New class forces are stepping on to the world stage, born of the revolution in the forces of production, and the inevitable displacement wrought in society as it embraces the new technologies. A new class struggle is emerging. The CPUSA dismisses the importance of ideas in the process (and hence the role of the subjective) in political struggle. They claim that "Marx was able to debunk the old ruling class concept that the primary cause for all change, or developments, was to be found in changing ideas, ... and thereby make and change history." when in fact, for Marx, the role of the revolutionary was in fact the introduction of new ideas into the social struggle. Ideas are what transforms the social struggle into class struggle. Marx and Engels emphasized the objective factors of history because the revolutionaries of the time disregarded them. Marxism is a study of consciousness and its development. The CPUSA statement displays a kind of philosophical idealism, that of fitting the world into a set of pre-conceived notions. The CPUSA, at least, displays a consistency in its thinking. It was founded in the industrial period, and the organization still holds to the same ideas. In this stability is their strength. However, once an organization gets founded with a certain purpose, it is extremely difficult for it to change its quality. Picking apart a CPUSA statement on philosophy is not just a parlor room exercise. To this day, the CPUSA and the other CPs are the theoretical expression of the broader left. They pay lip service to Marxism, but then reduce it to the tactics of the class struggle. In this, they confuse Marxism-the-science with Marxism-the-doctrine. By taking doctrine -- the application of the science of Marxism under specific historical conditions -- as the science, by seeing it as an unchangeable, unhistorical thing, they are doomed to repeating the tactics of the 1930s in the age of electronics. Thus, they still propose a tactic of uniting with a section of Capital to "fight the right." Their "Bill of Rights Socialism" replaces "dictatorship of the proletariat." But what, really, is the difference between "Bill of Rights Socialism" and democratic socialism? And therefore between that and the "Third Way"? Here lies the danger of this conception of change, when one sees the CPUSA in relation to all of its connections in the various movements. The struggle for the proper understanding of quantity and quality is not a luxury, but a necessity; otherwise, one draws extremely wrong political conclusions. With the dismantling of the Soviet Union, the past unity between the imperialist camp and the socialist camp has been shattered. Dialectics proposes that thesis and antithesis arise simultaneously. In the uni-polar world, with the U.S. as the sole superpower, the antithesis may not be strong enough to struggle with it (yet), but it is there. Various analyses are being put forward to explain recent developments and jockeying for position. It is essential that we review and critique these analyses. Discussions going on amongst the remnants of the old CP of the Soviet Union [see, for example, "Dreams of the Eurasian Heartland: The Reemergence of Geopolitics", Charles Glover, Foreign Affairs, March, 1999] abandon any notion of class struggle, and see that "victory is now found in geography, rather than history." The re-constituted CP in Russia represents the class of bureaucrats who had come to dominate the CPSU. They have no principles, but support whatever will put them in the driver's seat. The CP in Russia has gone over the edge. There is no basis for polemicizing with them, because there is no philosophical common ground. It's like polemicizing with Trotskyists. Their demise is an expression of the destruction of communist ideology on the old basis. What role can the parties of industrialization have now? Their destruction is a verification of the possibility of a real leap forward based on new realities. [This is not to minimize the emerging danger of a world war as the U.S. tries to muscle in on the historical reserve of Russia in central Asia.] It is important that we not see globalization and imperialism as hard and fast categories. Elements of imperialism persist within globalization. The interplay of national interests and imperial interests and global interests today demands more study. _http://www.scienceofsociety.org/discuss/wc1.html_ (http://www.scienceofsociety.org/discuss/wc1.html)
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