Bob Avakian is a Chairman of Revolutionry Communist Party ,
U.S.A.
Inspite of your good efforts and big claims, yours thesis of “Communism as a Sciecne” (Appendix to constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party) is lifeless and non-spiritual dogma. Because your thesis is missing a vital link between Nature and Man (Human being). When you ingone this basic link, your theory of communism is not based on science, but imperialist model of development. Due to this reason you are not in a position to address the real contradictions of the present world order.
You r saying, “communism is not a dogma or a set of scriptures. Just as there is no God in heaven, there is no predetermind ‘earthly end’ towards which every thing is bound to proceed. There is no idealized version of “nature” or “history” working towards inevitable goal of communism”, is true, but it is also true that there is a definite relation between Nature and human being (man), which determine the whole concept of human history and man’s daily needs.
As in ‘Essence of Christianity’ Feurbach says, “As man belongs to the essence of Nature,– in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of man,– in opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our “absolute” philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. Only by uniting man with Nature can we conquer supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity”.
Marx himself explain this in his Capital (Vol. 3, Moscow Edition, 1977, page 820) in very clear terms,“Infact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane cosideration ceases; thus in very nature of things, it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life so must civilized man and he must be so in all social formation and all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants but at the same time the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increases, freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producer rationally regularizing their interchange with nature, bringing in under their common control instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under condition most favourable to and worthy of their human nature.”
Fredrick Engels describe this relation more clearly when he says,“For me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing from it” (Anti Duhring, Peiking Edition, 1976, Preface II page 13).
In the same book on page 28 he clears this concept thoroughly by saying, “Nature in the test of dialectics and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this test with very rich and daily increasing materials and thus has shown that in the last resort nature works dialectically and not metaphysically.
As per Marx’s own explaination, “Nature is man’s inorganic body–nature, that is insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature–means that nature is his body , with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, page 73)
He explained this phenomenon further,“Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism and constitute at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.” (Same book, page 144)
But capitalism and imperialism breaks this relation between man and nature totally and therefore makes the man a non-spiritual being and ultimately animal as Marx put it:“Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly separated from the sphere of all other human activities turn them into sole and ultimate end, they are animal functions” (page 71)
Imperialism has done the same. It put an end to the spiritual needs of the peoples and limits them to their animal functions only. Your thesis of “Communism as Science” no where addresses the spiritual needs of the people. That is why you don’t understand the theoretical and philosophical basis of imperialist consumerism. Non-spiritual man is a senseless consumerist tool in the hands of imperialism.
You talk of Mao’s great contributions for “the theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat” and his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, “ to unleashing and leading the conscious role of the masses”, but you don’t try to assimilate the great lessons of this Cultural Revolution. This Revolution underscores the role of man’s consciousness to uplift the spiritual state of the masses. Only spiritually enlightened person can sacrifice his personal wants for the great cause of communism.
What is the role of this spiritual upliftment of the masses, described by Mao-Tse-Tung in his “Reading Notes on the Soviet Text” in which Mao sys. “At every opportunity the text discusses individual material interest as if it were an attractive means for luring people into pleasant prospects. This is reflection of the spiritual state of good number of economic workers and leading personnel and the failure to emphasize political idealogical work. Under such circumstances there is no alternative to relying on material incentives.... This kind of propaganda of material interest will make capitalism unbeatable!” (A critique of Soviet Economics; M.R. Press, 1977, Page 79)
Just like you Comrade Stalin didn’t concentrate on the spiritual needs of the people and their Party leaders. Imperialism produces the non-spiritual human being and communist like you (like Stalin) didn’t differentiate between man’s spiritual needs and religion. Without replacing nature with God how do you satisfy the spiritual needs of the people and how do you think that people could act scientifically. (“Science proceeds from nature-is true science”, Marx). Where imperialist capitalism have reached today, this cannot create any human value as created by his predecessor capitalism. Capitalism fighting against feudalism created some positive human values that is bourgeios democracy, scientific outlook and one sided rational thinking. But capitalism on this imperialist stage as decribed by Lenin has gone total reactionary. What your thesis missing here is distinction between imagined world of imperialism and real natural world.
Marx described very clearly in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Bouregeosie compels all nations, on pain of the extinction to adopt the bouregeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.” Now in this era of imperialism, we are living in a imagined world of imperialism and not in a real natural world. This imagined world when reflected in our thought, corrupt our thinking and vision also. Due to this reason there is a big gap between imagined needs and natural needs of a human being. This is the basis of imperialist consumerism. If we don’t understand this then we don’t understand the phenomenon of the massive urbanization brought by imperialist world system which is also unreal and reflection of the same corrupted thought and not as per natural laws.
Engels says clearly that,“It is true that civilization has bequeathed us a heritage in the form of large towns which it will take much time and trouble to eliminate. But they must and will be eliminated, however protracted a porcess it may be.”....“The abolition of the separation of town and country is therefore not utopian in so far as it is conditioned on the most equal distribution possible of large scale industry over the whole country.” Now compare these large towns of Engels’ time and so large metropolitan cities of impearlist era.
Marx explain this total phenomenon of communism in his ‘Economic and philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’, when he says, Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. (Page 96, 97)
Science is nothing but known laws of nature, reflected in human mind and tested by natural human needs. Culture is nothing but sense of socialization, sense of relations, relations between man and man, relations between man and women, family relations and relation between man and nature.
Due to these reasons you are not understand at present the real contradictions between Islam (other religions also) and impearlist system and your opposition to all religions is fake. Communism does not want liberation without Gods, but it wants liberation from Gods. When man is clear in his self-counciousness about his relation to nature, his mind is liberated from all concepts of God. This liberated mind is the real force of history. “The absolute is mind, this is the highest definition of the absolute”–Marx
As in ‘Essence of Christianity’ Feurbach says, “Religion is the first form of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive self-consiousness. Therefore the relation to religion is not merely negetive but critical one; we only seprate the true from the false; though we grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth, essentially different from the old.’’
Without uniting with truth thus separated from falsehood of all religion’s philosophies, you cannot proceed further in realm of human philosophy. These are your limitations to understand Marxist philosophy.
Gurbachan Singh
Email : despunjab@rediffmail.com
Mob: 98156-98451
Inspite of your good efforts and big claims, yours thesis of “Communism as a Sciecne” (Appendix to constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party) is lifeless and non-spiritual dogma. Because your thesis is missing a vital link between Nature and Man (Human being). When you ingone this basic link, your theory of communism is not based on science, but imperialist model of development. Due to this reason you are not in a position to address the real contradictions of the present world order.
You r saying, “communism is not a dogma or a set of scriptures. Just as there is no God in heaven, there is no predetermind ‘earthly end’ towards which every thing is bound to proceed. There is no idealized version of “nature” or “history” working towards inevitable goal of communism”, is true, but it is also true that there is a definite relation between Nature and human being (man), which determine the whole concept of human history and man’s daily needs.
As in ‘Essence of Christianity’ Feurbach says, “As man belongs to the essence of Nature,– in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of man,– in opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our “absolute” philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. Only by uniting man with Nature can we conquer supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity”.
Marx himself explain this in his Capital (Vol. 3, Moscow Edition, 1977, page 820) in very clear terms,“Infact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane cosideration ceases; thus in very nature of things, it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life so must civilized man and he must be so in all social formation and all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants but at the same time the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increases, freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producer rationally regularizing their interchange with nature, bringing in under their common control instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under condition most favourable to and worthy of their human nature.”
Fredrick Engels describe this relation more clearly when he says,“For me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing from it” (Anti Duhring, Peiking Edition, 1976, Preface II page 13).
In the same book on page 28 he clears this concept thoroughly by saying, “Nature in the test of dialectics and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this test with very rich and daily increasing materials and thus has shown that in the last resort nature works dialectically and not metaphysically.
As per Marx’s own explaination, “Nature is man’s inorganic body–nature, that is insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature–means that nature is his body , with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, page 73)
He explained this phenomenon further,“Here we see how consistent naturalism or humanism is distinct from both idealism and materialism and constitute at the same time the unifying truth of both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the action of world history.” (Same book, page 144)
But capitalism and imperialism breaks this relation between man and nature totally and therefore makes the man a non-spiritual being and ultimately animal as Marx put it:“Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc are also genuinely human functions. But taken abstractly separated from the sphere of all other human activities turn them into sole and ultimate end, they are animal functions” (page 71)
Imperialism has done the same. It put an end to the spiritual needs of the peoples and limits them to their animal functions only. Your thesis of “Communism as Science” no where addresses the spiritual needs of the people. That is why you don’t understand the theoretical and philosophical basis of imperialist consumerism. Non-spiritual man is a senseless consumerist tool in the hands of imperialism.
You talk of Mao’s great contributions for “the theory and practice of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat” and his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, “ to unleashing and leading the conscious role of the masses”, but you don’t try to assimilate the great lessons of this Cultural Revolution. This Revolution underscores the role of man’s consciousness to uplift the spiritual state of the masses. Only spiritually enlightened person can sacrifice his personal wants for the great cause of communism.
What is the role of this spiritual upliftment of the masses, described by Mao-Tse-Tung in his “Reading Notes on the Soviet Text” in which Mao sys. “At every opportunity the text discusses individual material interest as if it were an attractive means for luring people into pleasant prospects. This is reflection of the spiritual state of good number of economic workers and leading personnel and the failure to emphasize political idealogical work. Under such circumstances there is no alternative to relying on material incentives.... This kind of propaganda of material interest will make capitalism unbeatable!” (A critique of Soviet Economics; M.R. Press, 1977, Page 79)
Just like you Comrade Stalin didn’t concentrate on the spiritual needs of the people and their Party leaders. Imperialism produces the non-spiritual human being and communist like you (like Stalin) didn’t differentiate between man’s spiritual needs and religion. Without replacing nature with God how do you satisfy the spiritual needs of the people and how do you think that people could act scientifically. (“Science proceeds from nature-is true science”, Marx). Where imperialist capitalism have reached today, this cannot create any human value as created by his predecessor capitalism. Capitalism fighting against feudalism created some positive human values that is bourgeios democracy, scientific outlook and one sided rational thinking. But capitalism on this imperialist stage as decribed by Lenin has gone total reactionary. What your thesis missing here is distinction between imagined world of imperialism and real natural world.
Marx described very clearly in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “Bouregeosie compels all nations, on pain of the extinction to adopt the bouregeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.” Now in this era of imperialism, we are living in a imagined world of imperialism and not in a real natural world. This imagined world when reflected in our thought, corrupt our thinking and vision also. Due to this reason there is a big gap between imagined needs and natural needs of a human being. This is the basis of imperialist consumerism. If we don’t understand this then we don’t understand the phenomenon of the massive urbanization brought by imperialist world system which is also unreal and reflection of the same corrupted thought and not as per natural laws.
Engels says clearly that,“It is true that civilization has bequeathed us a heritage in the form of large towns which it will take much time and trouble to eliminate. But they must and will be eliminated, however protracted a porcess it may be.”....“The abolition of the separation of town and country is therefore not utopian in so far as it is conditioned on the most equal distribution possible of large scale industry over the whole country.” Now compare these large towns of Engels’ time and so large metropolitan cities of impearlist era.
Marx explain this total phenomenon of communism in his ‘Economic and philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’, when he says, Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. (Page 96, 97)
Science is nothing but known laws of nature, reflected in human mind and tested by natural human needs. Culture is nothing but sense of socialization, sense of relations, relations between man and man, relations between man and women, family relations and relation between man and nature.
Due to these reasons you are not understand at present the real contradictions between Islam (other religions also) and impearlist system and your opposition to all religions is fake. Communism does not want liberation without Gods, but it wants liberation from Gods. When man is clear in his self-counciousness about his relation to nature, his mind is liberated from all concepts of God. This liberated mind is the real force of history. “The absolute is mind, this is the highest definition of the absolute”–Marx
As in ‘Essence of Christianity’ Feurbach says, “Religion is the first form of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive self-consiousness. Therefore the relation to religion is not merely negetive but critical one; we only seprate the true from the false; though we grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth, essentially different from the old.’’
Without uniting with truth thus separated from falsehood of all religion’s philosophies, you cannot proceed further in realm of human philosophy. These are your limitations to understand Marxist philosophy.
Gurbachan Singh
Email : despunjab@rediffmail.com
Mob: 98156-98451
No comments:
Post a Comment