Thoughts Provoked by Hastening While Awaiting—Not Bowing Down to Necessity
December 16, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
A couple of thoughts provoked by study of the six paragraphs that begin Bob Avakian's Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity Part 2—that is, the section Hastening while awaiting—not bowing down to necessity. This passage was recently highlighted in the Bob Avakian section of the website, calling it to your readers’ attention. Thinking about this in connection to the RCP’s statement “On the Strategy for Revolution,” I was impelled to find and re-read “‘Crises in Physics,’ Crises in Philosophy and Politics” by Bob Avakian. Having done so, I think it’s quite relevant, stimulating, and worthy of returning to in this light.
First I was struck by the analogy made in relation to the current crisis (in particular, the end of the world’s first stage of communist revolution with the 1976 coup ending socialism in China) to Lenin’s political battles AND further, his polemical development of scientific thinking in the wake of the defeat of the 1905 revolution in Russia.1 The ways in which these crises, lines, and methods of thinking are posed today, their analogous stakes, AND the further development of scientific communist thinking in relation to reality and its transformation—all this is very sharply and clearly drawn in this “‘Crises in Physics,’ Crises in Philosophy and Politics” article, which is related in some ways to the very foundational “six paragraphs” from Making/Emancipating.2
A scientific understanding of contradiction is extremely important; and this “Crises...” piece—including in the contributions made by Ardea Skybreak that are referenced in this “Crises” article—about reality, contradiction, matter in motion and change—takes this further. And that is a real necessity. This includes points that go beyond an earlier, and to some degree mechanical, understanding of contradiction (i.e., “one divides into two”—though that’s not to be entirely discarded)—with new understanding of internal contradiction concentrated in unevenness...and borders/boundaries. It is crucial to grasp—and wrangle with—the fact that unevenness is the basis in reality through which change occurs—a dialectical materialist point of method which people need to understand, grasp, and continually apply: it’s essential—an essential scientific strength—in working for the change humanity needs.
This article also intersects with those “six paragraphs” reprinted and highlighted recently in Revolution newspaper from Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity Part 2 in discussing the relationship of universal and particular. To quote a bit from “Crises...”:
It is important to understand that what is involved in this—the dialectical relation between the universal and particular, and the different levels on which this can be expressed—is not simply the “interaction” of different particular forms of matter (or levels of matter), which should be conceived of as simply “external” to each other and “separated” in some absolute sense. No—while each particular form, and level, of matter (in motion) does have discrete existence, and identity, as such (some defining characteristics or internal coherence), at the same time this is relative, and not absolute. Accordingly, a particular form of matter may not only “interact with” another distinct form of matter, but may also be integrated, along with that other form of matter, into another entity at a different level of the organization of matter....
It did strike me that this is quite relevant grounding for a deeper understanding of the unity and purpose of various forms of revolutionary work, political and theoretical, that a revolutionary party is undertaking at any given time. For instance, why BA Everywhere is the leading edge of a whole ensemble of revolutionary work the Party is doing now and how this ensemble is an application of the Party’s strategy for revolution.
I think this article “Crises...”, shedding light on the Party’s strategy and ensemble of revolutionary work, can be an additional tool in needed transformations and, as part of that, it is definitely one good piece for our work on the transfer of the allegiance (away from “adjusting” this horrible world... to the need, basis, and work for a real revolution) of a section of the intellectuals—including in working scientifically on the relativism and agnosticism which plagues people’s thinking.
Another thought about revolutionary situations and the approach to scientific wrangling with this and actually hastening while awaiting a revolutionary situation:
To advocate for a point made in Bob Avakian’s article “There IS NO ‘Permanent Necessity’ for Things to Be This Way—A Radically Different and Better World CAN Be Brought Into Being Through Revolution”: it is important for people now to be grappling with the potential contours of the emergence of a revolutionary situation, and how both the objective conditions and subjective factors (the conscious actions of people) could conceivably come together—and what the vanguard party would need to prepare for—and to do—in such a situation to bring about the full ripening of that revolutionary situation in order to lead people in their millions to wage an actual struggle for power when the time is right. This article sheds light on why it’s important to do that well in advance of the specific features of this situation becoming obviously apparent.
NOT to be grappling with this is another form of tailing spontaneity and is also a method that leads to just essentially “waiting” within existing conditions and betrays the very purpose of being a vanguard party. Now the wrangling being called for is not idle speculation or imposing our wishes or precepts upon reality, but to be really probing and digging deeply beneath the surface to identify factors (objective and subjective) that could be part of the mix of a revolutionary situation, and what needs to be done to be a force that’s actually working to hasten toward that.
To quote from Hastening while awaiting—not bowing down to necessity (from Part 2 of Making/Emancipating):
Revolution is not made by “formulas,” or by acting in accordance with stereotypical notions and preconceptions—it is a much more living, rich and complex process than that. But it is an essential characteristic of revisionism (phony communism which has replaced a revolutionary orientation with a gradualist, and ultimately reformist one) to decide and declare that until some deus ex machina—some god-like EXTERNAL FACTOR—intervenes, there can be no essential change in the objective conditions and the most we can do, at any point, is to accept the given framework and work within it, rather than (as we have very correctly formulated it) constantly straining against the limits of the objective framework and seeking to transform the objective conditions to the maximum degree possible at any given time, always being tense to the possibility of different things coming together which bring about (or make possible the bringing about of) an actual qualitative rupture and leap in the objective situation.
So that is a point of basic orientation in terms of applying materialism, and dialectics, in hastening while awaiting the emergence of a revolutionary situation....
Also in this light, I’ve been thinking about Lenin, in his time, in relation to this. In particular at the time of World War 1 and Kerensky’s rise to power in Russia after the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917—and what Lenin saw beneath the surface and thus the real potential for a revolutionary situation and what needed to be done...in contrast to all the revisionist, gradualist/mechanical and stagist determinism that was afoot including in his own Party. Lenin’s very different method and approach to the actual reality and potential at that juncture made all the difference in the bringing into being the actual communist revolution of October 1917. And, analogously at THIS current time, what is needed is the scientific method and approach brought forward by Bob Avakian that is now there to apply, livingly, to actually bring fully into being a new stage of communist revolution.
No, we are not now in a revolutionary situation, but—as one among many aspects of taking up this method and approach—if our Party on all levels and increasing numbers of masses are not grappling with what the contours of a revolutionary situation might be in the way called for in “No Permanent Necessity...”...and IF we don’t have a Party at the core of a revolutionary movement that is living in the methodology concentrated in the six paragraphs from Part II of Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity and making the connection of this method to the Party’s strategy for revolution and actively applying it, then we are not really hastening while awaiting a revolutionary situation, nor preparing minds and organizing forces... for revolution.
1. In 1908, Lenin wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, a scathing critique of the philosophical and political opportunists who rallied around the thinking of Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist and philosopher. Machism was a form of idealism linked to the positivist/pragmatist trend in philosophy. Machists ridiculed materialism—the recognition that matter exists outside of experience and knowledge. They held that the real world consisted only of sensations—of things that exist only as they are realized in our knowledge of them and which have no existence outside our knowledge of them. This great struggle in philosophy was due both to recent discoveries in science, among which was the discovery that the atom could be divided into different parts. These discoveries brought about a crisis in physics that went along with a crisis in Marxism which was brought about by the defeat of the 1905 revolution—a period of vicious repression and lull in the movement in Russia and a period of regrouping and reconstituting the shattered revolutionary party in Russia. This was also a period of desertion from the revolution of formerly revolutionary intellectuals. This and the development of capitalism into imperialism strengthened revisionism and created real necessity for Lenin to advance philosophy and dialectical materialism. In particular, Lenin critiqued the mechanical materialism that existed in the understanding of science and of Marxism—mechanical materialism that was incapable of grasping reality as it is and degenerated into idealism and defeatism. This struggle was crucial to laying the ideological and political foundations for the successful revolution in Russia in 1917. [back]
2. Bob Avakian’s talk Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity appears in Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation, a Revolution pamphlet, May 1, 2008, and is also available online at revcom.us/avakian/makingrevolution (Part 1) and revcom.us/avakian/makingrevolution2 (Part 2). [back]
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