Revolution #105, October 21, 2007

MAKING REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATING HUMANITY

PART 1: BEYOND THE NARROW HORIZON OF BOURGEOIS RIGHT

by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Editors’ Note: The following is the first in a series of excerpts from a talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA earlier this year (2007). This has been edited for publication and footnotes have been added (among other things, in preparing this for publication, the author has considerably expanded the section on Karl Popper). These excerpts are being published in two parts. Part 1 is available in its entirety, as one document, online at revcom.us. Part 2 will also be available in the near future, as one document, at revcom.us; the excerpts comprising Part 2 will also be published as a series in Revolution after the conclusion of the present series of excerpts.

I want to begin by returning to a point that we continue to speak to—and for very good reasons—both because of its great importance and because it is still so little grasped and acted upon. This is the whole question of getting beyond the present narrow horizons imposed on society and on people and their thinking. Now, I am aware that in his latest CD, Modern Times, Bob Dylan has a song “Beyond the Horizon.” But what we are talking about is something entirely and radically different—it is the narrow horizon of bourgeois right, and the need for humanity to leap beyond that horizon.

“I Want to Get More”—or We Want Another World?

I was moved, or provoked, to speak to this again in reading some reports recounting the responses of different people, youth in particular, to watching the DVD of my 2003 talk Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About. I want to begin with a comment of one youth (I believe it was a high school student in Oakland) who watched this DVD, and said he really liked it—“I agree with everything in there, and I really liked the vision of the future society”—but, he went on, “if I invent something, I want to get more for it.”

Here we come right up against the question of making (or not making) a leap beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois right. What do we mean by “bourgeois right”? This refers to the concept of “right” which essentially corresponds to commodity relations—relations in which people confront each other as owners (or non-owners) of things which are to be exchanged—and more specifically, relations in which the appearance of equality covers over profound inequalities, relations which are grounded in the exploitation and oppression of the many by a relative handful. In its most fundamental terms, this is grounded in a relationship where a small number of people dominate ownership not only of the wealth of society, but more fundamentally the means to produce wealth (land, raw materials, technology of various kinds, and so on), and a large number of people own little or none of these things, and so must sell their ability to work to those who do own them (and, if they are not able to sell their ability to work—if they cannot get a job—they will either starve or be forced into other means, often illegal means, in order to be able to live). Once again, this exchange—of the ability to work (or “labor power”) for a wage (or salary)—appears to be an equal exchange; but in reality it involves and embodies a profoundly unequal relation, in which those without capital are forced into a subordinate position: forced to work for—and, in the process of working, creating more wealth for—those who do own and control capital.

This fundamental relation of inequality, of domination and exploitation, is extended into and embodied in all the relations of capitalist society. Take, for example, the concept of “equality before the law.” This is supposed to mean that the same laws are applied, in the same ways, to everyone, regardless of what their “station” in life is, how much money they have, and so on. Experience shows, however, that this is not how things work out in reality. People with more money have more political influence—and those with a great deal of money have a great deal of political influence and power—while those with less money, and especially those with very little, also have no significant political influence, connections with political power, and so on. And this plays out, repeatedly, in legal proceedings, right down to the way in which those presiding over legal procedures (judges) look—very differently—at different kinds of people who become involved in legal proceedings. But what is even more decisive is the reality that the laws themselves (and the Constitution which sets the basis for the laws) reflect and reinforce the essential relations in society, and most fundamentally the economic (production) relations of capitalism. This, for example, is why it is perfectly legal for capitalists to lay off thousands of people, or to refuse to hire them in the first place, if these capitalists cannot make sufficient profit by employing (and exploiting) them—or if they can make more profit by employing, and exploiting, people in some other place—but it is illegal for people who have been denied employment in this way to take the things they need without paying for them (without giving money in exchange for these things—money which in fact they do not have, money they cannot earn, because they have been prevented from working, by means that are perfectly legal under this system). All this—and the many ways in which this finds expression in society, in the relations between groups and individuals, in the laws and institutions, and in the thinking of people—is what is meant in referring to “bourgeois right.”

To dig further into what this means, let’s return to the example of someone “wanting more” if they invent something. This is hardly an uncommon view. It is “spontaneous” thinking that is very common when living in a society like this, where everything is ultimately—and very often not so ultimately—measured in the very narrow, constricting terms of the cash nexus and gets expressed crudely in “what’s in it for me?” So this youth could see the sweep of all that is presented in that “Revolution” talk, and agree with it—but, then, there was one little sticking point: “If I do something special, I want something in exchange for it, I want the chance to get something more for me.”

Well, we have to examine: How do things actually work when and where people “get more”? And, for that matter, how do things actually work when and where people invent something in the first place? What is it that happens most of the time when someone invents something, and then someone ends up “getting more out of it”? Usually, it’s not the person who does the inventing who “gets more”—or gets most of the profit—from this, but instead the people who have control of capital and who can turn the invention into a commodity and into capital. Because that’s what has to happen in order for someone to get more out of something that is invented: there have to be the social relations, and ultimately and fundamentally the production relations, which enable that, which make it possible to turn that invention into “intellectual property”—into a commodity and into capital.

Well, in order for that to happen, there must be a whole network of capitalist relations. Otherwise, on what basis are you going to get anything—and, specifically, get more than others—if there is not a whole network of commodity relations and of capital which is undergirding and is the basis on which the whole society is functioning? And this whole network of commodity relations, and of capital, is in reality a network of exploitation. That is what has to be in operation in order for someone—and most likely not the inventor, but a class of people, a class of capitalists (and particular capitalists in particular instances)—to get more out of it. It is those who already control large amounts of capital, and who have a dominant position in the capitalist economy, who are most likely to benefit the most—to get more than others.

And what happens if we have a whole network of capitalist relations? What kind of world do we then have? We have the same world that’s being dissected and indicted in the “Revolution” talk on the DVD—the same world that drove this person to say, in the first place, “I really liked what is said in that talk.” You don’t like this world. But if you don’t want this world, then you cannot want the things that define this world and that are the underlying and driving forces in this world. You cannot want a network of commodity relations and of capital, because then you have everything that goes along with that, not only immediately around you, but throughout the world, and all the horrors that we know about and could catalog almost endlessly.

To paraphrase Lenin, capitalism puts into the hands of individuals, as individual wealth and capital, that which has been produced by all of society. Production under capitalism—and the turning of an invention into something which not only has use value but exchange value, which can summon money back and even “surplus value,” more money than at the start of the process—requires a social production process which ends up with the surplus value (the wealth that’s produced as capital) going into the hands of individuals—and a relative handful of individuals, at that. This is the point Lenin was making when he said that capitalism puts into the hands of individuals, as individual wealth and capital, that which has been produced by all of society—and today, more than ever, this takes place on a worldwide scale. After all, capital is not something neutral, and it is not wealth in some abstract sense—divorced and abstracted from the social production relations through which that wealth is produced—capital is a social relation in which some have command over the labor power (the ability to work) of others and accumulate wealth for themselves by utilizing that labor power of others.

Lenin added that capitalism forces people to calculate, with the stinginess of a miser, how much more they’re getting than somebody else. Put that—and everything that’s bound up with that, all the horrors that go along with that—up against what it would mean to move beyond all that, to get beyond these production relations, and the corresponding social relations, and all the conditions that are bound up with them and intertwined with them. And, further, in the situation where humanity had finally managed to throw off all this, and all the horrors that go along with it, the orientation of “wanting more for myself” would very quickly move things backward, in the direction of the capitalist system, with all its very real horrors. There is no other way in which ultimately and fundamentally certain individuals can “get more”—no way other than to have a whole network of relations that makes that possible, with everything that goes along with that.

Does this mean—as is often claimed by people attacking and slandering communism—that in communist society everybody will have exactly the same amount of things, regardless of their particular situation and their particular needs? No, the slogan of communism—the principle that will be applied in communist society—is precisely from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. In other words, people will contribute what they can to society and will get back what they need to meet the requirements of a decent and fulfilling life, intellectually and culturally, as well as materially, on an ever expanding basis. This will involve and require a whole different outlook and morality, along with radically different economic, social, and political relations, in which it will no longer be the case that a relatively small group dominates and exploits masses of people and in which it is presented as “right and natural” for some people to have a superior position over others.

Look at that present reality, and the principles and morals that go along with it—where everyone is pushed into trying to “get more” than others, and where a small number “get much more” than the great majority—and contrast that with the much more lofty and liberating principle of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs—where we move beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois right—of “what’s in it for me, what do I get,” in accordance with the commodities and, in many cases, the capital that I have been able to accumulate through this process. This, once again, is not a neutral process, but a process of degrading and brutalizing exploitation and oppression—and today this involves exploitation and oppression of literally billions of people throughout the world, including huge numbers of children. This is the foundation of the present system, the capitalist-imperialist system—this is the reality of life under this system—in which it is a driving principle to “get more.”

Again let’s pose the basic question: Which is a much more liberating and lofty vision of society, and which would make a better world—this system, with its fundamental relations, and the corresponding ideas, or one in which people are receiving according to their needs while contributing according to their abilities—not on the basis of what they are going to get back out of it, in some narrow sense, but on the basis of understanding that society as a whole, including the flourishing of the individuals who make up society, is going to be on a much better foundation and reach to much greater heights if that whole orientation of “what do I get out of it” has been moved beyond, together with moving beyond the material basis for that and the necessity that is bound up with that?

This is a point we’re going to have to continually struggle with people about. What kind of world do you want to live in? Do you want all the things that now characterize the world? We can go down the list of them: the oppression of women, racism and national oppression, exploitation of little children, despoliation of the environment, the wars fought in which the people on the bottom are dragged into them as the cannon fodder (as the old saying goes)…and on and on and on. Is that the world you want, so that maybe—and very unlikely—you might be able to “get more”? Certainly most people will not “get more.” Or do you want a world free of and beyond all that, beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois right?

Are All “Ideal Visions of Society” Equally Valid and Good?

Now, let’s take up another question that came up when some college students were watching the DVD of the same “Revolution” talk, and in particular the “Imagine” section of it (where people are called on to imagine what it would be like to live in a radically different society, a socialist society on the road to communism). Their response was: This is really inspiring, this vision of an ideal world (that, apparently, is how they saw it). But then they began to grapple with the question: Isn’t it unfair to impose one vision of an ideal world over others? Maybe I have one idea of what an ideal world is, but you have another idea and someone else has another idea—isn’t it unfair to impose one vision and to favor that over others?

Well, once again, we have to answer this with a scientific outlook and method, with materialism and dialectics. And there are a number of different levels on which, and angles from which, we can and should answer this. Let’s start by putting the question very bluntly: Do we really not want to oppose—and, yes, in some cases suppress—some notions of an “ideal world” that some people and some sections of society hold and try to implement? What about the Ku Klux Klan? Is their vision of an “ideal world” one we don’t want to oppose and suppress? Is it unfair to insist that the “ideal vision” they hold cannot be implemented? What about fanatical Islamic fundamentalists and their counterpart Christian Fascists? Are their visions and programs for an “ideal world” things that we don’t want to oppose—and, yes, even suppress? Should “honor killings”—where unmarried girls and women who “lose their virginity,” even if they are raped, are murdered to preserve the “honor” of their family—should that not be opposed—and, yes, prevented? Should women’s right to abortion and birth control be taken away, in accordance with the Christian Fascist vision of a good society, of an “ideal world”—and should the laws of society be based on a literalist reading of the Bible, as many powerful Christian Fascists insist (which would mean stoning to death or otherwise executing: women who are not virgins when they are married; women who are accused of being witches; homosexuals; children who are rebellious against their parents; and many others who defy “God’s will,” as insisted upon by these Christian Fascists)? Should all that really not be opposed—and, yes, suppressed—should it be allowed because it corresponds to these people’s “vision of an ideal world”?

What about the people who now rule this country and much of the world, who think that their “ideal world” is such a good thing that it’s right to impose it on the rest of the world, through massive organized violence and mechanized destruction? Do we really not want to oppose—and, yes, when we are finally able to do so, do we really not want to suppress—that “vision of an ideal world”?

How does human society actually develop?

The basic problem with this way of thinking—and the use of the word “ideal” points to the problem—is that it is fundamentally idealist, and is in fundamental conflict with reality. This is not how societies have emerged and developed, or can emerge and develop—that different people come up with ideal visions of how society ought to be and then they set about imposing them on society, or trying to convince other people that this is the way to go, without regard to what the realities of society, and the driving forces of social development, actually are. As historical materialists, applying dialectical materialism to the history of humanity and the development of human society, we can see that society does not develop this way, but develops out of the constant struggle and transformation involved in the relation between necessity and freedom. “Ideal visions” of society—and programs for changing society—can and do play a very important role in the transformation of society, if and when those “ideals” and programs correspond to ways in which it is possible to transform society at a given time, under given circumstances. But if an “ideal vision of society” has no basis in reality—if it does not reflect the way society is moving and tending, or if it does not represent a certain resolution of the actual contradictions that characterize society and impel its motion and development—then such an “ideal vision of society” cannot be realized. Human beings don’t come together in society out of an “ideal vision”; they come together to deal with the necessity with which they’re confronted. They transform that necessity in one way or another, and in so doing they bring into being new necessity. Often—as has been pointed out before¹—what goes along with this is unintended consequences: People do things to deal with what’s immediately impinging upon them, and in so doing they may, and often do, set in motion a process which leads to results and consequences that had not been anticipated, or intended, by them.

Let’s look at an example I’ve used before: people in ancient Mexico who were living in hunting and gathering societies, and then their conditions changed. Partly as a result of environmental changes, but also partly because of what they themselves had done over generations, with the killing off of game through hunting, they could no longer maintain the way of life that they were previously engaged in. And so in some cases these people settled in one area, instead of living a more migratory life, and they began to carry out settled agriculture where the material conditions were at hand to do that. And that brought forth all kinds of changes which were largely unintended, and even unimagined, by them, including the emergence and development of new, oppressive social divisions among them. When something like this happens, new necessity is brought into being.

This is just one illustration of the basic reality that people come into certain relations with each other in order to deal with necessity which largely occurs “behind their backs,” and without their consciously deciding to do something—until, at a certain point, they become more conscious of this. This has gone through spirals and different stages of development, and has taken different forms, in the overall history of human beings and their societies. This is the way human societies have actually emerged, developed, and been transformed (or in some cases eliminated). And, without being linear, and determinist, in our understanding of this—without seeing this as some kind of “straight line” process, going onward, and upward, according to some predetermined plan, or some unavoidable, inexorable laws of development—this is the only basis on which human society can emerge and develop, and be transformed.

So, what is being spoken about in this “Revolution” DVD (and in particular the “Imagine” section of that talk) is the next leap that it is possible—not inevitable, but possible—to make on the basis of what has emerged through the complex and many-sided process of development that has in fact taken place in the historical development of human society up to this point. This is not something that was all laid out in someone’s mind from the beginning—neither god’s nor anyone else’s. But it is something which corresponds to the present situation humanity is confronted with, where another leap is possible to a radically different and much better world, namely communism.

We can make an analogy here to evolution in the natural world. One of the points that is repeatedly stressed in the book on evolution by Ardea Skybreak² is that the process of evolution can only bring about changes on the basis of what already exists. First of all, there is no “intelligent design”—no “design” of any kind—in all this. And, along with that, it is not possible for something to emerge through the process of natural evolution which doesn’t have its basis in what already exists. Evolutionary changes—including qualitative changes leading to the emergence of completely new species—can and do occur on the basis of genetic variation and mutation, in interaction with the environment (where changes involving features that confer a reproductive advantage to those individuals with those features can lead to the predominance of those features within a grouping and even, in certain conditions, to the emergence of a new species). But such changes do not, and cannot, come about on the basis that something would be favorable for a species (or for individual members of a species) to have, and so it just emerges to fill a need. Evolution in the natural world comes about, and can only come about, through changes that arise on the basis of, and in relation to, the existing reality and the existing constraints (or, to put it another way, the existing necessity).

And, in fundamental terms, the same thing is true in human social development, in the history of human society. This is why socialism is, in fact, such a goddamn hard thing: As Marx emphasized in a basic way, and Lenin began to grapple with more concretely as well, and Mao grappled with on a whole other level—you’re dealing with socialism as it emerges out of capitalism, out of the previous society. That is why Lenin said we don’t get to make socialism with people as we would like them to be; we have to build socialism, to transform society under socialism, with people as they have emerged from the old society. And that is true with regard not only to people but all the old conditions, including the material conditions of production (the technology but also, and even more essentially, the production relations, and the social relations, as well as all the ideas and the political institutions). That is what you set out to transform, in a qualitative and radical way. You don’t get to go to a drawing board and say: “What would we like to have here?” This doesn’t happen through a process where different people put down their “ideal vision,” and then there is a grand debate until everybody’s convinced of what’s the best ideal (and meanwhile, everybody has starved). You don’t get to do that, that’s not the way it works.

Yes, the “ideal” of communism is a very beautiful and desirable thing; but it emerges out of—its basis and its possibility exist in relation to—the prior constraints, the prior necessity, the results of the previous transformations of society through this dialectical, back-and-forth interplay between necessity and the transformation of necessity into freedom…which brings with it—what? New necessity.

Well, this is what we have to enable people to understand. This is why it takes science to deal with the transformation of society, and particularly to deal with it in a way that actually can, at this point, bring about the abolition of oppressive and exploitative relations, antagonistic relations generally among people, and lead to a whole new and far better world for humanity. This can only be done on a scientific basis—on the basis of a materialist and dialectical analysis and synthesis of reality and a scientific understanding of where we are in that process and what that opens up in terms of the transformation of necessity into freedom at this stage.

This series will continue in the next issue of Revolution.

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