A Rational Critique of Marxism and
Communism - VI
(Selections from the book:
"POLITICS POWER AND
PARTIES" by M. N. Roy.) - 2
1. "Of course, there can never be such a thing as an entirely new philosophy, There is a continuity in the history of philosophic thought, which has been evolving ever since the dawn of civilization. In various stages of that process of evolution, epoch-making contributions have indeed been made, from time to time. Those contributions mark the stages and emergence of various systems or schools of philosophy.
This process can be divided very roughly into three big periods. The period of religious philosophy or theological thought; the period of naturalist philosophy, associated with the development of modern science since the days of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton; and finally, in our time there developed what is called social philosophy, that is, the attempt to apply the results of abstract thinking to the solution of problems of social existence of the human race.
But there was one continuous under-current of generally evolving ideas throughout the successive stages of the development of philosophical thought, common to them all, and of a cumulative and abiding value. However we may respond to the present crisis, we can be moved and inspired in our thinking only by linking up with that heritage of human civilization. In so far as we can appreciate that heritage, in so far as we can recognize the abiding values of human civilization, will it be possible for us to react to the present crisis effectively and make our own contribution, be it large or small, to the solution of its problems. And through this effort, going on all over the world, and in which we are participating, we may contribute to raise human thought onto a higher level and open up a new vista of human progress.
We see the way out of the contemporary crisis in a philosophy of Humanism in the tradition of philosophical Radicalism. But the New Humanism is in certain respects clearly distinct from the philosophy of Radicalism of the 18th and 19th centuries." (Pages 16, 17)
2. "I believe that the object of all political thinking, the object of social philosophy as well as of political practice, is to ensure the freedom of the individual in society. But when we come to examine the relation between the individual and the State, we are dealing with a different problem. The State is not necessarily identical or coterminous with society. At the same time, if the State is to be regarded as the political organization of society, as it should be, then there is no reason why the State should not be coterminous with society. And if the State can be coterminous with society, the conflict between man and State should be no more difficult of solution than the apparent contradiction between the individual and society." (Pages 18, 19)
3. "Although the problem of reconciling the apparent contradiction of man and State has occupied political thought ever since antiquity, the eclipse of the individual at the cost of growing emphasis on the State, first under theocracy, later in monarchies, yet later in parliamentary democracies, not to mention the modern dictatorships, is one of the outstanding features of history. The 19th century held out hope for the triumph of the individual. But the two concepts with which it was heralded were defective. They were, parliamentarism in the political field, and laisser faire in economics. Parliamentary democracy formally recongnised the sovereignty of the individual, but in practice deprived all but a privileged few of effective use of that sovereignty. The sovereign individual became a legal fiction. For all practical purposes, most individuals were deprived of all power and even of their dignity.
In the economic field, the doctrine of laisser faire gave unbridled liberty to a small minority to exploit the vast majority of the people everywhere. Free enterprise meant freedom of a few to exploit many. That being the practical manifestation of 19th century Radicalism – the political expression of which was Liberalism - it was bound to be discredited and lead to a new period of crisis." (Pages 19, 20)
4. "But once we reject the idea of parliamentary democracy, the claim to dictatorship may be advanced from various sides. Therefore, the first reaction to the Russian Revolution was the rise of Fascism. The world entered into a conflict between two sets of reaction to the older form of political thought. The old form of political thought could no longer command people's adherence and they were now asked to choose between two forms of dictatorship. Whether we choose the one or the other, we shall have to say good-by to the whole concept of democracy; we shall have to say that the whole evolution of political thought since Plato was a mistake, and we shall have to dismiss the individual as a fiction. We shall have to accept society as something given, an amorphous organism which has a collective ego, and sacrifice the constituents of society on the altar of that collective entity." (Page 21)
5. "These collectivist ideas have had yet another consequence. They have resulted in a certain mental attitude, a habit of thinking, which completely disregards considerations of ethics, of morality in social behavior. They have led to confusion about the relation of means and end. On the one hand, an end is made of the means. On the other, any means is believed to be good enough to achieve a desired end. For the last hundred years, a growing section of mankind had come to believe that Socialism, or Communism as it came to be called subsequently, is necessary for establishing freedom and progress, and ultimately it came to be believed that Socialism or Communism as such is the goal. But why should Socialism or Communism be our goal? Presumably because we believe that under Socialism or Communism we shall have greater freedom and happiness. Thus it is obvious that Socialism or Communism is only an instrument, a means to an end, and not an end in itself." (Pages 22, 23)
6. "If again we cast a glance back to the beginning of human civilization, it is not at all difficult to see that the most basic urge of human existence is the search, the unending quest for freedom. This urge expressed itself at the pre-human level of biological evolution in the form of the struggle for survival. When the very existence of the biological organism which came to be called man, was hemmed in on all sides by frightening natural phenomena threatening the new organism with extinction, the new species tried to free itself from those manifold dangers and threatening calamities, in order to continue to exist. In other words, existence was conditional upon the success of the biological organism called man in freeing itself from the pressures of its physical environments.
My contention is that the social struggle for human progress, the entire process of social evolution, is nothing but the continuation of the struggle for existence on a higher level, where that struggle is no longer guided by instinct and natural selection, but by intelligence, choice and reasoning." (Pages 23, 24)
7. "There is no reason to believe that any mere change represents progress. A succession of changes can be characterized as progress only if we can discern in every successive stage a direction, an approximation to a certain goal. And that cannot be proved unless we have a clear idea about the ends of human existence, and a criterion of progress.
Let us not be utopians. Ideals are never completely attained. We can only achieve a greater or lesser approximation towards an ideal. The end of the basic human urge is to approximate to the greatest possible extent the ideal of freedom. If freedom is defined as the progressive elimination of all restrictions on the unfoldment of the potentialities latent in man, it ceases to be an abstraction, and can be intimately and concretely related with the daily affairs of human life." (Page 24)
8. "Previously, those who rejected parliamentary democracy did so on the ground – and it was a valid ground – that through parliamentary democracy political power was monopolized by a small class of people with certain economic privileges. Consequently, as long as the majority of people was deprived of the power which goes with those privileges, the sovereignty which in parliamentary democracy is supposed to rest in the people, never really belonged to the people, in such a way that they could have made use of it.
The ideologists of the new class of proletarians went one step further and said that the virtual dictatorship of one class, which was a minority, monopolizing the power under parliamentary democracy should be replaced by the actual dictatorship of another class, which was supposed to form the majority of society. This proposition was backed up by a very plausible and attractive argument, namely, that dictatorship should be merely a transition stage. One class should capture power with the object of abolishing all other classes, or rather all classes as such, and in doing so it could hardly be called a dictatorship, being the dictatorship of the poor and exploited majority of the people. Together with the classes, the dictatorship also would disappear, and the State as such, that instrument of coercion, wither away in the end." (Pages 24, 25)
9. "What happens after the exploited working class captures power? The economic structure of society would be remodeled; society would cease to be divided into property owning and dispossessed classes, and consequently, in the end, there should be no necessity any more for any class to exercise its dictatorship. If things would take place in this ideal and simplified way, it might be very desirable. But experience has shown that that process does not take place automatically, It does not take place at all in this way, and that is so because there is a logical flaw in this theory." (Page 25)
10. "It goes without saying that physical existence is the basic precondition of social existence. In the present world, the vast majority of mankind cannot satisfy the elementary necessities of physical existence. Unless that is ensured, unless adequate physical existence is guaranteed to every man, woman and child, there is no use talking of developing their potentialities, It is also recognized that under an economic system which has already broken down in most parts of the world, and which has plunged the world into two devastating world wars, that cannot be done.
The world must be economically reorganized . Not only the Socialists or Communists, but the Capitalists also have recognized that fact and are trying to adjust themselves to the new reality. But even a more egalitarian economic reorganization by itself will not produce the desired result, unless it is accompanied by the largest measure of political democracy. And that depends on the possibility of the diffusion of power in a State which will be coterminous with entire society. The State being the political organization of society, the widest diffusion of power makes it coterminous with society." (Pages 27, 28)
11. "The so-called spiritual or idealist philosophies have brought the world to its present state. The collectivist ideologies have wrongly been attributed to materialist philosophy. But philosophical Materialism is a more rational and consistent system of philosophical thought than other schools of philosophy. If the object of philosophy is to explain nature, explain existence, explain the world, and if for explaining the world we have to go beyond the world into regions of which nothing is and can be known, that would not be an explanation. Materialism is the only philosophy which has tried to explain the world without having to transcend this physical universe. A reasonable philosophy cannot possibly have unreasonable results as its logical consequence unless it is misinterpreted and misapplied." (Page 29)
For a more rational reconstruction of the social order of this world, we should not have to break away from a materialist philosophy. On the other hand, certain ill-conceived formulations of some aspects of materialist philosophy have vitiated its social thinking. For instance, one fallacy of the social theory of materialist philosophy is the economic interpretation of history, or Economic Determinism. The climax of this line of thought is to declare that all ideologies, philosophies, art, cultural values, and ethical systems have no objective existence of their own, but are mere super-structures of economic relations, or to be more precise, connected with the means and modes of production, determined by them and meant to perpetuate them by giving them moral or spiritual sanction.
Apart from the inadequacy of this appraisal of ideas and cultural values, this has led to notions of ethical relativism which have played havoc in our time. All the ethical relativists swear by the concept of the Economic Man, which derives its sanction from Economic Determinism. But curiously enough, this concept belongs to the bourgeois Radicals, to those Liberals whom all the collectivists condemn. They have rejected bourgeois Liberalism, but they have taken over its basic concept, the Economic Man.
If we want to put man in the centre of the stage and measure all social progress by the degree of progress and freedom enjoyed by the individuals in society, we shall have to discard this vulgar concept of the Economic Man and replace it by the concept of a Moral Man, a man who can be moral because he is rational. This can be done consistent with materialist philosophy. Materialism does not really discard epistemological Idealism, or idealist epistemology. It points out that ideas are not born by themselves in the air, irrespective of man's physical existence. On the contrary, it traces ideas to the common denominator of physical existence. But at the same time, intelligent Materialism refuses to run counter to the accumulated store of scientific knowledge by denying an objective reality to ideas, by denying the dynamics of ideas, once they are conceived by men.
Therefore, philosophically, 20th century humanist Radicalism proposes to make a synthesis between the history of material progress and the dynamics of ideas, regarding the development of ideas also as a process: once ideas are created, they have a logic of their own, and go on serving as incentive for further development, including the dialectics of economic development. These two parallel lines which go throughout history are continually influencing each other, new ideas leading to new material developments, and material developments giving rise to new ideas. I believe such a synthesis is possible." (Pages 29, 30, 31)
12. "In politics, Radical Humanism points out that democracy can be possible, that economic planning is reconcilable with the freedom of the individual; that is to say, Radical Humanism tries to present itself as a philosophy which covers the entire field of human existence from abstract thought to social and political reconstruction. It is an attempt to evolve a system of thought which would be able to react effectively to the crisis of our time, which would be able to offer a more sensible approach to the problems which are baffling the modern world.
The hopeful feature of these efforts is that they can be taken up and spread by ordinary intelligent and decent men and women everywhere. In that process, the ideas necessarily will be perfected and worked out in greater detail to their logical conclusions and practical consequences, and thus they can take effect and go into the making of ever newer ideas and greater freedom in days to come."(Pages 31, 32)
(to be continued)
POLITICS POWER
AND PARTIES
M.N.ROY
(First Edition : April 1960
Reprint : January 1981
Ajantha Books International,
I – U. B Javahar Nagar,
Bangalow Road,
Delhi – 110 007
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