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 Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 2:49 am
We cannot definitely say that communism will win over capitalism. 'There is no Hegelian law that guarantees our victory, or even the survival of the human race.' The biggest threat to humanity right now is the death-spiral of decaying capitalism, destroying the productive forces we have developed and through its anarchic, irrational system of economies constantly trying to expand beyond the nation-state, but forever trapped in a world of nation-states that creates conflict between nations that can at any moment turn nuclear. Imperialism is the epoch of the death agony of capitalism, where unable to exist with a national terrain, the various national economies fight for international dominance. Trotsky said that in this period of the death agony of capitalism the preconditions for the proletarian revolution and socialism are over-ripe. Well, we are past that. The fruit is rotting on the branch, and we no longer face the choice of 'socialism or barbarism,' but of 'socialism or nuclear holocaust.' To top it off, we do not have a workers state that is universally identified as such. Despite its Stalinist degeneration, the SU was recognised as the product of a proletarian revolution and stood as a beacon of hope and an alternative to this rotten system. We no longer have that, and to top it off all of the reformist left internationally has disavowed socialism as a desirable alternative. We need to face reality squarely, not run, and not hide: There is no other option for humanity but the forcible overthrow of this rotting system. We, revolutionary communists, future members of the vanguard of the working class, are in the fullest and most complete sense, the last, the only hope for humanity.
If you are unable to do anything else, read! Educate yourself! Do not give into despair! These are things that need to be said. Marx said that the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the point is to change it. Well now, most leftist ideologues divorce themselves from practical movements that face defeat consoling themselves with the thought that if we can't change the world, at least we can interpret it. Others see the apparently hopeless situation we are in and give up from politics all together, others accommodate themselves to capitalism under various pretenses. But no matter if they are giving in because they see no chance of winning or because they want to benefit while the system lasts. In the end, they are contributing to the current 'death of communism' ideology. I know many people here are in university or still in high school and may not be able to give themselves over to the common movement. I myself have a number of physical and psychological problems which are preventing me from doing the same. But you can still read. If you can, try to read one of theses works a week. Most are short and can be finished in an hour or so of reading, but many are not and will take weeks of reading. But please give it a go. Read, learn about the world, so that one day, hopefully you will be able to join the vanguard of the international working class in changing it.
--Gracchvs.
A Good, Short List of Good, Short Works For Beginners
[Principles of Communism] !READ THIS FIRST!
A draft version of the Communist Manifesto written by Engels. Considered by the more experienced members here to be superior for people new to Marxism.
[The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism]
A short pamphlet by Lenin explaining the three sources of Marxism: English economics, German philosophy, and French communism.
[The State and Revolution]
A pamphlet written by Lenin on the class nature of the state, and how the workers state is different to the capitalist state.
[Value, Price and Profit]
This is a speech given by Marx on economics, transribed and printed as a pamphlet. A very good condensation of Marxist ideas on economics.
This is a list of important works in the Marxist canon, sorted by author and date. Each of the works has three features:
*I have read it
*The work is available to read online
*I find it invaluable in explaining some aspect of Marxism.
Marxist Canon
Marx:
[Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right]
[The holy Family]
[Wage Labour and Capital]
[The Manifesto Of the Communist Party]
[The Class Struggles in France]
[The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte]
[Writings on the North American Civl War]
[Value, Price and Profit]
[The Civil War in France]
[Critique of the Gotha Programme]
Engels:
[Principles of Communism]
[Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany]
[The Housing Question]
[The Bakuninists At Work]
[Anti-Duhring]
[Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]
[Dialectics of nature]
[Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State]
[On the History of the Communist League]
[Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical Germany Philosophy]
Lenin:
[What Is To Be Done?]
[Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]
[The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism]
[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]
[Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power]
[The State and Revolution]
[Proletarian Reavolution and the Renegade Kautsky]
["Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder]
[Purging the Party]
[Better Fewer, But Better]
Trotsky:
[Terrorism and Communism]
[The lessons of October]
[The Third International After Lenin]
[Some Results and Prospects]
[The Permanent Revolution]
[The Revolution Betrayed]
[The Stalin School of Falsification]
[Their Morals and Ours]
[The Transitional Programme]
[In Defence of Marxism]
Others:
[Mehring: On Historical Materialism]
[Plekhanov: The Materialist Conception of History]
[Kautsky: The Foundations of Christianity]
[Luxemburg: The Junius Pamphlet]
[Hill: The English Revolution]
[Morrow: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain]
Not in the canon, but still very good
[The remaking of the American Working Class]
["Socialism in one Country" before Stalin, and the Origins of Reactionary "Anti-Imperialism"]
[Fascism/Anti-Fascism]
[The "N" Word in Racist America]
[Feminism vs. Marxism: Origins of the Conflict]
[On Bourgeois Class Consciousness ]
[Labour and Equality: an excerpt from Marxism vs Anarchism]
Fun Posts by Me:
[Dialectics and History. Applicable anywhere]
Blog Posts:
[What was Nazi Germany i]
[What was Nazi Germany ii]
[What was Nazi Germany iii]
YouTube Videos on Police Brutality:
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 1]
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 2]
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 3]
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 4]
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 5]
[The Largest Street Gang. Part 6]
Legal advice: DON'T TALK TO THE POLICE.
EVER!
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:49 am
Notes on Capitalist Exploitation:{1} Gracchvs Until the economic collapse, I built cement pumps. For our biggest one the customer was charged around $250 000. As a twenty year old 1st year apprentice I was paid $322 a week. The other apprentice was paid $270, the full tradesmen were paid $700 and $1200. Full labour cost for the job (4 weeks)=$9968, make it a clean 10. Approx. materials cost=$20000 Approx. transport=$3000 Approx. fixed capital costs=$50000 Total=$83 000 might as well add the secretaries pay for the four weeks: the total now becomes something like $89 000 The owner was also the designer of the pump system. In practice, all he did was change the drawings whenever one of the workers, most likely the one listed above as being paid 1200, notices how it will fail to work (standard plan which is modified for each customer for each customer) in the specified conditions or just won't work at all because the boss fails or because of other random s**t that comes up, which often did. The boss, in practice was only patent and record holder. Yet for all that he pocketed $161 000. If we accept his job as, in practice no superior the the secretaries (he would often take the secretary to business deals because he was so drunk he wouldn't remember what deals he made... at least he didn't go back on them, she was just there to take down what s**t deals he made for himself so they wouldn't be able to say he made a worse deal.), he should get $6000 over that month. So he pockets $155 000 that he did not work for. That is, assuming we take him as a worker for $6000 a month, the rate of exploitation is $155 000 over $22 000, let us clean that to 150 over 20. For every 150 units of labour the workforce gets paid for 20, or rather, after working for enough time to recieve our livelyhood and pay for materials, 20 units of labour, we work for another 150 units which are unpaid. This does not take into account the fact that while making this big machine we are also making (though at a slower rate than normal) smaller machines, say one of our medium machines and one personal machine: total is around $10 000 in cost to the customer and about $3000 fixed capital, materials and transport. That as well does not take into account the repairs we do, one a day usually of the middle sized units. I do not include them because I do not have figures even as approximate as those for the construction of the middle and personal units. (I loved the big units: they were fun to make, that is why I know about them and not the others). {2} Gracchvs A friend on Facebook was saying that the idea of wage theft is wrong because wages already are theft, the theft of surplus value from the worker. The thing is, can only be considered theft if you do not understand what is happening in wage labour. This is NOT a defence of capitalism and wage labour, but an illustration of how capitalism works and how it is 'fair' and 'just' and all those fine words that leftists like to talk about. Every day you need $50 to pay for food, rent, travel, and so on, in order to maintain yourself as a productive worker. Therefore, the cost of your ability to work for a day is $50. To pay for that need, you take up work in a window factory. The cost of your ability to work is $50, so you are paid $50 for your ability to work. Each hour at work, you make 1 window. Each window costs $50. So in your first hour you have made a product worth enough to cover the cost of your existence. However your ability to work all day was purchased, not your ability to to work an hour. So you continue to work for a further 7 hours, producing $350 of surplus value for the factory owner. The exploitation, the surplus value, is a result of a fair exchange. If you decided that since you make $50 in that first hour, that you would instead only work for 1 hour and make 1 window, then you would need less energy, food, sleep, worse bedding, and so on to maintain your existence as a worker capable of 1 hour of productive work. That is, you would cost less than $50 a day, let's say you now cost $30, and therefore your wage for that hour would be $30, but you would still make a $50 window in that 1 hour of work, and therefore make surplus value for the capitalist. You would still be paid at the cost of your labour power, and it would not be theft. You agreed to work for a day in exchange for a wage which covers your daily existence. You performed the work and the capitalist paid you. A perfectly fair exchange. This is entirely different to you making 8 windows in a day in exchange for $50, and the capitalist deciding "nah, I'm not gonna pay you for your day's work, I'm keeping that $50" which is what wage-theft is. *the above ignores the non-labour costs involved in making the window coz irrelevant to the point I'm making, as well as the reality that the cost of your labour power may be higher than your wage, also coz irrelevance* {1} Gracchvs This is all part of the backward ideology of the family, which the bourgeoisie requires to ensure a connection with the heir, and which it uses to foist the institution of the family on the proletariat, which serves as a transmission belt for bourgeois ideology. And precisely because it is required for the bourgeoisie they need to force the proletariat into this institution. After all, they can't let 'their' women flee to the proletariat. In maintaining the ideology of the nuclear family the bourgeoisie also seeks to regiment the population by repressing 'abnormal' sexualities and sexual 'deviancy.' Thus the question of homosexual and trans-whatever oppression stems directly from the 'solution' to the woman question to be found in capitalist society. Because of this, no matter what laws are enacted, the situation will remain: Women will be socially considered the property of one man or another, and non-monogamous, non-heterosexual conduct will be repressed. The only way out is to do away with class society itself, and that is only possible through the abolition of private property in land and capital. But there is no way the capitalists will allow this. They will use all the forces: political, economic, moral at their disposal to prevent this. Only through the destruction of the capitalist state (as Engels said: the 'special bodies of armed men' the gaols, courts, judiciary, police and military) and the creation of a proletarian dictatorship, such as that seen created in the October Revolution can that possibly happen. Among the first laws to be enacted will be full legal, economic, social and political equality for women, gays and other minorities. Central to the woman question in particular will be the elimination of alimony and the payment of child support by the state as well as the provision of free abortion on demand, and the socialisation of housekeeping duties such as the provision of free public cafeterias as well as social house-cleaning and the provision on a minimum of one year paid maternity leave. To cement the position of women as free and equal citizens, marriage will be made a simple legal matter of signing a common document with at most a token charge, as will divorce. But communists know that we cannot simply legislate morality. What is needed is to make sure that not only are the above available to all, but to maintain women as independent citizens by providing them with work at equal pay to men. This will certainly not eliminate all the problems stemming from class society, but those remaining will be the task of the next generation. One raised in a much more equal and egalitarian world where such attitudes are, at best, an historical curiosity of the barbarism of class society. {1} Gracchvs Soviet Democracy. From the Russian Revolution we know that soviets, or Workers' Councils are democratic organisations based on the place of production. This means that people do not vote for someone they don't know based purely on party, but people vote for a council from among those people they work with every day. Because a Soviet Republic (Or Republic of Workers' Councils) is a centralised republic, not a federal republic, the local soviets are not separate from the factory/workshop/shop councils, but are composed of delegates from those councils. At each step higher, from local to regional, state, national and international, the members of the soviet are delegates from the subordinate soviets. The delegates receive wages no higher than a well paid worker and can be recalled by their soviet at any time, thus, a person on the central committee of the State Soviet can be recalled if the local or factory electors think that they are not being represented. Because they are earning money at the same rate as a worker, there is no financial incentive to bureaucratism and political sterility. Because they can be replaced at any time they will either be doing what they were elected for, or replaced with someone else. Over to the economy. Because the planned economy is a centralised economy it is planned at the top, at the highest level, that is national or international. This planning in most cases will be rather abstract: how much of what needs to be produced, and how much actually can be produced. Each level parcels out production quotas to the subordinate soviets in proportion with their capacity to meet them and gives a more concrete order of what that will be. An example could be housing: There needs to be living space for two million people created over the next year (we will ignore the repair of existing houses for this example). The national Soviet divides this among the states in proportion to their capacity to build those living spaces and their capacity to maintain the people who will live in them. Our example State Soviet has been given a quota of 50 000 living spaces to be created and it divides that among the Regional Soviets and they among the Local Soviets. The living spaces are split between houses and apartments, and the different sizes of apartment complexes, and these construction projects are divided among the construction teams in the area. If, for some reason, the planners ******** up, (I don't know, maybe someone forgot to carry the one or something) and not enough can be produced, this will invariably conflict with other things and so need to be addressed. So people will vote for it. So, yeah, Tank: no moar Stalinism. {1} Gracchvs DaidojiKensuke A Deformed Workers' State. Couldn't it be said that a Deformed Workers' State is a predictable outcome to attempting to use 'rural idiots' (Chinese peasants/Russian serfs) as the foundation of a Communist revolution instead of proper proletariat? The Russian revolution was conducted by the urban working class which, while small, was concentrated in some of the biggest factories in the world. This tiny working class was able to make the revolution and lead the peasantry during the civil war, but after being bled white during that civil war, and with the collapse of industry... The working class was crushed and physically dispersed. As this happened, a bureaucracy formed which was able to slowly take necessary functions into its own hands until it dominated the whole state. The problem with Russia is that it was dependent on the revolutions in western Europe (principally Germany) which were defeated and in some cases even betrayed by the above mentioned bureaucracy. China is a different story. With the Long March, the CCP cut itself off from the working class along the coast and relied on the peasantry. As such there was not only no possibility for workers democracy, but just the opposite: they had to crush it. DaidojiKensuke Or by trying to essentially 'cheat the system' by trying to bypass the Capitalist and Socialist stages of history? It isn't cheating the system. The problem is that the conditions for a full development of capitalism like in France and England is missing because capitalism has entered from the outside. Thus we see an artificial native capitalist class that is dependent on the other big capitalist countries and is tied to the semi-feudal nobility and clergy. It is unable to make a revolution like those seen in England or France. As such, only the working class is revolutionary, so it is left up to the tiny working classes of these countries to conduct the revolution in the interests of the capitalists. The thing is, some of the measures at this point transcend capitalism. (example: land to the toilers. This takes land away from the bourgeoisiefied land-lords and the land-owning capitalists in order to give it to the peasantry, but this not only takes land away from a section of the capitalist class, but it impacts others through the mortgages they hold and other debts they owe, thus the whole capitalist order in these coutnries is called into question by this one act). Thus the revolution passes over into the socialist revolution. The problem is that while these countries are the most likely to have a revolution, they are unable to actually make socialism on their own. They need to hold out until a revolution in one of the advanced capitalist countries happens so they can recieve material, economic and technical help from the more advanced country. DaidojiKensuke The Chinese' peculiar brand of "Capitalism" at least appears to be driven the Legalist view of commerce as greedy, immoral, and essential. It almost a cultural license, perhaps even the expectation, for Chinese merchants/Capitalists to cheat and cut corners wherever possible. I remember reading this really cute quote one time by this minor CCP official. When asked why the CCP was in charge of a country with heavy capitalist investment he said it was so there would be little time spent building the revolution when they needed to kick the capitalists out. Now, as cute as that is, it isn't likely to happen (sorry Dermy, but bureaucratic self-reform is bullshit, re: Poland). What seems to be the case is that the heads of the CCP have decided that capitalism is what is needed for China to be great, and so they are bringing in capitalism, but they have learned from the mistakes of Gorby: Do it slowly, keep control, and DO NOT let go of power. Currently, no matter what the aims of the CCP leadership at the moment, it is still a deformed workers state and should be defended by all communists against imperialist attack from without and capitalist counter-revolution from within. That the CCP is itself preparing the counter-revolution itself, the only way to truly defend the PRC is to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy from power through a working class political revolution. That is pretty much a complete exposition of Trotskyism, by the way... {2} Gracchvs DaidojiKensuke One could argue that the failure of the Soviet Union and the PRC is a failure of vanguardism, that it not only fails to develop class consciousness, but it creates a class-within-a-class. Rather than being "First Among Equals" the members of the Vanguard are, to paraphrase Orwell, "more equal than others." The vanguard is a necessity prior to the revolution. After the revolution, material conditions willing, the party will not need to hold on to power for a long time. In fact, it may have to hold on to power for a really short period of time--historically speaking. The problem wasn't with vanguardism itself, but with the situation the vanguard found itself in. With the working class either wiped out, driven back to the village through unemployment or co-opted into the nascent bureaucracy there was no basis for the soviets as a democratic institution. This would not have mattered nearly as much is the 1923 German revolution had succeeded, because there would be a connection with the west, as well as a huge boost in morale. But it didn't, and the failure to even attempt a revolution on the part of the KPD demoralised the remains of the Soviet working class, and the Bolsheviks. As such, it was extremely easy for this group to come forward with interests of the bureaucracy. DaidojiKensuke But it comes back to the original problem of the "Theory of History." Marx seemed to be fairly clear that in order for the proletariat to develop class consciousness, they would have to be subject to the predations of the Capitalists, at least for a time. Trying to "soften the blow" of the Capitalist stage with trade unionism or bits of Socialism, may actually extend the Capitalist stage, if only because the proletariat won't be sufficiently pissed enough to eventually overthrow the Capitalists. I see this as a defeatist ideology. Rather than come to revolutionary consciousness, the proletariat will stop at trade-union consciousness on its own. It must be shown through example that only communists are capable of getting decent reforms from the capitalists, and that they can get those reforms because they are willing to lead the working class to overthrow capitalism. Class struggle always works. DaidojiKensuke We are in agreement on the point that a bureaucracy will almost never reform of its own accord. Whether the CCP can "control" the Capitalists is the million-dollar question. As an American, I can say that in the history of my own nation, Capitalists and merchants tend to be very good at defending themselves and their interests, whether politically or by force. As much as they want to be able to control the capitalists, they will be unable to. It will, in the end, come to a stituation of counter-revoluton by the capitalists or political revolution on the part of the workers. Just as this question was posed in eastern-europe, so it will be posed in China, and it will have similarly devistating effects. Gracchvs {1} So I was going through the Workers Vanguard internet archives and I saw this issue headlining with an article on Falun Gong (from August 3 2001). Quote: “Pseudoscience” hardly captures Li’s outlandish “cosmology,” based on the “Dharma Wheel” which, as the New York Times (5 July) reports, “he says he installs telekinetically in the abdomens of all his followers, where it rotates in alternating directions, throwing off bad karma and gathering qi [vital bodily energy].” Li insists that he (and the magician David Copperfield!) can fly, that fox and weasel spirits take over human souls, that extraterrestrial aliens have invaded Earth and that the French have discovered a two-billion-year-old nuclear reactor which is proof of an ancient civilization that practiced Falun Gong! He simultaneously preaches that “the story of Noah’s Ark is true” and “the theory of evolution doesn’t hold at all.” Get the article here. Please check out the article and post your thoughts... [edit] On searching their website for the racism mentioned in the article I found some more ******** class="quote"> http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/lectures/1997L.html The cosmos is incredibly immense, and we’re actually also in the middle of the cosmos. Yet I’ve just said that although particles seem to be enveloped by different particles, you are actually still on the outside, because the structure, the matter, and the associations of this dimension where you exist are like the systems of the dimensions on the outside, and are restrained by the dimensions on the outside—this is the situation. In addition, as I mentioned, Buddha Sakyamuni said that one grain of sand contains three thousand worlds. In fact, Buddha Sakyamuni was saying that the microscopic dimensions formed at the surface of sand particles contain many, many different worlds. But let me tell you more explicitly today: The sand’s outer shell—the skin—and the outer shells of the particles at each layer, which make up the grains of sand, are in the same system as our material dimension on this side. Many, many lives within the particles of different sizes composed of molecules have exactly the same shape and form as our humankind. In other words, the people inside grains of sand are exactly the same as us humans—there are black-skinned people, white-skinned people, and yellow-skinned people. And in the future you’ll find it odd that their clothing isn’t too much different from that of our ancient people. What’s more, at a more microscopic level of their world, another kind of overall change takes place, and this kind of change has never been discussed before. That is, different microscopic worlds also have certain cosmic expanses. What I just talked about were the cosmic expanses composed of sand particles. Also: Not quiet the same as the racism mentioned in the article, but disgusting none-ther-less the same page Question: What did you say last time that a person of mixed race has lost? Teacher: He has lost the body that comes from the top down through to here. Let me put it this way: People of the yellow race have people of the yellow race up there, and people of the white race have people of the white race up there. He’s lost this thread. [...] Question: Children who’ve grown up in the U.S. aren’t so good with Chinese. Should they be sent back to China in the future? Teacher: I can tell you that I’ve been to many places abroad and I’ve found this problem everywhere, so when I see my disciples I often tell them this: Make sure you have your kids learn Chinese; you can’t lose the characteristics of your yellow race. Since there’s no place for you in the Caucasian paradises, you still need to return to the paradises of the yellow race’s people. What matters the most is if you can’t understand the true meaning of the Fa when you study It. Today the translated books provide people with a process of understanding during the transitional period. Just like our book China Falun Gong, It is something only for people’s understanding process, whereas in true cultivation one follows Zhuan Falun. The books translated into foreign languages are also for during your process of understanding. If you want to truly practice cultivation, you need to read the original text. Only from the original text can you know what’s what. The translations—no matter how well they’re done—are shallow and don’t have the inner meanings. That’s why many of us find that each time you read the book It is different; when you read the same sentence from different realms it’s completely different. In short: people shouldn't interbreed with other 'races' because their children will be impure. http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/lectures/20030420L.html All the way through to today, [the people of] different races have been like particles under the feet of the Gods who created them; although people are able to meld together and coexist in this dimension, they don't belong to the same system. When it arrived at the recent period of time, inside the skins of the different human races were different Gods who had come from the heavens. What I discussed above was about what's going on with humans at the surface. Of course, Dafa is being imparted, and today it's not that I'm bringing salvation to Caucasians and turning them into people of the yellow race, or bringing salvation to people of the yellow race and turning them into Caucasians. ( People laugh) You're already clear about that. I'm making it possible for everybody to go back to wherever they came from, and if you cultivate well I'll give you an even higher Attainment Status. If you were a God, you'll still cultivate back to the God's image you originally had, and I won't do anything to it; if you were originally a Buddha, you'll still be a Buddha; if you were originally a Dao, you'll still be a Dao. What I eliminate are all the elements of yours in the postnatal universe that have gone bad. And at the same time, I assimilate you to the Great Law, rectify everything for you, give you even better things, and give you the state that the Gods of the future should have. ( Applause) In short: Stick with your own kind, where you belong, so you can be come a pure 'black,' 'yellow.' or 'white'! Wait... That kind of segregationist s**t is exactly what the article was talking about... Personality Types in Politics{1} Gracchvs This has nothing to do with the other 'presonality types' thread that was necro'd. Rather this is about how people work in a political/ideological environment. I posit three different personality types that may be present in all members of a given ideology to one degree or another: Propagandist/PriestThe propagandist tends to educate their comrades in the ideas of their ideology, seeking to show how the ideology explains everything or how it approaches everything. In organised religion, these people are priests tending to the congregation. Agitator/MissionaryWhere the propagandist tries to teach a lot of ideas abstractly to a small number of convinced members of the group, the agitator tries to connect everyday, concrete ideas to the ideas of the group, but to the mass of 'non-party' people. In organised religion, these people are the missionaries going out to spread the word. Commissar/InquisitorThe agitator and propagandist seek to educate people in the ways of the ideology. The inquisitor is a convinced member who serves to find deviations in the education of the propagandists and agitators. For lack of a better way of explaining it, they deal with heretics, seeking to expose them. Now, all groups have people who represent these tendencies. What proportion will be of a certain mould, and how much a given ideology fosters the growth of personality traits common to given tendency varies. The smaller and more marginalised the group, the more likely there is to be an outright split between the three types. In Marxist experience, the propagandists by-and-large become academics who have a more or less formally correct ideology but no organisational connection to 'the movement'. The agitators create reformist organisations and will water down theory so as not to be offensive or to try to get the most recruits in the shortest amount of time. The inquisitors will be left with a rump organisation with little charisma, a correct program, and no way to get it out there. I'd like to point out that this is due to the pressures of being a small group, and each personality type doing what it does best: educating, recruiting, and rooting out heretics. A smaller movement means less prestige for the propagandists who move--or new recruits who would be come propagandists simply no longer join--on to academia in order to do more 'serious educating. With their influence lessened the agitators will try to 'loosen' things up in their drive to get new recruits, and this will cause a fight with the inquisitors. Anyway, moving on: my point in all this is that the three personality types, each being present in each ideology to a different degree, should be embraced, and that it is silly for members of an ideology to try to divorce the ideology from a given personality type. Blah. ☭Gracchvs
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:50 am
Quotes I love: 1 Blanqui said in Warning to the People:That government would be treasonous which, raised upon the proletarian bulwark, doesn't instantly carry out: 1. The disarmament of the bourgeois guards, 2. The armament and organization of a national militia of all workers. There are doubtless other indispensable measures, but they will grow naturally from this first act, which is the preliminary guarantee, the only pledge of security for the people. There must remain not one rifle in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Without this, there is no salvation.... Who has iron, has bread. 2 Lenin said in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism:The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism. 3 Lenin said in What is to be Done?:We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh! 4 International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) wrote in The Stalinist School of Falsification Revisited:In Trotsky's view, because of the uneven and combined development of the world economy, the bourgeoisie of the backward countries [are tied] to the feudal and imperialist interests, thereby preventing it from carrying out the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois revolution--democracy, agrarian revolution and national emancipation. In the presence of an aroused peasantry and a combative working class, each of these goals would directly threaten the political and economic dominance of the capitalist class. The tasks of the bourgeois revolution can be solved only by the alliance of the peasantry and the proletariat. Marxism holds that there can only be one dominant class in the state. Since, as the Communist Manifesto states, the proletariat is the only consistently revolutionary class, this alliance must take the form of the dictatorship of the proletariiat, supported by the peasantry. In carrying out the democratic tasks of the revolution, the proletarian state must inevitably make "despotic inroads into the rights of bourgeois property" (e.g., expropriation of landlords), and thus the revolution directly passes over to socialist tasks, without pausing at any arbitrary "stages" or, as Lenin put it, without "Chinese wall" being erected between the bourgeois and proletarian phases. Thus the revolution becomes permanent, eventually leading to the complete aboolition of classes (socialism). 5 Trotsky said in Their Morals and Ours:The Jesuits represented a militant organization, strictly centralized, aggressive, and dangerous not only to enemies but also to allies. In his psychology and method of action the Jesuit of the heroicperiod distinguished himself from an average priest as the warrior of a church from its shopkeeper. We have no reason to idealize either one or the other. But it is altogether unworthy to look upon a fanatic warrior with the eyes of an obtuse and slothful shopkeeper. ... Opportunists are peaceful shopkeepers in socialist ideas while Bolsheviks are its inveterate warriors. 6 Trotsky said in Their Morals and Ours:History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality! 7 Trotsky said in Terrorism and Communism:It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realize that it is too dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections, or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie, hurled from power, must be forced to obey. In what way? The priests used to terrify the people with future penalties. We have no such resources at our disposal. But even the priests' hell never stood alone, but was always bracketed with the material fire of the Holy Inquisition, and with the scorpions of the democratic State. Is it possible that Kautsky is leaning to the idea that the bourgeoisie can be held down with the help of the categorical imperative, which in his last writings plays the part of the Holy Ghost? We, on our part, can only promise him our material assistance if he decides to equip a Kantian-humanitarian mission to the realms of Denikin and Kolchak. At all events, there he would have the possibility of convincing himself that the counter-revolutionaries are not naturally devoid of character, and that, thanks to their six years' existence in the fire and smoke of war, their character has managed to become thoroughly hardened. Every White Guard has long ago acquired the simple truth that it is easier to hang a Communist to the branch of a tree than to convert him with a book of Kautsky's. These gentlemen have no superstitious fear, either of the principles of democracy or of the flames of hell - the more so because the priests of the church and of official learning act in collusion with them, and pour their combined thunders exclusively on the heads of the Bolsheviks. The Russian White Guards resemble the German and all other White Guards in this respect - that they cannot be convinced or shamed, but only terrorized or crushed. The man who repudiates terrorism in principle - i.e., repudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined and armed counter-revolution, must reject all idea of the political supremacy of the working class and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the Socialist revolution, and digs the grave of Socialism. 8 Trotsky said in The History of the Russian Revolution:There remains the question of the political position of the author, who stands as a historian upon the same viewpoint upon which he stood as a participant in the events. The reader, of course, is not obliged to share the political views of the author, which the latter on his side has no reason to conceal. But the reader does have the right to demand that a historical work should not be the defence of a political position, but an internally well-founded portrayal of the actual process of the revolution. A historical work only then completely fulfils the mission when events unfold upon its pages in their full natural necessity. For this, is it necessary to have the so-called historian's "impartiality"? Nobody has yet clearly explained what this impartiality consists of. The often quoted words of Clemenceau that it is necessary to take a revolution "en bloc," as a whole - are at the best a clever evasion. How can you take as a whole a thing whose essence consists in a split? Clemenceau's aphorism was dictated partly by shame for his too resolute ancestors, partly by embarrassment before their shades. One of the reactionary and therefore fashionable historians in contemporary France, L. Madelin, slandering in his drawing-room fashion the great revolution - that is, the birth of his own nation - asserts that "the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, and behold at the same time the besiegers and the besieged": only in this way, it seems, can he achieve a "conciliatory justice." However, the words of Madelin himself testify that if he climbs out on the wall dividing the two camps, it is only in the character of a reconnoiterer for the reaction. It is well that he is concerned only with war camps of the past: in a time of revolution standing on the wall involves great danger. Moreover, in times of alarm the priests of "conciliatory justice" are usually found sitting on the inside of four walls waiting to see which side will win. The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies - open and undisguised – seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movement. That is the only possible historic objectivism, and moreover it is amply sufficient, for it is verified and attested not by the good intentions of the historian, for which only he himself can vouch, but the natural laws revealed by him of the historic process itself. 9 Isaac Deutscher said at the Socialist Scholars Conference in 1966:"We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all the predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man's making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trosky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies--hunger, sex, and death--besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labor movement have taken on. "...Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death, but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.... We do not see in socialist man evolution's last and perfect product, or the end of history, but in a sense only the beginning of history." 10 International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) wrote in Marxism vs Anarchism:A conventional understanding of socialism and communism, of what motivates us, is that we are hostile to capitalism because of the extremes of economic and social inequality. There are people who work hard and are destitute, especially but not limited to the Third World countries. And then there are people who do nothing, who are strictly parasitic, and live in the lap of luxury. Well, certainly an important goal of communism is to eliminate that. But that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal lies in a whole other sphere of human activity, the sphere outside consumption, and it is precisely this sphere that requires a much higher level of labor productivity than exists in even the most advanced capitalism. In other words, if our goal were simply to provide everybody in this country with a decent standard of living, say, equivalent to $80 000 or $100 000 for a family of four, we could do that with the existing American economy just by a little rearrancing. That is not what we're ultimately about. What we're ultimately about is providing all members of society, here and elsewhere, with the capacity to do creative work, what Marx called free or unalienated labor. We are not basically in the business of equality of consumption. Now precisely because of this aspect, Marxism, the concept of communism, is fundamentally different from earlier socialists and anarchists. For the pre-Marxian socialists, the ultimate goal was equality. The first revolutionary communist organization, derived in the last stages of the French Revolution, was called the "Conspiracy of Equals." If you ask an anarchist what his ultimate goal is, he would say "freedom." When Kropotkin formed a journal in England in the later 19th century, he called it freedom. Although we recognise that equality and freedom have a value in themselves, ultimately for us these are a means to an end. What does equality mean under communism? It certainly doesn't mean that people have the same living standards, or utilize the same material resources. Equality simply means equal access. There'll be a huge range of lifestyles, consuming very differently. People will be free to do what they want. It's not merely that there won't be a coercive state, but that most time will be what is now called "free time." The question for Marx was, how will people utilize that free time? Will they do it like they do now, which is mainly entertainment, sports, games, socializing, vegging out, hanging out, you know, not working? Marx envisioned most people spending their free time in "free labor," that is, creative, artistic, scientific or related work, which he described this way: "Really free labour, the composing of music for example, is at the same time damned serious and demands the greatest effort. The labour concerned with material production can only have this character if (1) it is of a social nature, (2) it has a scientific character and at the same time is general work, i.e. if it ceases to be human effort as a definite trained natural force, gives up its purely natural, primitive aspects and becomes the activity of a subject controling all the forces of nature in the production process"Well, to control all the forces of nature in the productive process involves the expenditure of very considerably resources. First, there is the question of acquiring the knowledge of the resources of nature. Consider the vast resources necessary to acquire a PhD in physics or chemistry or biology--not for the privileged few, but for anybody who wants to. Also, many spheres of scientific research require vast expenditures of material resources--space exploration, genetic engineering, robotics, paleontology, on and on. The point basically is that Marx's conception of communism is one in which all the progressive achievements of civilization are fully utilized, made available to all members ofsociety and vastly expanded. It is a concept quite alien to the Rouseauean idea of some kind of primitive economic harmony or communal values.
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:02 am
Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution 1 Trotsky wrote in The History of the Russian Revolution:The possessing classes could not foresee that the village was going to present its bill. But they drove away these black thoughts, hoping to wriggle out of it somehow. On this theme the inquisitive French ambassador Paléologue had a chat during the war days with the former Minister of Agriculture Krivoshein, the former Premier Kokovtsev, the great landlord Count Bobrinsky, the President of the State Duma Rodzianko, the great industrialist Putilov, and other distinguished people. Here is what was unveiled before him in this conversation: In order to carry into action a radical land reform it would require the work of a standing army of 300,000 surveyors for no less than fifteen years; but during this time the number of homesteads would increase to 30 million, and consequently all these preliminary calculations by the time they were made would prove invalid. To introduce a land reform thus seemed in the eyes of these landlords, officials and bankers something like squaring the circle. It is hardly necessary to say that a like mathematical scrupulousness was completely alien to the peasants. He thought that first of all the thing to do was to smoke out the landlord, and then see. If the village nevertheless remained comparatively peaceful during the war, that was because its active forces were at the front. The soldiers did not forget about the land – whenever at least they were not thinking about death – and in the trenches the muzhik’s thoughts about the future were saturated with the smell of powder. But all the same the peasantry, even after learning to handle firearms, could never of its own force have achieved the agrarian democratic revolution – that is, its own revolution. It had to have leadership. For the first time in world history the peasant was destined to find a leader in the person of the worker. In that lies the fundamental, and you may say the whole difference between the Russian revolution and all those preceding it. In England serfdom had disappeared in actual fact by the end of the fourteenth century – that is, two centuries before it arose in Russia, and four and a half centuries before it was abolished. The expropriation of the landed property of the peasants dragged along in England through one Reformation and two revolutions to the nineteenth century. The capitalist development, not forced from the outside, thus had sufficient time to liquidate the independent peasant long before the proletariat awoke to political life. In France the struggle with royal absolutism, the aristocracy, and the princes of the church, compelled the bourgeoisie in various of its layers, and in several instalments, to achieve a radical agrarian revolution at the beginning of the eighteenth century. For long after that an independent peasantry constituted the support of the bourgeois order, and in 1871 it helped the bourgeoisie put down the Paris Commune. In Germany the bourgeoisie proved incapable of a revolutionary solution of the agrarian problem, and in 1848 betrayed the peasants to the landlords, just as Luther some three centuries before in the peasant wars had betrayed them to the princes. On the other hand, the German proletariat was still too weak in the middle of the nineteenth century to take the leadership of the peasantry. As a result the capitalist development of Germany got sufficient time, although not so long a period as in England, to subordinate agriculture, as it emerged from the uncompleted bourgeois revolution, to its own interests. The peasant reform of 1861 was carried out in Russia by an aristocratic and bureaucratic monarchy under pressure of the demands of a bourgeois society, but with the bourgeoisie completely powerless politically. The character of this peasant emancipation was such that the forced capitalistic transformation of the country inevitably converted the agrarian problem into a problem of revolution. The Russian bourgeois dreamed of an agrarian evolution on the French plan, or the Danish, or the American – anything you want, only not the Russian. He neglected, however, to supply himself in good season with a French history or an American social structure. The democratic intelligentsia, notwithstanding its revolutionary past, took its stand in the decisive hour with the liberal bourgeoisie and the landlord, and not with the revolutionary village. In these circumstances only the working class could stand at the head of the peasant revolution. The law of combined development of backward countries – in the sense of a peculiar mixture of backward elements with the most modern factors – here rises before us in its most finished form, and offers a key to the fundamental riddle of the Russian revolution. If the agrarian problem, as a heritage from the barbarism of the old Russian history, had been solved by the bourgeoisie, if it could have been solved by them, the Russian proletariat could not possibly have come to power in 1917. In order to realise the Soviet state, there was required a drawing together and mutual penetration of two factors belonging to completely different historic species: a peasant war – that is, a movement characteristic of the dawn of bourgeois development – and a proletarian insurrection, the movement signalising its decline. That is the essence of 1917. 2 Trotsky wrote in The History of the Russian Revolution:Louis and Nicholas were the last-born of a dynasty that had lived tumultuously. The well-known equability of them both, their tranquillity and “gaiety ” in difficult moments, were the well-bred expression of a meagreness of inner powers, a weakness of the nervous discharge, poverty of spiritual resources. Moral castrates, they were absolutely deprived of imagination and creative force. They had just enough brains to feel their own triviality, and they cherished an envious hostility toward everything gifted and significant. It fell to them both to rule a country in conditions of deep inner crisis and popular revolutionary awakening. Both of them fought off the intrusion of new ideas, and the tide of hostile forces. Indecisiveness, hypocrisy, and lying were in both cases the expression, not so much of personal weakness, as of the complete impossibility of holding fast, to their hereditary positions. And how was it with their wives? Alexandra, even more than Antoinette, was lifted to the very heights of the dreams of a princess, especially such a rural one as this Hessian, by her marriage with the unlimited despot of a powerful country. Both of them were filled to the brim with the consciousness of their high mission: Antoinette more frivolously, Alexandra in a spirit of Protestant bigotry translated into the Slavonic language of the Russian Church. An unlucky reign and a growing discontent of the people ruthlessly destroyed the fantastic world which these two enterprising but nevertheless chickenlike heads had built for themselves. Hence the growing bitterness, the gnawing hostility to an alien people that would not bow before them; the hatred toward ministers who wanted to give even a little consideration to that hostile world, to the country; hence their alienation even from their own court, and their continued irritation against a husband who had not fulfilled the expectations aroused by him as a bridegroom. Historians and biographers of the psychological tendency not infrequently seek and find something purely personal and accidental where great historical forces are refracted through a personality. This is the same fault of vision as that of the courtiers who considered the last Russian czar born “unlucky.” He himself believed that he was born under an unlucky star. In reality his ill-luck flowed from the contradictions between those old aims which he inherited from his ancestors and the new historic conditions in which he was placed. When the ancients said that Jupiter first makes mad those who whom he wishes to destroy, they summed up in superstitious form a profound historic observation. In the saying of Goethe about reason becoming nonsense – “Vernunft wird Unsinn” – this same thought is expressed about the impersonal Jupiter of the historical dialectic, which withdraws “reason ” from historic institutions that have outlived themselves and condemns their defenders to failure. The scripts for the rôles of Romanov and Capet were prescribed by the general development of the historic drama; only the nuances of interpretation fell to the lot of the actors. The ill-luck of Nicholas, as of Louis, had its roots not in his personal horoscope, but in the historical horoscope of the bureaucratic-caste monarchy. They were both, chiefly and above all, the last-born offspring of absolutism. Their moral insignificance, deriving from their dynastic epigonism, gave the latter an especially malignant character. You might object: if Alexander III had drunk less he might have lived a good deal longer, the revolution would have run into a very different make of czar, and no parallel with Louis XVI would have been possible. Such an objection, however, does not refute in the least what has been said above. We do not at all pretend to deny the significance of the personal in the mechanics of the historic process, nor the significance in the personal of the accidental. We only demand that a historic personality, with all its peculiarities, should not be taken as a bare list of psychological traits, but as a living reality grown out of definite social conditions and reacting upon them. As a rose does not lose its fragrance because the natural scientist points out upon what ingredients of soil and atmosphere it is nourished, so an exposure of the social roots of a personality does not remove from it either its aroma or its foul smell. The consideration advanced above about a possible long life of Alexander III is capable of illuming this very problem from another side. Let us assume that this Alexander III had not become mixed up in 1904 in a war with Japan. This would have delayed the first revolution. For how long? It is possible that the “revolution of 1905” – that is, the first test of strength the first breach in the system of absolutism – would have been a mere introduction to the second, republican, and the third, proletarian revolution. Upon this question more or less interesting guesses are possible, but it is indubitable in any case that the revolution did not result from the character of Nicholas II, and that Alexander III would not have solved its problem. It is enough to remember that nowhere and never was the transition from the feudal to the bourgeois régime made without violent disturbances. We saw this only yesterday in China; today we observe it again in India. The most we can say is that this or that policy of the monarchy, this or that personality o; the monarch, might have hastened or postponed the revolution and placed a certain imprint on its external course.
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Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:07 pm
Uncle Rob In response to some ******** class="quoted"> Okay the thing you need to understand is this. The development of productive forces determine the human relations when producing goods to satisfy the needs of any given society. These relations determine our social life, our asperations, ideas, and laws. For example: Green liberalism wouldn't have found its existence if the expanison of industry didn't lead to the gradual and systematic destruction of the Earth. The same applies to Communism. It wouldn;t have been devised if hadn't Capitalism cleaved the popluation into the group that has everything and the group that works and owns nothing. (now that isn't to say other classes don't exist, but their roles aren't as important.) Now the problem here isn't Communist theory. The problem is your philistine conception of communist theory. Under socialism (first stage of communism) the goal is not not make everyone equal. Such is impossible becuase humans are not naturally equal. some are stronger, some are weak, some are smarter some are not. What we seek to do is level the playing feild by abolishing that which allows the enslavement of one man over another--private property. If you think capitalism is efficent, you are sadly mistaken. Under capitalism there are thousands of industries producing many different things. These industries produce inumerable amounts of commodities according to society's demand and they keep producing without any ragard as to how much is being made or wether or not it is even socially nessisary. They just keep producing to maximize profits. Now as we know this happens in every field of major industry. collectively driving the prices for certain commodities sprialing downwards. Before we know it, we are in a crisis. The capitalist world quakes with irony, for now there is too much to sell. The system begins to fracture and break, indusries close, jobs are lost by the thousands like the workers in Chicago a few months back. Who pays for this crisis? not the capitalists, but the workers who must now suffer scarcity and job loss. Now the way socialism remdies this anarchy of production is simple. Through a planned economy managed by the workers at the helm of the state, whom through local and national councils deliberate on the allocation of resources and determine how much of a certain commodity is socially nessisary to assure the most efficent use of avilable resources. It was through a planned economy by the workers that the Soviet Union was able to go from a rural backward peasent country to a world superpower in 40 years time. What capitalist state can lay claim to such success? None. Because socialism is historically the next mode of production. It outproduces all current economic systems and history has proven that. Just as capitalism outproduced feudalism, just as feudalism out produced tribalism. Socialism will be no exception. Now I want to address the little mundane points here as well. What Mao meant when he said "Democracy comes from the barrel of a gun" was that never was freedom won without the use of violent means. Further, you speak of socialism removing incentive. May I ask, where is the incentive under capitalism? Those who contribute nothing to their society make billions while those who work make jack s**t. By your logic Capitalism should have gone to s**t years ago. And lastly, I repeat this over and over again, the working class is the ruling class under socialism. They are the 'police' the 'government' and any other social apparatus.
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:52 am
is a gorgeous thread, thank you very much for those links. YAY!
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Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 10:53 am
Rob On Marxist Economics divineseraph Things that determine the price of a commidity include scarcity of materials, the amount of the produce produced, the need of the product by the society, the amount of time and energy put into the product (A bit- considering that T-shirts made by slave labor in China are still sold for upwards of 40 bucks at Abecrombie) and stock fluctuations or consumer confidence. Close but no cigar. The determining price in a commodity is two fold. Embodied in it are both use value and exchange value which both equal its value. That Value is then determined by the socially necessary labour time which is also two-fold. Concrete labour (which is the exact amount of labour embodied in a product) and Abstract labour ( which is how much labour it is embodied in that product in general. These two aspects come into play during the process of exchange . Again there is once more a two fold view to the exchange of commodities, being relative and equivalent. Equivalent is exactly how much that commodity is worth in relation to other commodities in accordance to the aforementioned and relative is the cost of the commodity in relation to other commodities in general determined by the fluxes in the economy. And these two factors are determined by the universal commodity: the money commodity. so something like this C-UV+EV-V= Socially Necessary labour time- CL+AL-E-R+Eq-MC But lets investigate how yours is incorrect. Now lets imagine a solid gold cup. Now Merchant A sells his for 50 dollars , because it is rare. Merchant B sells his solid gold cup for 45, Because it is rare, keeps the price up but he is driven to oust Merchant A so he must sell for a lower price. So from the outset we see that despite the rarity of the commodity, its still thrown the ******** out of the window. Your statement falls hard when we equate the possibility no one buys the gold cups which drives the relative exchange value of the gold cup falling faster than your bullshit claim. Secondly. Capitalism produces commodities without any regard as to how much they are producing, they produce according to the demand for that particular commodity. Now while it is true that this process does effect the relative exchange value, failure to mention the fact that demand for the commodity plays a role in this process is a vulgarization and serves no purpose but to show the utter falsity of your views. Thirdly: Customer confidence has absolutely nothing to ******** do with the economy. Its a bullshit claim made my bourgeois economists to compensate for the utter failure of the capitalist system. I have no faith in capitalism, yet I still purchase necessary goods to maintain myself as a worker. So as you see despite my confidence, I engage in exchange and in that respect has no effect on the economy regardless. divineseraph I understand how the system works. Please don't assume that I don't know how the world operates just because I haven't read your favorite author. Even then, economy is what I fight against- I think the whole thing is a pile of bullshit, now that we are in an industrial age where we can have clean, renewable energy and recylce materials, and also because we produce in surplus- There is more than enough to go around, we don't need numbers to tell us that folks starving need food. You can fight the enemy all you want. But if you are armed with nothing more than false conceptions of your enemy then you serve only to weaken yourself. And I've seen better calls at a square dance. divineseraph If that's the case, then no innovations can ever be made because everyone is born into a system and should, logically, stay in it. As such, Marx should have never been able to think his way out of capitalism and Capitalism should have never been made because nobody could think past Feudalism. Okay I think you're having trouble understanding this. The idea of communism arose do to the material conditions of capitalism. (poverty, starvation etc etc) because these things exist Human set out to discover why such things happen. The man who found out this s**t in its most scientific form was Karl ******** Marx. Now naturally you cannot think of s**t material conditions do not allow, Ideas do not spring up from the ground, they come from somewhere. Creativity is only how well you mix and match other ideas. Now here is your problem Divine, you seek to rewrite Marx, you seek to undo the science he has given us. As the the English saying goes "Facts are stubborn things" If you want to rewrite facts than you nothing more than a revisionist piece of s**t who is doomed to ******** failure and if you continue to follow this line I will no longer continue to offer you my sympathy. divineseraph Do we need to crack open a dictionary? Communism is defined as a classless egalitarian system in which the means of production are collectively owned by the workers, according to my Merriam Webster. That's what I want- A system where there are no owners of factories who sit pretty making massive amounts of money on the labor of the numerous poor forced to work there by the economic system. Then why the ******** did you offer this s**t as a definition? divineseraph Freedom, equality and no means of controlling the means of production. That happens to be Communism
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Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 11:53 pm
Eating at Arby's*
So Arby's makes 350 sandwiches on an average day. Each sandwich sells for an average of 4 dollars. Thats a total of 1400 dollars. Your typical shift has 3 people working, each paid 8 dollars an hour. Thats a total of 64 dollars a day for each person. That's 192 dollars that comes out of the daily 1400 dollars leaving Arby's with a daily profit margin of 1208 dollars. Even if rent, electricity and raw material prices were sky high, the bill is only payed once or twice a month. If the daily rate of profit is 1208 a day that is a considerably high profit and thats only from one store! multiply that by 5 stores and we see the CEO of Arby's sticking 33,824 dollars into his pocket a month. The work from the Arby's employees makes this man filthy rich, and your typical Arbys employee brings home about 1792 dollars a month. Now if we were to eliminate private property, that is 33,824 dollars a month that goes into the pockets of the workers who make that cash. Those 3 workers would get a wage of 402 dollars a day. That 11,256 dollars a month. Imagine making that much from working at Arby's?
...and they say Socialism is a bad thing.
*Arby's is a local chain restaurant in New England
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Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2012 11:55 pm
Unemployment and You!
Everyone reading this knows what it's like to be unemployed or to have their hours cut. Everyone knows unemployment and shity hours is a problem but little do people realize what causes the problem. Everyone has their own awnser depending on who you ask: some will say it's the immigrants stealing our jobs, some will say outsourcing, bad economy etc. The job market is a real thing and it's effected by real causes related to the formation of our economy and how we go about distributing our national goods and whatnot.
We've all heard of the whole Occupy Wall street movement, which for the most part came out in protest for the lack of jobs for long time workers and the student now coming out of college who can't find work. You may have also heard of the recent repression of this movement and the passing of that new bill which grants the US militatry the right to detain you indefinately for whatever it may see as a offense against the government (including protesting which is protected by the bill of rights!). So, the question is: What is the source of all these issues? Why is the government acting so harshly upon the people who are simply trying to earn a living or who are protesting because they can't earn a living? The source of unemployment is of course the companies we're supposed to get jobs from!
The economy we live under is called capitalism ( a bunch of companies competing in a market). Capitalism brings a bunch of people together in a single workplace or company where each person has their own specific job to keep the workplace running. Imagine a place like a UPS wearhouse or a Walmart store; hundreds of people working to make the owner of the company profit, and to get a paycheck so they can pay their bills. As time goes on the more an more people are concentrated into a workplace or a city where there is supposedly pleanty of work to be found. So on the one hand, working actually bring society closer together as they all work to produce the goods and services society needs to live, but that the same time, all these goods are actually owned by the rich people who own the company and "supply" jobs- a more social society but has private ownership!
So what happens when all these giant companies are competing against one another? In order to stay competitive they have to cut costs and make the workplace more efficent. If you've ever worked at a grocery store or been to one, you see these "Self Check-out" counters. This allows you to run four check out counters with just one person instead of four to eight (one to scan the groceries, and one to bag them). Two things happen when these machines are introduced. Firstly; it replaces the need for actual people. Secondly; it simplifies the available jobs therefore lowering the pay for that job. After awhile, we now see that there is a huge amount of unemployed people competing for the same low-paying jobs! All so some rich ******** can get richer at our expense! If that wasn't enough, the rich people use this ever-growing pool of unemployed people for busy seasons (like chrsitmas) when they need the extra help, only to throw them out on the street after the season is over. Secondly; prices need to be adjusted to the amount of money people make. So if there is a giant amount of unemployed people trying to get the same low-paying jobs it gives the owners of the companies an excuse to keep the paychecks low, just so they "cut costs", again, at our expense.
The government needs to make sure people don't get pissed off at the rich, because the government is there to protect them. At first the make welfare programs so we aren't completely displaced. When that doesn't work and people start to protest thats when they bring out the cops and military to start bashing heads. That is exactly why the government just passed that bill, and why they crushed the Occupy Wall Street movement- To protect the rich who are the cause of all the bullshit to begin with!
If we want a better life for ourselves, and for our kids, we have to understnd that capitalism is the real issue. The productive capabilities our society has are limitless - there is literally enough to feed, house, and clothe the entire country and most of the world. Capitalism does the job of combining all these industries, but it divorces the worker from the goods and services we produce. We have to organize and we have to overthrow it. Once we get rid of the rich middle man, these goods and services will be the social product they are meant to be. Working will gaurentee a house, a living and food on your plate- and that's what communism is all about.
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 12:03 am
Article I Wrote: On "Dogmatism"Quote: It is common within the fields of academia, politics and religion to hear the word “dogmatism” utilized in the pejorative. Many people have heard, used or have been called “dogmatic” with many carelessly hurling the term around for one reason or another. The word “dogmatism” is of particular importance to us, for what we are dealing with here is not “dogmatism” in a specific sense (which can be understood as the valuation of principles above evidence and contrary opinion) but “dogmatism” in an abstract sense that is removed from material analysis. To apply the term in such a way can only serve to muddle and weaken the fields of practice in which it is applied. Some of the opponents of Marxism-Leninism claim that we are sterile in our outlook, that we refuse to sacrifice our political line for the sake of unity and that our resoluteness resembles the unwavering doctrines advanced by the priests of a medieval church. We will offer a rebuttal to this line of argument and reveal that the term “dogmatism” in political discourse for what it is: an anti-dialectical smear which distracts from sober materialist analysis and is ultimately detrimental to our struggle. In discussing the application of the smear “dogmatism” to theoretical analysis, we should first set forth to define what we mean by “theory.” The term “theory” has two definitions, one social and one scientific. The first definition holds “theory” as being synonymous with “hypothesis,” and can readily be dismissed because it doesn’t hold a more official sounding name like “fact” or “law.” The scientific definition of theory has it as being a coherent group of propositions used as principles to explain a phenomena as it occurs in reality. Marxist theory views physical reality in a dialectical way; it perceives a world full of contradictions which move and evolve until reaching synthesis at higher levels of contradiction. It is not an arbitrary guess grounded in the biases of crack-pot theorists, but a science whose principles and analysis are vindicated by past and present events. Using the scientific conception of the term theory pays tribute to this fact, being that within this framework we can understand the motion of society, outside of the static and unmoving proclamations of metaphysics, and how our collective knowledge is constantly being expanded by virtue of the forward motion of events, of technology, of social conditions and material conditions constantly in flux. Marxist theory provides us with the most comprehensive understanding of society’s motion compared to any other social theory or philosophy. Therefore, as a vindicated science for social understanding unparalleled by its peers, Marxism can be understood for being the best grasp at truth we have available to us. Marxism helps us qualify the development of human history as resulting from the battles fought by contending classes for the distribution and control of society’s forces of production. It explains how wealth has been centralized within the hands of a small concentration of capitalists on one end while those who produce that wealth are ultimately alienated from it. These features of history and our present day society are realities which are demonstrated to us every day that we live in capitalism, despite whatever idealism and ideological subterfuge that is employed to distract us from this essential truth. Marxism provides us with foresight and concrete tasks adapt to both understanding and changing the course of society and is undoubtedly mankind’s best answer to understanding exploitation and social movement, yet to the “anti-dogmatists” this is a stale religious doctrine which serves ensnare our minds and deprive us of our intellectual freedom. What does this say for the position of the anti-dogmatists? Essentially, it reveals their position as a struggle against scientific understanding itself. As such, when backed into a corner, the true anti-dogmatist reveals their position as such: Despite your position being backed by evidence it is wrong to cling to it so tightly for it is morally indecent. There are two things wrong with this perspective. For one, it demands that we turn a blind eye to the truth for the sake of some moral imperative, being that, despite the truth, it would be wrong to be so “closed-minded.” Is this not the cornerstone practice of bourgeois ideology when it comes to those who challenge it? Has it been forgotten that morality is defined by the class structure of society? Would it be at all wise for us to turn a blind eye to gravity and leap from the top of a building because it is morally indecent for us to be “dogmatic” about gravity? Secondly, the “anti-dogmatic” position reveals itself as “dogmatic” in its perceptions and moral imperatives, in that it is unflinching in its pursuit of the “non-dogmatic” position of eclecticism and ideological opportunism, no matter what evidence is brought forth and argues this point using the same tactics of moralism asserted the actual peddlers of religious dogmas for centuries. Using “dogmatism” in such a way as to denounce those with evidence-supported theories reduces itself to the same sorry state of vapid emotionalist tirades that the “anti-dogmatist” attempts to invoke against their enemies being implemented with no less religious vigor. There are some on the so-called “left” who all too willing to hurl “dogmatism” against revolutionaries who refuse to surrender the science of Marxism-Leninism as their political line and guide to action despite its theory being vindicated by history. Some groups set out to define themselves by this “anti-dogmatism,” asserting that to lend credence to inherited knowledge from historical figures is sterilizing to the further growth of Marxism and that somehow it cannot be applied to current times. Essentially, by refusing to abandon the “old dogmas” and “dead horses” of revolutionary science, by refusing to reinvent the wheel in the shape of a square by abandoning tried and true scientific methods of understanding our world and how to change it for arbitrary eclecticism, we are somehow stifling the development of revolution. This absurd and anti-scientific line is completely and utterly useless to revolutionary struggle. We study history not only to understand the past successes, but to understand past failures so we do not fall into the same issues previous labor struggles faced and be able to deal with them as they arise. Take for instance, the political struggle in Russia between the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Social-Democratic Labor Party beginning in 1902. The opportunists within the Social-Democratic Labor Party in conjunction with the SR’s, raised the banner of “criticism of Marxism” in which many cried “dogma” at the Marxists who refused to relinquish Marxism’s validity for the sake of unifying with reactionary elements within the Russian labor movement at the time. The reason they did not submit is because throwing away the political line of the revolutionary Social-Democrats for a temporary aim meant precisely to become opportunists, thereby limiting their tactics and direction. Without a consistent political line it becomes inevitable to fall into political bankruptcy which is already much too common in modern politics. Marxist-Leninist theory is extremely important in class struggle, for without its scientific theory to elucidate the real problems that face the working class, there is no way for the working class to develop tangible methods of winning its political and economic freedom. This stigma of “dogmatism” disillusions those who are not yet equipped to fight through the thick disputes involved with the theoretical development of Marxist-Leninist theory against more backward and reactionary ones. But that is all “dogmatism” is; a stigma. Those who fail to realize this risk wanting nothing to do with it and eventual outright rejection. “All this” the anti-dogmatists says “to save Marxism from sterilization.” The situation is quite the contrary. By fostering this stigma it allows for the abandonment of any principled stance and thereby further breeds opportunism which is what really sterilizes the labor movement here and around the world, just as the cloak of “anti-dogmatism” always has. Political practice alone is not enough to emancipate the working class; ideological struggle is of high demand, especially in a time where revisionism is pandemic. To abandon Marxism-Leninism on the grounds that it is dogmatic is outright betrayal of the working class, for it is a deliberate attempt to close ones eyes to the situation at hand. This is exactly what our anti-dogmatists seek to accomplish. When we pose the issue this way, it becomes clear the stigma of dogmatism belongs to that class that does not want the working class to lay its eyes upon the true nature of the society they are enslaved by, that class that does not want to see its privileged position threatened, which is maintained by the sweat of the working class – it belongs to the exploiters of labor. We would do well to express our opinion for the benefit of the anti-dogmatists, that Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma, nor is it comparable to religion for its pro-scientific nature. It is comparable to religion insofar that is an ideology in which people believe, spread the word about and organize around, but this is true of any ideology. We could reproach the anti-dogmatists with the same accusation: “Your fetishism for ideological liquidation is similar behavior to religious preachers!” and it would carry the same weight (or lack thereof). The difference between us and religious ideologues (coincidentally the anti-dogmatists as well) is that religious organizations function entirely on turning peoples attention away from the real conditions that plague them. One of the most basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, on the other hand, is that change is everywhere and inevitable, so we are compelled to be mindful of developments and their specifics, to look at the real conditions. We are more than willing to adapt our ideology if we are to find in the course of struggle that we have misjudged the situation – only then can we say our application of our guiding theory is erroneous. This does not mean we will debase it so far as to adopt backwards ideas and methods that have already proven themselves to be infertile considering the international and historical experience. Unless the anti-dogmatists can disprove the ideology, we must cast aside the bogey of “dogma” in the abstract and boldly claim as we did in our article on Myths about Marxism-Leninism: “At this juncture, we must confess that we are dogmatic, in that we insist on world communist revolution, we insist on the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, and we intend to follow Marxism-Leninism, the revolutionary method which has been tried and proven as the proletariat’s theoretical mainstay against the forces of capitalism, imperialism, and revisionism. In short, we are dogmatic in our intention to win, and the whole of our ideology and activity conforms to the demands of such an intention.”
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 12:08 am
Another Article I Wrote: On DialecticsQuote: 1.) INTRODUCTION Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the working class, that class which is daily being degraded, economically displaced and exploited. From our oppression stems many ideas – some which seek to escape the cynicism that stems from our alienation, and others which seek to grasp the situation for what it is and use the knowledge as a means of guiding ones practical revolutionary activity. The latter justly describes the philosophical core of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, known as dialectical materialism. What is dialectical materialism? What features distinguish it from other philosophical outlooks and why must it be studied? Dialectical materialism provides the progressive political activist, the scientist and the downtrodden workers with a point of view that is irreconcilably opposed to all understandings which reduce life to superstitious conclusions. In a word, it is a scientifically-oriented philosophy and a method of cognition that denotes the most general laws of motion and development of physical reality. A keen understanding of dialectal materialism is an indispensable weapon for any progressive, for it instills us with a need to understand the concrete conditions that face us. It teaches us to consider all sides of a situation and allows only sober analysis of the present, past and future. Without it, we are bound to find ourselves in the dark, falling into one-sided and idealistic conclusions which can only hinder those willing to combat the real enemies of the working class. Its fruits are grandiose in any field it might be applied, be it science or politics – it is a light that guides us through the fog. It is for this reason that dialectics must be taught. We will attempt to give the reader a simple and clear exposition of the fundamentals of this scientific method beginning with a brief history and explanation of it’s two component parts; philosophical materialism and the dialectical method. 2.) MATERIALIST PHILOSOPHY Materialism is the school of philosophy which asserts the primacy of physical reality. All which we can perceive around us as well as ourselves is objective; it exists outside of us and is independent of our perceptions and ability to experience it. For materialism, all phenomena has a physical or objective reason for occurring. Even though we may not be able to understand the cause of said phenomena immediately it does not mean that it is unknowable. Materialism excludes the intervention of direct human consciousness, ghosts, spirits, the alignment of the stars, a voodoo curse or some supreme being in the physical happenings around us. Reality does not know such things. The lack of evidence to support such claims coupled with new scientific discoveries occurring daily, more and more discredit the possibility of such superstitious conclusions. Many years ago, when science limited itself to the mere categorization of things in nature, it was believed that God was the source of all life on the planet and the multitude of species we see today have always existed. Darwin’s challenge to this widely-believed notion guided him to the scientific theory of evolution and the idea that animals, too, go through a constant process of adaptation and change. Fossils prove the existence and evolution of species over time, which left little room for superstition once our understanding of biology grew. For the materialist, the more our knowledge grows the more we come to realize that the world around us has a rational and material cause. The materialist outlook trains us to appreciate the time we have on Earth to the fullest, for it is the only place and only consciousness we know. Without the notion of metaphysics we are thus compelled to change the world we live in to fit our needs instead of hoping for an afterlife or a heaven, and dedicate ourselves to the work that is required to liberate ourselves in this reality. Such is the materialist philosophical outlook. There are those who stand against philosophical materialism. In fact, it may be said that the whole history of philosophical development is categorized between two philosophies: materialism and idealism. What is idealism? Idealism is the notion that our thoughts or “essence” is primary. Reality is either the creation of a God or an absolute idea (objective idealism) or that reality is nothing more than our individual experiences and perceptions (subjective idealism). The major shortcoming of this school of philosophy is that it either refuses to recognize the objectivity and independence of reality to man, or if it does recognizes reality, idealism sees it as the creation and will of supernatural something that we cannot comprehend. In a word; it seeks to replace objective reality with a fake or imagined one. The consequences are clear – in reality there are laws governing the universe such as gravity and consequence. A fine example would be an organism needing subsistence. People need to eat, and if they don’t they will die. If reality was merely a creation of our subjective experiences and perceptions, wouldn’t it be enough to simply will ourselves out of the need to eat? In order to fly, can we simply convince ourselves that gravity is a myth? The notion exposes it’s own absurdity. For the materialist, our ideas are nothing more than physical reality reflected on our minds through our senses. Ideas do not simply come out of a vacuum; they are the culmination of experiences and perceptions we collect from day to day life. In order to cook, we must first learn how for the simple fact that we are not born with such knowledge. We would do well to point out that the brain (which is the source of our consciousness) is also made out of matter. Thought is the result of a physical process taking place within our brain. There are many people in the world who follow the idealist world outlook. We’re quite confident that any reader can recall the tale, be it a movie or a child’s story book, where through strength of will or an overly optimistic mindset the protagonist emerges victorious. Simply believing they would make it got them to where they needed to go. While it cannot be denied that an optimistic mindset can lead us to practical and fruitful activity, mindset alone is not the only factor in the unfolding of reality. When one invests so much weight into the capabilities of the human mind, one inevitably falls into a one-sided consideration; it teaches us not to look at things for what they are, but for how we perceive them to be. In other words, “mind over matter.” The mind does not create and cannot control objective reality. We live in a class society where members of the working class are oppressed – the capitalist media and scholars are always trying to blur the distinction between reality and fiction, for if we were to realize that the capitalists wealth is founded upon our labor there is little chance we would allow this society to continue. Human cognition is a complex thing. It’s tempting to fill in the gaps between issues we don’t fully understand with mystical answers, such as explaining earthquakes with the presence of evil spirits rather than the shifting of tectonic plates. It’s for these reasons a materialist outlook is so important – it leads us to understand how things actually are so we can change them for the betterment of ourselves. Things do not exist for their own sake, outside of our grasp. Things exist and they can be understood and used for our own advancement. Only with a materialist outlook combined with a dialectic method can we better grasp the world around us. This begs the question; What is the dialectic method? 3.) THE DIALECTIC METHOD Dialectics was initially a particular kind of dialogue invented in Ancient Greece in which two or more people holding different points of view about a subject seek to establish the truth of the matter by dialogue with reasoned arguments. (1) Today dialectics denotes a mode of cognition which recognizes the most general laws of motion, contradiction and new development. There exist four “laws” to the dialectical method. They are; 1) Everything is in a constant state of motion, development and change. 2) Everywhere there exist opposing forces which are mutually exclusive yet cannot exist without the other. Their conflict results in movement. 3) Change occurs suddenly, all at once. A quantitative amount of something results in a qualitative change (a “breaking” point). 4) Development moves in spirals, from lower to higher planes of development. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (or Hegel for short) was the first to convert dialectics into a comprehensive (more or less) system of thought. For Hegel, dialectics was a process occurring in the human mind. In Marx’s words: “To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea”. (2) The Hegelian dialectic of course, suffered majorly from the fact that it was founded on a idealist basis. Karl Marx was one of the first to recognize this. Judging Hegel’s system from a materialist standpoint he concluded that all ideas have their rational, material source of origin. In Marx’s words: “The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.” (3) Thus, by combining the materialist philosophical outlook with Hegel’s dialectical method we come to what is referred to as dialectical materialism. 4.) DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM Dialectical materialism is the recognition of a transient nature – a physical reality in constant motion and change. What makes dialectical materialism a revolutionary scientific method is that it excludes all static states, all metaphysical views of reality, all one-sidedness and inflexibility. Because it recognizes the concrete and present side of things, at the same time it acknowledges that this present state is bound to end. For dialectal materialism, the only absolute is that there are no eternal absolutes. If we apply this to capitalist society, with all its multitudes of forms, processes and contradictions, it is easy to see why the Marxist-Leninist outlook is degraded by the capitalists – because it boldly proclaims that they and their system of oppression are numbered. Nothing in nature exists forever and neither will the capitalists. 5.) THE UNIVERSALITY OF NATURE “The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved not by a few juggled phrases, but by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science.” – F.Engels According to the materialist premise that the world surrounding us is objective and not subjective, it follows that all forms of matter and their various processes are physical. The essence of the above quote is thus; because everything exists in matter and one of the fundamental laws of physics is cause and effect, we can conclude that every phenomena in nature occurs for a physical reason. Nature is thus unified. Effects are the predetermined consequence of a cause. If we drop a rock into a pool of water, it sinks to the bottom. The mass of the rock has greater density than that of the water, and therefore it sinks below the surface. Not every effect rigidly follows a certain cause. If we take smoking cigarettes for an example, the habit has the effect of lung cancer. While it is true and proven that smoking does cause lung cancer, it does not necessarily follow the person will always develop lung cancer. Some other factors may interfere; perhaps the smoker passes away before lung cancer can develop, perhaps he does not smoke enough for his lungs to be adversely effected. In order for a cause to have the intended effect, all conditions must be met. If certain conditions are not met, it is likely that some other casual cause may interfere with the first. Dialectical materialism recognizes that there are effects which occur out of necessity (i.e. species adaptation) and that some effects are causal and happen on accident. One of the fundamental ways of properly applying dialectical materialism is being able to examine issues objectively and from all angles, to see all the factors that give rise to a particular event, as well as the direction the events will lead, and other factors that may develop. 6.) NATURE KNOWS NO REST Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. As we mentioned earlier, everything in nature is transient, finite, and in motion. Matter cannot exist without motion. Everything has its beginning and its end. People are born, grow and eventually pass away. Stars such as our sun eventually begin to die, either slowly burning out or self-destructing. Species evolve, adapt, or go extinct. Rain falls from the clouds, evaporates back into the clouds where it will once again rain. Human society is also part of nature and is therefore subject to the same laws. Human society began in primitive communism and eventually tribal relations. As society grew and the division of labor became more complex, classes formed and slave society was born. This kind of society also passed away as the production of goods became so efficient that it was now possible to produce goods for the sole purpose of exchanging them on the market – capitalism was born. Despite the fact many claim capitalism is immortal, that it is the highest form of human society, the indisputable fact remains that not even capitalism will last forever, for capitalism too, is part of nature and nature knows no final state. This is the most important issue regarding Marxism-Leninism and capitalism. We know that capitalism will come to an end for nature knows no rest. Humanity faces two choices: either we consciously work towards a system where the productive forces of society are the common property of the working class, or capitalism plunges itself into destruction and threatens the existence of the human race. We are aware of the laws around us and it is precisely that awareness (dialectical materialism) that grants us the ability to do something about it, to make sure things play out in our favor – for the power of knowledge is the power of change. 7.) THE UNITY OF OPPOSING FORCES The principle governing all growth and development is the idea of opposition and contradiction. Two mutually exclusive forces which at the same time cannot exist without each other has been a common theme in many philosophies for a long time (i.e. yin and yang) exactly because such processes occurring around us reflect this concept upon our minds. Applying this concept is important to dialectic though. Such contradictory struggles are not always obvious to us. There are simple ones, such as hot and cold, wet and dry, high and low, light and dark. These concepts are familiar to us and none of these opposites can exist without the other. We would do especially well to emphasize that not all struggles and contradictions are so simplistic. To better elucidate this concept, let us take the example of a fish that instinctively tries to live so that he may continue to populate his species. There is of course a contradiction to life (life is our “thesis”), and that is death (death with be our “antithesis”). In the course of its life, the fish is surrounded by hostile elements – predators, unfitting temperature, lack of food – all of which are the embodiment of the antithesis. If our fish is wise, he may be able to overcome these trials long enough so that it can breed and continue the precious life cycle. At times he will be successful, others he will fail. The development of the course of his existence depends on how well he is able to adapt. How will this end? We know it must at some point. The will to live and the need to die will eventually come to it’s dramatic conclusion. This brings us to the next fundamental “law” of dialectical materialism. 8.) QUANTITATIVE CHANGES LEAD TO QUALITATIVE FORMS The basis of quality into quantity is simple; a certain amount of something will result in a change of appearance or form. Returning to the life of our fish, if his adaptive capabilities are bountiful, we will see a qualitative change in his mode of living. He will grow and produce offspring. On the inverse; if the conditions that would otherwise kill the fish are overwhelming, he will meet an untimely end. If we take another example such as water, we see that if we add or subtract a certain amount of heat eventually the water will change it’s qualitative form from a liquid into a solid (ice) or a gas (steam). Such changes are usually gradual and aren’t readily noticeable. Only when one opposite has quantitatively changed to the point where it is able to overcome the other opposite does the qualitative change become obvious. Gradual changes always result in a crisis, a breaking point, where one opposite is negated by the other. When the qualitative change takes place, we call this a leap. If we have a balloon and continue to add air, the balloon will get bigger and bigger. One the one hand, the rubber can only stretch so far, while on the other hand we keep adding air. Eventually, the rubber will no longer be able to contain the air and a leap occurs where the qualitative form of the balloon changes from an object of childhood delight to a ripped piece of rubber. Nature is rife with leaps. If we acknowledge this fundamental aspect of dialectical materialism it will be easy to see unfolding stride of nature to newer and higher forms – a concept that is especially important concerning the fate of human society. 9.) THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATURE FROM LOWER TO HIGHER FORMS Progress is a fact of nature. We see new forms of matter in development always and everywhere, one coming into existence and the other one dying away. Let’s recall the concept of opposites. Both sides are mutually exclusive yet cannot exist without the other. When one of these opposites is negated and a leap occurs, the old form has died. We have reached a higher form of development. Still, these higher forms will contain the most viable aspects of the previous form. If we recall the transformation of liquid water into steam – on a molecular level, it is still water, but the added heat, which speeds up the movement of the atoms, results in a change of physical appearance, a newer or “higher” form of water. Once again, let us look at modern capitalist society for an example of dialectal materialism in action. Two opposites exist; the working class and the capitalists. The worker must work in order to receive a paycheck that the worker then uses to buy things s/he needs to live. The capitalist, on the other hand, needs the worker so that s/he may create a valuable product or service that the capitalist can sell to make a profit. The capitalist gains by longer hours and less pay for the worker. The worker gains by more pay and less hours. These opposites have diametrically opposed interests, yet they cannot exist without each other. Eventually, the poverty that is imposed upon the worker coupled with the realization of their position will lead to a breaking point. A revolution occurs, the capitalists are put to an end as well as their mode of production, and socialism is born. The productive forces themselves are retained and advanced, the means of production are commonly owned and a higher and more advanced form of human society is achieved. While it is true things may stagnate, even regress, it is progress that always triumphs in the end. It is on these grounds that we should always combat against all things reactionary, be it in politics or science. To go backwards goes against one of the fundamental laws of reality and can only hinder our species. 10.) DEVELOPMENT ALWAYS OCCURS IN SPIRALS When things reach a higher form, they carry aspects of the old but in a more advanced compilation. These advancements aren’t always clear. The seed from a tree, for example, will fall from the tree and into the ground. From there, assuming conditions are ripe, it will begin to take root and change forms. Soon enough it will become a full-grown tree. Although it appears at first glance that it is simply a repetition of the previous tree, it is not. Firstly, the new and old tree are separated in time and space. Secondly, the direction of the roots, branches and grooves on the trunk are all different. The tree is “higher” in that it is a continuation of the old tree and that it is newer. The tree represents the same fundamental object, but on a “higher” basis. Many have heard or abide by the notion that “history repeats itself.” The dialectical materialist method rejects this notion as a farce for the same reasons we do not consider the new tree to be an exact repeat of the old. True, parallels can be drawn from two points in history, just as parallels can be drawn from the two trees, but like the two trees, two points in history are separated in time and in space, and if we consider the specific economic conditions we will find that they are fundamentally different, for they follow different courses of development and are no more than continuations of older forms. They can’t possibly be exactly the same. Likewise; communism as an economic system existed in primitive society, where the division of labor was next to nothing and all forms of production were held in common. We will again have communism, only this time it will be on a higher basis (advanced means of production, distribution, etc). It will, like in primitive communism, have a common ownership of the means of production and a greatly eroded division of labor but it will differ in space and time as well as specific characteristics such as labor methods. Thus we see, nature moves in spirals, not circles! 11.) CONCLUSION To summarize: dialectical materialism denotes a physical reality which is in a constant state of change due to inner strife and contradiction, always progressing to newer and higher forms. It lays bare the most general laws of development and motion – rendering us a great service in any field in which we choose to apply it. This scientific mode of cognition allows us to more readily understand the problems life presents us with. If we are to understand that nothing lasts forever, it becomes our imperative to study where new developments are proceeding. The historical mission of the working class is thus elucidated – deriving from the exploitation that is present, armed with the knowledge of the inevitable collapse of the capitalist system, with an eye to the concrete political conditions stemming from class struggle, we are able to play our cards in such a manner that guarantees working class victory. This is not to say dialectical materialism can take the place of specific sciences. With life and all its complexities, the most important thing for us to learn is how to apply dialectical materialism creatively. As was mentioned several times throughout this article, the answers aren’t always right in front of us. Dialectical materialism shows the most general laws of motion and development become more complex when dealing with specific processes. Understand phenomena in context, its particular features and circumstances. This is the only way we will grasp situations with the utmost depth and clarity, which in turn will guide us to the proper course of action. Dialectical materialism is our guiding light, a way for us to understand and change the world we live in – for the better. Sources 1) Plato’s Republic 2) Capital vol.1, Afterword to the Second German edition. 3) Ibid.
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