Bertell Ollman is one of my favorite Marxist writers, and not just because he introduced me to the wonderful world of pugs, Ruby Fu!). Perhaps best known for his popularizations of the renegade Marxo-psychologist Wilhelm Reich, Ollman also wrote the classic study of Marx's concept of Alienation. And, of course, he's the mastermind behind the cult classic boardgame Class Struggle, a play on Monopoly where every player picks a social class... and it's on! No, for real real!
As a prof, Bert's a student favorite at New York University (boo, hiss) for his lively classes and interest in learning. So, I was tickled to find a recent essay of his on dialectics at the Canadian Autonomy and Solidarity website in the midst of all the discussions breaking out on Red Flags. (Regular readers may have noticed that I'm adding feeds to the site. A&S was among the first.
So, the dialectics thing. Some claim it doesn't "exist," other use the term to justify any far-fetched claim... "hey, I know it sounds like gibberish... that's dialectics, baby!"
Not quite. Ollman wrote a great general introduction to this widely misuderstood method, and here shares a quick piece that's germaine to recent discussions about philosophy and the scientific claims of Marxism. The full text follows.
Why Dialectics? Why Now? (or, how to see the communist future in the capitalist present)
By Bertell Ollman
I.
But whereas seeing someone steal a goose from off the commons is a relatively simple matter—you only have to be there, to open your eyes, and to look—seeing someone steal the commons from under the goose is not, neither then nor now (Russia today is a possible exception). Here, the theft is accomplished only gradually; the person acting is often an agent for someone else; force is used, but so are laws and ideology. In short, to recognize a case of C.F.U.G., one has to grasp the bigger picture and the longer time that it takes for it to come together. It's not easy, but there is nothing that we study that is more important. Hence—and no matter what happened in the Soviet Union and in China—Marxism will continue to be relevant until we reclaim the commons from those who stole it from us and who go on helping themselves to it with impunity right up to this moment.
Just how difficult it is to grasp the bigger picture was recently brought home to us when a group of astronomers announced that they had discovered what they called "The Great Attractor". This is a huge structure composed of many galaxies that is exerting a strong attraction on our galaxy and therefore on our solar system and on the planet on which we live. When questioned as to why something so big was not discovered earlier, one of the astronomers replied that its very size was responsible for the delay. These scientists had focused so intently on its parts that they couldn't see what they were parts of.
Capitalism is a huge structure very similar to the Great Attractor. It, too, has a major effect on everything going on inside it, but it is so big and so omni-present that few see it. In capitalism, the system consists of a complex set of relations between all people, their activities (particularly material production) and products. But this interaction is also evolving, so the system includes the development of this inter-action over time, stretching back to its origins and forward to whatever it is becoming. The problem people have in seeing capitalism, then—and recognizing instances of G.F.O.C. Studies when they occur—comes from the difficulty of grasping such a complex set of relations that are developing in this way and on this scale.
No one will deny, of course, that everything in society is related in some way and that the whole of this is changing, again in some way and at some pace. Yet, most people try to make sense of what is going on by viewing one part of society at a time, isolating and separating it from the rest, and treating it as static. The connections between such parts, like their real history and potential for further development, are considered external to what each one really is, and therefore not essential to a full or even adequate understanding of any of them. As a result, looking for these connections and their history becomes more difficult than it has to be. They are left for last or left out completely, and important aspects of them are missed, distorted, or trivialized. It's what might be called the Humpty Dumpty problem. After the fall, it was not only extremely hard to put the pieces of poor Humpty together again, but even to see where they fit. This is what happens whenever the pieces of our everyday experience are taken as existing separate from their spatial and historical contexts, whenever the part is given an ontological status independent of the whole.
II
The alternative, the dialectical alternative, is to start by taking the whole as given, so that the interconnections and changes that make up the whole are viewed as inseparable from what anything is, internal to its being, and therefore essential to a full understanding of it. In the history of ideas, this has been called the "philosophy of internal relations". No new facts have been introduced. We have just recognized the complex relations and changes that everyone admits to being in the world in a way that highlights rather than dismisses or minimizes them in investigating any problem. The world of independent and essentially dead "things" has been replaced in our thinking by a world of "processes in relations of mutual dependence". This is the first step in thinking dialectically. But we still don't know anything specific about these relations.
In order to draw closer to the subject of study, the next step is to abstract out the patterns in which most change and interaction occur. A lot of the specialized vocabulary associated with dialectics—"contradiction", "quantity-quality change", "interpenetration of polar opposites", "negation of the negation", etc.—is concerned with this task. Reflecting actual patterns in the way things change and interact, these categories also serve as ways of organizing for purposes of thought and inquiry whatever it is they embrace. With their help, we can study the particular conditions, events and problems that concern us in a way that never loses sight of how the whole is present in the part, how it helps to structure the part, supplying it with a location, a sense and a direction. Later, what is learned about the part(s) is used to deepen our understanding of the whole, how it functions, how it has developed, and where it is tending. Both analysis and synthesis display this dialectical relation.
What's called "dialectical method" might be broken down into six successive moments. There is an ontological one having to do with what the world really is (an infinite number of mutually dependent processes—with no clear or fixed boundaries—that coalesce to form a loosely structured whole or totality). There is the epistemological moment that deals with how to organize our thinking in order to understand such a world (as indicated, this involves opting for a philosophy of internal relations and abstracting out the chief patterns in which change and interaction occur as well as the main parts in and between which they are seen to occur). There is the moment of inquiry (where, based on an assumption of internal relations between all parts, one uses the categories that convey these patterns along with a set of priorities derived from Marx's theories as aids to investigation). There is the moment of intellectual reconstruction or self-clarification (where one puts together the results of such research for oneself). This is followed by the moment of exposition (where, using a strategy that takes account of how others think as well as what they know, one tries to explain this dialectical grasp of the "facts" to a particular audience). And, finally, there is the moment of praxis (where, based on whatever clarification has been reached, one consciously acts in the world, changing it and testing it and deepening one's understanding of it all at the same time).
These six moments are not traversed once and for all, but again and again, as every attempt to understand and expound dialectical truths and to act upon them improves one's ability to organize one's thinking dialectically and to inquire further and deeper into the mutually dependent processes to which we also belong. In writing about dialectics, therefore, one must be very careful not to single out any one moment —as so many thinkers do—at the expense of the others. Only in their internal relations do these six moments constitute a workable and immensely valuable dialectical method.
So—Why Dialectics? Because that's the only sensible way to study a world composed of mutually dependent processes in constant evolution, and also to interpret Marx, who is our leading investigator into this world. Dialectics is necessary just to see capitalism, given its vastness and complexity, and Marxism to help us understand it, to instruct us in how to do "Commons From Under the Goose Studies", and to help us develop a political strategy to reclaim the commons. Capitalism is completely and always dialectical, so that Marxism will always be necessary to make sense of it, and dialectics to make correct sense of Marxism.
III
Why Now? The current stage of capitalism is characterized by far greater complexity and much faster change and interaction than existed earlier. But if society has never been so imbued with dialectics, the efforts to keep us from grasping what is taking place have never been so systematic or so effective—all of which makes a dialectical understanding more indispensable now than ever before.
Socialism's sudden loss of credibility as a viable alternative to capitalism, however, a loss largely due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, has given Marxists still another important reason to devote more attention to dialectics. For many socialists, even some who had always been critical of the Soviet Union, have reacted to this recent turn of history by questioning whether any form of socialism is possible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one result has been a kind of "future shyness" that has afflicted the writings of many on the Left today. What does a critical analysis of capitalism without any accompanying conception of socialism look like? It describes how capitalism works, shows who gets "screwed" and by how much, offers a moral condemnation of same, prescribes—faute de mieux—reformist solutions, and—because these no longer work—lapses into emotional despair and cynicism. Sound familiar?
Marx would not have been pleased, for, despite the absence of any single work on socialism/communism, there are no writings of his, no matter how small, where we are not given some indication of what such a future would be like. If Hegel's Owl of Minerva comes out and also goes back in at dusk, Marx's Owl stays around to herald the new dawn. This imaginative reconstruction of the future has been sharply attacked not only by his opponents but by many of Marx's followers, such as Edward Bernstein (Bernstein, 1961, 204-5, 209-ll) and, more recently, Eric Wright (Wright, l995), who view it as a lapse into utopianism that contaminates his otherwise scientific enterprise. But do all discussions of the future have to be "utopian"? With Rosa Luxemburg (Luxemburg, 1966, 40) and others, I do not think it is utopian to believe that a qualitatively better society is possible or to hope that it comes about. What is utopian is to construct this society out of such hopes, to believe, in other words, that such a society is possible without any other reason or evidence but that you desire it.
As opposed to this utopian approach, Marx insisted that communism lies "concealed" inside capitalism, and that he is able to uncover it by means of his analysis (Marx, l973, l59). And elsewhere, he says, "we wish to find the new world through the critique of the old" (Marx, l967, 212). Rather than a moral condemnation, Marx's "critique of the old" shows that capitalism is having increasing difficulty in reproducing the conditions necessary for its own existence, that it is becoming impossible, while at the same time—and through the same developments—creating the conditions for the new society that will follow. The new world exists within the old in the form of a vast and untapped potential. Marx analyses capitalism in a way that makes this unfolding potential for turning into its opposite (communism) stand out. As part of this, he is not averse to describing, if only in a general way, what the realization of this potential would look like.1
The central place of potential in dialectical thinking has been noted by a variety of thinkers. C.L.R. James refered to the internal relation between actuality and potentiality as "the entire secret" of Hegel's dialectics (meaning Marx's as well) (James, 1992, 129). Marcuse claimed to find an insoluble bond between the present and the future in the very meanings of the concepts with which Marx analyses the present (Marcuse, 1964, 295-6). Maximilien Rubel made a similar point when he suggested, half seriously, that Marx invented a new grammatical form, the "anticipative-indicative", where every effort to point at something in front of him foreshadows something else that is not yet there (Rubel, 1987, 25). But this still doesn't explain how Marx does it. Where exactly is the future concealed in the present? And how does Marx's dialectical method help him to uncover it?
In brief: most of the evidence for the possibility of socialism/communism surrounds us on all sides, and can be seen by everyone. It lies in conditions that don't seem to have anything particularly socialist about them, such as our developed industries, enormous material wealth, high levels of science, occupational skills, organizational structures, education, and culture; and also in conditions that already have a socialist edge to them, such as workers and consumers cooperatives, public education, municipal hospitals, political democracy, and—in our day —nationalized enterprises. Evidence for socialism can also be found in some of capitalism's worst problems, such as unemployment and worsening inequality. For Marx and his followers, it is clear that it is the capitalist context in which all these conditions are embedded that keeps them from fulfilling their potential and contributing to a truly human existence. Abstracting from this context, Marxists have no difficulty in looking at our enormous wealth and ability to produce more and seeing an end to material want, or looking at our limited and malfunctioning political democracy and seeing everyone democratically running all of society, or looking at rising unemployment and seeing the possibility of people sharing whatever work is to be done, working fewer hours and enjoying more free time, and so on. Unfortunately, most others who encounter the same evidence don't see this potential, not even in the parts that have a socialist edge to them. And it is important to consider why they can't.
Investigating potential is taking the longer view, not only forward to what something can develop into but also backward to how it has developed up to now. This longer view, however, must be preceded by taking a broader view, since nothing and no one changes on its or his own but only in close relationship with other people and things, that is as part of an interactive system. Hence, however limited the immediate object of interest, investigating its potential requires that we project the evolution of the complex and integrated whole to which it belongs. The notion of potential is mystified whenever it is applied to a part that is separated from its encompassing system or that system is separated from its origins. When that happens, "potential" can only refer to possibility in the sense of chance, for all the necessity derived from the relational and processual character of reality has been removed, and there is no more reason to expect one outcome rather than another.
The crux of the problem most people have in seeing evidence for socialism inside capitalism, then, is that they operate with a conception of the present that is effectively sealed off from the future, at least any notion of the future that grows organically out of the present. There is no sense of the present as a moment through which life, and the rest of reality as the conditions of life, passes from somewhere on its way to somewhere. When someone is completely lost in the past or the future, we have little difficulty recognizing this as a mental illness. Yet, the present completely walled off from either the past or the future (or both) can also serve as a prison for thinking, though "alienation" is a more accurate label for this condition than "neurosis". Here, people simply take how something appears now for what it really is, what it is in full, and what it could only be. With the exception of the gadgetry found in science fiction, what they call the "future" is filled with social objects that are only slightly modified from how they appear and function in the present.
With this mind-set, there is no felt need to trace the relations any thing has with other things as part of a system—even while admitting that such a system exists—for, supposedly, there is nothing essential to be learned about it by doing so. Likewise, operating with narrow, independent parts that are also static, there is no difficulty in admitting that there was a past and will be a future while ignoring both when trying to understand anything in the present. If people can't see the evidence for socialism that exists all around them, therefore, it is not mainly because of an inability to abstract elements from capitalism and imaginatively project how they might function elsewhere. Rather, and more fundamentally, the conditions they see about them do not seem to belong to any social system at all, so there is no system to take them out of and, equally, no system to insert them into. The systemic and historical characters of both capitalism and socialism that would allow for such projections are simply missing.
IV
The dialectic enters this picture as Marx's way of systematizing and historicizing all the conditions of capitalism, so that they become internally related elements of an organic whole, which is itself but the most visible moment in how its components got that way and what they may yet become. With this move, the present ceases to be a prison for thinking, and, like the past and the future, becomes a stage in a temporal process with necessary and discoverable relations to the rest of the process. It is by analyzing a present conceived in this way that Marx believes he can discern the broad outlines of the socialist and communist societies that lie ahead.
The dialectical method with which Marx studies this future inside the capitalist present consists of four main steps. l) He looks for relations between the main capitalist features of our society at this moment in time. 2) He tries to find the necessary pre-conditions of just these relations—viewing them now as mutually dependent processes—in the past, treating the pre-conditions he uncovers as the start of an unfolding movement that led to the present. 3) He then projects these interrelated processes, reformulated as contradictions, from the past, through the present, and into the future. These projections move from the immediate future, to the probable resolution of these contradictions in an intermediate future, and on to the type of society that is likely to follow in the more distant future. 4) Marx then reverses himself, and uses the socialist and communist stages of the future at which he has arrived as vantage points for reexamining the present extended back in time to include its own past, now viewed as the sum of the necessary preconditions for such a future.
Before elaborating on these steps, there are two qualifications and one clarification that need to be made. First, it should be clear that explaining how to study the future is not the same as actually making such a study. In the former, which is the case here, the details brought forward are meant to illustrate the approach and should not be taken as the results of an already completed study, though I have taken care to use only realistic examples. The second qualification has to do with Aristotle's warning that in undertaking any study we should not expect more precision than the nature of our subject permits. The potential within capitalism for socialism is real enough, but it is often unclear and always imprecise, both as regards the exact forms that will develop and as regards timing or the moment at which the expected changes will occur. In short, in investigating the future within the present, we must be careful not to insist on a standard for knowledge that can never be met.
The clarification has to do with the fact that the future that Marx uncovers by projecting the outcome of society's contradictions is not all of one piece. Marx's varied projections make it necessary to divide the future into four different stages, communism being but the last. Through his analysis of capitalism, as a system in the present that emerges out of its preconditions in the past, Marx also projects its immediate future (or its development over the next few years), the near future (or the coming of the crisis that results in a socialist revolution), a middle future or transition between capitalism and communism that we call "socialism", and, finally, the far future or communism. How Marx uses his dialectical method for inquiring into what lies ahead varies somewhat depending on the stage of the future he is concerned with. While our interest here is limited to what I've called the "middle" and "far" futures, Marx's treatment of the "immediate" and especially the "near" futures cannot be wholly ignored, since the outcomes he projects for them enter into his expectations for socialism and communism.
V
Keeping these qualifications and this clarification clearly in mind, we can return to the four steps by which Marx sought to steal the secret of the future from its hiding place in the present. The first step, as I said, was to trace the main lines of the organic interaction that characterizes capitalist society—particularly as regards the accumulation of capital and the class struggle—at this moment of time. In order to focus on what is distinctively capitalist in our situation, Marx has to abstract out (omit) those qualities—equally real, and, for different kinds of problems, equally important—that belong to our society as part of other systems, such as human society (which takes in the whole history of the species), or class society (which takes in the entire period of class history), or modern capitalist society (which only takes in the most recent stage of capitalism), or the unique society that exists at this time in this place (which only takes in what is here and now). Every society and everything in them are composed of qualities that fall on these different levels of generality. Taken together—which is how most people approach them—they constitute a confusing patchwork of ill fitting pieces that makes the systemic connections that exist on any single level very difficult to perceive. By starting with the decision to exclude all non-capitalist levels of generality from his awareness, to focus provisionally on the capitalist character of the people, activities, and products before him, Marx avoids tripping on what human society or class history or the other levels mentioned have placed in his way in carrying out his work as our leading systematizer of capitalism.
The widespread view of capitalism as the sum of everything in our society rather than the capitalist "slice" of it has been responsible for repeated complaints, most recently from post-modernists and social movement theorists, that Marx ignores the role of race, gender, nation, and religion. He ignores them, at least in his systematic writings, because they all predate capitalism, and consequently cannot be part of what is distinctive about capitalism. Though all of these conditions take on capitalist forms to go along with their forms as part of class society or the life of the species, their most important qualities fall on the latter levels of generality, and it is there (and on us in so far as we are subject to these levels) that they have their greatest impact. Uncovering the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production, however, which was the major goal of Marx's investigative effort, simply required a more restricted focus.
With the distinctive qualities of capitalism in focus, Marx proceeds to examine the most important interactions in the present from different vantage points, though economic processes, particularly in production, are privileged, both as vantage points and as material to be studied. To avoid the overemphasis and trivialization that marks most one sided studies, the relation between labor and capital is examined from each side in turn, and the same applies to all the major relations that Marx treats. Of equal significance is the fact that internal relations are taken to exist between all objective and subjective factors, so that conditions never come into Marx's study without umbilical ties to the people who affect and are affected by them, and the same applies to people—they are always grasped in context, with the essentials of this context taken as part of who and what they are. Capital, as Marx says, "is at the same time the capitalist" (Marx, l973)
After reconstituting the capitalist present in this manner, the second step Marx takes in his quest to unlock the future is to examine the preconditions of this present in the past. If the dialectical study of the present treats its subject matter as so many Relations, a dialectical study of the past requires that we view these Relations as also processes. History comes to mean the constant, if uneven, evolution of mutually dependent conditions. The past, of course, takes place before the present, and in retelling the story one usually begins at the beginning and moves forward. But the correct order in inquiry is present first, and it is what Marx uncovers in his reconstruction of the present that guides him in his search into the past, helping him decide what to look for as well as how far back to go in looking for it. The question posed is what had to happen in the past for the present to become what it did? This is not to suggest that what occurred was preordained (though there may have been good reasons for it); only that it did in fact take place, and that it had these results. It is in following this approach that Marx is led to late feudalism as the period when most of the important preconditions for capitalism are first laid down.
VI
After reconstructing the organic interaction of the capitalist present and establishing its origins in the past, Marx is ready to project the main tendencies that he finds there into one or another stage of the future. As part of this third step in his method, Marx re-abstracts (reorganizes, rethinks) these tendencies as "contradictions", which emphasizes their interaction as processes that are simultaneously mutually supporting and mutually undermining one another. Over time, it is the undermining activities that prevail. The fundamental assumption that underlies Marx's practise here is that reality is an internally related whole with temporal as well as spatial dimensions. Things that are separate and independent (if this is how one conceives them) cannot be in contradiction, since contradiction implies that an important change in any part will produce changes of a comparable magnitude throughout the system. Just as things that are static (again, if this is how one conceives them) cannot be in a contradiction, since contradiction implies there is a collision up ahead. The use of "contradiction" in formal logic and to refer to some relations between the categories of capitalist political economy (the province of systematic Dialectics—see chapter 11), rather than true exceptions, offer instances of Marx's willingness—evident throughout his writings—to use a concept to convey only part of all that it can mean for him. Finally, based on what has already been achieved in examining the present and the past, Marx's contradictions also contain both objective and subjective aspects as well as a high degree of economic content.
Marx's contradictions organize the present state of affairs in capitalism, including the people involved in them, in a way that brings out how this cluster of relations has developed, the pressures that are undermining their existing equilibrium, and the likely changes up ahead. With contradictions, the present comes to contain both its real past and likely future in a manner that allows each historical stage to cast a helpful light upon the others. Early in his career, Marx compared problems in society with those in algebra, where the solution is given once a problem receives its proper formulation (Marx, l967, l06). The solution to capitalism's problems, he believed, would also become clear once they were reformulated in terms of contradictions. It is chiefly by projecting such contradictions forward to the point of their resolution and beyond, where the character of the resolution gives shape to the elements of what follows, that Marx is able to catch a glimpse of both socialism and communism. The resolution of a contradiction can be partial and temporary or complete and permanent. In the former, as exemplified in the typical capitalist crisis, the elements involved are simply reordered in a way that puts off the arrival of the latter. Our concern here is with the kind of resolution that completely and permanently transforms all of capitalism's major contradictions.
Marx sees capitalism as full of intersecting and overlapping contradictions (Marx, l963, 218). Among the more important of these are the contradictions between use-value and exchange-value, between capital and labor in the production process (and between capitalists and workers in the class struggle), between capitalist forces and capitalist relations of production, between competition and cooperation, between science and ideology, between political democracy and economic servitude, and—perhaps most decisively—between social production and private appropriation (or what some have recast as the "logic of production vs. the logic of consumption"). In all of these contradictions, what I referred to earlier as the "evidence for socialism" inside capitalism can be found reorganized as so many mutually dependent tendencies evolving over time. Viewed as parts of capitalism's major contradictions, their current forms can only represent a passing moment in the unfolding of a larger potential.
Whatever necessity (best grasped as likelihood) is found in Marx's projection of a socialist revolution in what I referred to as the near future is the result of his demonstrating that the conditions underlying capitalism have become more and more difficult to reproduce while the conditions that make socialism possible have developed apace. All this is contained in capitalism's main contradictions. According to Marx's analysis, these contradictions display capitalism as becoming increasingly destructive, inefficient, irrational, and eventually impossible, while at the same time socialism is presented as becoming increasingly practical, rational, conceivable, necessary, and even obvious—notwithstanding all the alienated life conditions and the enormous consciousness industry that work to distort such facts. Consequently, for Marx, it is only a matter of time and opportunity before the then organization, consciousness and tactics of the rising class brings about the expected transformation.
VII
Marx's vision of what happens after the revolution is derived mainly from projecting the forms that the resolution of capitalism's major contradictions are likely to take in the hands of a new ruling class, the workers, who have already been significantly changed by their participation in a successful revolution, and who are guided primarily by their class interests in making all major decisions. And the most important of these interests is to abolish their exploitation as a class along with all the conditions that underpin it. How quickly they could accomplish this, of course, is another matter. The question, then, is not "Why would the workers do this?" but "Why—given their interests—when they come to power would they do anything else?".
For class interests to bear the weight put on them by this account of future prospects, we need to place the relations between different classes in earlier times, including their interests, inside the main contradictions that link the present with the past and the future. Only by understanding how capitalist class interests determine the forms and functions of what I called the "evidence for socialism" inside capitalism (step one), and how, in response to these same interests, all this has evolved over time (step two), can we begin to grasp how quickly these forms and functions would change in response to the demands of a new ruling class with different interests (step three). In other words, when the capitalists (and the feudal aristocracy and slave owners before them) acquired the power to shape society according to their class interests, they did so, and the workers will do likewise. If the workers' assumption of power together with the material conditions bequeathed by capitalism provide us with the possibility for socialism, it is the workers' peculiar class interests together with the removal of whatever interfered with the recognition of them under capitalism that supplies us with most of its necessity.
While Marx's vision of socialism (or the middle future) is derived mainly from the contradictions of capitalism, his vision of communism (or the far future) is derived not only from these contradictions (that is, from projecting the resolution of these contradictions beyond the attainment of socialism), but also from the contradictions Marx sees in class history and even in socialism itself, in so far as it is a distinctive class formation. After socialism has developed to a certain point—in particular, when everyone becomes a worker, all means of production are socialized, and democracy is extended to all walks of life—the contradictions that have existed since the very beginning of classes (having to do with the general form of the division of labor, private property, the state, etc.) come gradually to resolution. At the same time, and through the same processes, the contradictions that socialism still possesses as a class society (having to do with its own forms of the division of labor, private property and the state, which Marx sums up under "dictatorship of the proletariat") are also resolved. It is the resolution of the contradictions from all these overlapping periods—capitalism, class society and socialism—together with the forms of alienation associated with them that marks the qualitative leap from socialism to communism, and which makes the latter so hard for most people today to conceive.
To summarize: Marx begins to study the future by tracing the main organic interconnections in the capitalist present. He then looks for their preconditions in the past; and he concludes by projecting the chief tendencies found in both, abstracted now as contradictions, to their resolution and beyond for the stage of the future with which he is concerned. The order of the moves is—present, past, future (unlike most futurological attempts to peer ahead that move from the present directly to the future or, as in many utopian efforts, that go directly to the future, dispensing with the present altogether).
VIII
Marx's method for studying the future is still not complete. In a fourth and final step, Marx reverses himself and uses the socialist and communist stages of the future at which he has arrived as vantage points for reexamining the present, now viewed (together with its own past) as the necessary preconditions for such a future. This last, though little understood, is the indispensable means by which Marx provides the "finishing" touches to his analysis of capitalism. It is also part of his method for studying the future since the process I have described is an ongoing one. Building on what he learns from going through one series of steps, Marx begins the dance—the dance of the dialectic—all over again. For the work of reconstructing the present, finding its preconditions in the past, projecting its likely future, and seeking out the preconditions of this future in the present, now conceived of as an extension of the past, is never truly finished.
According to Marx, "The anatomy of the human being is the key to the anatomy of the ape" (Marx, l904, 300). The same applies to the relations between later and earlier stages of society, and in the same way that our present provides the key for understanding the past, the future (that is, the likely future, in so far as we can determine it) provides the key for understanding the present. It is Marx's grasp of communism, as unfinished as it is, for example, that helps him to see capitalism as the gateway to human history rather than its end, and makes it easier to distinguish the capitalist specific qualities of current society (those that serve as the preconditions of socialism) from the qualities it possesses as an instance of class and human societies. Communism also provides Marx with a standard by which the greater part of what exists today is found wanting as well as criteria for determining priorities for research and politics, distinguishing between the kind of changes capitalism can absorb from those that set transitional forces into motion.
The transparently class character of socialist society, epitomized in the notion of "the dictatorship of the proletariat", also makes it easier to grasp the more hidden class character of capitalism. We shouldn't be surprised, therefore, that insisting that the capitalist state, whatever its democratic pretensions, is a dictatorship of the capitalist class is the most effective way to innoculate people against the dangers of reformist politics (hence the theoretical loss incurred when the French and other communist parties removed all references to the dictatorship of the proletariat from their programs).
But above and beyond all this, revisiting the present from the vantage point of its likely future concretizes and hence makes visible the potential that exists throughout the present for just such a future. To William Faulkner's supposed remark, "The past is not dead—it is not even in the past", Marx could have added, "And the future is not unborn—it is not even in the future". Potential is the form in which the future exists inside the present, but until now it has been a form without a particular content just because it was open to every conceivable content. Now, everywhere one looks, one sees not only what is but what could be, what really could be, not simply because one desires it but because the aforementioned analysis has shown it to be so. Seeing the "facts" of capitalism as "evidence" of socialism becomes so many arguments for socialism. While, informing workers of and sensitizing them to the extraordinary possibilities that lie hidden inside their oppressive daily existence greatly increases their power to act politically by indicating how and with whom to act (all those who would benefit immediately from the enactment of these possibilities), just as it enhances their self-confidence that they can succeed. In sum, by enriching capitalism with the addition of communism, Marx's dialectical analysis "liberates" potential to play its indispensable role in helping to liberate us.
Taken altogether, the future proves to be as important in understanding the present and past as they are in understanding the future. And always, the return to the present from the future instigates another series of steps from the present to the past to the future, using what has just been learned to broaden and deepen the analysis at every stage.
IX
Before concluding, it needs to be stressed that the projections of the future obtained through the use of the method outlined here are only highly probable, and even then the pace and exact forms through which such change occurs owes too much to the specificity of a particular place, the vagaries of class struggle, and also to accident to be fully knowable beforehand. Marx, himself, as we know, recognized "barbarism" as a possible successor to capitalism, though he thought it very unlikely and devoted much less attention to this possibility that we need to after the blood curdling events of the past century.
To avoid other possible misunderstandings of what I have tried to do in this essay, I would like to add that my account of Marx's method is not meant to be either complete or final, but rather—in keeping with Marx's own approach to exposition—a first approximation to its subject matter. Further, I do not believe that Marx's use of contradiction to project existing potential is the only means he uses to uncover the socialist/communist future inside the capitalist present; it is simply the main one. Also, this approach to studying the future is not to be confused with Marx's strategies for presenting what he found, and hence with what he actually published, which always involved a certain amount of reordering that took the character of his audience into account. Nor am I maintaining that this is how Marx became a communist. That is a complex story in which Hegel's dialectic and Marx's unique appropriation of it are but part.
Once Marx constructed the chief elements of what came to be called "Marxism", however, projecting capitalism's main contradictions forward became his preferred approach for studying the future, providing that future with just the degree of clarity and necessity needed for him to use it in elaborating his analysis of the present (in doing his version of "Commons From Under the Goose Studies"). It is also the best way that we today can learn about a socialist future that is more than wishful thinking. Only then, too, can the vision of socialism, which has been so battered by recent events, fulfill its own potential as one of our most effective weapons in the class struggle. Putting this weapon in the hands of workers and other oppressed peoples, teaching them how to use it—to do this, to do this against all the pressures of the age—is largely why we need dialectics, and, with the world that capitalism has made teetering on the brink, why we need dialectics now more than ever.
---------------
1. For an attempt to reconstruct Marx's vision of socialism and communism from his scattered comments on this subject, see my book Social and Sexual Revolution (1979), chap. 3.
The commons, of course, was the land owned by everyone in the village. By the late middle-ages, feudal lords were claiming this land as their own private property. In universities today, we can discern two opposing kinds of scholarship, that which studies the people who steal a goose from off the commons ("Goose From Off the Commons Studies", or G.F.O.C. for short) and that which studies those who steal the commons from under the goose ("Commons From Under the Goose Studies", or C.F.U.G. for short). If the "mainstream" in practically every discipline consists almost entirely of the former, Marxism is our leading example of the latter."The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals a goose from off the common,
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from under the goose".
(15th century, English, Anonymous)
But whereas seeing someone steal a goose from off the commons is a relatively simple matter—you only have to be there, to open your eyes, and to look—seeing someone steal the commons from under the goose is not, neither then nor now (Russia today is a possible exception). Here, the theft is accomplished only gradually; the person acting is often an agent for someone else; force is used, but so are laws and ideology. In short, to recognize a case of C.F.U.G., one has to grasp the bigger picture and the longer time that it takes for it to come together. It's not easy, but there is nothing that we study that is more important. Hence—and no matter what happened in the Soviet Union and in China—Marxism will continue to be relevant until we reclaim the commons from those who stole it from us and who go on helping themselves to it with impunity right up to this moment.
Just how difficult it is to grasp the bigger picture was recently brought home to us when a group of astronomers announced that they had discovered what they called "The Great Attractor". This is a huge structure composed of many galaxies that is exerting a strong attraction on our galaxy and therefore on our solar system and on the planet on which we live. When questioned as to why something so big was not discovered earlier, one of the astronomers replied that its very size was responsible for the delay. These scientists had focused so intently on its parts that they couldn't see what they were parts of.
Capitalism is a huge structure very similar to the Great Attractor. It, too, has a major effect on everything going on inside it, but it is so big and so omni-present that few see it. In capitalism, the system consists of a complex set of relations between all people, their activities (particularly material production) and products. But this interaction is also evolving, so the system includes the development of this inter-action over time, stretching back to its origins and forward to whatever it is becoming. The problem people have in seeing capitalism, then—and recognizing instances of G.F.O.C. Studies when they occur—comes from the difficulty of grasping such a complex set of relations that are developing in this way and on this scale.
No one will deny, of course, that everything in society is related in some way and that the whole of this is changing, again in some way and at some pace. Yet, most people try to make sense of what is going on by viewing one part of society at a time, isolating and separating it from the rest, and treating it as static. The connections between such parts, like their real history and potential for further development, are considered external to what each one really is, and therefore not essential to a full or even adequate understanding of any of them. As a result, looking for these connections and their history becomes more difficult than it has to be. They are left for last or left out completely, and important aspects of them are missed, distorted, or trivialized. It's what might be called the Humpty Dumpty problem. After the fall, it was not only extremely hard to put the pieces of poor Humpty together again, but even to see where they fit. This is what happens whenever the pieces of our everyday experience are taken as existing separate from their spatial and historical contexts, whenever the part is given an ontological status independent of the whole.
II
The alternative, the dialectical alternative, is to start by taking the whole as given, so that the interconnections and changes that make up the whole are viewed as inseparable from what anything is, internal to its being, and therefore essential to a full understanding of it. In the history of ideas, this has been called the "philosophy of internal relations". No new facts have been introduced. We have just recognized the complex relations and changes that everyone admits to being in the world in a way that highlights rather than dismisses or minimizes them in investigating any problem. The world of independent and essentially dead "things" has been replaced in our thinking by a world of "processes in relations of mutual dependence". This is the first step in thinking dialectically. But we still don't know anything specific about these relations.
In order to draw closer to the subject of study, the next step is to abstract out the patterns in which most change and interaction occur. A lot of the specialized vocabulary associated with dialectics—"contradiction", "quantity-quality change", "interpenetration of polar opposites", "negation of the negation", etc.—is concerned with this task. Reflecting actual patterns in the way things change and interact, these categories also serve as ways of organizing for purposes of thought and inquiry whatever it is they embrace. With their help, we can study the particular conditions, events and problems that concern us in a way that never loses sight of how the whole is present in the part, how it helps to structure the part, supplying it with a location, a sense and a direction. Later, what is learned about the part(s) is used to deepen our understanding of the whole, how it functions, how it has developed, and where it is tending. Both analysis and synthesis display this dialectical relation.
What's called "dialectical method" might be broken down into six successive moments. There is an ontological one having to do with what the world really is (an infinite number of mutually dependent processes—with no clear or fixed boundaries—that coalesce to form a loosely structured whole or totality). There is the epistemological moment that deals with how to organize our thinking in order to understand such a world (as indicated, this involves opting for a philosophy of internal relations and abstracting out the chief patterns in which change and interaction occur as well as the main parts in and between which they are seen to occur). There is the moment of inquiry (where, based on an assumption of internal relations between all parts, one uses the categories that convey these patterns along with a set of priorities derived from Marx's theories as aids to investigation). There is the moment of intellectual reconstruction or self-clarification (where one puts together the results of such research for oneself). This is followed by the moment of exposition (where, using a strategy that takes account of how others think as well as what they know, one tries to explain this dialectical grasp of the "facts" to a particular audience). And, finally, there is the moment of praxis (where, based on whatever clarification has been reached, one consciously acts in the world, changing it and testing it and deepening one's understanding of it all at the same time).
These six moments are not traversed once and for all, but again and again, as every attempt to understand and expound dialectical truths and to act upon them improves one's ability to organize one's thinking dialectically and to inquire further and deeper into the mutually dependent processes to which we also belong. In writing about dialectics, therefore, one must be very careful not to single out any one moment —as so many thinkers do—at the expense of the others. Only in their internal relations do these six moments constitute a workable and immensely valuable dialectical method.
So—Why Dialectics? Because that's the only sensible way to study a world composed of mutually dependent processes in constant evolution, and also to interpret Marx, who is our leading investigator into this world. Dialectics is necessary just to see capitalism, given its vastness and complexity, and Marxism to help us understand it, to instruct us in how to do "Commons From Under the Goose Studies", and to help us develop a political strategy to reclaim the commons. Capitalism is completely and always dialectical, so that Marxism will always be necessary to make sense of it, and dialectics to make correct sense of Marxism.
III
Why Now? The current stage of capitalism is characterized by far greater complexity and much faster change and interaction than existed earlier. But if society has never been so imbued with dialectics, the efforts to keep us from grasping what is taking place have never been so systematic or so effective—all of which makes a dialectical understanding more indispensable now than ever before.
Socialism's sudden loss of credibility as a viable alternative to capitalism, however, a loss largely due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, has given Marxists still another important reason to devote more attention to dialectics. For many socialists, even some who had always been critical of the Soviet Union, have reacted to this recent turn of history by questioning whether any form of socialism is possible. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one result has been a kind of "future shyness" that has afflicted the writings of many on the Left today. What does a critical analysis of capitalism without any accompanying conception of socialism look like? It describes how capitalism works, shows who gets "screwed" and by how much, offers a moral condemnation of same, prescribes—faute de mieux—reformist solutions, and—because these no longer work—lapses into emotional despair and cynicism. Sound familiar?
Marx would not have been pleased, for, despite the absence of any single work on socialism/communism, there are no writings of his, no matter how small, where we are not given some indication of what such a future would be like. If Hegel's Owl of Minerva comes out and also goes back in at dusk, Marx's Owl stays around to herald the new dawn. This imaginative reconstruction of the future has been sharply attacked not only by his opponents but by many of Marx's followers, such as Edward Bernstein (Bernstein, 1961, 204-5, 209-ll) and, more recently, Eric Wright (Wright, l995), who view it as a lapse into utopianism that contaminates his otherwise scientific enterprise. But do all discussions of the future have to be "utopian"? With Rosa Luxemburg (Luxemburg, 1966, 40) and others, I do not think it is utopian to believe that a qualitatively better society is possible or to hope that it comes about. What is utopian is to construct this society out of such hopes, to believe, in other words, that such a society is possible without any other reason or evidence but that you desire it.
As opposed to this utopian approach, Marx insisted that communism lies "concealed" inside capitalism, and that he is able to uncover it by means of his analysis (Marx, l973, l59). And elsewhere, he says, "we wish to find the new world through the critique of the old" (Marx, l967, 212). Rather than a moral condemnation, Marx's "critique of the old" shows that capitalism is having increasing difficulty in reproducing the conditions necessary for its own existence, that it is becoming impossible, while at the same time—and through the same developments—creating the conditions for the new society that will follow. The new world exists within the old in the form of a vast and untapped potential. Marx analyses capitalism in a way that makes this unfolding potential for turning into its opposite (communism) stand out. As part of this, he is not averse to describing, if only in a general way, what the realization of this potential would look like.1
The central place of potential in dialectical thinking has been noted by a variety of thinkers. C.L.R. James refered to the internal relation between actuality and potentiality as "the entire secret" of Hegel's dialectics (meaning Marx's as well) (James, 1992, 129). Marcuse claimed to find an insoluble bond between the present and the future in the very meanings of the concepts with which Marx analyses the present (Marcuse, 1964, 295-6). Maximilien Rubel made a similar point when he suggested, half seriously, that Marx invented a new grammatical form, the "anticipative-indicative", where every effort to point at something in front of him foreshadows something else that is not yet there (Rubel, 1987, 25). But this still doesn't explain how Marx does it. Where exactly is the future concealed in the present? And how does Marx's dialectical method help him to uncover it?
In brief: most of the evidence for the possibility of socialism/communism surrounds us on all sides, and can be seen by everyone. It lies in conditions that don't seem to have anything particularly socialist about them, such as our developed industries, enormous material wealth, high levels of science, occupational skills, organizational structures, education, and culture; and also in conditions that already have a socialist edge to them, such as workers and consumers cooperatives, public education, municipal hospitals, political democracy, and—in our day —nationalized enterprises. Evidence for socialism can also be found in some of capitalism's worst problems, such as unemployment and worsening inequality. For Marx and his followers, it is clear that it is the capitalist context in which all these conditions are embedded that keeps them from fulfilling their potential and contributing to a truly human existence. Abstracting from this context, Marxists have no difficulty in looking at our enormous wealth and ability to produce more and seeing an end to material want, or looking at our limited and malfunctioning political democracy and seeing everyone democratically running all of society, or looking at rising unemployment and seeing the possibility of people sharing whatever work is to be done, working fewer hours and enjoying more free time, and so on. Unfortunately, most others who encounter the same evidence don't see this potential, not even in the parts that have a socialist edge to them. And it is important to consider why they can't.
Investigating potential is taking the longer view, not only forward to what something can develop into but also backward to how it has developed up to now. This longer view, however, must be preceded by taking a broader view, since nothing and no one changes on its or his own but only in close relationship with other people and things, that is as part of an interactive system. Hence, however limited the immediate object of interest, investigating its potential requires that we project the evolution of the complex and integrated whole to which it belongs. The notion of potential is mystified whenever it is applied to a part that is separated from its encompassing system or that system is separated from its origins. When that happens, "potential" can only refer to possibility in the sense of chance, for all the necessity derived from the relational and processual character of reality has been removed, and there is no more reason to expect one outcome rather than another.
The crux of the problem most people have in seeing evidence for socialism inside capitalism, then, is that they operate with a conception of the present that is effectively sealed off from the future, at least any notion of the future that grows organically out of the present. There is no sense of the present as a moment through which life, and the rest of reality as the conditions of life, passes from somewhere on its way to somewhere. When someone is completely lost in the past or the future, we have little difficulty recognizing this as a mental illness. Yet, the present completely walled off from either the past or the future (or both) can also serve as a prison for thinking, though "alienation" is a more accurate label for this condition than "neurosis". Here, people simply take how something appears now for what it really is, what it is in full, and what it could only be. With the exception of the gadgetry found in science fiction, what they call the "future" is filled with social objects that are only slightly modified from how they appear and function in the present.
With this mind-set, there is no felt need to trace the relations any thing has with other things as part of a system—even while admitting that such a system exists—for, supposedly, there is nothing essential to be learned about it by doing so. Likewise, operating with narrow, independent parts that are also static, there is no difficulty in admitting that there was a past and will be a future while ignoring both when trying to understand anything in the present. If people can't see the evidence for socialism that exists all around them, therefore, it is not mainly because of an inability to abstract elements from capitalism and imaginatively project how they might function elsewhere. Rather, and more fundamentally, the conditions they see about them do not seem to belong to any social system at all, so there is no system to take them out of and, equally, no system to insert them into. The systemic and historical characters of both capitalism and socialism that would allow for such projections are simply missing.
IV
The dialectic enters this picture as Marx's way of systematizing and historicizing all the conditions of capitalism, so that they become internally related elements of an organic whole, which is itself but the most visible moment in how its components got that way and what they may yet become. With this move, the present ceases to be a prison for thinking, and, like the past and the future, becomes a stage in a temporal process with necessary and discoverable relations to the rest of the process. It is by analyzing a present conceived in this way that Marx believes he can discern the broad outlines of the socialist and communist societies that lie ahead.
The dialectical method with which Marx studies this future inside the capitalist present consists of four main steps. l) He looks for relations between the main capitalist features of our society at this moment in time. 2) He tries to find the necessary pre-conditions of just these relations—viewing them now as mutually dependent processes—in the past, treating the pre-conditions he uncovers as the start of an unfolding movement that led to the present. 3) He then projects these interrelated processes, reformulated as contradictions, from the past, through the present, and into the future. These projections move from the immediate future, to the probable resolution of these contradictions in an intermediate future, and on to the type of society that is likely to follow in the more distant future. 4) Marx then reverses himself, and uses the socialist and communist stages of the future at which he has arrived as vantage points for reexamining the present extended back in time to include its own past, now viewed as the sum of the necessary preconditions for such a future.
Before elaborating on these steps, there are two qualifications and one clarification that need to be made. First, it should be clear that explaining how to study the future is not the same as actually making such a study. In the former, which is the case here, the details brought forward are meant to illustrate the approach and should not be taken as the results of an already completed study, though I have taken care to use only realistic examples. The second qualification has to do with Aristotle's warning that in undertaking any study we should not expect more precision than the nature of our subject permits. The potential within capitalism for socialism is real enough, but it is often unclear and always imprecise, both as regards the exact forms that will develop and as regards timing or the moment at which the expected changes will occur. In short, in investigating the future within the present, we must be careful not to insist on a standard for knowledge that can never be met.
The clarification has to do with the fact that the future that Marx uncovers by projecting the outcome of society's contradictions is not all of one piece. Marx's varied projections make it necessary to divide the future into four different stages, communism being but the last. Through his analysis of capitalism, as a system in the present that emerges out of its preconditions in the past, Marx also projects its immediate future (or its development over the next few years), the near future (or the coming of the crisis that results in a socialist revolution), a middle future or transition between capitalism and communism that we call "socialism", and, finally, the far future or communism. How Marx uses his dialectical method for inquiring into what lies ahead varies somewhat depending on the stage of the future he is concerned with. While our interest here is limited to what I've called the "middle" and "far" futures, Marx's treatment of the "immediate" and especially the "near" futures cannot be wholly ignored, since the outcomes he projects for them enter into his expectations for socialism and communism.
V
Keeping these qualifications and this clarification clearly in mind, we can return to the four steps by which Marx sought to steal the secret of the future from its hiding place in the present. The first step, as I said, was to trace the main lines of the organic interaction that characterizes capitalist society—particularly as regards the accumulation of capital and the class struggle—at this moment of time. In order to focus on what is distinctively capitalist in our situation, Marx has to abstract out (omit) those qualities—equally real, and, for different kinds of problems, equally important—that belong to our society as part of other systems, such as human society (which takes in the whole history of the species), or class society (which takes in the entire period of class history), or modern capitalist society (which only takes in the most recent stage of capitalism), or the unique society that exists at this time in this place (which only takes in what is here and now). Every society and everything in them are composed of qualities that fall on these different levels of generality. Taken together—which is how most people approach them—they constitute a confusing patchwork of ill fitting pieces that makes the systemic connections that exist on any single level very difficult to perceive. By starting with the decision to exclude all non-capitalist levels of generality from his awareness, to focus provisionally on the capitalist character of the people, activities, and products before him, Marx avoids tripping on what human society or class history or the other levels mentioned have placed in his way in carrying out his work as our leading systematizer of capitalism.
The widespread view of capitalism as the sum of everything in our society rather than the capitalist "slice" of it has been responsible for repeated complaints, most recently from post-modernists and social movement theorists, that Marx ignores the role of race, gender, nation, and religion. He ignores them, at least in his systematic writings, because they all predate capitalism, and consequently cannot be part of what is distinctive about capitalism. Though all of these conditions take on capitalist forms to go along with their forms as part of class society or the life of the species, their most important qualities fall on the latter levels of generality, and it is there (and on us in so far as we are subject to these levels) that they have their greatest impact. Uncovering the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production, however, which was the major goal of Marx's investigative effort, simply required a more restricted focus.
With the distinctive qualities of capitalism in focus, Marx proceeds to examine the most important interactions in the present from different vantage points, though economic processes, particularly in production, are privileged, both as vantage points and as material to be studied. To avoid the overemphasis and trivialization that marks most one sided studies, the relation between labor and capital is examined from each side in turn, and the same applies to all the major relations that Marx treats. Of equal significance is the fact that internal relations are taken to exist between all objective and subjective factors, so that conditions never come into Marx's study without umbilical ties to the people who affect and are affected by them, and the same applies to people—they are always grasped in context, with the essentials of this context taken as part of who and what they are. Capital, as Marx says, "is at the same time the capitalist" (Marx, l973)
After reconstituting the capitalist present in this manner, the second step Marx takes in his quest to unlock the future is to examine the preconditions of this present in the past. If the dialectical study of the present treats its subject matter as so many Relations, a dialectical study of the past requires that we view these Relations as also processes. History comes to mean the constant, if uneven, evolution of mutually dependent conditions. The past, of course, takes place before the present, and in retelling the story one usually begins at the beginning and moves forward. But the correct order in inquiry is present first, and it is what Marx uncovers in his reconstruction of the present that guides him in his search into the past, helping him decide what to look for as well as how far back to go in looking for it. The question posed is what had to happen in the past for the present to become what it did? This is not to suggest that what occurred was preordained (though there may have been good reasons for it); only that it did in fact take place, and that it had these results. It is in following this approach that Marx is led to late feudalism as the period when most of the important preconditions for capitalism are first laid down.
VI
After reconstructing the organic interaction of the capitalist present and establishing its origins in the past, Marx is ready to project the main tendencies that he finds there into one or another stage of the future. As part of this third step in his method, Marx re-abstracts (reorganizes, rethinks) these tendencies as "contradictions", which emphasizes their interaction as processes that are simultaneously mutually supporting and mutually undermining one another. Over time, it is the undermining activities that prevail. The fundamental assumption that underlies Marx's practise here is that reality is an internally related whole with temporal as well as spatial dimensions. Things that are separate and independent (if this is how one conceives them) cannot be in contradiction, since contradiction implies that an important change in any part will produce changes of a comparable magnitude throughout the system. Just as things that are static (again, if this is how one conceives them) cannot be in a contradiction, since contradiction implies there is a collision up ahead. The use of "contradiction" in formal logic and to refer to some relations between the categories of capitalist political economy (the province of systematic Dialectics—see chapter 11), rather than true exceptions, offer instances of Marx's willingness—evident throughout his writings—to use a concept to convey only part of all that it can mean for him. Finally, based on what has already been achieved in examining the present and the past, Marx's contradictions also contain both objective and subjective aspects as well as a high degree of economic content.
Marx's contradictions organize the present state of affairs in capitalism, including the people involved in them, in a way that brings out how this cluster of relations has developed, the pressures that are undermining their existing equilibrium, and the likely changes up ahead. With contradictions, the present comes to contain both its real past and likely future in a manner that allows each historical stage to cast a helpful light upon the others. Early in his career, Marx compared problems in society with those in algebra, where the solution is given once a problem receives its proper formulation (Marx, l967, l06). The solution to capitalism's problems, he believed, would also become clear once they were reformulated in terms of contradictions. It is chiefly by projecting such contradictions forward to the point of their resolution and beyond, where the character of the resolution gives shape to the elements of what follows, that Marx is able to catch a glimpse of both socialism and communism. The resolution of a contradiction can be partial and temporary or complete and permanent. In the former, as exemplified in the typical capitalist crisis, the elements involved are simply reordered in a way that puts off the arrival of the latter. Our concern here is with the kind of resolution that completely and permanently transforms all of capitalism's major contradictions.
Marx sees capitalism as full of intersecting and overlapping contradictions (Marx, l963, 218). Among the more important of these are the contradictions between use-value and exchange-value, between capital and labor in the production process (and between capitalists and workers in the class struggle), between capitalist forces and capitalist relations of production, between competition and cooperation, between science and ideology, between political democracy and economic servitude, and—perhaps most decisively—between social production and private appropriation (or what some have recast as the "logic of production vs. the logic of consumption"). In all of these contradictions, what I referred to earlier as the "evidence for socialism" inside capitalism can be found reorganized as so many mutually dependent tendencies evolving over time. Viewed as parts of capitalism's major contradictions, their current forms can only represent a passing moment in the unfolding of a larger potential.
Whatever necessity (best grasped as likelihood) is found in Marx's projection of a socialist revolution in what I referred to as the near future is the result of his demonstrating that the conditions underlying capitalism have become more and more difficult to reproduce while the conditions that make socialism possible have developed apace. All this is contained in capitalism's main contradictions. According to Marx's analysis, these contradictions display capitalism as becoming increasingly destructive, inefficient, irrational, and eventually impossible, while at the same time socialism is presented as becoming increasingly practical, rational, conceivable, necessary, and even obvious—notwithstanding all the alienated life conditions and the enormous consciousness industry that work to distort such facts. Consequently, for Marx, it is only a matter of time and opportunity before the then organization, consciousness and tactics of the rising class brings about the expected transformation.
VII
Marx's vision of what happens after the revolution is derived mainly from projecting the forms that the resolution of capitalism's major contradictions are likely to take in the hands of a new ruling class, the workers, who have already been significantly changed by their participation in a successful revolution, and who are guided primarily by their class interests in making all major decisions. And the most important of these interests is to abolish their exploitation as a class along with all the conditions that underpin it. How quickly they could accomplish this, of course, is another matter. The question, then, is not "Why would the workers do this?" but "Why—given their interests—when they come to power would they do anything else?".
For class interests to bear the weight put on them by this account of future prospects, we need to place the relations between different classes in earlier times, including their interests, inside the main contradictions that link the present with the past and the future. Only by understanding how capitalist class interests determine the forms and functions of what I called the "evidence for socialism" inside capitalism (step one), and how, in response to these same interests, all this has evolved over time (step two), can we begin to grasp how quickly these forms and functions would change in response to the demands of a new ruling class with different interests (step three). In other words, when the capitalists (and the feudal aristocracy and slave owners before them) acquired the power to shape society according to their class interests, they did so, and the workers will do likewise. If the workers' assumption of power together with the material conditions bequeathed by capitalism provide us with the possibility for socialism, it is the workers' peculiar class interests together with the removal of whatever interfered with the recognition of them under capitalism that supplies us with most of its necessity.
While Marx's vision of socialism (or the middle future) is derived mainly from the contradictions of capitalism, his vision of communism (or the far future) is derived not only from these contradictions (that is, from projecting the resolution of these contradictions beyond the attainment of socialism), but also from the contradictions Marx sees in class history and even in socialism itself, in so far as it is a distinctive class formation. After socialism has developed to a certain point—in particular, when everyone becomes a worker, all means of production are socialized, and democracy is extended to all walks of life—the contradictions that have existed since the very beginning of classes (having to do with the general form of the division of labor, private property, the state, etc.) come gradually to resolution. At the same time, and through the same processes, the contradictions that socialism still possesses as a class society (having to do with its own forms of the division of labor, private property and the state, which Marx sums up under "dictatorship of the proletariat") are also resolved. It is the resolution of the contradictions from all these overlapping periods—capitalism, class society and socialism—together with the forms of alienation associated with them that marks the qualitative leap from socialism to communism, and which makes the latter so hard for most people today to conceive.
To summarize: Marx begins to study the future by tracing the main organic interconnections in the capitalist present. He then looks for their preconditions in the past; and he concludes by projecting the chief tendencies found in both, abstracted now as contradictions, to their resolution and beyond for the stage of the future with which he is concerned. The order of the moves is—present, past, future (unlike most futurological attempts to peer ahead that move from the present directly to the future or, as in many utopian efforts, that go directly to the future, dispensing with the present altogether).
VIII
Marx's method for studying the future is still not complete. In a fourth and final step, Marx reverses himself and uses the socialist and communist stages of the future at which he has arrived as vantage points for reexamining the present, now viewed (together with its own past) as the necessary preconditions for such a future. This last, though little understood, is the indispensable means by which Marx provides the "finishing" touches to his analysis of capitalism. It is also part of his method for studying the future since the process I have described is an ongoing one. Building on what he learns from going through one series of steps, Marx begins the dance—the dance of the dialectic—all over again. For the work of reconstructing the present, finding its preconditions in the past, projecting its likely future, and seeking out the preconditions of this future in the present, now conceived of as an extension of the past, is never truly finished.
According to Marx, "The anatomy of the human being is the key to the anatomy of the ape" (Marx, l904, 300). The same applies to the relations between later and earlier stages of society, and in the same way that our present provides the key for understanding the past, the future (that is, the likely future, in so far as we can determine it) provides the key for understanding the present. It is Marx's grasp of communism, as unfinished as it is, for example, that helps him to see capitalism as the gateway to human history rather than its end, and makes it easier to distinguish the capitalist specific qualities of current society (those that serve as the preconditions of socialism) from the qualities it possesses as an instance of class and human societies. Communism also provides Marx with a standard by which the greater part of what exists today is found wanting as well as criteria for determining priorities for research and politics, distinguishing between the kind of changes capitalism can absorb from those that set transitional forces into motion.
The transparently class character of socialist society, epitomized in the notion of "the dictatorship of the proletariat", also makes it easier to grasp the more hidden class character of capitalism. We shouldn't be surprised, therefore, that insisting that the capitalist state, whatever its democratic pretensions, is a dictatorship of the capitalist class is the most effective way to innoculate people against the dangers of reformist politics (hence the theoretical loss incurred when the French and other communist parties removed all references to the dictatorship of the proletariat from their programs).
But above and beyond all this, revisiting the present from the vantage point of its likely future concretizes and hence makes visible the potential that exists throughout the present for just such a future. To William Faulkner's supposed remark, "The past is not dead—it is not even in the past", Marx could have added, "And the future is not unborn—it is not even in the future". Potential is the form in which the future exists inside the present, but until now it has been a form without a particular content just because it was open to every conceivable content. Now, everywhere one looks, one sees not only what is but what could be, what really could be, not simply because one desires it but because the aforementioned analysis has shown it to be so. Seeing the "facts" of capitalism as "evidence" of socialism becomes so many arguments for socialism. While, informing workers of and sensitizing them to the extraordinary possibilities that lie hidden inside their oppressive daily existence greatly increases their power to act politically by indicating how and with whom to act (all those who would benefit immediately from the enactment of these possibilities), just as it enhances their self-confidence that they can succeed. In sum, by enriching capitalism with the addition of communism, Marx's dialectical analysis "liberates" potential to play its indispensable role in helping to liberate us.
Taken altogether, the future proves to be as important in understanding the present and past as they are in understanding the future. And always, the return to the present from the future instigates another series of steps from the present to the past to the future, using what has just been learned to broaden and deepen the analysis at every stage.
IX
Before concluding, it needs to be stressed that the projections of the future obtained through the use of the method outlined here are only highly probable, and even then the pace and exact forms through which such change occurs owes too much to the specificity of a particular place, the vagaries of class struggle, and also to accident to be fully knowable beforehand. Marx, himself, as we know, recognized "barbarism" as a possible successor to capitalism, though he thought it very unlikely and devoted much less attention to this possibility that we need to after the blood curdling events of the past century.
To avoid other possible misunderstandings of what I have tried to do in this essay, I would like to add that my account of Marx's method is not meant to be either complete or final, but rather—in keeping with Marx's own approach to exposition—a first approximation to its subject matter. Further, I do not believe that Marx's use of contradiction to project existing potential is the only means he uses to uncover the socialist/communist future inside the capitalist present; it is simply the main one. Also, this approach to studying the future is not to be confused with Marx's strategies for presenting what he found, and hence with what he actually published, which always involved a certain amount of reordering that took the character of his audience into account. Nor am I maintaining that this is how Marx became a communist. That is a complex story in which Hegel's dialectic and Marx's unique appropriation of it are but part.
Once Marx constructed the chief elements of what came to be called "Marxism", however, projecting capitalism's main contradictions forward became his preferred approach for studying the future, providing that future with just the degree of clarity and necessity needed for him to use it in elaborating his analysis of the present (in doing his version of "Commons From Under the Goose Studies"). It is also the best way that we today can learn about a socialist future that is more than wishful thinking. Only then, too, can the vision of socialism, which has been so battered by recent events, fulfill its own potential as one of our most effective weapons in the class struggle. Putting this weapon in the hands of workers and other oppressed peoples, teaching them how to use it—to do this, to do this against all the pressures of the age—is largely why we need dialectics, and, with the world that capitalism has made teetering on the brink, why we need dialectics now more than ever.
---------------
1. For an attempt to reconstruct Marx's vision of socialism and communism from his scattered comments on this subject, see my book Social and Sexual Revolution (1979), chap. 3.
sorry for the accidental repeats.
Posted by: nick | March 13, 2006 at 10:20 PM
The notion of Marxism as science has been a great source of controversy inand out of the ICM and I doubt it will go away anytime soon.
It's true that real science is simply about prediction. If that were so, where would that leave natural sciences? Can physics predict when our sun will explode? Can biology predict when new species will arise and what they will be? No, science is also about explanation and causation. In the case of evolutionary biology that's pretty much what it does. The idea that 'science' guarantees absolute accuracy is wrong and shows a real ignorance of how science works. For centuries, scientists, including Isaac Newton, believed that light travelled through an invisible substance called 'aether' despite the lack of any supporting evidence. Finally, Einstein killed this theory by showing that light was both a particle and a wave and did not need this substance to carry it. Were all previous thinkers non-scientific? The history of science is fraught with both great achievement and error. Sometimes an idea once thought mistaken is revived with a new appreciation, like Einstein's gravitational constant.
It would be great to see Maoists enter the debates on the philosophy of science but we will have to do more than assert the scientific nature of Marxism. We'd have to be familiar with the different views on science [positivist, realist, conventionalist, etc.,] and be prepared to tackle them on some of these questions: Why is Marxism scientific? How do we define science? Why is it even important? Is it possible to apply scientific method to the study of societies? How is this related to natural science?
I am of the inclination that Marxism is scientific but there is still a need to further refine our understanding. Many social theorists have argued that Marxism is not scientific and have proposed alternatives [such as Anthony Giddens] that should not be taken lightly. Others have attempted to revise Marxism to make it more compatible with the methodological individualism that is so popular in mainstream social science thereby making it a non-Marxsism. This school of 'Rational Choice Marxism'has been soundly criticized by Ellen Meiksins Wood and Norman Geras. The Critical Realist school, led by Roy Bhasakar, has done some great work furthering the relationship between Marxism and science.
a comment: your point about me putting 'inevitability' in quotes and then implying something about my portrayl of Marx was...careless [I'm being generous]. First of all, I was clear that I did not have the quote at hand. Secondly, I stated over several posts that inevetiability was not the primary aspect of Marx's method so there was no need to speculate on my motives. You admitted that Marx had a tendency towards teleology and that's pretty much what I said. I just thought it was important to address because so many Marxists don't know how to deal with it, and would rather deny it instead.
By reviving the the debate on RCP's position and using the word 'apocalytpic' Christpher Day seems to be suggesting that RCP might rely on an undercurrent of inevtiability in its analysis. He even says that such a style could "seem to be used to shut down some critical reflection on the adequacy of the underlying analysis." What's the evidence for this statement of intent? If anything, RCP invites debate and criticism of its analysis. Here's some evidence for the onset of fascism: the Patriot Act, the Theory of the Unitary Executive, the legitimization of torture, the attacks on science and promotion of religious obscurantism, do I need to go on? There is an element of risk here that Chris is ignoring. The way he sees it, it is a matter of preparing the masses just in case or "when things don't unfold as suggested its difficult to consolidate whatever gains have been made either among the masses or in terms of developing cadre, who have been trained intensely in upholding the line but not so well in navigating the uncertainties when the line proves wrong." Day does not seem to believe that fascism is a likely possibiliity. I hope he's right, but if it becomes imminent, we won't get an e-mail. Some other things that could happen: the Bush regime might fall apart, Democratic liberals might reagin the initiative, the Iraqi occupation could take an even worse turn further isolating Bush, [add scenario here]. What I have not mentioned is what we should be doing. That's because our activiy should be based on how we assess the direction things are moving in. If we believe that the Bush regime has no plans to continue implementing its fascist program or that they will lose momentum, we should organize accordingly. However, how realistic is that? Can we afford to come back from further behind? Those of us who admire Rosa Luxemburg would do well to look at the history of pre-Nazi Germany to see the danger of only looking at the immediate future. Sure, many things could happen but what's more probable. Should we wait until the government loses coherence on its own? Fascism is not inevitable, but if anyone fails to see how more 'moderate' solutions are being rolled over, they wind up promoting something just as dangerous as passivity: confusion.
If you read him carefully, BA does not suggest that revolutionary situation was on the horizon. What he says is that we should make it so - that's a different kind of argument. The basic points are: the CF's are intent on re-shaping society in line with their interests and worldview; this requires a high degree of polarization in which they have the initiative; liberal reformism is unable and unwilling to stop it [Alito anyone?]; much of society is disgusted at the way things are heading; while there is demoralization, many people are getting active for the first time; there is a greater openness to radical and revolutionary viewpoints than pre-9/11; we must establish revolutionary communist politics as the most viable alternative to this state of affairs; I'm sure other could add to this but I believe those are the main points. Disagree? Fine, but put forth another analysis please.
Faithless Red, you say "No, of necessity a revolutionary movement or party needs to move Marxism from his more careful and cautious method into the realm of the IMMINENT, without which it has nothing to inspire the faithful." So you want to argue that revolutionary commmunism must be driven by inevitability or it does not even have the appeal of religious movements. This is not only cynical but insulting. What communism has to offer is a way for people to struggle to create our own future, not to realize a future that is somehow pre-ordained. Communists do not believe in the latter and to put this out to people is to lie about our beliefs and denigrate our own human potential.
There are at least two kinds of faith:blind and justified. Blind faith is that which persists regardless of evidence to the contrary. Justified faith is based on established, repeatable patterns and causal knowledge. Religion is driven by the former, science is driven by the latter. Scientists have faith that the world is knowable and we haven't exhausted our potential for knowledge. This is confirmed by the fact that we have continued to learn more things as time goes on, as well as developing the conceptual means to apprehend them. Faithless mentions "many movements, protests and projects, from anarchist to communist, collapse or peter out while still believing that revolution was just around the corner." Two things: since so many movements arise, this should be seen as evidence that people are constantly willing to envision and fight for a better life. Instead Faithless only sees an endless parade of failures. At the same time, I have a hard time believing that determinism was the main cause of all these movements' failures. Based on Faithless's post, it seems the determinism was more in his/her ideological need than in the movements.
Posted by: leftclick | March 13, 2006 at 11:07 PM
In the second paragraph, when I said "It's true that..." I should have said, 'It's not true that..."
Posted by: leftclick | March 13, 2006 at 11:10 PM
nick: "It is true that the RCP has never said that a revolutionary situation is immanent (or even on the horizon)."
If they truly said that then they would have to disband. What you mean is that the RCP never said that revolution was imminent. Note the "i" and look up the difference. It's important. Anyway, you're wrong. Many within the RCP did claim that revolution was nigh during the 1980s.
Posted by: the unreal john | March 13, 2006 at 11:25 PM
Even if RCP had always claimed that revolution was imminent - from 1975 until the 1980s: SO WHAT? Get over it.
They made a criticism of their previous approach in the Notes on Political Economy. More importantly, they are working on a more rigorous and open-ended methodology, and trying to find ways for broader participation in that process.
It seems that some people won't be satisfied with anything less than public self-flagellation.
Posted by: leftclick | March 13, 2006 at 11:41 PM
Historical materialism, as its name implies, is best used as a tool for investigating and understanding history.
It works pretty good for understanding contemporary realities...though, of necessity, may miss "small things" that unexpectedly turn into "big things".
It's never been any good at predicting the future in useful detail...though it can give you a strong sense of "what to expect" when "all other things are equal".
Historical materialism is deterministic...and I've never understood why that bothered people so much. But it certainly does seem to "stick in people's throats".
I wonder if they ever consider what it would be like to live in a world that was utterly contingent...completely lacking in any sort of regularity or predictability?
I don't think they'd like it much. LOL!
Meanwhile, Professor Ollman's "case" for "dialectics" seems to rest on the contention that elements of the future can be seen in the present. I fail to see how this rather basic platitude can support the cumbersome apparatus of "dialectics" with its tortured verbal mechanisms.
Nor have I ever seen any correct conclusion of "dialectical" thinking that couldn't have been reached using ordinary pedestrian scientific logic and empirical observation.
In fact, I rather doubt that when Marx and Engels sat down to study and write about some subject of interest that they even bothered with "dialectics" at all. Instead, they followed the scientific conventions of their century...since, after all, they were writing for people who would hardly be content with flourishes of Hegelian rhetoric as a substitute for real knowledge.
Only in the last century could one hope to pass off nonsense as sense by invoking Marx's intellectual reputation and costuming that nonsense in "dialectical" babble.
May I commend to the reader this site...
http://anti-dialectics.org/1.html
It drives the wooden stake through Hegel's heart better than anything else I've ever come across.
Posted by: redstar2000 | March 14, 2006 at 01:50 AM
I appreciate the clarification on the RCP's views. I think a very good argument is made here for the neccessity of revolutionary work in non-revolutionary times to prepare people for the emergence of openings and to push the gestation of revolutionary possibilities.
The real question is what is good prepratory revolutionary work.
Aesthetics matter. The RCP has a style that can be frantic and, yes, apocalyptic. And I think that is an obstacle to thinking as clearly as possible. My reference to "canonical" was academic not religious, and was not a dig at Avakian but rather at the over-reliance on the Marx-Engels-Lenin_Stalin-Mao pantheon.
Posted by: Christopher Day | March 14, 2006 at 07:39 AM
redstar2000 writes:
"Nor have I ever seen any correct conclusion of "dialectical" thinking that couldn't have been reached using ordinary pedestrian scientific logic and empirical observation."
Really? Are there other non- [or anti-] Marxisty works out there that provide the same insights as Capital? Please elaborate.
Posted by: leftclick | March 14, 2006 at 09:06 AM
leftclick: "Even if RCP had always claimed that revolution was imminent - from 1975 until the 1980s: SO WHAT? Get over it.
. . . It seems that some people won't be satisfied with anything less than public self-flagellation."
And what could be more Maoist than that, comrade? The ruling committee could wear dunce caps and read self-criticism under "big character" posters. I dig it. Such a display might even deflate the creepiness claim and inject a little aww shucks humor into an org with a bit of an image problem.
RedStar2000's link to anti-dialectics.org inspired me to iterate a question about dialectics, DM and HM to those on this thread who are willing to defend the continuing value of these analyses (nick?). Can you point out any Marxist economist or thinkers who used these methods to warn of the restoration of capitalism in China and the USSR? I mean, in terms of world history and revolutionary potential, this is no small thing. Whether it is "predictive" or simply serious analysis, someone should have seen it coming, right?
OK, forget the past. What does dialectics, DM and HM have to tell us about what went wrong in communist political economies? As leftclick noted, Marx underestimated the potential for socialism to be rolled back, he thought, as Ollman states, that the contradictions within it would be resolved into the new form of communism. The dialectic would end. So how has the "science" or method been modified to account for this shortcoming? Ollman doesn't undertake this project, so much as restate its errors. Can anyone point some material out to me?
Posted by: fellow traveler | March 14, 2006 at 12:28 PM
"Are there other non- [or anti-] Marxist works out there that provide the same insights as Capital? Please elaborate."
I believe you miss my point...which is that Marx could have written Capital and all of his other significant works even if he'd never heard of Hegel or "dialectics".
As he himself noted, he did not "discover" the existence of classes or class struggle. And there was ample empirical evidence to suggest the "laws" of capitalist "motion"...that's one of the reasons he spent so much time in the library of the British Museum.
What Marx really DID discover is the crucial DEPENDENCE of ALL cultural artifacts (including classes themselves) on HOW HUMANS MAKE THEIR LIVINGS.
To my knowledge, no one ever "saw" that before.
And, at least, it potentially tells us as much or more about human societies and human history as E = MCsquared tells us about the physical universe.
"Dialectics" played no role in Marx's discovery; it was an unfortunate accident that Marx grew up in a time and place when Hegel was "all the rage" and everyone "had" to be a "Hegelian". We can only WISH that Marx had been educated in France or England.
Had we been "lucky", then "dialectics" would be but a footnote in some tedious academic history of philosophy...which is where it will end up anyway.
After much fuss and fury.
Posted by: redstar2000 | March 14, 2006 at 12:40 PM
"All that is solid melts into air."
That was the original name for the blog (in my thick head).
But let me here mention Octavia Butler since we're on a kick to get beyond the 5 heads in our references. At the opening of Parable of the Sower, the basic gist of the new, post-religious philosophy that the central character is the leader/prophet of, says:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
In other words, the one constant is flux.
RedStar rejects the supposed flim-flam of dialectics for... positivism. Wow. That's a "clean break" with all of Hegel's bad writing (and clear thinking).
I posted this piece because I attended a class (on John Holloway) at New York's Brecht Forum a couple weeks back. I watched the professor/instructor struggle to explain what dialectics are without much success and he's a pretty bright guy.
It's not an easy idea, but it's not anything we want it to be. Dialectics is a method of analysis that has both ancient roots conceptually (in both eastern and western philosophical traditions) and that entered world consciousness anew with startling force through Hegel's Idealist writings and Marx's materialist turn.
Understanding dialectics is learning how to think.
(And LeftClick, you are right that some are satisfied with nothing less than "self-flagellation." What's funny is the insane standard the RCP is held up to on say, their 1980s positions, while prominent leaders of the, say, antiwar movement have positions upholding North Korea and, on the other hand (UFPJ's leadership) campaigned to "support the troops" and demanded sanctions on Iraq during the first Gulf War that killed hundreds of thousands of children. Self-criticism from THOSE quarters? I've never heard a fucking drop.
So let's get real real about self-criticism in the movement. Some struggle to understand WHY they do what they've done to do better in the future. Some just apply the same set of plays to any given reality and pretend the past doesn't exist (or the future).
Dialectics as a "motion" attempts to understand 1) tendency, 2) contradiction (relationship), 3) necessity, 4) "essence" in the sense that things are not always what they "appear", and 5) the DYNAMIC relationship between ideas and the objects of ideas... or is that ideas of objects?
Crazy stuff, I know. And a hell of a lot better than the kind of "data sheets" and atrocity lists that pass for analysis in the larger left and bourgeois science.
Of course RedStar rejects dialectics. He rejects the very idea of necessity.
Posted by: the burningman | March 14, 2006 at 01:09 PM
The imminent/immanent discussion is ironically enough crucial to these discussions.
There are those who see revolution as an infinitely retreating horizon, often very practical people, who even in their pragmatism become "religious."
Revolution is the answer to all problems, the big bang that never happens.
Revolutionary organizations form long before revolutions if they are to have a hope of effectively intervening in "natural" crises in ways that will push structural change.
So they uphold "revolutoinary work in non-revolutionary times," which is -- in countries where PW is not possible -- largely ideological/political work and not military.
That the RCP spent the 80s keeping a flame alive when most "Maoists" and other communists were busy campaigning for Jesse Jackson is hardly something to be ashamed of or apologize for.
Get REAL.
The people who defined themselves as "reasonable" by distorting what the RCP was saying (until they actually believed their own shit) is shameful. That these same political forces fucking ABDICATED is now a plain fact.
The RCP's hard line in those years says much for why a communist movement even exists in this country.
Posted by: Lexicon Luther | March 14, 2006 at 02:01 PM
I've no desire to see self-flagellation on the part of the RCP. Serious self-criticism taken as a basis for really uprooting the problematic aspects of the RCP's line and culture, on the other hand, would be most welcome. And the low standards of line and conduct to which other forces on the left are commonly held is no reason to evade what real revolutionaries should never be ashamed to do.
I think preparing people for revolution is critical and I'm glad the RCP puts this at the center of their politics. Its why I'm so willing to engage them even though I think their actual approach is often bat-shit crazy. At least they understand the centrality of what Lukacs called the actuality of revolution in "Lenin, A Study on the Unity of his Thought."
Avakian's critique of inevitabilism is to be applauded. But what would be more valuable would be a thorough analysis of how inevitabilism has distorted and continues to distort the actual practice of the RCP.
Inevitabilism leads to a preoccupation with certain kinds of theoretical questions to the exclusion of others. A lot of energy is put into attempting to grasp the contradictory motion of global capitalism (its crises and the plans of the imperialists) in order to predict when and how the big cataclysm will come and less attention is paid to the difficult on-the-ground questions of transforming everyday struggles and forms of resistance that capitalism is constantly throwing up into real revolutionary challenges.
This lopsidedness, I would argue, is what led the RCP in the 1980s to focus on the (real) danger of world war, but to miss (for example) the ways that the AIDS crisis was radicalizing gay activism. The RCPs rotten line on homosexuality wasn't an accident. It had methodological roots that underpin other errors. The depreciation of struggles of cultural assertion or for sexual liberation and the failure to really appreciate their potential to animate the emergence of revolutionary subjectivities has isolated the RCP from huge areas of struggle in this society where a forthright revolutionary politics could have made big gains.
The RCP's politics have matured since then. But I think there is a real underestimation of the seriousness of their errors, and more importantly, what their roots were. And this underestimation runs the real risk of repeating those errors.
When I say the RCP has a taste for the apocalyptic I should be clear that so do I. And sometimes social reality IS apocalyptic. My concern with this is not that it leads to doing revolutionary work in non-revolutionary times, but rather that it seems to go hand in hand with not confronting some of the issues raised by a reading of Gramsci about the sources of the stability of the advanced capitalist societies and their ability to weather big upheavals. To thinking that by being bold one can just overcome those things. What Gramsci sought to understand was why, after the revolutionary upheavals unleashed by the World War, was capitalism able to re-establish hegemony everywhere except the Soviet Union? We could and should ask a similar question about 1968. I fully expect that we will encounter future moments of this sort and I believe that how we act in them will determine the fate of humanity. So yes we need to prepare people to act boldly in such moments, but that is not all. Revolutionaries also need to have deep roots among the people and longstanding involvement in their practical struggles and everyday lives in order to be able to effectively link them up in such moments.
In "Can We Really Win?" and in the long ass Avakian DVD, Bob distinguishes between two scenarios for revolution. In the third world it is the culmination of a protracted peoples war, while in the first it is likely to take the form of an insurrection followed by civil war. These two models are represented by the Chinese and Russian Revolutions respectively. Two models is better than one I suppose, but this strikes me as a serious failure to confront the fact that nothing like this has occurred in the advanced capitalist countries really since teh Paris Commune, and for the reasons Gramsci lays out, is not likely to go down like this.
I wish I had another coherent model to offer. I don't. But that doesn't mean one isn't desperately needed.
My gut tells me that Christian Fascism IS a big danger AND that we have entered a period preganant with possibilities for social explosions, but it also tells me that the analysis of the nature of that danger and those possibilities presented by the RCP is two-dimensional, it doesn't really get at the connection between everday life and the theocratic turn of a wing of imperialism. That said I'm fucking glad they are putting the questions on the table.
Posted by: Christopher Day | March 14, 2006 at 02:26 PM
I actually think the Paris Commune is the wrong place to go back to.
Spain, and the collapse of communist forces in Italy and France after WW2 is a much better place to get into the discussion of our society. As is the 1968 moment in the USA.
The question of "seeing the communist future in the capitalist present" is a hard fucking nut to crack here in the USA -- and one that we can thank Avakian banging on even if (even) he hasn't managed to open it yet.
That's the challenge. When we have advanced forces, and in this sense the RCP certainly functions as a vanguard, this in no way asserts that they (as currently constituted) can answer each and every question -- even the cardinal questions of strategy, orientation and implementation.
Revolutionary forces need to grow -- not just in sentiment, but capacity.
Posted by: the burningman | March 14, 2006 at 02:38 PM
let me play "cleaner" and deal with some misconceptions. And hopefully in the process,help us all get into teh lines that are contending.
first my alter ego(the "unrealjohn") wrote above: "you mean that the RCP never said that revolution was imminent. ... Anyway, you're wrong. Many within the RCP did claim that revolution was nigh during the 1980s."
No. In fact I am not wrong. This is a relatively simple matter of fact.
What they said was that there was real danger that world war was immanent. Infact, nick's quoting of a "saying" above (That "revolution is a long shot but the best shot") was put forward in THAT context. They did not think world war was a long shot, but did thing that revolution was.
And IN THAT CONTEXT they said it was important to persevere and step up revolutionary work. Which was all true.
This is easy to verify, read Avakian's underestimated "The Horrof of the End, or the End to the Horror" which was written then, and there are published collections of "war and revolution" articles which i have found, bought and read.
Also, notice the formulation of "fake john" that says: "Many within the RCP did claim that revolution was nigh during the 1980s." All of us know that this isn't the way it works. The RCP had a unified line, expressed by their paper, documents and chairman. You know that, and I know that. And a disciplined organization like them doesn't have "many" running around with a different line on such a key matter. Naw,we all know better.
Either it was the line of the RCP or it wasn't. And it wasn't.
As for apocalyptic, well as burningman says, capitalism IS sometimes apocalyptic, and it may be worth remembering how veryclose the world came to nuclear exchange in the mid-eightties, far closer than was publicly known at the time. It was apocalyptic, and the questionwas sharply posed "What are you gonna do about it?"
Some folded their tents. Some rallied behind Jackson, and let's not forget that some rallied behind Soviet social imperialism, and half-"hoped-expected" that the bloc hostilities would be channeled into a U.S.invasion of nicaragua, where they could have a vietnam-era redux.
Anyway,lets deal with the real lines of organizations.
Iunderstand why some said "If all you canbring up is a twenty-year old error on the estimation of world war, then you really ain't got much."
I feel you.
There are some positions of the RCP from that period that some "love to hate" -- including "Revolution in the 80s go for it!" and the refusal to adopt identity politics analysis on homosexuality.
As for self-criticism -- I just want to mention what hasn't been mentioned: Avakian says that the struggle over reductionism (in agonizing over what led to the mechanical thinking on world war) was an important basis for their break with related reductionist approach to homosexuality.And that both of these grappling deepened Avakian's determination to dig up the methodological and philosophicalerrors of the old communist movement -- to deepenwhat he calls his "epistemological break."
Sowhen someone says that there was no real or deep self-criticism over these issues, I stop, and in all honestly wonder "what the fuck are you thinking?" Is it that you just haven'et read these things (these are some difficult documents on Poleitical Economy, epistemology, the issues of sexuality, and Avakians conversations on philosophy with Martin).
Or is it that we have different assessment of what a deep self-criticism looks like.
Or to put it another more-pointed way: The Storm organization self-criticism circulated through CUNY circles, and the various Love and Rage summations too. Manypeople on this list have read them.
Self-cultivation, muddle, mutualmud-slinging, focus on aggregating the petty, avoidance of the cardinal, anyone?
Does anyone want to claim that these documents leave anyone in a position to tackle revolutoinary work with a higher understanding?
As someone said, has anyone done self-criticism like Avakian and his followers?
*****
Now chris argues over and over again that there are issues of style that (for him) over shadow matters of line.
But we all know (including Chris) that there is really line at the heart of all this.
The issue of classless democracy is at the heart of it -- be cause Chris's politics require a specific relationship between the van and the masses, which is very different from the analysis of the RCP.
And the questionof "how to do revolutionary work"--whichwe allknow will boil down to work that is more "palpable and palatable." That's why the issues of "everyday life" keeps coming up. And that's why the "my mass line is a mirror for the masses, not a process of revolutoinary synthesis and communist leadership."
These things are all whole cloth-- they weave in and out. And they are a program for an approach to "work" that is (ultimately, in my humble opinion) NOT revolutionary (and here I am not talking about anyone's subjective INTENT, but objective "logic of the logic.")
Avakian had a great article: "Pay attention to the day to day concerns of the masses -- BUT DON'T OVER DO IT."
And the point was that there are concerns you have to pay attention to -- if Mao didn't worry about having salt for the peasants in the barricaded liberated zones, then they would not be able to live or support the revolution.
If the revolution doesn't feed the people of the big cities, how will the revolution hold problem? There are times when the problems of day to day life are crucial to the revolution. But that is exactly the point: there are times and ways when they are important TO THE REVOLUTION.
But in a profound sense, people (and especially the advancedand the communists) don't make revolution "to make a better life for ourselves and our children."
We make revolutoin for the future, and for humanityall over the world.
And if that breadth of mind is not our orientation, and if it is not fought for (among both communists and the masses) then again, there will not be a revolution, and if there is one we won't do any good with it.
If you train people (and especially in a country like this) to see politics through the eyes of their day to day lives (even if these lives ARE marked by real and severe impression)then the revolution will not be liberatory or communist.
The lives of the people have to improve throughthe revolution, including even economically for the people on the very bottom. And certainly society overall needs to be much better for the great majority -- in all the social relations that emerge.
But fundamentally communist revolution involves a great deal of sacrifice and visionary approach. Our revolution belongs to the people of the world, and their highest interests (not just the people in OUR immediate base, and their everyday lives).
See the difference?
The idea that "we need to pay more attention to everyday life" is a demand for more attention to bourgeois right (and it is tied to a political orientation toward "grassroots democracy" as the solution to everything.)
Important: It does not break from the whole framework of commodity exchange (including its political expression of "it is time for me/us to get my/our slice of life's pie!"
The difference between "all the way revolution" and "we are coming for what's ours" is profound -- and it is the contrast between proletarian revolution, and the "second model" (i.e. revisionism) that Avakian discussed
in Three Alternative Worlds.
Posted by: real john | March 14, 2006 at 07:08 PM
here are some of their self-criticisms for those who DO want to read:
Notes on Political Economy:
Our Analysis of the 1980s, Issues of Methodology, and The Current World Situation
Posted by: poster | March 14, 2006 at 07:35 PM
Notes on Political Economy:
Our Analysis of the 1980s, Issues of Methodology, and The Current World Situation
http://rwor.org/a/special_postings/poltoc_e.htm
On the Position on Homosexuality
in the New Draft Programme
http://rwor.org/margorp/homosexuality.htm
And more on homosexuality -- there is a chapter in the "Conversations" book (which is not online)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812695798/qid=1121813107/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-7087076-7699252?n=507846&s=books&v=glance
(There are some earlier self criticisms:
one on the "boston bussing controversy" which appeared in revolution.
And a self-criticism of the article "second harvest" which deal with traditionalism among Native people.
Neither of these two are online. But I scrounged around and found old Revolution magazines to study them.
Posted by: poster continued | March 14, 2006 at 07:38 PM
Chris is pretty clear that he's discussing matters of line, not "style."
Posted by: friend of a friend | March 14, 2006 at 07:43 PM
Things must have been going badly for burningman lately. I would never have expected him to admiringly quote some "post-religious" mystic who evidently believes in "prophetic leaders".
Is Bob Avakian a "Leader-Prophet"? LOL!
And then he asserts: "Understanding dialectics is learning how to think."
I guess so...if you want to think about mysticism, it's as good as anything else. Though, truth to say, it's customary to rely on revelation when dealing with such "lofty" concerns.
"Crazy stuff, I know."
It seems to arrive at that destination with regularity.
"Of course RedStar rejects dialectics. He rejects the very idea of necessity."
Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't.
I do advise folks to be WARY when someone invokes "necessity" to support their chosen political perspectives.
As in, for example, "we HAVE to support the Democratic Party in 2006 and 2008 OR ELSE bad things will happen." LOL!
The RCP's "World Can't Wait" is already drifting in that direction...so don't be shocked if "dialectics" is summoned up to defend such a position.
It wouldn't be the first time that's happened. LOL!
Posted by: redstar2000 | March 14, 2006 at 09:39 PM
I'm quoting a character in a novel.
You are one hard-headed fool. I'm not having a hard time at all, these have been interesting days and all and all I like my life.
World Can't Wait is not an owned entity. You can repeat internet chatter like it establishes facts all you want, but the world is lived in three dimensions, not one. Neither WCW nor the RCP is even close to drifting towards the Democrats. The RCP is challenging them for the thinking of progressive-minded people.
If you think that's funny, think about who you spend your time challenging and then take that for what it's worth.
I've watched you for some time. Bottom line? A troll with a library card (or at least an internet connection) who knows how to read subheads but not the subtext.
Posted by: the burningman | March 14, 2006 at 10:22 PM
My point being, I'm quoting a character who unlearns Christianity in a novel about the breakdown of Ameirca. I thought you'd have appreciated something like that.
Oh, she didn't just tell believers that they're stupid, your prefered form of attack.
Posted by: the burningman | March 14, 2006 at 10:27 PM
redstar2000, if alternative to dialectics is an ignorant positivism, then we have nothing to worry about.
You should actually try reading some Karl Marx. Then you might see that he clearly acknowledges his debt to Hegel throughout his writings, all the way up to, and including the Postface to Capital. Hegel provided Marx with the means to understand the interrelations betwen different phenomena as well as their driving force of their motion: contradiction. Take this away and all you have are "facts." Science is not primarily about uncovering facts but about elaborating their true relations and dynamics. To demonstrate your point, you quote him saying that he did not discover classes or class struggle but did focus on the material basis of human life. None of these points confirm or refute dialectics at all. My poiint about Capital is still valid. No other thinker "using ordinary pedestrian scientific logic and empirical observation" has come up with anything like Capital. That's not because they didn't have the data, it's because they couldn't see how it all related. So, NO, Marx's work would not be the same without dialectics.
Your poke at burningman for quoting a "prophet" is both dishonest and reflecive of your dogmatism. burningman was quoting a fictional character from a novel by an author he admires. Are you saying that only atheist materialists can have any insight into the world? [I AM an atheist, btw] Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that "an injustice anywhere is and injustice everywhere." Should we reject that because he was a christian? Why not show Malcolm X the door as well?
To quote the insightful and often funny non-Marxist, Oscar Wilde: "All of us are in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars." Others just deny they exist at all.
Posted by: leftclick | March 14, 2006 at 10:41 PM
fellow traveller said: " Can you point out any Marxist economist or thinkers who used these methods to warn of the restoration of capitalism in China and the USSR? "
Mao.
Posted by: leftclick | March 14, 2006 at 11:26 PM
So Bizarro John, here's the challenge you assert, that the RCP did NOT preach that either war or revolution must take place : "No. In fact I am not wrong. This is a relatively simple matter of fact."
Check your facts, especially the Taking The Self-Criticism Further in Notes on Political Economy(Courtesy of poster)
http://rwor.org/a/special_postings/poleco_e.htm#Section:%204
"Something major had to give and change, and war was the most likely outcome of the contradictions that were converging. It is our sense that if a Gorbachev and what he had unleashed had not materialized, then war probably would have ensued. War, however, was not the only possible outcome. But we did not foresee any other possibility except revolution. The point of our self-criticism is that we should have. And the question is: why didn't we? . . . We veered in the direction of saying that when certain elements appear, war must take place."
What part of that "we did not foresee any other possibility except revolution" do you not understand? What part of "MUST TAKE PLACE" can you not comprehend? Don't tell me what I heard from the mouths of numerous RCP adherents in the 80's or what I've read during and after the fact. Res Ipsa Loquitor
Posted by: the unreal john | March 15, 2006 at 12:16 AM
Real John characterizes my understaning of the mass line as "a mirror for the masses, not a process of revolutionary synthesis and communist leadership."
I've heard this here several times and its horseshit that serves to cover the RCPs repudiation in practice of the mass line (while upholding it in words).
Mao writes "Take the ideas of the masses and concentrate them, then go to the masses, persevere in the ideas and carry them through, so as to form correct ideas of leadership -- such is the basic method of leadership."
This is not holding a mirror up to masses, but neither is it holding a newspaper up to them (not that there isn't a place for newspapers). It does however recognize the masses as having important things to teach revolutionary leaders, and it puts what the masses know at the center of the process of leadership.
The point here is not that the masses don't need leaders and can understand everything they need to know based on their own spontaneous experience of everyday life. The point is that it is the totality of the lived experiences of the masses that constitutes the basis of social reality and that the experiences of the masses do give rise to "spontaneous" understandings of that social reality that contain not just the germs of revolutionary consciousness but also important concrete insights that may not be accessible to the minority of revolutionary leaders. These understandings co-exist with confused and backwards ideas, so there is a critical role for leadership in distillling these advanced ideas and synthesizing them with each other and with the whole body of already developed and tested revolutionary theory (which also it should be noted is the product of this process, whether carried out consciously or not).
The importance of this method of leadership can not be separated from what it is leadership towards, namely communism. And again we return to the central question of the development of popular agency. The point of the mass line is not simply to develop the most advanced analysis of the situation, but to develop the capacities of the masses to apprehend the revolutionary implications of their own experiences and in so doing to become something more than masses to be led, to become self-conscious agents in the revolutionary transformation of their world.
Now it is true that there are complications in all this that are thrown up by the kinds of consciousness that arise spontaneously from the social conditions inside an imperialist country as opposed to, say, pre-revolutionary China. (Here again is an important reason to read Gramsci.) The masses are not homogenous in their experience of social reality and the experiences of some produce spontaneous understandings that are better than others. It IS more difficult to apply this method in the heart of the beast. But that doesn't mean its not neccesary or that one can dispense with the sort of immersion in the lives of the masses that is neccesary to actually carrying it out. Because the lived experiences of the masses inside the United States are an important part of the totality of world capitalism and properly apprehending those distinctive features is critical to really making revolution in this country.
Are there dangers in all this? Absolutely. And obviously this is a method that can't just be applied by individuals, but demands a party (or something like one) able to concentrate the dispersed experiences of its members as leaders of mass struggles and to collectively distill and synthesize the advanced knowledge of the masses into a correct line. And thus our dispute returns to the question of whether such a party exists in the United States. Sadly I think it does not.
Posted by: Christopher Day | March 15, 2006 at 07:40 AM