Science, Philosophy, and History [CFML: Chapter 2]

A. Scientific Socialism

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily.

— Friedrich Engels1

• Science as a method of understanding and transforming society.
• The distinction between bourgeois and revolutionary science.
• Marxism-Leninism as the complete system of Scientific Socialism.

Science is not neutral.2 Science is a tool, or method, that is used for understanding, predicting, and shaping natural phenomena. As such, the scientific method is inherently tied to the nature of the material world, and is thus inherently oriented towards materialism.

While scientific inquiry may be wielded for progress and the betterment of humanity, it may also be twisted, deformed, and subjugated to the interests of oppression. This contradiction necessarily hinders both human and ethical progress, as well as the pursuit of science itself. This, fundamentally, is the crisis of bourgeois science.

It is here that a functional distinction arises between what may be described as bourgeois science, which reproduces and preserves bourgeois class domination, and revolutionary science, which functions to uplift and empower working and oppressed peoples.3 The content of any scientific endeavor, naturally, is imprinted with this difference through its class character and relation to the superstructure of the society within which it is carried out.4 For, as Mao Zedong asserted, every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.5

Under capitalism, scientific endeavors are alienated from the masses of working and oppressed people; rendering them to merely another form of estranged, or alienated labor.6 Rather than serving the public interest, improving the livelihood of all people, and being wielded as a tool for maximizing human flourishing, scientific institutions are themselves reduced to mere centers of capitalist reproduction. That is, that scientists themselves are reduced to wage labor; their results, innovations, and achievements, are reduced to mere commodities. This domination of science by the capitalist superstructure renders its pursuits as little more than a branch of commodity production and the optimization of exploitation, and subverts scientific achievements to the drive for profit rather than human development.

Revolutionary scientific endeavors, by contrast, are oriented towards the human species’ fundamental drive for creation, ingenuity, discovery, and self-improvement. In a few words, human thought is naturally, by virtue of our evolution, concerned with maximizing human flourishing and minimizing human suffering.7 This fundamental pursuit arises and persists, outside of capital, from the human subject ourselves. While incentivization may encourage or otherwise remove barriers from scientific development, such endeavors are ultimately and unavoidably hindered by capitalism, as they stand in contradiction with capitalism’s fundamental drive for self-reproduction.8

Each discovery and institution in the present period thus inhabits and embodies the contradiction between its revolutionary potential and bourgeois subversion. Over time, this contradiction engenders greater disparity and greater antagonism, as the dual-reality of its subverted potential arises from accumulated quantitative into new qualitative forms, through the process of dialectical motion.9

This phenomena appears in economics, as it is first subjugated to bourgeois domination and reproduction (by way of maintaining artificial scarcity), while simultaneously being imbued by its own revolutionary potential; the liberated productive forces, and the abolition of economic scarcity.10 It is precisely in this contradiction that the bourgeois economy reaches its final endpoint, or rupture, in the eventual qualitative shift towards either post-scarcity or neo-feudalism; either a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or the common ruin of the contending classes.11

The term Scientific Socialism specifically arose in the time of the First International,12 and was coined by the foundational thinkers and revolutionaries of our tradition: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For Marx and Engels, the term was necessary for distinguishing their vision of revolutionary development and socialist construction from that of the Utopian Socialists who saw socialism as merely an ideal or individual affair. Scientific Socialism, thus, views the development of Socialism as a matter of civilizational, material, socio-economic emergence, and development.13 As established in the previous chapter, then, Marxism-Leninism, in contrast with bourgeois science, arises as the complete system of Scientific Socialism: encompassing both the theory of liberation and the praxis of revolution.

The general method of scientific discovery may be summarized as the process of empirical analysis, reproducible experimentation, and the development of falsifiable conclusions based on those findings, towards the goal of understanding, predicting, and ultimately shaping, material phenomena. The goal of Scientific Socialism for Marx and Engels, then, was precisely to understand, predict, and shape the material processes of civilizational development towards the birth of a new era of human flourishing. Marxism-Leninism thus arises, as we have said, as the complete system of Scientific Socialism; for it not only maintained the broad systematization of inquiry and investigation first undertaken by Marx and Engels themselves, but, even further, and at an even higher level, it proved its success with the birth of the first Actually-Existing Socialist (AES)14 country in human history: the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).15

The ongoing and unfinished nature of this pursuit of human liberation is why Marxism-Leninism is likewise referred to as a living or immortal science. That is, that for more than a century, the foundational theories of Marxism-Leninism have been utilized and reproduced, and found valid even under evolving conditions.16 Even further, they have been utilized for further revolutionary undertakings in conditions that would have been altogether unfathomable by earlier thinkers, such as in China, Vietnam, Laos, etc.

As a core foundation of Marxism-Leninism, Scientific Socialism continues to evolve and advance into the new era, particularly in the AES countries of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and northern Korea.17

B. Materialist Philosophy

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

— Karl Marx18

• The distinction between materialism and idealism.
• Dialectical materialism as the most advanced form of materialist philosophy.
• Marxism-Leninism as the complete system of dialectical materialism.

Since the dawn of time, the human species has sought to understand the world in which we live. In order to support changing our world for our own betterment, we have strived over the millennia to improve our knowledge, and to cultivate wisdom. Prior to the birth of modern science, this pursuit evolved in many early civilizations into the field of philosophy.19

Fundamental to this field of inquiry is the question of being. That is, the question of why things exist, and what does it mean for a thing to exist. In its earliest forms, this question gave rise to superstition, mythology, religion, etc.; in philosophy, it eventually found two competing answers, and gave rise to two fundamentally opposing orientations: idealism and materialism.

Idealism is that orientation of thought which believes that the material world is secondary to some immaterial, mystical, or ideal world or force—that is, the belief in the primacy of ideals. This is recognizable in the idealist philosophy of Georg Hegel, who posited that being itself could only be understood, within the context of the whole of reality (das Absolute), as the self-referential process of the emergence of Spirit (Geist) and its coming to self-realization.20 Marx is said to have turned Hegel upright through the adoption and refinement of Hegel’s method into what we now know as dialectical materialism; the refinement and application of Hegel’s dialectical process towards understanding material as the source of being.21 That is, from the Marxist-Leninist standpoint, that being is a self-referential process of contradiction and struggle, of cause and effect, and so on; however, this process is not directed toward the realization of an ideal objective spirit, but rather towards a universal material truth, including the higher emergence of physical, subjective, conscious beings within the concrete motion of objective material reality.

Materialism, in contrast to idealism, asserts that matter exists independently of consciousness, and that human thought itself arises from the material conditions and relations of human life. Dialectical materialism begins from the axiom that life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.22 Our existence as social, productive, and relational beings precedes our thought; everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.23

Dialectical materialism, as the most developed form of materialist philosophy, further elaborates the nature of reality beyond a mere collection of fixed objects and randomized processes. It recognizes, rather, the interconnected and relational nature of the material world, and the process of emergence that arises through the struggle and interplay of contradictions; the unity of opposites that proceeds from quantitative to qualitative change from lower to higher levels. This materialist dialectic, therefore, is the fundamental logic of the Marxist-Leninist worldview, and the necessary starting point for the Marxist understanding of all complex phenomena.24

As the complete system of dialectical materialism, Marxism-Leninism utilizes dialectical materialism as one of its fundamental tools for understanding and interpreting the world—most importantly, however, is that correctly utilizing Marxism-Leninism also means wielding dialectical materialism towards enacting revolutionary change in society.25

It is precisely through the application of dialectical materialism to the natural world that Marxist-Leninists are able to derive clarity in their political, organizational, and developmental work. As Marxism-Leninism may be described as the embodiment of humanity’s long march to liberation, dialectical materialism may be described as the light which guides it.

From the fields of revolution in Russia, the abolition of poverty in the villages of China, and the overthrow of colonial domination in the jungles of Laos and Vietnam, centuries of struggle throughout the world have repeatedly demonstrated the ironclad validity of the dialectical materialist philosophy, and, thus, its centrality to the system of Marxist-Leninist thought and action cannot be understated.

C. Progressive History

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

— Karl Marx26

• The distinction between metaphysical history and progressive history.
• Historical materialism as the most advanced form of progressive historiography.
• Marxism-Leninism as the complete system of dialectical and historical materialism.

The fundamental development of dialectical and materialist thinking by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was not merely to gain philosophical understanding of vague abstractions. Rather, it was Marx and Engels’ application of dialectical materialism to the subject of human history and society which led to the development of historical materialism in order to explain the nature of human socioeconomic development.27

Through the lens of historical materialism, the primary contradiction appears as that of oppressor and oppressed; that as early human societies developed private property relations, there immediately emerged the contradiction between those who possess and those who do not. Class society soon follows, accompanied by the structural unification (and accompanying contradictions) of social, political, and economic relations, which are bound up within itself.

The history of all hitherto existing society, Marx and Engels thus declare, is the history of class struggle.28 While Engels would later clarify that this understanding refers specifically to modern, written history as it was known to them at the time, this distinction does not (nor was it intended to) lessen the principle of class struggle as central in the materialist conception of human history. Rather, it clarifies all the more that the emergence of class formations is not inherent to the human subject, is not a necessity born of nature itself, but is rather a social construct born out of the emergent contradictions between humanity’s collective, dialectical, and ongoing march towards further progress and the historical reality of humanity’s struggles.

This understanding of human history as inherently progressive (albeit non-linear), arises precisely from the understanding that humanity’s struggle for socioeconomic development is unceasing. For so long as humanity may be said to exist, this struggle shall continue, and it is precisely the standpoint of historical materialism that this process leads, inevitably, to either the development of Communism, or to the complete annihilation of the human race. This materialist conception of history takes on a distinct character from that which is upheld by the ruling class; metaphysical history.29

Whereas historical materialism identifies the material realities of the natural world and humankind’s struggles within it as the source of all motion in human society, the metaphysical conception of history rather mythologizes and mystifies historical development as little more than an assortment of random events with little or no bearing on the present. This obfuscation, ultimately, serves to protect and reproduce the dominant class relations of the given period; be it the divine right of kings in the period of the ancien régime, or the natural order of capitalist imperialism preached today.

As progressive historiography, the materialist conception of history further provides clarity on the question of history itself; i.e., that question of towards what is humanity progressing. While general ideas of progressive historiography may (correctly) grasp the basic trend of human development as being generally progressive, it is only in the historical materialist position that the totality of human history finds its highest expression; its ultimate endpoint. That is, that the history of humanity is, ultimately, the history of the struggle towards Communism or extinction.

In this way, Marxism-Leninism arises as the complete system of historical materialism, as it not only wields this conception of history and our place within it in order to see that which is and has been before, but, all the more acutely, to see with clarity that horizon towards which we actively struggle.30 That is, to see and grasp the species-being31 of the human subject itself, unable to rest, until that final achievement; that for so long as any human society may be said to exist, it shall be preoccupied, fundamentally, with this question of history and development. Only in that ultimate endpoint, in that final synthesis, is that question of history answered, and a new chapter opened: Communism or extinction. It is the complete system of Marxism-Leninism alone that grants us this full clarity.32

This traditional, Orthodox33 Marxist understanding of human history was developed first by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and further elaborated upon by their successors. Under this original formulation, the end of history referred to the birth of World Communism, and the end of oppression; the final synthesis to the question of history.

In contrast to the liberal-imperialist assertion of the end of history34 following the illegal dissolution of the Soviet Union—that history had ended due to the total global domination of liberal-imperialist hegemony—contemporary Marxist-Leninists have declared, in light of the emergence of the new era, that history has not ended, nor can it possibly end.35 This points, further, at the dialectical emergence of yet a new history that has yet to arise, but which will assuredly follow, and result from, the world-historic achievement of Communism. Regardless of the precise character of its emergence, however, it is clear that the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism, in the new era, will remain at the forefront of this new emergence.36

D. Dialectical and Historical Materialism

Hence, in order not to err in policy, in order not to find itself in the position of idle dreamers, the party of the proletariat must not base its activities on abstract ‘principles of human reason,’ but on the concrete conditions of the material life of society, as the determining force of social development; not on the good wishes of ‘great men,’ but on the real needs of development of the material life of society…

The strength and vitality of Marxism-Leninism lies in the fact that it does base its practical activity on the needs of the development of the material life of society and never divorces itself from the real life of society.

— J.V. Stalin37

When taken together, dialectical and historical materialism forms the bedrock of the complete Marxist-Leninist system of thought and action. From what we have here learned, the key principles of dialectical and historical materialism, which every Marxist-Leninist must grasp, may then be paraphrased as:

1. Everything is connected. The entirety of the material world—its laws, phenomena, and motion—is interconnected, interrelated, and interreliant. Nothing exists in isolation from the absolute—the totality of the material world—and nothing arises, as it were, from the aether of non-being,38 without first being preceded from within by some force or action in the world of material reality. In the study of human society, this factor finds its expression in understanding the interrelated nature of the different factors comprising each society, specifically in relation to the development of political economy.

2. Everything is changing. The inborn contradictions of material phenomenon give rise to dialectical motion—the unceasing movement of change, rupture, development, and emergence—towards an ultimate endpoint, or final synthesis. The fundamental contradiction of human society, from this perspective, is the human drive for development giving birth to property relations, which in turn finds expression in the formation of class society. Class society itself then moves, over time (in a non-linear fashion), and through a process of constant struggle, towards humanity’s ultimate endpoint or final synthesis of Communism or extinction.39

3. Quantitative change leads to qualitative change. Contradictions generally build over time, in a quantitative fashion, until ultimately rupturing, whereby the phenomenon or force containing the contradiction takes on a new qualitative form.40 In human society, these ruptures appear as crises, or revolutions. As the contradictions of capitalism accumulate quantitative antagonisms, such as the disparity between rich and poor, the obsoletion of liberal models of scarcity, etc., the revolutionary movement arises for the qualitative reordering of a new society: Socialism.

4. Change occurs through sublation. With each turn, the motion of dialectical contradictions, and the outcomes of their qualitative shifts, over time, naturally trend towards minimizing human suffering while maximizing human flourishing.41 This change occurs by way of sublation, otherwise known as the negation of the negation—the process by which the subject itself becomes the source of its own contradiction and further synthesis. Such turn, or revolution, of the subject thus continues, ad infinitum, with each transformation giving rise to higher form, until it reaches its ultimate endpoint or final synthesis. In application to human society, we see this as the long march of history, and ultimately progress, which has continued for millennia.

What is sublated or resolved is thus, at the same time, preserved; it has only lost its immediacy, but it is not on that account annihilated.

— G.W.F. Hegel42