Let us go back a bit to our riddle of what came first, the
chicken or the egg, structure or function, practice or theory? If
waging the class struggle and politics, or, in short, practice,
are not put in the first place, how is it possible to raise the
question of acquiring a world outlook? Why would anyone want to
acquire a world outlook when that outlook has no meaning for that
person in real life? A world outlook is a matter of approaching
the social and natural world, a world of which the people are an
integral part.
A world outlook determines how a person approaches the world
in which that person lives. Should we approach it from the
standpoint that ideas are primary and matter is secondary or the
other way around? Only those who wage the class struggle will be
objective and approach the question of a world outlook from their
own standpoint, from their own class interest. When the
universities as well schools these days teach that reality is not
even knowable, they are waging a class struggle. They tell the
people that they must not look at the reality of capitalist
exploitation and wage slavery and draw what would be the
warranted conclusion that no problems can be sorted out with
finality until the capitalist system and the capitalist class are
overthrown.
We Marxist-Leninists, on the other hand, approach the world
from the standpoint that not only is reality knowable but it also
has its own laws of social development. What is necessary is to
take into consideration these laws when anything is done, that
is, when we participate in the class struggle and the struggles
for production and scientific experimentation -- the three major
fronts of practice of all human beings. For us, matter is primary
and it can only be verified in the forms in which it exists. The
fact that it exists in myriad forms proves that matter cannot
exist without motion, just as motion cannot exist without matter.
The capitalist class which teaches the youth that reality is
not knowable organizes its own individual enterprises and
political parties and processes extremely consciously and
knowingly. They knowingly use the worn-out method of all
reactionary classes, which is to advance on the basis of keeping
the people ignorant. Thus for them it is very convenient to
philosophize and have an outlook stating that even reality is not
knowable. There are people who can even get their Ph.Ds and
become well-known professors saying such things!
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
