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Description
In the past, as a rising class, the bourgeoisie brought humanity tremendous progress in its mode of thinking. The enlightenment period introduced humanity for the first time to universal values, and while the rights that followed therein were based on bourgeois right, it introduced a new type of thinking characteristic to social production. However, since approximately the beginning of the 20th century, this bourgeoisie has given rise to the most brazen and anti-human types of thinking. Relinquishing all principles aside from the principle that whatever saves their rule in their period of desperation is good and correct, one of the most vulgar forms of bourgeois thought is pragmatism, the ideology which asserts that whatever leads to the continuation of bourgeois rule is true.
Examining this trend, Chen Yuan-hui in The Pragmatist Philosophy of the Modern Bourgeoisie shows that according to pragmatism whatever makes the individual most “successful,” i.e., the richest and most prosperous, can be called true. So the capitalist’s method of forcing his labourers into the most pauperizing situation is true. This also applies to collectives. So the capitalists who control the state and band together to criminalize striking workers in the law are also true. In fact, the pragmatists allege, this is a fact of human nature, along with the capitalist social system itself. Further, they argue that for the worker, to believe in god is true and pragmatic because even though he is exploited, at the very least he gets Sunday off. Therefore, god is true because he is useful. And for any movement, there is not and cannot be a final goal or ultimate aim, but only what suits one in the immediate sense. Not only does this serve the bourgeoisie very well, which has refused to create any new theory for centuries, but also the opportunists of every hue who are known for slithering like snakes.
One, looking at things in today’s light, can see very clearly how this preceded postmodernist thinking. Pragmatism, like postmodernism, posits an absolutely relativist view of life. Both are characteristic of the darkest reaction at this historical moment — the only difference between the two is that the former says there are true things, whatever is useful to man, while the latter denies there are true things, seeing history as an amalgamation of sporadic and unconnected “discourses.” Both deny there is any such thing as historical laws; both return to medievalism to retain bourgeois rule; both oppose the scientific materialist view of development, which can only lead to proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.