Institute for the Study of the Science of Society
“While the people were very much alive, I saw a dead philosophy – Cold War anti-communism and neo-imperialism – walking the corridors of the Pentagon.”
US Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski (retired) speaking about the prevailing mood and decision-making process at the Pentagon, 2004.
This little section of an interview published by salon.com illustrates how new conditions call for new principles to guide important activity. Today few can doubt that any political scientist or political functionary who tries to handle the political and social realities of the turn of this millennium by using principles that fit the Cold War is going to get into a big mess. Likewise any scientific communist who tries to superimpose the principles that guided the political activities of Marxists 100 or 150 years ago is in for quite a bit of frustration. But any revolutionary who tries to focus activity without making use of science is in for at least as much frustration and mistakes.
This is why we make a distinction between the enduring value of the science of Marxism and its doctrine at any given historical moment. In this class, we’ll start with a few definitions and then explore some of the critical ramifications of doctrine.
Science and doctrine
Let’s review the general relation between science and doctrine. Science discloses the nature of the motion in society. But revolutionaries still need to figure out what to do.
Doctrine guides revolutionaries, but it is not simply a set of things to do. Doctrine is the indispensable level of thinking between describing the laws that govern the objective process and identifying what needs to be done to advance the revolutionary process.
“For revolutionaries, doctrine is a general policy or set of principles that guides political activity to accomplish a definite political goal. Doctrine is based on the conclusions of the science of society: a definition of the specific set of inherent, objective laws that govern the objective process you are dealing with.”
Marx’s epoch and doctrine different from ours
To appreciate the importance of developing doctrine for our epoch, we have to take look at the origins of capitalism and the epoch in which Marx and Engels developed their scientific methodology and developed doctrine.
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that the epoch they were describing was the epoch of the bourgeoisie. They noted that the economic interests of those who accumulated wealth in the business that went on in the towns (as opposed to those who held their wealth in land) were compatible with the beginning of industrial production. They highlighted the immense transformation of relationships in society. Historians have documented the events that confirm Marx’s concept that capital is a social relation, not a certain amount of money. It wasn’t as if wealth based on the privileges of land ownership got larger and larger and then somehow became “capital.” Capitalism didn’t originate simply by something else getting bigger. Nor did it simply grow out of industrialization. It certainly thrived within industrialization and modernization, but the beginning of capital as a social relation was a political as well as economic process. The seizure of certain lands and the passage of certain laws in a certain part of England separated laborers from their land (and tools) and forced their connection to and dependence on the capitalists. Under the conditions of modernization and industrialization, once the first step in this qualitatively new relationship was taken, there was no stopping it. All the stages of capitalism’s growth were stages of this process of the growth of capital as a social relation.
In his epoch, every political step that Marx advocated was conditioned by and flowed from the class struggle associated with the growth and development of capitalism in the context of the rise of industry and the growth of the social relationships.
Today everything communists do must be conditioned by and flow from the leap from industry to electronics and the resulting destruction of society.
Other reports and papers have described the social revolution sweeping away old relationships, disrupting societies, and destroying lives around the world. As critical as it is, describing the economic revolution at the foundation of this social revolution ever more deeply and specifically does not, in and of itself, advance the revolutionary process. Yet we cannot figure out what to do unless we understand these things and figure out what they mean for our activity. Doctrine navigates the relation:
“The force that shapes an epoch determines the doctrine that guides all political activity. Everything we see around us today is conditioned by and flows from the beginning of the leap and transition in society — the leap from an industrially-based society to one based on electronics – and the resulting disruption and destruction of society. Today doctrine is the set of principles that guide revolutionaries’ political activity within the context of this leap.”
This is not at all to say that our epoch does away with class struggle. The class struggle is the political struggle, the struggle for political power. The point is that today the keystone in the arch of principles is the leap in society. This is the context for all the complex and interconnected processes going on today, including the class struggle.
In Marx’s epoch there took place an immense transformation of social relationships. That is, the connections between the capitalists and the workers in production were growing and strengthening. Under those conditions, in order to guarantee the ultimate general (political) results of the proletarian movement, the communists had to keep uppermost in their minds the class struggle between the workers and the capitalists. In Marx’s epoch, taking the class struggle as the reference point was especially critical in the context of the capitalists’ political struggles against the aristocracy, a struggle that necessarily drew in the working class as well.
Today society is undergoing a different immense transformation of social relationships. The economic revolution of our epoch is tearing apart the connections between the capitalists and the workers that were built up in the past epoch. The doctrine of the leap serves as a guide to everything Marxists need to figure out and do in this epoch of social revolution.
Revolutionary process, line of march, and critical questions of the revolution
“Theoretically, [the communists] …have …the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian revolution.”
Whether in Marx’s epoch or ours, once the revolutionary process begins, it goes through definite stages. Not only are the epoch and character of the revolution we are dealing with different from what the Marxists of the past epoch faced, but we are also at a different stage of the revolutionary process. For us, the disruption of society that kicks off the revolutionary process is only in its initial stages. But that revolutionary process has begun.
Recognizing the difference between the Marxist doctrine of the past epoch and doctrine for this epoch makes it possible for us to proceed from the line of march of the revolution rather than from a set of beliefs or truths. Here we will explore the overall difference by looking at a critical question: relying on the objective economic and social changes in order to prepare the political aspects of the revolution.
The preparation for the political revolution has been a stumbling block for revolutionaries of many countries and time periods. Many “Marxists” seem to have reduced the doctrine of the class struggle to the economic struggle between the capitalists and the workers, as if the back-and-forth struggle between the workers and capitalists determines or leads automatically to a transfer of political power. It is as if bigger and bigger social struggle somehow leads to or becomes “political struggle.” A wrong philosophical conception about how change takes place leads to wrong political and organizational conclusions, with the result that many well-meaning revolutionaries organize their political lives around intensifying the economic struggle. If the economic struggle – not just the unions, but all non-political wrangling over the distribution of the wealth – were the route to the reconstruction of society, then there would be no need to develop political consciousness or to form an organization of revolutionaries; all the hard work of valiant fighters would certainly have given us socialism by now.
Let’s break this apart a bit and look at it through the “glasses” of the doctrine of the leap.
Social struggle is not the same as political struggle. The social struggle is the struggle over the distribution of the social product; the political struggle is the struggle to impose the demands of a class, the struggle for the political power to reconstruct society. To find our way, we have to approach things dialectically. The resolution of the social struggles is political, that is, a matter of the struggle for political power; but the social struggle won’t “jump track” and suddenly become political. The social struggle will not spontaneously lead to political power; but communist have to work within it in order to prepare for the political tasks ahead. Communists aim their political activity toward creating the conditions for the class to achieve political power.
Since we have to operate within the social struggle, we need to understand its foundation and character today and how that differs from the practical struggles of Marx’s epoch. Although the social struggle doesn’t spontaneously become a political struggle, communists today have to take stock of the objectively communist character of that social struggle. Marx dealt with a struggle of workers whose relationship with the capitalists in production was growing; we are dealing with a struggle of workers whose labor power is more and more useless to the capitalist class and whose struggle is bound to clash more and more with the capitalists’ means of political control.
In order to find our way through these stages – to master the line of march of the revolution, including the steps communists have to take to ensure the completion of each stage and the ultimate reconstruction of society – we need to understand the conditions under which we are operating. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other revolutionaries of the past epoch had to work out their conceptions of the path to political power under conditions entirely different from ours.
In Marx and Lenin’s epoch, the historical struggle was the struggle against the aristocracy. The working class could march side-by-side with the capitalist class (or a section of it) against the aristocracy, and the Marxists always fought for the workers to understand and fight for their independent interests. In addition to protecting and promoting those interests at every step in the process, the Marxists also understood and prepared for the political tasks.
“The Marxist writings which could be termed doctrine, in the sense we are using it, summed up the principles guiding the preparation for moments of crisis and instability when the industrial working class could carry the revolution against the aristocracy past the seizure of political power by the capitalist class and on to political power in the hands of the workers (or workers and peasants). Their writings also addressed the tactical and organizational implications of those principles.”
Even in times of economic crisis, the Marxists of the previous epoch faced a process far different from what we face today. Economic crisis may have presented a situation of extreme poverty and suffering of the working class (and, in some cases, the peasantry) or even with political instability. But there did not exist the objective antagonism to capitalism that we find today, and the connection between the capitalists and the workers were growing. Today we face not just economic crisis but social revolution based on economic revolution.
The class struggle is the political struggle. The struggle of the classes for their interests cannot be resolved except in a political struggle for power. Marxists who limit themselves to the doctrine that fit the epoch of the rise of the connection between the capitalists and the workers find it difficult to recognize or envision a political struggle under the conditions of the beginning of the destruction of those conditions.
Revolutionaries who don’t proceed from the recognition of the leap in society and the beginning of the social revolution, will not even recognize the beginning the revolutionary process. They won’t be ready to identify what needs to be done at each stage of the revolutionary process in which they operate.
Today we face the social consequences of a system in the process of destruction — not the growing pains of an expanding and developing system. Our challenge is to prepare for the political struggle within the social struggle that develops on that objective foundation. We need to get more specific about how to do that under the specific historical and cultural conditions in which we work. Under these conditions, the concept of a “mass uprising” takes on a different significance than it did in a previous epoch. Marxists of our epoch are going to have to grapple with the prospects and ramifications of all this for relying on the objective – economic and social – aspects of the revolutionary process in order to prepare for the conscious – political – aspects and resolution of the process.
Objective economic and social changes set the basis for the transformation of society, but the direction of change depends on political consciousness, political action, and political power. Political revolution is impossible without the development of political crisis, political struggle, and political consciousness. We may be a long way from that stage, or it may be closer than it appears. But revolution will have to go through a stage of political struggle.
Organizational ramifications
Following from all this, the “doctrine of the leap” also has organizational ramifications.
Under the conditions in which there is a class that is objectively communist, Marxists can conclude that the nature of the organization of revolutionaries will be different from that of the epoch of Marx, Engels and Lenin. At this relatively emergent stage of the revolutionary process, Marxists see the importance of an organization of revolutionaries based not on a set of beliefs or the theory of Marxism but rather on the program of the “bottom” of society, those with no stake in the capitalist system.
Such is the nature of doctrine and effective political work: Assess and evaluate changing conditions. Identify the quality of the process or a task. Determine what will move the revolutionary process ahead. Sum up, draw conclusions, spell out guiding principles.
Once we understand doctrine in that sense, we can see that there is – or should be – a set of general principles that guides any specific field of revolutionary activity. For example, the conclusions of the doctrine of the leap point Marxists toward building a certain type of organization of revolutionaries. But it doesn’t stop there. Such an organization will have a general guiding doctrine on organizational development (such as the development of revolutionaries into communists, or the unity of authority and responsibility) or a general doctrine on agitation and propaganda. The point is that doctrine is not simply a list of tasks; nor is it static. Doctrine is not a set of rules for revolutionaries to follow. It is a set of principles that encourage and equip revolutionaries to think through a changing situation and its implications.
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We don’t talk much about “the left” because we don’t seem to even operate on the same plane. But it might put things in perspective to emphasize something that so clearly distinguishes us from “the left” that we don’t necessarily recognize it. The “doctrine of the leap” means that, if society is entering into the process of a leap, then the revolutionary process on that basis has begun. Even in the face of such overwhelming changes as are destabilizing the whole world, much of the “left” is still busy clarifying, arguing, and bargaining its shibboleth-like positions. These “positions” are often nothing more than favorite fragments of Marxist doctrine of a bygone epoch pasted onto one or another issue in today’s social struggle. Without recognizing that social revolution is bringing the world through a traumatic leap, they are very simply stuck at the very moment when the revolutionary process is just beginning. Marxists who proceed from the “doctrine of the leap” and the objectivity of the revolutionary process can begin to anticipate and flesh out a conception of the stages of the revolutionary process and more accurately identify their tasks at any given step along the way. Everything we do must be examined from the standpoint of this doctrine of the leap,
The Institute for the Study of the Science of Society concentrates on teaching science in such a way that unleashes rather than channels thinking. Only with this type of education can revolutionaries find their way through changing objective conditions, develop doctrine, and draw the correct conclusions about political activity.
May 2004
Readings:
- “New Epoch Calls for New Doctrine,” Institute Resource Paper #10, In Marxist Philosophy: A Study Guide for Revolutionaries in the Age of Electronics” which is available on this website on the page, Resources for the Study of the Science of Marxism
Suggested readings:
- Selection from V.I. Lenin, “Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism.” Section 3. (Pages 8-10 in Proletarian Publishers edition.)
- Selection from V.I. Lenin, Karl Marx. Section titled, “The class struggle.” (Pages 16-18 in Foreign Languages Press edition.)
- Thomas Friedman chapter
