RATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM - XIV

A Rational Critique of Marxism and Communism - XIV

(Selected from the book:

“Reason, Romanticism and Revolution”

By M. N. Roy-2)

1.   “To attach class labels to ideas is evidently a false practice. Ideas are created by men, and as such belong to the entire race, and not to any particular class. They are, of course, not static; from the dawn of civilization they have been in a continuous process of evolution, having been influenced by the natural and social conditions under which various human communities and classes lived in different parts of the world, in different epochs of history. But ideas have their autonomy and a logic which is not dialectical, but dynamic. Therefore, political doctrines of the bourgeois revolution, theories of the classical capitalist economics and the principles of the Hegelian philosophy could all go into the making of Marxism which called itself the ideology of the proletariat, but the positive elements of which will survive the proletarian revolution. Marxism was not a negation, nor a negation of a negation, of the older ideas that it took over. Without those ideas there could be no Marxism. Therefore, the laws of the dynamics of ideas cannot be called dialectical.” (Pages:399, 400) 

2.   “As against the “utopia” of the forerunners of Socialism, Marx offered his “scientific Socialism. He criticized his predecessors because they had no knowledge of the proletariat; that they built out of their imagination fantastic pictures of a new social order that they appealed to morality; that, in short, they did not have a philosophy of history. An unbiased study of the pre-Marxian history of socialist thought shows that some of the charges against the Utopians were simply unfounded. As regards the charge of appealing to morality, they were guilty, but only from the Marxist point of view. For rejecting that appeal, Marxism was doomed to betray its professed ideas and ideals. The contention that “from the scientific point of view, this appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch farther”, was based upon a false notion of science.” (Page: 405) 

3.   “Marx distinguished himself from his predecessors by declaring that he wanted to proceed scientifically; nothing was to be taken for granted or deduced from preconceived notions. He would make inferences only from the empirical laws of social evolution and forces of modern society. He proposed to prove that Socialism was bound to come, as a “necessary product of historical development”. The “evolutionary laws of history”, which enabled him to found scientific Socialism and predict the inevitable advent of Communism, was the Hegelian notion of progress through conflict. It was certainly not an empirical law; it was a preconceived notion; and Scientific Socialism was derived from it. As a notion, it belonged to idealist philosophy, even when Marx’s imagination put it on its feet. The result was that “the picture given at the end of Capital, Vol.1, answers to a conception arrived at by speculative Socialism in the forties.” The picture conjured up in the Communist Manifesto is much more so. Marx had not yet hit upon his master-key of economic determinism. Later on, to elaborate the philosophical presuppositions of Marxism, Engels wrote that a particular economic phenomenon had already ceased to exist “when the moral consciousness of the masses declares it to be wrong.” The idealism of the dialectic method cannot be suppressed. Moral consciousness is not an economic force. And Marxism, in so far as it was true to the tradition of man’s age long struggle for freedom, could not get away from the appeal to morality. Its historical significance lies in that fact. But the much vaunted historical sense failed Marx when he ridiculed his predecessors, and believed himself to be a prophet of immaculate conception, possessed of the light of revelation.” (Page: 406) 

4.   “The error, if not insincerity, of Marx’s rejection of the earlier socialist thought is proved by the fact that his whole fight against the German philosophical Radicals, who called themselves “true Socialists”, was a defence of the utopianism of the French Socialists. The German Socialists, whom the founder of scientific Socialism vehemently combated, characterized pre-Marxian Communism as utopian and maintained that, as against the empiricism of the French and English social reformers or revolutionaries, they reached Socialism scientifically.” (Page:407) 

5.   “In the same article, in which for the first time Marx advanced the theory of the inevitability of the collapse of the capitalist order and the advent of Socialism, he also for the first time advocated armed revolution for the overthrow of the established State and the social system. So, at its very conception, Marxism was self contradictory. If the decay and disappearance of any social system was inevitable, a violent revolution for its overthrow was palpably unwarranted. Conversely, if the change had to be brought about by force, it was not inevitable. Because it could be prevented by the use of superior force.”(Page:409) 

6.   “Trying to combine rationalism, the view that history is a determined process, with the romantic view of life which declares the freedom of will, Marxist historiology contradicts itself. Not that the two cannot be combined; they are combined in Hegel’s dialectics. The notion of progress is a product of reason and romanticism. Nature is a rational system; so is society, because it is a part of nature, social evolution being a continuation of biological evolution. If the mechanistic view is not to be tampered with, then neither a dues ex machina should be allowed to wind up the clock of the evolution of the physical Universe, nor any conscious effort of man is to influence the unfolding of social forces. And the mechanistic view of the physical, biological and social evolutions is the very essence of Materialism.” (Pages:409, 410) 

7.   “The recognition of the decisive role played by thinking man, that is to say, by ideas, in historical processes, runs counter neither to the rationalist notion of progress nor to the mechanistic view of evolution. The harmony between the rationalist conception of progress and the romantic idea of revolution also takes place in the materialist philosophy, which is not a negation of Idealism, but absorbs and goes beyond by tracing the roots of ideas in the rational scheme of nature. The thinking man acts upon the process of social evolution not as a dues ex machine; he is an integral part of the process. The human brain is also a means of production – of ideas, which motivate action to create history. 

These philosophical implications of Marxism were not clearly thought out by its founders. Therefore, the Marxist view of history is vitiated by the contradiction between rationalism and the romantic notion of revolution. With his rationalism, which is the essence of materialist philosophy, Marx was a Humanist, and as such a romanticist. He combined, as Heinemann wrote, “the righteous fury of the great seers of his race, with the cold analytical power of Spinoza.” A different personality could not be the prophet of revolution; because, any successful revolution is conditional on a combination of thought and action inspired by a harmony of rationalism and the romantic view of life.

The harmony is in the thesis that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” This basic doctrine of the Marxist philosophy of revolution is a legacy of Renaissance Humanism, which saw the relation between history and philosophy. Inspired by the humanist tradition, Bacon in his Advancement of Learning emphasized on the necessity of shifting importance from precept to application, from theory to practice, from philosophy to history. Bacon, at the same time, was a rationalist, the exponent of inductive logic, which made Newtonian mechanistic natural philosophy possible. Inspired by Bacon’s humanist approach to history, Vico’s Scienza Nuova unfolded the romatic vista of humanity creating itself. The relation that connects Marx and Bacon can be traced backward through earlier phases in the history of philosophy.” (Pages : 410, 411) 

8.   “Dialectics is a rationalist notion; dialectical Materialism, therefore, is a rationalist notion and a rationalist philosophy. On the other hand, the appeal to violence, being an echo of the last phase of the Great Revolution, is a romantic extravagance. The two aspects of Marxism thus stand in the relation of thesis and antithesis. The synthesis is the statement that “by changing the world, man changes himself”. In other words, man’s ability to change the world, to expedite evolution through revolution, and the moral right to do so, result from the fact that man is a part of nature, which is a ceaseless process of change, a dialectic process, in the Hegelian language. But the world is greater than the greatest of men; and will always be so. Therefore, man’s ability to change it is limited by the axiom that the whole is greater than its part. By disregarding this self-evident truth, revolutionary activism becomes irrational and runs up against the law of nature and the nature of man. Then, revolution only mars the salutary and uninterrupted progress instead of being truly beneficial for mankind, as Godwin warned.” (Pages:412, 413) 

9.   “Owing to the Hegelian association of his adolescence, Marx himself was not sufficiently aware of his spiritual ancestry. Under the influence of the Hegelian dialectics, he rejected eighteenth century Materialism as mechanical. At the same time, he disowned the humanist tradition of the earlier advocates of social justice, ridiculing them as Utopians. Though he thus believed that he was beginning from scratch, as the founder of a new philosophy and the prophet of revolution, Marx belonged to the intellectual lineage of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Bruno, Gassendi, Hobbes, Holbach, Diderot and Feuerbach, to mention only the most illustrious of them. His place in the history of philosophy, therefore, is no less significant and honourable than any one of his forerunners. Indeed, his contribution to the cause of human freedom was greater, because he had the advantage of living in an age when scientific knowledge could throw light on the old problems of philosophy.

To be able to offer a rational explanation of the world of experience, and to avoid the pitfalls of mysticism, philosophy must be monistic; monistic metaphysics does not preclude pluralism in the process of becoming; and only a materialist metaphysic (irrespective of the change in the concept of matter in physics) can be strictly monistic. Marx’s proposition that consciousness is determined by being placed materialist metaphysics on a sound scientific foundation. His subsequent thought, particularly sociological, however, did not move in the direction indicated by the significant point of departure. Marxism, on the whole, is not true to its philosophical tradition. In sociology, it vulgarizes Materialism to the extent of denying that basic moral values transcend space and time. With the impersonal concept of the forces of production, it introduces teleology in history, crassly contradicting its own belief that man is the maker of his destiny. The economic determinism of its historiology blasts the foundation of human freedom, because it precludes the possibility of man ever becoming free as an individual. Yet, contemporary sociological thinking has been considerably influenced by the fallacious and erroneous doctrines of Marxism which do not logically follow from its philosophy.

In addition to the accumulated achievements of the agelong struggle of metaphysics against dualism, philosophically, Marxism inherited also the liberating tradition of Humanism. The two apparently conflicting trends of thought – mechanistic naturalism and romantic Humanism – harmonized in Feuerbach, who therefore could throw off the Hegelian influence more completely than Marx. Nevertheless, in Feuerbach’s materialist Humanism, man remains an abstraction, veiled in mystery, an elementary, indefinable category, as simply given, to be taken for granted. The fiery prophet of social justice in Marx was more a Humanist than a Hegelian. But his critical mind did not miss the weakness of Feuerbach’s Humanism and realized the necessity of explaining the being and becoming of man, if his sovereignty as the maker of his destiny was to be empirically established. It was in search of a rational foundation of the humanist view of life that Marx under took his analytical study of history. At the same time, anthropology had discovered that the struggle for physical existence was the basic human urge – a biological heritage. Marx identified the primitive man’s intelligent effort to earn a livelihood with the biological struggle for existence, and came to the conclusion that the origin of society and subsequent human development were economically motivated. The point of departure of the Marxist historiology was the mistake of confounding physical urge with economic motive.” (Pages:418, 419) 

10.       “For a considerable time after the origin of the species, homo sapiens were not moved by any economic motive, but by the biological urge of self-preservation. He earned the means of subsistence, and for the purpose devised primitive tools out of sheer physical necessity. Anthropological research does not show any economic motive in the human struggle for existence in the earlier stages of social evolution. What it does show is that the struggle for physical existence provides stimuli for mental development. Consciousness and other rudiments of mind are a biological heritage antecedent to the appearance of homo sapiens. Thus, further evolution is determined by the physical conditions of the being and becoming of man. But economic determinism of history from the origin of society cannot be logically deduced from that fact. In other words, economic determinism is not a corollary to Materialism. Moreover, it is antagonistic to Humanism, because it subordinates man to the inexorable operation of the impersonal forces of production. In an economically determined society, man is not a producer, but a means of production.” (Pages:419, 420) 

11.       “Marx’s effort to place Feuerbach’s materialist Humanism on a rational foundation led to the exactly contrary consequence. Feuerbach’s mystic abstraction was replaced by an economic automation; and the abstract conception was transferred from the debased man to society, which was endowed with a collective ego.” (Page:420) 

12.       “Marx’s failure to work out a sociology consistent with materialist philosophy was due to his passion for social justice, inherited from his humanist predecessors, though he disdained them as Utopians. Marx, however, was not the dry-hearted mathematical prophet of history, as he has been celebrated by his followers, and as he might have believed himself to be. With a burning faith in revolution, he was a romanticist and as such a Humanist. The idea of revolution is a romantic idea, because it presupposes man’s power to remake the world in which he lives. If purposeful human effort is left out of account, social development becomes a mechanistic evolutionary process, making no room for sudden great changes and occasionally accelerated tempo. As the prophet of revolution, Marx was a romanticist. He proclaimed his faith in the creativeness of man which, accelerating the process of evolution, brought about revolutions. Marx being a Humanist, the force of his theory of revolution was its moral appeal. Even his critics, who do not depart from objectivity, honour Marx for a passionate search for truth and intellectual honesty. Without a moral fervor of the highest degree, without an intense dislike for injustice, he could not undertake the lone fight to improve the lot of the oppressed and exploited.” (Page:420) 

13.       “In the absence of an adequate knowledge about the origin of life, in the past, Humanism could not be placed on a rational foundation. The advance of scientific knowledge since the middle of the nineteenth century, while compelling certain revisions of mechanistic cosmology and materialist metaphysics, contributed to the triumph of rationalist Humanism. The fact that life is found to be associated with dead matter in a particular state of organization connects man, through the long process of biological evolution, with the background of the physical Universe. The supreme importance of man results from the fact that in him the physical process of becoming has reached the highest pitch so far. Humanism thus ceases to be a mystic and poetic view of life. Based on scientific knowledge, it can be integrated in the materialist general philosophy, and the latter, then, can be the foundation of a sociology which makes room for human creativeness and individual liberty without denying determinism; which reconciles reason with will; which shows that cooperation and organization need not stifle the urge for freedom. Harmonised with Humanism, materialist philosophy can have an ethics whose values require no other sanction than man’s innate rationality.”(Page:421)     

                                                     (to be continued)

Reason, Romanticism And Revolution

M.N.Roy

Ajanta Publications India,

Jawahar Nagar,

Delhi-110 007

RATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM - XIII

A Rational Critique of Marxism and Communism - XIII

(Selected Passages from the book:

“Politics Power and Parties” by M. N. Roy-3)

1.   “Democracy started from the two admirable principles of individual freedom and of popular sovereignty. But having started from those unexceptionable principles, in practice democracy immediately deviated from those principles. We do not have to examine only the record of parliamentary democracy in the 19^th century. We may go all the way back to the man who has been recognized in history as the prophet of modern democracy, to discover that democracy, however well conceived, was born with a crippling defect, because of which it never got a fair chance. That prophet was the French philosopher Rousseau, who is credited with having developed the ideal of democracy. Like all the leaders of the French Revolution, Rousseau also drew his inspiration from the experience of ancient Greece.

The idea of democracy, including its name, was derived from there. The ideal of democracy, as the early leaders of the French Revolution conceived it, was the direct democracy of ancient Greece. There, democracy had been practiced in small City Republics, inhabited perhaps by no more than ten to twenty- thousand people. Since it could not be practiced in 18^th century Europe, where States consisted of entire countries inhabited by millions of people, Rousseau immediately came up against this fact, which was irreconcilable with the practice of direct democracy as it had been practiced in Greece; and yet, if democracy was ever to be practiced, it must indeed be direct democracy, to the largest possible extent.

Hence it was necessary to find new ways and means to practice democracy. Rousseau was a man of great imagination. He was rather a dreamer and a poet than a political thinker. Giving reign to his imagination, he arrived at the conception of a General Will, and devised a system by which the General Will of a people could be ascertained. Any institution which could claim to embody the General Will, should be considered as a democratic institution.

Starting from the conception of individual freedom, Rousseau admitted that every member of a community had individual interests, and when in operation, the individual interests of all the members of the community cancelled each other. But apart from their individual interests, according to Rousseau’s theory of the origin of society in a social contract, the members of a community alienated their individual interests and pledged themselves to work for the common interest. Once individual interests have cancelled each other, there remains a residue of general interest based on the surrender of individual rights, and out of that surrender emerged the concept of the General Will.

This concept was fraught with dangerous consequences. When democracy was to be introduced in the post-revolutionary period, that is, after the defeat of Napoleon, this metaphysical concept of a General Will, interpreted in political terms, took the form of the delegation of power from the people to some other agencies. But already during the French Revolution, the dangerous significance of this doctrine of the General Will made itself felt, and it was on the claim that he represented the General Will of the French people that Robespierre tried to establish a dictatorship through the terroristic regime which practically destroyed the positive outcome of the French Revolution” (Pages:50, 51)

2.   “On the one hand, we have the mass of people, and on the other, we have parties. The individual man and his judgment, his discretion and will are nowhere in the picture. Appeals are not made to individual voters and their power of reasoning, but to the sentiment of masses. The purpose of election propaganda is to create a state of mass hysteria, to create either hatred for one or bias in favour of some other party. Consequently, when the time comes for the sovereign people to make the crucial decision of selecting persons who can be entrusted with their fate for a period of four or five years, the electorate is in a state where no discriminating judgment is at all possible, whipped up into a state of frenzy and driven like cattle to the polling stations to cast their votes. With music, brass-bands, flags and shouting, the judgment of the people is dulled and benumbed; they are placed under some spell, and in that condition they are asked to decide their fate. This is naturally more so in backward countries, but on principle it is the same everywhere.

On the other hand, when votes are canvassed for a party, once the popular vote brings a man to the parliament, his responsibility is not to the people who vote for him, but to the party machinery which has ensured his election by supplying the money and the brass-band.”(Page:53)

3.   “The first criticism of this formal democracy was offered by Socialists. From the time of Karl Marx, they pointed out these defects and deficiencies of parliamentary democracy, and came to the conclusion that parliamentary democracy degenerated in this way not because of its internal contradictions or the discrepancy between theory and practice, but because it is only an instrument for one particular class to establish its dictatorship. The corollary suggests itself logically: Since formal democracy is the dictatorship of one class, therefore the other classes or the class which are suppressed and exploited are entitled to overthrow the dictatorship of the oppressing and exploiting class and establish its own dictatorship. In course of time, this alternative came to be advocated by the “revolutionary” communist school of Marxists; the “reformist” Socialists, however, did not accept it and maintained that dictatorship was not inherent in Karl Marx’s teachings.

By advocating dictatorship as an alternative to a defective form of democracy, Marxist critics did not maintain that democracy was not desirable, but only that its bourgeois parliamentary form was defective. But that was not a sufficiently strong argument for maintaining that an out and out dictatorship is better than a veiled dictatorship or a defective democracy.”(Pages:53,54)

4.   “In the period between the two wars from 1920 to 1939, Democracy, attacked from two sides by advocates of dictatorship, lost ground step by step, and, except in a few countries, was replaced by some form or other of dictatorship practically all over Europe.

But even then the advocates of democracy who, in the critical days, wanted to have a democratic front against Fascism on the one side and Communism on the other, did not see the inherent defects of democracy and did not feel the necessity of broadening their concept of democracy, so that it could stand the challenge and survive the crisis of the contemporary world. If we now think of a politics for the future, it implies that we are, on the one hand, rejecting the various forms of dictatorship and, on the other, realize that Democracy as practiced so far is not adequate. It cannot sand the crisis. Therefore, democratic principles must be reorientated. Democratic ideas must be enriched by experience, and a more effective form of democratic practice must be conceived.”(Page:55)

5.   “The practice of delegation of power is a negation of Democracy, because it can never establish government of the people and by the people. It can, under the best of circumstances, only establish government for the people, which, again in the best of cases, may be a benevolent dictatorship, but not Democracy. It goes without saying that in a large country, with millions of inhabitants and where all power is concentrated in a centralized government, rule of the people and by the people is not possible. Therefore, we must think of a decentralized structure which will make a more direct form of Democracy a practical proposition.”(Pages:55,56)

6.   “We start from the proposition that institutions, political or economic, are created by men. They are created by man to serve his purpose, which is the purpose of having a full life, a good life, and of developing all aspects of his life and all his potentialities. Every institution is as good as the men who work it. But in the modern world the relation between individuals and institutions has been reverse. Supreme importance is attached to institutions, and man is subordinated to them. Social progress is not visualized as the resultant of the development of individuals or groups of individuals, but as structural changes imposed from above, from time to time. This reversal of relations between man and man-made institutions evidently is a denial of the fundamental concept of Democracy, because it completely eliminated man and his sovereignty from the picture of things. Therefore, if a better form of political theory and practice is to be evolved, we shall have to see if this abnormal relation can be reversed again, if man can be placed in his proper position of primacy and supremacy.”(Pages:56,57)

7.   “The general belief is that the common man cannot think for himself and is incapable to judge what is good or bad, for him and in general, and therefore, the common man must be led. For this reason we need either leaders or parties to lead the people and rule the countries. They might go to the extent of guaranteeing to the people the widest suffrage, but that is all they can do because, according to that philosophy, the people are not, and will never be, capable of ruling themselves.”(Pages:57,58)

8.   “It is an unfortunate fact that owing to long disuse, because traditions and social institutions never appealed to them, a large number of men have been made to forget that they are born as thinking being and endowed with the power of judgment, that they can discriminate between what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, without having to rely on any external authority for that knowledge. If the modern world is to come out of this perilous crisis, if the sovereign people is to emerge from this state of degradation, there is no other way than to make a growing number of men conscious of their essential human attributes. To awaken their self-respect and self-reliance, their pride to be men.”(Page:58)

9.   “Even when democracies were composed only of a few thousand people, voters could be misled, unless they were educated. This ancient wisdom is even more true in our time. Those who are trying to give Democracy a chance to be practiced must realize that without education democracy is not possible.

But experience has proved that education measured in terms of literacy alone does not create guarantees for democratic government. What is needed is a different kind of education, an education which will not be imparted with the purpose of maintaining any given status quo, but with the sole purpose of making the individuals of a community conscious of their potentialities, help them to think rationally and judge for themselves, and promote their critical faculties by applying it to all problems confronting them.”(Pages:58, 59)

10.       “Only when the monster called the masses is decomposed into its component men and women, will an atmosphere be created in which democratic practice becomes possible, in which there can be established governments of the people and by the people. In such an atmosphere, it will become possible to practice direct Democracy in smaller social groups, because to make individuals self-reliant, they must be freed from the feeling of being helopless cogs in the wheels of the gigantic machines of modern States, which allow them no other function than to cast a vote once in several years, and give them no idea of how governments function, so that they cannot even effectively help their government, if they wanted to.”(Page:59)

11.       “Today, the State has become an abstraction. In the written Constitutions, the State is divided in three branches, the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. If that is all that the State is, then the States must exist only in the capitals and nowhere else. The State, supposed to be the political organization of society as a whole, has come to be completely divorced from the life of society, if you think of society in terms of the human beings constituting society. The individual has nothing to do with the State, that is, the political administration of his society. It exists only in some central place, faraway, beyond the reach and influence of the members of society, and from there makes decisions and imposes its decisions and the people has no say in them.”(Page:61)

12.       “The first need is to break in our minds with the prejudice that power is the object of all politics, that anybody who wants to participate in politics and achieve anything at all, must have for his first and foremost object to come to power, on the assumption that otherwise nothing can be done, and this is the whole of politics. Party politics in our time is based on that assumption. Power must be captured in some way or other, be it by constitutional or by violent means. All schools of politics, revolutionary and otherwise, have that in common between them; they all must fight to come to power first before they can do anything in pursuance of their programmes. A party is organized with the object of capturing power. It is done with the ostensibly plausible argument that some people know just how society should be organized, and therefore the voters must vote for them so that they come to power and impose the blessings they have in mind from above on the people, who would otherwise never even think of those blessings, much less achieve them on their own.

That is why we say that party politics implies the denial of democracy; it implies that people cannot do anything by themselves; it is a denial of the potential intelligence and creativity of all men, of the sovereignty of the people. Democracy is an empty concept if sovereignty does not mean the ability of the people to do things themselves. If there must always be some-body to do things for them, it means the denial of the sovereignty of the people, the denial of the creativity and the dignity of man.”(Pages:62, 63)

13.       “Against the prejudice that there can be no politics without parties and that parties can do nothing without power, there are two propositions. Firstly, power is not the primary object of politics; it is a means and there are other means; and secondly, party politics leads to concentration of power and hence carries in it the germs of the destruction of democracy. Political ends can be achieved without capturing power. Politics can be practiced without a party organization. The object of such a political practice will be to give the sovereign people the opportunity of exercising its sovereignty, to persuade the people not to surrender it by voting for anybody else expecting him to do the things they want to be done, but to vote for themselves, and do things themselves. To do those things being the function of government, by doing them themselves, they will increasingly assume the functions of government, and thereby create a government of the people and by the people.”  (Page:63)   

(to be continued)

Politics Power And Parties

M.N.Roy

Ajanta Publications India, Jawahar Nagar,

Delhi-110 007

RATIONALISM AND COMMUNISM - XII

A Rational Critique of Marxism and Communism - XII

(Selections from the book:

“New Humanism – A Manifesto” by M. N. Roy) 

1.   “As an economist, Marx was a critic. There is nothing of social engineering or technology in his voluminous writings. Any planning of the future was utopia, which he so severely condemned. While defending his “New Economic Policy”, Lenin said that in the works of Marx there was not a word on the economics of Socialism.

Nor did Marx write anything about post-revolutionary political practice. He postulated proletarian dictatorship as the instrument for breaking down the resistance of the dethroned bourgeoisie. What would happen thereafter, how the post-revolutionary society would be politically organized and administered – that again was all left to the operation of the determined and yet incalculable forces of history. He evaded the political issue by setting up the utopia of the State withering away”.(Page:11)
2.   “The post-revolutionary political practice and economic reconstruction in Russia have been purely pragmatic. They have no theoretical foundation, no bearing upon the ideological system of Marxism. Therefore it is arbitrary to call them Socialist or Communist. On the other hand, since the prophet did not prescribe how the new order should be built, not held out any picture even in broad outlines, the label can be attached to anything, and nobody can prove that the Soviet State and Soviet economy are not Communist”.(Page:12)

3.   “The non-proletarian ‘periphery’ was alienated, seriously weakening the Communist movement, which became completely subservient to the pragmatism of the Soviet State. Its function was no longer to promote world revolution, but to do whatever was necessary for the opportunist policy of the new Russian National State, which claimed to be Socialist.

The Communist International, forged as the instrument of the coming world revolution, was the first victim of the crisis. It was torn asunder by the contradictions between the problems of pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Communisms; between the theory and practice of Communism. By virtue of being the only party in power, the Russian Communists monopolized the leadership of the International. The parties in other countries voluntarily forfeited the freedom of reacting intelligently to the pre-revolutionary conditions under which they had still to operate. The Russian Communists were recognized as the authority not only of Communist practice, but also of theory. Pragmatic practice under unforeseen post-revolutionary circumstances provided the sanction for the dogmatic degeneration of the theoretical pre-suppositions of Marxisms. The interest of the State established by the first proletarian revolution militated against the possibility of world revolution. Socialism in one country precluded the realization of the ideal of international communism.”(Pages:13, 14)

4.   “The “economic man” is a liberal concept; and it is the point of departure of the Marxian interpretation of history. The labour theory of value is the corner-stone of Marxian economics. It was inherited from Ricardo. The theory of surplus value was a logical deduction from the labour theory of value. The idea of surplus value had, indeed, occurred to early English Socialists, such as Gray, Hodgskin, Thompson and others. On the whole, it cannot be denied that Marx drew upon the doctrines of classical English political economy, which he so severely criticized. His was a truly constructive criticism, the object of which was to free the criticized system of ideas from its fallacies, so that its positive essence might be the foundation of a more advanced theoretical structure. Adam Smith had expressed the view that “the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments”. The father of bourgeois political economy anticipated the Marxian doctrine that man’s ideas are determined by the tools with which they earn their livelihood.” (Page:19)

5.   “The philosophical Radicals approached moral problems from the individualist point of view. They disputed the morality of asking the individual to sacrifice for the interests of society. Deprecating the virtues of obedience and humility, they held that general prosperity and well-being were promoted only by the defence of individual rights and interests. Moral order resulted necessarily from an  equilibrium of interests. Running counter to his own Humanist conviction, marx, however, rejected the liberating doctrine of individualism as a bourgeois abstraction.” (Page:20)

6.   “The producer not receiving the full value of his labour is not a peculiarity of the capitalist system. Social progress, particularly of the capitalist system. Social progress, particularly, development of the means of production, since the dawn of history, has been conditional upon the fact that the entire product, at any time, of the labour of the community was not consumed,. The margin can be called social surplus, which has through the ages been the lever of all progress. What is called surplus value in Marxist economic language, is the social surplus produced under capitalism.” Page:22)

7.   “Economically, a demand for the abolition of surplus value will be impractical, indeed suicidal. Social surplus will disappear if production of surplus value is ever stopped; then, with the disappearance of the lever of progress, society will stagnate and eventually break down. Ancient civilizations disappeared owing to  inadequacy or shrinkage of social surplus.” (Page:22)

8.   “Blinking at the fact that production of social surplus represents “exploitation” of labour, in the sense that the producer does not get the full value of his labour, and disregarding the consideration that under any economic system, if it is not to stagnate, surplus must be produced, Marx held that under capitalism production of surplus value represented exploitation of labour because it is appropriated by one class. As a corollary to that fallacious view, he demanded that the class appropriation of social surplus should stop; that expropriation of the expropriators was the condition for the end of the exploitation of man by man.”(Page:23)

9.   “No, revolution has not been betrayed. It has unfolded itself according to the dogmas of the orthodox neo-Marxism of Lenin and Stalin. The fallacies and inadequacies of the old philosophy of revolution are thus exposed by experience to inspire efforts for blazing the trail of a new revolutionary philosophy.”(Pages:24,25)

10.       “Society undoubtedly was always divided into classes, and the classes had conflicting interests. But at the same time, there was a cohesive tendency, which held society together. Otherwise,, it would have disintegrated, time and again, and there would be no social evolution. The refusal of the contemporary capitalist society to be polarized into two classes according to Marxist prediction throws doubt on the theory of class struggle. As regards the past, with some ingenuity, facts may be fitted into any preconceived theoretical pattern.”(Page:25)

11.       “Marxism certainly is wrong as regards the role of the middle class in the capitalist society. The prophesy that the middle class would disappear in course of time has not been borne out by history. On the contrary, the intellectual and political importance of the middle class proved to be decisive in the critical period ushered in by the First World War, The concentration of the ownership of the means of production in fewer hands necessarily enlarged the middle class. But all those who are deprived of the privileges of capitalist exploitation are not proletarianised. Economically, they may be so described; but in other matters of decisive importance, such as culture and education, they remain a distinct social factor capable of influencing events. As a matter of fact, between capital and labour, the middle class numerically grows, potentially as an enemy of the status quo.

Socialism, indeed, is a middle class ideology, Detached from both the antagonistic camps – of capital and labour – and possessed of the requisite intellectual attainments, the middle class alone could produce individualswho saw beyond the clash of immediate economic interests and conceived the possibility of a new order of social justice and harmony. The decacy of capitalism economically ruined the middle class. The result was quickening of their will for the subversion of the status quo, which made no place for them, and the striving for a new order. Because of economic destitution, the middle class was prepared to join the protetariat in the fight for Socialism, by which they meant not State Capitalism, but a more equitable social order. They were, however, not culturally proletarianised. They were capable of appreciating cultural and moral values as the positive outcome of human civilization, and would not sacrifice the precious heritage at the shrine of the revolutionary Providence of economic determinism. The result was a split of the forces of revolution. Marxist dogmatism attached supreme importance to economic considerations. That, together with a cynical attitude to moral and cultural values, alienated the middle class, seriously weakening the forces of revolution intellectually. Selfish economism eclipsed the moral appeal of Socialism.”(Page: 25, 26)

12.“Lenin saw the mistake of ignoring the middle    class,

and tried to rectify it, but only in the field of organization. In theory, the proletariat still remained the chosen people of the Marxist world, Yet, while discussing the organizational problem of the revolutionary party, Lenin admitted that the proletariat by themselves could not develop a social-democratic consciousness, which must be brought to them from outside – by middle – class intellectuals. Emphasising this significant view, Lenin further said that, spontaneously, the working class did not become Socialist, but trade unionist. That revealed the contradiction between Marxist economism and the theory that the proletariat was the builder of the new order.

Lenin generalized his theory: Not only in Russia, but everywhere, the working class was unable to work out an independent ideology; it followed either the bourgeoisie or middle – class Socialist intellectuals. That was a clear admission that the ideal of Socialism and the theory of the proletarian revolution were not born out of the experience of the working class; the one was conceived and the other created by middle – class intellectuals. According to Marxism, the emotions and thoughts of the middle-class intellectuals must have been determined by the experience of that class. The glorification of the proletariat as the herald and builder of Socialism was obviously unwarranted. The credit belongs to the middle – class, which is so very woefully maligned and totally ignored in the orthodox Marxist scheme of revolution.”(Pages:26,27)

13.       “Lenin corrected a mistake as regards organization; but theoretically he was the most intolerant defender of orthodox Marxism. He pointed out the ideological limitations of the proletariat with an entirely different purpose – to expound his theory of party and its role. Since Socialism had to be injected in the proletariat by middle – class intellectuals, the party of the proletariat should be composed of professional revolutionaries who, by the nature of things, could hail only from the middle-class. Yet, theoretically, Lenin would not recognize the revolltionary significance of the middle class. The result of his realistic evaluation of the working class was to superimpose the party on the class which it claimed to represent. But in no way was the party a part of the class. It was the self-appointed leader of the class, incorporating its imaginary collective ego. Subsequently, the Fascists made much of the “leadership” principle. But the dogmatic, uncompromising Marxist Lenin was the theoretician of the principle which came to be the cardinal article of faith of the Communist movement.

According to economic determinism, the proletariat must be the most backward class, intellectually and culturally. Only after the establishment of Socialism could the economic conditions of their life improve, and the possibility of intellectual and cultural development be available to them. Disregarding this clear implication of its theoretical presuppositions, Marxism allots to the proletariat the honourable role of leading society towards a higher civilization. The contradiction is palpable. Communist practice has been vitiated by this theoretical contradiction. A way out of the vicious circle has been found by compelling middle-class intellectuals to sink to the intellectual and cultural level of the proletariat, as the price of the leader-ship of the party.” (Pages:27, 28)

14.   “There is no intellectual freedom in the Communist movement; proud of its proletarian composition, it has no use for the capitalist culture and bourgeois morality. But until now there is no other culture and morality. Proletarian culture is a contradiction in terms; and the cardinal principle of proletarian morality is that everything is fair in love and war; the working class is in the thick of a civil war-the worst of all wars; the end justifies the means. The Communist Party is admittedly amoral, and takes a cynical attitude to cultural values. That is hardly an inspiring leadership for the contemporary world engaged in a struggle for the salvation of the total heritage of human civilization, which alone can be the foundation of a new order of greater freedom and higher culture. Caught in the throes of a moral crisis, the civilized world is looking out for a better leadership with a more rational attitude towards the problems to be solved, and a nobler philosophy.”(Pages:28,29) 

15.       “The proletariat by itself is not a revolutionary force. The ideal of a new order may have an appeal for it. But intellectual and cultural backwardness does not permit it, as a class, to have a long – distance view. Originally, Marxism took this basic fact into account and set up the doctrine that the historical necessity of revolution was felt by the class-conscious vanguard of the proletariat, which was to constitute the revolutionary party.

The dogma of an uncompromising class struggle, and the false expectation of a polarization of society into two classes, moved exclusively by economic incentives, led Marx and Lenin, particularly the latter, to visualize revolution taking place through an insurrection engineered by the so-called vanguard of the proletariat, to be followed by its dictatorship over the people. This theory not only defeats its purpose, as proved by the Russian experience, by creating a new system of political domination, cultural regimentation and economic enslavement, but the uniform failure of Communists all over the world, after their accidental success in Russia, proves its utter inadequacy even as a technique for the capture of power.”(Pages:29,30)

16.       “Scientific inventions since the days of Marx have vastly increased the military might and coercive strength of the existing States, and have rendered the idea of a minority-insurrection impracticable and out of date. On the other hand, by virtue of their class ideology and their failure to offer anything more inspiring than proletarian dictatorship, the Communists were unable to gather together in one movement all the progressive and revolutionary forces; they remained a sectarian and dogmatic body. Even in relation to the proletariat, the Communist Parties failed to attract the culturally more advanced section, which largely remained attached to older Social – Democratic Parties. Consequently, the revolutionary appeal of Marxism was addressed largely to the most backward strata of society. Finally, Stalin went to the extent of declaring that the unemployed and the unorganized were the most revolutionary social force.

The proletariat could not make the expected revolution; nor did the mystic forces of history unfold themselves cataclysmically, as predicted. But revolution, that is to say, radical reconstruction of society, remains a pressing need of our time, felt by a much larger section of society, and more keenly and consciously, than the proletariat. The urge for a new order is a reaction of the threat for the destruction of the values of civilization. Naturally, it is felt more acutely by those who can appreciate and cherish those values. But a new philosophy of revolution, suitable for our age, is yet to arise as the beacon light for civilized humanity. The new philosophy must be able to destroy what remains of the moral sanction of the status quo, by providing an idea of a new social order to inspire all those disgusted with the present state of affairs. It must also indicate new ways of revolution appropriate to the needs of the time. While the concrete steps for social transformation must differ from place to place in accordance with prevailing conditions, the movement for freedom, if it is to succeed, must out-grow its sectarian class character and be inspired by the Humanist spirit and cosmopolitan outlook. It must, further, take the initiative of organizing the people into democratic bodies to provide the basis of the post-revolutionary order.”(Pages:30,31)
17. “The bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, capital versus labour, is no longer the central issue; indeed, it has never been, although it has been, and still is, an issue to be settled. The conflict of our age is between totalitarianism and democracy, between the all-devouring collective ego – nation or class – and the individual struggling for freedom. Continuation of the capitalist order demands substitution of Liberalism by Fascism, in practice, if not as yet in profession. On the other hand Communism in practice has also established a totalitarian regime, under which all the aspects of life are rigorously regimented. For the moment, the perspective of the fight for freedom looks like the legendary struggle between David and Goliath. But man will once again destroy the Frakenstein of his creation, and tame the Leviathan.” (Page: 31)

                         (To be continued)

'New Humanism - A Manifesto',                                                                                                         M.N.Roy,
RENAISSANCE PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LTD,
15, BANKIM CHATTERJEE STREET, CALCUTTA -12,

(First Edition : August 1947,
Second Edition : August 1957,
Reprint        : December 1961,
The above quotations from : July 1974 reprint.)