– NEPH –
All modern science teaches humanity that certain stages of development are irreparably bound up with the domination of certain classes over others, leading to an eruption, a crises so deep causing a leap in which neither the exploited nor exploiters can live in the old way. The path for the progress of society becomes a prospect not just narrowly for one class, but for the liberation of society as a whole. That is, until a new class usurps power, the new becomes old, and a new force comes in to being which has an historical mission of abolishing that old.
One can take this two ways — progress is inevitable and that one day the abolition of exploitation will begin the real history of humanity; or that exploiters will continue usurping power to the detriment of the entire masses of people, forever and ever, until the sun sets on mankind as a life form in the universe. The latter conception is not a matter of progress at all, but rather a metaphysical cycle in which, departing from point A and going to point B, one will inevitably end up back at point A. It is fatalistic, which is why it pervades much of academic thought and even dominates a whole strain of the “progressive left”, believing there is nothing we can do about the bourgeoisie destroying the natural environment.
These trends have one thing in common — they neglect the notion of the historical mission totally. They have forgotten to analyse the concrete basis of this society. They have forgotten to take the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat to its conclusion. They have forgotten to think about the deepening divide between rich and poor, the driving of millions upon millions of workers into destitution, their transformation into paupers, while the fat cats atop the monopolies concentrated ever more wealth and become fewer.
What does this mean? It means that capitalist society has prepared the conditions for a new society which will end exploitation of man by man, put the interests of the vast majority of people into power for the first time and end this sad state of affairs where the bourgeoisie is enriched at the expense of so many, liberating all of humanity. In previous leaps, upheavals of the old social order, even the new exploiter class was able to garner support from the exploited, as the rising bourgeoisie was able to rally the serfs and other classes against feudal bondage and the landlords. But there can be no new exploiter class — capitalism has simplified things magnificently — proletariat and bourgeoisie, and for the first time an exploited class leads the struggle. This is because there can be no new exploiting class with such an advanced stage of social productive forces, only a new emancipatory class with the objective aim of ending the wage-slavery imposed by exploitative society and matching those social productive forces with social relations.
When we speak of an historical mission, therefore, we mean what history has set out for the proletariat to do. For us, as communists who know our theory of historical materialism, this is no news. This article can be typed up in a few minutes as a simple explanation for what must be done and some reasons why it must be done. This is the ABCs. But we cannot say that sufficient play has been given to developing modern theory worldwide, especially since the counter-revolutionary retrogressions of 1989. Our historical mission is shaped through the prism with which we theorize the world, and the specificities and new problems of today will not be tackled simply with the old theory. While having a very modest view of our work as a small publishing house, we know how important it is for this work to be done. And we hope, for what Historic Mission is worth, that we will contribute even slightly to taking on the theoretical problems of today.