A RATIONAL CRITIQUE OF
MARXISM AND COMMUNISM - III
(Selections From The Book:
"Beyond Communism" by M. N. Roy)
1. HUMANISM IS NOT A WORD USED AS FAÇADE BY COWARDS OR AS CAMOUFLAGE FOR SOME HEINOUS PURPOSE
"The human species was born with the most basic and powerful means of production, which was not produced by man, but inherited from his animal ancestry. With the help of that creative weapon, he produced the first non-biological means of production. Man is greater than any means of production, which are his creation. But while settling the fate of humanity, you take into calculation everything except man. That is the defect of Marxism, as of all other forms of philosophy; and it is owing to that defect that the world has come to its present impasse. We propose to free Marxism from its basic fallacy." (Page – 66)
2. HUMAN BRAIN, THE MOST POWERFUL MEANS OF PRODUCTION
"Until the Renaissance, the world was guided by one form of determinism, the belief that everything goes on according to a Providential Will; everything is preordained; men have only to fall in line. The Renaissance was a revolt of man against that fatalistic attitude. But later on, for various other reasons (it will be impossible to go now into that past history in detail), that spirit of the revolt of man was forgotten, although on the foundation of that spirit other forms of social philosophy were created, which, consciously, or unconsciously, resurrected the teleological view.
Just think out what it means that everything is determined by the means of production. Previously, everything in this world was traced to some super-human power. Marx traced it to the means of production. But may we not ask who created the first means of production? What was there originally? Did the first man appear with hammer and sickle in hand? No. But he did come into the world with another means of production, the most powerful ever created. And that was his brain, which was a creation neither of mystic social forces, nor of God. The history of the growth of that instrument of creation, with which man appeared on the scene, is to be traced all the way down the process of the evolution of the higher biological forms. That history finally vanishes into the background of the physical world. The brain is the most powerful means of production: When you talk about means of production, do not forget that. We are all born with it, and it remains our basic asset, provided that we can appreciate its worth and make proper use of it. If you prefer a crude hammer, or even an electric hammer, or something still better, the most modern technological inventions, to your brain, I wish you luck."(Pages -65, 66)
3. MARX HAS PLACED HIMSELF ON THE HEAD, LET US PUT HIM ON HIS FEET
"We do not accept the Marxist doctrine that moral values, cultural patterns, aesthetic tastes, are all ideological super-structures of economic relations. They talk of bourgeois art and bourgeois philosophy. If these were super-structures of the economic relations of the bourgeois society, then they are the outcome of capitalism. But what is the fact? What is called bourgeois philosophy, modern idealism, rose before the establishment of the capitalist social order. Karl Marx may have put Hegel on his feet, but he has certainly placed himself on the head. Was he not the prophet of the ideology of the proletariat, which was still to appear on the scene as a dominating factor? He disproved his theory that a particular ideology was the creation of a class which adopted it." (Page – 70)
4. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
"We shall have to begin from man. The doctrine is preached with an air of superiority that the individual is an abstract concept; it is argued that, just as in physics the atom has been found to be an abstraction, just so the individual is the non-existing social atom. The corollary to the doctrine must be that society was created, by some super-human force, as a group, and not by men. But, curiously enough, the collectivists also maintain that man is the maker of his world. So, after all, it is admitted that society is the creation of man. Why did man create society? And how? He did it in course of his struggle for existence. Coming out of the background of biological evolution, the human species start their struggle as individuals. In course of time, they realized that, together, they could carry on the struggle for existence more successfully. That was the origin of society." (Pages – 87, 88)
5. FAILURE OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY
"Apparently, Fascist dictatorship is more democratic than the communist dictatorship, because its collective ego is the whole nation. Apparently; because, if the nation is at all a democratic concept, then why should there be a national dictatorship? The nation need not dictate itself. The fact, however, is that Fascism, as the highest form of Nationalism, does establish a dictatorial State, which claims to incorporate the collective ego of the nation. Nevertheless, formally, in so far as it claims to represent the entire nation, Fascism is a higher form of democracy than proletarian dictatorship, which admittedly claims to represent only one class. Because of this apparent distinction, when the Fascists also revolted against parliamentary democracy, they captured the imagination of large masses of people in a much shorter time than the Communists.
That is a very tragic fact, which has to be taken into consideration by those who want to find a solution of the crisis of our time. No use shutting our eyes. The Communist manifesto was issued about a hundred years ago. Seventy five years thereafter a revolution on its (pattern took place in one country. As a reaction to that revolution developed Fascism, and within ten years, Fascism swept the whole of Europe. The people followed the Fascists and not the Communists. That is a fact which cannot simply be explained by saying that the Social Democrats were treacherous cowards, so on and so forth. The fact must set us thinking, and if we do think, we must realize that not only parliamentary democracy was a failure, but the Marxist theory of democracy was fallacious, dangerously so. Therefore, it did not have a sufficiently strong appeal for the people." (Pages – 89, 90)
6. MONISTIC EXPLANATION
"We trace the origin of ideas into the context of the pre-human biological evolution. Biological evolution, in its turn, takes place in the context of physical nature. Thus, our ideas, the ideas to which we must concede a sovereign independent role, if we are to interpret history without teleology, rise out of the background of physical nature. By doing that, we do not leave the ground of Materialism, to fall into the morass of metaphysical Idealism. On the contrary, by doing that, we solve one of the baffling problems of philosophy, the problem of dualism. There is no contradiction between the living and the non-living world. We reduce everything to one unitary background." (Page – 93)
7. THE ANTI-HUMAN NATURE OF COMMUNISM
"Let it be remembered that, whatever function it may perform, under different circumstances, essentially the State is the political organization of society. Therefore, the Marxian Utopia of the State withering away under Communism can never be reached. And if freedom of the individual is possible only in that Utopia, man can never be free. That negation of freedom is logically inherent in the Communist theoretical system. It seems that Marx himself and the early Marxist theoreticians did not think out their thought to the logical consequences. Marx was a humanist, and he formulated his philosophy as a philosophy of freedom. However, if the theory, with all its apostolic fervor and idealistic excellence, remained so very fallacious, it could not convince thinking people. Therefore, something more was added to it; a collective ego was assumed. Society was to be reorganized to promote collective social progress. Communism lost its original merit of a Utopia. A libertarian philosophy provided sanction for the negation of the concept of freedom by denying the very existence of men and women as individuals." (Page – 86)
8. HUMAN INDIVIDUAL THE MEASURE
"A free society must be a brotherhood of free individuals, based on the sovereignty of the individual. That is our message. For some time, ours may have been a voice in the wilderness. But to-day it is getting a larger and larger audience. It can no longer be suppressed, nor neglected. It is the voice of resurgent humanity; the powerful voice of Prometheus unbound." (Page – 102)
(To be continued)
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