– N. Ribar –
The best way to gauge people’s feelings, their basic responses to the world around them, is by talking to them. This may seem to be a truism, but often this step is overlooked among certain individuals who are broadly for change. Diving into the books and disorienting oneself is quite a common phenomenon. But when we actually engage with the prevailing sentiment, we position ourselves within the people and our work can actually assume a mass character once we have evaluated the position of the people and taken a position to lead those masses through enlightenment, organization and so on.
Yet there is already a spontaneous impulse that the whole society feels at the moment — it is that something is not right. Yes, this is a basic response to a world of crisis and decay, with innate contradictions bursting the buttons of the suit of capitalism yearly, monthly, weekly and daily. Not everyone knows what system is at fault, but everyone knows that at least something is not right, that something is afoot. It is that embryo of change which fills the air we breathe and consumes the lungs of our bodies. Think of the crisis today, for example, as a cough. Something simple as the bodily function of a cough is dialectical, scientific. Believe it or not, this is certainly the case. The body may have contracted some sort of cold, but the body can not only expel that by fighting with its immune system, but it can combat its effects by expelling the mucus built up in the throat. If it did not do this, if the body’s basic function in its self-motion did not expel the mucus, we would lose our capacity to breathe and simply die. This is dialectics 101 — the mucus builds up in the throat, a gradual quantitative change occurs, but suddenly the body expels it by coughing, a quantitative leap in response that resolves the contradiction. This is actually the law of contradiction, the unity and struggle of opposites proceeding through quantity into quality. The old is negated by the new. Before, one may not have had the cough, now they have it, but for many they will soon get over it and cough for the last time in the process of their cold — they will return back to their pre-cold state, but with the key added effect that it will be a higher stage where they have gained antibodies from the cold. This is simply the law of negation of negation.
Society itself has a cold. Indeed, it has a very serious one that nobody, bourgeois or proletarian, can expel by their own individual volition. It is a systematic and pervasive virus we all feel. And again, people feel it, everyone feels it — just talk to them. Everyone feels the effects, but not everyone knows the cause, not everyone is able to identify it and see its pervasively in all spheres of life. For the sake of this article, we must take one such effect and analyse it deeply, keeping in mind that it does have a cause and that cause is an entanglement of relations, a prism through which we must analyse the whole society. One thing you will hear from people who spontaneously know something is wrong is the idea that society is very divided at present. What do we mean by “division”? The verb divide is defined in common dictionaries as “to separate into two or more parts, areas, or groups.” Yes, this is undoubtedly true, and one of the moments when the sensuous data does not fail the observer, even if they do not yet know the cause of our plight.
You will hear from many that this division is the problem with the world. It is well-known that many use it to say nobody can agree on anything and that it is simply human nature to be antagonistic to one another. Instead of analysing this process in its development and self-motion, its social and historical contingency, you will have many who, endowed with bourgeoisie ideology, jump immediately to such metaphysical conclusions as the innateness of antagonisms. Nobody will disagree with you that there is great division in the present society. But let us discuss and get to the root of the problem! Let us not take such often uttered phrases, stemming from bourgeois philosophy and theorists like Locke, as misanthropic dogmas. These are not solutions of any type because the problem itself has not been seriously analysed but only given a vague veil of “common sense” to conceal ideology.
This “common sense” is actually a block on progress. Any time we no longer rely on our own investigation and uncritically accept what some illusory forces tell us we are blocking progress. How can we define social devision on a modern basis without the social world, its fundamental laws and characteristics? Again, this seems obvious, but it is not applied in practice often enough. The prevailing anti-consciousness suggests that we do not need to think about such things with its blindfold of “human nature.” But we know for a fact that society not only shapes human behaviour, but the source of each action has a social basis — this has been proven on the basis of modern social science. Nothing is forever and innate, everything is temporary and relative.
So what are the actual conditions? We have devision yes, but it is not enough to say we are divided into two or more groups and posit that as the problem of the world. A modern definition goes further. We can start off by saying that humanity has been divided as long as the old exploitative orders have existed — whether slave, feudal or capitalist society, division has not only been a floating ill that exists in man’s mind, but a concrete phenomena with a basis in the relations of production. As these orders have progressed, especially into today’s bourgeois society, the polarization between rich and poor, exploiter and exploited, becomes more and more evident. The workers and capitalists are two fundamentally opposed classes in their interests — one has its prime motive as maximum profit through the exploitation of the working class and the other constantly wants to liberate itself. On this basis, capitalism is divided innately, separating the nine-tenths who do not own means of production from the one-tenth that does.
Pure ideas have not caused this split — human productive powers have. Classes came into being because coming out of primitive communal society, the entire humanity was not able to be educated in managing the emerging productive powers. Humanity has been through multiple exploitative orders since that point, separating the exploiters and exploited to such an extent where the latter has become the vast majority and the former a tiny ruling circle. Two classes, two poles, two outlooks — proletarian and bourgeois. This is the primary and most obvious way the present society is divided. One class holds in its hands the means of production, depriving it from the rest, and the other class must sell its labour power for a wage. To expect any society that is divided into classes not to be divided in ideology is a mere phantasm. The means of production are more than a simple thing that one part has and one doesn’t, it is the entire basis of the society. If the proletarians one day say they will no longer work for the bourgeoisie, but they will not yet expropriate their means of production, society would be without every essential means of sustenance. The means of production and products are what have transformed hunter-gatherer systems into large-scale industry — the bourgeoisie has in its hands literally 100+ centuries of human development. When so many are deprived of that and so few have the entire concentration, division would not only be abnormal but is an innate law. For the many centuries of exploitative society, it has been the exploiters who have been able to control these capabilities and such is concentrated to the highest in bourgeois society, pushing the exploited further along their concentration as well up to the moment when they will end exploitation and seize the reins of development.
But it will only be when the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can no longer live in the old way that this will happen — a crisis must occur that is so deep and so through-going that no force will be able to act in the old way. This will be the preparation worldwide for the end of the division of the world caused by classes, the end of blocs that hold other nations under sway by means of blackmail, coups d’etat and the Sword of Damocles. A new world will have come into being. Indeed, it has come into being in the past, and it was very difficult for the international bourgeoisie to exorcise this “demon.” It was the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Bolshevik Party that gained the outstanding experience of smashing the old state power and bringing the new society into being for the first time. Led by Lenin and Stalin, the old world threw everything at it to crush the great nation-building project of the Soviets — first in the invasion of Russia by 14 imperialist countries during the civil war, an invasion which was mightily destroyed. Later, after they had bankrupted their imperialist rival in Germany at Versailles, with Hitler’s rise to power suddenly the Anglo-Americans monopolists changed their face and began to bankroll nazi Germany in its efforts to become an imperialist power. As Lord Halifax said at the time, the nazis did well ridding their country of communists that they had every right to go east and attempt to smash the new world in the USSR. Hitler’s fascist gang eventually did invade the Soviet Union, butchering over 20 million people. When, in the wake of that monstrous war, the new people’s democracies of Europe and Asia emerged, the imperialists once again tried to smash them — both from within with their agents the Tito gang, and their accomplices in Albania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia; and externally, when they formed NATO with a view to stopping Western Europe from turning socialist, the CIA putting into place Operation Gladio, creating paramilitary groups of ex-nazis to protect the bourgeois governments from the revolt of the workers. Then they invaded north Korea on June 25, 1950, crossing the 38th parallel towards Haeju, Kumchon and Chorwon, ending in the killing of millions of Koreans, the levelling of whole cities and the use of biological and chemical weapons on civilians. Similar acts occurred during the aggression against Vietnam, including well-known chemical weapons such as Agent Orange. How much blood does the world bourgeoisie have on their hands in their attempts to preserve their profits and stave off the new social order. No dying order gives up its power voluntarily, and the whole history of class struggles proves this. How can such a society on the peak of revolution, with so many millions killed in an attempt to stop the inevitable, not be divided? Of course we are living in a divided society.
Despite the fall of the socialist camp starting in the 1950s and ending with the total collapse in 1989-91, the new has not been exorcised as the imperialists have so gleefully wished, as they were so euphoric about. The new exists, you can have a system that provides a full slate of social programs, you can have a society without exploitation of persons by persons, you can have a society that develops not according to the division of antagonistic classes but according to criticism and self-criticism, as the heroic peoples of Cuba and the DPRK demonstrate to us each and every day despite the horrible conditions imposed on them by the imperialists. Nor can they even exorcise the new within their own countries; they cannot pray away the divisions that their system necessarily creates. The proletariat still exists objectively, that class that must sell its labour power in exchange for a wage, and is destined to constitute itself the nation by virtue of historical and social laws. It is in this that the proletariat is the centre of the epoch in which we live. That is already the key piece of the new that has sprung into being. We have all the objective conditions for the creation of that new — and despite all the propaganda about the USSR, specifically during its socialist period, the idea of a new socialist world retains the vitality of that beautiful dawn that encapsulates the sky and all mankind. The threat of this new, the mere existence of the proletariat, makes the society divided innately — the bourgeoisie has as its objective maximum profit at the ruin of the rest of the society, while the vast majority have a vested interest in no longer kowtowing to a system which is carrying us all down a dark abbess.
So no, we do not deny that capitalist society is divided. It must be divided, or else such a society could not longer be considered capitalist society. It must have economic, social and political crises, or else such a society could no longer be considered capitalist society. It must pursue profits at the expense of all else, or else such a society could no longer be considered capitalist society. This much is self-evident.
But we know it is not this division which some have in mind, and it is certainly not the division that the media and the demogogical politicians mean when they say they want to “unify all sides.” They are speaking merely of ideas, of the battle of ideals and not definite struggles between classes as posed by objective social laws, as we materialists see the world. They talk about division as if one is a mere liberal, conservative, social-democrat or some other ideology that one of the big political parties hold. When they speak about division, they mean the increasingly vitriolic rhetoric that is thrown “across the aisle,” whereby liberals scorn conservatives and conservatives scorn liberals. They speak of a “golden middle,” a “centre,” some form of moderation which sees things sober-mindedly and not according to lining up behind this or that politician. According to this mentality, it is all ideologies except for itself which are divisive. This “centre” is as much of a fraud as the rest, as I will discuss later on.
But again, one concession from that is absolutely necessary — society is also divided according to thought imposed by above, which is why you see this vitriol expose itself as an objective phenomenon. It has a material basis as well, though in a different sense from the material basis of class struggle mentioned above. Its basis is the very sections of bourgeois interests who are in competition and constantly attempt to end each other to gain supremacy over profits. Marx’s theory of surplus-value exposes this competition in all its features, whereby monopolies drive each other out of business by constantly producing products for cheaper, selling them for slightly less to undercut the competitor and then purchase the other monopoly to gain a supermonopoly. So in politics, for example, some bourgeois may support some more conservative candidates because they are in his pocket, they have his funding and carry out measures which will increase the profitability of his enterprises. Another bourgeois may support some more liberal or social-democratic candidates because they are also in his pocket, they have his funding and increase the profitability of his enterprises. For the bourgeois, having a politician in his pocket at with helm will give him the upper hand over his competitor. Another reason for aligning with this or that party from the perspective of the capitalist may be for an added appearance of whatever demographic the company’s consumer generally is, so “progressivism” hoisted onto the liberals and social-democrats would be profitable for that demographic, and “conservatism” hoisted onto the conservatives would be also profitable for that demographic. This is a very general example, but it is how it normally occurs.
This thought division, however, is not according to great differences, but only according to the interests of capitalists who back them over the others. At the time of elections, the bourgeois candidates, hindered by the universal franchise which the workers fought for and won, make all the promises in the world as to how they will help the workers, yet once they are elected the promises are dropped. They make some excuse such as that the previous government has left them such a mess that they can’t be as ambitious as they thought, or that there are budget constraints, or that here are not enough votes in the parliament. This last argument in particular is useful for our purposes, because if true, it is a self-admission that the bourgeois parliament is not in the interests of the workers but the rich. To those who may disagree — millions have expressed their displeasure with the anti-social offensive since the 1980s, demanded the universality of health care and education, yet which governments have increased social and economic rights since that time period? They can talk all they want but nothing ever comes to pass. This is because bourgeois society and in specific the state has been objectively restructured since the pre-1980s situation, it is no longer possible to provide Keynesian rights because it is a detriment and an obstacle to profit-making. Take the Liberal-NDP coalition in Canada which was forged early last year: they promised pharmacare and dental care, but what has come of it? Where are the bills and the deliberations? The answer is nowhere because the state operates in spite of the popular will, it has no motive to enshrine the concessions that the bourgeois politicians make in words to the working class. This state, which is one of the capitalist class, preserving private property and deepening privatization, imposes this division in thought which is nothing other than demagogy to deceive the people. The only changes governments impose are favours it gives to this or that bourgeois that helped it get elected in the first place.
Another objective phenomena recognized, again without identifying the source, is the demonization of certain ideas while claiming theirs to be perfect. In my view, this is only further proof that this division is manufactured from above, by the bourgeoisie and their various interests. The pontification that occurs in this regard is really dreadful and irritating to listen to. There are conservatives who accuse liberals of being child-eating, pedophilic criminals, and liberals who accuse conservatives of being racist and genocidal maniacs. The hypocrisy is that in the former’s case, conservative politicians the world over have been tied to actual predators and in some cases are predators themselves, while in the latter’s, the liberal governments continue the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples, for example through joint state-corporate terrorist gangs paraded around as law-enforcing forces for good such as the Community-Industry Response Group in British Columbia. One such group demonized was the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” which was police-backed and led by Western separatists. And indeed, they were terrorizing the citizens of Ottawa. But what was the social basis for such an eruption? Indeed, what is the social basis for all such blind faith that fosters the demonization of others? Certainly, it did not and cannot emerge out of nowhere. It is the various reactionary circles which cannot solve the crises and, in their competition, are dragging down the rest of humanity with it. Simply demonizing the participants of the so-called “Convoy” and not addressing what is underlying is to leave oneself deluded into thinking the individuals are the source of the problem, thus leaving us all unaware for more severe crises.
On a related note, us communists do not demonize the backwards workers who believe in anti-conscious ideology, for they are mere products of their backward social environment and must be pulled through new environments which temper them in the steel of proletarian class struggle, where they realize their true interests as an individual within a collective class. Unless some grave crime against the people has been committed, education is the method through which this is done.
After accusing the society of being divided along lines of thought, increasingly lining up behind this or that side, yearning for a sort of idealistic social harmony without changing the exploitative and divisive nature of the social system itself, our bourgeois opponents first of all demonize the communists. They accuse us of being the most divisive people with our ideology because we say that this society is innately divided along class lines, and that only Marxism-Leninism can change the direction of development. Well, in that regard we purely point out what is objective, that one class owns the means of production and the other does not.
In terms of partisanship on the lines of Marxism-Leninism, we also plead guilty to that accusation. But we embody a specific kind of partisanship, the partisanship of a class. Our partisanship is proletarian forged in the basis of the science of society, Marxism-Leninism. And our unity and fidelity to that ideology is key, for it is a single sheet of steel and not a single principle can be removed without compromising the whole, as Lenin said. This is possible because the proletariat, as an oppressed and exploited class, does not have antagonistic interests, but the same interests of liberating themselves from the shackles of the present system. In this sense, it is truly emancipatory for the vast masses of people — unlike all pre-1917 revolutions, it will not be another exploiting class which will come to power but those exploited who have it in their interests to actually abolish state power forever, meaning that their liberation is the liberation of all humanity. So yes, indeed, we are partisan for the proletariat and the future of humanity, but in no other way. We are in nobody’s pockets; we are only driven by our conviction that the work to build the new society can and must be done.
Yet the bourgeoisie does not demonize the fascists, for they are useful sometimes (such as a weapon against the communists). However, they cannot say this openly without a revolt from below, so they demonize what they call all “extremes,” coming up with the term “extremism” to mean any sentiment which is against them. They thus attempt to group communism and fascism in the same boat in the eyes of the people. This is the standpoint of the aforementioned “centre” which sees itself as above division. To such accusations we shall only say: messrs. “level-headed” bourgeois’, you may equate communism and fascism but it is not communism that bankrolled Hitlerite fascism and egged them on to the east, your system did that; it is not communism that starved 100 million Indians to death from 1880 to 1920, your system did that; it is not communism that installed fascist dictators who kidnapped and murdered millions in the last century such as Syngman Rhee, Fulgenico Batista, Shah Pavlavi, Mobutu, Ngo Dinh Diem, Augusto Pinochet, Suharto, Anastasio Somoza, Ferninand Marcos and so on, your system did that; it is not communism that was responsible for the extermination of the Indigenous peoples of an entire hemisphere, your system did that; it is not communism that fostered the racist apartheid state of South Africa and today imposes apartheid on Palestinians through Israeli Zionism, your system did that. No wonder Hitler, the world’s greatest criminal, derived his inspiration for the Holocaust from such a system, and specifically the genocide of Indigenous peoples. As it turns out, that this present system is only divided from fascism by the fact that fascists oppose it, not by any sort of liberal moral superiority. On the other hand, what is communism? Communism led the world in the most glorious and critical war the world has ever known. Communism made the greatest sacrifice any system has ever made to save the world from the nazi scourge — the whole humanity rose as one in indignation, with Marshal Stalin as its leader, with the heroic Soviet and Chinese peoples in specific losing tens of millions. Communism brought millions into the light with education, literacy programs, health care, culture, foodstuffs, enmity between nations, free and creative labour, electrification, land reform, expropriation and socialization, industrialization, collectivization and the building of a people’s power whereby even the most formerly downtrodden could exercise their rights and duties as equal citizens. That is what communism is, that is what it has brought the world.
Now you see what is “extreme” and what is moderate, that communism is “extreme” and liberal capitalism “moderate,” the full absurdity of this bourgeois postulate. It is one deeply steeped in historical crib arguments, the blindfold of anti-conscious dogmatism — there are good people leading us, you should imitate them and you have no role in determining what the relations of production are. So, as society descends into severe disorder and crises, such as today’s enduring one of climate change, line up in your “moderation” behind this system, drive the car off the cliff, don’t turn the wheel and save humanity because that would be purely divisive “extremism.” We would certainly call any other group with these mentalities a cult, would we not?
In a very twisted way of seeing things, they often fling the word “cult” at communists, no doubt in part claiming divisiveness among the chief characteristics of cults. But if there is to be a cult of communists, it can only be the cult of truth. The proletariat and its vanguard, the communists, are the only force at present which has no motivation to lie, to conceal its aims or hide what has actually occurred. It has no motive to preserve a certain system, it has no profits to guard, no oppression to sustain. The oppressors constantly conceal the facts for this reason, but the proletariat has no such reason to. It only yearns for free toil and the scientific construction of socialism and communism. Thus our partisanship can also be called the partisanship of truth.
While society divided into classes has truths and mistruths, these days ruled by the latter, truth itself is indivisible. There is only room for one reality, one set of events, one world, one interpretation from the standpoint of the class and its political party. This interpretation of the world, its scientific ideology and outlook, headed by materialist dialectics, is the key to understanding society and all its processes. It is key in recognizing the block on development, demobilizing it, uniting the advanced, winning over the middle and isolating the backwards — moving from this society to the next.
The bourgeoisie has put this term before us: divisiveness. The Marxist-Leninist Communists declare that we must win the day so that not only are our ideals are served; no, that would be an incredible vulgarization on par with the bourgeois interpretation of the purpose of political parties. Rather, we must identify what the entire society needs, take up the space for change and act in accordance with our specific conditions. This is the least divisive thing, and in our work we take up this problem with the solution to harmonize the individual and collective. We want to do away with all division, division on the basis of ideas and, much more importantly as all ideas in the final sense depend on the prevailing relations of production, the basis of material reality. No longer shall there be a rich that controls everything and a working class that controls nothing. Not in a modern society, not in a society that wants to be free of all anachronisms. Our definition of division precludes the eternal aspect that seemingly looms over the head of all the bourgeois theoreticians, indeed it inherently includes the fact that division will one day negate itself and go out of being — not by platitudes or by slogans of classless unity, but by real social revolution for the end of all division.