The Communist Manifesto – 2,

Or

“Proletarian intellectuals of the world – unite!”

 

By Andrei Shkarubo

 

The cause of disagreements in the communist movement.

 

Once again we are witnessing the party brawls between the ‘fat’ and the ‘lean’, the clash of the fed and glad with the hungry and mad. Of course, all personal sympathies are on the side of the ‘lean’: indeed, the ‘fat’ with their unlimited ego appetites are prepared to sell out everything just to get the scraps from the Kremlin’s table. At the same time, the fat are right to some extent: “If you don’t like what we do, take our place and do better - or leave the party ranks so as to break its unity.”

How can one tell who’s right and who’s wrong? And, what’s more important in politics, who’s going to take the upper hand in these disputes?

To get the answer, one has to forget about all personal sympathies, and instead of rash biased judgments, try and give the objective assessment of the situation.

 

The cause of the continuing disarray in the communist movement, as well as the collapse of the USSR, lies in the fact that the old communist ideology, the old communist world outlook are no longer capable of adequately reflecting the current realities and meet the modern challenges of Time – the old political economy and dialectic materialism dating back to the mid 19^th century are simply not up to the task.

 

If one wants to have an objective view of the current processes in social development, one has to apply a more abstract, systemic approach reflecting the modern scientific knowledge of mankind.

 

(Note: For more detailed information on the methodology of analysis, see Dialectics of New Vision at http://www.geocities.com/andrei_shkarubo/dialectics.htm ).

 

The mechanism of evolution.

 

Applying this abstract systemic approach, one cannot but notice that social systems, like any other systems, following the Law of Time either degrade and die, or trying to survive, evolve and grow.

 

The whole task of the system’s survival actually tapers down to maintaining the unity of its energy-information content and its material form (the unity of the so-called body and soul). In the case of the social system they are the ideology and the state which plays role of societal form.

In turn, the maintenance of its inner unity, wholeness is impossible unless balance, equilibrium – at best unity – with the outer environment is maintained too.

 

Two methods are used to maintain balance with the environment:

 

1)      active method of forceful counteraction outwardly directed and aimed at changing or neutralizing the impact of environment primarily through growth and strengthening of its own structures, i.e. through quantitative growth which usually takes form of expansion;

 

as soon as the active method of maintaining balance reaches its limits, the system resorts to

2)      passive method of conscious cooperation: the outward visible growth is replaced by contraction (the system in effect is pulsating) and inner invisible in-depth growth leading to a qualitative shift, i.e. change, reorganization of its own inner structures and more adequate reflection of reality, consequently to a more stable balance with the environment.

 

The system applies these two methods at each of its three levels: material, energy and information – the choice of the level is determined by the stage of the system’s evolutionary development.

 

The system of social relations evolves similarly: at first the balance is maintained at the material level which manifests itself by active multivector growth, then reorganization of inner structures; after which the same methods are used to maintain the balance at the energy-information level.

 

The ways of social development.

 

Since the time the man has lost his unity with Nature (expelled from Paradise as Bible asserts) almost all history of human relations has been devoted to the restoration of balance at the material level.

 

The first direction of balance restoration was numerical growth, the demographic expansion as a means of survival; correspondingly, the hierarchy of relations under the conditions of demographic growth was built on time aspect, seniority, i.e. the boss was the one closest to the top of the kin pyramid, to the forefather.

The demographic growth could not but lead to the structural changes in society: the first division of labor and emergence of farmers and cattle breeders.

 

Which determined the next direction in the multivector growth of society: territorial expansion, migration as a means of survival. Correspondingly, the hierarchy of relations in a new tribal society was based on space-time aspect, i.e. the rights were determined not only by the seniority of one’s kin, but by the place of birth.

 

Territorial expansion, constant wars triggered structural changes, reorganization of social relations: the emergence of the warrior class. The rise of this class determined a new direction in growth: the hierarchy of power. One’s place in society was established not so much by kinship or place of birth, but by one’s position in power structures.

 

The increasing power inequity led to inequality in ownership, i.e. the continuing rise of the warrior class in relatively peaceful conditions provoked its division, resulting in the emergence of the landowners class.

Appropriately, the accumulation of property determined the hierarchy of social relations: now it was not the senior kinship, nor power, but wealth which made you the king of the hill.

 

This multivector quantitative growth of the society’s material form intermitted periodically by the leap-like changes, reorganizations in social relations reached its final stage with the start of industrial revolution – an upsurge in the turnout of the means of production – when pressure in the social reactor rose to such heights that a new element in the public consciousness emerged: the communist ideology embraced by the working class as its carrier.

 

The mankind was offered an alternative path of development: not the path of material growth which led only to more conflicts, wars now reaching the world scale, but the path of harmonious reorganization of social relations, first of all through elimination of political and property inequality.

 

The spread of this ideology, the emergence of a bloc of countries developing along the socialist path, though diminished the disparity in wealth at the national level, at the same time created the two poles of political confrontation, and in effect provoked a global rise in material growth as a good old way of reaching the balance.

 

This upsurge known as technical-scientific revolution created a new class - intelligentsia (intellectuals?) (ambiguously called in the West as the ‘middle class’) and made the society move to a higher energy-information level of its development so as to maintain the balance. The energy and information technologies began developing at the accelerating pace.

Illusion reemerged that extensive growth, this time in science and technology, would be enough to create a paradise on earth. That’s why the new ruling class, intelligentsia, discarded as utopian the communist ideology which required that man and society conduct the usually painful reorganization of public consciousness and public relations – as a result the socialist states, the carriers of this ideology, disappeared. (Lenin who knew well how easily intelligentsia could change its mind apparently foresaw such u-turn in history when he said in emotional outburst that intelligentsia, at the time a social layer, was not the brain, but the shit of the nation).

 

As soon as the global confrontation of the two political systems disappeared, the confrontation between the human civilization and the planet emerged, soon followed by the reemerging, dormant until then, social tensions which took the form of ethnic and religions conflicts.

 

The next spiral of extensive development, this time at the energy level, reached its limits (the energy production is no longer capable of satisfying the growing appetites of consumer civilization) and triggered the next sequence of social division: intelligentsia, or the middle class, began disappearing, giving way to capitalist intellectuals and proletarian intellectuals.

 

The new rise of tension in the social reactor will inevitably create in the public consciousness, the way it happened in the mid 19^th century, the ideology with a much bigger period of semi-decay than the communist ideology of the Marxist-Leninist edition had. The more so that it’s now obvious that the extensive path of development has not only failed to eradicate social tension , but in addition increased the disbalance between the mankind and nature, bringing the planet and civilization to the brink of collapse.

 

This ideology must help mankind move to the next, informational, level of development where social, communist, relations are to develop along the same old principles, adjusted to the new conditions.

The demographic growth, for example, will be not at the expense of increased birth-rate but due to increased life-expectancy rate: the older the person, the more his information load as information carrier.

 

The demographic growth is to trigger another territorial expansion, this time not on earth but in Space, of which cosmic philosopher K. Tsiolkovskiy wrote a century ago.

 

The exploration of other, macro and micro worlds is to trigger an explosion of new knowledge which can be mastered not by those who are seeking to exchange it for material comforts – a crate of whiskey and a string of glass beads – but by those who are seeking spiritual growth and freedom from material bonds. Appropriately, the hierarchy of relations in such society is built not on property, not on material but on spiritual dominance, i.e. the lesser the material necessities are, the stronger is the spiritual authority.

The millennia-long existence of religious communes is a valid proof of viability of such hierarchy in human relations. Unlike the monastic commune, though, focused on the search of God, the communist society will be focused on the search of Truth, and knowledge is to become its major product.

Unlike the present society whose development is practically uncontrollable – one cannot call ‘control’ those political manipulations at which the blind leaders of the blind are so apt – the evolution of social relations under communism will become a socially conscious controllable affair, i.e. it will be a truly open democratic process in which every class will be fully aware of its role in the life of society.

The mechanism of control, the state, and the social classes won’t disappear because the public division of labor is to continue, but class tensions will stop because the understanding of the laws of social development, the ability to manage this development would make it possible to synchronize the process of the social division of labor with the opposite process of social integration.

Special attention will be paid to the latter, which is to make the state structures and the hierarchy of power so flexible that one might have an impression that they are absent.

 

Way out of the deadlock of consumer civilization

 

Mankind already has the seeds of knowledge required to build the new, communist in arrangement and cosmic in scale, civilization; there are also technical and labor resources for this. But for these seeds to survive and sprout one has to change the present social conditions – which is impossible without changing public consciousness, the consciousness of proprietor and consumer.

 

That’s why the communist revolution is not so much about the transformation of power as the transformation of human mind. That’s why this ideology will spread the same way the early Christianity did: at the grass-roots level, through communes. In other words, the carrier of such ideology is to have a virtual, conditional, hierarchy.

In turn, the communist party of a new formation which is to emerge as the fully-fledged carrier of communist ideology cannot limit itself by the national borders and a short-sighted goal of building communism in an isolated country.

Under present conditions of globalization such party must take care of the whole planet earth.

 

Attitude to parties, classes and organizations.

 

Of course, the old communist parties in their present mummified by the old dogmas state are unable to offer the mankind a way out of the deadlock of consumer civilization because they have neither modern methodology of analysis of social processes which could penetrate into their essence and draft a corresponding strategy, nor their own outlook adequate to present-day realities, nor their own ideology, the very same strategy without which survival is impossible.

 

The bankruptcy of such parties is inevitable as long as they keep putting their stakes on the working class, the horse which has long gone off the track, as long as they are unable to see that it’s the proletarian intelligentsia which has become the leader of the social development. (Although the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has long been putting its stakes on the bourgeoisie, its political bankruptcy is unavoidable too).

 

Of course , the existence of the new class cannot escape the notice of the party top but recognition of the proletarian intelligentsia as a hegemon implies the inevitable loss of monopoly on truth: there’s always someone who may emerge and offer the people the live truth, removing you with your obsolete dogmas from the fore-front of politics which implies the loss of a cushy seat in the row of a pocket opposition built in the regime’s hierarchy of power, and which implies the loss of one’s assured income from the sale of the trust the people still have in you as a defender of their interests.

 

The ideological crisis of the modern communist movement, the opportunism of its party leadership lead inevitably to divisions and splits as many think that as soon as a new form, party, is created a new content, ideology will emerge. But it doesn’t, and a new bubble of party building bursts into the air.

 

Which is inevitable because creation of content, ideology, cannot be rushed in a campaign style, nor influenced by party intrigue. This work is for the unbiased and unselfish, those who set the truth above all personal interests, above one’s own life.

 

Until ideology, the strategy of party work, is created the party splits due to tactical divisions are counterproductive. This won’t speed up the emergence of strategy, so before any splits and re-alignments one must determine the root-case of the existing divisions and conformities. Which is impossible without a new improved methodology of dialectic analysis. The more so that the majority of provisions of the Marxist ideology are still valid but require a new interpretation in a new reality.

Avoiding the split, one should not avoid the party inner struggle with the opportunistic leadership, mobilizing for it the party rank-and-file for whom communism is not a trade brand which helps profit but a life conviction for which sacrifice is normal.

That’s why the logic of this struggle requires that moral-ethical norms for every party member, whatever his position, should be made the topmost priority: revolutions are made by puritans, not by those who sell indulgencies.

 

Relations with classes must be determined by the actual ability of a particular class to influence the cause of social development.

Therefore, determining one’s relations with the oppressed classes one should understand that the most revolutionary of them is not the one which is oppressed most (such class simply degrades into lumpenproletariat) but the one which is more capable to fight for its rights.

In this respect, the modern working class can only be an ally of the hegemon, the way peasants used to be before; and any stakes put on the present working class are the stakes put on the plebes, demanding, on their knees too, bread and amusements; the stakes put on a ruminant mammal nostalgic about the quiet and nourishing life in the past.

The role of the engine of the coming social changes can be played only by the class which is capable of thinking of future, which can understand that communism is not an endless free feast for all in the fairy-tale country of fools but a democratic, highly integrated, and therefore highly efficient, society evolving according to the laws of harmony where unlimited consumption is possible only in one sphere, spiritual.

Only one class can play the role of such locomotive force – the impoverished intelligentsia, that’s why the present-day slogan of the communist movement should become: “Proletarian intellectuals of the world – unite!”

 

Determining one’s allies in political struggle, one should understand that in present-day Russia whose civil society is crushed by the iron heal of the secret services and their oligarchs it’s vital to have the closest possible cooperation with all democratic parties, movements and organizations, both at home and abroad, paying no heed to the provocateurs outcry that the Russian left are collaborating with the enemy and selling the motherland to NATO.

Such cooperation is essential especially now when attempts of the transnational capital are evident to strip the democratic society of its rights and liberties under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Finally, such cooperation is simply unavoidable under conditions of increasing global problems which demand immediate solutions, and which cannot be solved without the reshuffle of the modern society.

 

One can go on speculating endlessly as to what class is to carry out this reshuffle, and what political force is to win in the increasing dispute over the future social arrangement, but one thing is sure: the winner will be the one who will see the truth in this dispute, the one who’s objectively interested in it.

 

July 12, 2007.