A New Era - A New Doctrine II
The teaching of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels is all-powerful because it
is true. Marx was a genius because he was able before anyone else to abstract
from all the writings of history the law system that governed changes in
society. Using the law system he discovered, Marx shifted through a mass of
data concerning the fact of economic and social development and elaborated
the conclusion into the doctrine of the class struggle.
People always were and always will be the victims of deceit and
self-deceit in politics, as long as they have not learned to discover the
interests of one or another of the classes behind any moral, religious,
political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
Virtually every adult in America understands that we are living in an era
of revolution and the revolution is in the economy as expressed in the
technology and revolutionizing of all kinds of social products and services.
What everyone in society recognizes as revolutionary is a qualitatively new
technology that alters all social relationships. The way we communicate with
one another is changed forever and continues to change; the way we pay our
bills, shop, secure information, go to the movies and purchase tickets, drive
our vehicles, cash weekly checks or deposit it into banking accounts, secure
education, interact with television, play recording devices and listen to
music - everything is being revolutionized and people already know this.
The revolution has entered a stage where people begin to fight out the social
question posed by the economy revolution. This developing fight to formulate
what is wrong in society cannot mature without a cause, a morality and a
vision. During the last reform movement within capital, the Civil Rights
Movement, there was a cause, a morality and a vision. The vision of a genuine
system of justice and equality for all was the cause that excited deep
passion throughout every sector of society because it conformed to a general
morality that say it is honorable to be fair.
One hundred years before the Civil Rights movement the struggle to preserve
the Union birthed the cause of ending human slavery. That cause became the
foundation of a vision of a new world of human freedom. One Hundred years
earlier the cause of national independence - self-determination, united the
scattered and contradictory forces around a program of Independence and
ushered in 1776. It is the striving of our diverse peoples for a higher
vision that demands formulating the righteous cause that can inspire them to
unbelievable heights.
Lurking beneath the morality of fairness is always class interest, however
the vision that inspired was the striving for a better and just world. The
cause today is slowly emerging into view - the distribution of the wealth of
society according to need. The vision is of a world without human suffering
based on want, without race and national hatred, without sexual oppression
and human exploitation, a world where an ever expanding technology delivers
fuller lives for all, materially, culturally and spiritually in a safe and
healthy environment.
The historical record clearly proves that it was Marx to first formulate the
vision of the new world and this was not a vision called socialism but "from
each according to his ability, to each according to their need." Trying to
take "socialism" to the working class is useless for several reasons. One
important reason is that the process of the decay of capital does not take
place on the basis of a general collapse of the system where everything stops
working at one time but rather on the basis of the polarization of society
into two hostile camps; wealth and poverty.
This polarization splits the working class into two hostile camps. One camp
is absolutely dependent upon imperialism for its privilege position relative
to the other sector of the class. The other sector of the working class faces
the razor edge of capital with its standard of living slowly sinking lower
and lower, while its rank slowly but consistently grows larger. This process
is underway in all countries on earth and in this sense is historic and
develops with its own uniqueness in every country. The more stable section of
the working class has no interest in socialism, but rather the stability of
employment and preservation of its relatively high wages - compared to the
bottom. This desire does not prevent large sections of skilled and
white-collar workers from being pushed into the lower sectors of the working
class.
The lower and most destitute sector of the working class has no interest in
socialism because it is driven on the basis of its needs - I need this, that
and the other.
Then of course the banner of socialism was a banner in a historical period of
time that no longer exists. Socialism has already defined itself on earth and
before the collapse of Soviet power, the Soviet proletariat wrote the most
glorious chapter in human history, with its boundless sacrifices and
selflessness and then crowned everything with the stunning defeat of European
fascist reaction of the Hitler mode. From the rubble of Stalingrad bombed
buildings and twisted steel beams, came the greatest military offensive in
the history of warfare. When the smoke cleared it was the Red banner that
broke the back of fascism and the iron hand of the Soviet proletariat that
swept German fascism into the dustbin of history.
Socialism was rightly proclaimed as the system of transition from private
property relations to a system of "from each according to his ability, to
each according to their need." This was during a period of time where large
portions of the earth's masses were still in agriculture and unlike today
where billions are concentrated in and around the world's metropolis.
Further, the technology and productive capacity of our country and the world
at large is such as to make it possible to enter the land of "need" on the
basis of what already exists, without organizing society on the basis of a
more or less lengthy transition.
A qualitative change has already taken place in the productive forces with
the emergence of electronic-digitalized production process. When qualitative
changes takes place in the productive process, everything dependent upon the
process must in-turn change and conform. It is the changes in the economy
that is at the root of the polarization in society and its shifting and
tearing from the old foundation. It is the advent of electronic-digitalized
production, which defines the boundary to the end of the rule of capital.
It is precisely because of the very real changes in the economy, driven by
the technological revolution that a new generation can finally understand the
fullness of Marx words.
"No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which
there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production
never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured
in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself
only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely,
it will always be found that the tasks itself arises only when the material
conditions of its solution already exist or are at least in the process of
formation.
. . . The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form
of the social process of production - antagonistic not in the sense of
individual antagonisms, but of one arising form the social conditions of life
of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the
womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of
that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of
society to a close."
We are currently in the process of formation. The path forward is through the
most destitute sector of the working class.
Melvin P.
