienation: Marxʼs Debt to Hegel: (1983) 82 II. George Novackʼs Understanding History (Pathfinder, 1972)………………….83 III. Eric Fromm 1961 Marxʼs Concept of Man ................................................... 87 IV. Marshall Berman, 1963 Freedom and Fetishism……………………………..91 V. Gajo Petrović 1965 Reification……………………………………………………93 VI.István Mészáros 1970 Marxʼs Theory of Alienation……………………………94 Part 3 The Dialectic, Humanism and Consciousness……………………………..97 Epicurus and Modern Socialist Revolution………………………………………….98 The Universal Unity of Consciousness…………………………………………….101 Agency, Consciousness and the Dialectic…………………………………………104 The Universal Again…………………………………………………………………..107 Resistance is the Renaissance………………………………………………………114 Marxist or Existentialist………………………………………………………………..119 Reason and Empathy………………………………………………………………….126 Dialectic as Humanism…………………………………………………………………130
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Introduction I was born March 8, 1947 into a railroad family. I had two major passions in my early teens: the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy. With his assassination and then the failure to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the summer of 1964, I lost all mooring with Party politics. The following May 1965, I graduated from Pocatello High School; I was eighteen, registered for the draft, and the nation was at war. Mr. Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, the sending the troops into the Dominican Republic, completed my crisis of faith; I was no longer a Democrat. My history is an intellectually personal history of the awakening and growth of a radical in love with the wonderment of the radical life-style. This is a story of an insurrection and rebellion on the limits placed upon human essential quality in a bourgeois society. This rebellion is at its core anti-capitalist, anti-state, anti-bureaucratic, anti-clerical, antipatriarchal, and anti-positivist. This rebellion has continually evolved as age brought more insight and wisdom. One tradition replaces another not that they are outgrown or abandon, but they lead naturally by life experiences to new way of dealing with life. This is a rebellion born in experience and not abstraction of an isolated rebel. The early days of my youth Camus provided an image of the isolated rebel fighting for human dignity stripped of all meaning in a world given over to the absurd. Particularly because of the rebellion that was the 1960ʼs, I soon discovered the philosophy of the Russian Anarchists of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Berkman. With the collapse of the movement in the early 1970s the veterans and history of the old left became beautiful beckons in the night. The Industrial Workers of the World, Socialist party USA, Communist Party USA, and the Socialist Workers Party became my foundation. The culture to which I belong is related to the left wing of the Socialist Party of America during the first two decades of the twentieth century, Industrial Workers of the World from its founding in 1905 to 1924, the Communist Party USA 1928 to 1939 during both the third period and the popular front, and the Progressive Party Presidential campaign of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor in 1948, the last hurrah of the popular front before the Dark ages of the Domestic Cold War suffocated the creative soul of America from which we never fully recovered. The following is a love letter to the heroes of my life. Part 1 is the discussion centering on the goals of revolution as seen in the early days of the 20th century. Part 2 the meaning of human dignity. Part 3 what it means to be human. An earlier version of the first two parts appeared in Debate Over Lunch, Trafford publishing. Because it has been entirely rewritten and a new section added I decided to also change the name.
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Part 1 Withering of the State The debate between Anarchism and all other socialist traditions is about the role of the state in the transitional period between capitalism and communism. I hope to show here that all socialists are anarchists and all anarchists are socialists. The debate is over the time frame for the movement from a socialist revolution when working people have control over government and the economy is run through public agencies for the democratic needs of all. Even those socialists and social democrats that believe that a stateless modern society is impossible, use this model as an ideal type to measure the progress made towards a better and more humane society. Real democracy and not hierarchy is what is the final goal. The goal of socialism is to bring the economy home to all the people. At first socialist put social responsibility and designing an economy to meet the needs of all of the people at the forefront. Followed closely by public control over the key financial companies, industries and social services. This is but a step that hopefully will lead to increasing direct participatory democracy at the shop floor level, in the community, the nation and globally. The economy belongs to all of us. We need to see a revival of radical militant rank and file unions, civil rights and civil liberties organizations, client rights groups, womenʼs rights, environmental, gay and lesbian, consumer and community activists. The goal is an economy that meets the needs of all the people particularly the poor and most vulnerable.
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Radical Ethics Simple morality is used to lead the exploited to passivity in the face of oppression. This morality maintains existing relations of exploitation by placing moral responsibility on the shoulders of the poor and exploited, while the rich and powerful get their just rewards. A morality of this type with the destruction of the lives of the poor is unchallenged. The property relations that condemns the poor to a shorten life of misery is perfectly moral, while the poorʼs resistance to that suffering is immoral. (Eugene Kamenka 1962) Morality is set in a specific historical setting defined by law and religion to protect and defend existing power relations. The existential being creates a recurrent pattern pertaining to authenticity with having actual continuation over time. In time the rule of the rulers are seen as universal. This can only be shattered by the essential coming together of a rational self-possessed assessment and class agitation leading to opposing the system of dividing society into a rigid system of social distinctions and that we make a great effort to fight against all forms of inequality. (George G. Brenkert, 1983) Only by actively challenging the existing moral principles through collective action can decency as defined by the privileged as is use to control the general public and it use of principled teachings and unquestioned right beliefs be confronted. (Paul Mattick 1965) Developing an alternative ideology drives the struggle for emancipation forward. This redefines the moral as what meets the needs of the poor and powerless. The old society becomes an obstruction to the decent life as now explained as the essential nature of what it is to be human with dignity. Old morals are uncovered and set forth as a lie standing in the way in the making of the future society. (Paul Mattick 1965) With this movement towards the realization of the creation of a life that becomes the most we can live, with the greatest fulfillment in our Epicurean garden in which we indulge in every day as a ceremony and a celebration a passionate love affair with existence. Anything else falls far short and must be overthrown, the revolution is and everyday experience is also a permanent part of that life. With each new triumph we find ourselves fighting new forms of alienation and isolation, new forms of exploitation and manipulation, domination and oppression. There can never be political freedom with social and cultural sovereignty and all of the above with out economic self-determination through collective control over the cooperative production by the direct producers in public ownership of the resources necessary for production, survival, subsistence, and the full enjoyment of life. (George G. Brenkert, 1983) Through labor we manifest our humanity as connected with nature, this is the creative and artistic materialization of our citizenship of life. We wage laborers we are stripped of this genuine and real meaning of life to become little more than raw materials for industry. Work is no longer an inspired and enjoyable emergence of happiness, but becomes a necessary gravity to be undergone required in order to survive. Nature our home, our true quintessence and our maternal connection with life becomes an angered hostile force to be conquered by others and used to subjugate us into submission. Isolated and alienated ultimately we are torn from our community to die alone in the deserts of a forgotten time and a forgotten land. The above outlining the nature of alienation of labor becomes no more than the consideration of the temperament of disaffection from the gratification of subsistence in
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an existential sense by the worker. This is a simple tautology and does not give us a universal moral code. For the owner of property need in the production of the necessities of life any threat to that property is wrong. To a business owner theft of property is wrong. These are seen as theft and robbery is always wrong. To a worker particularly a class-consciousness worker property is a result of wealth and wealth is the result of surplus value, which is only produced by the worker. Thus, the work often feels all wealth is theft and property that comes from that wealth is also theft. Morality reflects in this case class positions and what meets the interests of the conflicting classes. This is why it is important for the capitalist to represent their particular morality as a universal morality. If successful the worker will accept the dominant morality of the capitalist and no more need be said. If not there appears to be a conflict of right against right. It is not however simple moral relativism. In the conflict between moralities that which expands opportunities to have a better life to ever increasing numbers of and classes of people I will argue is more moral than the older more restrictive morality. Liberal Revolution replaced the ideal rank based upon birth and divinely sanctioned with rank based upon earned merit and at least some hope of equality of opportunity. This is an improvement. Yet, with private property, restriction to access to the resources need for survival, inherited wealth and accumulation of wealth inequality is still guaranteed and will seem to those operating under an innate impediment as unwarranted thus morally wrong. With equality of outcome in the necessities of life and nominal level differences in life choices replacing ordinal and interval level differences in rank, income or life chances it will be argued here morality has been made better. Peter Kropotkin in his outline of Mutual Aid as an evolutionary strategy seems a better moral fit than survival of the fittest. Moralizing by the more restrictive ruling class is not moral. The advantaged will be liberated along with the oppressed by the more inclusive and democratic ethics of equality. (Eugene Kamenka 1962) All ethics are situational ethics. That moral codes are embedded in a particular historical and cultural setting. Moral codes represent the interests of a particular class in that setting, and often are presented as a general and universal truth. In fact one class will benefit more than the existing competing classes. This is not to say all moral codes are equivalent. The larger the classes protected by the principled instructions on life the closer it comes to also protecting the humanitarian concerns of the opposing classes, as well a offering a chance for liberation to the classes suffering oppression. We are coming closer to understanding the basis of a “proletarian” ethic, the class of a wage earner’s moral guidelines. A community of individuals, in which individuality is more fully realized through the near complete rejection of egoistic individualism, is now realized. This is a situation of mutual aid between members of the community, and a reciprocal confirmation, with an innate reflectively inspired interaction between this community and nature. As soon as the worker becomes alienated from work, from the product, from nature and from other people labor becomes a labor of personal sacrifice, of humiliation. Under this set of circumstances someone must suffer so someone may benefit. Only under the state of affairs of mutual aid flanked by citizens of the nation, abided by a common validation, with an inborn thoughtfully educated communication connecting this group of people and natural world can humanity move to a more complete morality. This does not mean that any ethical system can be achieved before the material preconditions for its insights exists in the historical and social environment.
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At each stage in our analysis of morality it will be noted, that goals are nothing to be jeered at as a basis of morality. While end and means interact, morality does not predate the material reality that gives rise to. There cannot any other meaningful ethics other than situational ethics. Eternal truths and universal ethics are both dogmatic and dictatorial as well as corrupt and unprincipled. Before we can attain a more universal ethical code moving from family to clan to tribe to nation to humanity and finally to the living planet we needed to attain a material reality that is based upon an increasing interdependence that we are aware of an ever larger community. If our world consciousness stops with the next mountain range we will not develop a humanist worldview. If the capitalist income is derived from the labor of others surplus value and economic equality is seen only as a Marxist emblematic fairy tales. From the view of the wageworker socialism, communism, worker councils, worker self-management, and the cooperative commonwealth federation frees the worker and the capitalist. ((Eugene Kamenka 1962)) Even this over looks the fact that morality set in a particular environment setting. What is an evil in one setting is a virtue in another. To kill bacteria to save a patent is a virtue even it means of taking the life of the bacteria. To eat meat we take the life of what is eaten, animal protein can in improve the health of people who eat meat. Meat eating it appears played a role in human evolution. To take an innocent life we can all agree is wrong. (George G. Brenkert, 1983) The highest form of morality is the end result of struggle, even class struggle, often set in a revolutionary setting. Yet the highest form of morality is only the raw materials for future struggles of yet another class who becomes the limitations for their own needs as the older morality represents the best expression of the class now as the exploiters. (Raya Dunayevskaya 1971) According to Leon Trotsky Historically ethics the creation of chronological societal evolutionary occurrence. With morals there is not any unchanging principles that would complete universal social welfare in all places and all times. Competing philosophies represent rival interests that are conflicting and morality like all ideology a class temperament suited to the needs of a specific class. Each warring class represents it particular ethical code as the best for society as a whole. The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions patronized by religion, philosophy, or that hybrid which is called “common sense”. The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception. The exposure of this deceit which retains the tradition of thousands of years is the first duty of a proletarian revolutionist. (Trotsky: 1938) Science, common sense, truth and logic each will express themselves differently when used in different setting by different group while fighting for their goals. While classes stand opposed with enough strength to challenge the authority of the ruling elites compromise is offered to maintain control at top levels of the upper class over the rest of society. Where there is not enough power to force concessions form the leaders of the
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social whole, the ruling class can openly use terror to keep control and justify it using their own universal moral codes. If this wasnʼt enough simple commonsense simple or the logic of animal survival is distorted into justifying the authority of the existing state of affairs. “Politics makes strange bed fellowsʼ goes the tired cliché, yet this opens up the dilemma faced by all sincere revolutionaries. With out a genuine popular front all we have immature political posturing. But, do we justify working with those allies that ultimately will be harmful to us? Are differences swept under the steps in our basement so as not to make our allies self-conscious? There can be no final answer. Yet these are part of our day-to-day decisions. Openness is suggested and when necessary express candidly our position on both the long term and short-term aims. It can never be easy to be cooperative and honest at the same time, but success requires just this kind of concern.
Radical Ethics Eugene Kamenka 1962 The Ethical Foundations of Marxism Published: by Routledge & Kegan Paul George G. Brenkert, 1983 Marxʼs ethics of freedom publ. Routledge & Kegan Paul Paul Mattick 1965 Humanism and Socialism International Socialism (1st series), No.22, Autumn 1965, pp.14-18. Trotsky: 1938 Their Morals and Ours The New International, Vol.IVNo.6, June 1938, pp.163-173.
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Human Activity and Production Human activity in the production of the means of existence is basic to all moral practice, and this we call labor and is the essential groundwork for all of other activities, including the spiritual. Our moral philosophy is grounded in this theory. Theory comes from the practical struggle to gain knowledge of our world, in order to gain more power over our lives within the social-material environment. Knowledge depends upon behavior. Production of our material life is the most important and is the ultimate foundation of our awareness of the circumstances surrounding our lives cultural and physical. These are the properties of our total environment. Its basic nature and essential quality of its attributes, is the groundwork of the component elements of our culture. The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans rest with the idea we are always a part of nature because we are but one part of the physical nature of the world (Mao 1966: 1-2). Communities are people cooperatively interacting with nature. We as individuals and members of the community take from nature the resources necessary to live. Through our cooperative labor our survival becomes possible. Through this cooperation not only our mere survival, but also the highest spiritual and cultural elegance is consummated. But to live and to achieve culture we must have access to the necessary resources for survival. This becomes the foundation of all other democratic struggle. In class society the equal access to the necessary resources to survival is erased. Different classes have different relations to the means of production, and thus have different ethics representing these conflicting relationships. This continuing struggle between the competing economic and social classes has a deep sway on the growth and change of understanding. As a member of a specific class, thinking itself is a reflection of that class. History becomes a distortion of interpretation, instead of having a history we have several histories all grounded in the ideology of a specific class. The political and economic elite controls the telling of history for all classes. The morals of the working class demands telling their own side of the story and being told in the words of the working class (Trotsky 1938). The questions of truth or falsity for the working class depends on the affect in developing its own theory and the relationship between this theory and the practice of gaining power over our own lives. To attain the expected accomplishments through our actions we must bring our ideas into conformity with laws of the actual physical and social world. Knowledge cannot be separated from practice. Theory and practice is the necessary marriage of all known reality. Theory guides our practice and from our practical activity theories develop. Morality is tied both to our subjective needs and our objective understanding of our universe. Through this connection between the theory and practice our actions lead to more authority over our lives. In this way both the objective and subjective manifestations of our needs can be understood and dealt with. Through a deeper understanding of the universal and the specific of our humanity and our struggles we can gain an understanding of the basic nature of our existence in its entirety, along with the internal links and the inherent arrangement of things in our environment. By way of understanding and deduction we are able to formulate reasonable insights based upon our discoveries. From these insights our morality is formed and not divinely revealed (Mao 1966: 2-7; Kropotkin 1925: 293-300;
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Kropotkin 1970: 109-113). Democracy is a complicated word, meaning something radically different to a socialist than to a liberal. With the liberal revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries democracy became limited to universal suffrage, once achieved it become a completed project. The limited legitimate channels of political activity established the arena of democracy. Any expression of the community concerns out side of this arena with illegal and immoral consequences must be considered. With the growth of the professional classes of the 20th century was added to, but remained on the margins and somewhat outside of the democratic arena. Professional autonomy, limits democratic control of the job site by offering the expert independence from the interference by bosses as well as the general public over the job of the specialist. The radical view is that democracy is an on going historical process that has only just begun. Democracy is never a finished product. Democracy is a life style not limited to politics or the legitimate political channels. If those legitimate channels further popular power over our collective lives, then they must be used. If these channels inhibit democratic expression of all the people then they must be opposed. To the radical, democratic revolutions are built one upon the other in a neverending series. In Western Europe liberal revolutions began the fight for the vote, equality before the law, merit replacing rank, capitalism, private property, and individualism. This forms the basis of the ideology of political democracy. The labor movement particularly socialism formed a new ideology that found liberal democracy to limiting. Whether moderately or radically economic democracy must be added to political democracy. Public control over the entire economy became the first order of the day. From this foundation other issues would follow to extend power over our own lives. Other social movements of the 20th century were modeled after the socialist movement. Each found liberal democracy to limiting. The feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements are cases in point. The third world national liberation movements are an attempt for democracy where there were no liberal revolutions. The first stage of anti—imperialism is followed by the struggle for socialism. Socialism is the materialization of democracy. Without socialism no form of democracy is possible. Without democracy socialism is a bureaucratic sham. Liberal capitalist democracy is only political democracy at the most superficial level. Political democracy is carefully designed to blunt popular opposition to class rule. Political democracy demands the equitable distribution of power. Such a demand remains utopian without the equitable distribution of the rewards of production. Economic democracy demands this equitable distribution, and only by insuring that the resources necessary for this production remains under the collective control of all the people will economic democracy become possible (Mao 1971: 467-470; Allende 1973: 31-34; Che 1987: 196-202; Kautsky 1964: 25-58). Just as economic democracy is impossible under the conditions of a capitalist economy, so also the existence of political democracy is impossible under the circumstances of bureaucratic socialism. Bureaucratic socialism is at its core hostile to political democracy and as such economic democracy becomes impossible. If either the political or the economic is lacking in the term democracy there is no social democracy and with out social democracy either the political or economic true manifestations of democracy become impossible. After all is said and done a bureaucratic socialist state is closer to becoming democratized than a capitalist republic because the formal ownership has been eliminated already and would be easier to bring the productive resources under the collective control of society for the benefit of all the people. What is to be
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restricted under democratic socialism are privilege and not the existing political rights (Luxemburg 1961: 68-72, 77-80, 89-108; Lenin 1965: 47-53, Trotsky 1972: 45-64, 273290; Trotsky 1965: 39-46). Marx would claim the administrative control of the direct producers over the production process couldnʼt live with the continuation of personal economic servitude of the workers. When labor becomes emancipated, every human being becomes a worker, and productive labor will no longer be a characteristic of class. By transforming individual property into social property workers transform the means of production from a method of indenturing and exploiting labor into an apparatus of the free association of labor. Workers must work out their own emancipation through their own agency, passing through a series of long struggles reconstructing environments and people. These workers have no principles to be realized except one to release the substance of the newly forming society for the benefit of all the people, ending the antiquated disintegrating effects of capitalist rule (Marx 1940: 60-62).
Socialism, according to Luxemburg, encourages the oppressed to take the most active stand possible in a resolute manner without hesitation. This should be done in such a way as to guarantee the most comprehensive public form based on the foundation of the most dynamic, involvement of the entire community. Political decisions should be made with the unconstrained participation of the greater portion of the people, always moving towards a more complete democracy (Luxemburg 1961: 76). Conventional capitalist democracy is a soft thin shell of freedom over a large hard core of inequality. The formal equality claimed the above is the silk underwear covering the putrefied tissue of an economy based upon exploitation. Socialist democracy begins with the eradication of class rule. Satisfaction within liberal democracy leads to the stagnation of democracy and preservation of privilege (Luxemburg 1961: 77). Socialism begins with an organized effort to expand democracy, to strengthen and encourage popular participation in public life, to awaken in people their collective potential, to become aware of their capacity for achievement. It was held by Luxemburg working people had the capacity to acquire popular solutions to social problems by gaining control of the political machinery of a society and all of its economic resources (Luxemburg 1961: 22). The struggle for democracy internationally is the basic responsibility of socialist in all countries. It is solely on this foundation that the ultimate significance of the determined international movement of the proletarian revolution can become capable of success, without this collective action internationally as the necessary support for any local action, indeed even the greatest sacrifices of the radical workers will become muddled in a labyrinth of contradictions (Luxemburg 1961: 28-29). Political rights are not calibrated by obscure expressions like “justice” as if given by God, but by the socialeconomic relationships for which it was designed. Justice meaning equity cannot happen in a social condition of economic inequality (Luxemburg 1961: 22). The working people, being not only the bottom, but also the most productive class, must free themselves only by canceling out all the sources of exploitation, oppression and injustice. It is the industrial working class who are both oppressed and exploited as a class, which is necessary for the existence of all the other classes. The wageworkers are the only class that continually expands in size, potency, and importance. Through our appreciation of the power of labor, the solidarity of workers internationally become
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ripe for the fight and the responsibility of rebuilding the world society. Only by accepting the predilection to carry on the struggle, will the final triumph of socialism become possible and this is necessary for freedom and for democracy if it is ever take root (Kautsky 1971: 4). With the evolution of class conflict between capital and labor, the State power presupposes the characteristic of the governmental authority of capital over labor. The state is the public enforcement established for social subjugation of the real producers. The state is a mechanism of class oppression. After every revolution characterizing a progressive stage in the achievement of democracy based upon class struggle, the directly autocratic aspect of the state become more apparent. The state in its determination to control the forces of production becomes more insolent and immodest in its total configuration. It is essential to overpower the bourgeoisie and overcome its opposition to true democracy. The component of control is now the preponderance of the toiling masses or the majority of the total population. Because the majority of the people overpower their oppressors, the special force of government in no longer needed. The state would then be in the process of withering away. Instead of the distinctive establishment of privileged minority, the majority itself can immediately accomplish all these services, and the more the functions of state power come under the control of the people as a whole the less is the need for the existence of a powerful state (Lenin 1970: 48-52). Radical knowledge and planning ability are things that can be achieved in the event that the passion is there to attain them, supposing of course the deficiencies are acknowledged while learning through action. This revolutionary activity is a movement in the direction of canceling out the mistakes of the past (Lenin 1973: 40). Without a radical ideology the struggle remains limited. The character of the initial struggle will grow only when that courageous struggle can be fulfilled only by a coterie that is directed by the most well developed theory (Lenin 1973: 29). Without a radical philosophy there can be no revolutionary social movement, or revolutionary activity. The part played by the forerunners who are the first opponents of social injustice can be completed only by an alliance that is directed by the most well developed ideology (Lenin 1973: 28-29). The influence of the workers and the labor movement is a challenge to the power elite because of the fact that the working class would be beginning to take their fate into their own hands (Lenin 1973: 43).
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Issues and Social Movements To begin with socialism was a mass movement, which soon grew beyond the working class. Only those who are not self-confident with their own association fear alliances. With an understanding of the contemporary circumstances, and of the environment surrounding the social movement comes valiancy and wisdom of the heart. No one should be afraid of to take part in an informed coalition with other groups or associates. This is true even with the people of questionable classes, according to Lenin. The political fact is that no party, whether it is a vanguard party or a mass party, can exist for long without association with other such political groups. To work with others on shared issues is primary to success. An essential necessity for any of that kind of an federation must be the total feasibility for the Socialist to bring to light to the working class as a whole and the radical workers in particular, that we must never lose sight of the long range goals while seeking short term objectives. Reforms in capitalist society are always temporary and the contradictions of capitalism undermine the long lasting success of those reforms. It must be remembered that it is to the advantage of the working class to understand that they have interests that are diametrically antagonistic to the interests of the capitalists and even sometimes even the professionals, selfemployed and small businesses. The professional must choose between alliances with one of the two major classes. The classes of professionals, small business and selfemployed craftsmen have no ideology of their own. In nearly all circumstances, however the middle class welfare are even more repressed by the large capitalist than the working class (Lenin 1973: 19). The significance of the working class for the struggle for socialism rests completely on the role of its activity being the direct producer in corporate monopoly capitalism, which is enormously and highly concentrated in the centralized production on a scale not known before. The capitalist retains its political superiority, which is attached to its economic supremacy, because it controls access to the resources necessary in production. Those who control the means of production control the means of political domination. Control of the means of production will be kept out of the hands of the working class at all costs. All reforms will have this as its primary logic. The means of production control exclusively by the capitalist can be set into motion producing only by the employment of the working class. The workers must at all costs be reduced to only a material force of production like the machines used by the workers. The worker is to be seen as input costs, a simple extension of the tools used in production. The human capital i.e. employees has a will of its own and can hold up production by refusing to cooperate in its own exploitation. The organized working class in large-scale industry can stop the entire economy; the central role of these workers is critical fort the advancement of socialism. Small workshops or farms can never have that kind of influence on the national economy in its activity (Trotsky 1969: 93—95). Actual tangible and essential conditions of a technology and material resources to support an absence of personal material gain are required before socialism can advance along its natural path. The precondition is created by monopoly capitalism, the greediest form of capitalism. Even though the means of production are privately owned, class consciousness of the socialized forces of production in large scale industry leads to an expanded feeling of solidarity once class understanding grows to an international movement (Trotsky 1969: 82). At a certain level of economic concentration the working class can seek to attain
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more than simple reform over the conditions of work. Radicals in the revolution in order to acquire power must set for itself the goals that can be achieved, by contemplating the strength of the adversary and set up its strategies accordingly. Both subjectively the will to fight for equality by the workers, and the resolve to maintain privilege by the capitalists, is treated like a set of objective factors. So are support of the other classes, the power in control of military resources on both sides, international aid to both sides and the level of development of the economy. At some point only limited options are the issues that can be dealt with. If we do not take direct action then socialism will not happen. The capitalist by the objective forces in capitalism have the advantage. Without the active will of the working class and their allies we can never win anything. Socialist psychology grows only when the objective conditions make socialism possible, and continues to grow as the struggle for socialism advances, and socialism ultimately become the precondition for the complete socialist psychology (Trotsky 1969: 96—99). Because the workers are the most exploited of the classes under capitalism, they cannot free themselves without abolishing exploitation in general. Because the working class is the most important class in capitalist production they can only grow in strength once properly organized. Socialism is the primary mechanism for the freeing of the laboring classes from oppression. With out an ever-expanding practical democracy, socialism is inconceivable (Kautsky 1964: 1-2). The two statements above show that both Lenin and Kautsky agreed on the necessary leadership of the working class, and the need to form alliances with other oppressed groups. Their disagreement was based upon the nature of that leadership, and the degree of mass participation in the central organs of the party. Social movements have internal roots, and are a part of a nations particular history. The social movement of any country must be understood within the historical context of that country (Cabral; Luxemburg). Most social movements begin modestly in its vision, some of them become more comprehensive, elaborate, and radical. A radical coalition with established liberalism, while sometimes necessary, limits the possibilities of its accomplishments. Radical social movements must move beyond these narrow limits if it is to grow and survive. Radicals, on the other hand, can become isolated if they refuse to work with reformist coalitions when the need arises. These coalitions are usually necessary at the beginning of a movement. Many moderate socialists often feel it is a mistake to go beyond these coalitions. To work with reformist coalitions merely provide a foundation for further social change. The strength of an alliance or popular front is not only cooperation, but also the recognition of the differences (Luxemburg 1970). The working class is the only class capable of emancipating the exploited position of the poor farmer. Only the workers can lead society toward equality, democracy, end of coercion, end of the domination by the church, expropriation and redistribution of wealth of the capitalist (Trotsky 1969: 71). The working class can gain power only through a popular rising, national devotion, cooperation, and public spirit. The radical working class will become the government of the people as the only leader against privilege, totalitarian government, antiquated, brutality of a market economy and private property (Trotsky 1969: 75). Radical workers in the revolution will find support in the conflict between rich and poor peasant, farm workers and the capitalist farmers, “progressive villagers”, and those whose access to the lands are being lost (Trotsky 1969: 76). The main bone of contention between the revolution and the small farmer, at first at least is collectivism and internationalism (Trotsky 1969: 77).
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The outcome of any revolution is born from internal contradictions, yet its success or failure depends upon long-term international trends. A world economy with a market ideal can overpower a national economy no matter how revolutionary. The revolution either simply democratic or democratic and socialist cannot escape this logic. Trotsky, Luxemburg, and Cabral all saw this truth in their respective revolutionary struggles. Each revolution has an important impact on any and all revolutions that follow. Socialist of all countries must maintain a deep sense of international solidarity. If not the forces of a highly organized market economy can prove more powerful than any socialist country can cope with, i.e. Cuba in the 1990ʼs (Luxemburg 1970). International solidarity and national struggles are a necessity born out by the fact that capitalism is a highly integrated world system. Only through this unity can socialism ever develop and survive. The collapse of socialist economies around the world in the 1990ʼs prove the age of national economies is forever gone. Even the most sincere struggle of national liberation is doomed before it ever starts. Luxemburg and Trotsky saw this following the Bolsheviks coming to power in Russia. Then it seemed to many hopeful revolutionaries as overly pessimistic, today it cannot be denied. Uniting all the nations of the world jointly with a distinct all encompassing mode of production and distribution with its corresponding commerce, capitalism has transformed the whole world into but one and only one economic and political organic structure. Without unbroken assistance of the working class outside of Russia and without the success of establishing Revolutionary Governments in other lands also aiding the Russian Revolution, the working class lost power in Russia its political power was transitory. Without an international solidarity no socialist revolution can succeed. The unlimited political rule of the toiling masses cannot be established, economic control of industry by the workers remains a dream. The collectivist dream will remain just out of reach (Trotsky 1969: 105—107). The capitalist will without a historical understanding of its own foundations and the caustic groundwork of its expansion. Copy that organization of its growth even if that impairs its own totality and the foundation of the existence of a market economy. The capitalist gaspingly hold tight to anything that will save its property no matter how menacing this is to the rest of society particularly laboring people and their allies. Ultimately the capitalist will protect its property no matter what risk this is to neo-liberal economics or their own political power even if this entails sacrificing their democratic ideals. Lasciviousness and lewdly the capitalist will go after any and each reactionary group or social energy that worships with total idolatry private property (Trotsky 1969:108). Capitalism expands beyond what even the world economy can maintain, and only by expanding human misery can the profit of private property continue to grow. The less the revolutionary working class wait for the appearance of liberal democracy to give it freedom the less it has to barter away its essence to capital for the illusion of reform. The clearer it becomes that the workers should know what they really need the less will these same workers have to accommodate to the fanciful sluggishness and mawkish ludicrous drool of the professional class and their repugnance of exclusive deliverance and xenophobic individualism. The battle of the workers becomes increasingly inapplicable for liberal goals. The more aware the workers are of their separation from liberalism, the more determined the struggle for collective stewardship of the all the land and resources and the more intense the fight for egalitarian distribution becomes. Socialism breeds the determination to battle for the completion of socialism or true communism. No whining and bewailing but open fighting for socialism. The political
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leadership can and must fall into the hands of the workers. It is the only class that can lead the rest of society to true democracy (Trotsky 1969: 121). The liberal revolution is a revolution led by the capitalists and their intellectual supporters. If the working class party remains the left wing of the democratic front the socialist will have to face the fact that the capitalist class will oppose the workers in any reform that threatens property. Within the loyal opposition the issue of property cannot be challenged the threat of the reaction my unite worker and capitalist in the short run, but the ultimate enemy of the working class is capitalism. The farmers came to see that the liberals has much in common with the large land owner, the rural poorʼs only hope for radical land redistribution is with the working class coming to power (Trotsky 1969: 127). Industrialization is the generator of cultural evolution in modern times; the industrial working class is at the front of this change. The worldview of the workers becomes the theoretical foundation of socialism. The workers have a collective existence already. This is a worldwide movement and socialism can succeed in one nation only by expanding to other nations. The resources of the advanced must be shared with the underdeveloped ones for socialism to firmly take root in the less developed countries (Trotsky 1969: 144 145). Within the capitalist world economy there is uneven development between countries, and between industries within a particular country. National idiosyncrasy is the most common outcome of this unevenness. The uneven development of different branches of the local economy, different economic class within a country, social institutions, this is the expression of these peculiarities. National culture, civilization, countrywide prototypes is the consolidation of this unevenness; encumbrance to social progress is also a result of the unevenness (Trotsky 1969: 148). Power can be either progressive or reactionary, it all depends on which class is the ruling class. State power is always political, cultural and ideological; meaning the economic core of world capitalism is always an issue for radical socialist to deal with even in a workers state. Every country is integrated into the world market economy, and this dependency maybe lessened by a socialist revolution, but capitalism still must be struggled against even after the local revolution wins power (Trotsky 1969: 152). Between the establishment constitutional government and the socialist formulation of society there is a continuity of revolutionary progress. Through a process of continuous domestic struggle, all social relations are reshaped based upon the changes of international trends (Voyeikov 1994: 7). Capitalist development must grow and change with the businesslike growth of its foundation. Because of its irresolvable incongruity a market economy must enlarge its total control worldwide. At the core export markets grows in importance. Unmanageable expansion and everlasting emergency is primary to the underlying basis of capitalism. These flaws are the progress of capitalism and its ever-present impending doom and expiration. The energy of a collective economy is the expropriation of private corporate property and the nationalization of industry as well as planning of the uses of the means of production. Its weakness is its isolation (Trotsky 1969: 153). The underlying philosophy and political culture in specific are important, a political revolution is a component of this worldview, having an internal logic and movement that can and does interrupt unmistakably the course of the world economy, but does not exterminate its penetrating laws, ultimate causes and forces (Trotsky 1969: 154). Farming people because of their isolation, and the diversity of its social organization means the rural population can only choose between defending the revolutionary working class or reactionary capitalist class. Who wins the struggle
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between workers and capitalist in part determines who wins a separate struggle between rich farmer and poverty-stricken small family farms in the struggle in the countryside (Trotsky 1969: 194). The working class creates democratic administration or workers self-management collectives. These will guide the offensive accomplishments of the working masses, which attract into a confederation with the workers both the rural poor and the military. The absolute democratic sovereignty of all the people is a must and the predominant position of the working class is central. Uninterrupted persistent revolution means any and forms of privilege must be attacked by the working poor (Trotsky 1969: 209). In the less developed nations foreign capital is released promptly into large capitalintensive industry. This creates a large highly class conscious working class. There is no other candidate in this history to lead the revolution than the industrial working-class, even the liberal entrepreneur and professional will side with the old order reactionaries to protect its property. This means that the liberal democratic revolution proceeds at once into a socialist democratic revolution (Trotsky 1969: 215—220). Finance capital is the ruling faction of capitalist in all capitalist countries. This is true notwithstanding of the fact that technique of control differs greatly from country to country. With this being the case the workers within a socialist government will be different in each country. Even if participatory democracy is established, even though the revolutionary control of the democratic government of all working people is central to any real democracy (Trotsky 1969: 253). The peculiarity of a nation, which has not completed its democratic revolution, must begin with the type of movement that defines the important meaning of democracy that becomes the foundation for any specific approach of the revolutionary front line. With the level of capitalist development setting the tone for those leading to a largely revolutionary working class must be also concerned with broadminded principles. The solution for the majority of civil liberties leads to socialist humanism. Colonialism deepens oppression in the underdeveloped countries that leads in the direction of a national democratic revolution followed immediately by a socialist egalitarian revolution. The law of uneven development holds sway over the relations between nations and the forces and classes within the colonial state. An adjustment of the uneven processes of economics and politics can be determined only on a world scale. No country can build socialism within its own nationwide boundaries because productive forces of capitalism exist world wide, making socialism within a single country crippled from the start (Trotsky 1969: 254—255). It is likely for workers to come to power in an economically underdeveloped country before it will in a well-developed nation. Liberal Capitalist and middle classes becomes a reactionary and counter-revolutionary. Losing their liberal potential even before they win their own revolution capitalism is morally bankrupt. The pathfinder situation of the working class in any revolution means it is the working majority that pushes the revolution forward to the foremost limits that has a real chance to see significant improvements in their lives. All other classes of the toiling poor cannot help but follow the lead of working people who are aware of the source of the economic sufferings. Socialist revolution is but the logical outcome of a democratic liberal revolution abandoned by liberal capitalists. Socialist revolution in this way is permanent, liberal reform cannot solve the problems created by the liberal revolution. Socialist revolution is but a necessity that all reforms will lead to. Socialism will lead to collectivization, communism and the ultimate democratic fulfillment of all aspects of life. Socialism either opens the door to further radical revolutions or it collapses in on itself (Trotsky 1969: 180-182).
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Either the revolution will break the narrow national bounds, or it will remain limited in its possibilities. If the socialist revolution is overthrown than it will only be a capitalist social movement. The working class and the small farmers working together must overcome the worldwide counterrevolution if socialism is to survive. The revolution must continuously widen its scope at home and its base worldwide. The revolution must remain always revolutionary. All the resources of the state and economy within a socialist country must be thrown into the revolution. If the revolution slows down than it retreats and dies (Trotsky 1969: 184). The workers government can only be such a government when representatives of the working class command and direct the political institutions of the state. The masses led by the working class, in accord with the goal of socialism, must fortify its power and its will to widen the foundation of the revolution by incorporating allies, but the wage workers will always stand at the lead of the revolution (Trotsky 1969: 70). Once the socialist take power the demarcation between ultimate objective and its beginning aim fail to have any importance for setting up revolutionary policy, as every thing leads to the final goal of collective stewardship of the resources of production and equal distribution of lifeʼs necessities (Trotsky 1969: 78). National capital can only be understood in its relationship to a world market economy. Particular characteristics of the national economy are but an elemental piece of the world economy; this is why all communist or socialist movements must be part of an international struggle (Trotsky 1969: 148). Permanent revolution means an immediate passing from one to another form the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution. The revolution cannot give rise to any concession with any pattern of class rule, no permanent compromise with the liberal bourgeoisie only temporary holding patterns of reform. Not stopping the political democracy and civil rights of socialism and communism are always in the plan of action. To all revolutionaries all enemies of socialism on a world scale will be resisted in its every turn. Every subsequent step of the revolution is solidly grounded in the prior ones and only the workers can abolish class rule. Between the democratic revolution and socialism a condition of continuous revolutionary development (Trotsky 1969: 130— 132). Communist collectives are based upon the democratic participation of the actual producers becomes the arrangement of the day. This destroys the boundary between maximum and minimum programs. The main impediment is the relation of the material and social forces within society. Once the radical working class gains control over the revolution, they must keep the revolution within their grasps at all times driving the revolution forward or lose to some other class or faction of a class (Trotsky 1969: 80). Revolution like the rest of a radical working class culture is always cosmopolitan. In the beginning the urban workers were derived from many isolated village cultures. In this new industrialized setting the dislocated rural peoples form a new culture when they move to town to find work. The philosophy of socialism helps the radicalized working people to understand the trauma of the industrial environment. Radical urban industrial culture is born from both the lived experience of industrialization and the melding of several eccentric village cultures into something distinct. Revolution also feeds upon revolutions in other nations. While both national and international influences are important, this sharing of ideas between nations and applying them to unique national circumstances creates a new living culture. Finally, many urbanized radicals move back to their farm villages, bring with them new radical ideas that are intermingled with ancient tradition to create a culture of resistance in the countryside. These new traditionalist then
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move to town bringing together of new traditionalist of many distinct backgrounds to merge with the urban radical culture (Luxemburg 1970). Social movements are a collective reaction to shared disappointing conditions of the lived experiences of the participants. Evolving processes, of antagonism and adaptation come to pass when major social tendencies produces conflicts and public opposition based upon the psychological need for a refutation of the impact of that trend, upon traditional ways of doing things. Movements are born from a history of traumatic disruption and dissension. Market economies disrupt social protection over land, labor, and resources that are protected by tradition and social obligations. Powers beyond the gods destroy the traditional idyllic confidence with the past (Robert and Kloss 1974: 132; Wolf 1969: 276-302). Because of the deep perceived sense of injustice, which leads to the feeling of frustration. The old world is fallen apart and the new one is not acceptable. People simply lose faith in the established authority; there is weakening in confidence people have of the rulers. A new set of confrontational beliefs often made up of older traditional and imported radical ideas that in combination make sense to the oppressed emerges (Szymanski and Goertzel: 322-327; Heberle 1951: 1-19). Social movements continue to move toward even more radical demands, or it stagnates giving the reaction time to mobilize to regain, what the class of privilege sees as lost ground. The Revolution moves from small reform to ever more radical demands with each victorious change. Each failure is turned into bases for mobilization to regain ground lost to the Revolution and to move to even more radical demands. There can never be a middle ground of collaboration. With each issue being defined as revolutionary or reactionary there is never a middle ground. Revolution or reaction is the battle cry. The moderate is soon left behind to join the camp of the reaction, or caught in the crossfire. Power is the issue, with power comes justice, equality and freedom (Luxemburg 1970: 31-40; Heberle 1951: 23-37). Without a radical ideology there can be no revolutionary activity. The role from the very beginnings of that courageous struggle can be fulfilled only by a coterie that is directed by the most well developed theory (Lenin 1973: 29). The leadership according to Lenin is founded upon a sound theory that acts as a practical guide to action. To have a weak theory or no theory at all is the results of unawareness of the historical sociology of the reality people have to deal with in their struggle for emancipation. Imperialism is more than an abstract concept. It is not only a relationship between nations, but also a lived experience of real people. When an ample number of individual and collective experiences have been accumulated and analyzed it well provide the means the revolutionaries need to define a general line of thought and action with the aim of getting rid of the lack of historical understanding and following a strategy that has a hope of success (Cabral 1969: 92-93). Lenin claims workers left to their own devices will never evolve beyond simple trade unionism. The impulsive and spontaneous resistance of workers to their exploitation on the job is a substance of their basic nature, according to Lenin. From this rebellion while it remains undisciplined will exemplify not anything more or less than the awareness of their exploitation. It is an undeveloped pattern of social awareness; the workers have at this stage. Even these rudimentary disorders assert the cause of oppression in the hearts of the workers. This is natural result of the lives and working conditions of the workers. To the worker this spontaneous reaction serves as a wake up call for political understanding of a specific type and amount. The workers demonstrate the need for the radical leadership in the party to excite opposition between workers and
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employers. Lenin would further state that without a vanguard the workers can never appreciate the antagonistic and irreconcilable differences between their working class interests and the sum total current political-economy of the world market economy. They are not yet socialists. This must be brought to them by a small group of people who are educated, and privileged yet strongly identify with the dispossessed working poor. The working class by it self cannot go beyond the trade union identity or simple political democracy (Lenin 1973: 36-37). This is the core philosophy of the vanguard party. Both syndicalism and the position held by Rosa Luxemburg that workers learn socialism in the process of struggle and not brought in from the outside (Luxemburg 1971: 289). Socialism without democracy as a way to liberate the masses is unimaginable. Socialism is both the public organization of production, but also an extension of democracy. Socialism cannot be separated from democracy. Democracy requires public control. The working class being a majority of a highly industrial society can acquire political power by making use of existing freedoms. The despotism of capitalism has difficulty regulating the compulsion needed for the obstruction of democracy (Kautsky 1971: 1—11). The more firmly established political democracy is within a society, the longer democracy has historically been central to the politics of that society the more all minority groups have in protecting their rights. The more power in the hands of the people the more any minority can oppose the pretensions of any party which tries to retain control over the government at all costs. Any socialist party must make the protection of minorities extremely important. All current doctrine, be they based upon theory or strategy convictions of principle with assumption that minorities are important, many times in the foremost standards of that doctrine minority representation is its nucleus (Kautsky 1971: 33). Democracy is the key foundation for the making of a socialist society with its public control of production. Only through democracy does the working class gain the fully developed skills needed the form socialism and democracy test the maturity of the workers (Kautsky 1971: 42). The pure labor unionist and the revolutionary conspirator, according to Lenin, share the worship of spontaneity. The anarchist-syndicalist, Lenin claims, surrender to the myth of sudden inspiration of action of the pure working class struggle, while the terrorists give away to the impetuousness of the burning moral rage of the isolated intellectual. The intellectuals in their isolation are unable to join up with the struggle of the working class at the job site and in the working class communities. The intellectual is not part of the working class as a whole, unless they take on a working class identity and world-view (Lenin 1973: 92-95; Cabral 1969: 110). Union activity as well as running for office through legitimate elections are carefully thought about ways to educate and progressively show the path that the working class can learn to accept control over their lives and for the need to seize political power to obtain socialism. This working through the system is only a means of training workers to take control over the economy and political institutions of society for the benefit of the workers. The fight for socialism and total democracy cannot be limited to legal methods as the capitalist still control the rules of the game for their benefit. Through labor activism and parliamentary struggles the appreciation of class-consciousness for the workers to become more socialist is established, and the laboring class is organized as a class of workers. If legitimate political and union activity is foolishly considered as apparatus for the socialization of the capitalist economy, the revolutionary working class loses their capability to establish socialism and no longer prepare all the workers to take over
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society as a whole in their conquest of power (Luxemburg 1971: 85—86). As soon as the short-term practical gains become the principle aim of the working struggles, class-consciousness is lost, and the working class party stands in the way of the working class coming to power. All reforms no matter how it benefits the workers by improving their lives will still leave the capitalists in power and the ultimate cause of most societies ills the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Socialism will be the result entirely of the ever-growing disparity of rich and poor; weak and strong because of capitalism and the understanding by the workers that overthrow of these contradictions through social reorganization is inescapable (Luxemburg 1971: 87—88). The philosophy of Socialism, started growing out of the vision of those educated individuals who identified with the working poor. The Socialist Movement developed from historical and economic theories that were refined by the intellectualʼs representatives of the class with property (Lenin 1973: 37). Bakunin held that the freeing from oppression of the worker must be the responsibility of the workers themselves, and not an intellectual vanguard (Bakunin 1971: 295). It would be terrifying for all people if a small group of party intellectuals had any real authority, beyond persuasion. All experts tend to exaggerate their importance, and any professional who believe in their own BS is of course a tyrant. Education is for all the people, and both the teacher and student continuously change roles, as we all learn from well thought out experience. Theory is created out of lived experiences. Minority rule is minority rule, and is based upon the unfounded faith of the stupidity of the masses (Bakunin 1971: 295-332). In reality both Lenin and Bakunin are right, yet socialism cannot be socialism unless it resonates with the lived experience of the poor and working people. The goal of the revolution is a collective society; policy will be chosen that will shorten the path to socialism. The goal of all reforms within the minimum program is modest improvement in workers lives as soon as possible. Each compromise will be the foundation for further struggles; each victory and each reform will be used to further the long-term goals of socialism. Political democracy remains shallow and incomplete without moving toward economic democracy and finally political democracy there is no political freedom with wage slavery. With the ultimate slogan of expropriation without compensation the long rang goals are kept alive (Trotsky 1969: 100—101). It is the objective conditions that create the class division of society, the working class is a class in itself, but not yet a class for itself, only through its awareness does a class become a class for it self by fighting the interest of the working class as a class (Marx 1963: 173-174). Marx leaves debatable where the consciousness of a class as a class comes from, leaving wide-open Leninʼs theory of socialism coming from the outside. Marx clearly had in mind overall class interest occurs when one class confront in an antagonist way another class. Class struggle if fact if active, then conflicts will develop within the already existing discord that is readily available between two or more classes (Marx 1947: 82-95; Marx 1968: 51; Bukharin 1969: 292-293, 297). This makes it seem likely socialism is an indigenous working class phenomenon and not brought in from the outside like Lenin assumes. When we speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, we are talking about within the shell of the older society, the elements of a newer one develops, the decay of the old ideas is replaced by newer revolutionary ones (Marx 1968: 51). The correct revolutionary ideas are important, and
the wrong ones dangerous debate becomes important in the eyes of the participants.
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Legal, Reform, Revolution, Insurrection Legal reform and revolution are distinct considerations in the progress of class struggle which shape and supplement each other yet restrain each other jointly. Every legal constitution is the product of revolution. In this relationship revolution is the creation and legislation is the political articulation of that creation. Reforms can only carry out the order bequeathed by the driving forces of the last revolution and only within the setting of the social arrangements created by the last revolution. Their basic nature and the issues of their appropriate specific possibilities distinguish revolution and reform from each other. The gist of this is that one will add to what already exists and the other radically creates something new. No code or customs in the nature of humanity require the workers to succumb to the bewitchment of capitalism, only the need to eat because workers lack access to the means of existence. The necessary resources of production belonging to the capitalist force the free worker to work for the capitalist or die. The market enslaves the worker, not the law. Humans become commodities used up in production and thrown away (Luxemburg 1917: 115). Stretching out of the problems of capitalism are in part the result of limiting working class struggles to only the legitimate channels. The essence of revolution is to recognize this and to move between legal and illegal activities with the utmost of freedom. Inequality and the total of capitalist production must be challenged defiantly. The extremes of capitalism continue to grow world wide making all of us part of the same struggle (Luxemburg 1971: 89). Lenin because of the fact of the secret police of the Tsar, could not see that struggle of the workers in their own lived everyday experience would have the raw materials to become radical activist and sociologist or anthropologist. As Gramsci repeatedly pointed out every class would have its own intellectuals. Whenever any class comes into existence it creates its own set of intellectuals, which give the class its identity, and awareness of its self as a class (Gramsci 1971: 5-6). In the backward Russia of the Tsar in the early 1900ʼs only the industrial working class was organized or strong enough to challenge authoritarian centralized command of the state (Trotsky 1969: 66). Socialist should show their typical democratic loyalties in the company of all the people, without ever hiding their radical socialist convictions that are necessary for democracy. The conclusion is that the political and social life of the proletariat either as a class in and of itself, or even as the beginnings of the revolutionary contest is on the inside of the fight for freedom world wide. Socialist should promote freedom of the working class as the essence of their political rallying cry and their campaign for the social movement for the struggle for equality economic, political, and social (Lenin 1973: 102-103). Socialism is more than the democratic organization of economic production; socialism is also the democratic organization of the social life of the communities. Working class struggle for socialism takes for granted democracy, or the completion of democracy (Kautsky 1971: 4—13). The best community for political orientation is the working class. This is true, however only after they become class conscious. Which means the workers need a broad and energetic political understanding, workers will only then become the most able at adapting this information into an active struggle. Political displays are public
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announcements of resistance against the state. Economic revelations are an assertion of a fight against the bosses and owners. Simply put, an alliance is needed that will coordinate the population for an extensive struggle against capital and lead discussion groups to inspire. This creates distinctively acute knowledge on the causes of the origin of the oppression of the toiling masses. Only at that point can the radical develop as the forefront of the revolutionary action of our time (Lenin 1973: 109-110). A class can be the ruling force through its influence of a nation state. It would appear exclusively that the act of governing directly is not always a possibility. This is true for an economic class as it is for an indistinct conglomerate of individuals. While only a coordinated assemblage of administrators within government can truly govern, class interests remain important influences. It is the legitimate political parties within government, which manages a democracy. A political party is not indistinguishable from the class, which most directly benefits from its platform. Class and party remains distinct even though it is most likely, that in the long run, any party will try to exemplify a class advantage for the class it ultimately supports. Only once in a while does a party have the proper mix of people so that the party and the class it represents can regulate enough energy in the right amount so that the party and indirectly the class it represents can govern the State by itself. If a class through its party attains power, and finds out that it cannot hold that power by its own authority, it looks for collaborators in other classes (Kautsky 1971: 31).
Sensible policy of the organized radical industrial working class will need to have the inclination to summon to power significant leaders among the intellectuals, small farmers, professionals, small business owners and other lower middle class people. Caution must be maintained to insure ultimate power resides with the workers. These allies of the workers are at best undependable, contradictory and ungrounded in rational theory (Trotsky 1969: 69—70). When industrial capitalismʼs growth begins to slow down dramatically, then union power will also decline. The demand for labor power slows while the supply of labor continues to increase. The declining growth in profits based solely upon increased production means the capitalist will make an increase effort to reduce the part of the total gross product going to the workers as wages. Unions then are reduced to only to defending already made gains in the struggle against capital. The fundamental limits of social reform must appease capital in the form of compromise only. In this struggle all reforms in the future are going to be limited by the interests of capital not labor (Luxemburg 1971: 76-77). Class character of the state means the state takes on increasingly more coercive role over ever-larger domains. Democracy is increasingly tamed by parliamentary restraints. Parliamentary form of government is nothing but class rule. This is true by the fact that simply the rules of the game no matter how powerful the socialist become exist to protect private property of the capitalist. If democracy ever betrays the interests of the capitalist class, democracy must be suspended. Parliamentary democracy cannot be used as a socialist tool for progressively and firmly replacing capitalist society with socialism. Political democracies, at this time, will all the time continue to put limits on further development of economic and social democracy. Production under capitalism becomes more socialized leading to more not less state intervention, yet with the growth of monopoly capitalism private property remains the core of the economy and the state reflects this. Parliamentary democracy stands as the organization of the capitalists by controlling the rules of the game for the benefit of the capitalist class (Luxemburg 1971:
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83—85). Every major Government, even a truly revolutionary one, before long brings to light that its adversary will abuse its rights. These same governments, this includes political dictatorships tries to look at itself as if to be the expression of the whole people, and not just the class they truly represent (Kautsky 1971: 85). Each government will describe its role and its rule to be representing that of the whole country. The government in power will claim whatever does not agree with the rulers cannot be appropriate for the nation as a whole (Kautsky 1971: 87). The active capability of the state is class interests. Government, the press, education, religion, the civil bureaucracy, military, police, courts and prison interact through the state, and the state becomes a mechanism to control the producers by the ruling class. Every political party will try to capture political power and control the state for the class it represents. Any socialist party that truly represents the working class will fight for the workers. Capitalism creates the working class, and the working class will have its own party of socialism to over throw capitalism (Trotsky 1969: 62). Every state will attempt to mold the new arrangement of the government and public domain in a tradition comparable to the distinctive interests of the rulers. The slogan of the common people of the nation in the early 1900ʼs began with Universal Franchise and Civil Liberties (Kautsky 1971:27). The most energetic tool of the struggle of the working class is in its numbers. We could not free ourselves until we became the largest class. When the workers replaced farmers and shopkeepers as the largest class, the struggle began (Kautsky 1971:29). Society is made up of diametrically opposing classes with clashing interests, goals, ambitions, and understandings. They are separate and conflicting cultures. Universal science that is the same for all classes is absurd. Theoretical progressiveness, virtue, ethics and needs that are the same for all classes are an illusion (Luxemburg 1971: 126). Only the workers are in an objective position to lead the way toward socialism. Only the workers have the objective interests in socialism in both the short and long run. They have the will to fight against those whose narrow interests stand in the interests of socialism and the majority of the people (Trotsky 1969: 92). Marxʼs dictatorship of the proletariat as it was called was to be the transition between capitalism and communism. This was meant to be the government of the working class, not a dictatorship of a single person, party or committee. The above was meant to be not a form of government, but a condition that occurs when the working class has obtained by the energy of their struggle power to control the political and economic distribution of wealth and power (Kautsky 1971: 43). General wealth not poverty is the natural starting point for socialism. Political dictatorship and civil war further weakens the possibility of socialism. Capitalism is the precondition for socialism. Socialism comes about where the workers gained experience in self-rule through labor unions and parliamentary democracy. Governmental dictatorship cannot bring about the general prosperity of all, nor establish political, economic or social democracy that is the essence of socialism (Kautsky 1971:92—93). The material foundation of society and not the desires of the dictator will decide the success of socialism (Kautsky 1971:102). With modern corporations the exploitation and oppression of the workers increases and does not become more democratic. It is the working class and not the capitalist that fights for democracy. Democracy is extended only through class struggle by the workers, and is constantly under attack by the capitalist. In this democracy direct participation of
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wageworkers in important economic decisions hastens the decay and collapse of capitalism; thus the capitalists will always fight against democracy as much as they fight against socialism, which is democracyʼs twin sister. The transformation to socialism assumes a prolonged and continuous battle, the power between the capitalist and workers will go first in the direction of the workers only to be taken back by the capitalist many times. The premature seizure of state power is very likely in all socialist revolutions. Each attempt nurtures the conditions for final victory. One revolutionary struggle becomes the foundation for the next. Each attempt to capture power and establish socialism only strengthens the next attempt and should be encouraged. The premature attempt is part of the larger struggle. Each premature attempt is necessary and right. Caution and not bold dreams is the enemy of socialism (Luxemburg 1971: 119—123). Socialism is the result of economic destiny and the knowledge of that is essential for the workers. This leads to the destruction of capitalism by the working masses of the people. That central fact of capitalism is its moral disorder is what is at issue. Like all historical societies capitalism came into being and will collapse. The replacement should be democratic socialism or true communism not bureaucratic rigidity nor brutality of humanity cannibalizing it self (Luxemburg 1971: 98-102). The final goal of socialism is and always will be the main theme of any socialist party true to its name; reform is only short-term strategy to strengthen the workers and to lessen their burden. Capitalism cannot be reformed, only its more extreme abuses can be fought. The contradictions of production for profit ultimately leads to the spreading of human misery and the rebellion of class-conscious workers (Luxemburg 1971: 52—60). The state is a capitalist state when the capitalist class gained political mastery over the older ruling classes. When the capitalist class interests become dominant the functions of the state then began to expand to control the economic environment. First liberty was designed to free the capitalist from previous social obligations, and then the greatly expanded role of the professional bureaucracy was to control the environment including the growing resistance of the working class (Luxemburg 1971: 79). The policy of maintaining a strong military ready for action is necessary to defend the “national interests” of the capitalist class, the means of investments for financial and industrial capitalist, plus class domination over the workers of any and all lands (Luxemburg 1971: 82). The participants in a democratic movement should unite into one coalition of comrades to force the government to act in the name of all the working people. The revolutionary preparation by the most militant of the proletariat must defend public liberty, while directing the economic struggle of the working class as a whole, and bringing together an ever-expanding collection of the total working class (Lenin 1973: 109-111). The unexpected social movements of the working class left to its own logic can give birth to only minor reforms of trade unions, feared Lenin. With the Capitalist State the politics of working class labor union are definitely working class politics defined and limited by the rules of the state and official capitalist ideology (Lenin 1973: 117). This only confuses short-term goals with the final struggle. Socialism is lived not made, and every struggle is but a prelude to further struggles for even greater freedom. The working class ultimately can only learn of socialism through its own daily struggles. The vanguard at any time either becomes intellectuals separated from working class issues by the remoteness of the scholarly life, or of the sectarian cults of obscurity. The overly romantic affirmation of the radical intellectual is often confused with that of a
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professional revolutionary. When this happened, ideological chastity is often the beginning of sectarian isolation. This further serves to isolate the revolutionary intellectual from the rank and file working class. Thus, leaving the radical both within and outside of the working class vulnerable to repression by government of the capitalist class as was the case of the IWW and peace socialist during and after W.W.I and the Communist and other left socialist in the us after W.W.II. The left in the US was in both cases too weak to organize a mass resistance. The working class came under the bureaucratic leadership of cowardly conservative business unionists. Marxism loses its working class roots and becomes either a disciplined academic masturbation, or a middle class whimsical disappointment (Kipnis 1952: 421-429). The reality is that normally most workers were able to show a great deal of brave behavior in their personal commitment to a strike and show courage with their on going conflict with the bosses. This was important because the entire establishment of law was only used to protect the property of the owners. These same workers were capable of setting up the struggle to maximize the accomplishment of the strike given the power of the other side. This has a direct effect of bringing the larger labor movement to the lives of the working class community in the area. The fight for immediate demands by all the toiling people is always important and the foundation for a struggle for an ever expanding democratic roles of the working class. This was also true for Lenin, but in Russia of Leninʼs time the fight against the terror of the secret police required special qualities for the professional revolutionaries. This vanguard struggled along side of the rest of the working class, but was the permanent core of the revolution. They were to encourage the workers to advance concrete demands, and to increase the numbers of revolutionaries with the ranks of that working class (Lenin 1973: 135). The role of the vanguard party in Czarist Russia could not be exaggerated. This vanguard role was always limited from the start, and failure to realize this proved fatal in the end. The “truth” as seen and understood by Lenin is that the rank and file workers are spontaneously being attracted into the labor movement. This movement makes the association of the working poor into a united army of organized and disciplined toilers. This is unexpected, from the ownersʼ point of view. Rousing the rabble to action. This ragtag group of drudges struggling against these same owners in unity that will cause among the capitalist class as a whole such an over reaction and will promote among the working class ever enlarging quantity of skilled revolutionaries to fill leadership roles (Lenin 1973: 136). What Lenin missed was that non-working class intellectuals couldnʼt export socialism to the workers from the outside. Socialism will only be embraced when the workers themselves come to see socialism as their product created out of their own lived experiences. Radical ideas come from radical practice. Once the idea fits with the lived experience of the workers it in turn becomes the guide the revolutionary worker lived by. Ideas that were born from practice and error and practice again in turn guided further practice (Mao 1966: 135). A working class organization must also be a labor union, as comprehensive as the current social circumstances will allow. However for Lenin, the vanguard should remain obscure as possible as far as the employing class and government officials in Russia were concerned because of the conditions of the autocratic state where the working class lack political rights found in most of the Western European societies of his day. The association of activist (rabble-rousers) must be composed of folks willing to make the revolutionary movement their craft and profession. Revolution becomes a life style as far as the existing political potential is concerned. Revolutionary fellowships required the
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separation between the workers and intellectuals are removed, and the separation between unskilled labor, skilled trades and professions will have to be taken apart piece by piece. If political rights are not protected than the leadership must remain small and hidden from the view of government officials. This to Lenin this was exclusive responsibility of the radical professional. The revolutionary was to take an advantageous position within existing unions while remaining active and efficient in the direction of future socialism. Every socialist should work in the union at their job site and any other progressive community affiliation (Lenin 1973: 138-143). Socialist Democracy will replace liberal capitalist democracy with a democratic direction that wisdom will nurture and that will denote the method for the entire laboring class in their battle for equality (Lenin 1973: 144-145). The organization of capitalism only breeds hunger for the many, ecological putrefaction for us all, cravenness for the few. The assumption that the working class in a political democracy will have to give up its revolutionary goals is always false. Political democracy has not eliminated class antagonism, because it has left economic exploitation in tact. The ultimate goal of the overthrow capitalist society is still central to working class politics. Political democracy will warn against premature and reckless attempts at revolution before the working class has the power to rule, and it may lessen significantly the violence necessary to carry out a revolution. The democratic processes give a clear reading on the relative strength of the class-conscious working class. The final overthrow is not eliminated, however meanwhile the workers even in a capitalist society can win real concessions from the capitalist class. To many revolutionary workers this may seem much too slow, but power is a real concern if success is to be gained. Class struggle cannot be limited by legal or legitimate methods, but these same peaceful methods must also be used as they simplify the necessary sacrifices (Kautsky 1971: 36—37). Revolution both social and political is a swift action by large masses of people that directly reverse the relative strength of the classes in a society. Those classes kept out of power gain control over the means of government. The more democratic the government, the more likely the revolution will be peaceful. The revolution cannot but be limited by capabilities of the people to assimilate the revolutionary agenda (Kautsky 1971: 56). The mass strike to be triumphant will break out by surprise in specific circumstances. Most important it will occur spontaneously (Kautsky 1971: 72). The mass strike once it breaks out by unimpeded and unexpected, political parties and labor unions rigidity off times frustrates the actions taken by the workers (Kautsky 1971: 72). It is necessary for radicals to bring about a far-reaching a communication network. These same militants must reach as many workers as feasible about their leftist arguments in order to make known to the widest numbers the understandable ideas about class struggle within the nation of workers. A modestly succinct nucleus of those activists that show the greatest dependability, capability and discipline among the workers, for Lenin, is the important center of revolutionary activity. The contradiction between popular democracy and revolutionary discipline is where Lenin receives his greatest criticism (Lenin 19173: 145). The following is a paraphrase of Leninʼs theory of a vanguard party, as can be seen the critical environmental issue is the police state Lenin was dealing with. The revolutionary professional was necessary for the revolution. It is also important to have groups of activist in each locality; united to other progressive groups. The core that
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unites these groups must remain underground and must be unseen to the bosses. This forms the center within the radical labor groups themselves. With the widest aid from the rank and file that can be achieved, while through the larger organizations the small revolutionary core provides services needed for a trade union and labor party even in a police state. Beginning with the firm structure and a powerful organization of revolutionaries there is a promise of stability in the social movement. The entire labor movement is brought under a single management. The revolutionaries together with the entire labor and community groups are united in popular action, carrying out the aims of socialism, and democracy. Labor unions need protection in the face of repression from any totalitarian government. Radicals must have an organized council of skilled activist. For a successful revolution it is not important one way or the other if any single student or worker is able to become a revolutionary, it is important that the analysis of the professional revolutionary matches the social reality of the workers. No insurrection can grow and survive without a sturdy organization of advance guard that retains its primary goals (Lenin 1973: 145-52). The more thoroughly the common people are brought into class struggle, the more they will become an integral part of the support of the movement for socialism. Workers must take part in the necessary tasks of revolutionary action. This becomes the society of radical workers; this is a Cultural Revolution. The leadership of radicals must become a more complete organization of revolutionaries, if it is to become the vanguard. The essence of the structure of the movement is composed of a small group that is professional revolutionaries. Under a tyrannical government, the more we restrict the body of members of the leadership core to the people who are experienced in practicing revolutionary activity the more stable the party. People, who have been skilled in preparation of creating the aptitude of opposing the governmental control, will also become the people who can fight the more troublesome parts of their domination by creating an association to erase government support for the oppressors. The small vanguard allows the larger populace of the working class to become capable of uniting with the movement vigorously (Lenin 1973: 153). Defense of any and all minorities is fundamental precondition for the survival of a democracy, even the political rights of the old ruling class. The rule of the majority will protect the gains of that majority (Kautsky 1971: 34). It takes many years of experience to prepare oneself for social action and to mature as an expert social activist. The living and far-reaching support of the common people will not be hurt by, but will be further enrich by a small group of trained revolutionaries, informed and skilled in the art of revolution. These revolutionaries must concentrate all professional activity in the direction of organized social change. To escape the notice of the police they must conceal much of the conditions of their occupation. They accumulate of the skill needed. While a majority of the revolutionaries activities remains concealed from public view. The good service done in the association of these radicals will not lessen, but more willingly grow in the magnitude and accomplishment of the larger social movement. A broad sum total of diverse groups can now be effectively brought into this struggle. People brought into this movement are now better directed. Which means they have their goals more clearly in mind. The citizens belonging to more extensive popular organizations and are unfettered by the same obstacles as the professional revolutionaries face and popular activities remain as unhidden as practicable (Lenin 1973: 154-155). In Russia Capitalism was introducing through the active intervention of the state (Trotsky 1969: 42).
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During the 19th century in Russia big capital and the industrial revolution were artificially imposed upon a natural economy (Trotsky 1969:61). The centralized government of the Tsar became independent of direct influence of the aristocracy and the large capitalist, mostly foreign, though government was dependent on both sections of the ruling classes. This became the formula for the particular type of autocratic rule the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries were dealing with. The government was both a stimuli for economic growth, because of the needs of the army, and a fetter on economic development because of autocratic control over the economic environment (Trotsky 1969: 44). Leninʼs model of a vanguard party is limited in its moral justification to police states without minimal protection of civil rights. The less democratic the central command is the less democratic will be its results after the revolution. Louis Auguste Blanqui taught what became known as Blanquism that a small number of secret revolutionaries could make a revolution for the working class. The problem remained that through this small group of conspirators revolutionary activities would be carried out without much actual feedback by the workers in whose name this was to be done. Lenin shared this same problem with his organization. While he was more creative than many of his followers, it still remains a serious flaw that is difficult to overcome. Lenin debated with Rosa Luxemburg on the issue of nationalism. Lenin supported it and Rosa Luxemburg was that it was at most of secondary importance. In point of fact it was Polish chauvinism, which would give the church and landlords in Poland power for the reactionary opposition to democracy. The urban working class in Austria, Germany, and Russia saw common cause with the working class of each of these three nations as more likely to lead to empowerment for the workers than nationalism. Lenin in this case was out of touch with Polish workers in the 1905 Revolution. The Polish Workers would stand to lose in an independent Poland (Luxemburg 1976; Davis 1978). The flaw in universally applying what Lenin help organize in Russia as a model for radical change everywhere in the world is the failure to distinguish among the various types of governments within the world capitalist system. The fundamental position held by Marxist Political Sociology is that the state is the result of class society. With economic stratification class antagonisms develop requiring ultimately the coercion of the state to safeguard the existing institutions of wealth and power. The state mechanisms arise when and where these natural conflicts of interests require that force will be used to preserve the peace. As long as a conflict of interest exists class antagonisms will exist and peaceful reconciliation cannot be guaranteed (Lenin 1970a: 7). This broad overview cannot be taken as absolute. Each country will have its own history of struggle and balance of power between the classes. While the above is clearly true in all individual capitalist societies it follows that in some societies there has been significant political freedoms that have been won by the working class, and these liberties should be used as a foundation to fight for still more freedoms for the working class. Multilinear evolution assumes that there is some regularity in cultural change between different societies, but not necessarily so. This is an empirical question and not a universal. Differences also occur depending upon core economic and historical variables (Steward 1955: 18-19). Forces of production, in the last analysis set real limits, upon the social-history of a society and its culture. The economy and the corresponding class structure are the result of possibilities and specific interests that operate within the confines of these limits. The division of labor assumes part of the population is capable of producing a surplus,
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which is large enough to be taken over by the non-producing elite who controls the necessary resources (Trotsky 1969: 37). Every change in the forces and relations of production leads to a change in the division of labor. The different types of division of labor are different forms of restrictions on the universal access to the resources of subsistence, or otherwise known as property (Marx 1947: 43). Gramsci, while testing a major tactic for a revolutionary party to follow, also created an ideological resonance for scrutinizing the relationship between structure and superstructure in this struggle. He recorded that the popular beliefs and ideas of a mass movement can become an incentive and energy in a peopleʼs actions. This means ideas are part of the social environment. That in a dialectical manner material forces create ideology, it becomes in turn part of the material forces (Gramsci 1971:123-205). It is the question of the relationship between structure and the super-structure that we must first correctly understand if the trends, which are dynamic part of history of a specific era, are to be correctly examined and minutely to be understood in our actions (The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy 1974:475). The institution of the state is always a political tool of a certain class or classes. The state became necessary because of class conflict. To protect the ruling class both from itself and opposing classes, the state stands above society to represent the interest of society as a whole. The state is central to class society yet it is separated from the rest of society in the sense it stands above society with laws that apply even to those whose benefit most from those laws. Individual members of the ruling class are often forced to take positions that conflict with other members of their class because they do not want to protect the ruling class as a whole. It is true that the state is alienated from the rest of society giving a small measure of independence from its economic base. In the final analysis, however, the economic interests of the ruling class determine the state. The power of the state stands in the way of the liberation of the oppressed classes. Freedom becomes impossible without revolutionary change. One reason for this is because the entire power of the state stands in opposition to any radical change that threatens the ruling class. Total destruction of the existing government and the corresponding administrative apparatus becomes necessary before freedom is possible. This is true because any particular state was created to represent the interest of a particular class, or a certain temporary alliance of classes, and when another class comes to power the previous state apparatus will no longer suffice (Lenin 1970a: 7-9, Lenin 1970a: 8-9, Marx 1974: 143-249). The state must back up its policy by force; in order to do this the specialized institutions of force must be in place, these are the police and the military. The state creates government to establish policy, administration to carry these policies out and or police the require compliance by coercion if necessary these policies. The state then claims the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The military and the police are the chief means to enforce the edicts of the state. Lenin claimed because of this every revolution must begin by the destruction of the existing state. This is necessary before new institutions are created to reflect changes in class relations. The old state reflected a certain relationship of exploitation, when these relationships change the old state can no longer function properly (Lenin 1970a: 10). The separate social formulations within the institution of the state; government, administrative bodies, police, military, public education and etc. operate to hold class conflict to a minimum. This means ordinarily the over all interests of the most powerful class, becomes the interest of the whole of society. The economically dominant class is
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also the politically dominant class, though sometimes indirectly, it is through the state that wealth and power is maintained. In this way the exploited classes are held in check. Only through struggle can the people on the bottom challenge this power. When warring classes balance each other out then and only then does the state gain a measure of independence from ultimate control by the upper class, though then only for the time being (Lenin 1970a: 14). The state will act in the interest of the capitalist in the long run because the organization of the circumstances under which government operates is obligate it to carry out its business for capital in order to maintain a sound economy (Szymanski 1978: 268). As the modern form of state develops class antagonism become more sophisticated. The state power became more of a national power of capital to control the discontent of labor. Every time workers gain more control within the state, the more autocratic becomes capitalʼs control over all parts of the state (Marx 1940: 55) The totalitarian power of capital thrives in the liberal democracy of the republic. Capital becomes politically more powerful than government, not only making capital partially independent of the state, ultimately the free movement of capital means the state is often held hostage by capital through the social, cultural, ideological, and economic control of all the parts of the state by the needs of capital. All players in the legitimate politics of the capitalist state must accept the rules that maintain the power of capital (Lenin 1970a: 15-16). This leaves the revolutionary with few options; reform can only become steppingstones to further radical action and further reforms leading to a total revolutionary change. Any victory that brings about radical change is brought about by class struggle, will lead to only more renewed struggle on the part of the ruling class who had been forced to give up some of its power. The working class cannot allow its self to remain limited by the rules of liberal capitalist democracy (Trotsky 1969: 30). Once power is gained it can only be maintained by continual struggle against those who directly benefited from the old order (Trotsky 1961: 15). By capturing the control of the state from the ruling class, the toiling masses which includes the working class, destroys the founding necessity for the institutions of the existing state. The state, which is created to maintain capitalism, becomes outdated and non-functional. The new revolutionary state greatly expands democracy and dramatically lessens the role of the state and weakens its power for oppression. The old state does not simply retire from the scene; the new ruling class must consciously eliminate the structure of the old state. Only through increasing social and economic democracy for all the toiling masses does the political role of the state decline (Lenin 1970a: 20). The essence of the state is coercion. By claiming monopoly of the legitimate use of force, the rulers of the state claim the right to eliminate any competition to its power. The state simply exists to repress certain classes for the benefit of other classes. The socialist will take possession of the state, however the tools of oppression already exist and are not a creation of the socialist. By doing this the socialist also take jurisdiction of the means of production in the name of the toiling masses. After the political control of the state is taken away from the ruling class and the majority of toilers are given more democratic control over their lives the old structure of the state in no longer adequate for the new expression of democracy (Lenin 1970a: 20-21). Democracy is the conclusion of a struggle to include more and more people in relationships of wealth and power in ever increasing equality among all the people. Democracy is the ultimate struggle for working people, within state society. As long as
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state society survives democracy cannot be surpassed. Only through revolution can moderate or liberal political democracy, be replaced by social and economic democracy, and at which point the political aspects of democracy is outlived. Under capitalism the workers must defend liberal democratic rights. The capitalist will abrogate democracy, before this same democracy will be abandon by working class organizations. The capitalist class and their expert supporters used democracy to further their commitment to private property, profits, and an open market economy. In the liberal democratic republic political democracy remains shallow, limited, it is a superficial facade that hides the tyranny of wage slavery. Private property always stands opposed to democracy at any level. The market economy is always a cruel joke on the workers. The complete control over the means of coercion, formation of ideology, and the all-powerful market means a liberal market based society can never become truly democratic or completely representatively sovereign without a complete social, economic, and political revolution. This revolution must be total or it will fail and a hierarchical society will be re-established (Lenin 1970a: 22-25). State society exists where there is serious conflict between two or more classes. Because force is monopolized by the state, force that is not authorized by the state is not legitimate, therefore illegal. This legitimate organization of violence exists to maintain order benefiting the ruling class by repressing the threat of another class. Once the workers create a revolution to seize the government for themselves, the state will no longer be used to suppress the working class. The workers to protect their gains that were made by the workers from the resistance to these gains now being made by their former oppressors the capitalist will now use the state. The working class must be willing to follow through with the suppression of the capitalist if the democratic and socialist gains won by the workers are to be protected. The wage workers has the most revolutionary potential among all the toilers, thus can unite all the working poor and exploited creating a majority against the parasitic minority. The capitalist like all previous exploiters, need to politically control their specific form of state in order to maintain their systems of exploitation. The exploited class uses politics to abolish the previous system of exploitation. (Lenin 1970a: 28). The capitalist state is so all-inclusive that it cannot evolve by its own logic into a radical popular democracy. The people who work for a wage is the only economic class among the laboring people who lives a life style in regard to the technology, working relations and social organization used in the production of our everyday life who can take advantage of the conditions necessary for the creation of a truly social and economic democracy. If a class other than the working class comes to power new forms of exploitation will be established. The farmers, for example, are not in a position to be the leaders because of their isolation. Under capitalism the peasants are turned into agricultural workers, rural small business owners, or capitalist farmers. In advance capitalism the numbers of the self-employed and small business owners both rural and urban has become too small to lead a revolution. In the colonies and periphery they become increasingly dependent on local capitalist to lead a nation wide struggle. The two major classes contending for power are the capitalist and the working class. Lenin never looked at the growing class of educated professionals and administrators, thus for him they were not an issue. To Lenin the working class or the intellectuals who have taken on a working class identity could only lead the coming revolution. Because of mass production the working class has a collective view of economics. Because of this view the working class remains the natural leader in any democratic revolution under capitalism. Only through a working class identity can we develop a sophisticated class
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analysis leading to a clear understanding of class struggle. This is particularly accurate when issues of state power are at stake. It is the working class who ultimately stands the most to gain from a socialist revolution. The capitalist even after the revolution will resist socialism at every turn. To prevent the reaction from regaining power cooperation of all the toiling masses is important (Lenin 1970a: 29-30). All revolutions in history up till now expanded the power of the state, by increasingly developing bureaucratic structures of control. Only the working class finds it in its interests to replace bureaucracy with the first time in history with a popular democracy. This is why Lenin, believed that for the hope of a truly economic democracy to be established the republican state of the capitalist must first be smashed. Because the state being an instrument of class rule, the working class must first confiscate the state out from under the control of the capitalist class. The working people soon fined the republic cannot meet their democratic needs, and then the smashing the liberal democratic republic is simple necessity. If this smashing is not done liberal society can never be overthrown. Political democracy whitens with age as social and economic democracy grows. Laws, courts, police, military, government, bureaucracy one by one are replaced by workers and community councils (Lenin 1970a: 32-33). Expansion of a professional bureaucracy growing with the centralizing state power reaches its ultimate conclusion under advanced capitalism. With the collapse of the monarchy the state bureaucratic structure did not wither away, the professional bureaucratic power only increased in size and importance. Bureaucracy and the standing army became increasingly central to everyday life under capitalism even with the growth of a representative republic. Even though they were massive under the rule of the absolute monarchy, the bureaucracy grew even more bulky after the democratic liberal revolutions with the birth of market capitalism. Because the military and the administrative bureaucracy are not part of capitalist production, they become a necessary parasite that was needed to control in an orderly fashion the established order of the capitalist environment (Lenin 1970a: 34). With the growth of the modern liberal capitalist and their corresponding political revolutions, the state grew in size and importance, from a parasite to a civil bureaucracy that manages all the details of daily life of an entire population. From the late middleages until the liberal revolutions the state became increasingly expensive to the point of stifling the further economic development of the ruling classes. The state must represent the interests of the most dynamic part of the upper classes, the capitalist, who ultimately controls the economy. Yet the state came in serious conflict with the interests of other parts if not most other elements of the upper classes. The state became too expensive and too restrictive, and conflicts between purpose and function developed. A similar set of problems would develop again in the 20th century worldwide. In these conflicts the working majority soon learned that no faction among the wealthy classes represented their interests (Trotsky 1969: 39-40). In times of crisis the middle class will share the official ideology of the monopoly capitalist including the civil religion of private property, market economy, individualism and competition. The middle class cannot help but remain subservient to capitalism. Thus by incorporating elements of the average academic and specialist into the administrative bureaucracy the capitalist has the appearance of being a popular government. These administrative jobs become dependent upon the success and stability of the market economy thus capitalism can never be seriously challenged (Lenin 1970a:
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34). With monopoly capitalism imperialism reaches its ultimate development. The entire state apparatus becomes overly developed, thus the state becomes an increasing drain on the capitalist economy. The growth of all parts of the state is out of control because of the inherent instability of capitalism. The bureaucracy necessary for the rational control of the social environment of capital intrudes on all aspects of popular life. The increasing repression of the worker becomes total. The market economy becomes so omnipresent that to most people the economy is seen as a force of nature and a part of human condition. The market economy becomes totalitarian and is a hidden cultural reality operating even at the subconscious level (Lenin 1970a: 38). The central motivation in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and create socialism, which will lead ultimately to communism, and this, should end all class inequality, which will become indispensable for freedom. Intensive class struggle is both the effect and the cause of revolution. With the great expansion of social democracy the privilege of property is lost. For the working poor life becomes freer, for the rich and the powerful the advantage of wealth is lost (Lenin 1970a: 41). Dictatorship is an inherent part of all governments. Government being part of the state is also an instrument of class rule that is needed to repress other classes in their resistance to that rule, i.e. dictatorship. As long as there are class divisions there will always be some sorts of dictatorship. Politically even a democratic dictatorship or dictatorship of the working people, will be necessary to protect the democratic gains of a socialist revolutions from those who would reestablish privilege. Only when all memory of privilege is gone will social democracy finally replace the last traces of political democracy. The democratic republic under capitalism is in fact a dictatorship of the capitalist class. First in the socialist revolution is the overthrow of the dictatorship of the capitalist economy, which allows the establishment of the democratic dictatorship, which early Marxists called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Finally the greatly expanded political democracy of socialism, the democratic dictatorship, is totally replaced by the social and economic democracy of communism. The need for instruments of repression will then be eliminated by popular action of all the people. This is yet another reason why the republic, with its very limited political democracy and the liberal capitalism of the oppressors is of little use too socialist after the revolution. The peopleʼs revolution is the natural evolution of democracy as all the masses weighted down by drudgery of wage slavery become involved in a new democratic way of life (Lenin 1970a: 41-45). Working class cannot use the liberal state as it is structured; the peopleʼs revolution is a democratic revolution. The total elimination of the capitalist state represents the best interests of the majority of the workers and small farmers. The alliance of all the working poor whether they be they industrial workers, day laborers, or indigent farmers, or be they small urban shopkeepers must come together in this effort. The destruction of the republican, autocratic, or even political democratic form of government is a prerequisite for social and economic democracy. Without a strong alliance among all the toiling masses any form of democracy, even political democracy the lowest form of democracy, becomes meaningless. Socialism is only the expansion of democracy into the social and economic wholeness if all those who work to create the necessities of existence are included. With the full development of world capitalist market economy the two major classes, workers and capitalists are locked in a deadly battle. The primary role of the state under capitalism is to create an orderly nation-state. The state must have enough coercive and ideological power to control the inadmissible
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expectation of the radical working class. With the modern nation-state all the public forces of the entire nation are mobilized for the enslavement of the drudging plebeians (Lenin 1970a: 47-58). By making a revolution to smash the state in all of its current manifestations the workers and small farmers unite in the common task of eliminating the common parasite of the state corporate investors and their beneficiaries, living off the labor of the working person and tiller of the soil. Because of the fact the privilege of the few is supported by the state, after the revolution force will be necessary because the former upper class will not leave the scene willingly. The majority will need to defend them selfʼs from the former elite. The old oppressors will morn the good old days of their institutional supremacy. Once political democracy gives way to the economic control of all the people of a society the oppressive institutions of the state become unnecessary (Lenin 1970a: 47-58). With large-scale production and the world economy of capitalism the nation-state becomes out dated even before a socialist revolution. Much of the roles of the state become increasingly simplified to the point of being understandable to most people, leaving the control over the populace by a professional and managerial elite without a sensible justification. The role of government in large part is taken over by many public administrative bodies. This public sector bureaucracy should not be abolished, but democratized. This is possible only when this public sector bureaucracy is absorbed into worker and community councils. Through a worldwide federation of these local councilsʼ monopoly capitalʼs property, the public bureaucracy and a world economy can be democratized. Then and only then will the role of the state become greatly reduced and its functions will also become so greatly reduced and its purpose change so dramatically that what would be left would be qualitatively different from any previous form of statesociety (Lenin 1970a: 47-58). The fortified majority will in the short run protect the gains of the revolution by its own form of state. This will be necessary to win and protect its freedom. The leaders of capitalist society always confuse liberty and privilege. This revolutionary transition needs a committed populace who will not tolerate sabotage of the growing social and economic democracy by the former privileged few. The soviets or worker councils will become the new economic foundation of society. Every force of the reaction will unite for the destruction of this expansion of democracy. The churches, the former capitalist and even the educated professionals will create alliances with the remaining reactionary nation states to destabilize any hope for a broad base social and economic democracy. When faced by the reactions of the Church along with the former rulers and the reactionary nation-states who have not had their revolution the revolution is in constant peril. The democracy of the capitalist state is limited to formal democracy, leaving the basic economic institutions of private property and exploitation in tact and unchallenged. The myth that liberal democracy is the last word in democracy is seriously threatened by socialist action. True democracy is always the worst fear of the liberal democrat of capitalism. This empty lie will fall because crushing poverty of the majority of the world cannot be resolved with the lie of liberal democracy (Lenin 1970a: 102-104). If we examine political democracy, of the liberal capitalist republic we see serious limitations to participatory democracy in order to protect the private property of the capitalist. Suffrage is limited in that only certain issues are open to public debate. In addition the selection of elected officers in government leaves the basic political and economic rules effectively unchallenged. The structure of how representative government can allow public discussion to go only so far is carefully maintained by the rules of the political game. Never at any point are the basic social relations of economic
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stratification seriously threatened. As far as the market economy and private property are at issue, compromise after compromise are set up in such a fashion to remove and change in these two basic institutions from the realm of democratic decision making. Fundamental rights like freedom of speech, press and assembly are define in such a manner as to restrict their basic core to one of discussion and inaction. The working poor are seriously excluded from any participation in political democracy. The democratic dictatorship of the majority is the democratic transition from that of restrictive political democracy to one of genuine economic and social democracy. This is not merely an expansion of political democracy, but something entirely different. The liberal institutions must be entirely eradicated in order to free humanity from capitalism and wage slavery. The new working class state is not an expansion of the so-called freedoms under the democratic illusions under the dictatorship of the capitalist class, but repression of privilege so that real freedom can take root and grow. Freedom is freedom only when there is real equality. More and more the workers come to see that without equality economically there is privilege but no real freedom (Lenin 1973a: 104-105). Democracy for the toiling masses is a serious threat to the former capitalist, thus the poor must be able to protect themselves by ensuring privilege is never reestablished. Liberal democracy is a cruel lie. It is oppression for the poor and privilege for the rich. Only when private property and a market are dismembered can real democracy take root. Only when the economy and the basic resources of necessity are under the democratic control of all the people can we speak of authentic democracy. This is communism in the true sense of the word. When the memory of privilege is replaced by equality of freedom, then the attraction of coercion will have no appeal. This is because the state exists for those who control the mechanisms of the state. Exploitation and oppression are twins of necessity if we remove one the other cannot survive. The exploiting classes cannot keep the exploited in line without a specialized institution that uses terror for its purpose, this is what the working poor must remember about every state they fight against. As economic and social democracy expands, so do the peaceful mechanisms to resolve conflict. With communism all people can participate in a community of equals. In the beginning after the socialist revolution, the justice of equality is still far away. Exploitation becomes impossible because individuals no longer own or control the means of production. The conversion of privately owned means of production into public property and the expansion of the public sector without the corresponding expansion of bureaucracy cannot help but to expand democracy (Lenin 1973a: 112114). The worst enemies of capitalism often are the capitalists themselves. Capitalism stands in the way of the complete development of their own society. Many sectors of the world community do not benefit from capitalist development. Socialism can turn capitalismʼs incredible development into the benefit of all (Lenin 114: 1973a). Democracy is very important for the working class in their struggle against the capitalist in the fight for freedom. Democracy is an evolving process, not a finished product. Under capitalism democracy is a formal type of state in which violence is used by the state to limit debate. Equality is formalized, and for the workers democracy is and must be a means of struggle against the overly formal and limited bourgeois democracy. Democracy grows from the equality of the vote too ever more ever more encompassing types of equality. Equality must grow until the formal political limits are burst asunder, as capitalist democracy cannot hope to meet the expectations of the general population for control over public life increases. As the public sector replaces the private sector we all work for each other. Worker control over the work place merges with community control
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over the community. When this stage is reached administration ceases to be the boss and becomes the collective representation of all the people (Lenin 1973a: 118-122). The already established democratic rights in all nations claiming to be a democracy are a minimum starting point for the establishment of socialism. These minimal democratic rights of a liberal republic cannot be sacrifice in the struggle for socialism. Socialism becomes a necessity because these existing political democratic rights are too adolescent and unpredictable for real democracy to become established (Luxemburg 1970). In the United States specifically there is an historical tradition of either ignoring rights at the state and local level, or suspending these rights nation wide for certain dissident groups when it suits the purpose of the national elite. The rights as defined in political democracy must be broadened in our demands to include the greatly expanded right of economic and social democracy. Existing democratic rights are important at all times, but the radical in particular must defend civil rights during times of reaction. The liberal capitalists will violate their own deeply held principles in a heartbeat when threatened. The radical is always committed to the expansion of those rights beyond the very narrow liberal limits. The dismissal basic civil liberties are never acceptable. This is not because of some sort of universal justice that stands outside of history, such a belief is a mystical drug. Justice is always set within a specific historical setting and is measured in terms of real power. For the radical it is the power of those on the bottom to end inequality. Rights have different meanings to different classes in any one society. In different societies rights or liberties often become emotionally charged phrases with little agreed upon meaning. To the socialist rights are viewed from the viewpoint of the working poor. Socialist see rights as being but stepping stones that will burst asunder the narrow limits of political democracy to expand to a radically new society of democratic socialism in which democracy is seen as social and economic. Politics of liberal revolutions are transcended and all liberal politics dies when all people are equal. It is the reaction and not the socialist, which kills democracy to save the private property of the few. Every society has a different division of power between the classes meaning whether legitimate channels are open to democracy. In Western Europe they are and in the United States they are not. “Freedom only for the supporters of the government . . . however numerous they may be is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of justice but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when freedom become a special privilege” (Luxemburg 1970: 69). Socialism and democracy are born out of struggle; the struggle is defined by the struggle itself and not pre-existing ideology. Theory is but a map that gains meaning only in practice. Socialist ideology reflects that struggle and changes with that struggle. Marxist through critical analysis can expose the contradictions, as they exist. Through negative criticism the positive form of the future is carefully outlined. Theory must reflect existing structures and experiences. All social needs produce ways of satisfying those needs. When existing structures block the way that those needs are met then the social background for a social movement is created. If insight into the source of the social frustration is valid then the theory will provide a map to create the possibility of success out of the real situations born from exploitation and oppression. If the explanation is incorrect than the collective action is doomed to failure, leading to a more cruel reaction. Ideals no matter how impeccable or sincere must reflect material reality, or be lost in the
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romance and failure of utopian ideals. The power of theory is necessary. Always with social movements the negative of tearing down is necessary before there is a positive of building up. Both sides of this equation must be guided by theory. If the theory is correct, continual corrections are necessary if the movement is not to fall into a dead end trap. If correct, however, every movement has limited potential. When that potential is met, there is created a social foundation for future movements. Freedom and equality remains the necessary slogan, but in fact it always is but an ill-defined battle cry of the exploited majority. The demand for basic democratic rights is necessary but not sufficient. The most basic of these rights is that people must be allowed to govern themselves directly in a participatory fashion if socialism is ever to work. This is only the simplest beginning of democracy. “The whole mass of people must take part in it. A dozen intellectuals will decree otherwise socialism from behind a few official desks . . . Public control is indispensably necessary. Otherwise the exchange of experience remains only with the closed circle of officials of the new regime . . . Socialism in life demands a complete spiritual transformation in the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule . . . The only way to a rebirth is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, demoralizes” (Luxemburg1970: 71).
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Radical Socialism Radical socialism, syndicalism, true communism are ideally the collective attempts to reunite people with the creative aspects of their collective lives. When there is a community of individuals that are united in the environment of existence for mutual aid and the celebration of life this is a life of being equal in our interdependent closeness with others, from this life a common humanity of a cooperative commonwealth community is molded. From this a comradeship will emerge from this interaction. This will be the most vigorous avenue taken by people collectively within their material and social environment, to gain the deepest meaning in their lives. It is in our struggle to endure through unity, upon which that the essence our humanity is founded. What born in struggle is nourished in joy and passionate satisfaction! Our humanity is established on justice, the essential quality of which will always be justice through equality. Radicals experience a moral obligation to revolt against any power that would subjugate another human being to any and all treatment that would demean this equality. It does not matter if the radical is the recipient of the injustice or not (Kropotkin 1927: 105-109). Only through equality can any human beings realize their potential, only through the completion of democracy can equality have any meaning (Bakunin 1970; Luxemburg 1961: 76-80; Marx 1940: 61). Revolutionary visions of a worldwide community project are born in a struggle for equality. What starts as a local common concern, will grow and change as it matures it creates the coalition of the common people made up of concerned world citizens acting together with the authority of ever broadening hungry hoards. The movement gains the guidance of a sincere sovereignty of the poor who are the producers of all wealth and the victims of that wealth must lead the way to a new day. These revolutions are the collective attempts to reunite people with the creative aspects of their lives. When there is a condition of being free the essence of which is equality there develops an interconnected association with others. There is born a deep feeling of companionship that will come out of this common humanity. It is through our reciprocal responsibility of each individual to other people in the community and humanity as a whole that we also connect to nature and life. We as individuals are never separate from the larger community. Each community is part of an even larger whole. This continues at each stage ever-larger communities are established that includes both our social and physical environment. This common struggle will be the most effective road taken by people collectively within their material and social environment. It is in our endeavor to survive through unity. Upon this unity the essence of our humanity is founded. By working and struggling with other humans we ourselves become human. After fully developed compassion we can say our humanity itself is the result of these community connections. In turn our humanity is the result of our kinship with other human communities. Ever more distant connections with the world of humans and with nature are established through our humanity. Our humanity is established on justice, the essential quality of which will always be justice through equality. Revolt against injustice is the maturity of a moral obligation to rise up against any power that would subjugate another human being. Any and all treatment that would demean this equality is to be resisted. Freedom in the US is only the privilege of the few. Without equality of all, equality of outcome based upon the dignity of our humanity is what we are fighting for. (Kropotkin 1927: 105-109). We are always connected to the larger whole, the whole of the community that includes both our social and physical environment. Our humanity itself is the result of these community connections and our relationship with other human communities and
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with nature. It has been said that we are human in a social context. The old slogan an injury to one is an injury to all becomes the credo of a life style. Human activity in production of the means of existence is basic to all moral practice, and this we call labor and is the essential groundwork for all of other activities, including the spiritual. Our moral philosophy is grounded in this theory. Theory comes from the practical struggle to gain knowledge of our world, in order to gain more power over our lives within the socialmaterial environment. Knowledge depends upon behavior. Production of our material life is the most important and is the ultimate foundation of our awareness of the circumstances surrounding our lives cultural and physical. These are the properties of our total environment. Its basic nature and essential quality of its attributes, is the groundwork of the component elements of our culture. The relationship between humans and nature and humans and other humans rest with the idea we are always a part of nature because we are but one part of the physical nature of the world (Mao 1966: 1-2). Communities are people cooperatively interacting with nature. We as individuals and members of the community take from nature the resources necessary to live. Through our cooperative labor, our survival becomes possible. Through this cooperation not only our mere survival, but also the highest spiritual and cultural elegance is consummated. But to live and to achieve culture we must have access to the necessary resources for survival. This becomes the foundation of all other democratic struggle. In class society the equal access to the necessary resources to survival is erased. Different classes have different relations to the means of production, and thus have different ethics representing these conflicting relationships. This continuing struggle between the competing economic and social classes has a deep sway on the growth and change of understanding. As a member of a specific class, thinking itself is a reflection of that class. History becomes a distortion of interpretation, instead of having a history we have several histories all grounded in the ideology of a specific class. The political and economic elite controls the telling of history for all classes. The morals of the working class demand that these workers tell their own side of the story (Trotsky 1938). The questions of truth or falsity for the working class depends on the affect it has in developing its own theory and the relationship between this theory and the practice of gaining power over our own lives. To attain the expected accomplishments through our actions we must bring our ideas into conformity with laws of the actual physical and social world. Knowledge cannot be separated from practice. Theory and practice is the necessary marriage of all known reality. Theory guides our practice and from our practical activity theories develop. Morality is tied both to our subjective needs and our objective understanding of our universe. Through this connection between the theory and practice our actions lead to more authority over our lives. In this way both the objective and subjective manifestations of our needs can be understood and dealt with. Through a deeper understanding of the universal and the specifics of our humanity and our struggles we can gain an understanding of the basic nature of our existence in its entirety, along with the internal links and the inherent arrangement of things in our environment. By way of understanding and deduction we are able to formulate reasonable insights based upon our discoveries. From these insights our morality is formed and not divinely revealed (Mao 1966: 2-7; Kropotkin 1925: 293-300; Kropotkin 1970: 109-113). To the radical, democratic revolutions are built one upon the other in a never-
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ending series. In Western Europe liberal revolutions began the fight for the vote, equality before the law, merit replacing rank, capitalism, private property, and individualism. This forms the basis of the ideology of political democracy. The labor movement particularly socialism formed a new ideology that found liberal democracy too limiting. Whether moderately or radically defined, economic democracy must be added to political democracy. Public control over the economy became the first order of the day. From this foundation other issues would follow to extend power over our own lives. Other social movements of the 20th century were modeled after the socialist movement. Each of the other movements found liberal democracy too limiting. The feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements are cases in point. The third world national liberation movements are attempts to establish democracy were there were no liberal revolutions. The first stage of anti-imperialism is followed by the struggle for socialism. Socialism is the materialization of democracy. Without socialism no form of democracy is possible. Without democracy socialism is a bureaucratic sham. Capitalist democracy is only political democracy at the most superficial level. Political democracy is carefully designed to blunt popular opposition to class rule. Political democracy demands the equitable distribution of power. Such a demand remains utopian without the equitable distribution of the rewards of production. Economic democracy demands this equitable distribution, and only by insuring that the resources necessary for this production remains under the collective control of all the people will economic democracy become possible (Mao 1971: 467-470; Allende 1973: 31-34; Che 1987: 196-202; Kautsky 1964: 25-58). Just as economic democracy is impossible under the conditions of a capitalist economy, so also the existence of political democracy is impossible under the circumstances of bureaucratic socialism. Bureaucratic socialism is at its core hostile to political democracy and as such economic democracy becomes impossible. If either the political or the economic is lacking in the term democracy there is no social democracy and with out social democracy either the political or economic true manifestations of democracy becomes impossible. After all is said and done a bureaucratic socialist state is closer to becoming democratized than a capitalist republic because the formal ownership has been eliminated already and would be easier to bring the productive resources under the collective control of society for the benefit of all the people. What is to be restricted under democratic socialism is privilege and not existing political rights (Luxemburg 1961: 68-72, 77-80, 89-108; Lenin 1965: 47-53, Trotsky 1972: 45-64, 273290; Trotsky 1965: 39-46). Marx would claim the administrative control of the direct producers over the production process couldnʼt thrive with the continuation of personal economic servitude of the workers. When labor becomes emancipated, every human being becomes a worker, and productive labor will no longer be a characteristic of class. By transforming individual property into social property workers transform the means of production from a method of indenturing and exploiting labor into an apparatus of the free association of labor. Workers must work out their own emancipation through their own agency, passing through a series of long struggles reconstructing environments and people. These workers have no principles to be realized except one to release the substance of the newly forming society for the benefit of all the people, ending the antiquated disintegrating effects of corporate rule (Marx 1940: 60-62). Socialism, according to Luxemburg, encourages the oppressed to take the most active stand possible in a resolute manner without hesitation. This should be done in such a way as to guarantee the most comprehensive public form based on the
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foundation of the most dynamic, involvement of the entire community. Political decisions should be made with the unconstrained participation of the greater portion of the people, always moving towards a more complete democracy (Luxemburg 1961: 76). Liberal democracy is a soft thin shell of freedom over a large hard core of inequality. The formal equality claimed by the above is nothing more than the silk underwear covering the putrefied tissue of an economy upon exploitation. Socialist democracy begins with the eradication of class rule. Satisfaction within capitalist democracy leads to the stagnation of democracy and preservation of privilege (Luxemburg 1961: 77). Socialism begins with an organized effort to expand democracy, to strengthen and encourage popular participation in public life, to awaken in people their collective potential, to become aware of their capacity for achievement. It was held by Luxemburg working people had the capacity to acquire popular solutions to social problems by gaining control of the political machinery of a society and all of its economic resources (Luxemburg 1961: 22). The struggle for democracy internationally is the basic responsibility of socialist in all countries. It is solely on this foundation that the ultimate significance of the determined international movement of the working class revolution can become capable of success. Without this collective action internationally the necessary support for any local action is limited. Indeed even the greatest sacrifices of the radical workers will become muddled in a labyrinth of contradictions (Luxemburg 1961: 28-29). Political rights are not calibrated by obscure expressions like “justice” as if given by God, but by the social-economic relationships for which it was designed. Justice meaning equity cannot happen in a social condition of economic inequality (Luxemburg 1961: 22). The wageworkers, being not only the bottom, but also the most productive class, must free themselves by canceling out all the sources of exploitation, oppression and injustice. It is the industrial working class who are both oppressed and exploited as a class, which is necessary for the existence of all the other classes. The employee as a class is the only class, which continually expands in size, potency, and importance. Through our appreciation of the power of labor, the solidarity among the workers internationally becomes ripe for the fight and has the responsibility of rebuilding the world society. Only by accepting the predilection to carry on the struggle, will the final triumph of socialism become possible and this is necessary for freedom and for democracy if it is ever take root (Kautsky 1971: 4). With the evolution of class conflict between capital and labor, the State power presupposes the characteristic of the governmental authority of capital over labor. The state is the public enforcement established for social subjugation of the real producers. The state is a mechanism of class oppression. After every revolution characterizing a progressive stage in the achievement of democracy based upon class struggle, the directly autocratic aspect of the state become more apparent. The state in its determination to control the forces of production becomes more insolent and immodest in its total configuration. It is essential to overpower the capitalists and overcome its opposition to true democracy. The component of control needs in the future to rest in the hands of the preponderance of the toiling masses or the majority of the total population. Because the majority of the people can overpower their oppressors, the special force of government is no longer needed. The state would then be in the process of withering away. Instead of the distinctive establishment of privileged minority, the majority itself can immediately accomplish all these services, and the more the functions of state
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power come under the control of the people as a whole the less is the need for the existence of a powerful state (Lenin 1970: 48-52). Radical knowledge and planning ability are things that can be achieved in the event that the passion is there to attain them, supposing of course the deficiencies are acknowledged while learning through action. This revolutionary activity is a movement in the direction of canceling out the mistakes of the past (Lenin 1973: 40). Without a radical ideology the struggle remains limited. The character of the initial struggle will grow only when the courageous struggles are waged. Victory can be achieved only by a coterie that is directed by the most well developed theory (Lenin 1973: 29). Without a radical philosophy there can be no revolutionary social movement, or insurgent activity. The part played by the forerunners of revolution who also are the first opponents of social injustice can be consummated only by an alliance that is directed by the most well developed ideology (Lenin 1973: 28-29). The influence of the workers and the labor movement is a challenge to the power elite because of the fact that the working class would be beginning to take their fate into their own hands (Lenin 1973: 43). We need to welcome the opportunities as they arise. Sacrifices may be inevitable in order to acquire the strength to over come the obstacles that stands in the way of democracy. We need to be able to support agitation directly, propaganda methodically, planning precisely, action purposefully, and achieve our accomplishments diligently in those associations in which the wage workers, public employees, day laborers and even the unemployed street people are found. We must coordinate producer cooperatives and labor unions in order that class-consciousness can grow and the desired radical organization becomes part of a radical working class culture (Lenin 1965: 45). The common people must have their own knowledge of public concerns and how to deal with those issues politically. It is class-consciousness that is to guide the people. All other classes belligerent and antagonistic to the workers have become muddled up in a series of alliances with other competing classes wearing down their effectiveness. The allies of the working class; which include the professionals and small business owners; are driven by individual insecurities are always indecisive, inconstant and undependable with an unpleasant concern for individual fortune. The socialist workers need to support the most stubborn, courageous, and democratic action possible. The activist group of workers needs be capable of learning all methods of social activity crossing from one model to another as immediately and as expediently as possible. Following the success of our efforts the workers must make a vigorous attempt to disengage themselves from the opportunists. We must work hard to inspire other workers about the goal of the workers controlling the economy and the system of administration. It is our obligation as socialists to understand all sorts of needed action. We must learn how to carry out our activities, with the utmost agility, to supplant any single item when necessary for another short-term goal in our struggle, and to accommodate our strategy to every modification when the situation warrants (Lenin 1965: 93-111).
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The Revolution or Betrayal The Russian Revolution, not only was a first, it literally was happening without a clear path or strategy for the passing from capitalism or semi-colonialism to socialism and eventually communism. In view of the fact that it was extremely local conditions that led to a successful seizing of power in Russia. In fact a group of revolutionary socialist came to power quite suddenly in the middle of a political crisis. After seizing power they had no existing illustrations to learn from. The Bolsheviks found themselves isolated of in an extremely hostile world dominated by a few powerful capitalist states. The Russian revolution was a grand experiment with very little in the way of previous experience to go by. The Bolsheviks became the leading models for revolution. The older social democratic parties of Europe were put on the defensive for none them had anything in their experiences that could challenge the Bolshevik strategies. The Russian model was the most important model at least until Mao, and Castro changed the rules. Following the Russian Revolution classical Marxism became orthodox Leninism. The debate between parliamentary socialism and revolutionary socialism became intense and off times personal. The following is an endeavor to craft the radical perspectives of the times. Most revolutions are literally brought into existence by homegrown and national issues, but ultimately tied to international trends of the world economy. This leaves the revolutionary with few options; reform or revolution overly simplifies the dilemma. Reform brings changes that can be taken back after the workers become apathetic again. Revolution can lead to sectarian isolation. The solution remains reforms that leads to revolution, thus all reforms must be able to become stepping-stones to further radical action. These further reforms instituted in a way leading to a total revolutionary change. Any victory that brings about radical change is brought about by class struggle. This will lead to renewed struggle, because the ruling class who were forced to give up some of its power, they will fight to regain lost ground. The working class cannot allow its self to remain limited by the rules of liberal capitalist democracy (Trotsky 1969: 30). Once power is gained it can only be maintained by continual struggle against those who directly benefited from the old order (Trotsky 1961: 15). By capturing the control of the state from the ruling class, the toiling masses which includes the working class, destroys the founding necessity for the institutions of the existing state. The capitalist state, which is created to maintain capitalism, becomes outdated and non-functional. The new revolutionary state greatly expands democracy and dramatically lessens the role of the state and weakens its power for oppression. The old state does not simply retire from the scene; the new ruling class must consciously eliminate the structure of the old state. Only through increasing social and economic democracy for all the toiling masses does the political role of the state decline (Lenin 1970a: 20). The essence of the state is coercion. By claiming monopoly of the legitimate use of force, the rulers of the state claim the right to eliminate any competition to its power. The state simply exists to repress certain classes for the benefit of other classes. The socialist will take possession of the state, however the tools of oppression already exist and are not a creation of the socialist. By doing this the socialist also take custody of the means of production in the name of the toiling masses. After the political control of the state is taken away from the ruling class and the majority of toilers are given more democratic control over their lives the old structure of the state is no longer adequate for the new expression of democracy (Lenin 1970a: 20-21). The republican state founded upon a market economy is in reality a dictatorship of
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the capitalist as a class. The capitalist pilfers the working people and exploitation is legal. Government and the law both sanctions and sustains existing capitalist robbery. The use of police to enslave the toilers who are born from the ranks of the people is the rule of law. Through the use of coercion to protect the assets of the avaricious few is the reality behind law and order. The government uses part of the people to support and defend the money-grubbing investment capitalists in burglarizing the totality of the nation (Berkman 1972: 21). Administration becomes the proper protection of privilege of the few, while allowing the mass to have a say in their own exploitation. The goals must remain the goals of the capitalist class. If the workers go too far in fighting for their own interests the workers lose their jobs as investment opportunities dry up. Wage labor requires the capitalist to invest locally. Institutions of exploitation and oppression must look like it is the idea of the workers themselves (Bottomore 1979: 12—17). In times of crisis the intellectuals, professionals, managers, small business owners and civil administrators will share the official ideology of the monopoly capitalist including the civil religion of private property, market economy, individualism and competition. The small business owners cannot but remain subservient to the larger capitalist enterprises. By incorporating elements of the class of the educated professionals into the administrative bureaucracy the capitalist has the appearance of being a popular government. These administrative jobs become dependent upon the success and stability of the market economy thus capitalism can never be seriously challenged (Lenin 1970a: 34). With monopoly capitalism, imperialism reaches its ultimate development. The entire state apparatus becomes overly developed; thus the state becomes an increasing drain on the capitalist economy. The growth of all parts of the state is out of control because of the inherent instability of capitalism. The bureaucracy necessary for the rational control of the social environment of capital intrudes on all aspects of popular life. The increasing repression of the worker becomes total. The market economy becomes so omnipresent that to most people, markets became to be seen as a force of nature and a part of human condition. The market economy became totalitarian and a hidden cultural reality that was operating not only openly, but even at the subconscious level (Lenin 1970a: 38). The central motivation in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and create socialism, which will lead ultimately to communism, is to end all class inequality as indispensable for freedom. Intensive class struggle is both the effect and the cause of revolution. The bourgeoisie its society, culture, ideology, religion, educational system, as well as the state stand as enemies to be crushed before the workers can emancipate them selves. With the great expansion of social democracy the privilege of property is lost. For the working poor life becomes freer, for the rich and power the advantage of wealth is lost (Lenin 1970a: 41). Dictatorship is an inherent part of all governments. Government being part of the state is also an instrument of class rule needed to repress other classes in their resistance to that rule, i.e. dictatorship. As long as there are class divisions there will always be some type of dictatorship. Politically a democratic dictatorship or dictatorship of the working majority, will be necessary to protect the democratic gains of a socialist revolutions from those who would reestablish privilege. Only when all memory of privilege is gone will social democracy finally replace the last traces of political democracy. The democratic republic under capitalism is in fact a dictatorship of the capitalist class. First in the socialist revolution is the overthrow of the dictatorship of the
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capitalist economy, and the establishment of the democratic dictatorship, also called the “dictatorship of the proletariat” i.e. the working majority. Finally the greatly expanded political democracy of socialism, the democratic dictatorship, is totally replaced by the social and economic democracy of communism. The need for instruments of repression will then be eliminated by popular action of all the people. This may be another reason why the republic or the very limited political democracy of liberal capitalism of the oppressors is of little use to socialist after the revolution. The peopleʼs revolution is the natural evolution of democracy as all the masses weighted down by drudgery of wage slavery becoming involved in a new democratic way of life (Lenin 1970a: 41-45). Until things become so intolerable that prolonged reconciliation becomes unacceptable; the majority will not embrace a radical ideology that offers an alternative vision of how society should be structured. Until the people on the bottom reach that agitated point of grievances, they will accept the prevalent values of the dominant culture as inevitable. It is demanded by all that any disruptive political behavior “must be avoided” by both the exploited and the exploiters. Until the revolutionary juncture is reached only the working class will pursue those concessions that are seen as untenable to the ruling class. (Lenin 1970a: 47-58). As more people become desperate the capitalist becomes ready to use coercion to force compliance, only further alienating the poor. Death squads and low intensity wars of genocide have become commonplace in Africa and Latin America in the last third of the twentieth century. Foolishly daring wars of liberation are met with sanctions and technological holocausts by the advanced industrial state like the US and their third world client states. Democracy is very important for the working class. Workers in their struggle against the capitalist in the fight for freedom will need to become the defenders of democracy. (Lenin 1973a: 118-122). Theory is born from experience. The intellectual who tryʼs to articulate theory must first go to the ordinary people of the community, to study their lived experiences in the context of the larger social structure in order to understand the impact of that complex web called world capitalism on real life in real communities (Mao). People learn from democracy, and extending progressively more power to the powerless is the best education on self-rule. Political rights in the liberal democracies are superficial at best, but without them people lose their main vehicle to express their dissatisfaction and demand change that will address the issues that affect their lives. Every socialist must be a civil libertarian, for without these basic rights the radical socialists become but easy targets for repression. People cannot make use of radical theory without first being exposed to it. Only if the theory of socialism makes sense to those on the bottom of a society can socialism take root as the expression of the oppressed. This problem becomes in our every day lives we as teachers become exposed to traditional liberties as being but an outside covering of inequality, oppression, very limited freedom of expression for the majority of the people who are victims of exploitation and living broken lives (Luxemburg 1970). Socialism is the manifestation of democracy. Without socialism no form of democracy is possible. Liberalism ultimately is a slick sells job; the object is to blunt any possible opposition to class rule. Socialism and democracy both share the responsibility and the necessity of ending any form of class rule. Just as democracy is impossible under the conditions of a capitalist economy, so also is the bureaucratic manifestation of state socialism also hostile to democracy. However the second type of systems is easier to reform along democratic lines than the form. This is because formal ownership of private property has been eliminated. This is the main reason why the democratic
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reforms in the state socialist societies were openly stolen by the former communist in Eastern Europe rejecting what they were in the past to become proponents of capitalism. In both cases privilege and not political rights is what the rulers want. The expression of class narrow-mindedness is everywhere in advanced capitalist society. The fact that there are non-producers who control the means of production and producers who do all the real work, while true, is officially denied. The non-producers have their private independent income, which is the result of their ownership and control of the productive property of society. This means it is the producers the actual working class which produces the wealth of the non-productive owners. Class is the relationship to the means of production, and this relationship affects the accumulation of wealth and power. This means the relationship between the workers and the corporate elite is one of exploitation. The rich corporations exploit not only the workers of the rich centers, but all the poor nations of the world. The expressions of oppressed ethnic groups often are in themselves the result of class exploitation. (Parenti 1994: 55-70)
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Theory The historical isolation of most struggles limits its possibilities. Both the national and international characteristics of any social upheaval interact to give each social setting a unique set of possibilities. Because social movements depend upon internal peculiarity of a nation it is easy to forget the worldwide trends of which it is apart. It must be remembered that all social movements are the result of internal national struggles brought about by local manifestations of a larger worldwide trends. The worldwide nature of the market economy and its bastard child imperialism creates many distinct yet similar problems, each with its unique national character. Every struggle must take into account the unique differences, as well as the cross-national similarities. This means a revolutionary strategy that may work in one nation is not exportable to another nation with a different social environment. The local objective of a movement is determined by the history of the indigenous people. Each nation has its own interaction between external and internal forces at work. This creates a specific contradictory reality and its own formula for resolution. The failure of a radical ideology to take root and to offer a realistic solution is born from the lack of an historical understanding of the situation. History includes a knowledge of the material factors that leads to success or failure. In all class societies any movement that fails to consider the internal class struggle will remain limited in its possibilities. The development of the productive forces allowing for a surplus and an unequal distribution of wealth means for the toiling poor that a victory will improve the drudgery of their lives but very little if at all (Cabral 1969: 11-14, 90—111). The isolation of any local or national struggle sets the limits of its success. It becomes increasingly obvious all national struggles are in turn tied to the success of other struggles around the world. Without this connection each revolution, if successful, creates a weakened national economy in which the socialist state is but a puny threat to a world system based upon imperialist exploitation. Rosa Luxemburg wrote from her prison cell during The Great War: “ The fate of the revolution in Russia depends fully upon international events. That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political farsightedness and firmness of principle and bold scope of their policies” (Luxemburg 1970: 28). Without this association of socialists around the world, and because each individual socialist revolution in any one country is encircled by a unfriendly capitalist world, she gave a prophetic warning to the effect that because of such deadly circumstances of continual assault on socialism by the world capitalist even with a revolutionary commitment of tremendous scope on the part of the revolutionaries in any new socialist society, and even with radicals who are most experienced in fighting under siege in the field, with all their revolutionary energy they will still be helpless of achieving either democracy or socialism but only the most deformed strivings at either (Luxemburg 1970: 28). The issue of national sovereignty cannot limit the expanded struggle for a truly democratic society. National sovereignty is not the type of right that will expand political democracy or move towards economic and social democracy. Sovereignty becomes the battle cry of a national capitalism seeking opportunistically to strengthen their position in a neo-colonial relationship with the elite power of world capitalism (Luxemburg 1970). Reactionary politics and nationalism reinforce each other no matter if we are talking about the domination by the metropolis or the subjugation of the periphery. Nationalism improves the lot of the national elite while leaving the plight of the poor people in tact. Nationalism only increases the poverty, exploitation, and oppression of
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the working poor by creating yet another thin layer, the national leaders, who live off the surplus generated by these poor (Luxemburg 1970). A nationalist slogan in a developed class society ignores the existing contradictions and only maintains those already existing class antagonisms. There can be no real national self-determination of oppressed nations as long as there exists an international capitalist system. Each class within the existing oppressed nation has a different vision of what self-determination means. In the end however the national elite has the power to speak for the oppressed nation as a whole. At independence the national leaders have the power to subordinate all the working poor to its command, while creating an integral position for itself in the world capitalist system. This is neocolonialism. Socialist often agree that nationalist movements that lack the integrating ideology for the continuation of class struggle within the oppressed nation must not be supported by the socialist in any nation (Luxemburg 1970). Among the small property owners who suffer tremendously under capitalism, are often attracted to any kind of revolutionary ideology. When they become revolutionaries they often move in irrational and dangerously extreme directions. Because of this they often start trouble and lack the discipline to follow through. Because of the individualism of small property the same individual often moves from the extreme left to the extreme right, and follows any of the latest fads that appears to be anti-establishment. These same individuals because of their lack of discipline ultimately end up apathetic cynics when the last fad passes (Lenin 1973b. 17). It is stupid to reject compromise with other groups out of hand. With out a grounding in rigorous sociological theory the revolutionary never understands what compromises will further the struggle for emancipation, and which will jeopardize the revolution itself. To gain strong theoretical insight will protect the revolutionary from the ideological purest who reject any and all compromises or alliances, even those that will strengthen their power, expand their popular base, and add further insights to revolutionary theory (Lenin 1973b: 23). Socialist movements are born from a prolonged awareness of injustice. Once expressed it has the power as a collective action of the people. In the process an alternative ideology is shaped. This gives form and substance to the movement. This growing popular mood defines the political issues and the opposing sides. The growing popular rebellion and its ideology of resistance creates and defines the authority of the movement. It is clearly the movement itself, which brings into being by its radical action the white-hot fervor that moves people to become more than what they are. That delicate but resonant essence, impressionable yet tense political and social ambiance in which wave after wave of public emotion grows into the vibration of democratic animation of entire communities. People become drunk on the movement (Luxemburg 1970: 61). In all countries in this era there are continuous developments of internal struggles. These struggles develop certain elements that become progressively more radical. Each local struggle is at some point tied to a larger national struggle or it will remain a local issue easily defeated and forgotten. If successful this can lead only temporarily to minor changes in peoples lives. Each national struggle is in turn tied to a larger world trend and thus closely dependent upon the success of struggles in other nations. The first stage in any local or national movement is to form a coalition of many parties and interested people, but as it moves toward revolution a single party gains control over the revolution. Either a movement must develop along revolutionary lines or remain forever limited in its visions of accomplishments (Luxemburg 1970: 29-36). Each class in most republican states has either their own political party, or their
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own political organization to represent their interests. A faction of stable and experienced individuals will acquire influence over the political organizations (Lenin 1973b: 28). Ferdinand LaSalle offered the theory of the iron law of wages, which was, based upon the overabundance of people needing a job under capitalism driving down wages, making labor activity somewhat ineffective. The strategy for socialism was to be electoral and/ or forming cooperatives. On the other hand to the Marxist there should be no preexisting limitations to political activity, the working class Party must operate both legal and extra-legal activities (Kipinis 1952: 8). Small commodity producers are not the enemy. They must, however, be brought closer to the revolutionary working class. The culture of the professional and small business owner is one of individualism. Their dreams usually center on more private property and more personal wealth. Only through the strictest revolutionary discipline can the working class make use of this activist raw material to further the struggle for democracy (Lenin 1973b: 32). The issue of who is the working class becomes central to the debate over alliances with the professionals. Most Marxist included wageworkers that did not own the resources of production and had very little control over those resources. Larger wage packages were offered to the upper stratum of skilled workers of the older capitalist countries, to buy off those workers who would be the hardest to replace. With skilled labor dominating the labor movement in industrialized nations, skilled labor in the rich countries began to see their interests in narrowly nationalist terms. These workers in rich countries shared the surplus created in the poor nations. Poverty became more intense and permanently entrenched in the less developed parts of the world. In the rich centers, the labor movement became short term and reformist. The hope for revolution then was in the dependent and semi-dependent nations (Lenin 1939:61). Victor Berger a socialist from the US in the early 1900ʼs would hold skilled craftsmen were workers, as were college educated intellectuals, small farmers, small business owners, independent producers, merchants even capitalists who were not monopoly capitalist. These groups gave socialism its finest minds. Unskilled workers were the product of the slum and gutter, were squalid, unenlightened, and dull. The rabble only leads a movement of class hatred and was dangerous to the future of socialism (Kipinis 1952: 226-228). Most revolutionary Marxists would see this latter group as the real working class. Once the working class has been defined, it is seen as the class of emancipation, the intermediate groups are full of contradictions, and undependable. The working class must ultimately lead the revolution if democracy is to lead to socialism. The working class in power is seen as the highest form of democracy as they are in no position to exploit anyone (Trotsky 1969: 70-71). The centralized property of a worldwide monopoly capital is easier to socialize than the small properties of thousands if not millions of small proprietors (Lenin 1973b: 33). The old craft distinction of the early days of capitalism lived on to plague the radical working class, as craft union had dreams of business ownership and middle class individualism at its core. Any kind of union is progressive; industrial unions were more advanced than craft unions and revolutionary social union should lead the way (Lenin 1973b: 40). Trade unions developed into industrial unions as working class unity come into being (Lenin 1973b: 41). Through revolutionary action members of a trade union become educated on the need for a radical labor party. It is through this action that workers learn to become
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communists. They become free of capitalist ideological control of such oppressive support units as the churches, schools, the popular media, professional management and the limited visions of their own unions. They become capable of replacing the rules of the market and professional managers, who pawn their souls to the capitalist, with a true working class democracy (Lenin 1973b: 41). The most radical workers become models for the least progressive political workers teaching them to become militants in the revolutionary struggle for freedom (Lenin 1973b: 42). Democracy based on real socialism demands nothing less of its scholars than to become plebeian in their heart and soul and claim themselves workers. The intellectual must call the rural poor farmers and farm labors relatives, and to feel at home in the villages, the working class neighborhoods and among the destitute. It is in times of nonrevolutionary quietude or the explosion of counter-revolutionary reaction that the hard work of the radical counts the most. It is during these times in a thousand subtle ways, and in many quiet conversations that keeps the popular hope of equality and liberty alive. If the radical ideology is carefully cared for during this time of barren hopelessness, will the reverberation of the sound of insurrection move to a climax of meaningful lived experience during times of upheaval. The revolutionary ideology will grow to give expression to the shared feelings of those whose sense of social injustice and moral outrage that demands expression will find a home. This is revolution. “The revolutionary petty bourgeoisie must be capable of committing suicide as a class in order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong” (Cabral: 110). The educated “elite” among the radicals in the socialist and labor movement is always a difficult contradictory group to understand at best. These groups of intellectuals are drawn from several different classes and strata within these classes. Many of these intellectuals have their own grievances against capitalist society. There are far too few legitimate positions open compared to number of qualified applicants, the competition for these positions resolves itself often around characteristics only indirectly related to the job. Often the position ends up restricting what the office holder is allowed to do. In either case potentially progressive professionals are thrown on the scrap heap of the refuse of the decadent market economy. Therefore many of these middle class intellectuals come to socialism through the back door. Many of these socialists have very little in common with the direct producers, the working class. The working class socialism is the best expression of anti-capitalism. The intellectual alienated from the main trends of capitalism are often drawn into socialism, not for their deep concerns for the working class but because of the lack of a creative life in the heart of a market economy. Because of the suffocating life within the free market society, anyone who spent their lives developing their intellectual talents will soon run up against the heartless and cruel laws of the market. Their socialism is the socialism of the broken heart. Because of their easy access to theory their socialism is often an authoritarian form of socialism. When the intellectual of any other class speaks for the working class, these tendencies toward centralized command become even more pronounced (Luxemburg: 1970; Bakunin 1971). According to Cabral there are only two alternatives, either to betray the revolution or to commit suicide as a class. This constitutes the dilemma of the radical intellectual within the general struggle of the larger national liberation struggle. The development of revolutionary consciousness becomes the most important challenge of these peopleʼs
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existence (Cabral: 110). Because laboring people often lack the access to the most developed socialist sociology, when they do embrace socialism it often takes on an eclectic character. This selective eclecticism of the working class often lack scientific understanding or practical strategies, but is grounded in real lived experience of the workers. The flaw of the intellectual middle class is the strong inclination to become an ideologically pure and narrow sect. What is needed is a blending of both. All factions within socialism have a certain measure of insight. Through open and friendly dialogue the various competing factions can contribute to a larger more logical whole. Historical Sociology and the lived experience of the proletariat need to be brought closer together. Class-consciousness is the key to this unity. Bureaucracy is hostel to maintaining class-consciousness and the movement is easily taken over by the educated professionals who are hungry for power (Luxemburg: 1970). “Nothing will more surely enslave a young labor movement to an intellectual elite hungry for power than this bureaucratic straight jacket, which will immobilize the movement and turn it into an automation manipulated by a central committee . . . there is no more effective guarantee against opportunist intrigue and personal ambition than the independent revolutionary action of the proletariat, as a result of which the workers acquire the sense of political responsibility and self-reliance” (Luxemburg 1970: 102). Revolutions that are led by a professional vanguard, will need a second revolution with an independent revolutionary culture born deep within the working poor as a class instinctive in their pain, their hope and in their joy, is an absolute if the revolution is to survive. If socialism is to survive the workers must through their own democratic organizations take control of the revolution. If the revolution does not pass out of the hands of the vanguard then this vanguard will be drawn from the ranks of the corporate capitalists, minor entrepreneurs and the professional classes and speaking in the name of the international working classes will use the plight of the working poor to continue their own bid for power and care for the eliteʼs interests first, the exploitation continues with new masters (Luxemburg 1970). This problem is not easily solved because socialism is opposed to any form of injustice. Socialism has always been the sanctuary for any who are abused by global capitalism. Socialism not only represents the class interests of the working people of all lands, but socialism also is the last best hope for any with dreams of a more humane society. All who dare to care beyond their narrow interests will find socialism attractive. The socialist movement is not only often dominated by an educated strata who are from non-working class origins, but often the majority of its adherents are also non-working class, i.e. the New Left of the 1960ʼs. This is because of the permanent moral crisis of a market economy i.e. capitalism and the consumer driven mediocrity of popular culture all of which is founded on the most amoral, and outright immoral economy worldwide the planet has ever seen. Socialist of all varieties is the only social movement that takes on all inequalities at its fundamental core. Socialist must be opposed to any form of inequality and all ruling classes. This is why all socialist must return to the movementʼs working class origins or socialism becomes as both Rosa Luxemburg a classical Marxist and Michael Bakunin the father of modern Anarchism pointed out socialism will turn into its opposite and become the rule of the professional for the professionals at the expense of the workers and other toiling poor. While working within the limits of the existing society, and the rules lay down by its laws and social structure it is important to guard against any form of elitism. Through the day-to-day struggles we learn, often painfully slow, that victory only has a chance if we respect in a democratic way other positions
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and other dreams. Each victory is but a resting platform leading to further struggles and new launching platforms until all traces of inequality is eliminated. The collective control of the fruits of society And the collective control of the needed resources and the labor of society means that only through equality of outcome can any individual have the support necessary to maximize her full potential. Socialism is a mass movement of all people with out regard to rank. The flaws socialism must overcome within its own movement are created out of the fact that everywhere socialist face a firmly established class structure. The ideological garbage of capitalist society has been deeply entrenched into the psychology of each and every one of us as socialists. Only by fighting for socialism can we become healed. Errors must be treated with loving compassion, for that is the only way to learn (Luxemburg 1970). Socialism must remain critical of liberal society in its entirety. Any compromise with this long-term opposition to liberal society will mean total defeat of the socialist ideal, even before one begins on a socialist path. Socialism can only be judged using a socialist frame of reference. Socialism is born and nurtured in opposition to liberal society. All human rights are based upon human relations, either they lead to further collective emancipation or they lead to privilege of an elite minority. Liberty is always subversive to privileged the two are always opposed. Privilege in a liberal society masquerades as liberty. If property is challenged, as it must be for egalitarianism or liberty to be established, this become subversion and repressed to stop the movement toward equality. Liberty always remains its opposite in the hands of a ruling elite. Liberty is defined not as the collective freedom of individuals in society, thus its content remains shallow. In a liberal society or under a bureaucratic nationalized economy the collective freedom of all is properly channeled so as to protect ranking of power. If freedom is not the social psychology born out of the economic environment based upon the democratic collective production relations of equals, then all we can expect is that the elite must be appealed to protect our mutual freedom in opposition to their own best interests and power; which is absurd. Liberal society is based upon the established national elite who is in a position to give or take away the freedom of others, as they will (Luxemburg 1970: Saxton 1992; Bakunin; Lenin 1973b; Marx 1968; Trotsky 1968, Cabral 1969; Mao; Kropotkin). Theory that is rigorous and scientific cannot be avoided, if organized socialist are to see through the labyrinth called the present. Theory deals with what exists and its historical development. By understanding what are the current contradictions in the larger setting of historical trends we gain an understanding on how to organize, around what issues and what strategies are possible. Because there is always the conjuncture of local issues in the context of regional, national and international environments each locality has its own specific needs that need to be dealt with (Luxemburg 1970; Cabral). Organization must take on long-term strategies and a permanent structure. This leads to both centralization and bureaucracy. These two characteristics are necessitated by the very structure of international capitalism. Because capitalism dominates all aspects of life, any resistance to capitalism takes on certain traits of capitalism. Centralization and bureaucracy while unavoidable, carry within it strong anti-democratic tendencies. Class struggle needs an organization that can withstand the crushing effects of the state, militarism of imperialism, and the assimilation of the entire world into a single all dominating economic system. Unions and socialist parties must continually be on the alert for the anti-democratic top down bureaucracies. Each generation must push for democracy, as long as there is a market economy that dominates every fiber of our lives democracy will remain subversive and democracy will be attacked on all sides even
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within our own ranks (Luxemburg 1970). Education of a socialist strategy is born out of struggle. Day to day manifestations of that struggle necessitates a continuing re-evaluation of any strategy. Radical awareness comes from lived experience. Theory only makes sense in the context of lived experiences. The toiling majorities become educated in the context of trying to improve their lives collectively. Local awareness incorporates national and international understandings. The workers cannot wait for political reformers to take pity upon them. The poor and the working majority must develop their own collective organized activities to influence public life for their benefit. The mind deadening jobs of the unskilled worker means that their bodies and their work lives become an extension of a non-living machine. When these same workers become radicalized within their working class organizations and make contacts with radicals the world over their lives become a fertile and cultivated aesthetic declaration of their humanity. The radicals sees their larger collective interests in common with laboring people everywhere. The coordination for a worker on the job provides the discipline for larger political activity. To disentangle capitalist control over every aspect of proletarian existence the obedience and servility on the job, in the working class communities, and the private recesses of the workers minds must be forever shattered. Once a movement takes off whatever ideological spadework already done will provide the framework for the popular rebellion. If this ideology reflects and maps real situations it will provide a rough outline to move the insurrection toward a long-term movement and in a hopeful and progressive direction. Once established ideologies no mater how insightful or radical are hard pressed to keep up with what is happening. If radicals have not done the ideological groundwork another ideology will be found leading the movement in a reactionary direction defeating all hope to improve the situation (Luxemburg: 1970). This is why theory must resonate with the real historical situation, and the continuing chance to expand the revolution over time. Theory must remain flexible to allow changes in its formal expression as the social environment changes. The most difficult thing to learn is how to study the sociology of the current situation, and learn the political potential of the now. Part of this understanding is to become aware of any revolutionary or reform opportunities that currently exist. To do this we must understand the limitations of potential action. The revolutionary workers need to know what to expect from their allies in the struggle to seize power. To use past experiences only as an educational tool to better comprehend the historical development of the current situation. To use skills used in this analysis to become aware of the new potentials as they present themselves and to inform others of our discoveries. To move with caution when caution is warranted, to move with radical and decided resolve when the opportunity for insurrection is good. Class-consciousness only grows when such opportunities exhibit themselves with a sensibility of how to proceed (Lenin 1973b: 42). Revolutionaries must be capable of great sacrifices, because great sacrifices are required. The struggles are many, and the hurdles are great as they are many. It is always dangerous to agitate. (Lenin 1973b: 45). Only those who feel they have more to gain than lose will pursue revolution. Even death while fighting injustice has more meaning than living through that injustice (Kautsky 194: 17). The revolutionary organization must learn from past mistakes. It is true that only by being willing to learn can an effective organization be created. Revolution is serious business and should be treated as such (Lenin 1973b: 50). Rosa Luxemburg is clear when she stated that the Revolution should be compelled
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to move forward at a speedy pace. Revolutionaries should constantly be besieging the fortress of privilege, but always at a determined momentum of struggle. This is the only way to break down all the obstacles that are set up by the Reaction and place the goals of the revolutionary working class even further ahead with each victory. If each victory is not seen as a lunching pad for further revolutionary struggles the whole movement will soon simply be thrown backward at a place even further behind the puny goals of the beginning of the working class movement. Those gains we have already made will be suppressed by the counter-revolution unless we continuously build upon our victories of the past and our current strength (Luxemburg 1970: 36). By being willing to admit mistakes, can we find the reasons why these mistakes were made in the first place, and what were the conditions that led us into such mistakes and finally what can be done to correct these errors (Lenin 1973b: 51). Moderate gains are easily lost in the fight against the Reaction. In a revolutionary situation those groups of radicals who push to the limits of their goals and match the hopes of the toiling poor will take control of the struggle. Only through this control of the revolution can the revolutionaries ever hope to be a part of the movement of the majority of the oppressed who came to see their interests are articulated by the Revolution. Only by taking control of the situation will the majority of the working poor offer support to a disciplined and organized party of Revolution. The immediate aim is the seizure of power by the party claiming to speak for the toiling mass. By direct seizure of the land by those who work the land, can the rural poor be won over to socialism. In fact national selfdetermination has little to do with either democracy or socialism. Land and sovereignty without an over riding commitment to international socialist democracy is easily controlled by narrow self-serving petty or national bourgeoisie leading only to neocolonialism. (Luxemburg 1970: 36). Strategy is always changing, based upon the objective analysis of the continuously change situations in the social settings of state societies. Sometimes working within the legitimate parliamentary channels is indeed wise and practical, because of the fact there may me room to make progressive changes legally. At other times the legitimate parliamentary channels, only show to the activist the limitations of those channels. Many times it becomes necessary to work outside of the existing the legitimate parliamentary channels either to change the rules or to irradiate that system (Lenin 1973b: 51-158). Following the organization of the Revolutionary Party, any tactics will be successful only if those actions bring ever-larger numbers of the exploited masses into the revolution. At every stage radical workers will meet organized opposition from the international capitalist class. Even after the socialist revolution the enemies within the nation and in cooperation with the international opponents to socialism will work together to destroy socialism and discredit the revolution. All socialist revolutions start from a position of weakness. Even after the establishment of a socialist state within a country that nation remains isolated as the organized and more powerful international capitalist class will throw all its combined power at the socialist state to destroy it and any hope of the expansion of socialism into other countries. The more powerful enemy can be overpowered only by putting forth a very long, highly organized and extremely systematic struggle by the workers of the world, even in the reactionary countries. Every contradiction, of every faction, within the international capitalist class must be taken advantage of by the revolutionaries within every socialist nation and hopefully with the active support of socialist everywhere (Lenin 1973b: 52-78).
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When the revolution catches on, the worldview of the workers becomes dramatically altered. The old ways of doing business becomes so unattractive that there will be no returning to the life of the docile and willing wage slave. The crisis runs so deep as to make an entirely new consciousness the norm. The revolution becomes the workers lifeblood. Every sacrifice even death is preferred to returning to the old ways of doing things. As the revolution grows spin off groups, are formed who fear going further with the revolution. The revolution has already reached a point of no return. Thus, the reaction grows with the growth of the revolution. Socialism remains surrounded by a lot of enemies (Lenin 1973b: 85-113). Everywhere socialism has been established it either had to compromise it main principles from the start with the large corporate capitalist by not challenging private property, i.e. social democratic Sweden; or it became isolated and under attack by the surrounding capitalist countries, i.e. the Soviet Union during the formative years. To survive socialist around the world turned in upon themselves and created a society in which the economy is controlled by a highly bureaucratic centralized state. What happened with the early abandonment of liberty in former socialist countries like the Soviet Union is understandable when threatened with extinction by a worldwide hostile camp of capitalism. This, is not to say the suppression of human liberties can ever be excused. It is only to say that in the long run democratizing the soviet Union would have been easier than democratizing the United States in which all of its major institutions are dominated by corporate capitalist concerns. The sabotage of the democratic efforts within Eastern Europe took the active cooperation of both bureaucrats who claimed loyalty to the Communist Party at one time and now are strongly pro-capitalist, and International Capitalist organizations. These international capitalist organization like the World Trade Council. the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the United States Government cannot stand any threat to imperialism. The former Soviet Union certainly was a threat by its international support of National Liberation Movements, yet a democratic model on the scale of the 1989 revolutions would have been far greater cause of concern. Democracy and capitalism will always remain mortal enemies. Only a tamed and trite political democracy can be tolerated, as long as it acts like religion to drug the minds of the oppressed. Every nation is unique. Any time frame in history is also unique. Taken in combination, every road to socialism meets with its own nightmares and has its own shortcomings forced upon it from the outside. National history is always exceptional. Any and all historical stages exist in a historically specific set of circumstance with its own unique limitations (Luxemburg 1970). The fetal organization of socialism created out of revolution rapidly grows to maturity after political victory. The ends are a direct product of the means. The compromises made with democracy or civil liberty soon becomes institutionalized. If socialist are not careful the organized power needed to fight against inequality, oppression and exploitation will create a bureaucracy hostile to democracy. On the other hand it is important for socialist to understand its organized opposition. To take the necessary precautions to save democracy does not require the abandonment of democracy. This contradiction will have to be resolved if we are to have a better world someday. What is needed is the flexibility to deal with each unique situation that develops out of the conjuncture of historical variables local and international (Luxemburg 1970). We as humans consciously act within a social-historical environment that exists, at least initially for all of us, independent of our will. This environment is historical. People were around before we were born, in part created the environment. Its boundaries are
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demarcated, and its present form reflects a particular historical development. In the past within each society were people struggling with their own preexisting social environments changing that social setting and themselves to reflect their continuously evolving circumstances. The fact that change is constant does not alter the fact that change often results in conflict. Those with a stake in the past or present social relations resist that change, particularly any change that may favor another class contending for power. It is this particular struggle that establishes the political generations of contending forces, the issues defined as important and the contending ideology. Following such upheavals are many people who are attracted to movements without experiencing a radicalizing event, thus leading to a superficial commitment to the Revolution. Intellectually this leads to an emotional and shallow understanding the social forces and issues at stake. The original radicalizing experience is made even more radical by the repression of the ruling class that feels threatened. This is a struggle between those with the power and those that directly challenges that power. The result of this power struggle is at least in part determined by what resources the contending factions can muster. These classes opposing each other are manifested in opposing ideologies. The tensions that develop as an outgrowth of their social relations accumulate for years then at some point spill over into open conflict. Within the struggle that is the result of the contradictions inherent in the productive forces, ideas are a guide to action. The ideas being expressed can lead to a better resolution of these contradictions, as far as the working class is concerned, if it correctly expresses the material nature of these contradictions. This action led by a good understanding of sociology, leads to a weakening of class oppression. If the ideology of struggle focuses on the wrong causes of exploitation it will weaken the classes fighting for more equality. Radical consciousness helps the radical to focus her attention on the origin of oppression, and not competing victims of injustice. The old ruling class controlling ideological production orchestrates nationalism just for that reason. Only by taking a class analysis can theory become apart of the direct action in which the actors transform themselves while transforming society. While critically analyzing the limitations of liberal society can one understand the potential for a socialist transition and recreating a new persona. This theory of history takes society and the personality of the individuals involved as an historical construction in which individuals have a say in remaking their society and themselves. The recreating of self creates new individuals capable of freedom. This is a theory of history that says by becoming a revolutionary we create a new social-psychology in which people can become masters of the their own personal fate, and not just its victims. Society and personality, both were historical constructions beyond our control, now becomes a product of our own creativity. If theory and sociology are not only the study of what is, but also what might be if certain action is taken then sociology and theory becomes guides to conscious behavior. Through rebellion we become free, even while the institutions of oppression remain. Because this theory is set in a specific historical and social context, sociology is necessary to understand the potential beyond the utopian illusions. Theory set in a sociological as well as a socialist frame of reference will give that theory a greater possibility of limiting the material structure of oppression and exploitation. In the contest with the ruling elite the toiling masses cannot afford not to take this socialist frame of reference if they ever hope to limit or end their source of oppression. This is theory of action. If history is the history of transformation of the economic base, it is under capitalism of today that socialism can become a tool of the working class to implement social change. By changing their circumstance the
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working class changes them. Only through understanding history by having an insight theory of anthropology does the socialist have a chance of controlling the direction of the changes they live through. The workers are the direct producers of the material base of society. Socialism must belong to the working class. Our welfare is at stake here. If not there can never be democracy because of the fact the other classes live off the surplus produced by the working people. Till now democracy has meant democracy for the few. Liberal democracy becomes possible because of poverty and exploitation of most of the rest of the world. For a handful of these liberal democracies the horrors of imperialism is carefully maintained abroad. At home drugs like mass culture and religion are openly supported by corporate and government cooperation, deaden the pain class exploitation, by giving short-term fixes to the exploited working class. Violence and oppression are the necessary preconditions of freedom and peace in a capitalist society. This contradiction divides the world between rich nations, with their own internal colonial pockets of poverty, and the poor nations who are exploited for the benefits of the wealthy citizens of the rich nations. The rich nations, or at least to their richer citizens, can claim to offer the best hopes and opportunities only because these same dreams are denied to the majority in those poor nations, and even among the workers in the rich nations, who are exploited for the benefit of the rich. Through our education in the United States we are constantly told of the crimes of the former Communist nations like the USSR and the Peopleʼs Republic of China. What of the worldwide carnage orchestrated by the United Statesʼ Government through the world during the twentieth century? At home the United States passed many laws restricting first amendment rights of its own citizens. Around the rest of the world the government murdered countless millions of people to keep the world safe for corporate investments. What the Soviet Union did to its own citizens the US Government did directly or indirectly to the rest of the globe. In both countries the murders, justified their crimes because of the logic of the historical situation. Given the logic of the specific modes of production and their corresponding ideologies murder is never really murder. Criminals with a clean conscience see only the evil of the other side. However, the crimes are not equal. Exploitation around the world is central to the capitalist system. Its violence and oppression is necessary for its very existence. The tragedy of the Soviet Union was its violence was an unnecessary internal paranoid reaction to a very real external threat. The Soviet Union out of a false concept of the “necessary”, created its own professional class to speak in the name of the proletariat. This class without a clear identity of its own relationship to the means of production, never was in a position to understand the class needs or temperament of the Soviet Working Class. The professional bureaucrat became a ruling class, controlling the very same people they claimed to speak for. This contradiction only grew because the ideology did not recognize their separateness from the working class. This contradiction could not resolve itself without recognizing the antagonistic relationship between the workers and the professionals. When the professionals ceased to see itself as part of the working class they falsely saw themselves as potential capitalists. In point of fact the revolution or counter-revolution of 1989—1991 was never over democracy. The Communist Party professionals and many enterprise directors had dreams of becoming a national capitalist class. In the United States the Crimes committed by the ruling class are not only done with a clear conscience, but also with a clear mind as a necessity for the survival of the world market economy. The rape, felony, robbery and murder by the economic and political leaders of the US are as rational as they are cynical. Rational crimes can be even more dangerous than irrational crimes.
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Vanguard or Mass Movement The Party of the Working Class The evolution of capitalism is also the evolution of a unified working class (Lenin 1973b. 40-41). Ever since the Bolshevik Revolution the name of Lenin was closely associated with Marxism. Marxism-Leninism has often equated with not only Marxism, but with the entirety of the communist, socialist, and revolutionary working class movements. Until after World War II the socialist movement as a whole was dwarfed by the Third international. Lenin strongly believed in a centralized command structure and a very strict discipline among revolutionaries is necessary for victory (Lenin 1973b: 6). In fact Lenin was but one player in a rather diverse anti-capitalist movement. Before the Bolshevik Revolution his influence out side of Russia was limited. After 1917, because of the events in Russia his words and deeds electrified the left world wide, in turn sparking some of the healthiest debates in the 20th century. The books “What is to be Done” (1902), “The State and Revolution” (1917), and “Left Wing Communism: Infantile Disorder” (1921) expresses his evolving ideas on revolutionary strategy and the role of the party. This stimulated very heated debates between a vanguard vs. mass party, as well as the very definitions of democracy and the role of the revolutionary in a larger social movement. We need to look at the ideas of Lenin and compare them to other ideas on the revolutionary left. From beginning to end of the 19th century socialism was a mass movement, by the end of that century socialism grew beyond the working class. Many socialists believed that only those who are not confident with their own organization and understanding of the contemporary circumstances, of the environment surrounding the social movement, would be afraid to take part in an temporary alliance with other classes or parties. The political fact is that no party, whether it is a vanguard party or a mass party, can exist for long without association with other such political groups. A fundamental prerequisite for such an alliance must be the complete possibility for the Socialists who are not from the working class become exposed to the working class as a whole and the radical workers in particular. The result was the idea that the party of the revolution must never lose sight of the long-range goals while seeking shortterm objectives. It must be remembered that it is to the advantage of the working class to understand that they have interests that are diametrically antagonistic to the interests of the capitalist and even sometimes the professionals and the self employed. The middle class must choose between alliances with one of the two major classes. In most cases, however the small business ownersʼ interests are even more frustrated by the large capitalist than the working class (Lenin 1973: 19). The basic tenet of Marxism was it would fall to the working class to unshackle all classes of the demoralized, thereby emancipating humanity. Because the workers are the most exploited of the classes under capitalism, they cannot free themselves without abolishing exploitation in general. Because the working class is the most important class in capitalist production they can only grow in strength once properly organized. Thus Marx and the Marxists after Marx indentified with the working class. The expression of a class-conscious worker is socialism. Socialism is the primary mechanism for the freeing of the laboring classes from oppression. With out the expansion of practical democracy, socialism is inconceivable (Kautsky 1964: 1-2). Lenin and Kautsky agreed on the needed supervision of the working class, and the importance to forming coalitions with others striving for freedom. Their dispute was over
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what kind of leadership, and the extent of popular participation in the control of the party. Was there to be a mass party led by representatives of the working class as a whole? Was there to be a vanguard core of professional revolutionaries who have accepted the life of sacrifice, and in the name of the working class they would carry out the revolution? When successful and only then will the working people be able to rule themselves through direct participatory democracy without fear for themselves and their families being imprisoned or murdered by government police. Social movements have internal roots, and are a part of a nationʼs particular history. Social movements of any country must be understood within the historical context of that country (Cabral; Luxemburg). Most social movements begin modestly in its vision, some of them become more comprehensive, elaborate, and radical. Creating radical socialist coalitions with the more moderate liberals, while sometimes necessary, limits the possibilities of its accomplishments. Radical social movements must move beyond these narrow limits if it is to grow and survive. Radicals, on the other hand, can become isolated if they refuse to work with reformist coalitions when the need arises. These coalitions are usually necessary at the beginning of a movement. Many moderate socialists often feel it is a mistake to go beyond these coalitions. To work with reformist coalitions merely provide a foundation for further social change. The strength of an alliance or popular front is not only cooperation, but also the recognition of the differences (Luxemburg 1970). The outcome of any revolution is born from internal contradictions, yet its success or failure depends upon long-term international trends. The world market economy can overpower a national economy no matter how revolutionary. The revolution, which is either simply democratic or democratic and socialist, cannot escape this logic. Trotsky, Luxemburg, and Cabral all saw this truth in their respective revolutionary struggles. Each revolution has an important impact on any and all revolutions that follow. Socialist of all countries must maintain a deep sense of international solidarity. If not the forces of a highly organized market economy can prove more powerful than any socialist country can cope with, i.e. Cuba in the 1990ʼs (Luxemburg 1970). The progressive nature of the American and French revolutionary traditions, rapidly turn into their opposites when the property of the wealthy was threatened by the rising popular expectations of toiling poor. Bonaparte and the U.S. Constitutions are examples of this reaction. From the founding of the Republic the U.S. created various anti-sedition legislations to quiet dissent. Un-American activities are always defined in a way that protects property and never extends equality. International solidarity and national struggles are a necessity because of the fact that capitalism is a highly integrated world system. Only through this unity can socialism ever develop and survive. The collapse of socialist economies around the world in the 1990ʼs prove the age of national economies is forever gone. Even the most sincere struggle of national liberation is doomed before it ever starts. Luxemburg and Trotsky saw this following the Bolsheviks coming to power in Russia. Then it seemed to many hopeful revolutionaries as overly pessimistic, today it cannot be denied. Revolution like the rest of a radical proletarian culture is always cosmopolitan. In the beginning the urban proletariat are derived from many isolated village cultures. In this new industrialized setting the dislocated rural population form a new culture when they move to town to find work. The philosophy of socialism helps the radicalized working class to understand the trauma of the industrial environment. Radical proletarian culture is born from both the lived experience of industrialization and the melding of several eccentric village cultures into something distinct. Revolution too feeds
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upon revolutions in other nations. While both national and international influences are important, this sharing of ideas between nations and applying them to unique national circumstances creates a new living culture. Finally, many urbanized radicals move back to their farm villages, bring with them new radical ideas that are intermingled with ancient tradition to create a culture of resistance in the countryside. These new traditionalist begin moving into town and through this process the bringing together of new longestablished view points of many distinct backgrounds begin to merge with the urban radical culture (Luxemburg 1970). These multinational urban ideas need grounding in a historical sociology. The pure labor unionist and the revolutionary conspirator, according to Lenin, share the worship of spontaneity. The anarchist-syndicalist, Lenin claims, surrender to the myth of sudden inspiration of action of the pure working class struggle, while the terrorists give away to the impetuousness of the burning moral rage of the isolated intellectual. The intellectual in their isolation are unable to join up with the struggle of the working class at the job site and in the working class communities. The intellectual is not part of the working class as a whole, unless they take on a working class identity and world-view (Lenin 1973: 92-95; Cabral 1969: 110). The philosophy of Socialism, started growing out of the vision of those educated individuals who identified with the working poor. The Socialist Movement developed from historical and economic theories that were refined by the intellectualsʼ from classes other than the working class (Lenin 1973: 37). Bakunin held that the freeing from oppression of the workers must be the responsibility of the workers themselves, and not an intellectual vanguard (Bakunin 1971: 295). It would be terrifying for all people if a small group of party intellectuals had any real authority, beyond persuasion. All experts tend to exaggerate their importance, and any professional who believes in their own BS is of course a tyrant. Education is for all the people, and both the teacher and student continuously change roles, as we all learn from well thought out expressions born from experiences. Theory is created out of lived experiences. Minority rule is minority rule, and is based upon the unfounded faith of the stupidity of the masses (Bakunin 1971: 295-332). In reality both Lenin and Bakunin are right, yet socialism cannot be socialism unless it resonates with the lived experience of the poor and working people. It is the objective conditions that create the class division of society. In the early stages of capitalist development the working class is an objective class, but not yet aware of itself as a class, only through its awareness does a class become a class fighting for the interest of the working class as a whole (Marx 1963: 173-174). Marx does not answer the question where class consciousness comes from, leaving wide open Leninʼs theory of socialism coming from the outside. Marx clearly had in mind class interests occurs when one class confront in an antagonistic way another class. Class struggle when it is active will develop the already existing discord between two or more classes (Marx 1947: 82-95; Marx 1968: 51; Bukharin 1969: 292-293, 297). Socialism seems like a homegrown working class phenomenon. Not brought in from the outside like Lenin assumes. When we speak of the ideas that revolutionize society, we are talking about within the shell of the older society, the elements of a newer one develops, the decay of the old ideas is replaced by newer revolutionary ones (Marx 1968: 51). The correct revolutionary ideas are important, and the wrong ones dangerous. The debate becomes important in the eyes of the participants.
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Lenin targeted syndicalism as romantic reckless strategy. Syndicalism is a revolutionary way of life, in which everything is judged by how it affects the relative welfare and power of the workers. The workers will struggle to seize control of the government and the economy by their own direct efforts, creating a system of economic organization in which all industries and society as a whole are managed and owned exclusively by the workers. If you donʼt work you donʼt eat. Notice the first two lines of the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World Constitution is as follows: The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, and abolish the wage system. *** It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for the everyday struggle with capitalism, but also to carry on production when capitalism is overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. Revolution itself has created among the revolutionary working class “workers councils”. These were the workers who have developed a radical class-consciousness. At a certain point the workers outgrow their intellectual leadership from the universities. The party leaders maintain power only if the revolution is stopped at a point before reaching true democratic socialism (Lukacs 1971: 80). The council communist saw Leninʼs party as part of the problem and not part of the solution, as leaders find it hard to give up power (McLellan 1979: 171). Every devoted act by the radical workers no matter how faithful fails with out a sound theory. Radical ideas start out being the result of the lived experiences. Without the leadership of the vanguard, even their anger only weakens the working class movement, Lenin countered. All these anti-intellectual sentiments of direct action of the working class ends up being hostile portrayal of the scholarly ingredient of socialism as being mere academic hogwash. This only makes stronger the authority of liberal philosophy. To ridicule socialist beliefs for each and every appearance of elitism is popular superstition. This mindless populism is to deviate from the practical path of revolution and will removed in the long run any hope for success. Even the slightest importance given to this superstition is to encourage middle class beliefs of the impossibility of socialism (Lenin 1973: 46). The Council Communist on the other hand, declared socialism was not a science of the vanguard, but the lived results of exploited workers fighting against that exploitation. The Bolsheviks according to these radicals were important in the fight against capitalism, but after the revolution the party would become a new sources of exploitation if the workers themselves did not eliminate this vanguard party (McLellan 1979: 172). Rosa Luxemburg while condemning anarcho-syndicalist did support the idea of a mass strike, as being more important than the careful control over political action by a highly centralized party. In “What is to be Done” Lenin has two closely related points that without this outside influence workers develop only a trade union consciousness,
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and without political freedom the revolutionary is always at risk. The intellectual, who becomes a professional revolutionary, can use their educational advantage to help the working class. In the autocratic state of czarist Russia a small group of highly disciplined and clandestine revolutionaries stood a better chance of being not detected by the secret police than individuals of a large undisciplined mass party. The police spy also is less threatening, while infiltrating the party; the spy does good work for the party by spreading the ideas of socialism (Luxemburg 1971: 227). Revolutionary knowledge based upon an understanding of the social forces at work and the organizational ability to use this understanding are things that can be gained by labor union activists providing the desire is there to win real long term victories. The shortcomings of the social setting can be overcome providing these longrange goals are accepted (Lenin 1973:40). While this is true there is no reason to assume that these skills must be gained by importation from outside the working class. In point of fact off times these skills are the result of having the time to study the social setting of the working class using the sociological imagination. It is also possible that lived every day experience of the workers themselves can lead to the same conclusions as that of the radical professional anthropologist or sociologist (Luxemburg 1971: 228). The potency of the working class militant activity is increased by workers taking their destiny into their own hands and out of the hands of their labor administration (Lenin 1973:43). Radical principles are gained through workersʼ own accomplishments. Education can seem real if it reflects workers own lived every day experiences. This would basically lead to a conclusion different from what Lenin proposes. Once again the intellectual of other than working class origins has a valuable role to play, it does not follow that theory must be brought in from the outside. Lenin was on the right track in the following idea. The only real alternatives remaining for workers to choose from in a capitalist society is between either, what Lenin called, “bourgeois liberalism” which is the same thing as the dominant culture, or the socialist culture also known as revolutionary approach to life. In a society split by class conflict there cannot be a nonpartisan set of beliefs representing a classless point of view (Lenin 1973: 48). The power of mass culture is something that has continuously blunted radical criticism. Lenin recognized this, a mass social movement has to fight against the social drugs of religion and popular culture. With the hasty growth of a movement the working class struggles without a clearly developed radical ideology, the workers will remain mesmerized to the mass culture controlled or captured by the capitalist class. Because of the individualizing effects of these twin drugs the subjugation of the toilers remains complete. Popular culture, of course, at its core is an out growth of capitalism. Popular culture ultimately defines reality in the narrow confines of conventional consumerist society. The labor union movement, according to Lenin, without a socialist organization associated with it means servitude of the working class to the capitalist rules of the game. This has proven true in the US. The job of the socialist is to help workers to gain a radical discipline. Radical workers take the working class movement away from this mawkishness of sentimentality and have it supported by the revolutionary attachment to the rigor of class studies. As long as the working class is controlled by the mass culture superstitions, extreme swings in sentimental drivel such as nationalism and religious awakening become constant threats to the hope of liberation (Lenin 1973: 49). Class awareness of the capitalist, is economic to its core. The antagonistic disharmony between essential principles and economy, means core values are rewritten
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to see the free market as based upon human nature, and a self-regulating economy as following natural laws. The dominions of the industrialist, financial capitalist and government envelop the total society; the entire society is organized around the interests of the capitalist class. The ideological history of the capitalist class is the frantic preventing of any serious understanding of the genuine character of the society created by the ruling class (Lukacs 1968: 64—66; Polanyi 1944). To make real the liberal illusions of every aspect of life is necessary for capitalism. Alternatives are kept from view. The substance of ideology and its coterminous consciousness can be understood only when one analyze them in their actual social environment. Distinct social surroundings lead to a particular type of consciousness. What appears to be a stability of a philosophy we should examine that set of beliefs in its real material setting, in order to comprehend the fine distinctions an ideology goes through as its social environment changes (Lukas 1968:27-81). Ideology is a complex system of opinions, beliefs and ideas directly and indirectly formed by the economic and social characteristics of any society. Ideology combines in an eloquent way the position, resources, needs and objectives of certain social classes and is organized to continue or transform the present social structure (The Fundamentals of Marxist Leninist Philosophy 1974:475). Gramsci, while analyzing a success strategy for a revolutionary party to follow, set the theoretical tone for investigating the relationship between structure and superstructure. He noted that the popular beliefs and ideas become a motivating force in peopleʼs actions, and, as such, are themselves part of the social environment. This means that in a dialectical manner, while it can be said material forces in society fabricate ideology, ideology becomes in turn part of the material forces (Gramsci 1971:123-205). It is the question of the relationship between structure (technology, environment and economic core) and super-structure (ideology and culture), which we must first correctly understand if the trends, which are dynamic part of history of a specific era, are to be accurately analyzed (Gramsci 1971:177). The continual redefinition of ideology requires the appearance of continuity for what it is: a non-historical view that fails to see the relationship between the material base and the ideological super-structure (Gramsci 1971:177-179). When the workers finally strive for its own class interests it at once has the possibility of creating a strategy that can carry through the intelligent attainment of the actual goals of the total toiling masses of a society (Lukacs 1968: 149). The consciousness of the laboring class is impractical, as long as it does not become freed from mass culture. Mass culture is not a real class-consciousness. Before all the traces of the mind deadening alternative of religion and mass culture are replaced by a directed class awareness the intelligent moral principles of a political theory of action representing the actual needs of the working class must become separated from the short term fads of popular culture, or the escapist drunkenness of religion. There will never be practical class awareness on the part of the workers, until they understand the society of which they are apart. Every other social class must also be understood as far as their interests are concerned in relation to the interest of the working class. This must be done in order to understand what alliances are possible and the limitations to those alliances. The workers must learn philosophical and scientific materialism using this approach to examine minutely all conditions of life and class conflict in any society (Lenin 1973: 86). The liberal arrangements of their concepts are more developed, than socialist
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sociology. Neo-liberal and neo-classical economic philosophy of constant development within the narrow confines of capitalist reality results in the lack of critical sociology. This never questioning liberal capitalist intellectual history means never seriously questioning the foundations of capitalist society. This can be carried to the point that overly mature capitalism is seen as natural, until it becomes intensely ubiquitous increasing its believability because of the lack of acceptable alternatives. The faddishness of conventional liberal philosophy, even at the most academic level, leads to continuous paradigm shifts that lead nowhere. It is enlargement in the family tree of mainstream explanations of any social reality that leads to the popular marginalization of critical sociology of the socialist variety. A neo-conservative and neo-liberal doctrine appears more advanced by the marginalization of alternatives through the economic controls over resources giving conformist dogma more of a chance to distribute alternative ideas. Socialist philosophy is still in the process of developing explanations based upon lived experience, and this is its strength. The larger the normal rebellion of the common people, the more far-reaching the movement becomes, so socialist understanding grows through experimentation and experience. The needs of the people in their struggles for equality, power and freedom advance the requirement for superior awareness in the theoretical, political and organizational work of socialism. Lenin and Luxemburg views differ on the importance of raw experience in formulating an insightful theory. All the unions can achieve, according to Lenin, without socialism is for the sellers of labor power is to educate themselves as workers on how to sell their commodity, labor power and to fight the purchasers of labor power over an utterly economic contract. This may lead to better terms for wages. Unions are part of the greater socialist movement. This means that the struggle of the working class is not only for increased wages and better conditions of the sale of their labor power, but also the elimination of that social order which forces the propertyless to prostitute themselves to the rich property owners (Lenin 1973: 50-70). The collaborative battle of the workers through their unions, which fought against their employers for better working conditions and more money in the marketing of their labor power, remains limited. This business unionism is a struggle related to economy, i.e. industrial in nature, and does not deal with the political problems of oppression, or exploitation. Circumstances of work vary greatly between jobs and frequently the diversified occupations; make a common economic strategy without a larger social and political agenda very insufficient. Thus industrial unions are an improvement over craft unions, yet they still remain locked into respect for the ownersʼ property. Revolutionary socialist will fight for freedom and for socialism when they put theory into practice. The propagandist and the radical sociologist construct ideas mainly by method of the printed word, while the activist by way of the lively expression of ideas through the process of activities (Lenin 1973: 75-83). Economic compromises are the least costly and beneficial practice from the governmentʼs attitude of control over the people. Humble reforms, it is hoped, will obtain the trust of the majority of workers. A significant requirement for the increase of political struggle of the workers against the abuses they suffer under capitalism is the creation of the exhaustive political revelation through the advancement of critical sociology of how the existing system benefits those in positions of wealth and power. Through repeated efforts of legitimate political activity that only leave the social relations in tack, the common people will become well-grounded in class consciousness and with the right kind of social theory the revolutionary political activity of radical workers becomes understandable. Working class consciousness cannot become political awareness
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unless the workers are experienced in fighting all classifications of exploitation and oppression, against any dispossessed classes even the middle class (Lenin 1973: 84-85). Invitation to fight the bosses by the class of workers is to enter into conflict against the owners of the resources needed for liberation. Each confrontation can only be made at the time and locality that the conflict takes place. Only those who are part of the purposeful course of action can make the cry for a social movement (Lenin 1973: 88; Cabral 1969: 92). Lenin because of the fact of the secret police of the Tsar, could not see that struggle of the workers in their own lived everyday experience, have the raw materials to become radical activist sociologist or anthropologist. As Gramsci repeatedly pointed out when ever any class comes into existence creates its own set of intellectuals, which give the class its identity, and awareness of its self as a class (Gramsci 1971: 5-6). Leninʼs general distrust for the untrained revolutionary stands in marked contrast to Luxemburgʼs view of the mass strike. To her the mass strike was the most substantial weapon in the struggles of the working class (Luxemburg 1971: 227). If it were simply a deliberation between the expressiveness of the encouragement of their dreamlike political views, then secret resolutions of the central committee were accurate then mass strikes would be seen as non-revolutionary. In point of fact it is only through the mass strike that the majority of workers become revolutionaries according to Luxemburg (1971: 231). The real working class revolutionary is recruited from the experience of exploitation. Struggle for freedom is their education, as the objectives of the struggle become clear. There is created out the ranks a massive segment of workers trained in political battles, and the probability for the workers to acquire their own political movement by way of direct action. This is a straight path to power within their public life, to create an assemblage of like thinkers, establish party publications, and to establish large public councils (Luxemburg 1970: 89). The intellectuals no matter how revolutionary has a (overly romantic and poetic) personal mannerisms only leading to a flightiness and vicissitude in their quaintness. Working class teachers are the stewards and must dominate their own movement, and the town laboring class must stand as the pilot (Trotsky 1969: 70). Lenin is opposed to the above views. No matter how we try to give the economic struggle a political makeup, workers will never be able to gain a political consciousness in Leninʼs view. If the workers stay within the environment of the economic issues, business unionism is all that can be hoped for. This is because pure and simple unionism as a direction is much too confining to fight the structure of oppression and exploitation enslaving the lives of the workers. The political consciousness of the working class can be completed by the struggles of the workers alone. This education is born from the actions that remain apart from of the pure economic struggle of their unions. The political awareness is obtained is from the relationship between the opposing classes and the state (Lenin 1973: 97-98). Socialist should show their typical democratic loyalties in the company of all the people, without ever hiding their radical socialist convictions that are necessary for democracy. The conclusion is that the political and social life of the proletariat as a class is aware of existing class stratification. The beginning of the revolutionary contest is on the inside of the fight for freedom worldwide. Socialist should promote freedom of the working class as the essence of their political rallying cry and their campaign for the social movement for the struggle for equality economic, political, and social (Lenin 1973:
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102-103). Socialism is more than the democratic organization of economic production; socialism is also the democratic organization of the social life of the communities. Working class struggle for socialism takes for granted democracy, or the completion of democracy (Kautsky 1971: 4—13). The best community for political orientation is the working class. This is true, however only after they become class conscious. Which means the workers need a broad and energetic political understanding, workers will only then become the most able at adapting this information into an active struggle. Political displays are public announcements of resistance against the state. Economic revelations are an assertion of a fight against the bosses and owners. Simply put, an alliance is needed that will coordinate the population for an extensive struggle against capital and lead discussion groups to inspire still others. This creates distinctively acute knowledge on the causes of the origin of the oppression of the toiling masses. Only at that point can the radical be developed as the forefront of the revolutionary action of our time (Lenin 1973: 109-110). The participants in a democratic movement should unite into one coalition of comrades to force the government to act in the name of all the working people. The revolutionary preparation by the most militant of the revolutionary workers, must defend public liberty, while directing the economic struggle of the working class as a whole, and bringing together an ever-expanding collection of the total working class (Lenin 1973: 109-111). According to Lenin: The unexpected social movements of the working class left to its own logic can give birth to only minor reforms of trade unions. With the Capitalist state the politics of working class labor unions are definitely working class politics defined and limited by the rules of the state and official capitalist principles (Lenin 1973: 117). Normally most workers are able to show great deal of brave behavior in their personal commitment to a strike and show courage with their on going conflict with the bosses. This was important because the entire establishment of law is only used to protect the property of the owners. These same workers are capable of setting up the struggle to maximize the accomplishment of the strike given the power of the other side. This has a direct effect of bringing the larger labor movement to the lives of the working class community in the area. The fight for is immediate demands by all the toiling people. But in Russia of Leninʼs time the fight against the terror of the secret police required special qualities for the professional revolutionaries. This vanguard of the working class struggled along side of the rest of the working class, but was the permanent core of the revolution. They were to encourage the workers to advance concrete demands, and to increase the numbers of revolutionaries within the ranks of that working class (Lenin 1973: 135). The reality as seen by Lenin is that the rank and file workers are spontaneously being attracted into the labor movement. This movement makes the association of the working poor into a united army of organized and disciplined toilers. This is unexpected, from the ownerʼs point of view. The inspiring the rabble to action is always a surprise. The sight of this ragtag group of drudges struggling against these same owners in unity causes among the capitalist class as a whole such an over reaction. This in turn will promote among the working class ever enlarging quantity of skilled revolutionaries to fill leadership roles (Lenin 1973: 136). A working class organization must also be a labor union, as comprehensive as the current social circumstances will allow. However for Lenin, the vanguard should remain obscure as possible as far as the employing class and government officials in
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Russia were concerned because of the conditions of the autocratic state where the working class lack political rights found in most of the Western European societies of his day. The association of activist (rabble rousers) must be composed of folks willing to make the revolutionary movement their craft and profession. Revolution becomes a life style as far as the existing political potential is concerned. Revolutionary fellowships required the separation between the workers and intellectuals be collapsed, and the separation between unskilled labor, skilled trades and professions will have to be taken apart piece by piece. If political rights are not protected than the leadership must remain small and hidden from the view of government officials. To Lenin the position of full time revolutionary was exclusive of the radical professional. The revolutionary was to take an advantageous position within existing unions while remaining active and efficient in the direction of future socialism. Every socialist should work in the union at their job site and any other progressive community affiliation (Lenin 1973: 138-143). Socialist Democracy will replace liberal democracy with a democratic direction that wisdom will nurture and that will denote the method for the entire laboring class in their battle for equality (Lenin 1973: 144-145). It is necessary for radicals to bring about a far-reaching a communication network. These same militants must reach as many workers as feasible about their leftist arguments in order to make known to the widest numbers understandable ideas about class struggle within the nation of workers. A modestly succinct nucleus of those activists that show the greatest in dependability, capability and discipline among the workers, for Lenin, is the important center of revolutionary activity. The contradiction between popular democracy and revolutionary discipline is where Lenin receives his greatest criticism (Lenin 19173: 145). The following is a paraphrase of Leninʼs theory of a vanguard party, as can be seen the critical environmental issue is the police state Lenin was dealing with. The revolutionary professional was necessary for the revolution. It is also important to have groups of activist in each locality; united to other progressive groups. The core that unites these groups must remain underground, however and must be unseen to the bosses. This forms the center within the radical labor groups themselves. With the widest aid from the rank and file that can be achieved, while through the larger organizations the small revolutionary core provides services needed for a trade union and labor party even in a police state. Beginning with the firm structure and a powerful organization of revolutionaries there is a promise of stability in the social movement. The entire labor movement is brought under a single management. The revolutionaries together with the entire labor and community groups are united in popular action; carrying out the aims of socialism, and democracy. Labor unions need protection in the face of repression from any totalitarian government. Radicals must have an organized council of skilled activist. For a successful revolution it is not important one way or the other if any single student or worker is able to become a revolutionary, it is important that the analysis of the professional revolutionary matches the social reality of the workers. No insurrection can grow and survive without a sturdy organization of an advance guard that retains its primary goals (Lenin 1973: 145-52). The more thoroughly the common people are brought into class struggle, the more they will become an integral part of the support of the movement for socialism. Workers should take part in much of the necessary tasks of revolutionary action. This becomes the society of radical workers. This is a cultural revolution. The leadership of radicals must become a more complete organization of revolutionaries, if it is to become the vanguard. The essence of the structure of the movement is composed of a small group
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of professional revolutionaries. In any tyrannical government, Lenin believed the body of members of the leadership core be restricted to the people who are experienced in practicing revolutionary activity and who have been skilled in preparation of opposing the governmental control. With a small professional core as leaders it will be more troublesome to rub out such an organization. The populace of the working class will be capable of uniting with the movement more actively (Lenin 1973: 153) It takes many years of experience to prepare oneself for social action and to mature as an expert social activist. The living and far-reaching support of the common people will not be hurt by, but will be further enrich by a small group of trained revolutionaries, informed and skilled in the art of revolution. These revolutionaries must concentrate all professional activity in the direction of organized social change. To escape the notice of the police they must conceal much of the conditions of their occupation. They accumulate of the skills needed. While for the majority, of their activities remains concealed from public view. The good service done in the association of these radicals will not lessen, but more willingly grow in the magnitude and accomplishment of the larger social movement. A wide-ranging total of diverse groups can now be effectively brought into this struggle. People brought into this movement are now better directed. Which means they have their goals more clearly in mind. The sameobstacles, now unfetter the citizens belonging to more extensive popular organizations, as the professional revolutionaries face and popular activities remain as unhidden as feasible (Lenin 1973: 154-155). In Russia Capitalism was introduced through the active intervention of the state (Trotsky 1969: 42). During the 19th century in Russia big capital and the industrial revolution were artificially imposed upon a natural economy (Trotsky 1969:61). The centralized government of the Tsar became independent of direct influence of the aristocracy and the large capitalist, mostly foreign; though government was dependent on both sections of the ruling classes. This became the formula for the particular type of autocratic rule the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries were dealing with. The government was both a stimulus for economic growth, because of the needs of the army; and a fetter on economic development because of autocratic control over the economic environment (Trotsky 1969: 44). Leninʼs model of a vanguard party is limited in its moral justification to police states without minimal protection of civil rights. The less democratic the central command is the less democratic will be its results after the revolution. Louis Auguste Blanqui taught what became known as Blanquism that a small number of secret revolutionaries could make a revolution for the working class. The problem remained, revolutionary activities that this small group of conspiratorsʼ carried out in name of the working class, there wasnʼt much actual feedback from those workers. Lenin shared this same problem with his organization. While he was more creative than many of his followers, it still remains a serious flaw that is difficult to overcome. For example, Lenin debated with Rosa Luxemburg on the issue of nationalism. Lenin supported it and Rosa Luxemburg thought was that it was at most of secondary importance. In point of fact Polish chauvinism, which would give the church and landlords in Poland power for the reaction. The urban working class in Austria, Germany, and Russia saw common cause with the working class of each of these three nations as more likely to lead to empowerment for the workers than nationalism. Lenin in this case was out of touch with Polish workers in the 1905 Revolution. The Polish Workers would stand to lose in an independent Poland (Luxemburg 1976; Davis 1978).
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Lenin hypothesized that a centralized command structure and a very strict discipline among revolutionaries was necessary for victory (Lenin 1973b.6). The actuality past historical events and the forced isolation of most revolutionary struggles within nations out side of Western Europe and North America, meant socialist movements in the “backward countries” anticipated that the national parties ought to count on support from larger more established socialist parties in the West. The smaller parties surrounded by a hostile capitalist world limited the possibilities of any socialist. But help did not come. Repression and national security issues were the advanced capitalist countries response. There would be suspension of many civil liberties in the advanced democracies, and either direct invasion of the neo-colonial or secondary nations by the highly developed capitalist powers or the support of third world dictators. The flaw in universally applying what Lenin help organize in Russia as a model for radical change everywhere in the world is the failure to distinguish among the various types of governments within the world capitalist system. The fundamental position held by Marxist Political Sociology is that the state is the result of class society. With economic stratification class antagonisms develop requiring ultimately the coercion of the state to safeguard the existing institutions of wealth and power. The state mechanisms arise when and where these natural rivalries of interests require force to preserve the peace. As long as a conflict of interest exists class antagonisms will exist and peaceful reconciliation cannot be guaranteed (Lenin 1970a: 7). This broad overview cannot be taken as absolute. Each country will have its own history of struggle and balance of power between the classes. Multilinear evolution assumes that there is some regularity in cultural change between different societies, but not necessarily so. This is an empirical question and not a universal. Differences also occur depending upon core economic and historical variables (Steward 1955: 18-19). The economically dominant classes can function best where their security is recognized as the security of all by the dominant ideology. The exploited classes are taught to accommodate the upper class. Challenging the sound reasoning of the dominant ideology is unacceptable. The alternatives are “practical politics” or revolution. The rebellion of the “peopleʼ is subversive because if successful will create and entirely new game plan for the political and Cultural Revolution. The rivalry of competitive firms is the theory of a market economy. The competition of political parties for public office is the theory of liberal democracy. Free markets lead to economic monopolies; electoral democracy leads to large administrative bureaucracies or political monopolies. The types of monopolies are mutually supportive of the political and economic elites, which most often are the same people. Both free markets and free elections lead to centralization and concentration of power, cultural mediocrity, and xenophobic individualism What ever sells gets elected. The struggle for a greater share of the market presupposes a tightly controlled market. In politics this leads to the ideology and behavior of authoritarian democracy of the privileged elite (Bottomore 1979: 17). Law and order is the main means of violating the basic human rights within the United States. Labor organizations can easily be targeted because of the perceived threat to private property. Subversive organizations were defined, officially, in such away as to allow repression of any of the groups, which may question the assumptions of the capitalist economy. It is not only within the United States that repression of dissent became the norm, but around the world the U.S. Government felt free to use violence either through direct intervention or by supporting regimes with abysmal human rights records. The mass culture in the United States has been manipulated to create a popular
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demand for suppression of alternative views of life, and open support for shameless neocolonialism around the world. Violence is the official policy when preserving liberal society of the United States and its worldwide empire. The purity of principal of basic liberal civil rights around the world and at home, require the direct violation of those self same rights in order to protect the foundation of liberal society. Life in liberal society is mystified, in away that creates a total culture of support for a capitalist economy and capitalist class rule. Resistance becomes impossible without a fundamental ideological break within the radical herself from the education she received in liberal capitalist society. With out this break any serious resistance becomes psychologically impossible. Alternatives become limited within safe bounds in a way that can be incorporated within capitalism protecting private property and liberal bureaucratic rule. A spiritually vacuous life becomes the norm, leading to metaphysical illusions and escapism as the only hope for relief (Luxemburg 1970: Saxton 1992; Bakunin; Lenin 1973b; Marx 1968; Trotsky 1968). For democracy to protect the interests of the economic privileged few, a sharing of core values is required of all the citizens regardless of class. Democracy of the political patricians must be viewed, as a completed article of trade, a sophisticated system and it is the core values that hold it together. Further radical evolution of democracy would only undermine the political culture of liberal democracy. Democracy in a capitalist society not only stands opposed to every other political system, but any opposing definition of democracy (Bottomore 1979: 18). The radical wants to extend democracy beyond the narrow confines of the selection of candidates. Democracy can never become a finished product, but a continuing evolutionary process. Democracy is a total cultural life-style. There is not a distinct separation of political culture from the rest of the life ways of a people. Political democracy gives way to social democracy, economic democracy, intellectual democracy, cultural democracy and spiritual democracy. If existing political institution furthers the democratic vision than they can be used. If political democracy as it is instituted stands in the way of the democratic life-style than it must be obliterated.
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Workers and Farmers Reform, Revolution: Working Class Organizations Labor unions are positively essential because the workers are much healthier as a class the larger the total amount of members of the working class organized within the unions. The larger the fiscal assets of the unions, the stronger they are, in relation to the task they have to do. Bureaucracies become inevitable because the size, permanence and the ramifications of these labor organizations. Bureaucracies restrict the use of the general strikes, and it is the direct action of strikes that leads to more democracy. These organizations democratic or bureaucratic are necessary for the emancipation of the working class. Unions and the Parliamentary parties, however, can only act as a backup for the spontaneous strikes. Only through direct action will the leadership fall into the hands of the worker councils or local soviets (Kautsky 1971: 83). It would appear according to Kautsky that unions and social democratic parties are both working class organizations, but will lead to increasing orderliness of these associations and thus increasing bureaucracies. The workers themselves need to work within the system to democratize the bureaucracies. First the workers must create their parties that work closely with their unions. The concept of a working class dictatorship would unavoidably occur in a setting of genuine democracy, this is because the workers would be the majority. Dictatorship as a form of continued existence, must not be confused with dictatorship as a form of government. Dictatorship as a form of government will mean to neutralize the adversary by taking away the vote, freedoms of press, speech, and association. The governmental form has nothing to do with the rule by the majority class (Kautsky 1971: 45). State organization of the existing means of production, through the state bureaucracy foreordains a dictatorship of a small group of people and this is not socialism. Socialism must be that the broadest masses of people are actively part of the formulation of control of these needed resources. Political and economic structures of society, which would be under the direct, collective and democratic control of all the people, can develop in complete liberty. The socialist type of labor is not the function of military discipline. The dictatorship of a vanguard, which would bestow to the people full freedom of association, simply disables its own power in the process. This volunteering to give up of power seems unlikely. If the dictatorship chooses to persist in its own command by restraining the freedom of its opposition, it obstructs the development of socialism, which is public and democratic control of the means of production. The obedient army is always the basis of the dictatorship of government. Through the repression of dissent with the elimination of basic liberties and the coercion, suppressing freedom of expression, a counter-revolutionary army becomes the next logical step. Civil war becomes the death of revolutionary progress (Kautsky 1971: 51—52). Revolution itself has created among the revolutionary working class “workers councils”. These were the workers that have developed a radical class-consciousness. At a certain point the workers outgrow their intellectual leadership of minor academic and specialized origins. The party leaders maintain power only if the revolution is stopped at a point before reaching true democratic socialism (Lukacs 1971: 80). Lenin did agree, yet the council communist saw Leninʼs party as part of the problem and not part of the solution, as leaders find it hard to give up power (McLellan 1979: 171). Under a democracy, socialism can be achieved completely only when most of the
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people desire of it. An active minority cannot institute socialism when the majority is opposed to it (Kautsky 1971: 88-89). Socialism means liberty, food, safety, a livable natural environment and lodgings for all. All are equally important. People cannot be consoled for the loss of freedom with food and shelter or even increasing material pleasures of life. The old ruling class still trying to regain power need not loose the vote. The workers greatest political power is its numbers (Kautsky 1971:90—91). A society that has a democratic government and a capitalist economy is a possible candidate for socialism. The more contemporary and integrated the productive creation of goods and services and the rest of the economy the easier socialism can be established. The larger the working class, the more educated this class, and the more experience in parties and unions in a democracy the more likely socialism is to be established. Once the socialist party wins the national elections the workers will attain the physical and intellectual assets to establish socialism (Kautsky 1971: 96). The devotion, will and capabilities of the revolutionaries are limited by the material conditions of that society and this proves how powerless even the strongest revolutionary organization is. Democracy in a real form cannot be found anywhere on earth, and everywhere must be strived for continuously. The closer the people come to democracy the closer they are to socialism. To compromise the principles of democracy is to compromise the principles of socialism (Kautsky 1971:136—149)).
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Labor is Symbolic Labor is both symbolic and natural. Labor is born in combining symbols of creation with real human needs or wants. As a Dineʼ person may say thinking leads to planning, planning to action, through action the product of labor is born. Through working together in an existing environment, to take from nature and altering it in ways to meet our needs, we bring forth new needs in this action. It is through this process of being human that society and cultures are created, and only in society are we fully human. Only through affinity with others can we decidedly attain our power of creativity of expression and fully maximize our humanity. (Donham: 56) We produce, and thus make happen, alter, create and ultimately bring forth ourselves through labor. Thought and action through labor produces new thought and action continuously. Culture through communication, and collective expressive validity, which creates meaning, that becomes basic to the cultural explanations and socially knowledgeable people who in turn create themselves by creating culture (Donham: 57). Societies to a certain degree are internally consistent. There is a fundamental interactive relationship between economy, politics and religion in a mutually reciprocal way where these institutions can be intellectually defined within a larger social whole. These “social totalities” have structures of somewhat consistent arrangements of institutions that define the type of character a society has, in spite of the variation with in the whole of that society. In any social and historical setting there are limited options that the formation of these structures place upon choices people make and the degree of social change possible. There are types of societies these types form epochs. The epochs are a short hand for these basic themes of production of human social life of an entire historical era. (Donham: 58). Productive powers are anything that can be used in production and through production people interacts with nature. People act in a way that will ensure that production in fact occurs because of our collective efforts and in turn we can use these forces and powers. This contribution to production is in fact planned. There must be an objective knowledge about this contribution to production. This interpretive composition of comprehension, within a culturally defined meaning and within a relative framework establishes our ability to communicate in a social context. A related interactive complex of meaning for the actors is involved. This is central to the interpretation of symbols needed to carry out production. Productive powers include raw materials, technology, within an environment along with the skills and knowledge about the use of technology with in that environment. (Donham: 59). Humans in fact create themselves and their society through their productive action in the material world. Productive powers are the resources that people use in that process. It is acting people using symbols, ideas and objects which, changes nature that is the core to the production of society and its culture (Donham: 60). All human social relations and their functions have an incontestable influence upon material production, and material production directly influences these relations (Donham: 60). Humans realize themselves through labor. Through labor people develop power and skills with an on going “dialectic” with nature. Productive knowledge is central to this actualization. Differing productive powers (forces of production) express themselves in different societies. Different relations of production give internal groups different interests in technological changes in these different societies. Most social revolutions would
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appear to preserve the level of productive powers already achieved. Yet this tendency of expanding powers can best be seen at the world level, because locally relations of production can prevent technical development beyond a certain point. The population size and average productivity of labor, resolutely conditions mass productive powers (Donham: 61). It is power that decides differing groups access to control over the means of production, and the division of the fruits of labor of that society. Relations of production lead to productive inequalities. These relations of production are affinity between groups with in a society in which some groups dominate and others remain subordinate in production and distribution. This is the basis of the inequalities over the distribution of societies total product (Donham: 62). A capitalist owns the means of production. Because of this power, the capitalist can buy labor power of those who nothing but their ability to work. The owner now controls the labor of others and the product they produce. It is the owners who own the profits of the production process. Prior to beginning of the labor process, the specific distribution of power over the forces of production is in place. The capitalist has ultimate control over the means of production; the proletarian now has only labor power to offer. It is the capitalist who has says who gets what when the final product is sold (Donham: 63). More than control over the forces of production; it is the differential power over the production and distribution of societyʼs total product that leads to gross inequalities within the relations of production, or productive inequalities. Productive inequalities are in fact powers over labor and products of that labor. This unequal access to the resources used in production means one group lives to a greater or lesser extent on the labor of the others. Marxistʼs utopian vision is that everyone can realized their essential identity through their free and creative labor in a community of mutually supporting free and creative individuals each benefiting and benefiting from all these others. Productive inequalities are social impediments to the process of true freedom and creative selfrealization of labor. Labor should be our spiritual connection between ourselves, the community of free citizens and with nature. Labor is the essence of our humanity. With inequality this spiritual essence is shattered. Labor becomes the toil of drudgery. Individuals become alienated from the creative process of labor and thus form their own spiritual essence. We are all alienated from the products that we produce. The social product required for our self-realization stands in opposition to any hope for that selfrealization (Donham: 65). In functionalism there is no understanding about the inherent conflicts with in a social order and cultural manifestations, or it is seen as detrimental to the over all wellbeing of the humans involved. The functionalist sees any conflicts that that might arise as being the result of individuals who were poorly educated in the core values of that society and became deviants. Marxist disagrees. Marxist claim the economic system is based upon exploitation. The direct producers create the surplus used against them and which supports the élites. The manner in which this surplus is extracted from the producers determines the relationship of “servitude and domination”. Because this grows directly out of production and this relation in this relationship in turn is determinant to production. The degree of alienation reflects how short the producersʼ fall short of realizing or actualizing their essential quality of their humanity through labor or the products of their labor. Technology is historical specific and environment is also distinct to a setting. Both are always changing. The greater the potential for achieving freedom through creative labor, the greater will be the failure of the potential because of
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exploitation. The gap between the benefit going to the producers and the benefit to an elite who receives the surplus continues to increase. This multiplies the degree of alienation to the producers (Donham: 65). At the beginning of the productive operations, capitalist society is divided into inequalities founded on the productive process. The two major classes stand opposed to each other, in an unequal contest of power. Capitalist who control the “greatest mass of productive powers” over and against those who are separated from control of the forces of production and have only their potential labor power to bargain with for a wage job. Capitalist control the means of production, only they have power to establish the enterprises of capitalism. Capitalist invests their money in machines and the hiring of the labor of workers (Donham: 66). Workers own nothing but their own labor power. Without access to the forces of production controlled by the capitalist workers cannot work. Without the capitalist, then all production lies idle. Starving workers are in a poor position to bargain. Workers are free to sell their labor power or free to starve. It is only a matter of which capitalist they work for. The workers to live must work for some capitalist, the structure of capitalism is as simple as that (Donham: 66). It is the capitalist that organizes production. The pace and intensity of the work force is under the command of the capitalist. The capitalist is constantly driving the workers to produce more in less time. Workers resist any way they can, like on the job sabotage, or joining unions. Even so it is the workers and not the capitalist who owns the surplus created by the workers and not by the capitalists. This surplus is reinvested into ever expanding capital, increasing the power of the capitalist and diminishing the power of the workers (Donham: 66). There is a system of ideas that convinces all classes within a society that the unequal distribution of power is both natural and healthy. Power of ideology and the ideology of power mutually interact, in a way that the majority of both the exploiters and the exploited agree on this relationship as the best around. The powerful will act to preserve their power at all costs, and the powerless often cooperate with their own subjugation. When opposition arises among the exploited is likely to be divided, while the exploiters are far more united. Both the powerful and the powerless then believe the dominant culture. Ideologies then have a kernel of truth, but are limited in that the full possibilities of any particular time are not completely recognized by the workers themselves (Donham: 68). In all societies the norms and values have a conventionalized or conventional ways of settling social conflicts. Laws and conflict resolution are necessary for stability. If these conflicts widen the contradictions in a society the social production of power relations are threatened. The mode of production and its unequal power relations must be maintained to the interests of the dominant groups (Donham: 69). Coercive force finally can be used to maintain the law and preserve the dominant ideology. This coercion is very slight in some societies and very authoritarian in others. It is the dominant ideology and the law that makes coercion to preserve the power of the dominant group legitimate (Donham: 70). Forces of production are anything that can be used in the material process of production. Relations of production (social organization and social relationships) are characteristics of prevailing power over the productive process as well as over the gross a product of the labor of society. Superstructures (culture, ideology, politics) are created and reproduce the relations of production, including the established inequalities. It is through their conscious action that people reproduce their lived mode of production.
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Insight into inequalities and oppression often exists, while knowledge of possible successful options to fight back is often hidden from view (Donham: 70). Superstructure is not simply determined by relations of production. The productive inequalities are expressed in the ideology of the superstructure. In turn the superstructure are necessary for the reproduction of these inequalities (Donham: 71). Relations of production that maintain the productive inequalities have only a number of conceivable reproductive arrangements that can stabilize the existence of differences in social power. This pattern of purpose is selected for, in order to bring about the superstructure that allows the inequalities to exist in the first place (Donham: 72). Forces of production and the level of productive powers determines the relations of production and its productive inequalities, because there are only a limited number of potential productive inequalities which promote subsequent development of the powers of production. As long as forces and relations of production reinforce each other the powers of production can be expanded until real limits in the development is attained only by revolutionary changes in the relations of production is this stagnation transcended (Donham: 73). Conservation of orderly reciprocation is founded upon the superstructure. Part of the replication pattern of a dominant culture perseveres in a consistent manner an assemblage of inequalities. The superstructure protects the economic base from any attempt to rupture or reconstruct those inequalities (Donham: 73). The pattern of power over people results from the kind of control that one group may have over other people and results from the kind of control the more powerful group may have over the forces of production. Through social reproduction the pattern of control over the forces of production leads to control over people in the work process, strengthens the control of forces of production and the producers alike. This is a relationship of power (Donham: 82).
Standard Bibliography for Withering of the State Allende, Salvador (1973) Chileʼs Road to Socialism Pelican Althusser, Louis (1969) For Marx. Vintage Bakunin, Michael God and the State (1971) Berkman, Alexander (1972) What is Communist Anarchism: Dover Bukharin, Nikolai (1969) Historical materialism: A system of sociology Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press Cabral, Amilcar (1969) The Weapon of Theory New York International Publishers Cameron, Kenneth Neill (1995) Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science New York International Publishers Davis, Horace B. (1978) Toward A Marxist Theory Of Nationalism New York, Monthly Review Donham, Donald L. (1999) History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology Berkley, University of California Press Engles, Frederick (1955) The Conditions of the Working Class in England New York International Publishers Engles, Frederick (1965) Peasant War in Germany New York International Publishers Engles, Frederick (1970) The Role of Force in Histroy New York International Publishers 228 Engles, Frederick (1975) Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State New York International Publishers Engles, Frederick (1977) Dialectics of Nature New York International Publishers Engles, Frederick (1978) Anti-During New York International Publishers Guevvara, Ernesto Che (1987) Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution Pathfinder Kautsky, Karl (1964) The Dictatorship of the Proletariat Ann Arbor University Of Michigan Press Kautsky, Karl (1971) The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) New York Norton Kropotkin, Peter 1967 Memoirs of a Revolutionist Glocester, MA: Peter Smith Kropotkin, Peter 1967 Mutual Aid Boston: Extending Horizons Kropotkin Ethics(1967) Origin and Development London: Benjamin Blom Kropotkin, Peter 1968 Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow London: Benjamin Blom Kropotkin, Peter 1970 Revolutionary Pamphlets New York: Dover Kropotkin, Peter 1989 The Conquest of Bread Montreal Black Rose Books 229 Lenin, V. I. (1956) The Development of Capitalism in Russia Moscow Progress Publishers
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Lenin, V. I. (1973) What is to be Done Peking, Foreign Language Press Lenin, V. I (1947) One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Moscow Progress Publishers Lenin, V. I (1970) Materialism and Empiriocriticism Peking, Foreign Language Press Lenin, V. I (1939) Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism New York, International Publishers Lenin, V. I (1954 )Critical Remarks on The National Question / The Right of Nations to Self-determination Moscow Progress Publishers Lenin, V. I (1934) The Emancipation of Women New York, International Publishers Lenin, V. I (1970) Left Wing Communism An Infantile Disorder Peking, Foreign Language Press Lenin, V. I (1954) The Agrarian Program of Social Democracy in the First Revolution 1905—1907 Moscow Progress Publishers Lenin, V. I (1970) The State and Revolution Peking, Foreign Language Press 230 Lenin, V. I (1970) What the Friends of the People are and how the Fight the Social-Democrats Moscow Progress Publishers Lukacs, Georg (1968) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics Cambridge, MA MIT Press Luxemburg, Rosa (1970) Rosa Luxemburg Speaks New York Path Finder Luxemburg, Rosa (1971) Selected Political Writings of Rosa Luxemburg New York, Monthly Review Press Luxemburg, Rosa (1976) The National Question: Selected Writings New York Luxemburg, Rosa (1961) The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press Luxemburg, Rosa (2009) The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy: (the “Junius” Pamphlet) [ 1919 ] Cornell University Library Luxemburg, Rosa (1971) The mass strike: The political party and the trade unions, and the Junius pamphlet Harper & Row Mao Tse-Tung (1966) Four Essays on Philosophy, Foreign Language Press Marx, Karl (1938) Critique of the Gotha Programme: Internationa Publishers Marx, Karl (1940) Civil War in France: The Paris Commune Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels (1970) The German Ideology. New York International Publishers 231 Marx, Karl (1964) The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. International Publishers Marx, Karl (1964) Karl Max: Early Writings Ed. T. B. Bottomore New York: McGraw Hill
Marx, Karl (1975) Karl Marx Early Writings Translated by Lucio Colletti and Gregor Benton, New York: Vintage Books Marx, Karl (1994) Early Political Writings Edited by Joseph OʼMalley. Cambridge McLellan, David (1977) Freiedrich Engels New York, Penguin Books Marx, Karl (1967) Capital Vol. One New York: International Publishers McLellan, David (1979) Marxism After Marx London, Macmillian Polanyi, Karl (1944) The Great Transformation Boston, Beacon Press Steward, Julian H. (1955) Theory of Culture Change: the methodology of multilinear evolution. University of Illinois Press. Szymanski, Albert (1978) The Capitalist State and the Politics of Class Cambridge Szymanski, Albert (1981) Logic of Imperialism New York: Prager Szymanski, Albert (1983) Class Structure: a critical perspective, Prager Trotsky, Leon (1938) Their Morals and Ours in The New International: Vo. IV No. 6 June 1938 pp. 163 – 173 Trotsky, Leon (1969) The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects New York, Pathfinder Press Leon Trotsky (1973)The Revolution Betrayed New York, Pathfinder Voyeikov, Mikhail (1994) in The ideological legacy of L. D. Trotsky history and contemporary times : materials from the International Scientific Conference on Leon Trotsky held in Moscow November 10-12, 1994 [English-language ed.] International Committee for the Study of Leon Trotskyʼs Legacy. 232 Part I. The relevance of Trotsky today. The relevance of Trotskyʼs ideological legacy / M.I. Voyeikov White, James D. (2001) Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution Hampshire England, Palgrave.
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Post War Marxists All of the selections from Post War Marxist were taken from Marxist Internet Archive http://www.marxists.org/ Following World War II many on the left began to look for the humanist and utopian roots of the more scientific Marxist writings. In doing this topics like was is alienation, its causes and the solutions to the pain suffered because of alienation. Not only was Marxist humanist roots carefully examined, but also Marxism as a Cultural Ecology or naturalist philosophy was clearly outlined. Life should be a celebration to be indulged in and not a burdened to be endured. Anything that interferes with that celebration is the cause of repression, exploitation and alienation and must be opposed. These Marxist reexamined Marxʼs earlier writings to look for that humanist continuity with his later writings. The following selections give a brief examination of these concerns. The next few diversity of positions gives us a selection of opinions on these topics. Not increasing misery of the workers as many workers in the industrialized West were represented by labor unions, which were able to negotiated contracts that did offer the union members a living wage. But, boredom, lack creative control over the job sight, arrested creative development and alienation remained unchallenged.
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Raya Dunayevskaya The Theory of Alienation: Marxʼs Debt to Hegel: (1983) The revolution is an on going process, each generation builds upon the previous generations. As each social movement resolves itʼs own contradictions, win or lose, creates fertile ground for the birth of the next world-shattering fermentation. Liberation is only the beginning of a revolution, not to take the next step is only to be forced to repeat what has already been accomplished. The continual revolution is sweeter than the initial victory. The struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism and capitalism are only the preconditions of revolution. The real revolution begins with, includes and goes beyond direct democratic control of our worksites, communities and the world; but also includes the living unity of work, play and art in everyday life. At this time people become the authors of their own lives and not its victims. Life becomes a ceremony to be indulged in, not a burden to be endured. Our social lives within a cultural and historical setting are always embedded within and growing out of nature, a real physical and social environment that is ever changing as the environment we live in changes. Each form of class society evolves in a real historical setting within an eve changing environment. As a people fight against their own limitations they define themselves and others.
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George Novackʼs Understanding History (Pathfinder, 1972) Alienation Alienation is not in any sense the fanciful idea of the revolutionary intellectuals. Socialism addresses the real concerns of people. Not only the struggle for the secure control over the necessities of life, they must come to terms with the basic emotional and psychological needs for the fulfillment and meaning in life. Alienation stands at the center of these concerns. Estrangement lingers at the focal point of extent of the degree of anxiety. These concerns are real and painful. Growing from the enmity that is central between the relationships of the class society that decides upon and sets that societyʼs political and economic policies and the dominated in the capitalist world. Life is weighted down with a frustrating feeling of powerlessness. Anxiety leads to trepidation that runs deep because ordinary people have decisions made for them by a small global elite who control the economic choices that remain. This elite decides matters of life and death. Freedom now is to choose between a limited numbers of options. Freedom becomes a shallow mockery cautiously organized by large investors, capitalists, powerful government officials, bureaucrats, administrators, Secular Caliphs, professional managers and licensed technical mandarins. Care must be taken in our careful study that is required to understand how deeply individual workers, families and communities are hurt by reducing real people to being no more than the means to an ends defined by a small elite. At every stage class analysis remains important to understanding the source of alienation. Socialist humanism sates publicly we need to release people from oppression and bondage to anotherʼs property, to the pursuit of profit in the servitude to ʻeconomic necessityʼ. Seclusion, separation and alienation are the crucial lessons in the nature of thought as a way of life. The outlines between identity as the separation between self and other and the defining characteristics between you and me are ultimately founded on an external material reality. Yet everything is always changing. In this process of change everything is continually becoming something other than what it is currently. The struggle for a meaningful life puts the individual up against a social reality designed to separate that same individual from the necessities needed to control ones own fate while maintaining the illusion of real freedom. Each individual is also separated from the social context that gives birth to the individual as a biological social animal. Rebellion becomes problematic until the collective individuals come to realize their private as well as their social lives is in fact born out of a publicly orchestrated set of lies. Through labor humans are spiritually connected to nature from which they are an active and interactive force. Through exploitation this consecrated connection is severed. Nature and labor become continual sources of pain and estrangement. Property belongs to another separating the individuals from their own living essence. Labor which is this connection with living nature becomes alienated continually when the direct producers works, not honestly for herself not even collectively united individuals amalgamated by shared needs, but for the owners of property interests which stand in sharp contrast to the needs of the direct producers. Those who work hard and continuously to create the wealth of the few and the basic necessities of everyone else is estranged from her own body which must be maintained as a physical object for the use by another functioning as an element of the industrious development of the outsiderʼs profit.
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Nature becomes a foreign and hostile force not the mother of her existence. Nature is no longer the natural force central creative self-satisfaction but the source of power for the one who oppresses and exploits her. Her creative and inspired imaginative part of her inspiration is degraded to a mere extension of a mechanism of mind sedating drudgery. Workers are turned against other workers in the competition for employment. Work becomes a source of personal slavery that strengthens the owner at the expense of the worker and her family. She forges her own chains in order to survive. While at work she is the property of and wholly subject to another, because of her dependence on the owner for the opportunity to live. From this relationship the capitalist become rich and powerful and the source his strength is the wealth he has stolen from the worker and her labor power. Every other worker stands in potential opposition and in competition to her to livelihood because there often are more workers than jobs available. Her source of pain is the source of wealth and pleasure for the Capitalist. His wealth the capitalist identity, the foundation of affluence and his happiness can be procured only by stealing the very life force and inner self of the worker. The worker through labor power creates a product that is alien to her as a hostile and foreign spirit that replaces her true creative essence. This remote power over her is the lonely and compulsory end result of the estrangement of drudgery of toil and labor. The worker does not assert herself in her employment but relinquish herself to her oppression through her wage labor. She cannot experience genuine gratification but remains deeply discontented in her secret heart. She cannot evolve generously in her physical and intellectual power but work will demean her body and spoil her intellect. The worker only feels herself to be human outside her work, and while at work she feels foreign to herself. ʻShe is at home when she is not working, and when she is working she is not at homeʼ. Labor has two temperaments first called concrete labor that which produces real commodities that have specific use values, and abstract labor called this because it has the quality of being a summarize account of work in general what all labor shares in common. This is the source of wealth in capitalist society. This enables us to appreciate and give details into the nature of commodity production as the source of value and surplus value as well as such ambiguity of the power of money in a market economy. We must make a differentiation between labor as a concrete tangible type of work that is capable of creating specific types of use-values of particular items and labor power, and the ability to work, which is the value-producing property of labor. With the evolution of property and classes one class has control over the access over the resources necessary in production. The producers then become dependent upon the owners of private property for right just to live. They must work under the condition set by the owners. The workers lose control of the resources needed to live and the “material means of production”, forfeiting the right to control the tools and wherewithal needed to produce the necessities of life. Thus they surrender power over the conditions that they live under, and any real say about the circumstances and the conditions of their subsistence Capitalism is only the most advanced form of class society. For capitalism to thrive, the direct producers had had to be both divided and estranged from any remaining access to the resources of production. Previous social relations and non-capitalist economic systems had to be either ruined or these economies were forcefully brought under rival control of the logic and authority of a global capitalist economy. Wage labor now replaces custom, social relations based upon kinship or patronage, and some measure of control over the resources guaranteed in a traditional economy. Separated
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from the materials used in production the wageworker finds her labor stolen from her by the provisos of the labor contract called employment. Capitalism is both a very recent and unique economic. Where the direct producers whether artisans or peasants were forcefully separated from access of the resources necessary for production. For capitalism can exist only with wage labor in which the worker have nothing to sell on the open market except their ability to work. Labor power being their only commodity means the worker can live only if they have a job and work for someone else. The worker sells her self piecemeal to the capitalist. The capitalist is free to use that labor power any way he sees fit. After each turn around of the investments in capital, the accumulated resources under capitalist control continue to grow ever larger. The worker living from paycheck to pay check only sees her meager savings eaten up by unforeseen events as she becomes increasingly anemic in relation to capital. At the job site production is separated from design with a division of labor between the salaried professionals whose expertise give them a measure of autonomy and control that is lacking among the line workers who are reduced an extension of the machine. The worker is transformed into a material a secondary and ancillary part of production. The capitalist is the living force of assets and speculative investments. The worker is even further dehumanized. The salaried employed professional is pitted against the worker as an alien and hostile force all to the disadvantage of the worker. After the day is done what the worker has created is now a show of aggression leveled against the worker as a foreign force under the control of the capitalist. The government that protects the capitalist meets the worker as a force of nature beyond the control of the worker and always a serious threat to the worker and her family. Ultimately even the powerful capitalist and his friends in government are unable the control market forces which ultimately lead to unforeseen consequences which in the end creates startling end results which the capitalist and not the worker is once again saved by direct government intervention to rescue the free market yet again. The war is truly all against all. The larger capitalists devour his rivals or form a unity with a competitor who can turn on him at any minute. The workers are many and the jobs are few. Workers at home and abroad threaten other workers. The poverty of the many is necessary for the wealth of the few. Democracy is a sham, in which options are controlled by these few, and we truly do have a choice but the alternatives are restricted in away in which the capitalist is never seriously threatened. This poverty is made even more absurd because money an abstraction, determines who is rich and who is poor. Money a fantasy, which becomes the only really real reality, also determines who lives and who dies. To keep it altogether government enters on the side of capital to make sure this barely actuality genuine ridiculous certainty is never doubted. The dictatorship of money and with the support of the state over the everyday lives of the working people is in the last analysis the destitution of the meaningfulness of the stagnant social order. Life under capitalism is absurd. Life is reduced to the most uninspired and inconsequential levels. Yet rebellion, resistance and death are constant companions. Government must be on the continual watch or freedom and creativity will break out, bringing the whole system collapsing to its very foundation. Government must keep the influence of commonplace citizens hemmed in, so that the private property of the elite is never threatened.
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Workers of course are alienated from their very existence on this planet. But, the autonomy, privilege and opportunity of the professionals come at a heavy expense. To put on the market oneʼs essence for the continued exploitation of the starving, over worked and destitute browbeaten day laborers, sweat shop slaves, undocumented domestics, underemployed and wage workers without a future must reduce the professionals to existentialists with the ghosts of dead philosophers as constant companions in a daily ocean of angst. Unless they become rebels there is little hope. The cure is to overthrow the existing economic and political institutions. The historical summary is a theoretical criterion that has to be linked to accessible data and the condition of progress is placed satisfactorily under democratic control if they are to become tangible and creative. Then at this point socialism becomes the direct opposition to the alienation Wrought by capitalism. The on going war against the twisted market economy that meets the absurd interests of profit based economy class antagonisms between capitalist and worker are going to be the founding principles of socialist ethics. The insecurity of the workers life is the result of the logic of an irrational economic system. The socialist ethics reflects this struggle. An economy that condemns the direct producers to a life of grinding poverty and rewards the gambler and the criminal is the moral basis upon which capitalism and a market economy rests. Laws are instituted to ensure that the property of the thief and the parasite is protected while those who create the wealth are locked out of the fruits of her labor. The emancipation from the alienation of labor is the dream of all socialists. This is the final goal even if it is impossible to fully achieve this. Direct participatory democracy is the ultimate benchmark of success. We use this ideal to measure how far we still have to go. To live in a truly communist world is the long-term goal. But, what this would look like is not clear. It may be replacing exploitation by the capitalists with worker councils, neighborhood councils, community councils federated into larger units with democratically elected representatives on these larger councils representing local councils. It comes with the unity of working, playing and art making because labor at that level is lived as being the spiritual connection to nature. It may be reducing necessary labor time worldwide to a minimum say, five to ten hours a week depending on the season. What everyone agrees upon is drudgery must be reduced to a bare minimum and creativity greatly expanded. This expansion of rational imaginative judicious artistic expansion of human energy along with the elimination of want, hunger, poverty, destitution or deprivation is why we are revolutionaries.
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Erich Fromm 1961 Marxʼs Concept of Man The ideological superstructure including the political culture and institutional structures, the spiritual, emotional, and cultural settings are related to social relations that are set in a specific historical setting embedded in an environmental and technological arrangement forming a complex interactive feed back system. Culture is the sum total of all shared knowledge, learned behavior, patterns of attitudes and perceptions of a people. Culture refers to socially shared and transmitted knowledge, both how the world is and how it should be. Ideology is the openly expressed system of beliefs of a people. This multifaceted structure in which the configuration is arranged in a way in which people through culture is always an active and interactive part of nature. People are a product of their historical environment. While this is true, it is also true people are not only the authors of their own lives, they collectively create their historical environment. The social and the ideological interact in such away that people truly are a product of their social upbringing, which reflects their public background which they are born into an exists independent of their consciousness, yet is changed by people making conscious choices and acting on those selection of possible options. We are acting on what is really happening and our interpretations of what is out there. The results will either lead to unforeseen consequences or a chance of success. Each person has both the temperament one is born with and the embodiment of the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual that is generated and adapted by the historical cultural setting one grows up in and is living in at the current time. The contradiction then modifies itself to become an interactive feed back loop in which people often act without all the information. Humans interacting within their environment crate themselves. As they try to understand their true nature they create that nature. If their information is flawed they create demons that rise up and dominate them and they are powerless in the face of the monsters they created. As products as well as producers the lives of people are the product of an objective environment independent of their consciousness, but as a product of conscious choice they are the subjective subjects of their own actions. For the individual is a social creation. Because the existence of the public person who is the creation of a real situation that is distinct from her awareness, yet at the same time a result of deliberate assortment of living situations her life is the personal focus of her own conclusion. A person finds her self in her relation to another person, or in relation to a community of people. It is in a social context that we become human. In this same context humans are an interactive part of nature. We become what we become only in this complex of relationships. It can be a source of our greatest fulfillment or the source of our enslavement and degradation. The struggle for freedom is the resistance against enslavement and for the love of existence. Life being reduced to a burden to be endured diminishes the human character of life. Slavery enslaves both the slave and the master. While the rich and powerful have all the best things in life they do not have their humanity. While the slave is stripped of every ounce of humanity they carry the key to liberation. Only when the slave is emancipated can the master regain a lost humanity. Through work the exploited worker is reduced either to a minor machine part or a beast of burden. Everyday is degraded and stripped of humanity. Labor which is the spiritual connection a person has with nature is turned into its opposite and becomes the
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source of spiritual death. Labor which connects nature, art, play and our humanity is turned into its opposite and labor becomes a source of mind deadening drudgery. What we believe and what is really real do not always coincide. Our job as historical sociologists is to discover the discrepancy and to ascertain through rigorous observation where the difference between what we believe to be real and what is really real lie. Through our close observations and carefully thinking about what we observe the riddle of the bond between the real meaning and its being is realized. We can define the essence that better reflects this reality. At this time existence and essence come closer to being the same. Through a better understanding of the world outside our consciousness we come to understand ourselves better. When we have improved information we can make healthier decisions in our lives and create a world that reflects our wishes better. With better information our actions acting upon the outside world, in such away that the result are more closely connected to what we have expected. Only at this point can we say we are the authors of our own fate and not its victims. We domesticate the gods and put them in the backfield where they will never interfere with our dreams again. On, the other hand we are always the authors of our fate, but in such a way that unforeseen consequences overwhelm us. Only through a deeper understanding of the world around us can we limit these unforeseen consequences and tame the unexpected outcomes. The truth we seek is always changing because we change it through our actions. We then create our reality working with raw materials drawn from a material realty independent of our consciousness and yet we change it through our actions. Through ignorance our passions lead to actions that only harm us. When we act with good information our act lead to results that only increase the long-term happiness for ourselves and the community, the rest of humanity and all living things. If we act with the correct knowledge of the world we live in, our lives and our work are the artistic expression of the joy we have in living. It is only through this creative interaction with the world around us can we truly say we are human. In this more rewarding life, we reach true happiness without exploiting others. The true simplicity of our lives gives riches that gold cannot buy. Through our labor we interact with others forming links of friendship, we interact with nature defining who we are and finally creating a deep meaning in our lives. Through this type of life we bring to our selves and to others. Through our interaction with others we become human, through our interaction with nature we become alive. A simple non-exploitive happiness for ourselves, is the best we can give to others. Through simple hedonism we preserve the best of nature for our heirs. People are first of all animals with basic animal needs. As these needs are met people create a new reality they become social beings with social needs. The next stage of evolution the social beings become a community of artists. It is through these efforts that we find ourselves in others. It is through these collective action that not only do we discover we are an interactive part of nature we are nature at its best. Through equality, compassion and true participatory democracy each individual become truly unique and fulfilled in the interaction with others. A community of individuals is formed in relation with other individuals. This takes love to a new level, not just the use of another but in the mutual completion and satisfaction of others in their interaction and in the full celebration of each personʼs exceptional worth. Life in a world that we can understand, in nature that we are a part of, in humanity we share, it is only then that we become fully human. With wealth came poverty. With private property came the propertyless. The
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wealth has all the good things and life but not their humanity. The poor have nothing but their misery. It is only through resistance can the poor envision their humanity. Poverty really hurts because it kills the very fiber of life. Through rebellion that life once again can feel the pulse of existence. The ironic outcome of private property is that it makes us stupid. In life the bodily and intellectual wisdom have been replaced by the straightforward isolation of all lifeʼs meaning. The final goal is for each individual participating in a community of equals is to have a say in the decisions of those facts that directly affect their lives on the jobs and in the communities. To establish a setting in which production and design is united into a single process in which work is the goal of on the job struggles. To make work, play and art inseparable. To reconnect with nature in which through work a person is linked to nature is a deeply spiritual bond. Finally work becomes neither drudgery nor a necessity if work is not connected with being able to afford the basic necessities of life. The socialist struggle is a goal for liberation from alienation as well as hunger and want. The two are co-equal and one cannot be won without the other or we trade one form of oppression for another. When we become separated from our creative processes we become passive victims of a fate controlled by the other. This other derives benefit from a flaccid sufferer of both isolation and incongruity as we collectively create our own fate and yet we are unaware of that fact and react to our creation as if they were divine whims beyond our control. Thus, we trust the elites to give us direction even as we allow these elites to exploit us. We create our own slavery by allowing the few to control the resources necessary for our survival, to control the access to what is needed to create our meaning and self worth. It is the many, who create what is necessary to live through interacting with nature. It is the many who possess the power of liberation. It is the few who remain powerful because they control the force necessary to manage the resources needed to continue to exist and we remain separated from the power we control because we remain divided one from another and unaware of our true potential. We as slaves, create philosophies to give us illusions of freedom as we passively submit to our exploitation and oppression. In turn, we establish a way of thinking that will give us fantasies of power as we submit to our passivity. We as slaves have lost sight of our deeper meaning and creativity. We became dependent upon those who harm us for our very survival. We became separated from our true nature as a part of nature and a community of those who both love and respect us. We became alienated and dehumanized. Labor should be our spiritual connection with nature and that, which defines our humanity. But because of class society, specifically wage labor and capitalism labor is our separation from nature and our separation from our own humanity. We toil to create our own chains of bondage by the products we make for the capitalist as rented slaves. Everything the capitalist is we are not. We are not free, rich, or fulfilled. Where each individual should be the personification of humanity and humanity expresses it through each individual. In fact because of class society, private property in the means of production each individual becomes an atomized extension of the production process, stripped of the spirit of human essence. The work is lost in the product, even though not a living thing is more alive than the worker. Tool rules over living flesh all to make the capitalist rich and the worker poor. Because with the worker who is hired only to expand the wealth of the one who hires her and because the product become the source of this wealth only if it is sold on the market, the product becomes more important than the worker who produces it. The identity of the worker is even less important than the machines and the raw materials
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used up in production. The worker can live only if employed, and will be employed only if there is a market for the product being produced. Like the slave the worker lives only at the mercy of the master or the capitalist. When the slave becomes free this dysfunctional codependent relationship is broken. The worker is the enabler to the extremely abusive capitalist. All of humanity becomes human only when the worker or slave shatters the chains of oppression that is built upon servitude. The worker is estranged from her own life, any peripheral part of the natural world, her intellectual existence and her individual living. This in turn leads to alienation in the method in which we labor, from what we produce, from the state of affairs of our everyday lives, which is indistinguishably joined together with alienation from oneself, from other workers in our own communities and from the natural world. We become more and more atomized beings, strangers in our own homes and living as an alien in a neighborhood of foreigners. Each friend could become a threat; each family member is a potential Judas. The free person main object in living is to live. We live in a community and we find ourselves in the other. Under capitalism the individual and the other is severed. Under capitalism the other is less a real human being. Under democratic socialism the individual is a mutually interacting supportive other. Under capitalism the other becomes an abstraction in which we judge ourselves by but never fully understands. We find ourselves in things and not people under capitalism. Money defines our worth, and power like wealth is defined by money. Money is an idol given power by people, yet only real if we all agree to pretend it is real. Under capitalism alienation is so common most victims cannot even fantasize what it would be like to be free, not to be alienated, to have meaning in our lives. Life is an illusion of our own making keeping us in slavery. Only in rebellion do we know our humanity. Everyday life in capitalist society, living in a culture where the market is anything but peripheral, requires us in our action and our thoughts to reject the core values upon which our nation is founded and replace them with democratic humanism.
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Marshall Berman, 1963 Freedom and Fetishism Everywhere people are in chains, yet everywhere people cannot escape the fact we all make choices. To accept our slavery passively or to rebel is the choice we can never escape. We live in a world of idols of our own creation and what we believe becomes a choice we make. We give these false deities influence that creates power over our own lives. These idols are everywhere treated, as they were real. Everywhere we go we can never escape this choice. We see that there is clearly something wrong in our lives. Only we have the power to rise up against our oppression by not accepting the lies told us in our schools, churches, the media and our government. Only we through our rebellion can improve our lives, not just for ourselves but also of all living things on the planet. It is our inescapable moral obligation is to resist and not to make us coresponsible for the oppression that exists everywhere in totalitarian capitalist world of alienation. Finally we can find a life that is truly rich and rewarding in rebellion. Everyday life becomes a ceremony to be indulged in and not a burden to be endured. Free labor and a free markets creates a new kind of slavery in which feudal ties of bondage is forever broken and replaced by slavery for rent, in which we forge our own chains. Because workers have little choice on what is produced and for whom, they have little influence over the work process itself. Under capitalism employment is not an exercise in participatory democracy. Production is for sale and not strictly for use. If the capitalists cannot have profits then the workers are laid off. The obsession of production is never to provide needed and desired products and services for all the people regardless of their ability to pay, but only when the capitalist make money. In past economies of public service was the major motivation for work. Under capitalism the worker lives only if she finds employment. Her wages keep her alive, it is paid to her in the money the capitalist cannot consume or reinvest in his company. The capitalist tries to keep wages down and the worker has to struggle for every penny. Social service or use value, needs, or the betterment of the community remain secondary to profits, budgets, costs, or money. Products sold on the market are seen as authentic and the people who make the products remain hidden from view and thus profits are real, not people. Wealth is the ultimate goal. Wealth is the source of all power, and its own justification. Because use value, personal need, public service or social commitments are only means to an end, profit. There is never an upper limit to how much is enough wealth. The war of capital against labor becomes a worldwide conquest of wealth by the capitalists. Capitalists forming alliances with other capitalists when it suits his fancy only to knife his brothers in the back whenever it meets his needs. With capitalism there is no honor among thieves. The suffering of the worker and her sisters in the factory are no more than raw materials consumed in the production process. Life is not life. Humans like iron, fuels, machinery and etc. are wasted if they are not consumed for creating profits. As long as this is the dominant way of organizing the economy few options are allowed. Markets, prices, profits like money are real only as long as we believe them to be real. When enough people begin to doubt their reality then this economic system is in trouble. As long as the workers have faith in capitalism the most they can ask for is a little more in their wages and maybe a little better environment to work. Alienation as a
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way life is preserved. When it is realized that capitalism is a historically created economy, in which choice made at that level of revolutionary actions of real people and direct government intervention then capitalism too can be overthrown. The capitalist society is a casket society. A dreamless sleep that is unadorned. Living our lives as if we have only one and the same existence that is forever stretched out like a level plain in all directions. There is everywhere an impassive hopelessness of lethargy. To be free is possible only if others around me are also free. That is it is, those who are like me, also need to have a say on those events that affect their lives be it on the job in the neighborhood. In a family or a community multiple points of view can come together, each needing to be heard and each individual will have an influence on the final decision. This stands in mark contrast to current day society. Inventing deceptive environs by typecasting ideology into tired old jokes. This is the crap we are sold in schools, churches, the news and popular culture. By creating still photographs out of living emotions and giving birth to an obstinate human outward appearances of a prefabricated role-playing, thus reducing every child to a mundane caricature of a person, symbolizing all the pretexts and qualities of the illusive group of a people which in turn is prepackaged to meet artificial wants. But, this cruel illusion cannot rest because rebellion also will spring up again and again because the enslaved are predisposed to exercise their freedom through rebellion.
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Gajo Petrović 1965 Reification Alienation under capitalism is expressed through reification in regards to an imaginary thing that we take as real and acting towards it as if were in fact real. People become hidden behind our creations and forgotten. Goods are made in factories and sold around the world, no one knows nor cares about the individual lives of the workers who created the products that are bought in a store. Those goods will only be produced if there is a market for them. No one knows nor cares what may be the true needs of the producers. Nor do they really care about sweatshops or ruined lives. We have very little information on how are products were made. The workers live only if they have a job, and they are employed only if the capitalist can make a profit. Economists provide answers on price and maybe what will sale. Marketing departments exist to get me to buy what I really donʼt need. Objects become real because selling can make money, another fantasy. People are only a means to making money either as workers or customers. If I cannot afford the basics but I really need them, this is irrelevant. If there is no market for my skills I do not have a job. Everything comes down to money. I work for wage and my employer hires me only if it is profitable to do so. That is our relationship. Our shared humanity is buried and my survival depends upon the sale of a product. I had only a small part of what sold to a stranger. The objects I buy are made in China. The lives of the people who made these products mean nothing to me and I do not want to know anything more than the price I have to pay. This economy in which the goal of labor is to provide for the needs of others is replaced by working only for personal gratification i.e. wages vs. profits or how to divide up the money after the product is sold. If the product is unsold in the market I lose my job. Overproduction happens over and over again. We can work only because of continual intervention by government to protect capitalists from themselves. There is a blind belief in the “free enterprise system. There is a closing off of all alternative options and there is high risk gambling with other peopleʼs lives. What becomes real are prices and money. Both are fantasies we agree upon and thus it becomes real. Economic decisions are made along the lines of costs, balanced budgets, prices, and marketability all of which are independent of the lives shattered by these decisions.
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István Mészáros 1970 Marxʼs Theory of Alienation As capitalism developed it needed a new ideology to lend itself to generalized acceptance. From the early middle ages following the crusades when usury was forbidden by the Church in Catholic Europe, the Jew became identified with the middleman minority of merchant, trader, banker and bureaucrat, profit in money lending and sells became a specialized profession. However unfair and anti-Semitic the belief in the middleman as Jews was a despised subgroup in European society in part because of this belief. With the rise of international trade centering in Western Europe and with the Protestant Reformation Christians, particularly Protestant Christians became more and more in control of international markets, the slave trade and international finance. In a word the thousand years plus attempt to convert the Jews to Christianity failed completely and the Christian particularly the Protestant became even more Jewish than the Jews as defined by anti-Semitic stereotypes. In point of fact Jews believed they were chosen by God as a unique people with a highly extraordinary and only one of its kind relationship with God shared by no one else on the planet. The religion of Christianity is a religion for all of humanity. Yet in the high middle ages with the churches ban on profits, Christianity became isolated and inaccessible to global development. The particularity of Judaism allowed for international co-religionists to gain a near monopoly on international trade. In the early modern period of international trade the Christians would need to challenge that near monopoly held by the Jew. The conservative nature of the Catholic nations handicapped them in controlling this international trade. Protestants with their personal and individual relationship with God allowed them to become international merchants without being tied to either a church hierarchy or a ridged religious community. First the Dutch and then the British Protestants took on all the negative traits blamed on the Jews by the anti-Semite. That is the Jew converted the Christian and not the other way around. It became normal to calculate everything including nature, land, and people, wage vs. profit, in terms of market value, i.e. money. Profitability of commodities that are determined by their prices, substitutes for the communal comradeship of social relations between people. Understanding is mesmerized by the self-centered necessity by duping and exploiting in order to make a little more money. The civil religion of self-seeking remoteness along with avarice becomes the virtues of a back-to-back society. This is a historical and cultural state of affairs that is unique. We lie to our selvesʼ daily and yet convince our selves we are telling ourselves the truth about our everyday lives. Our beliefs being a product of our lives and defined in terms that are understandable by the language of our culture is in part the raw materials in which we construct the mythology about our imaginary tales about who we are. Because much of what we call common sense remains unexamined and while it justifies the status quo it is in fact causing us harm and we do not know the source of our bottomless discontent and solitude. In time of economic crisis and political upheaval it is possible for a brief moment to see clearly the flaws and weaknesses of the major institution of society and the way of transcending current society into something more alluring and fulfilling for its citizens. This is the beginning of historical sociology, because with the study of history using a modified form of science we expand our understanding of life, which was originally only
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covered by legend, imagination and the absurd. Until historical sociology replaces common sense, the dominant ideology was taken as universally true in all times and places as if it could not be any other way. This dominant ideology was accepted by the majority of the poor and was refined by the elites. What needs to be studied is why a people would accept established inequalities, and to determine the extent that an oppressed people fail to understand the source of their exploitation and the existing inequalities. The intellectuals of any society create complex explanations that justify this inequality in away that excuse slavery or minimum wages or poor people who work very hard and still stay poor. As long as it is just and natural to see existing poverty and extreme wealth is seen as either gods will or a reflection of what one truly deserves. These explanations are seen outside of their historical context and it fails to recognize alternative explanations that may do a better job of explaining the inequality in a historical setting. Without studying economics using the tools of a marriage of history, sociology and anthropology leads to conclusions that are founded upon lies that are cynically constructed to keep the poor and oppressed in line. History studied in the context of an ever-evolving social whole in which each part of a society interacts with and changes every other part operating within a larger whole. Each interaction changes the society as a whole. Then by comparing how one society with compares other societies in similar situations, we gain a better understanding how economics works. Any other approach to economics is superstition. The ancients defined the divine in accordance with their own communities. Modern economists see as that every individual anywhere and anytime all the way back to our earliest primate ancestors operated as proto-capitalists. Both views are mythical and not scientific. Each culture defines what is to be a person, and what ever separates a person from fulfilling that ideal would be seen as alienation. Where ever inequality is an established fact an ideology is needed to justify the oppression and exploitation of one group by another. Ideology not only allows the elite to feel good about themselves, but the workers who produce the wealth and power of the elite are educated to accept their subordinate position. It becomes acceptable not to develop fully as a human being and freedom is redefined to include a subordinate role. This is “alienation” or “reification”. Alienation is the condition of being out of contact with the real material situation and cut off from the objective world, and every stratified society explains itsʼ inequality in a way that makes the existence of classes seen natural. The intellectuals in particular in all cultures, up to now, have a line of attack that is used to justify inequality by defining “human nature” in a way that allows the society to continue to exploit the masses for the benefit of the minority. This establishes the passion of the belief in the justification as well as the temperament of the real nature of alienation. Cultural Anthropology creates a comparative Historical Sociology. Over time by comparing many distinct societies we gain a deeper understanding of a single society. Otherwise without this historical grounding any statement about human nature, or better human natures, is simply trading one form of mystification for another. At this point we find religion and government, along with formal economics and functional sociology define human nature as outside of time and therefore independent of real people in their everyday lives set in a specific and unique historical setting. If the misery of the day labor is taken for granted than a whole system of government, religion and social philosophy is called in to protect the establishment of privilege, and from there we develop absolutes
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that protect are artificially created truths from threat of changes brought about by those properly socialized to accept their inferior status. What is created in each of these cultural and historical settings are unnatural requirements that are built upon fantasizes cravings of artificial needs and imaginary redundant wishes. These can express themselves in spiritual terms or in consumerbased materialism either way relations of power and economic inequality are protected. One philosophy replaces another as economies mature and replace previously existing economic systems. Not until we have a Historical Anthropology that looks at the continuously evolving social location, while looking at a historical background with a long enough view to compare to other historical settings can we get beyond the mystification of the present. Only at this point can it be shown that modern society evolved along with its political philosophy justifying liberal culture and a “market i.e. capitalist economy”. Reason replaces revelation as a source of this mystification.
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The Dialectic, Humanism and Consciousness In the on going struggle between bourgeoisie (capitalist class) and the proletariat (working class) it is the worker and not the capitalist that has the possibility of transforming bourgeois (liberal) society in the direction of real democracy founded upon the mutual aid in a self fulfilling significance through reciprocal service through our lives within society. Hegel offered the way to understand the changes that modern society was going through. Yet it was up to Marx to liberate Hegel from his theological superstition and create a theory of liberation. By using the dialectical method, both science and a scientific approach to historical sociology could be use to understand what in fact exists, what are the choices currently available and what is the best way to make the choices that will offer the best chance of achieving true liberation given what we have to work with. By understanding what is to be a fully conscious human being we can better understand the individual in her specific historical setting.
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Epicurus and Modern Socialist Revolution
The goal is to live within your life and to enjoy that life and harm no one. To be angry leads us nowhere but pain. We should try to turn that anger into an assurance that we are supposed to find the source of irritation and do something about it. Live as if each day was the last and embrace each day fully. The fact that we all will die, we should not let that honesty interfere with the living and celebration of life. Death is not daunting for while you are alive you are not dead. When you are dead you are no more. Once you into the natural elements that make up our bodies we feel no sensations we worry about nothing we suffer no grief. Experiences of sensations are for the living, without thought there is no fear. The goal of receiving and giving pleasure and avoiding and giving no pain is the goal of all living things. We as people should respect that and try not to exploit others for our own limited desires. Ataraxia is distinguished by liberation from anxiety, apprehension or dread. Enjoyment of life is hedonism. Hedonism that does not harm our bodies is a good thing; hedonism that harms no one else is even better. Hedonism that can be gained through reciprocity, generosity and compassion is what the core of socialism is all about. Real hedonism requires a strong sense of social justice. With equality we live without fearing those who have less than us. Without everyone getting their basic needs met the public realm becomes one of anger and fear. If there were no large amounts of wealth side by side with poverty then we would all live without exploitation and theft. Struggling just to survive while others live in luxury because the wealthy steal what others have worked so hard to produce. The teachings of Epicurus are a sound foundation for socialists thought. The wealth necessary to live a good life without exploiting others is found in the natural world, which has environmental limitations. But it is simple to get hold of the resources needed to live modestly but comfortably for everyone. The wealth needed to survive a market economy bolstered by arrogant morals of corporate accumulation become more intense as wealth grows for the few and poverty for the many extends to infinity. The prosperity requisite in the environment is limited; if we go beyond natural limitations we destroy our own homes. Comfort is easy to achieve; but the avarice that is obligatory by narcissistic gluttony of capitalism extends to eternity. Hedonism based upon greed is not hedonism but iniquity. Intemperance centered upon avarice is not only self-indulgence but also social injustice. Simplicity, fairness, mutuality, directness, justice, reciprocity, kindheartedness, consideration, understanding and appreciation of others are the sources of happiness. Social justice is necessary for security. But justice is fairness only if it is independent from any suggestion of antagonism or retribution. In living the good life then, pleasure is the highest virtue if that pleasure is not bought at the pain and suffering of others. Reciprocity is founded upon mutual bond of having confidence in the thoughtful appreciation of others.
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Life is a celebration to be indulged in and not a burden to be endured. Any thing that interferes with that merriment called living is injustice. Injustice anywhere it comes to our attention it must be opposed with all the moral indignation we can muster. This in itself becomes our celebration. If we are to stand for justice we must confirm the worth of the victims of injustice. Justice is the nonexistence of hate, resentment, avarice and disrespect for others. Victory is the intelligent human condition that will prevail over injustice by good sense and useful study of the natural world and of other people from which we form a scientific foundation for sympathetic understanding. Our knowledge of the world around begins with our sensational experiences of that world. All our sensations are basic stimulus response and in the beginning are absent of purpose and because it is not open to of recollection, thinking about and based on reason or philosophy we define reality. Our experience of the external world it is not selfcaused. It does not have an external cause outside of that experience. Our experience cannot add anything without our interpretation. The external world is given and we learn through stimulus response and by talking to others thus an ego embedded in an everchanging culture is formed. Reason is born with that this complex interaction between the ego, sensations, the external environment and communication with others. “Epicurus, the son of Neocles and Chaerestrata, was an Athenian from the deme of Gargettus and the lineage of the Philaïdes. He was born 341 B.C.E. He live till 270 B.C.E. From his garden he crated a utopian community where people could live devoted to simple pleasures and joy in a way the exploited no one, harmed no one, including oneself and could easily be shared with all of humanity. This is what he taught. The fundamental obstacle to happiness, says Epicurus, is anxiety. No one can be happy if they are anxious or never satisfied no matter how rich. Good health will not make you happy if you're worried about getting sick. You will not be happy in this life if you're worried about what happens to you after you die. People who are fearful of worried about being punished or victimized by powerful divine beings will only find sorrow in life. It is very easy to be happy if you follow the four basic truths of Epicureanism: there are no divine beings that threaten us; there is no next life; what we actually need is easy to get; what makes us suffer is easy to put up with. "Don't fear god, don't worry about death; what's good is easy to get, and what's terrible is easy to endure”. In summery: Epicurus four keys to happiness: 1. Fear no god 2. Fear death even less 3. Pleasure is easily attained 4. Pain is easily endured Epicurus Path to Happiness
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1. It is impossible to live pleasurably without living sensibly 2.To provide for one self with minimum effort to secure protection from harm 3. True security cost little 4.Comfort is easily attained and wealth is never enough 5. Pleasure that costs little and harms no one is best 6. The greatest pleasure is the simplest pleasure 7. Reason makes any surprises acceptable 8. Allowing all people the same amount of life's necessities this makes theft unimportant 9. The greatest obstacle to pleasure is fear 10. The fear of the gods and of death is the source of most evil 11. We can dispel these fears by understanding life, death, nature and the universe 12. Pleasure is impossible until science dispels superstitions about life, death and nature 13. True pleasures are simple and easily attained neither wealth or eternal life adds anything 14. Eternity contains no more or greater pleasure than that attained in the now 15. The gods add nothing to humans or their happiness
Source: Epicurus & Epicurean Philosophy http://www.epicurus.net
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The Universal Unity of Consciousness: What I learned from Hegel Categories of Subject and Object 1. Agency is what some would call freewill. Agency requires an acting subject that undertakes an act of will within a structure and a context. Each person acts with the information at hand with a preexisting set of circumstances. But to act, both the action and what is being acted upon must be defined. 2. This is understood as a defining entity before action can take place. This is a delineated being or person, which in turn has a real and independent existence and is the connecting tissue of many separate individuals into a single shared category. This category points out the chief qualities of the unit under consideration and identifies the essential qualities that become its meaning. This concept is a unifying set of characteristics that are placed together in the process of creating a definition. 3. In establishing each specific set of characteristics that will be used in understanding in any category of a comprehensible entity existing in the external world, we will also be describing what is excluded from that category. Setting up the defining and essential qualities of a category or entity helps establish the boundaries around the necessary and important traits. This helps clarify all that is excluded from our category; depending on the chosen significant and definitive features of specific qualities of our category, and the items we are investigating. Definitions can, at this point, be either expanded or narrowed in order to better understand more closely how this category is embedded in an externally changing material reality. 4. We create categories that are divided into species and genera of a universal that is created intellectually from the logical process of trying to understand the external world. Each defined entity stands in opposition to every other entity, because one thing is not another. Because of our familiarity with this, each species is contained within our larger understanding of the universe around us by our awareness of how this species is set apart by the boundaries that separate each species from every other species and everything else. 5. To avoid confusion it must be made clear that the differences between species are not the essential and defining characteristics for any species. Taking two closely related species, the dissimilarities are not indispensable and central to the description of any speciesʼ uniqueness, but the dissimilarities are vital for the detailed description of the variety of characteristics of closely related species. With those differences in mind it is now possible to understand what any entity is not. Because two closely related species share many characteristics in common, it becomes important to understand what they do not share to understand the boundary between them. 6. Both the essential qualities and secondary traits give only partial information about species. Also important is knowing characteristics excluded from those that are part of the identity of the species. Because any species exists in a larger ever-changing environment, the boundaries between one species and another is never perfectly fixed.
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The specific qualities we use to describe a species change as what we need to understand changes with new information. These concepts and defining characteristics are mental reflections of an ever-changing material reality. Evolution is the only constant, not only of material reality, but also our understanding of that reality. When the fit between our categories and what they represent becomes too uneasy, there follows cognitive leap and new ways of understanding the world around us. Old worldviews are either redefined or they are abandoned to be replaced by new ones. These changing categories outline the boundaries between species and are also included in those traits that other species share.
Awareness, the Will and Consciousness 1. Awareness forms the envisioned liking the goal of the will to the interpretations of reality and their explanations to the existential. Of course this awareness begins at the appearances. This is the individualʼs relationship to herself. This relationship is her mirror to the imaginary other. The self only exists in a relationship to the other. Yet through imagination the self can create the other. But, the invented other required a real other to model itself after. 2. Because self is a social construct, it requires a community of interacting individuals in order to form the self. Because the self is also a single individual then individual interpretation is also required. Isolation of each personality is a network of many mingling comradeships and kinship of communal set of connections is the on going creative masterpiece of life. Remoteness of both personality and identity is a set of connections of various kinds in which we come together as comrades in association of shared arrangements of linking ideas that is the current cultural meaning and inspires the on going work of art of our existence. 3. Life containing the determination of the phenomenology of existential subsistence is in the process of making self a work in progress. The study of subjects and objects of a personʼs experiences requires the structures of consciousness as qualified from the firstperson point of view that is born from the empirical experiences of a sustained way of life of being. The personality is formed in this interaction. 4. The endeavor of the meaning within consciousness is to make its emergence related by means of its genuine significance. The authentic importance is not only significant for the individual, but also at some point in communication with many individuals sharing a common identity. This helps raise conviction to the level of fact, at least if this cultural meaning is adaptive to a real environment. 5. Consciousness is formed with the interaction between the temperaments of the person with the external environment as mediated by the individualʼs communication with the group she interrelates with directly. Her consciousness, her relation to the objective world is the consequence of the down to earth estimated confidence of an existential and sensual responsiveness to that world adjudicated through her intellect. The sensory consciousness belongs to the type of sensation that unites external and internal for each individual. Consciousness includes groupings integrated with the
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abstract personality. Thus awareness is but a summery reflection of the complex relations between an individual and what exists independent of that individual. Learning and responsiveness is always leading to a more defined limits of data while expanding what can be learned. This expanding identity of knowledge will be seen as having fundamental general characteristics in common that are found in similar but always some different instances that can be compared to it. 6. Knowledge based upon experiences is the beginning of reason. Reason is created out of the unity of the subjective reaction to the objective. Through the thought process the rational is merged with the empirical. Empiricism or systematic and detailed observation of the outside world gives the data to use in rational studies. Through reason and empiricism, the study of the world outside the mind while using a heightened consciousness is used to arrange the data to create an enriched self-awareness and awareness of the external world. 7. Self-consciousness is born from the ongoing interaction between a personʼs mental reflection of the external world and the reality of that world. Through a cultural understanding, a person sorts out the meaningful from the meaningless. Being overwhelmed by sensory information, a person could not react safely to the environment. Thus, what we discard is as important as what we keep and analyze. Truth is ultimately how successful this interaction is. The self is the idea of our individual isolation while being created out of and existing in a social context. Tearing apart prior judgments that could exist creates this self-independence. These bracketed judgments are resurrected when one feels a level of certainty that these ideas are based upon reason and observation can securely be introduced into our thinking. This is learning based upon reflection. Through reflection the self can look upon the self as one would look upon any external reality. This is the origin of introspection and the substance of selfconsciousness. Hegel Science of Logic And History of Philosophy From the above Hegel develops a philosophy of dialectical awareness. What follows is a Humanist consciousness.
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Agency, Consciousness and the Dialectic 1. The Agency of an acting subject is whose activity is set within a structured environment within a specific context. As said before, some people would also call agency free will. The agent is eternally trapped in mire without escape. The agent can never escape the fact that at every turn there are choices, this is what Sartre calls freedom. What Sartre fails to understand is that freedom is not a thing or part of the human condition. Freedom is a feeling and as a freedom it may or may not match anything real in the lives of the free. It is choice, which is inescapable. Choice is what Sartre calls freedom. Choices are firmly set in a historical structure that exists objectively even before we act. However limited, and limited it is, choice exists. Ideas and action are born out of choices – choices framed in a determined material world. Choices are incessantly formed and modified out of lived experiences and action is guided by philosophy. Because action founded on choices amends reality, action modifies and changes philosophy. 2. Agency operates within a social setting and is in part a result of past action taking place in an already formed but ever changing environment. Current social structures are reflections of adaptations to environments of the recent past. Cultures are themselves reflecting precedent adaptations to environments of the recent past. Because of this, cultures are presently readapting to the existing ever-changing social-cultural and natural environment. An innovative social movement is set in motion through actions based upon categories created out of actual experiences; guiding theory based upon observable facts, that had come into view and can be recognizable before a fresh outlook could be work out. This would be the creative process of a social order already changing. 3. From the point of view of people advocating profound structural changes, this evolving way of life would assume the character of a new historical mindset. This sustains deep corporeal configuration that is becoming something different born out of the remains of the corpse of the previous world; the social activists would call this a true Renaissance. The new philosophy born in opposition to the philosophy of the dying world is an increased intellectual awareness as a guide for popular action. Seen as a concretization of the dawning of a new age with a “New Type of Humanism”. This means that each set of ideas corresponds to a specific set of behaviors. Actions are married to consciousness that both reflect the objective world through our understanding; but also understanding through informed social activity. The material reality independent of our world of ideas is modified by our actions guided by our ideas. 4. Every set of ideas has its own set of limitations, these limitations often undermine the coherence of this set of ideas; also because people try for some measure of understandability. This set of ideas develops into different sets of thoughts. These notions soon bump into philosophical contradictions because of the inherent limitations. The resolution is a new philosophical system or such reinterpretations of old ideas such that it, in fact, is functionally a new system.
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5. This interactive union between the material and social world with the ideological superstructure is the foundation of agency. Agency is founded on a subjective experience and yet the subjective always remains embedded in an objective world. In the same way, the self exists independently of awareness; only real to us in a similar manner in relation to the other. The ideas we have are but our consciousness set in a social environment. It is in the social environment that our consciousness and our personalities are formed. 6. Even though what exists is independent of awareness, this existence is only understandable and therefore real to us because of our awareness; and only through awareness do we know anything. The tension between the subjective and the objective is the source of our knowledge and knowledge is learned in a social as well the natural environment. The knowledge of the external world that we obtain is a lot like a photograph. Depending on lighting, angle and distance the image reflects an external and objective reality founded upon the point of view of the observer. It is not necessarily that any one photograph is more real than another, but one may be more current than another. What we actually observe depends on our cultural and historical background, experience, and type of education. What we actually observe empirically will be affected by the considerations outlined above. Taken together they give us a more or less complete understanding. Depending on the position we hold in a social and historical setting, we see which options are available. Some viewpoints offer a more realistic grasp of options than others and there are more right at that time. However, by comparing concurrent theories we get a more complete understanding. Finally, depending on our interpretation of the objective, the subjective is altered. This is where communication furthers understanding and the subjective evolves with increased understanding. Because imagination is the product of the subjective and that subjective is reflected in a personʼs imagination and the subjective is a reflection of the objective, the objective and the imagination interact and are related. Interpretations, which are always influenced by imagination, complete the subjective and our understanding of the objective. 7. The objective-subjective interaction is completed through interaction in a cultural and historical setting. If there is an amiable interface between the objective- subjective, it is real enough to allow people to survive; and our understanding of the external world is a fairly close fit. If there is a serious disconnect, then revolutionary changes may be required to survive. This becomes clear as the environment is always changing. Whether the there is a disconnection or the fit is close, the interaction of subjective-objective makes sense only if we define it in cultural and historical terms. 8. This is more than simply a phenomenal reality of external determinability. The general presupposition is negated in the process as we learn through interaction with the environment and others. This how we are always learning and readapting. Through this interaction a state of being is set firmly as it is reflected in the mental processes of understanding the Objective. This continual process of establishing objectively in possessing a true being is part of our culture and ecological adaptability. Even if interpretations that are based upon delusions survive as long as they are understood in a social context and practical in an objective setting. These on going and changing interpretations will correspond close enough to the existing circumstances that they persist in meeting the material needs of the people. The strange thing is people survive
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even if the cultural beliefs and interpretations are irrational as long as the guiding actions are too disruptive to the needs of survival. 9. Change will happen as what we already know is reinterpreted. What was in our body of knowledge is being replaced even as we try to preserve the old ideas. We are changing these ideas. Truth being in part an interpretation can reflect reality only imperfectly. Yet specific procedures of combining systematic empirical observation with disciplined rational analysis. The promise is we can achieve an even closer approximation to external reality. If we base our actions on what we learn from this procedure our actions will become even closer to the external environment and the results would be nearer to what we would like to achieve. Our actions become not only more successful, but we can better predict our outcomes and we can have more control over the unanticipated consequences. With increasing awareness of the Objective and Subjective becomes more under our individual and collective influence. The Subjective is always but an appearance of the Objective, with better understanding we have a better fit between the two. 10. This continuous interaction between appearance and an external reality that we can become aware of, even though is one of approximations, is clearly attainable through careful investigations. At least some guiding ideas lead to new ideas that give us more
Feuerbach, Ludwig. (1986). Principles of the Philosophy of the Future. Hackett,
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The Universal 1. What appears as a defining entity, connecting many individuals into a single category is an intellectual replica of reality. This concept is a unifying set of characteristics that are placed together in the process of creating a definition. The universal is created from the logical process of trying to understand the external world. Each defined entity stands in opposition to every other entity, because it is defined as one thing and not another. Each species is self-contained in our understanding by the boundaries that separate it from everything else. But the differences between species are not the essential defining characteristics for any specific species. The dissimilarities are not indispensable and central to the descriptions of species uniqueness, but the dissimilarities are vital for detailed descriptions of the variety of closely related species. These differences are necessary for pointing out what it is not. Though two species may share many characteristics in common, what they do not share defines the boundary. (Hegel) 2. In establishing each specific characteristic, the definition also describes what it is not. What it is are the essential qualities and what it is not are together the necessary and the important traits. Depending on the chosen defining features, specific qualities change as the need for understanding changes. The most important elemental qualities of species, if they are shared in part by other species, helps create a larger genus uniting species in this broader category; while maintaining the distinct identities of more narrowly defined species. Each object once defined allows for understanding not only about the object but also how it relates to other objects that are of different species. (Hegel) 3. Similarities in data are categories created out of generalized experiences that appear to have characteristics in common. This generalization is the origin of the Universal. The first Universal is the dichotomy between Subject and Object. (Hegel) 4. Universal is an intellectual abstraction. The Universal is not a direct reflection of empirical experience. Universals are systematically worked-out tools constructed by logic using rational analysis. Categories based upon a concept of logical necessity are ideal types used to come closer to that external reality. Certainty is another ideal type that comes prior to universal categories, and reflects empirical experience. (Hegel) 5. Essence, which is defined by the observer, is based upon the experience of existence. Once this is done, essence becomes an artificial construct, needing only an element of the arbitrary. If similarities are discovered, a generalized definition becomes an artificial construct independent of specific existence. It now becomes a part of the reality of the observer. In this way the essential also becomes real. These artificial tools and concepts become necessary for us to understand external reality. (Hegel) 6. “I” being the first Universal can exist only in relation to the “Object”. The “Object” now becomes the second “Universal.” The “Objects” of a specific series of experiences are brought together by abstracting similarities leading to an understanding of a concept called “Itself”. “Itself” is an “Object” experienced by the “I” as something outside of an independent of the “I”. At this point the “universal” is universalized. The observer and the observed are universalized and detached from any details of subject or object. (Hegel)
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7. The self can experience the external world with meaning. Through interaction with the external world, the self proceeds to define herself through her meaningful experiences. Self-definition is not only molded by understanding the external world, but also greatly influenced by the definitions of parts of the external world. (Hegel) 8. Further experiences of the specific are understood in relation to these intellectual constructs of “Essence” and “Universal”. Specific differences are negated by the process of generalizing from similarities in forming the “Universal”. The “Universal” is in turn negated by experiences that form around the tensions of conflicting trends, that the intellect resolves by creating a new “Universal” that stands in contrast to past experience and forms new conflicts with future experiences. The external reality also shows observable signs of tensions that resolve themselves in the beginnings of a new reality. With this frame of reference, specific characteristics are used in defining an object. Once the characteristics have been defined and isolated they become a list that is used in the future classification of categories of species. Each specific characteristic is independent of other defining characteristics. These characteristics are recombined to form new definitions of another species. (Hegel) 9. Consciousness is indispensable to perception just as awareness is fundamental to knowledge. Consciousness is molded out of the clay of perception. Self-consciousness exists in an interactive relationship with the external world. We become aware of ourselves by becoming aware of the external world. In turn, we are aware of the external world by being aware of ourselves. (Hegel) 10. With the knowledge of what is before us, we assume what we observe is real. It is also assumed that what exists is independent of the observer. We can know what is, only if we know what is real. Reality is given. Awareness of reality also assumes an Ego that is capable of knowing. Truth is both independent of the observer and understandable by the observer. The object being observed remains separate from the observer. Consciousness is this awareness. To be conscious is to be cognizant of Self and Other. (Hegel) 11. The Ego that observes interacts with the object. This is also true when the object is the Other. Consciousness is formed through the interaction of the Ego and the Other. To be aware is to be sensitive of the self and the Other. When the Other is also aware of this relationship, the self is defined by the interaction between the consciousnesses of self and Other. (Hegel) 12. Consciousness is defined as a relation between the known and the knower. Social consciousness is set in a social environment. Each Ego is the Other to all Egos. Every relationship in this setting has many interacting and contradictory qualities. With this complexity set in motion, there are several alternatives, each changing the direction of history depending on which alternatives are chosen. (Hegel) 13. This would mean there are regularities in nature and society that are independent of our consciousness. This reality is in motion, and this motion itself has patterned regularities that can be observed and understood with our consciousness. These material regularities are also dialectical in that they change over time. Tensions within the structure that is studied form the basis of this change. These changes add up until
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the structure itself is something Other than the original structure. A new entity is formed with its tensions or contradictions. At every turn, choice remains between more than one predetermined alternatives. The choices, once they are made, change future patterns in the regularities of nature and society. (Hegel) 14. Because the Ego is set in a social environment, the individual is defined not only by the choices of the individual, but also by the choices of other individuals. In this way the” I” is reflected by being separated yet united with the Other. The External though independent of the Ego, is made known through acculturation into a community by the consciousness of the Ego; formed in relation to the Others that form the reference group that is part of the Egoʼs environment. (Hegel) 15. The relationship between this community of Egos and the External material reality exists before and after any Ego is alive. This larger relationship forms the Other and any Ego in turn forms a relationship with this Other. The Ego is defined in its relationship with the Other. The interaction of all the Egos of the Community is delineated and formed by and through an increasing awareness of the External. The Object is but a particular manifestation of the External. (Hegel) 16. This awareness is the raw material of Consciousness. Consciousness is set in an ever-changing reality. Both the subjective and objective reality is changing and Consciousness is always in a process of redefining itself. Consciousness requires artificial constructs to understand the external. Continuity is a necessary but synthetic concept. What we understand is always changing. This means that what we know is always something that is other than what we first knew, thus it is always in a process of being mediated through an awareness of an external reality that is always changing. (Hegel) 17. Time itself is an intellectual tool. As such, this tool is an attempt to understand the continuing changes to this external reality. Time negates itself because of the everchanging mid-point called Now. The Now never exists, but without this Now, the past and the future have no meaning. (Hegel) Overly Determined 1. Etiology becomes a diachronic and synchronic interaction. Cause and effect is both described and replaced by a model that emphasizes the interaction of several variables contributing to a single event; with nearly all the variables having some influence. Some have greater and some have lesser influence over time. The effect is determined by multiple causes. This includes examination and study of more than one statistical variable at a time. The word multivariate is defined as: "having or involving a number of independent statistical variables." (Hegel) 2. Philosophy and activism, when taken together, explore the relationship between the actual and the possible. The actual is determined empirically and the possible can be determined only by understanding the actual. (Hegel) 3. Science, math and logic require assumptions at the beginning of the study. Each assumption or concept is embedded in a multivariate empirical environment. As this combined distribution of interacting variables in a changing environment that is founded
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upon lived experience evolves, the founding suppositions also change. These assumptions may be minor premises in a more complex empirical observation; yet as the environment changes, the assumptions are expressed differently. (Hegel) 4. Necessity determines movement in nature and in society. With necessity, the determinism of events is only a matter of probabilities within a field in which accidents are not uncommon. Accidents change necessity; and with human consciousness, humans must continuously re-evaluate changing events. Evolution requires accidents and accidents are understandable as they play off and are in opposition to necessity. Because accidents go against the existential encounter with essence, new material reality is in a long-lasting corporeal conflict with necessity. (Hegel) 5. With human society, accident is related to choice. With choice there is agency. Agency changes necessity. Because determinism studies necessity, necessity reflects agency and agency is limited by necessity. (Hegel) 6. Because of the interaction between necessity and agency, hard determinism provide a model to study relative necessity. With each choice, all other alternative choices are negated. Determinism is an animated and variable flow of events. With each alternative possibility, there would be a divergent and dissimilar history. By understanding the historical sociology of the series of events and the actual possibilities, the unforeseen consequences of history are lessened. With a scientific understanding of historical events, control over outcomes is increased. (Hegel) 7. People make daily decisions that affect their lives. In making decisions they work with materials already in existence. The society and culture that surrounds them and precedes them defines the options, possibilities and probabilities. In this setting, peopleʼs conscious actions driven by choice have consequences. The effects of these choices create new situations for which no one really planned. Often this results in a feeling of helplessness by the people who make decisions that shape change; and also results in a world out of control. (Hegel) 8. With clear analyses, a possible meaningful review is arrived at. To abstract from one situation to another is essential and inescapable. With abstraction, risk is increased; and with generalization possibility is amplified. This is basic and crucial. With theory it becomes possible to study the outcome of options. To be one thing is not to be another, to choose one thing is not to choose another. That which is not chosen is forever excluded. To define something is not only to list its characteristics but also to understand what it is not. Characteristics change over time, requiring a rethinking and a redefinition. (Hegel) 9. Permanence is a generalization of appearances. Continuity is an intellectual tool we create to understand change. Change as a statistical concept can only conclude probabilities, not necessity. The abstraction we create to understand external reality never perfectly fits that exterior universe. Time and space are intellectual tools that form a conflicting relationship with the material reality of which we are a part. (Hegel) 10. Essence is an abstract model created to understand what exists independent of essence. Essence creates knowledge of appearances; which, though artificial, helps us
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understand existence. Appearances change even as they are being understood through the use of our intellectual tools. (Hegel) The Potential and the Negation 1. Liberty is possible by making informed decisions based upon a deep understanding of the regularities of natural processes. Subjective truths are real only when we understand objective reality. Faith in powers beyond material reality and a belief in the supernatural will lead to a private frailty. Submission to the divine begins a voyage to a diminished humanity and a restrained understanding of nature. In this, faith is a downfall of selfdetermination. (Hegel) 2. Action within the context of possibilities is agency. Agency is the action of freedom. Agency is the negation of negation of necessity. Necessity sets the limits of agency and agency changes the boundaries of necessity. Agency without knowledge of possible alternatives is imaginary romance and numinous fantasy. Awareness of potential options for making choices is embedded in authentic material reality. This pertinent wisdom is based upon the fact that material reality follows repeated patterns. Natural laws are intellectual constructs created by humans trying to understand these patterns. (Hegel) 3. All products, cultural or material, are created from natural raw materials following the ever-changing forces governed by natural laws. By understanding these natural processes, success is possible. Liberation is achievable only when a scientific and deterministic model is used. The systematic and deterministic model is successful because the particulars of an event typify natural laws that have satisfactory sources for its existence. Determinism is the understanding of natural laws and natural resources. Only understanding these objective processes expands free will, and a self-conscious attempt to understand the world becomes more likely. (Hegel) 4. People create their own reality by creating their lives. In this way, people are but one part of nature; although they are an active part of a continually changing nature. Without a wide-ranging authoritative acknowledgment of tangible validity of data drawn from a world external to our subjective lives, that same life moves beyond the command of the authors of those lives. Unforeseen and uncontrolled consequences over power challenge the best attempts of creators of those lives. (Hegel) 5. Nature, culture, society, and individuals are always changing. Changes require more changes. Movement is always passing away in a process of becoming. Nature, society and culture are shifting, flowing movements. Everything in the Universe is temporary. These changes follow patterns we can understand through careful observation. Both Nature and human history follow patterns that are integrated in ever-larger wholes. Patterns form ever-larger arrangements of comprehensive systematic transformation. Because of culture, human understanding is set in changing myths and traditions. Cultural knowledge changes as circumstances change. (Hegel)
What logic tries to capture is an understanding of all this, yet changes require us to constantly take our investigation to new places. Everything is constantly changing -becoming what it is not. Life is living out possibilities, good or bad; and everything is the
realization of potential. For pleasing outcomes or dreadful consequences, again and again, what is ceases to exist to become something yet in existence. Hegel, G. W. F. The Phenomenology of the Mind
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Contradiction 1. The contradiction between the subjective and the objective is erased and a new reality is formed in which the self is our interaction in the process of creating a real person. Yet the environment in which this identity was formed is always changing and a new contradiction is formed out of a new self-consciousness undermining the old and changing the current until yet another new self-consciousness is formed. 2. This agency or free will is the active part of interaction with nature, within this interaction the individual is the subject. Because this subject exercises her agency while acting within an established structure set within a specific context, this becomes the relationship between the individual and society and society and the rest of nature. This connection is interactive in both directions and this relationship is understood. 3. It is in this context that understanding is established. In this milieu the interaction between subject and object is the defining relationship between agency and determinism or determinism and chance. This contradiction is an interactive contradiction that is necessary for change and transformation is continuous. 4. All human action takes place in an environment in which choice is inescapable and choice takes place in a structure that is determined. The action following choice changes the structure, thus determinism determines choices and choices establishes the preceding events that shapes the environment. 5. This relationship is further expanded to include the connection of many interacting individuals acting within a larger whole. This social whole establishes the defining characteristics of the community, group or society. These definitions will help the investigator understand what is being studied. 6. Cultural concepts begin with a unifying set of characteristics. Historically cultural traits interact through acting individuals within a community of persons to create an everevolving tradition that is always in a process of defining a whole worldview for each generation within any community. Though this understanding is a sorting process, it is also an unraveling course in which the relevant is separated from the irrelevant. In this understanding, the continuing arrangement and rearrangement of particular sets of characteristics that will be used in deciding what will be included and excluded in the defining categories are decided. Hegel, G. W. F. The Phenomenology of the Mind Hegel, G. W. F. The Science of Logic Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of History
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Resistance is the Renaissance, Resistance is the Enlightenment Resistance is Today An open dialog between a Classical Marxist with various Hegelian or NeoMarxists To escape the sterility of dualism is to unlock the ability to study chances of improvements while transformations are happening in the context of specific changes. If there are long term patterns of social change then rule by autocratic oligarchies through coercive organizations, built upon irrational ideologies like patriotism and ethnic exclusivity, then this in turn can be and must be challenged. The exposed illogicality in modern society is the foundation of popular democracy in the struggle against authoritarian oppressive control of information and education that creates a feeling that rational is irrational, and irrational is rational. This reification of the absurd and the emotive turns the superficial into the profound by allowing superstition to appear as science. By consenting, as the surface, to be represented as the deep and the multilayered is neither here nor there. Once lied to, we share in the creation of our own reality. The intent to deceive is part of the daily bread of news broadcasts by mainstream media, resources of facts conveyed and instruction. The source of repression is masked. Through modern use of rules founded on judiciousness in the impersonal operation of authorized administration, ethical stupefaction results in the clear-cut management of the general public for the benefit of closely established elite. The mistake made by liberalconservative sociologists and historians is when surface appearances appear real; fault rests in their weak historical methodology and a theory of knowledge separated from the historical and ecological setting for a culturally based body of knowledge. The universality of liberalism placed the scientist beyond history or culture. This created the illusion of an elite with a truth that also stands outside of context. This is idealist philosophy at its worst. The social scientist is always embedded in a distinctive historical setting and an explicit cultural worldview. All worldviews have limited logical conclusions. By exposure to multicultural historical understandings even science can be expanded to embrace a variety of worldviews as part of the environment, both of what is being studied and the one doing the studies. This becomes the basis of understanding the history of how historians do history, which in turn becomes a guide not only to future studies by also a guide to the informed activists. Action in a social setting has enduring consequences. Many unplanned and unanticipated consequences that change the historical setting cannot be avoided entirely, but their effects can be in part controlled, and unintentional and unforeseen outcomes proscribed. Through interaction with the immediate other, the infant becomes a child and the child a youth. Stimulus response is soon mediated through interpretation learned in an ever-changing culture. This social setting requires the other for that individual to develop self-awareness. In stratified society a person with the ability to use the “labor power” of others is the master. Master is vast only in relation to a person whose survival is subject to the whim of the boss. The person in charge and the drudge know about bondage in
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relation to a slave-owner. The oppressed and subjugated worker define freedom in relation to overcoming the conflicting relationship between the exploited struggling to become free and the exploiter who wants to maintain the established unequal relationship. This makes the slave the voice of the future and the master the voice of the past. Out of this conflict a new social order is born with a new culture and a new worldview. Human nature is radically transformed to become what it is not. This something soon develops its own contradictions and history moves on. Because change is constant and because the slave is not satisfied with her lot in life, the status quo can never be anything but temporary. The world of the master is built in a past already changed, and the world of the slave manifests itself in a future not yet defined. This conflict can only be resolved when the antagonisms creating these conflicts are resolved by transcending this conflict with a new reality. The slave worker was devoid of fulfillment, while the master's minimum wish was satisfied without effort, without work. It is through work that humanity becomes human. Work creates a necessity of collective production and therefore society. Work is art expressed through necessity. Work is the manifestation of freedom because it humanizes the connection with nature. When work is coerced, it binds the worker who loses the connection with humanity with the loss of freedom. The non-worker owns the fruits of labor but does not have that connection with nature. Such utopian dreams are a philosophical foundation of science in the service of democracy. A critical theory of science becomes necessary for this to happen. With this new critical theory there is a concern with the human subject as a person that experiences participation in conscious action, with a concept of freedom of choice after an objective knowledge of the option available. Especially when using historical sociology as a guide to the study of the history of history and historical realism. This diachronic anthropology is the groundwork of understanding human reality. People participate through conscious choices on the changes affecting their lives, even when those choices are limited by an objective reality people have little control over. This soft determinism can be modified with better knowledge of the environment. This includes the reality that social action is not a moral imperative, but an unavoidable veracity. Humans are separated from one another through a unnatural illusion of money in an economy based upon profit as most important; and people producing to meet the basic needs of all members of society through a human relationship between producer and consumer being a conceptual impression. Economics is a sub-branch of sociology centered on social relations; that is people cooperatively meeting their own material needs entering into relations of production and distribution. But, economics itself becomes a reification based upon analytic deduction and not empirical investigation of the social environment in which an economy is embedded. This marriage of Marx and Polanyi becomes a tool to fight back against the dehumanization of alienation. Because all economies are embedded in social relations and its supporting ideology, alienation is not only the result of a capitalist economy it is also the consequence of a capitalist culture. Work, the natural and artistic connection between humans and their natural environment, becomes something hostile and an
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action insolent to, withstanding satisfaction of, and fighting against the worker. Humans become slaves to their own tools as machine pace and the boss controls production goals. This knowledge can lead to the unity of production and design, and the regulation of the economy to meet the basic needs of all members of society;\ or the primacy of the poor. When poverty is eliminated, we can work on replacing consumerism with a more improved understanding of life and a deeper creative meaning of our work lives. This is a confidently believable avocation of liberty, pertaining to the distinctive existence of a human being as a self-determining agent responsible for authentic choices, though limited. Promoting a collectivist method that spoke of a humanitarian system of social organization, based on the holding of all property in common as the realization of "authentic humanity" and "total personality" of the individual. This is the set of ethical guidelines that define humankindʼs compassionate responsibilities as being involved in every aspect of the welfare of all people, especially the poor. Utopian dreams may seem on the surface as wish fulfillment or escapist illusions, but the beginnings of a challenge to mainstream Sociology and positivist philosophy is the foundation of a thought pattern that was part of the liberal or (bourgeois) Weltanschauung. It had to be discarded before a real understanding of the underlying connections between long-term historical trends could be clearly recognized. The obvious inadequacy of most scientific education in grasping world issues, and its open separation of reason from history, has led radical sociologists to search for new ways of thinking; a search that led to closely examining Marxism, both classical and neo, Cultural Ecology and Cultural Materialist Anthropology, Substantivist Economics of Polanyi and Dalton, Anarchist Communism and Syndicalism, Left Existentialism, Secular Humanism, and Traditional Indigenous World Views. Each intellectual would come up with her own mix, but we are all heading in the same direction. In the closed and superficial mid-range theory of the liberals, things are as they appear and analysis is quite simple -- what is missed is everything. The multiple interactions between variables over a long period of time, the overly determined and interactive changes in the environment, cultural history and consciousness; and most important, a deep appreciation and understanding of life as an artistic expression of opposition to a liberal society and through protest the creation of a deeply meaningful life of our own. We each define for ourselves who we are. While the powers that be are greater than any of us, we can choose either to go down peacefully lending our decayed bodies to manure heaps that nourish oppression, or kick and scream and shout knowing that each revolutionary in the bright lightening of insurrection undermines the legitimacy of the autocratic oligarchy pretending to be democratic. People are not encouraged to question this legitimacy through our institutions of education. Each rebel must discover her own possibilities for self-transformation from a victim drugged on the individual selfinterest of personal accumulation, personal salvation, personal satisfaction, and personal growth. The ultimate reality of capitalist liberal society is that each of us will live alone, shop online, have everything delivered, earn an income online, develop relationships online, eat alone, talk to imaginary friends and lovers, masturbate alone in the dark and never be aware that we are alone -- a brain in a bottle, locked in a dark closet.
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The tragedy in all this is that people become alienated not only from each other and their own creativity on the job, but we become enslaved by our ability to consume. The human animal as part of nature becomes sheepishly estranged from nature. Nature, like faith in the fantastic, becomes a way of viewing life with the wrong side up; and born out of a frustrated human awareness of the daily agony of the absurd and a protest against genuine suffering the wounded panther cry of the oppressed wretches of the earth in response to a callous world escape is the essence of bleak circumstances – fixation on a daydream that brings about dreariness while it anesthetizes the intellect, creating a happiness of quick diversions. Sports, nature, religion and popular culture are carefully orchestrated to provide the citizens with bread and circuses. As Marx once said in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegelʼs Philosophy of Right Introduction: This state, this society, produces religion, which is an inverted world consciousness… Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Marx, 1975) With this as a backdrop, we can now talk about resistance and liberation. There are four concepts that need to be examined closely. All these concepts have been misused and abused. We need to clarify in order to understand. I will use these terms as most people will use them. Choice is what Sartre calls freedom. Choice is inescapable at every moment in our lives. The choice to accept our fate or fight against, even if making the choice to fight, costs us our lives. When family is threatening, the cost of resistance is too great, but we still need to accept responsibility for our choices. By choosing not to choose, we lie to ourselves. It is not that there was no choice, but the costs are too great and someone else controls the rewards. The issues lie in the quality of the choices that are outside our command. Humans as a species are always making choices as part of what defines us as a genus (Homo). Then there is liberty, or more correctly liberties. These are specific freedoms specifically defined and empirically observable as in freedom to do something specific. To speak my mind, to print my opinion, to worship as many gods or goddesses as I want or no god at all are examples of liberties. They are definable and observable, and any restrictions on these liberties whether for national security or some arbitrary reason are also observable. Liberties are closely related to rights. Rights are defined limitations on authority. The right to speak my mind is a limitation on the authority of government to stop me. The limitation on authority is a right, speaking my mind is a liberty. Then there is freedom proper. Freedom is not a thing but a feeling. The most avid Nazi supporter was free to support Hitler. The Nazi was free to support state-supported hate crimes. There was not liberty to protest these murders. There were no legally defined rights that protected the opposition to these national massacres. The state had the authority to silence dissent and the dissident had the choice to actively resist and be
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publicly executed or remain mute while the sadism of mass murder was carried out by the government. The supporter of totalitarian tyranny is free. References and Further Readings: Cameron, Kenneth Neill (1995) Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science. New York International Publishers. Carrillo, Santiago (1977) Eurocommunism and the State South Hampton, UK: Camelot Dunayevskaya, Raya (1973) Philosophy And Revolution. From Hegel To Sartre And From Marx To Mao New York: Dell Engels, Friedrich (1955) The Conditions of the Working Class in England. New York International Publishers. Engels, Friedrich (1965) Peasant War in Germany. New York International Publishers. Korsch, Karl (1970) Marxism and Philosophy, New York: Monthly Review Lenin, V.I. (1970) Materialism and Empiriocriticism. Peking: Foreign Language Press. Lukacs, Georg (1968) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics Cambridge Luxemburg, Rosa (1970)The Russian Revolution and Leninismm or Marxism Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press Marcuse, Hebert (1968) Reason and Revolution Boston: Beacon Marx, Karl (1938) Critique of the Gotha Programme: Internationa Publishers Marx, Karl (1964) Karl Max: Early Writings Ed. T. B. Bottomore New York: McGraw Hill Marx, Karl (1975) Karl Marx Early Writings Translated by Lucio Colletti and Gregor Benton, New York: Vintage Books Marx, Karl (1964) The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. International Publishers Marx, Karl (1940) Civil War in France: The Paris Commune Marx, Karl (1994) Early Political Writings Edited by Joseph OʼMalley. Cambridge Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels (1970) The German Ideology. New York International Publishers Novack, George (1971) An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism. Pathfinder Press Trotsky, Leon (1939) The ABC of Materialist Dialectics in From A Petit-bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party Dec 15 1939
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Marxist or Existentialist To the Existentialist the individual feels alone. She lives in a society where she is cut off from nature, humanity, friends and self. To the Marxist, this sense of being alone as a social occurrence is historically created. We are living in a transitory period when values are uprooted and confused. Crises – political, economic, moral, social, and psychological – are normal. We each live a daily contradiction. On the one hand our lives are overly rationalized and bureaucratized in which each individual is but a replaceable part; and on the other, each life seems stripped of any rational consistency. The individual lives a life without any underlying goals and over-weighted with superficial external goals defined by the pop economy. The perpetual social crisis is internalized. Old standards are forever being delegitimized and new ones are being discredited. Increasingly, only technical and practical decisions have any meaning, and then only in specific contexts and for a specific moment. Modern philosophy has become a life centered on mental gymnastics and theoretical masturbation, divorced from the concrete reality of daily life. Existentialism focuses on the subjective and psychological feelings of the individual and does not analyze the objective historical context that creates the emotional chaos of estrangement. Existence is defined as the “…immediate living experience of the individual. This takes priority over essence or the rational abstract laws of objective reality.” (Poster: 9 –10) The existentialist claims to freely choose a course and follows it with total dedication. The choice remains relative. The choosing, and not the choice is what is important. Only by choosing among the many possible and arbitrary positions, voluntarily, can one find solace in a world stripped of any final meaning. The basis of this decision for the individual is at best non-rational, but it is important to act as it were grounded in reason. Torn between conflicting truths, we can do no more than make an attempt at finding meaning. In a world pulling in several directions at once, we are able to see beyond the fetishes of our “truths”. It is possible now to see that “truth” is the subjective creation of the one who holds this truth. Our gods and wisdom are our own creation. We can see past the illusions, which mistook a profound truth as universal and failed to see how truth was constructed. This frees us to pick from competing truths, all of which appear to be valid; and to mold our life around such insights and put our freely chosen beliefs into practice. The individual still makes sacrifices for those values considered as vital, yet she can see beyond blind faith into both the underlying intentions as well as the results of our most “sacred ” beliefs. The pessimism of existentialism is but a starting point. In rejecting all previous philosophies, one is free to search and to construct a new philosophy on “fresh foundations”. This is the reason for the insistence on freedom and upon personal responsibility. For Sartre, freedom is released from all conditions. Each individual is free to become what one wishes. (Novack: 17 – 28) In order to develop this concept of freedom, Sartre draws upon the phenomenological method of Husserl. This focus on the subjective experience in which any objective condition is to be put aside or bracketed comprises Sartreʼs studies of freedom. With this, Sartre claims to create a third way which is neither idealist nor materialist. In spite of the claims of Sartre, this third way in
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fact becomes idealism without a god. It was also an irrational description of the human condition subjectively perceived by the individual. With no preplan, we are forced to choose, and choice is unavoidable. With nothing to judge the worth or validity of each decision, the individual remains responsible for every success or failure. With no set criterion, each decision is possibly wrong, yet decisions are unavoidable. People are constantly escaping their moral responsibility in religion, cults, fads, drugs or suicide it is all the same. Even in these escape routes, moral cowardice cannot prevent the individual on some level from living a lie; and there is no avoidance of the constant threat of failure. What Sartre is describing is the individual in mass society. In a world of continuing revolution of the means of production, all past ideologies are torn from their moorings and cursed to remain forever outdated. Sartre thought he found a universal truth in that there is no universal truth. What Sartre in fact found was that his vision of the human condition was the condition of advanced Capitalism in which any existing worldview is always being pulled away from its material roots by the rapidly altering technical world. Both Marxism and Existentialism view theory as a tool; its reality is determined by its effectiveness in social change. However, Sartre over-romanticized the subjective and discredits the objective influence on the ego. What Existentialism lacks is a method. If the world and society are doomed to be irrational, then rational choice can never intercede to improve the human condition. The classical Marxist would argue that such a position is the luxury of the privileged-butalienated professional or petty bourgeoisie classes. The Existentialist counter that what the Orthodox Marxists lack is an appreciation for the subjective condition of psychological chaos. Many existentialists claim all Marxists have overly rational explanations; these revolutionaries ignored the individual who experienced a crisis of constant culture shock. The pain and poetry of alienation was replaced by explanation of economic determinism. The extreme individualism of Bourgeois society left each of us with a feeling of abandonment, which an understanding of economic roots could not ease. Personal values became commodities sold like the latest fashions, and Marxism became but one of these competing fads. Camus claimed Marxism was yet another excuse for oppression. History replaced God and now any crime could be excused as necessary for the benefit of generations not yet born. Camus further claimed Marxism demanded faith and sacrifice of its followers. Practically, this meant faith was not to question why the leaders got to live while the followers must die. To the atheist existentialist like Camus, Marxism was perhaps the least satisfying of worldʼs major religions. Marxism can offer neither eternal life, nor a chance to see the fruition of oneʼs sacrifices. One must give up the joys of this life for a stranger not yet born. One must kill in order to save people not yet alive. Orthodox Marxism led to a sterile faith divorced from the effectiveness of its method as a social science. Yet Marxism, not Existentialism, can offer the possibility of creating a society that allows the individual the freedom that the Existentialist revels in. Only by gaining control of the means of production can people create their own history in ways they choose. Existentialism offered no answer to the subjective feeling of abandonment or the psychological alienation claimed to be central to the human condition. This could easily be seen as negative religion based upon faith. Any revolutionary would claim the subjective meaning one gets from being a radical аre fourfold. There are real problems whose origin is endemic to the social-economic logic of a historically specific society. Through a system study of the historical and sociological roots of these problems real solutions are possible, one is ethically bound to try and the
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life as a revolutionary is the only meaningful life to live. What Sartre believed was that a dialogue was possible between the two leading radical philosophies of the mid twentieth century, Marxism and Existentialism. Hegel was the common ancestor in the evolution of both the Marxist and Existentialist traditions. Hegel focused on the connection of the parts of the totality, an interdependency of contradictory parts. (Poster 3 –8) Alienation was the major focus of those who attempted to reconcile these two traditions. Hegel gave the word its original flavor, which was to mean estrangement. A consciousness that projects its substance outside the subject ended in alienation. An attempt to reach this, created a myth that would only lead to despair. (Desan: 27). Feuerbach saw these visionary worlds constructed from the mind in our imaginations. Each part of the human psychology was deified and was carefully placed within the existence of a Supreme Being created by devoted worshippers. Instead of looking at reality, oneʼs desires were to be fulfilled in the essence of the Being. With belief, the individual loses her strength and the personality becomes fragile and powerless. God exists at a great distance in perfect splendor of external manifestations of the cultural essence of the pious. The individual became isolated from her own essence. Attention is focused away from this world towards the illusion we create and a God that cannot exist outside the mind of the believing individuals negates any chance at self-transformation. (Desan: 27) For Marx, religion is a symptom rather than a cause of alienation. Religion is a sign of an unhealthy society. Religion divides the individual who now has only a partial commitment to this earth and an eye to the supernatural. (Desan: 30) In the political and ideological realms alienation is the construct of class struggle. The class, which controls the means of production, controls the political and ideological structures, which furthers its own interests. Alternative theories can become a revolutionary force. Yet philosophy by itself is nothing: In order to reach the people and transform the world, action is necessary. For Marx, Lefebvre, and Sartre “Truth is concrete.” Only through action in a historical and empirical context can truth be known according to Marx; anything else is empty speculation. (Desan: 28 – 37) Hegel taught that an individual becomes a “Self” by being recognized by the “Other” and in turn recognizing the “Other” in the same way. This idea was significant when applied to the relationship of Master and Slave. This part of Hegel became an important metaphor in the study of alienation for Marx and most left Existentialists. When two egos come together, one gains greater power and uses this against the other. The ego that became vanquished becomes the Slave while the victor becomes the Master. The Slave becomes a thing, a part of the material base like the products the slave makes, while the Master becomes free to live life at its fullest. Nonetheless, the Master is only a Master if she is recognized as such by the Slave. When the Slave no longer does this, the Slave becomes the Master. In the Manuscripts, Marx compares the proletarian to the Slave. The proletarian remains dependent on capital for survival. The object of her labor is taken away to the profit of another. Her labor is coerced because she must sell herself in order to live. Capitalism separates the individual from nature; she is no longer a part of nature that acts and is acted upon by nature in natural ways. Nature is an alien force to be conquered for the increasing accumulated power of the few, not the harmonious security of the community. The worker must live in fear and trembling, for other workers could always replace her in the production of commodities. Without the necessary close ties to other individuals, she is isolated from herself; for her, humanity is dependent upon the recognition of her humanity by other humans. (Desan: pp 33-37)
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This is the basis of all other forms of alienation. In producing a commodity, work creates both use value, the value an object has in satisfying a need, and exchange value, the value a product brings in the market. All commodities share the fact they are the products of labor. The labor of the worker is also a commodity bought by the capitalist. The exchange value of her labor power is called variable capital, or what the proletariat takes home in order to live. The actual worth of the worker is how much value she really produces. The difference between these two sums is the surplus value, or the profit that defines capitalism, which is observable by the continual accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the few. This is the Marx that Sartre, Lefebvre, and the Existential Marxists see as basic. This gives direction to their struggle. Deliverance is to be gained through reconstructing the social-economic order. This provides a social dimension and an appreciation for the external objective reality ignored by Existentialism. The isolated protest of the Nietzchean individual is both a social guidepost, or substantive dimensions and a shared ethic. Nietzsche claimed: Few are made for independence – it is a privilege of the strong. And he, who attempts it, having the completest right to it but without being compelled to, thereby proves that he is probably not only strong but also daring to the point of recklessness. He ventures into a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers which life as such already brings with it, not the dangers which life as such already brings with it, not the smallest of which is that no one can behold how and when he goes astray, is cut off from others, and is torn to pieces limb from limb by some cave minotaur of conscience. If such a one is destroyed, it takes place so far from the understanding of men they neither feel it nor sympathize – and he can no longer go back! He can no longer go back even to the pity of men! (Nietzsche: p 42) Using the metaphor of the Master and Slave, the proud struggle of the lonely Rebel creates a dilemma for humanism underlying existential philosophy. What if the Slave is successful? Will she become a new Master with another set of Slaves? The relationship between Master and Slave is distorted from the beginning. For liberation, the relationship between Master and Slave must be attacked at its source. Servitude destroys common shared humanity. Silence replaces dialogue, eliminating any shred of common ground. This is the injustice because it maintains a silent hostility that separates the Oppressor from the Oppressed. It destroys that part of existence by which the individual can become truly human by the mutual understanding of egos involved. The Masterʼs desires are not evil, for the desire to possess is but the desire to endure. It is similar to futile love, yet “no human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving is ever in our possession.” (Camus: 280) It is this source of oppression that separates the humanity of both, preventing genuine needs from ever being fully met. (Camus: 254 – 284) The slave who opposes his master is not concerned…with repudiating his master as a human being. He repudiates him as a master. He denies that he has the right to deny him, a slave, on grounds of necessity. The master is discredited to the exact extent that he fails to respond to a demand which he ignores. If men
123 cannot refer to a common value, recognized by all existing in each one, then man is incomprehensible to man. (Camus: p 23) Rebellion is an act in the name of a subjective value taken to be universal. Though irrational as this is objectively, this remains as the first principle of the rebel. The act itself is as much a confirmation of this principle as it is a negation of the oppression. Rebellion is an act to maintain order that allows this ill-defined principle to thrive. Oppression is defined as such because it represses the full development of the individual in achieving this principle. Idealist as this maybe, it remains a non-rational emotional commitment on the part of the Rebel. This is both the source and the end of rebellion. Once the rebel justifies her actions, she reifies a new source of oppression. As soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuges in doctrine, as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once crime was solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trail; today, it determines the law. (Camus: p 3)
Camus, like the anarchist, sees the end and means as inseparable. Not to act is a crime; to act is also criminal if it negates either the humanity of the rebel or another individual. This leaves the rebel with an uneasy feeling that ethics are both universal and situational in the same way, at the same time. Choices are relative and arbitrary between difficult alternatives that demand our full dedication, always knowing we could be wrong. This is what Existential thought can add to Marxist social thought: the personal. In addition, with concern for the personal, the revolution is for the now, not exclusively for a world not yet ready. Existential struggles are in the present giving meaning to the rebels in their own lives. Insurrection is a profoundly spiritual awakening. An awakening, which fills the universe, it strikes to the innermost essence of oneʼs being, and it involves the whole of humanity. One sees the world anew with eyes one has never known before. When one sees something with such intensity that he loses all awareness of the self, he is then committed to life at its fullest or to die in the pits of the absurd. The radical is coming to realize the beauty and the tragedy of the human existence; and this becoming will follow her for the rest of her life. The Master and Slave for Kojeve was Hegelʼs theme no theorist could ignore. The individual at first is contemplation, a consciousness reaching for an object for confirmation. The lack is called a desire; it completes a person to recognize oneself in another. The individual needs another individual to recognize her desire. In this life and death struggle for prestige, humanness is learned. “The Victor became the Master or autonomous consciousness and the Vanquished, the one who refused to risk himself in the struggle, became the slave or dependent consciousness.” (Poster: p. 12) The relationship shapes the consciousness of both parties. Both are crippled by this relationship. The Master is dependent on the Slave for the position of the Master to
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thrive. The Slave is the source of all change, for she receives no prestige as a slave and because she experiences oppression is motivated to change the relationship. It is the Slave who must learn to sublimate her desires, while directing nature and creating products that confirm oneʼs internal aims. The Master neither produces nor learns selfdiscipline in relation to nature. A free and satisfied human being is a slave who overcame slavery. (Poster: pp 14 – 17) Work allows one to gain the essence of humanness by realizing the power of thought through actions, which means that only slaves have the potential for freedom. (Poster: p 17) Hyppolite claimed that by seeing oneself as an object one could become human. This can only happen in a community. Each individual must be fulfilled in another to be an individual. The Slave, in denying the immediacy of consciousness in relation to nature and others allows for the possibility of becoming fully human. This position states that only in a social context is individual liberty possible. (Poster p. 24) Merleau-Ponty states that through communication one confirms oneself and the other. This is the basis of existence. Both my view of myself and the otherʼs view of me are distorted; only together can I understand myself. The objective structure must be completed with the human subjective. For Goldman, Existentialism was necessary for Marxism to cut through reification of the subject in bourgeois thought. (Poster: p 48) Only when there are correct objective conditions and a subjective decision to see these conditions is action possible. Truth of history cannot be independent of our projects and freedom can only modify what history presents. For Merleau-Ponty, this history is uncertainty; any outcome is never foreseen and values are always blurred. (Poster: pp. 149 – 155) Finally, the Existential Marxist, in addition to the need of a subjective awareness of the individual, felt constrained by the rigidity of Stalinist Orthodoxy. A need for a critical NeoMarxism was necessary to stand poised against both advanced capitalism and bureaucratic socialist societies. Lefebvre, when he broke with the Party in 1956, led the attack of Existentialist Marxism. To him, Marxʼs naturalism was founded on human relations and the struggle with nature. Work was the source of alienation, reciprocally related to all other forms of alienation. No alienation could be overcome until work had become humanized. Humanization of society means gaining control, consciously, over nature and society. (Poster: p 57) Some trends noticed by Marx were still valid: The socialization of society, concentration of wealth, and integration of the world. Yet, monopoly capitalism replaced completive; and superstructure and base lost their distinct outlines. The proletariat is becoming depoliticized. Because of automation, job security became a primary concern for labor struggles. Petty-bourgeois culture became the standard model for society with its concern for individual autonomy. Working class interest focused more on leisure and less on work. In daily life the individual was strained between the cyclical time of nature necessary for renewal and reproduction, and linear (cumulative) time, which is the basis of industrial society. New areas of radical discontent replaced the proletariat in advanced capitalism. Youth, women, dissatisfied professionals, bureaucrats and other white-collar workers added new dimensions to radical movements. These groups were not integrated into the two traditional major organized economic classes, nor were they well defined enough collectively to have significant coordinated economic or political clout. (Poster: p 245) Existentialism added to Marxism offered a theoretical tool for cutting through the subjective reification of
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bourgeois thought. (Poster: p 48) Marxism was too integrated into a total conceptualization while studying the relationship between the real and the imaginary. While Marxism brought together ecology, biology, psychology and historical sociology, Existentialism now brought philosophy back into the mix. (Poster: p 218) Marx, and Hegel before him, provided a critical theory of everyday life; which requires unlimited departure from any authoritative ideology, continual critique, relativity, understanding contradictions, challenge and the struggle against reification. Camus added a conscience to insurrection. Sartre, an understanding of the unavoidable responsibility of making choices and accepting the consequences of opposing the limits imposed upon the individual by injustice. Nietzsche, in spite of his flaws, provided a constructive theory of rebellion in a life lived as a festival to be indulged in and not a burden to be endured. The two schools must stand opposed to each other, each supplementing the other, yet maintaining their respective autonomy. Any total synthesis would compromise the power of each as a social theory. Marxism provides the most effective tool for understanding scientifically how the individual and society interrelated. In the first instance where our minds and hearts dwell, Existentialism speaks with a voice that can cut to the core of the individual, her joys and her lonely struggle. References: Camus, Albert (1956) Rebel. Alfred A. Knopf, New York Desan, Wilfrid (1966) Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Anchor Books, Garden City, New York Nietzsche, Fredrich (1973) Beyond Good and Evil. Penguin Books, London Novack, George Ed. (1966) Existentialism Versus Marxism. Delta Books, New York Poster, Mark (1975) Existential Marxism in Postwar France. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
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Reason and Empathy Marxists Meet the Humanists: What a Tryst Reason is only part of what knowledge is all about. Knowledge is embedded in wisdom. The core of wisdom is empathy. Because humans have highly developed imaginations they can come into contact with lives of people they have never met and people can feel the experiences they never experienced. This is the origin of empathy. Knowledge is founded on reason but also transcends reason through empathy. The intellectual quest is to understand. To understand is reflected in our ability not only to study rationally and empirically the interacting variables that determine the lives of the victims of oppression and exploitation, but to reflect through sympathetic understanding those lives as lived by real people. This places any serious study at odds with wealth, power, rank and property. Philosophy, science and art are tools to empower the powerless. Education is always subversive; if it is not, then it is not education but misinformation. Education is literacy. Through literacy the disenfranchised will become enfranchised and the dispossessed can claim what has been stolen from them. Among the children of the privileged they can walk away from the comforts of that privilege and stand with the poor and the powerless. The morality of public life is based upon a higher ideal of not only the greater good of the community, but also the more full development of the individual. The establishment of the interpenetration of art and labor, in which the anagogical connection between humanity and nature is born, is a marriage between Marxism and Humanism. The revolutionary potential of any social movement is based upon a serious study of historical sociology of the social structure and the long-term historical trends that underlie the continually changing nature of those structures. The awareness of a commonly shared humanity and the resilient empathic association with the humble and the expelled, are as a general rule the communal distinctiveness of a reasonable deepseated humanism. This humanist tradition set for itself the task of fighting in resistance to the opposition of the increase and spread of knowledge and the reaction against improvement of the condition of the poor as a class; leading to the premeditated mystic puzzles of avoidance of lucidity. The intellectual must find a home with one class or another. The intellectual, to be honest, must be a rebel who claims that most human suffering is the result of decisions made by real people. When decisions are made that hurt others, it must be asked why? Perhaps it is due to unforeseen consequences or the result of deliberate action on the part of people who know what they are doing. Depending on the circumstances, it could be one or the other or a little of both.
Four points unite classical Marxism with Secular Humanism. The first is in alliance with Naturalism. The earth is a mid-size planet in a minor solar system with only one sun. This solar system is lost toward the edge of a modest sized galaxy with billons of suns, many with solar systems. Millions of galaxies make up galaxy strings and millions of these strings make up a cluster, etc.
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Next, Philosophical Materialism teaches us that human beings are first and foremost an integral part of this earth at each and every point an interacting part of nature and a natural ecosystem. Humans are physical, social and cultural animals; and like any other species, interconnected with their environment in an active way adapting to and changing and readapting the natural world. Through labor, people connect with nature to take from nature what is needed to survive by working with other people, altering resources taken from nature into products that are used to live. In the process, people also create connections with each other, which in turn create society, culture and the personality of the individual. Thirdly, Humanism allows us to see our commonly shared humanity. The commonality transcends history, culture or the limitations of patriotism or intellectually stifling nationalism. It is claimed Tom Paine said, “The world is my country and to do good is my religion.” Maybe Robert Ingersol misquoted it. Finally there are the ideas of primacy of the poor, preeminence of the humble people, class struggle and “working class” resistance to exploitation. To identify with the impoverished and the disadvantaged is to make common cause with those left out of the daylight of hope. Toilers create all wealth and those who generate this wealth live without sharing in the prosperity. They are forced to live in a deep subterranean tunnel of despair with no way out except changing all of the economic and political relations of society. These four points add up to a struggle against an autocratic oligarchy centered in the United States, Europe, Japan, and China and neo-colonialism and imperialism everywhere else. This means a struggle, not only for participatory democracy, but real political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual democracy everywhere in the world. Not only do people have an innate right to good food, decent housing, appropriate clothing, free education from pre-school to PhD and high quality universal health care, but also the right to highly creative socially meaningful employment. These basic rights are fundamental to any social progress. When they are met, artistic and humanist principles are expanded to include the full potential of the individual. The goal of the rebel is to get hold of the genuine power that only comes with true sovereignty for the masses. This can only be done when we triumph over the profound division between those who are deprived of food, comfort and freedom and the ruling class which is not accountable to the people, but controls access to the resources necessary to live and the avenues of authority. This unequal access to the resources for the production of the needed materials of life is the most important and key blockage to the development of the means for achieving any measure of economic security for the majority of this planet and not just the few. Without all the people being guaranteed the basic necessities of life, any measure of social solidarity and human happiness is impossible. Only by empowering the powerless can poverty ever end. Poverty is necessary for wealth. The two are husband and wife of tyranny. To eliminate poverty, wealth of the few must be challenged and in the end you cannot have a minimum income without a maximum income. Because it is the poor majority of this planet who create the wealth of the few, eliminating both wealth and poverty seems just. Because all economies are and have been regulated in a democracy, it is the majority that can
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choose to regulate the economy for the benefit of the poor first, and everyone else next. This is possible because people create their own lives through their joint labor and recreate these lives each generation. Humanity has created and recreated society and culture in the course of the advancement of the labor process set in a natural environment that is co-evolving along with cultures, societies and the lives of people. This small and insignificant planet is our known universe and it is the world that through natural forces created us; and in this world we make our lives and it is to the earth we all return to give nutrients to future life. Because humans create themselves through their collective labor in a social and natural environment, human nature is a social product. Human nature is always changing in culturally and historically specific terms. Human nature is localized in time and space. Society molds people through the process of real people interacting with one another and then these same people refurbish their social relations; thus, themselves as individuals in the process. Because humans are both animals in a natural ecosystem and social artifacts, people eat, sleep, mate, think and make things of beauty for the pleasure of it. They do all this in the social setting they are born into and recreate anew with each generation. The limits of what is possible are predetermined, but those limits are in part the result of decisions made by past generations. The decisions we make today will redefine the limits for future generations. The aggressive irrational nature of production for profit has long been exposed as a luxury for the few, that society as a whole cannot afford. Historical studies take into account the necessity for people to provide for their basic needs in order to live. This activity is set in a specific environment that includes the interaction of cultural, social and material elements as part of an ongoing natural process. It is in this setting that real individuals live and work. People live in communities were they talk to other people. They learn from each other and the society they are born into comes ready-made with a culture, which is the sum total of all shared knowledge, learned behavior, patterns of attitudes and perceptions of a people. This culture is the raw material from which a group of individuals draw their inspiration when they interact to solve the ongoing problems in life. With new problems, and most problems are in some way one-of-a-kind before we figure out a solution, an innovative approach often becomes desirable. This is the basis of historical change. The authors of change are individuals acting in a social setting. This is what we call agency. This agency is characterized as an act that is willfully chosen as shared human activity, and this action is communal by its very nature. Talking is a social activity. Thinking is filtered through cultural learning and therefore even thinking is a social activity. The result of living in society is that not only we are a product of our social up bringing, but also of a group identity. Even in protest, we are a creation of our common education. The changing history we meet beneath the profound throbbing wallop of very important inevitability has formed by excitement and pulsation of life itself is the ever present new world born from our blood and sinew of our labor pains of creation.
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Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.20 No.1, Winter 1959, pp.13-16. [1] (William F. Warde was a pseudonym of George Novack.) Source: International Socialist Review, Vol.20 No.2, Spring 1959, pp.53-59. Source: Camus, Albert (1956) The Rebel New York: Vintage Source: Dunayevskaya, Raya (1965) Marxʼs Humanism Today New York: Doubleday Source: Dudintsev, Vladimir Dmitrievich (1956) Not by Bread Alone Boston, Dutton Source: Formm, Erich (1966) I. On Humanism in Socialist Humanism Garden City, New York: Anchor Source: Marcuse, Herbert (1960) Reason & Revolution Boston: Beakon
Source: The German Ideology (1978) Karl Marx and Frederick Engels New York, International Publishers Source: The Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1964) Karl Marx, New York, International Publishers Source: Marx, Karl (2006) The First Writings of Karl Marx Ed. By Paul M. Schafer New York, IG
Source: Marx, Karl (1964) Introduction: Contribution to the Critique of Hegelʼs Philosophy of Right in Karl Marx: Early Writings Ed. By T. B. Bottomore New York: McGraw Hill
Source: The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman, Herder and Herder, 1971; Alexandra Kollontai
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Dialectical Materialism as Humanism The Hegelian logical system called dialectics was recast under the Marxistsʼ view of nature and history. The importance here is that Hegel developed his philosophical school and its corresponding logic within the German idealist tradition. Marxists modified this logical system by using the dialectical method within a larger materialist approach. Then in the beginning as Engels pointed out Dialectical Materialism was set up in opposition to German idealism and French materialism or mechanical materialism. All philosophical systems are set in a particular historical frame of reference and a particular cultural setting that is always changing. Philosophy reflects a set of economic, political, social and cultural interests of specific classes set in their own meaningful historical time span. Thus, opposing philosophies represent opposing interest. Idealism can be defined as “in the beginning was the word” or in other words in history consciousness comes first and all else follows. Materialism on the other hand was founded upon empirical and scientific investigation of an external and material reality. Marxists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries argued that idealism was used by the wealthy and powerful elites, to pacify the victims of exploitation by focusing their attention away from the real causes of their sufferings. If materialism is the foundation of the scientific method, then scientists acting as scientists, whether they are religious or not, are materialists when doing science whether they admit it or not. In modern times materialism has defined much of what has become a modern way of life. There are two classes, which have made use of the materialist philosophy in modern times. Both the capitalist and the workers have benefited from materialism. Dialectical Materialism used by Marxists in socialist led unions and political parties, and positivists and neo-positivists that were used by pro-capitalist theorists like Herbert Spencer and neo-liberal economists like Friedrich Hayek and Paul Samuelson. Marx used the concept that there are real regularities in nature and society, which are independent of our consciousness. This reality is in motion, and this motion itself has patterned consistencies that can be observed and understood within our consciousness. This material uniformity changes over time. For Marx, tensions within the very structure of this reality form the basis of this change; this is called dialectics. These changes accumulate until the structure itself is something other than the original organization. Finally, a new entity is formed with its own tensions or contradictions. Science evolved very rapidly during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Both science and capitalism grew at the same time. Each was building on the other. Both these trends took off in Britain and Northwest Europe and spread to every coroner of the globe. Both the workers and the capitalists were a creation of capitalism. Because there was a clear relationship between capitalism and science, science took a modernist flavor. Because the capitalist found positivism to their liking and Marxists parties representing labor found dialectical materialism useful, opposing ideas on what science meant soon developed. In sociology structural-functionalism, elite theory, pluralist sociology all leant support to the status quo. Where as a Marxist historical sociology leant support in a more rigorous way Scientific Socialism giving socialists an insight into the long-term trends in the development of capitalism. Idealism argues that the best way to study history, change and reality is to begin with the world of ideas and through understanding conscious awareness we can gain an insight into the underlying themes of historical change. But, idealism in its original form declared frankly that not only does history reflect changes in the ideas that govern the
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direction and content of specific historical tendencies and equivalent transformations, they also held that the Universe itself was the creation of divine consciousness. This in turn led to what exists, exists for a reason and ours is to accept what happens in our lives is either preordained or the result of our own individual actions. Rather than challenging the existing economic order we learn to adapt and accept our fate. Idealism then openly supports the existing relations of power. Positivism for the ruling economic and political elites and faith based religions for the rest of us. Materialism assumes there is an external reality that is independent of our consciousness. We are born into a world that already exists and will continue to be present long after we are gone. Through careful observation and systematic studies we can gain a clearer understanding of that reality. That reality is always changing. Thus, materialist theory evolves and changes over time. Idealism has its roots deep within human history. Ancient tribal societies that existed long before the first traces of class society, it was the people in those communities that both feared and loved the forces of life and nature. It seemed the outcome of existence was beyond their command. Animism along with spiritual and divine forces in conjunction with magic was used for protection and celebration. With the establishment of class societies powerful people strove to keep superstition alive in order to keep the toiling masses passive. The gods reflected human society with their own hierarchy. The gods were ranked according to social position, reflecting the beginning of social stratification among human society. It was their power, which both the gods and human chiefs and monarchs cherished. Materialism of the ancient Greeks and the infancy of the early stages of their science were set in motion when certain philosophers looked to nature and not the gods or Neo-Platonism monism for answers. Science stagnated with the Romans and died with the early church of the middle ages. It was not until inherited rank of feudal society was challenged by the new commercial class who were moving into positions of power that things began to change toward open inquiry. This rising class and their intellectual supporters ask hard questions and science was reborn. Science looks to the external and material reality. Through careful observation and study we learn of the existing patterns of nature. Through gaining a clearer understanding of these patterns of nature we can design our strategies. These strategies are based upon real scientific principles allowing us to have more supervision over the physical outcomes of our lives. Not prayers, magic, incantations or even fatalism but scientific determinism gives us more freedom not less. It is not only materialism and science, but Dialectical Materialism that gives us a model designed to study the changes all around us. Dialectical Materialism helps us arrange information in away that best utilizes this logical strategy in a way that makes understandable that everything in the Universe is ultimately material and this material substance is always changing. This is the defining principle of Dialectical Materialism. The Universe, the earth, human communities, individuals are all natural and material. Everything is interacting with everything around it, evolving in a never-ending movement of transformation. This profound understanding begins with the observation of matter in motion and constant change. As Engels described nature is in a constant process of coming into existence, while at the same time ceasing to exist. From the decay of the old order the new order is born. This happens day after day until something new is brought forth. Insignificant and hardly noticeable quantitative changes are constantly accumulating until enough of a strain is built up and then change becomes increasingly more rapid until…
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In the natural environment one climax community replaces another as continents shift and weather patterns change, the sun explodes destroying the solar system creating the raw materials for a new sun and its own new solar system. Everything is made up of internal contradictions. This is the source of change. While the old is breaking down the new is being formed. Engels outlines this as the process beginning with the law of unity and conflict of opposites. Then there is a slow accumulation of quantitative changes appearing over time until the final breakdown. This is followed by rapid qualitative changes and the birth of something new. There is social revolution in society, punchuated evolution in nature, super novas, etc. The law of the negation of the negation, the formation of something new, is based upon the Hegelian “triad” of thesis-antithesis, synthesis or a new thesis. This gives us an improved working model in the field of Historical Sociology, as well as science as a whole. In order to accomplish the desired outcomes through our actions we must bring our ideas into conformity with laws of the actual physical and social world. Knowledge cannot be separated from practice. Theory guides our practice in a real world. From our practical activity theories develop. Morality is tied both to our subjective needs and our objective understanding of our universe. Through this connection between the theory and practice our actions lead to more authority over our lives. In this way both the objective and subjective manifestations of our needs can be understood and dealt with. Through a deeper understanding of the universal and the specifics of our humanity and our struggles we can gain an understanding of the basic nature of our existence in its entirety, along with the internal links and the inherent arrangement of things in our environment. By way of inductive understanding and deduction we are able to formulate reasonable insights based upon our discoveries. From these insights our morality is formed and not divinely revealed. Physicalism, or logical positivism begins with the statement that things in the world around us can be understood through the use of science and mathematics. Religion, ethics and metaphysics are meaningless. Anything that cannot be demonstrated through observation or proven through experimentation, logical deduction is simply a matter of opinion with no real content. This fits the needs of capitalism, in which the bottom line or profit, not ethical or humanitarian concerns, becomes the center of economic plans. This frees both the scientist and the capitalist of long-term social responsibilities. Both science and economic investment become dis-embedded from the social ethics of the larger community, i.e. value free. Historical Materialism takes another approach. It is not value free, but unites theory and action. The research projects are grounded in the needs of real people. Historical Materialism is the sociological application of Dialectical Materialism. Because this was meant to be a guide to social action the sociologist, anthropologist, or scientist is also an activist. There are three themes that link Historical Materialism to social action. They are materialism, action and choice. Action within nature is central to movement. Free choice through action is central to liberation and sovereignty. Through our actions, conscious or subconscious, we endlessly adjust the preparations and influence we have within society and nature. Not only action, but also action within a preexisting environment is the groundwork of theory. These preexisting but changing boundaries do in fact limit the range of our free choices. Frontiers do exist and they cannot be breached. These include the physical universe, biology, ecology, social arrangements, technology, populations, organization, social design and mode of production. Any change we bring about to the above can only come about by studying them objectively and use to science to modify them.
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Theory leads to action, from action comes new theory. Moral choice, determinism and a sense of freedom form an interaction that cannot be separated. Natural history, geology and biology is coupled with human history including sociology, anthropology, psychology and all the other social sciences People participate through conscious choices on the changes affecting their lives, even when those choices are limited by an objective reality that people have little control over. At every turn choice cannot be avoided, it is the alternatives that are determined ahead of time. Once a choice is made the environment is forever altered creating a new set of predetermined options in the future. This is the heart of Historical Materialism uniting theory and action. This soft determinism can be modified with better knowledge of the environment. This includes the reality that social action is not a moral imperative, but an unavoidable veracity. Four points unite classical Marxism with Secular Humanism. The first in alliance with Naturalism the earth is a mid-size planet in a minor solar system with only one sun. This solar system is lost towards the edges of a modest size galaxy with billions of suns many with solar systems. Millions of galaxies make up a galaxy strings and millions of these strings make up a cluster, and of course etc. Next Philosophical Materialism teaches us that human beings are first and foremost an integral part of this earth. At each and every point there is an interacting part of nature and a natural ecosystem. Humans are physical, social and cultural animals and like any other species interconnected with their environment in an active way adapting to and changing and readapting the natural world. Through labor people connect with nature to take from nature what is needed to survive. Then by working with other people altering resources taken from nature into products that are used to live. In the process people also create connections with each other creating society, culture and the personality of the individual. Humanism allows us to see our commonly shared humanity. The commonality transcends history, culture or the limitations of scriptures. Finally primacy of the poor, preeminence of the humble people, class struggle and “working class” resistance to exploitation. To identify with the impoverished and the disadvantaged is to make common cause with those left out of the daylight of hope. Toilers who create all wealth in which those who generate this wealth live without sharing in the prosperity and forced to live in a in a deep subterranean tunnel of despair with no way out except changing all of the economic and political relations of society. All ethics are situational ethics. That means moral codes are embedded in a particular historical and cultural setting. Moral codes represent the interests of a particular class in that setting, and often are presented as a general and universal truth. In fact one class will benefit more than the existing competing classes. This is not to say all moral codes are equivalent. The larger the classes protected by the principled instructions on life the closer it comes to also protecting the humanitarian concerns of the opposing classes, as well a offering a chance for liberation to the classes suffering oppression. Thus, ethics has a historical reality. Those moral codes that protect the power of the elites tend to focus on issues shielding the existing social arrangements. While oppositional movements create a code of ethics based upon a common advantages and a mutual aid to larger groups of people. With liberal capitalism came political rights and political democracy. Socialism adds economic rights and economic democracy to this. While adding to the already existing sets of rights without eliminating them, we create a radically new society by taking humanity to places never before gone. Thus, ethics has its own evolutionary progress.
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We are coming closer to understanding the basis of a “proletarian” ethic, the class of a wage earnerʼs moral guidelines. A community of individuals, in which individuality is more fully realized through the near complete rejection of egoistic individualism, is now realized. This is a situation of mutual aid between members of the community, and a reciprocal confirmation, with an innate reflectively inspired interaction between this community and nature. As soon as the worker becomes alienated from work, from the product, from nature and from other people labor becomes a labor of personal sacrifice, of humiliation. Under this set of circumstances someone must suffer so someone may benefit. Only under the state of affairs of mutual aid flanked by citizens of the nation, abided by a common validation, with an inborn thoughtfully educated communication connecting this group of people and natural world can humanity move to a more complete morality. This does not mean that any ethical system can be achieved before the material preconditions for its insights exists in the historical and social environment. At each stage in our analysis of morality it will be noted, that goals are nothing to be jeered at as a basis of ethics. While end and means interact, morality does not predate the material reality that gives rise to it. There cannot be any other meaningful ethics other than situational ethics. Eternal truths and universal ethics are both dogmatic and dictatorial as well as corrupt and unprincipled.
Marxism like all Humanism acknowledges our commonly shared humanity as the ultimate source of reason, understanding, ethics and social justice without reference to the supernatural, magic, the spirit world or other canons and fables. Before we can attain a more universal ethical code moving from family to clan to tribe to nation to humanity and finally to the living planet we need to attain a material reality that is based upon an increasing interdependence that we are aware of an ever larger community. If our world consciousness stops with the next mountain range we will not develop a humanist worldview. If the capitalist income is derived from the labor of others surplus value and economic equality is seen only as a Marxist emblematic fairy tales. From the view of the wageworker socialism, communism, worker councils, worker self-management, and the cooperative commonwealth federation frees the worker and the capitalist. Sources Used and Further Readings: Afanaslev, A. G. (1987) Dialectical Materialism International Publishers Afanaslev, A. G. (1987) Historical Materialism International Publishers Berman, Marshall (1963) Freedom and Fetishism
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Cameron, Kenneth Neill (1995) Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science New York International Publishers Raya Dunayevskaya, (1965) ʻMarxʼs Humanism Todayʼ Socialist Humanism, edited by Erich Fromm (New York: Doubleday) Engels, Frederick (1935) Ludwig Feurbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy International Publishers Engels, Frederick (1975) Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State New York International Publishers Engels, Frederick (1977) Dialectics of Nature New York International Publishers Engels, Frederick (1978) Anti-During New York International Publishers Feuerbach, Ludwig (1989) The Essence of Christianity Prometheus Godeler, Maurice (1977) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology Cambridge University Press Hegel, G. W. F. (1979) Phenomenology of Spirit Oxford University Press Hegel, G. W. F. (1990) The Philosophy of History Prometheus Books Hegel, G. W. F. (2005) Philosophy of Right Dover Publications Lenin, V.I. (1970) Materialism and Empiriocriticism Peking, Foreign Language Press Lukacs, Georg (1968) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics Cambridge Luxemburg, Rosa The Accumulation of Capital Monthly Review Marx, Karl (1964) The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 International Publishers Marx, Karl (1994) Early Political Writings Edited by Joseph OʼMalley Cambridge Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels (1970) The German Ideology. New York International Publishers
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Mao Tse-Tung (1965) Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Volume I On Contradictions Foreign Language Press Novack, George (1971) An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism Pathfinder Press Trotsky, Leon (1939) The ABC of Materialist Dialectics in From A Petit-bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party Dec 15 1939 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Educational Bureau (1974)The Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy Moscow
